“A safe hiding place! Oh, so safe! You were so confident of its safety that you didn’t even trouble to keep your eye on it while you were in the hospital. It was a shock, wasn’t it, Koenig, when you saw that story in the World-Telegram, when you dressed behind that curtain?”
Spike paused in his agitated pacing. He stood over Koenig, looking down on him, exulting in his own triumph.
“Taking those stamps, Koenig, was pure genius. I understand it now. They were to be your incontrovertible alibi. No one would accuse a stamp dealer of taking such great rarities. Only a stamp dealer would know, would understand and realize the difficulties of such a theft. You told me so yourself, that night at my place when we were talking about Homer Watson. But the stamps were to serve a double purpose. Not only were they to act as your alibi, but they were to be used also as red herrings.
“You stuck one in Crossley’s hand, and the police would have found it there if Linda Crossley hadn’t removed it. You hadn’t bargained for that. That was the monkey wrench in the works I was talking about. You stuck one in Mrs. Ealing’s hand. You stuck one in your own watch case. Why? For no reason at all. That was the reason. Just red herrings, to make the police give up in despair at last and put it down to the work of some irrational lunatic. But it turned out that the stamps were the key to the whole thing. They made plain—”
“Just a moment.” Koenig again held up his hand in interruption. It was steadier now, but his voice was still hoarse with emotion. “There’s one thing I would like to know. How did you ‘get hep’ to me, as you say? How did you know?”
“I didn’t know—at first. I’m not one of these scientific blokes you read about in detective stories who get everything by pure reason and deduction. I just had a hunch—and I played it. Something you said that night when you were telling me about Fairleigh. You said he was ‘a man of honor.’ You said it contemptuously.; I asked you if you were a man of honor, and you said, ‘No, thank God—but I have my own code.’
“I sat up for a long time that night just thinking about the implications of that remark. It was that— and your shoes. Those funny, clumsy shoes, and you such a dandy. I got a wild idea and I decided to try it out. That’s why I pulled all that stuff with Pug and the fake telephone calls. I just had a hunch then, but I’ve known ever since last Friday when I got hold of your shoes.”
Koenig was looking straight into the triumphant eyes of the man who had beaten him, trapped him at his perilous game. There was something in his unflinching gaze that cut off the spate of words.
“I suppose,” he said, and now his voice was firm with the firmness that comes of resignation, “you will want these.” He pointed to the letters lying on the table—the letters stained with the blood of a long dead soldier.
“And this, too.” From the safe Koenig produced another object. Spike stared at it. It was a bayonet of peculiar design, a bayonet that was still shining and polished, a foot long, its three triangular blades serrated at intervals.
“My German regiment—used these. I kept mine as a—souvenir. The Americans used to send them home for souvenirs, too.”
He picked up the bayonet and the letters and held them out to Spike. For a moment Spike only looked at him. His brows wrinkled in a puzzled frown. Koenig pushed the objects toward him impatiently.
“Here, take them.”
“But—what for?” Excitement and triumph were halted before bewilderment.
“For evidence, for exhibits,” Koenig explained losing patience. “For evidence before a court. Isn’t that what you’re after? Isn’t that what you want? For your brother—a conviction?”
A moment of silence. Then Spike spoke.
“You—you have me all wrong.” He spoke slowly. He had not yet recovered from the emotions of the moment before, and he was still dazed with the sudden transition in his own mood. It was as if he were feeling his way through the words.
“You’ve got me all wrong. I wasn’t after—evidence. If the things I’ve done since last Friday seem—well, crazy it was only to make sure that— that—”
He broke off. Impulsively he grabbed Koenig’s two hands in his.
“Koenig, you damn fool, don’t you know I’m a damn fool myself? Don’t you understand that all I’ve done since last Friday was done just to make sure the police would never get wise? I was dragging a few red herrings of my own across the trail. Don’t you see?
“I was jockeying for a chance to throw them completely off. And then yesterday it came quite unexpectedly. Linda Crossley crashed into the picture. I thought she would stay put at Sark Island. But she couldn’t. When she got stronger, she got to thinking about her child and she went crazy. She had waited fourteen years and she couldn’t wait any longer. They couldn’t hold her—Mrs. Parsons and Pug. That’s why she crashed into Fairleigh’s office yesterday.
“I hadn’t expected that. I knew with her out of hiding I’d have to act quickly—so I did. I pulled a fast one. Two or three fast ones—all those monkey-shines with the stamps. I did all that you know— sticking stamps around hither and yon, pretending I was beaned on the head and knocked out. Don’t you see? I was just proving to them that you and all the other people involved couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with the case. Don’t you understand?”
It was Koenig’s turn to look bewildered.
“Then why—all this—today?”
“Why? That’s why—the why. I knew the how’s and the who’s and the when’s. I wanted to find out the why’s. If I’ve seemed a bit—well, overbearing in my self-satisfaction, it’s just that I’m a lousy winner.”
As he spoke he picked up the letters from the table.
