The Paul Cain Omnibus: Every Crime Story and the Novel Fast One as Originally Published (Black Mask)

by Paul Cain

  The Filipino boy went to Hanan, felt gingerly under his coat, drew out a small black automatic and took it to Druse. Then he went out through the swinging door to the kitchen. Druse put the automatic in his pocket. He turned his eyes to Mrs Hanan, said: “I’m going to tell you a story. After I’ve finished, you can both talk all you like—but please don’t interrupt.”

  He smiled with his mouth—the rest of his face remained stonily impassive. His eyes were fixed and expressionless, on Hanan. He said: “Your husband has wanted a divorce for some time. His principal reason is a lady—her name doesn’t matter—who wants to marry him—and whom he wants to marry. He hasn’t told you about her because he has felt, perhaps justifiably, that your knowing about her would retard, rather than hasten, an agreement… .”

  The Filipino boy came in from the kitchen with a cocktail, set it before Hanan. Hanan did not move, or look up. He stared intently at the flowers in the center of the table. The Filipino boy smiled self-consciously at Druse and Mrs Hanan, disappeared into the kitchen.

  Druse relaxed a little, leaned back; the derringer was still focused unwaveringly on Hanan.

  “In the hope of uncovering some adequate grounds for bringing suit,” Druse went on, “he has had you followed for a month or more—unsuccessfully, need I add? After you threatened Crandall, you discovered suddenly that you were being followed and, of course, ascribed it to Crandall.”

  He paused. It was entirely silent for a moment, except for the faint, faraway buzz of the city and the sharp, measured sound of Hanan’s breathing.

  Druse turned his head towards Mrs Hanan. “After you left Mister Hanan at Roslyn, last night, it suddenly occurred to him that this was his golden opportunity to dispose of you, without any danger to himself. You wouldn’t give him a divorce—and it didn’t look as if he’d be able to force it by discovering some dereliction on your part. And now, you had threatened Crandall—Crandall would be logically suspected if anything happened to you. Mister Hanan sent his men—the men who had been following you—after you when you left the place at Roslyn. They weren’t very lucky.”

  Druse was smiling slightly. Mrs Hanan had put her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands; she regarded Hanan steadily.

  “He couldn’t go to the police,” Druse went on—“they would arrest Crandall, or watch him, and that would ruin the whole plan. And the business about the rubies would come out. That was the last thing he wanted”—Druse widened his smile—“because he switched the rubies himself—some time ago.”

  Mrs Hanan turned to look at Druse; very slowly she matched his smile.

  “You never discovered that your rubies were fake,” he said, “because that possibility didn’t occur to you. It was only after they’d been given back by Crandall that you became suspicious and found out they weren’t genuine.” He glanced at Hanan and the smile went from his face, leaving it hard and expressionless again. “Mister Hanan is indeed ‘crazy about stones.’”

  Hanan’s thin mouth twitched slightly; he stared steadily at the flowers.

  Druse sighed. “And so—we find Mister Hanan, last night with several reasons for wishing your—shall we say disappearance? We find him with the circumstance of being able to direct suspicion at Crandall, ready to his hand. His only serious problem lay in finding a third, responsible party before whom to lay the whole thing—or enough of it to serve his purpose.”

  Mrs Hanan had turned to face Hanan. Her eyes were half closed and her smile was very hard, very strange.

  Druse stood up slowly, went on: “He had the happy thought of calling me—or perhaps the suggestion. I was an ideal instrument, functioning as I do, midway between the law and the underworld. He made an appointment, and arranged for one of his men to call on you by way of the fire escape, while we were discussing the matter. The logical implication was that I would come to you when I left him, find you murdered, and act immediately on the information he had given me about Crandall. My influence and testimony would have speedily convicted Crandall. Mister Hanan would have better than a divorce. He’d have the rubies, without any danger of his having switched them ever being discovered—and he’d have”—Druse grinned sourly—“the check he had given me as an advance. Failing in the two things I had contracted to do, I would of course return it to him.”

  Hanan laughed suddenly; a terribly forced, high-pitched laugh.

