A Most Immoral Murder

by Harriette Ashbrook

  She giggled. “Oh, that’s what you tell all the girls.”

  “No, but really I mean it. Haven’t I…”

  They had dinner together at a little restaurant on a side street in the Thirties, a discreet, quiet little restaurant with no orchestra or dancing. The girl was a bit disappointed.

  “Oh, I like to talk better,” the young man protested. “I like serious things—you know, like politics and what you read in the newspapers, and problems like—well, like unemployment and crime. Now you take, for instance, this Crossley crime case in the newspapers…”

  A late moon rose over the horizon, bathed Sark Island in silver, washed it with iridescent waves.

  Spike stretched himself gratefully in the porch swing and lit a pipe while Pug cleared away the remnants of a late supper. It had been almost ten before he had gotten back to the island.

  “Thank God,” he said, “she lived in Jamaica and not in the Bronx.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “A dame I picked up.”

  “Ain’t you got enough dames on your hands without goin’ out and huntin’ trouble?”

  “Maybe I’ve got too many. How’s she today?” He sobered suddenly and nodded in the direction of the upper room.

  “Same, only maybe a little quieter. Mrs. Parsons says she ain’t got so much fever as she did yesterday.”

  “Talk any?”

  “Not much and not so’s you could understand anything.”

  For a moment Spike was thoughtful. “Sit down, Pug. I’ve got to get things off my chest.”

  He told the story of his two days’ adventures. His interview with Herschman and R. Montgomery Tracy, the reports, the slim little red book with its quaint tales of stamp rarities, the two hours he had spent in the Crossley library.

  “I pretended I had a sleeping hangover. That was a lot of crap, of course. I told Richard I had slept through it all there in the library. I wanted to get away to follow Fairleigh. I didn’t like the way he acted. I think he was lying. I think he knows a hell of a lot more about old Crossley and the granddaughter than he lets on. So I followed him after he left. He didn’t know it, of course. He drove out to a little town west of the Forestry Reservation in Jersey. Stayed about five minutes in a house on the edge of town and then beat it back to New York. I stuck around.” He paused and pulled meditatively at his pipe.

  “What did you find out?” Pug prompted.

  “Nothing much. Family living there by the name of Polk. A Mr. and Mrs. Polk and their nephew. I found most of it out from the boy. I managed to strike up a conversation with him. Pretended my car was busted and he stuck around while I tinkered with it. He said Fairleigh was ‘Oh, just a man Uncle Henry has some business with.’ He didn’t seem to know just what the business was, but he said Fairleigh came out every two or three months. Never stayed long, though.

  “After that I went back to town and up to Fairleigh’s office. I played the dumb cluck and took the telephone operator out to dinner. Telephone operators always know things.”

  “Well—did she?”

  Spike paused, took a long pull at his pipe.

  “She said that about two o’clock last Monday afternoon, Linda Crossley phoned and asked to speak to Fairleigh’s private secretary. The secretary was out. Then she asked to speak to Fairleigh himself. When they told her he would be out of town for two weeks she had hysterics over the telephone.”

  There was a short silence, both of them musing on the implications of this revelation. Then Spike spoke. “Go upstairs and bring down her handbag. It’s in the bureau drawer in her room.”

  In a few minutes Pug was back with the bag—a plain black envelope, its fine seal leather showing the effects of rain and mud. They had opened it that first night, searching for a card, a bank book, a letter, something that would identify the wild, sodden creature who had stumbled over the door sill. But there had been nothing helpful. A vanity case, about ten dollars in bills and coin, a few other inconsequential items that are to be found in every woman’s purse. The only thing unusual was a tiny square steel box. But it had offered no initial, no address, no hint of identity, so they had paid little attention to it.

  Now Spike reached into the purse and brought it out, held it in the palm of his hand. His eyes met Pug’s and they were troubled. He pressed a tiny spring at the side, just as he had seen other tiny springs pressed that morning in the Crossley library. The lid flew open. He brought his flash to play on it, the better to reveal what was inside. He and Pug bent closer.

