The Big Book of Reel Murders

by Stories That Inspired Great Crime Films (epub)

  Malone nodded, and then said, “Horace, we’re old friends and classmates. You know me of old, and you know you can trust me. Where did you hide it?”

  “Where did I hide what?”

  “You know what!” Malone fixed the man with the cold and baleful eye he used on prosecution witnesses. “Let me have it before it’s too late, and I’ll do my best for you.”

  The eyes rolled. “Oh, Lawdy! I knew I shouldn’t a done it, Mista Malone! I’ll show you!” Horace hurried on down through the car and unlocked a small closet filled with mops and brooms. From a box labeled Soap Flakes he came up with a paper sack. It was a very small sack to hold a hundred thousand dollars, Malone thought, even if the money was in big bills. Horace fumbled inside the sack.

  “What’s that?” Malone demanded.

  “What would it be but the bottle of gin I sneaked from the bar? Join me?”

  The breath went out of John J. Malone like air out of a busted balloon. He caught the doorknob for support, swaying like an aspen in the wind. It was just at that moment that they both heard the screams.

  * * *

  —

  The rush of self-confidence with which Miss Hildegarde Withers had pushed her way into the lounge ebbed somewhat as she came face to face with Lolly Larsen. Appeals to sympathy, as from one supposedly stranded fellow passenger to another, failed utterly. It was not until the schoolteacher played her last card, reminding Lolly sharply that if there was any commotion the Pullman conductor would undoubtedly have them both evicted, that she succeeded in getting a toehold.

  “Oh, all right!” snarled Lolly ungraciously. “Only shut up and go to sleep.”

  During the few minutes before the room went dark again, Miss Withers made a mental snapshot of everything in it. No toilet, no wardrobe, no closet. A small suitcase, a coat, and a handbag were on the only chair. The money must be somewhere in this room, the schoolteacher thought. There was a way to find out.

  As the train flashed through the moonlit night, Miss Withers busily wriggled out of her petticoat and ripped it into shreds. Using a bit of paper from her handbag for tinder—and inwardly praying it wasn’t a ten-dollar bill—she did what had to be done. A few minutes later she burst out into the corridor, holding her handkerchief to her mouth.

  She almost bumped into one of the sailors who came lurching toward her along the narrow passage, and gasped, “What do you want?”

  He stared at her with heavy eyes. “If it’s any of your business, I’m looking for the latrine,” he said dryly.

  When he was out of sight, Miss Withers turned and peeked back into the lounge. A burst of acrid smoke struck her in the face. Now was the time. “Fire!” she shrieked.

  Thick billows of greasy smoke flooded out through the half-open door. Inside, little tongues of red flame ran greedily along the edge of the seat where Miss Withers had tucked the burning rags and paper.

  Down the corridor came Malone and Horace Lee Randolph, and a couple of startled bluejackets appeared from the other direction. Somebody tore an extinguisher from the wall.

  Miss Withers grabbed Malone’s arm. “Watch her! She’ll go for the money—”

  The fire extinguisher sent a stream of foaming chemicals into the doorway just as Lolly Larsen burst out. Her mascara streaked down her face, already blackened by smoke, and her yellow hair was plastered unflatteringly to her skull. But she clutched a small leather case.

  Somehow she tripped over Miss Withers’s outstretched foot. The leather case flew across the corridor to smash against the wall, where it flew open, disclosing a multitude of creams, oils, and tiny bottles—a portable beauty parlor.

  “She must have gone to sleep smoking a cigarette!” put in Miss Withers in loud clear tones. “A lucky thing I was there to smell the smoke and give the alarm—”

  But John J. Malone seized her firmly by the arm and propelled her back through the train. “It was a good try, but you can stop acting now. She doesn’t have the money.” Back in her own compartment he confessed about Horace. “I had a wonderful idea, but it didn’t pay off. The poor guy’s career as a lawyer was busted by a City Hall chiseler. If Larsen was the one, Horace might have spotted him on the train and decided to get even.”

  “You were holding out on me,” said Miss Withers, slightly miffed.

