A MOST IMMORAL MURDER
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE MURDER OF CECILY THANE
THE MURDER OF STEVEN KESTER
THE MURDER OF SIGURD SHARON
COPYRIGHT, 1935, BY
H. ASHBROOK
Published in Mystery Magazine under the title
“He Killed a Thousand Men”
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
WELLMER
WHO COLLECTS STAMPS AND TO
DIZ
WHO DOESN’T
CHAPTER I - “AIN’T IT DULL?”
CHAPTER II - A Good Deed Gone Wrong
CHAPTER III - The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship
CHAPTER IV - Murder at Last!
CHAPTER V - Enter—the Super-Sleuth
CHAPTER VI - Dull But Necessary
CHAPTER VII - The $32,500 Nut
CHAPTER VIII - 50,000,000,000 M = 2c
CHAPTER IX - “Haven’t I Met You Somewhere Before?”
CHAPTER X - The Guy without Guts
CHAPTER XI - Spike Hunts Russian Air Mails
CHAPTER XII - Just a Couple of Damn Fools
CHAPTER XIII - Enter—a Man of Honor
CHAPTER XIV - A Very Private Secretary
CHAPTER XV - Gossip on the Doorstep
CHAPTER XVI - A Familiar Face
CHAPTER XVII - The Inspector Has Spots Before the Eyes
CHAPTER XVIII - Pug Forgets He’s a Wodehouse Butler
CHAPTER XIX - Mr. Heffenbaugh’s Buddy
CHAPTER XX - ‘Missing in Action’
CHAPTER XXI - Clem Yoder, Memory Marvel
CHAPTER XXII - The Killer Strikes Again (S’Death!)
CHAPTER XXI - A Little Nifty Mail Robbing
CHAPTER XXIV - The District Attorney Bites the Dust
CHAPTER XXV - The Truth and Nothing But
CHAPTER XXVI - The Way-Down-East Motif
CHAPTER XXVII - Wanted—an Unmarried Mother
CHAPTER XXVIII - Found—an Unmarried Mother
CHAPTER XXIX - A Goofy Hunch
CHAPTER XXX - Worse and More of It
CHAPTER XXXI - Three Frightened People
CHAPTER XXXII - The Long Dead Past
CHAPTER XXXIII - Just Nosey
AN EPILOGUE - Involving Two Disreputable Characters
NOTE
In all fairness to the reader it should be pointed out that the events narrated in this story are supposed to take place in the year 1933. The reader should also bear in mind the fact that, although all of the stamps mentioned herein really exist and are famous throughout the philatelic world, the ownership attributed to them in this story is pure invention on the part of the author.
A Most Immoral Murder
CHAPTER I - “AIN’T IT DULL?”
“ ‘IT MAY BE LIFE, but ain’t it dull?’ ”
The lazy young man, a-sprawl in the porch chair, flung down his book and gazed across the blue waters of the bay.
“I beg pardon, sir?” The voice was soft and discreet in the best traditions of English butlerdom.
“Just quoting. Guy named Herbert. He knows what he’s talking about.”
“Yes, sir. Very good, sir.”
“You lie! It’s lousy.”
The discreet voice made no comment, but a tall tinkling glass was deftly inserted into the curve of the young man’s hand as it lay outflung in boredom across the wicker table beside the chair. His fingers closed around its icy smoothness. He raised it and took a long swallow. Then he made a face.
“God! Even the liquor’s lousy!”
“Beg pardon, sir, but that’s the special brand you ordered the other day. Durfey & Benson.”
“Well, it’s lousy just the same. They made a mistake on the label. They ought to call it ‘cambric tea.’ If you ever get wind of some good old pre-repeal, aged-in-the-bathtub gin, buy out the house.”
“Yes, sir. Very good, sir.”
The young man took another swallow of the “cambric tea” and scowled at the landscape.
“The trouble is,” he said, “I’m getting old.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m twenty-nine and I’m bored as hell.”
