Three minutes later, her stilted heels were clicking across the conservatory. She heard a faint shuffling of feet in the direction of the foyer and judged that the guests were leaving. Her lungs expanded and contracted in a deep breath of relief when she found the dressing room vacant, the coats missing, and the place all to herself.
* * *
—
Working with the speed of a burlesque strip-artist, she peeled the incriminating black crepe frock from her lovely, quivering figure. Swiftly, the brown satin dress replaced it. The black gown and the domino were quickly folded and added to the letters which she placed in a large, addressed envelope. This gown of special construction for the purpose, folded neatly about the domino, hypo-needle, and automatic, and the package made no very perceptible bulge beneath the high-necked satin dress. Then, smiling, Ellen Patrick joined the departing guests in the foyer!
“Mr. Wyatt?” a servant was saying as she departed. “Just a wee-nip too much, sir! You know how it is, sir? He will be quite all right in a little while, sir! Thank you, sir!”
And The Domino Lady smiled knowingly to herself as she hesitated in the lobby long enough to drop the large envelope into the mail chute for the morrow’s delivery! No taking chances with the incriminating parcel at the last moment, she mused! And her mind was busy with three pleasant subjects as her cab knifed the night traffic of Hollywood Boulevard: Wyatt’s discomfiture; Eloise Schenick’s thankfulness; and her next encounter with the handsome hunter who never knew any rules.
DETECTIVES: TRIXIE MEEHAN AND MIKE HARRIS
THE LETTERS AND THE LAW
T. T. Flynn
BLACK MASK is regarded by one and all as the greatest of the mystery pulp magazines, and most experts agree that the Avis of the pulps was Dime Detective, which featured some of the greatest names of the era, much as Black Mask did: Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich, Erle Stanley Gardner, and George Harmon Coxe. When Harry Steeger, the legendary president of Popular Publications, decided to start a sister publication to his enormously successful Detective Fiction Weekly, he called on his regular contributors to write for the new magazine. The first issue (November 1931) included a story by Thomas Theodore Flynn (1902–1979), the prolific author who went on to be a mainstay of both publications.
Eschewing college for a life of adventure, Flynn went to sea at the age of fourteen, working as a common laborer as ship’s carpenter, oiler, steersman, fireman, and more. He returned to work on railroads, gathering material for his fiction. After Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic captivated the nation, Flynn wrote aviation stories, taking flying lessons in the name of accuracy. Sometime after he moved to the West, he began to write westerns, a genre in which he had his greatest success, making a sale to the Saturday Evening Post. The Man from Laramie appeared as a serial in eight issues from January 2 to February 20, 1954; it was made into a hit movie that starred Jimmy Stewart the following year.
Flynn’s most popular crime fiction characters were Mr. Maddox, a racetrack tout and bookie who appeared regularly in Dime Detective, and Mike Harris and Trixie Meehan, private eyes who were fixtures in the pages of Detective Fiction Weekly. An ongoing storyline is that the very cute Trixie exasperates Harris, first by getting them into trouble and then by being a step ahead of him as they solve a mystery. Unusually for a pulp detective male-female team, there appears to be little sexual chemistry between them.
“The Letters and the Law” was originally published in the June 27, 1936, issue of Detective Fiction Weekly.
The Letters and the Law
T. T. FLYNN
CHAPTER I
In the Ring—
MIAMI LOOKED THE SAME—white clouds in the clear blue sky—the February sun bright and hot—when I tipped the Pullman porter and dashed through the station to a taxi.
“Geigler Building on Flagler Street,” I panted at the hacker.
“Nice weather we’re having,” he beamed as he closed the door.
I was mopping perspiration off my face and neck. “Terrific!” I groaned. “What I need is an oversized ice plant.”
“Ha-ha—it is a little warm today, isn’t it?” he burbled over his shoulder as he drove off. “But think of the weather they’re having up north.”
“If I think, I’ll melt,” says I, shoving my heavy overcoat over on the seat and mopping perspiration.
