The Big Book of Female Detectives

by The Big Book of Female Detectives (retail) (epub)

  I closed my eyes and panted. “You handle that, Poppa. Tell me, did you find a handkerchief on me? A woman’s handkerchief? My right coat pocket.”

  “Didn’t look. Wait a second.” He stuck his hand in and felt around. “There’s nothing in there, kid, but an old beer bottle top.”

  “Filched,” I said. “Wonderful evidence. Gone. Look, Poppa. Three things for you to do. Put out a call for the car belonging to Vinnie Harris, Myers’s old sidekick. You’ll pick up Myers that way. Then go to my place, take the cigarette box on side table, take it to headquarters and get prints off it. Then take this pill out of me and match it with those in the records of ballistics. It’ll match one somewhere. I think—”

  Suddenly the world swam, and I knew I was fainting, and as I went, I heard the medico say, “Well, I warned him. Next time he’ll keep quiet with a wound like that.”

  Poppa Hanley grunted, “For two pins, I’d slap your ears down.”

  And then I was really gone.

  * * *

  —

  Next day was Sunday. I was a pretty sick laddie. They tell me the nurse put Garbo to shame. I don’t even remember what she looked like. Banks were closed, so Poppa couldn’t get into the lock-box drawer. Nothing else happened. Someone sent flowers, forget who. Poppa told me he had the bullet and it was down at ballistics. That’s why I was sick. They gave me ether to get the pill out.

  Ether makes me sick.

  * * *

  —

  On Monday morning, I felt like a million dollars. Dr. Kerr Kyne, the old Buzzard no less, came in and looked me over and sniffed. “Well, that’s hard luck,” he said drily. “I’m afraid you’re going to live. Entirely a flesh wound, knitting nicely, and you could really leave here tonight, just so you don’t use your left arm and tear the wound open again. Your temperature is normal enough. Humpf! Well, I’m on my way to see your cohort’s viscera, as you would say. Sorry I can’t perform an autopsy on you too.”

  “Vulture,” I said warmly, “I love you!”

  He smiled faintly and waved and then left for the post-mortem on Marian Hans. I shivered at the thought. It might very well have been my own post-mortem. I’d never been that close to the line before.

  At ten o’clock, Poppa Hanley arrived and we settled down for a session. “In the first place,” Hanley said, “I’ve been down to the lock drawer, and the rod was gone. The drawer was absolutely empty, and the guard told me that someone had been in on Saturday morning before the bank closed.”

  “Sure! You see? Whoever did it got that gun out before Jane Willis was bumped. If that gun hadn’t been recovered, Jane would never have been clipped.”

  “All right, you button your lip and just listen. You’re supposed to be wounded. So the gun is gone. Then Doc Kyne told me this morning that he had finally analyzed the smudge on Willis’s forehead this morning, and that it was blue-black mascara, and not a typewriter ribbon. We get along, no?”

  “I’m all ears,” I said. “Confound and amaze me. Go ahead.”

  “I picked up the cigarette box in your apartment and took it down to headquarters and got prints off it. But they didn’t match Myers’s. What are you trying to prove?”

  “Have you got Myers yet?”

  “Uh-huh. Eight o’clock this morning on Canal Street. You were right. He was in Vinnie Harris’s car. But the spouse wasn’t with him and he won’t talk.”

  I said, “All right. Now how about the pill you got out of me, and out of Marian Hans?”

  Poppa Hanley stuck a cigar in his mouth, and instantly tipped me off that the news was both good and big. Poppa buys the very cheapest cigars on the market because he doesn’t smoke them. But whenever Poppa gets excited about a case, a cigar goes in his mouth instead of chewing tobacco, and he chaws it until it’s in shreds and utterly disreputable. He started chawing right then and there.

  “Well, Daffy,” he said, “I don’t know what you’re aiming at, and I’m not sure that you were in on this, but that pill outa you has done big things.”

  “I’ll guess,” I said. “That pill was fired out of the same gun which showed up in another case sometime somewhere. Probably a murder case. The gun wasn’t recovered.”

  Hanley blinked. “Go on. You’re not guessing.”

  “I swear I am. It’s the only logical thing.”

  “I don’t believe it. You’ve hit it on the nose. You couldn’t guess a thing like that. You had the Chronicle send you up clippings from the morgue on Al Myers.”

  “True,” I said, “but I haven’t seen them yet.”

  As if to substantiate me, the nurse—whose name was Jones and who must have been a beautiful baby—said that a man was here from the Chronicle and called himself Rasputin, the Mad Monkey. I said okay and the Old Man breezed in.

  In topcoat and hat to cover the bald spot, the Old Man looks fairly respectable. “Hello, my dear boy,” he said. “When are you going to quit lousing up this hospital and come back to work? Hanley, we’d better fire the nurse for one thing. She’s conducive to illness. Ahem, and me with four children. How do you feel, Target?”

  “Good enough,” I said, “to know when I’m well off.”

  “Hmm, a pity,” said the Old Man. “Well, I brought up all the trash out of the morgue that you asked for. Think you’re well enough to read all this stuff? All kidding aside?”

  “I’m well enough to ask for a bonus for being wounded in line of duty for the New York Chronicle, the sweatshop which keeps me in velvet.”