  “Funny,” Spike said, “how it keeps its color all these years.”

  It was a stamp… a three-masted sailing ship… a Latin motto… black on deep magenta… It was the most valuable stamp in the world—the British Guiana, one cent, 1856.

  CHAPTER X - The Guy without Guts

  ‘THE TROUBLE with you, Spike, is that you ain’t got guts. And another thing. You think just because a jane’s a jane, she’s got special privileges, like gettin’ away with murder and—”

  “Oh, shut up!” Spike snapped the command as he paced irritably up and down the sun-drenched verandah. Pug lolled complacently on the chaise longue and took the rebuff philosophically.

  “Now in this book I’m readin’, the one I was tellin’ you about the other day, the fella finds out that this jane he thought was on the level is really workin’ for the Sultan, and has been makin’ up to him just so she could steal the Czar’s secret plans from him. He’s all broke up, findin’ out like that, that she’s a rat. Of course he’s nuts about her but he turns her over to the secret police and they put her in prison and she’s condemned to be shot at sunrise and that’s as far as I got. That guy’s got guts. Now you—”

  “Shut up!”

  Pug shrugged his shoulders and lapsed into silence. Spike flung himself into a chair and gazed out over the bay, his brows twisted in a troubled scowl. Finally he turned to Pug.

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “Same as you. Only I ain’t afraid to admit it.”

  “What should we do about it?”

  “Better phone up your brother and tell him.”

  “Throw her to the lions—eh?”

  “Well, I could think of other things to call your brother besides a bunch o’ lions, but I guess that’s what it amounts to.”

  “You are a bastard, Pug.”

  “Maybe,” Pug agreed without rancor. “But then again, I ain’t no damn fool.”

  “And I am?”

  Pug nodded, rose and began clearing away the breakfast dishes from the wicker porch table. At the door leading into the house he paused. “But then,” he added slowly, “there’s worse things than bein’ a damn fool.”

  Spike left the verandah and went for a walk along the smooth, sandy beach. One hand held his pipe, the other was jammed into his pocket, fingering a small square steel box. He had put it there last night after he had taken it from the woman’s purse. Now he was tempted to hurl it out into the low whitecaps that curled up the beach. They would wash it away, carry it out to sea, bury it in sand. Perhaps that would be best. Still—It was not alone the thought of the $32,500 that stayed his hand.

  He left the beach and wandered inland, followed the meanderings of a tiny creek through woods and meadow. It was almost noon before he returned to the house. Pug met him at the door.

  “Mrs. Parsons says to come up quick. She’s talkin’—sense, you know. She’s conscious.”

  Upstairs, as Spike stepped over the threshold, it seemed a different room from the one he had left in the gray, chill dawn three days before. The fitful, eerie shadows of flickering lamplight were gone, and the place was bathed in sunlight. The air, too, was different. It was as if a haunted spirit, babbling in delirium, had found refuge in consciousness.

  She lay now in the bed, quietly, her eyes closed, her hand resting in Mrs. Parsons’. She looked infinitely worn and beaten, and yet strangely enough she seemed at peace, like one who ceases to struggle and surrenders, regardless of wha
t the surrender may entail.

  As Spike approached the bed her eyes opened. She looked at Mrs. Parsons and a faint, weak smile curved her lips. She spoke, almost in a whisper.

  “You are so—kind. Who—”

  Mrs. Parsons leaned over and brushed the tangled black hair off the brow. “Don’t fret yourself with questions now,” she said gently. “Wait ’til you’re feeling a bit stronger.”

  “But—but I want to know who—where—”

  “I’m Mrs. Parsons and you’re in Mr. Tracy’s house on Sark Island, and you’ve been mighty sick for five or six days now, and we’ve been looking after you. This here’s Mr. Tracy.”

  Spike drew up a chair and sat down beside the bed. She shifted her eyes slowly, looked at him, said nothing.

  “You came Monday night,” Mrs. Parsons went on. “You must have lost your way in the storm.”

  “The storm…” The woman echoed the word weakly. “Oh yes—the rain and the wind—and before that Saugus…” She seemed to be laboring to remember, and the effort was exhausting. She closed her eyes.