He thought I was kidding him. I don’t know what Bradley’s office girl thought when I walked in on her, still mopping perspiration.
“Why, it’s Mister Harris!” she squealed, hopping out of her chair.
“Hello, Dotty,” says I. “Last spring it was Mike, wasn’t it?”
“Dotty?” says she, cooling off. “Don’t you even remember my name?”
“Could I forget it,” I remembered just in time. “Prudence, the little lady who couldn’t forget her name.”
“I thought we agreed to forget all that,” she reminded with sweet charity.
“Pay no attention to me,” I cracked. “My meter isn’t connected yet. Where is Bradley?”
She reached for the phone. “I’ll tell him you’re here.”
“Is he in conference?”
“Why—why, yes and no,” says Prudence. “I think he’s expecting you; just let me tell him you’re here.”
“Never mind; I’ll tell him myself,” I refused, starting toward Bradley’s door.
“Really—” Prudence protested weakly.
But I was already opening Bradley’s door….
Maybe you’ve never met me—Mike Harris, of the Blaine Agency. I’m red-headed, five feet and a shadow, and life doesn’t seem much more than one case after another. I’ve got a vacation coming—but I’ll give you that later.
Bradley was behind his desk, lighting a fresh cigar.
“I’m here, thanks to you,” I snorted, tossing the overcoat on a chair and peeling off my coat and vest.
“So I see. You’re a sight for sore eyes, Mike!” says Bradley heartily. He came around the desk and grabbed my hand. “I’m certainly glad to see you, Mike. Yes, sir, I certainly am.”
Bradley managed the Miami office. He was gray-haired and immaculate, smooth as a Junior League smile, and hard-boiled as a dowager’s determination. Just the man for that stretch of gold coast between Jacksonville and Miami. Bradley could soft-soap a chair full of jittery millions or strong-arm a gold-washed crook with the same finesse.
“Never mind the greeter’s lullaby,” I handed him sourly. “Where’s your ice water? Where’s a fan? I’m burning up.”
Bradley chuckled. “It isn’t that hot here, Mike.”
“Meet this sun in an overcoat, a winter suit, winter underwear, and socks, and then sing your song,” I retorted. “Those ditherwits in the New York office didn’t care whether I had on earmuffs or rubbers when they wired me to change trains at the next junction and get down here. Dish me the dirt before I melt on your floor.”
“It’s a woman,” says Bradley, returning to his chair.
“Isn’t it always?” I cracked, drawing ice water from the cooler in the corner.
Bradley took the cigar from his mouth and sighed. “But what a woman, Mike!”
“So was Eve, and she took the apple.”
“In this case,” Bradley informed me wryly, “the lady plants the tree, too. Give this Lucille Palmer a brace of free tickets to an opening and she’d leave with the show.”
I tossed the paper cup into the waste container and surveyed Bradley. He was deeply affected; more so than I’d ever seen him.
“It must be pretty bad,” I said. “Give me the worst. This Lucille Palmer sounds to me like a great discovery.”
“In a way she is,” Bradley admitted ruefully. “I’ve met some sharp-witted women in my day, Mike, but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen one who could s
tay in the money with her. Yes, she’s a discovery.”
“So was Little America—but what does one do with it? What has the lady done—tampered with your happy home?”
“I,” said Bradley severely, “am a very moral man, Mike. But Colonel Wedgewood, the beet-sugar king, unfortunately forgot himself. It would be more truthful to say he lost his reason. Lucille Palmer led him back to the cradle days and made him beg for the bottle.”
“So what?”
“So,” said Bradley, “it’s two hundred grand for the letters—or else.”
* * *
—
I gave Bradley a vicious look. “Did you have me sent all the way down here to recover a sap’s letters? Tell that peepshow grandpappy to pay off the lady and charge it to education.”