  Malone unwrapped a cigar and said, “If anybody finds that money, I want it to be me. Because I’ve got to get my fee out of it or I can’t even get back to Chicago.”

  “Perhaps you’ll learn to like Manhattan,” she told him brightly.

  Malone said grimly, “If something isn’t done soon, I’m going to see New York through those cold iron bars.”

  “We’re in the same boat. Except,” she added honestly, “that I don’t think the Inspector would go so far as to lock me up. But he does take a dim view of anybody who finds a body and doesn’t report it.” She sighed. “Do you think we could get one of these windows open?”

  Malone smothered a yawn and said, “Not in my present condition of exhaustion.”

  “Let’s begin at the beginning,” the schoolteacher said. “Larsen invited a number of people to a party he didn’t plan to attend. He sneaked on this train, presumably disguised in a Navy enlisted man’s uniform. How he got hold of it—”

  “He was in the service for a while,” said the little lawyer.

  “The murderer made a date to meet his victim in your drawing room, hoping to set you up as the goat. He stuck a knife in him and then stripped him, looking for a money-belt or something.”

  “You don’t have to undress a man to find a money-belt,” Malone murmured.

  “Really? I wouldn’t know.” Miss Withers sniffed. “The knife was then hidden in your room, but the body was moved in here. The money—” She paused and studied him searchingly. “Mr. Malone, are you sure you didn’t—?”

  “We plead not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity,” Malone muttered. He closed his eyes for just five seconds’ much-needed rest, and when he opened them a dirty-looking dawn was glaring in at him through the window.

  “Good morning,” Miss Withers greeted him, entirely too cheerfully. “Did you get any ideas while you were in dreamland?” She put away her toothbrush and added, “You know, I’ve sometimes found that if a problem seems insoluble, you can sleep on it and sometimes your subconscious comes up with the answer. Sometimes it’s even happened to me in a dream.”

  “It does? It has?” Malone sat up suddenly. “Okay. Burglars can’t be choosers. Sleep and the world sleeps—I mean, I’ll just stand watch for a while and you try taking a nap. Maybe you can dream up an answer out of your subconscious. But dream fast, lady, because we get in about two hours from now.”

  But when Miss Withers had finally been comfortably settled against the pillows, she found that her eyelids stubbornly refused to stay shut.

  “Try once more,” John J. Malone said soothingly. She closed her eyes obediently, and his high, whispering tenor filled the little compartment, singing a fine old song. It was probably the first time in history, Miss Withers thought, that anyone had tried to use “Throw Him Down, McCluskey” as a lullaby, but she found herself drifting off….

  Malone passed the time by trying to imagine what he would do with a hundred grand if he were the murderer. There must have been a desperate need for haste—at any moment, someone might come back to the murder room. The money would have to be put somewhere handy—some obvious place where nobody would ever think of looking, and where it could be quickly and easily retrieved when all was clear.

  There was an angry growl from Precious in his cage. “If you could only say something besides ‘Meeerow’ and ‘Fssst’!” Malone murmured wistfully. “Because you’re the only witness. Now if it had been the parrot…”

  At last he touched Miss Withers apologetically on the shoulder. “Wake up, ma’am, we’re coming into New
York. Quick, what did you dream?”

  She blinked, sniffed, and came wide awake. “My dream? Why—I was buying a hat, a darling little sailor hat, only it had to be exchanged because the ribbon was yellow. But first I wore it out to dinner with Inspector Piper, who took me to a Greek restaurant, and the proprietor was so glad to see us that he said dinner was on the house. But naturally we didn’t eat anything because you have to beware of the Greeks when they come bearing gifts. His name was Mr. Roberts. That’s all I remember.”

  “Oh, brother!” said John J. Malone.

  “And there wasn’t anyone named Roberts mixed up in this case, or anyone of Greek extraction, was there?” She sighed. “Pure nonsense. I guess a watched subconscious never boils.”

  The train was crawling laboriously up an elevated platform. “A drowning man will grasp at a strawberry,” Malone said suddenly. “I’ve got a sort of an idea. Greeks bearing gifts—that means look out for somebody who wants to give you something for nothing. And that something could include gratuitous information.”