  “Just you rest a while now,” Mrs. Parsons commanded gently. She motioned Spike out of the room and lowered the curtain that the light might not shine in the woman’s eyes. Later she took up some food, rich meat broth and an egg whipped up in milk. In the early afternoon, soon after lunch, she summoned Spike once more. She met him outside the upstairs room and closed the door softly behind her as she stepped into the hall.

  “She’s lots better,” she said in a low voice. “I’ve explained as much as I could to her and she insists on seeing you.”

  “Did you—did she say anything about—about what I showed you in the paper?”

  Mrs. Parsons shook her head.

  When Spike entered the room for the second time that day, the woman was lying propped up on pillows. Her eyes were open and they met his steadily as he sat down beside her. Her voice was still weak but even.

  “Mrs. Parsons has told me how very kind you’ve been,” she began. “I’m grateful and I’m sorry I’ve been such a trouble to you.”

  Spike tried to brush away her protests of gratitude.

  “I feel much stronger now and I don’t want to trespass further on your kindness. I think by tomorrow I’ll be able to go—” She paused. It was as if she could find no word with which to finish the sentence, as if the realization had suddenly come to her. For a moment a sort of panic seemed to lurk in her eyes. Then once more she was in command of herself. She went on, but not quite so steadily.

  “I have a friend—and if you will call him by telephone, he will come tomorrow—and get me.”

  “But you’re much too weak yet,” Spike assured her. “And anyway, there’s no question of ‘trouble’ or ‘trespass.’ Forget about everything except just resting quietly and getting back your strength.”

  “No—no, I must see my friend. You must call him for me. I must go—away from here.”

  “I couldn’t allow it. You’ve been desperately ill. Mrs. Parsons has told you that. You must stay here, in this bed, in this room for a week, several weeks.”

  “No—I must go—tomorrow.” She was getting tired and she closed her eyes wearily.

  Spike looked at her thoughtfully for a few moments, hesitated, then spoke.

  “But why,” he said softly, “must you go away from here—tomorrow?”

  She opened her eyes and returned his steady gaze. “Because you have been kind, and if I stay I will bring you—trouble.”

  “I told you there was no question of ‘trouble.’ ”

  “I don’t mean that kind—inconvenience. I mean—real trouble. Please—call my friend. Tell him Linda wants him. Ask him—to come.”

  “Very well,” he said, rising. “What’s his name and how shall I get in touch with him?”

  “He’s in the telephone book—the Manhattan book. His name is Koenig. Kurt Koenig.”

  CHAPTER XI - Spike Hunts Russian Air Mails

  “IT WAS,” said the large lady with the bosom as she peered into the cavernous depths of her handbag, “very romantic. You see, my grandfather was living in Allegheny at the time and my grandmother—but, of course, she wasn’t my grandmother yet. She was just plain Hattie Haws—well, she was living back in Medbury, Mass., and my grandfather wrote to her and said that if she didn’t come west right away and marry him, he’d jump in the river and drown himself, but the letter got lost and my grandmother didn’t get it ’til three years after they were married—my grandfather didn’t jump in the river after all—and then it turned up when they were living in Chillicothe—my grandfather ran a feed store there—and of course they had a big laugh over it and my grandmother always kept it, and me being her namesake she handed it on down to me when she died along with her Battenberg tablecloth and her crocheted bedspreads, and I never thought much about it ’til the other day Mr. Simpson—he’s in business with my husband up in Yonkers, they’re in the plumbing business—well, I happened to be telling Mr. Simpson about it and he says that only the other day he was reading in the paper about just such a letter, you know, somebody’s grandfather and grandmother, and they took it down to a stamp dealer and he looked at the stamp on the envelope and said it was worth twelve hundred dollars, so—”

  This monologue, carried on without pause or punctuation, suddenly ended with a triumphant “There I” as the large lady with the bosom at last managed to extricate an old and yellowed envelope from the debris of her handbag.