“This,” said Bradley earnestly, “is no ordinary case, Mike. You know me well enough to know I don’t go off half-cocked when a client cries on my shoulder. Colonel Wedgewood has paid off already with jewels, cash, and a long list of expensive odds and ends.”
“So now he’s left with the odds while the lady keeps the ends? What does he want?”
“Forty-seven torrid letters,” Bradley informed me sadly.
I yawned. “Don’t you know,” I asked wearily, “that if she’s asking two hundred grand for those letters, he should tell her to take the squawk to the Supreme Court—or jump off the Hoboken Ferry? No one pays any attention to dirt any more. She couldn’t get it into a New York court if she carried a union card. Where is he from?”
“New York and Denver. But a breach of promise suit is not what Colonel Wedgewood fears, Mike. His lawyers can handle that without difficulty. The old man is enough of a fighter not to care much what the newspapers print.”
“Then who’s crabbing about what?”
Bradley rolled the cigar in his fingers. He looked as sad as a corporation lawyer reviewing a bad case.
“Colonel Wedgewood gave me the complete picture,” he sighed. “Relations between the colonel and his wife are strained—very strained. The colonel washed a great deal of the family dirt in those letters. He was in an agitated state of mind at the time; and he felt certain he had found a marvelously understanding girl who was happy to share his troubles and sympathize. So, in the various letters, he wrote it all out, with appropriate comments. If Mrs. Wedgewood’s lawyers get hold of those letters, they’ll bomb him with some of the things he put down. He’ll be forced into a property settlement which will cost him several millions. And that, my boy, is not penny arcade money.”
“You make it sound very pitiful,” I said sarcastically. “The colonel will have only a couple of million left, I suppose? I could weep at such poverty. Why is he squawking about two hundred thousand if that much will save him several millions? He’ll never turn up another deal that will pay him such a percentage.”
“On the face of the matter, yes,” Bradley admitted. “But Colonel Wedgewood is certain other demands will follow. He has no way of knowing that this Palmer woman won’t keep photostatic copies of the letters—which would be quite enough for Mrs. Wedgewood’s lawyers. You see, due to the facts the colonel put down in the letters, this Lucille Palmer is quite aware of the situation—and how valuable the letters really are.”
“The man certainly went whole hog when he decided to play the fool.”
“He couldn’t have done worse,” Bradley sighed again. “I don’t see any way out but to get the letters, and at the same time make certain no photostatic copies exist.”
“In other words, you want a miracle—so you send up north for me to do your dirty work?”
“It’s an important and delicate case which must be settled quickly and carefully, Mike,” Bradley pleaded earnestly. “I couldn’t think of two people in the Blaine organization better fitted to do it than you and Trixie Meehan.”
That blew me out of the chair yelping: “What? Trixie Meehan? Not on your egg-stained vest! I wouldn’t work panhandlers’ row with that little torpedo! Nix! Nein! No! Get it? NO! Trixie’s raw-hided me for the last time! If you send for her, I take a runout powder and go back to New York. Do I make it plain?”
Bradley’s face was red before I finished. He coughed behind his hand, looked distressed.
“Aren’t you a little severe on Miss Meehan, Mike? You two have done some great work together. She’s tops in her class!”
“So is prussic acid in its class!” I snorted. “I’m not having any of Trixie Meehan this trip—and that’s that!”
Bradley coughed again.
“Unfortunately,” he sadly informed me, “Miss Meehan is—er—”
“Miss Meehan is right here!” says a voice I know only too well. “And if that sawed-off little eohippus has any more cracks to make about me, I’ll add up the check myself!”
CHAPTER II
The Parade
From the next room Trixie swept in—little Trixie, pert as ever—and primed for trouble. And I started back-pedaling fast.
“Am I surprised?” I bleated weakly. “You know—”
“I know,” says little Trixie, glaring. “Don’t soft-soap me, Numbskull!”
Never met Trixie Meehan either? Life has passed you by. Trixie is no bigger than a gadfly. But her blue eyes are so-o-o big, and soft and melting. Trixie’s misleading little face has a way of making old men husky and young men weak. Trixie tripping by on the main stem is as soft and helpless as a bit of fluff on an autumn breeze.