  She nodded. “Perhaps someone planned to murder Larsen aboard this train and wanted you aboard to be the obvious suspect.”

  The train shuddered to a stop. Malone leaped up, startled, but the schoolteacher told him it was only 125th Street. “Perhaps we should check and see who gets off.” She glanced out the window and said, “On second thought, let’s not. The platform is swarming with police.”

  They were interrupted by the porter, who brushed off Miss Withers, accepted a dollar from the gallant Malone, and then lugged her suitcases and the pet container down to the vestibule. “He’ll be in your room next,” she whispered to Malone. “What do we do now?”

  “We think fast,” Malone said. “The rest of your dream! The sailor hat with the wrong ribbon! And Mr. Roberts—”

  The door burst open and suddenly they were surrounded by detectives, led by a grizzled sergeant in plain clothes. Lolly Larsen was with them. She had removed most of the traces of the holocaust, her face was lovely and her hair was gleaming, but her mood was that of a dyspeptic cobra. She breathlessly accused Miss Withers of assaulting her and trying to burn her alive, and Malone of engineering Steve Larsen’s successful disappearance.

  “So,” said Malone. “You wired ahead from Albany, crying copper?”

  “Maybe she did,” said the sergeant. “But we’d already been contacted by the Chicago police. Somebody out there swore out a warrant for Steve Larsen’s arrest…”

  “Glick, maybe?”

  “A Mr. Allen Roth, according to the teletype. Now, folks—”

  But Malone was trying to pretend that Lolly, the sergeant, and the whole police department didn’t exist. He faced Miss Withers and said, “About that dream! It must mean a sailor under false colors. We already know that Larsen was disguised in Navy uniform…”

  “Shaddap!” said the sergeant. “Maybe you don’t know, mister, that helping an embezzler to escape makes you an assessory after the fact.”

  “Accessory,” corrected Miss Withers firmly.

  “If you want Larsen,” Malone said easily, “he’s next door in my drawing room, wrapped up in the blankets.”

  “Sure, sure,” said the sergeant, mopping his face. “Wise guy, eh?”

  “Somebody helped Larsen escape—escape out of this world, with a shiv through the—through the—?” Malone looked hopefully at Miss Withers.

  “The latissimus dorsi,” she prompted.

  The sergeant barked, “Never mind the double-talk. Where is this Larsen?”

  Then Lolly, who had pushed open the connecting door, let out a thin scream like tearing silk. “It is Steve!” she cried. “It’s Steve, and he’s dead!”

  Momentarily the attention of the law was drawn elsewhere. “Now or never,” said Miss Withers coolly. “About the Mr. Roberts thing—I just remembered that there was a play by that name a while back. All about sailors in the last war. I saw it, and was somewhat shocked at certain scenes. Their language—but anyway, I ran into a sailor just after I started that fire, and he said he was looking for the latrine. Sailors don’t use Army talk—in Mister Roberts they called it the head!”

  Suddenly the law was back, very direct and grim about everything. Miss Withers gasped with indignation as she found herself suddenly handcuffed to John J. Malone. But stone walls do not a prison make, as she pointed out to her companion-in-crime. “And don’t you see? It means—”

  “Madam, I am ahead of you. There was a wrong sailor aboard this train even after Larsen got his. The murderer must have taken a plane from Chicago and caught this train at Toledo. I was watching to see who got off, not who got on. The man penetrated Larsen’s disguise—”

  “In more ways than one,” the schoolteacher put in grimly.

  “And then after he’d murdered his victim, he took Larsen’s sailor suit and got rid of his own clothes, realizing that nobody notices a sailor on a train! Madam, I salute your subconscious!” Malone waved his hand, magnificent even in chains. “The defense rests! Officer, call a cop!”

  The train was crawling into one of the tunnels beneath Grand Central Station, and the harried sergeant was beside himself. “You listen to Mr. Malone,” Miss Withers told their captor firmly, “or I’ll hint to my old friend Inspector Oscar Piper that you would look well on a bicycle beat way out in Brooklyn!”

  “Oh, no!” the unhappy officer moaned. “Not that Miss Withers!”