“Beg pardon, sir, but might I suggest that—”
“No!”
Inertia changed to sudden irritation. The young man’s feet came down off the chair opposite with a bang, and he twisted in his seat to confront the soft discreet voice at his elbow.
“Sit down!”
The soft, discreet voice sat.
“Pour yourself a drink!”
Soda sizzed in a second tall, tinkling glass.
“Now be yourself!”
“Very goo—”
“Yourself, I said.” There was a threatening edge to the tone.
“O. K., Chief.”
“That’s better, but make it ‘Spike.’ ”
The young man relaxed once more into his comfortable sprawl and let his eyes rest this time on the figure before him.
A surprising figure it was. Surprising at least to anyone who up to this time had heard only the voice that issued therefrom. “Yes, sir… Very good, sir… Beg pardon, sir.” A butler. An English butler, tall and austere, the snobbish sort who gets racing tips from dukes, and can make even the most self-satisfied Americans feel a bit wormish and inferior.
As a matter of fact Pug Beasley was none of these. He was short, just a bit over five feet, and he had never in all his forty years so much as seen a duke. His scarred, battered features taken separately—the broken nose, the missing teeth, the bent left ear—were not prepossessing, but the ensemble, though ugly, was comic and strangely intriguing.
Of late, however, his general air of geniality had been somewhat marred by the assumption of a dignity which his stature made slightly ridiculous.
“Just what,” said Spike, “is the idea?”
Pug relaxed gratefully from the strain of British butlerdom and took a long swig from his glass before he answered.
“Well, you see, it’s like this. I been readin’ a book.”
“Bad business, Pug. The higher learning has ruined more than one prize-fighter.”
“Yeah, but I don’t read so good, and I ain’t a fighter no more, so I guess it ain’t gonna do me no harm. Anyway this book here, I’m tellin’ you about, has got a butler in it. A real classy one. And I figure to myself that this here job with you is pretty soft, and if I’m gonna hold it I’d ought to be perfectin’ myself in my art. If I’m gonna be a butler, I’m gonna be a good butler, like when I was a fighter, I was a good fighter, see?”
“I see, but I don’t think it’s so hot.”
“Well, that’s maybe because I ain’t so good yet. I ain’t had the book but about two weeks, and I’m only at page eighty-three. Gimme time.”
“Give you time and you’ll work yourself right out of your soft job.”
“Whaddaya mean?” Pug looked suddenly apprehensive.
“I mean that I didn’t hire you to be a butler. If I’d wanted a butler, I would have gotten a butler, not a has-been, bantam-weight pug. I loathe butlers. They’re too damn snooty. They don’t realize that this is a democratic world. A butler, for instance, would never sit down and put his feet up on the table and drink with the mahster.”
“No? Well, that just shows what a sap he is.”
“See that you don’t get to be that kind of a sap.”
“Well, I’ll tell you, Spike. With you—no. But in front of company, it’s class. See?”
“All right, in front of company, but at your own risk. There’s no telling when I may haul off and bust you one.”
Pug grinned. “Couldn’t be done. My foot work’s too good for you. It ain’t al
l just in the hittin’, you know. You gotta find the guy first before you can lam him one. Now you take—”
“No, you take it right back home. When I want a lesson in boxing, I’ll call up Dempsey. He’s more my size.”
The two men sat for a few moments in silence, sipping their drinks and smoking. Presently Spike spoke, taking up once more the thread of his boredom.
“What do you do, Pug, when you don’t know what in God’s name to do?”
Pug considered the question judicially. “Well, if I got the price, I get drunk.”
Spike shook his head. “No good. I tried that all last week. The relief’s just temporary.”
“Well, if you’re hell bent on goin’ to hell, and likker won’t do it, most everybody else tries women.” Again Spike shook his head. “Vastly over-rated. Anyway modern morals have destroyed sin. It’s, called ‘living life to the full’ now.”