  “It is very funny,” Druse said. “It would all have worked very beautifully if you”—he moved his eyes to Mrs Hanan—“hadn’t happened to see the man who came up the fire escape to call on you, before he saw you. The man whose return Mister Hanan has been impatiently waiting. The man”—he dropped one eyelid in a swift wink—“who confessed to the whole thing a little less than an hour ago.”

  Druse put his hand into his inside pocket and took out the black velvet jewel case, snapped it open and put it on the table. “I found them in the safe at your place at Roslyn,” he said. “Your servants there objected very strenuously—so strenuously that I was forced to tie them up and lock them in the wine cellar. They must be awfully uncomfortable by now—I shall have to attend to that.”

  He lowered his voice to a discreet drone. “And your lady was there, too. She, too, objected very strenuously, until I had had a long talk with her and convinced her of the error of her—shall we say, affection, for a gentleman of your instincts. She seemed very frightened at the idea of becoming involved in this case—I’m afraid she will be rather hard to find.”

  Druse sighed, lowered his eyes slowly to the rubies, touched the largest of them delicately with one finger. “And so,” he said, “to end this vicious and regrettable business—I give you your rubies”—he lifted his hand and made a sweeping gesture towards Mrs Hanan—“and your wife—and now I would like your check for twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  Hanan moved very swiftly. He tipped the edge of the table upward, lunged up and forward in the same movement; there was a sharp, shattering crash of chinaware and silver. The derringer roared, but the bullet thudded into the table. Hanan bent over suddenly—his eyes were dull, and his upper lip was drawn back over his teeth—then he straightened and whirled and ran out through the door to the living room.

  Mrs Hanan was standing against the big buffet; her hands were at her mouth, and her eyes were very wide. She made no sound.

  Druse went after Hanan, stopped suddenly at the door. Hanan was crouched in the middle of the living room. The Filipino boy stood beyond him, framed against the darkness of the entrance hall; a curved knife glittered in his hand and his thin yellow face was hard, menacing. Hanan ran out on the terrace and Druse went swiftly after him. By the dim light from the living room he saw Hanan dart to the left, encounter the wall there, zigzag crazily towards the darkness of the outer terrace, the edge.

  Druse yelled: “Look out!” ran forward, Hanan was silhouetted a moment against the mauve glow of the sky; then with a hoarse, cracked scream he fell outward, down.

  Druse stood a moment, staring blindly down. He took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead, then turned and went into the living room and tossed the derringer down on the big center table. The Filipino boy was still standing in the doorway. Druse nodded at him and he turned and went through the dark entrance hall into the kitchen. Druse went to the door to the dining room; Mrs Hanan was still standing with her back to the buffet, her hands still at her mouth, her eyes wide, unseeing. He turned and went swiftly up the broad steps to the office, took up the telephone and dialed a number. When the connection had been made, he asked for MacCrae.

  In a minute or so MacCrae answered; Druse said: “You’ll find a stiff in Mrs Dale Hanan’s apartment on the corner of Sixty-third and Park, Mac. She killed him—self-defense. You might find his partner downstairs at my place—waiting for his boss to come out… . Yeah, his boss was Hanan—he just went down—the other way… . I’ll file charges of attempted murder against Hanan, and straight
en it all out when you get over here… . Yeah—hurry.”

  He hung up and went down to the dining room. He tipped the table back on its legs and picked up the rubies, put them back into the case. He said: “I called up a friend of mine who works for Mahlon and Stiles. As you probably know, Mister Hanan has never made a will.” He smiled. “He so hated the thought of death that the idea of a will was extremely repugnant to him.”

  He picked up her chair and she came slowly across and sank into it.

  “As soon as the estate is settled,” he went on, “I shall expect your check for a hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars, made out to the insurance company.”

  She nodded abstractedly.

  “I think these”—he indicated the jewel case—“will be safer with me, until then.”

  She nodded again.

  He smiled. “I shall also look forward with a great deal of pleasure to receiving your check for twenty-five thousand—the balance on the figure I quoted for my services.”