  “That Miss Withers,” she snapped. “My good man, all we ask is that you find the real murderer, who must still be on this train. He’s wearing a Navy uniform…”

  “Lady,” the sergeant said sincerely, “you ask the impossible. The train is full of sailors. Grand Central is full of sailors.”

  “But this particular sailor,” Malone put in, “is wearing the uniform of the man he killed. There will be a slit in the back of the jumper—just under the shoulder blade!”

  “Where the knife went in,” Miss Withers added. “Hurry, man! The train is stopping.”

  It might still have been a lost cause had not Lolly put in her five cents. “Don’t listen to that old witch!” she cried. “Officer, you do your duty!”

  The sergeant disliked being yelled at, even by blondes. “Hold all of ’em—her too,” he ordered, and leaped out on the platform. He seized upon a railroad dick, who listened and then grabbed a telephone attached to a nearby pillar. Somewhere far off an alarm began to ring, and an emotionless voice spoke over the public address system….

  In less than two minutes the vast labyrinth of Grand Central was alerted, and men in Navy uniforms were suddenly intercepted by polite but firm railroad detectives who sprang up out of nowhere. Only one of the sailors, a somewhat older man who was lugging a pet container that wasn’t his, had any real difficulty. He alone had a narrow slit in the back of his jumper.

  Bert Glick flung the leather case down the track and tried vainly to run, but there was no place to go. The container flew open, and Precious scooted. Only a dumb Siamese cat, as Malone commented later, would have abandoned a lair that had a hundred grand tucked under its carpet of old newspapers.

  “And to think that I spent the night within reach of that dough, and didn’t grab my fee!” said Malone.

  But it developed that there was a comfortable reward for the apprehension of Steve Larsen, alive or dead. Before John J. Malone took off for Chicago, he accepted an invitation for dinner at Miss Withers’s modest little apartment on West 74th Street, arriving with four dozen roses. It was a good dinner, and Malone cheerfully put up with the screamed insults of Sinbad and the well-meant attentions of Talley, the apricot poodle. “Just as long as the cat stays lost!” he said.

  “Yes, isn’t it odd that nobody has seen hide nor hair of Precious! It’s my idea that he’s waxing fat in the caverns beneath Grand Central, preying on the rats who are rumored to flourish there. Would you care f
or another piece of pie, Mr. Malone?”

  “All I really want,” said the little lawyer hopefully, is an introduction to your redheaded niece.”

  “Oh, yes, Joannie. Her husband played guard for Southern California, and he even made All-American,” Miss Withers tactfully explained.

  “On second thought, I’ll settle for coffee,” said John J. Malone.

  Miss Withers sniffed, not unsympathetically.

  Brother Orchid

  RICHARD CONNELL

  THE STORY

  Original publication: Collier’s, May 21, 1938

  ALTHOUGH BEST KNOWN for his exciting adventure/suspense story “The Most Dangerous Game,” one of the most anthologized stories ever written, the majority of Richard Edward Connell Jr.’s (1893–1949) work was comedic and romantic—exactly what the reading public of the 1920s and 1930s wanted from such hugely popular fiction magazines as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Cosmopolitan, and The Red Book Magazine, among many other magazines for which he wrote prolifically after his World War I service.

  Connell also had a successful career in Hollywood, having written the original story for Meet John Doe (1941), which starred Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck and for which he received a nomination for an Academy Award. Other films on which he worked include writing the screenplay for Booth Tarkington’s Presenting Lily Mars (1943), starring Judy Garland and Van Heflin; cowriting the original screenplay for Two Girls and a Sailor (1944), with Van Johnson, June Allyson, and Gloria DeHaven; and cowriting the screenplay for Her Highness and the Bellboy (1945) with Hedy Lamarr, Robert Walker, and June Allyson.

  “Brother Orchid” is typical of Connell’s stories in that it has a quiet charm and humor that doesn’t throw a pie in the face. It is about a gangster who has been released from the slammer and attempts to take back his position as the leader of a gang. When a rival decides to get rid of him, he is shot but manages to escape by climbing over the wall of a monastery, where he recovers in a safe hideout, slowly and surprisingly acclimating to the life of a monk.