Plainly Pug was stumped. Liquor and women exhausted his own personal repertoire of iniquity. His was a simple soul, untuned to the finer nuances of wickedness. In desperation he cast about into those realms of vicarious experience in which he had lately been immersed.
“Well, in this book I’m readin’, the one with the class butler in it, it starts off with a guy that’s kinda like you. I mean he’s got tons of jack, and he ain’t bad lookin’ but he ain’t got nothin’ to do except spend his jack and make janes, and he’s already kinda tired of doin’ that, so he begins lookin’ up ads in the newspapers. You know like—well—”
He reached for the newspaper that lay on the wicker table and opened it to the column of personal notices.
“You know, like these here. They was one that said, ‘Wanted, young man of fearless courage to undertake secret mission, one willin’ to risk life and fortune if need be,’ and it was just signed ‘Sonya,’ so this guy in the book answers it and Sonya gives him a ring and tells him to come on over, and it seems she’s the daughter of a spy in the Czar’s army and she’s tryin’…”
The exploits of the stalwart hero of fearless courage were lost on the lazy young man in the porch chair as he let his eyes wander down the personal column of the Tribune.
The regular annual meeting of the shareholders of the Teachers’ Building and Loan Society will be held at the office of the society, 349 Broadway, at 4 p. m., August 12.
—————
Party driving to California in car will take three passengers for share of expenses.
—————
Marty: Come home. Mamma sick. We’ll forget it.—
Cora.
—————
Write Joe Marajos for details of Mexican divorce law. Divorces obtained in six weeks without leaving New York.
Spike put down the paper and shook his head sadly. “I’m not a member of the Teachers’ Building and Loan Society, I have no intention of driving to California, I haven’t an idea who Marty and Mamma and Cora are, and I’m not married so I don’t need a Mexican divorce. No, Pug, I’m afraid that won’t do.”
“Well, those ain’t so good. I been sort of readin’ them myself since I started this story I’m tellin’ you about, and the best ones is in that paper that’s all about books.”
“The Saturday Review. Ah yes; poor, dear Richard gave me a subscription to it. He thought it might improve my literary taste.”
Spike took from the pile of newspapers and magazines which cluttered the screened verandah ledge, the Review and opened it to that enticing column of human vapidity in a world of literary austerities.
Lives there a man with soul so dead he could not suffer inspiration from a young woman?—Gay but Wistful.
“Sorry,” Spike said, “but my soul is absolutely moribund.” His eyes wandered down the column.
Struggling harpist wishes someone would endow her future musical education. Sick and in prison. Adele.
“Now this,” Spike remarked as he scanned the third item, “sounds promising.”
I want to put on an act to make the cats in my office sit up and take notice. For this not especially high-minded purpose I require an attentive date. I’d like him to be forty or older and willing to come into the office with the expressed purpose of taking me to lunch or dinner. It will be Dutch treat, but the cats will never know. Proud Polly.
Pug was not impressed. Female office intrigue is pap to one whose regular fare is international espionage. But he merely pointed out: “You’re too young. It says forty or over.”
Spike read on.
Artist or writer can have home in exchange for part time work around country residence. Must be well recommended.
“Recommended for what?” he inquired. “His prose style or his skill in putting up the summer screens?”
He tossed the Review from him and scooped up from the floor the Saugus Weekly Index. A much less pretentious sheet than either the Review or the Tribune, yet boasting a personal column enlivened with photographs. There were two in today—a young man and a cow.
Beneath the young man the caption read: “Will anyone knowing whereabouts of fourteen-year-old boy resembling this photograph communicate with Box 71, Saugus Index.”
And beneath the cow: “Will anyone knowing whereabouts of Holstein cow marked like above communicate with C. F. Springer, Old Lane Road, Saugus.”
There was also an advertisement of the midsummer strawberry festival of the First Presbyterian Church of Saugus, an announcement of a meeting of the Farmers’ Co-operative, and three notices of strayed calves.