  “There!” she repeated, and handed the envelope over to the little round man behind the counter. On her face was the broad satisfied smile of one who has just engineered a remarkable coup. Through her mind ran visions of new velour dining room curtains, a brocade upholstered davenport for the living room, and other assorted domestic glories.

  The little round man picked up the envelope, looked at the stamp and handed it back to her.

  “It’s the 1851, three-cent, dull red, type I. It is worth—”

  He paused slightly and the bosom of the large lady heaved with expectation.

  “It is worth twenty-five cents.”

  The large lady gasped and sputtered. “But—but Mr. Simpson said—”

  “This is a poor specimen and on cover. Unused this variety sells for around $3.50.”

  “But—but it’s very old. Mr. Simpson—”

  “It is not the age that counts; it is the rarity.”

  “But 1851—that’s very old.”

  “But very ordinary. There are hundreds of that issue still in existence.”

  “But Mr. Simpson said—” She was indignant now.

  “Pardon me, madam, but if you would rather take the word of a plumber instead of a stamp dealer, perhaps you had better offer this for sale to Mr. Simpson himself.”

  The large lady sailed out, wrath fighting with disappointment. Mr. Simpson had said…

  The little round man sighed in relief and turned to the three small, grubby boys sprawled across the counter, poring over a thick catalog. One unused to small, grubby boys would have concluded that they were about to spring at each other’s throats, so violent were the tones in which they addressed each other, so threatening their gestures as they turned pages. But the little round man, who was used to small, grubby boys, knew that this was only their ordinary mode of amiable conversation.

  “It is not!”

  “It is so!”

  “Ain’t it, Mr. Koenig?”

  They addressed him simultaneously as he settled himself happily in their midst. The transactions under consideration were weighty ones and involved all of a dollar and seven cents. As the only other customer in the shop was a tall, blondish young man, who seemed unwilling to be disturbed in his consultation of one of the counter catalogs, Koenig devoted twenty minutes to stretching the dollar and seven cents over a French “Poste Arienne,” a couple of “Ubangis” from Belgian Congo, and a complete set of Soviet “First All Union Assembly of Pioneers.” He was a wizard at that—stretching a small sum over a
large territory, especially when small, grubby boys were concerned.

  At last they departed, happily clutching the tiny cellophane envelopes containing their purchases, and Koenig turned his attention to a newcomer in the shop. It was an elderly, bearded gentleman of academic mien, but with an air of excitement incongruous in one of his advanced years. He greeted the stamp dealer as an old friend, a friend to whom he had brought a weighty problem.

  “It’s about those Hawaiians,” he said. “I think—but I’m not sure—I’ve picked up an original five cent, 1853.”

  From his wallet he produced a tiny oiled paper envelope. A bluish stamp fluttered down upon the dark baize of the counter. “What is your opinion?” he asked eagerly.

  Koenig bent over the tiny square of paper, screwed a glass into his eye, scrutinized the wooden face of a long dead Hawaiian king—King Kamehameha III, who ruled the tropic islands before they were subjected to the “civilizing” influence of the white man. From a drawer beneath the counter the stamp dealer drew out a tiny forked instrument of infinite delicacy and laid it across the face of the stamp.

  Presently he stood up and unscrewed the glass from his eye. “How much did you pay for it, my friend?” he said gently, as one handling a patient who at any minute may take a turn for the worse.

  “Five dollars, but the price doesn’t matter. Is it a real one—an original?”

  “Come, look,” Koenig said, and together the two heads bent over the bit of paper—the white one and the shining bald one. “See, the blue is much brighter than in the original, and the design is a fourth of a millimeter wider. And see, the space around the five in the upper right hand corner is perfectly clear. In the original there are two tiny dots just within the left hand border. No, no, my friend, not so shrewd. It is not the 1853 original. It is the 1868 reprint.”

  The bearded gentleman seemed visibly to slump. It was as if the fine cord of his excited anticipation had broken, and left him, not a shrewd bargainer, a discoverer of the rare and the beautiful in obscure byways, but just an old gentleman with sadly dashed hopes. A slightly too intense bluishness, and the hundredth part of an inch had robbed life of its savor.