  She turned her head slowly, looked up at him. “A moralist,” she said—“morbid—and mercenary.”

  “Mercenary as hell!” He bobbed his big head up and down violently.

  She looked at the tiny watch at her wrist, said: “It isn’t morning yet, strictly speaking—but I’d rather have a drink than anything I can think of.”

  Druse laughed. He went to the buffet and took out a squat bottle, glasses, poured two big drinks. He took one to her, raised the other and squinted through it at the light. “Here’s to crime.”

  They drank.

  Hunch

  Brennan turned off Sixth Avenue at Forty-Ninth Street and walked towards Broadway. It was a few minutes before seven; there were little knots of men around the tinhorn bookmakers who used the street as an office. Brennan elbowed his way through one of the groups, went into the drugstore of the Valmouth Hotel, sat down at the soda fountain and said: “Small glass of milk with a shot of chocolate in it.”

  He watched the soda-squirt pour milk into the glass, squeeze the dark cloud of chocolate into its whiteness, set the glass on the green marble counter.

  A woman sat next to him and put her hand down on the counter near the glass; her hand was very white and her nails were long—bright scarlet.

  She said: “You wouldn’t high-hat an old pal, would you?”

  Brennan turned his head slowly, smiled faintly with his mouth, said: “H’ are ya, Joice?” He picked up the glass. “What do you want to drink?”

  “I want to drink Piper Heidsick Nineteen-eleven,” she said slowly, “but I will drink a lemonade—with plain water.” She spoke more to the soda-squirt than to Brennan.

  The soda-squirt smiled, nodded.

  Brennan sipped his milk. He asked: “How’s business?”

  “Lousy.” She took a cigarette out of a small black suede bag. “Got a match?”

  Brennan shook his head.

  The soda-squirt took a paper of matches out of his shirt pocket, scratched one, lighted her cigarette.

  She inhaled deeply, blew a thin gray cone of smoke at the electric fan on the end of the counter. “I guess I’ve lost my dewy freshness.”

  Brennan nodded slowly, emphatically. “An’ if you don’t lay off the weed, and start taking care of yourself, you’re going to lose whatever you’ve got left.”

  She said: “I haven’t had any weed for five weeks—an’ I’ve been getting a load of sun, on the roof, every day the sun’s been out.” She watched the soda-squirt serve her lemonade with a broad flourish, tasted it. “It’s not me—it’s a jinx.” She smiled without mirth. “Or all the chumps are still out at the World’s Fair.”

  Brennan finished his milk, put a quarter on the counter.

  She set down her glass, said: “That’s terrible,” turned to Brennan. “Come on upstairs—I want to show you something.”

  Brennan grinned. He said: “I’ll buy you another drink, but I won’t go upstairs.”

  “That’s not funny.” She smiled faintly and stood up, and Brennan stood up and they went through the lobby to the elevator, up to the sixteenth floor. She fumbled in her bag for the key; Brennan noticed that her hands were trembling, that she had suddenly paled until the deep red rouge on her cheeks looked black against the icy whiteness of her skin.

  He said: “What the hell’s the matter?”

  She put the key in the lock, turned it, swung open the door; Brennan went into the dimly lighted room. She followed him, closed the door. The shade was tightly drawn on the one window; a brightly figured negligee had been thrown over the lamp. There was a very slender, very beautiful girl lying across the bed; her head hung in a strange and broken way, down backward over the edge of the bed; her long straw-colored hair hung to the floor, made a twisted yellow pool on the dark rug.

  Brennan knelt and put out his hand and stroked two fingers Hunch across her forehead, turned to stare expressionlessly up at Joice Colt.

  “How come?”

  Joice Colt shook her head. She was trembling violently; her eyes moved back and forth swiftly from Brennan to the girl on the bed. “I don’t know,” she said. “I came in about ten minutes ago an’ she was like that. I called Ed Harley, but he wasn’t in. I was afraid to call the police—her being in my room an’ everything. I couldn’t think. I went downstairs an’ went into the drugstore an’ tried to think—an’ then you came in… .”

  “Go on.”

  Joice Colt shrugged, shook her head slightly, stood staring vacantly down at the girl on the bed.