Spike flung the pile from him. “No, Pug, I’m afraid they won’t do.”
Pug agreed with him. Lost cows and strawberry festivals bore even less promise of adventure than starving harpists and spinsters without dates.
They sighed in unison and for a long time they sat gazing gloomily out across the gay ripples of the bay, musing on the barrenness of life. Presently Spike yawned prodigiously, stretched, and gathered together his sprawling members.
“I guess there’s nothing for it, Pug, but to give myself up to good works.”
Pug looked apprehensive. “You mean prayin’ and takin’ jelly to the sick?”
“Hardly. I’m not exactly the type for that. What I had in mind was a trip over to the mainland to my brother’s.”
Pug rose and started gathering up the glasses. “I don’t suppose,” he said, as he busied himself with an overflowing ash tray, “that there’s much accountin’ for tastes.”
“Meaning, of course, that you think my brother is one of the most God-awful blisters on the landscape.”
Pug nodded and Spike grinned reminiscently. “That was the beginning of our beautiful friendship, wasn’t it? The minute he told me you were a ‘disreputable character,’ I felt drawn to you. I felt something in you akin to myself. Richard has so often called me a ‘disreputable character.’ ”
Pug paused in his cleaning and eyed Spike, his forehead wrinkling with speculation. “Tell me somethin’—are you sure your ma didn’t put nothin’ over on your old man?”
Spike laughed, then sobered quickly. “Unfortunately,” he said dolefully, “I’m afraid she didn’t. Blood brothers we are, though, thank God, it isn’t visible to the naked eye.”
“Then what do you want to see him for?”
“I was thinking of Teddy. I feel sorry for the brat. He wrings my heart. He’s been sick and I promised him I’d come and see him and bring some stamps. Tell Mrs. Parsons I’ll be back late for dinner, maybe not before eight.”
“The paper says storm tonight. You’d better look out crossin’ the bay.”
CHAPTER II - A Good Deed Gone Wrong
MR. PUG BEASLEY was not alone in his speculations as to the parentage of the Tracy brothers. There were many who shared his doubts. It seemed hardly possible that two such diverse human beings could spring from the same parents.
Spike, or to give him his baptismal, passport and police blotter name, Philip Tracy, was a blithe, debonair young man of infinite good humor and a feeling that life is more bea
rable if laughed at. He was twenty-nine, personable in a tall, blond way, with plenty of inherited money, and an inclination to enjoy what he had rather than make more. He had an apartment in New York and a summer cottage on an island two miles off the south shore of Long Island.
His brother, Richard, shared none of his insouciant qualities. Between the ages of one and three Richard had been subjected to the portrait of an ancestor in a frock coat with the left hand stuck in the chest about to make a speech. It had hung over the mantle in the drawing room and he had viewed it every day of his life and it had left an indelible imprint. Life as he saw it was serious and should be treated with proper respect. Man was created for some useful purpose like being district attorney of New York County—which Richard was. Man should strive onward and upward, ever aspiring toward something higher like being senator or governor—which was Richard’s secret ambition.
Man should not waste his youth in idle bachelorhood but should found a family. And as Richard was some fifteen years older than Philip, the family which he had dutifully if not passionately founded was not twelve years old and just recovering from the mumps.
It was the hapless plight of Teddy which had aroused the benevolent impulses of his Uncle Spike. Not that the mumps, and an extremely light case at that, was particularly distressing. It was at worst a temporary ordeal. But parentage such as had been wished on Teddy was a permanent blight on a young life which otherwise might have been full of hope. If Spike considered his brother a blister, he regarded his sister-in-law as a boil.
How the two of them together had ever managed to produce a child as appealing as Teddy was one of the major mysteries of life which he had refused to tackle. He did, however, feel a certain responsibility toward the child in ameliorating the hardness of his lot. And in consequence he found himself some fifteen minutes after his parting with Pug heading his motor launch toward the mainland of Long Island and the Saugus wharf.
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