“I love to play games and I love to win and when I do I’m insufferable. It doesn’t make any difference what the game is—poker, tennis, murder, tick-tack-toe. I’m unbearable when—” With one swift movement he tore the letters across. “—when I win. Forgive me, Koenig! And forgive my poking my nose into your private affairs. I’m funny that way, I guess.” Another swift tear. “I’ve always been insufferably curious.” Tear, tear. “Just plain nosey I guess you’d call it.”
Tiny scraps of paper trickled from his hands, formed a heap on the hearthstone. He stooped, lit a match, touched it to a corner. Flame licked at the little heap, enveloped it in miniature fury, left a small mountain of ash.
He rose, dusted off his knees. “Of course,” he said, and grinned, “all this is—ah—immoral. Most immoral I letting the dastard go scot free. One of the things that just isn’t done in our best detective stories, but then—” He shrugged his shoulders in indifference to the orthodox technique of crime and punishment.
He picked up the bayonet. “I’ll be taking a boat ride tomorrow out to Montauk Point,” he said significantly.
He reached for his hat and stick. At the door he paused.
“If you’re ever out my way, Koenig, be sure and let me know. We’ll go fishing.”
AN EPILOGUE - Involving Two Disreputable Characters
“OF COURSE, Richard, the scandal will be awful.” Spike, fortified against infamous contingencies by four double whiskies, sprawled at ease in a deep upholstered chair in his brother’s office. On the opposite side of the room equally fortified and equally at ease was Pug. The district attorney stood between the two of them, shocked and distrait.
“Fierce,” corroborated Pug complacently. “Compoundin’ a felony. If you get put in the jug, Spike, I’ll bust loose at a cop or somethin’ and get jugged with you. I always stick by a pal,” and suddenly in the emotion of the moment Pug burst into song.
“ ‘Comrades, comrades, ever since we were boys.’”
“I will probably,” Spike went on unmindful of the tuneful interruption, “make the front pages of the tabs. They’ll love it. ‘D. A.’s Kin Shields Linda from Law’s Wrath.’ The tabs are so chummy and informal.”
“And there’ll be pitchers,” Pug supplemented.
“ ‘Famous Ex-Prize Fighter, Prisoner’s Pal.’
‘Comrades, comrades, ever since—’ ”
The district attorney pounded in exasperation on the desk and the song ceased.
“Philip,” he barked, turning to his brother, “I must demand an explanation of this outrageous thing you’ve just told me. I realize that you are at present in no condition to think clearly, nevertheless I must ask you—”
“Can it, Richard, can it. I’ll come clean. You don’t need your third degree. The dame simply fell into my arms. And the next thing I know, a bunch of your flatfeet are all over the place looking for her, saying she bumped off that old Crossley buzzard. I should throw a beautiful woman to the flatfeet-
No, no, I mean to the lions—I mean to you, Richard. Why should I throw you a beautiful woman, Richard? You’ve got Hilda.”
“If you ask me,” Pug put in, “I’d rather have a lion.”
The district attorney turned on him, his irritation bursting into sarcasm. “I am not aware that anyone has asked you anything, Mr.—ah—”
“Just call me Pug.” Pug helped himself to a Corona-Corona from the box on the district attorney’s desk.
“Public sympathy,” Spike announced, “will be with me. A woman, innocent, defenseless, hounded by the police, and I open my arms to her and—”
“Philip, do you mean to tell me that in addition to obstructing the due processes of the law you have—”
Spike held up a wavering, admonitory hand. “Richard, your libido is positively filthy. It should be sent to the dry cleaners. You’re always thinking of sex. I was speaking only figuratively—figuratively. I mean to say, I gave her shelter when all doors were closed against her, when all—”
“But was it necessary for you to lie about it—to me, to Inspector Herschman?”
“But, Richard, what could I do? Would you have me throw a beautiful woman to-No, I said that before, didn’t I? I mean to say, aren’t we sort of going round in circles or is it—”
“Philip!” again the district attorney’s voice barked, and his mouth set itself in a firm, angry decisive line. “Some explanation to the newspapers is inevitable. In some fashion they got hold of the story of the criminal’s visit here at Headquarters yesterday afternoon. They know, thanks to the quick work of Inspector Herschman in checking all alibis, that five of the people involved in the case were automatically eliminated—Fream, Watson, Koenig, Maysie Ealing, Fairleigh. That leaves only one— Linda Crossley.
“Already the newspapers have convicted her. Your evidence, of course, clears her. We will have to make that evidence public. And when we do, I am going to say—” The district attorney paused, fumbled. “I am going to say that we—meaning Inspector Herschman and myself—were aware from the beginning of the whereabouts of Linda Crossley—but for certain—ah—strategic reasons we deemed it inadvisable to make her whereabouts known. Or rather I should say, we—ah—feared that she was marked as the next murder victim— and we felt that in the interest of—ah—her own safety, we—ah—”
“It’s all right, Richard. All right.” Spike rose unsteadily from his chair, motioned to Pug. “Anything you say goes. Only I haven’t got time to listen. We’re celebrating. It’s our anniversary. Four months ago tonight we spent in jail together. And now we’re celebrating. We’re going to get drunk.”