  “So now I’m supposed to do the thinking.” Brennan stood up, moved towards the door. He smiled, shook his head slightly. “Nuhuh, baby—I’m a busy man.”

  Joice Colt laughed suddenly. She said: “You damned fool!—don’t you realize this is a swell story? I thought you were a newspaperman—or have you passed that up for straight P.I.?”

  “Story!” Brennan grinned slowly. “Blond Beauty Bumps Herself Off in Forty-ninth Street Hotel—that kind of story is a dime a dozen. This”—he jerked his head towards the girl on the bed—“is probably the sixth today. Any leg-man can cover it.” He drew himself up with exaggerated pride, tapped his chest with a blunt finger. “I’m doing features.”

  He put his hand on the doorknob, smiled gently at Joice Colt. “I’m sorry about the gal, but being sorry for her won’t help her now. I don’t quite see how you’re jammed up because she decided to commit suicide in your room. If you’re telling the truth, I think you’d better call the police. I’ll call my paper from downstairs and have them send somebody over that likes this kind of thing.” He half opened the door.

  Joice Colt said slowly: “This is Barbara Antony, Lou Antony’s wife. Lou got out of Atlanta this morning. Maybe it wasn’t suicide.”

  Brennan closed the door. “Now you’re talking sense,” he said. “When you give me that wide-eyed ‘that’s the way she was when I came in’ business, an’ then close up like a clam, I pass. You’re a lousy liar.”

  He went to one of the two low armchairs, sat down, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “What’s it all about?”

  Joice Colt took a cigarette out of her bag, lighted it. “Barbara and I have been practically living together for the last month,” she said. “She had the room across the hall but we always left our doors unlocked and sort of shared everything.” She smiled ruefully. “That is, whatever we had to share—which was nothing.”

  Brennan suddenly noticed a green glass tumbler that had rolled partway under the bed. He got up and picked it up with his handkerchief and sniffed it, sat down again and put the tumbler on the table beside him.

  He said: “Make it fast. We’ll have to call the Law pretty soon.”

  “Barbara’s been cockeyed for the last couple weeks,” Joice Colt went on, “An’ every time she’d begin talking about killing herself. She talked about it too much—people who
talk about it that much don’t do it.”

  “What was the matter with her?”

  “Everything. Antony cut off her allowance about three months ago. He’d fixed it up for her before he was put over. She didn’t have a dime. She was on the cuff to the bootlegger for a couple hundred an’ she was into the hotel for twice that much—she got her eviction notice yesterday… .”

  Brennan glanced at the girl on the bed. “How come Antony cut off her dough?”

  “He probably heard she was playing around.”

  “Was she?”

  “Uh-huh.” Joice Colt was smiling a little. She took a deep drag of her cigarette.

  “Who with?”

  Joice Colt said: “Ed Harley,” as if the name were a bad taste in her mouth. Her eyes were narrowed to thin blue-fringed slits.

  Brennan leaned back. He said slowly: “Well, well—your own true love. How come you and Barbara were so chummy if Harley aired you for her?”

  “It wasn’t her fault. He gave her that razzle-dazzle works about starring her in one of his clubs an’ she was too limp to say no. Then he dropped her like a hot potato when Antony was wise to him, an’ got scared.”

  Brennan curved his thin lips into something like a smile. “And Harley didn’t even take care of her bill in his own hotel?”

  Joice Colt shook her head.

  Brennan said: “Nice boy.” He stared thoughtfully at the girl on the bed. “It looks like there were plenty of reasons for her to do it—broke, kicked out of the hotel, given the gate by Harley, and Antony on his way up from Atlanta with blood in his eye.”

  “Just the same, I’ll take the long end that it wasn’t suicide.” Joice Colt smashed out her cigarette. “She wasn’t the type.”

  “Harley would probably want to shut her up.” Brennan picked up the tumbler again with his handkerchief, sniffed it. “And Antony would be a cinch for this kind of thing—if he’s half as haywire as they say he is—but he couldn’t get here from Atlanta if he was sprung this morning… .”