But this Trixie, who worked Blaine Agency cases with me, was concentrated hell-on-wheels. Her cuddly curves had the strength of an adagio dancer, her fluffy helplessness masked a chilled-steel nerve, her mind clicked eighty to the minute, and Trixie’s pink little tongue could take the skin off a chromium gargoyle. What a woman—and here she was loaded for bear.
“This is a surprise,” I got out weakly. “Ha-ha, what a surprise. I didn’t know you were below the Mason-Dixon line, Trixie.”
“I’ll bet you didn’t,” says Trixie.
So I let her have it back twice as nasty. “I took the pledge on you, sister, that last case out West. You’re poison to me. You give me nightmares with that razor-edged tongue. I’m not having another helping, if you ask for it on a hot griddle. No more—get me?”
Trixie put her little hands on her little hips and cut me down with a look.
“I get you,” she gave me coldly. “But since when were you heaven’s gift to anyone, Ape?”
“Time!” yelled Bradley. “Call off this cross-country feud until you break this case! I’ve explained it to you, Miss Meehan. You’ve got the layout, Mike. The Palmer woman is registered at the Miami-Plaza. She’s dealing through a New York law firm. I think they’re shysters. One of the partners, a man named Louis Layre, is also at the Miami-Plaza. That’s all the help I can give you. Now give me a little help. I’m the one that’s in hot water here. It’s my office that’ll get the heat if the Palmer woman puts it over.”
Trixie had calmed down. She gave me a nasty look and the lift of her shoulder, and spoke to Bradley. “Are there only two of them?”
“As far as I know.”
“Only two,” says Trixie demurely. “That shouldn’t be hard to handle.”
“Now, listen,” I said desperately. “I told you—”
“Of course,” says Trixie sweetly to me, “if you’re a cowardly quitter, Mike. If you’re afraid of this Palmer woman—”
“Afraid of her? Me afraid of any woman?”
“Hmmmmm,” says Trixie, giving me the up-and-up under her long lashes. “Well, we’ll see. Mr. Bradley, where is this lovely old sapodillo?”
“Colonel Wedgewood and his wife have opened their Palm Beach villa,” Bradley explained hastily. “They’re doing the social whirl rather big this winter. This Palmer woman has turned up with her squeeze just when it will be most emba
rrassing and damaging to the colonel’s peace of mind and—er—his wife’s good nature. That sent him to us so quickly and—uh—desperately.”
“I adore desperate men,” Trixie giggled.
I sighed. “I’ll take the hook,” I said. “But if a certain party gets in my hair I’ll run her back to New York so fast her brogues’ll smoke. And that’s no maybe. Furthermore, I’ll give the orders.”
“Of course, Nitwit,” Trixie agreed. “You always try, don’t you?”
“Now there you go—”
Bradley waved us down. “The sky’s the limit on expenses,” says he hurriedly. “Colonel Wedgewood wants results. He’s willing to pay through the nose to get them. Could anything be fairer?”
“Or sweeter?” Trixie sighed.
“We’ll get results,” I promised sourly. “But how he’ll pay! Start the swindle sheet with a bottle of good Scotch. I’ve got to think.”
“Dynamite might blast it out quicker,” Trixie suggested helpfully.
Bradley stood up with a wild look in his eye. “Go into the next room there and plan it any way you like,” he choked. “Only don’t bite in the clenches.”
Trixie saw my ideas—after an argument which brought Bradley to the door twice. He didn’t interrupt because we had the door locked. When we had it settled, I drew a check to the expense account that made Bradley gag, and took the next plane back to New York.
A day’s hard work got me luggage, clothes, and a big, lean valet by the name of Bitters. From my room at the Pierre, I wired the Miami-Plaza to reserve a suite for Mr. Michael Harris and manservant.
The Big Book of Female Detectives Page 38