He put a fraternal arm about Pug. They gazed with deep emotion into each other’s eyes, and as they wended their wavering way down the hall they burst into song:
“Comrades, comrades ever since we were boys,
Sharing each other’s sorrows,
Sharing each other’s joys…”
FIN
About Harriette Ashbrook
Harriette Cora Ashbrook (1898-1946) was an American author and journalist who also wrote under the name Susannah Shane. Under her own name her series detective was Spike Tracy, a ne'er-do-well playboy who decides amateur sleuthing might be fun for a lark. He is an obvious imitation of Philo Vance. Tracy's brother Richard (no, they don't call him Dick!) is the D.A. of New York City and it is through his brother that Spike first becomes involved in crime solving. In his first case (The Murder Of Cicely Thane, Coward-McCann, 1930), he upstages both the police and his district attorney brother in the puzzling murder of socialite Cicely Thane.
Ashbrook somehow was never taken seriously in the mystery arena. She got short shrift by most of the book reviewers of her time who failed to see the ingenuity and humor in her books. In one of her books she skewers The Saturday Review because of this oversight. Though she was published by Coward-McCann, a leading second-tier American fiction publisher, she was never picked up by any of the leading paperback houses for reprints. Why? The books are entertaining, smart, witty and never dull. They should've been part of the Dell Mapback series, if not part of Pocket Books' or Bantam's equally successful mystery paperback lines. Only her last four titles in the Tracy series were reprinted in paperback editions (two by the obscure Green Dragon digest imprint and her last, The Purple Onion Mystery, by Penguin) during her lifetime and not one book has ever seen the light of reprinting since the 1940s. There don't seem to have been any Susannah Shane books in paperback (though Lady In Lilac was reissued in 1944 by Books, Inc., a publisher of discounted hardcover reprint books and as a tabloid-size full-length "Gold Seal" novel reprint for the Sunday edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer, August 23, 1942), so she seems to have continued to be ignored by the paperback publishers even after she abandoned using her own name.
Her early books are populated with lively characters and show an obvious love of the genre but derision for its tried formulae which she often spoofs in humorous asides. We get realistic detection with clever plot mechanics, neat insights into forensic police work not often seen in any of the American books of her contemporaries, and a smart alecky likeable playboy detective who is much more interesting and funny than Philo Vance.
Writing as Susannah Shane she started out creating the kind of thing Mignon G. Eberhart and others did so well -- women in peril suspense thrillers. Lady In Lilac even dares to start with a Woolrichian plot device: two strangers meet and one woman asks the other to impersonate her. But as she continued, her offbeat sense of humor took over and she wrote books that bear comparison with Alice Tilton and Craig Rice. But the mystery plots often surpass the story mechanics of those two better known writers.
A Most Immoral Murder was the fourth book in her Spike Tracy series and was first published in book form by Coward-MCann Publishers in 1935. It had originally been published as a complete novel in the July 1935 issue of Mystery magazine under the title "He Killed A Thousand Men."
Mystery magazine had been launched in 1929 as The Illustrated Detective Magazine. It was a smooth, bright-colored, slick-papered publication that was sold exclusively in Woolworth Stores and was aimed mainly at female customers. After 33 (mainly) monthly issues, in October 1932 the title was changed to the rather more bland Mystery, as which it lasted for a further three years. Many well-known authors appeared in the pages of Mystery, including Ellery Queen, Sax Rohmer, Hulbert Footner, H. Bedford-Jones, Philip Wylie, George Harmon Coxe, Stuart Palmer, Albert Payson Terhune, Jacques Futrelle, Frederick Nebel, Mignon G. Eberhart, Vincent Starrett, Guy Endore, and many others. The February and March 1933 issues featured a serialization of Edgar Wallace's adaptation of King Kong. Its final issue appeared in September 1935.
Bibliography
Philip "Spike" Tracy Detective Novels
The Murder of Cecily Thane (1930)
The Murder of Stephen Kester (1931)
The Murder of Sigurd Sharon (1933)
A Most Immoral Murder (1935)
Murder Makes Murder (1937)
Murder Comes Back (1940)
The Purple Onion Mystery (1941) (AKA Murder on Friday)
As Susannah Shane (most of these featuring Christopher Saxe)
Lady In Lilac (1941)
Lady In Danger (1942)
Lady In A Wedding Dress (1943)
Lady In A Million (1943)
The Baby In
The Ash Can (1944)
Diamonds In The Dumplings (1946)
Notes
[←1]
“The Murder of Cecily Thane.”
[←2]
“The Murder of Steven Kester.”
[←3]
“The Murder of Sigurd Sharon”
[←4]
Now we know perfectly well that the office of the district attorney of New York County and the office of the chief of the homicide squad are not in the same building. But later on we’re going to pull a fast one that would be impossible if we stuck to geographic fact. Why should poets be the only ones with special license?
Table of Contents
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
A Most Immoral Murder Page 20