  “You’re not well enough to be refused,” the Old Man said. “So I’ll wait until you come back to the office before I turn the angle down. Look, I’ve got to get back for the home edition. I didn’t tell Dinah that anything had happened to you. She telephoned in this morning, finally got her statement out of the Whittakers. Smart girl, that kid. They wouldn’t see her and they wouldn’t talk to her. So she sent Smootsy in to fix the phone—the old repair man gag—and Smootsy planted one of those little gadget microphones. That night, they sent the Whittakers a wire saying Myers and Elsie were in Miami and would come home as soon as they were sure they would be welcome. Then Dinah hooked up the dry cells and listened to momma and pater thrash the thing out. It’s thumbs down, Daffy. An annulment, a divorce, or good-bye Elsie. There was something about blood will show. And they didn’t mean Al Myers either. Another listen, and it develops that Elsie Whittaker was an adopted daughter, and not their own. We checked with the Infant Home, and it’s true. Adopted at age of eight months. So Dinah has a story that’ll make the other cocktail reporters rip their hair-dos wide open. Take care of him Hanley, I’ve got to go.”

  “Listen,” I called, “Dinah isn’t coming home yet, is she?”

  “Told her she could have a week,” the Old Man said, and then he was gone.

  “Let’s see that stuff you’ve got there,” Hanley said.

  * * *

  —

  We looked through it together and we finally reached the story and I shivered at the goodness of my guess. In 1928, Albert Myers had gone on trial in General Sessions for shooting and killing Black Jack Denham in a brawl at a night spot. But when the trial came off, the state’s witnesses forgot their stories (intimidation), and the defense attorney had pulled a fast one by demanding that the gun, marked exhibit A, be matched with the bullet taken from Black Jack. Some fun, because someone had switched guns, and the exhibit was a phony and had never fired the murder bullet, and Captain DuBois himself, chief of ballistics, had to admit the fact. Mistrial.

  “Well,” said Hanley, “that’s that. Pretty plain now.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Jane Willis was married to Al Myers in those days and when that killing finished up in a mistrial, Jane figured she had enough of that kind of stuff. Not being chained to a killer for her, so she took the highroad. Now she must have known t
hat Myers had done it, and been afraid she might be killed by him to cover it. So she kept that gun—maybe it was given to her for safekeeping after the switch was made. Anyway, she kept it. As long as she had it—and it was Myers’s gun—she was good for life because she told Myers if anything happened to her, that gun would go to the D.A. and Myers’s goose would hang high.”

  “Sure,” said Hanley. “Everything is fine except Myers has an alibi for the afternoon Jane Willis was bumped.”

  “Baloney,” I said. “He told me himself he was the last one to see her alive. But Myers didn’t kill Willis, Poppa. A woman did.”

  Hanley just spluttered.

  “That’s what I said. A dame. A woman. Listen. You run down to headquarters and match that print you got off my cigarette box with the print of the upside down thumb you found on Jane Willis’s forehead. You do that, and you’ve got your killer. You do it, and if they match, you tell me, and I’ll give you the dame’s name.”

  “I’ll take you at your word,” Hanley said. “I’ll be back as soon as I check.” He shook hands and went out.

  CHAPTER VI

  No Kidding

  He hadn’t been gone two minutes—oh, it was less than that—when Miss Jones appeared at the door and said, “Another visitor, Daffy. A lady. Miss Beckwith.”

  “Never heard of her,” I said. “But who am I to turn down a lady? Send her in.”

  The door opened and Miss Beckwith came in. She wore tortoise-shell glasses and she had buck teeth and black hair and she was dressed like a woman suffrage campaigner of 1918. Nurse Jones closed the door and left and Miss Beckwith came right to my bedside and pulled her hatpin out of the hat on her head and stuck it against my ear before I could move.

  “Not an inch,” she whispered. “Not an inch, not a sound, or I’ll run it home. It’s ready to go.”

  “Son of a gun,” I gasped. “You did it!”

  I could feel the hatpin pricking the inside of my ear. She had her left hand on my head to steady it, her thumb upside down as it had been upside down on Jane Willis’s head. Her right hand held the pin. It was nine inches long if it was anything at all. Black. The end of it was broken. You could see where the glass ornament had been on the end of it, but the edge was jagged where the ornament had broken off. I said, “So that’s where the glass came from.”

  “That’s where it came from,” she said. “It might interest you to know that Jane Willis broke it when she fell to the floor. She never made a sound. It’s an excellent way to kill someone. I read about it in a mystery novel, but it worked better than I ever expected….Quick, what have they done with him?”

  “Mrs. Myers, née Elsie Whittaker,” I said, “your husband is going to fry in the electric chair. And so are you, because you made a mistake. You left your thumbprint on Jane Willis’s head, and you left it on that cigarette box in my apartment. Hanley is matching them both right now. You can bump me off, but it’s not going to save you. They’ll take you in as a material witness with your husband, sooner or later, and you’ll be fingerprinted, and presto, they’ll have you.”

  “Very smart,” Elsie Whittaker said. Her voice was very low. Then I thought she was going to cry. “You’ve spoiled it all!”

  That needle was pricking me and I was sweating.

  “Well,” I said, “it was a long shot, Elsie. You must have loved the guy an awful lot. When he told you his past, he told you about the murder, eh? And the fact that Jane still had the gun?”

  “I wasn’t going to kill her,” she said. “I stole the key to the lock-box and got the gun—”

  “Whoa. Whoa, whoa there!” I said. “It wouldn’t be as simple as all that. You can’t just walk into a bank and get into a lock-box—even though you have the key.”

  “Naturally!” she snapped. “I’m not a complete dimwit even though I made my début. I’ve had a lock-box of my own for years.”

  “Well, how did you get her signature authorizing you to open it?” I wanted to know.

  “That was easier than you’d think. I invited her for cocktails, and when she was a little high, I tricked her into putting her signature on a letter of authorization. With that and the key I got into the box and took the gun.”

  “Smart,” I admitted. “And—?”

  “And when she found it out, she was furious. She told me to come up there, so I went, alone. Al didn’t know anything about it. He still doesn’t.”

  I had a feeling that she was breaking and that her nerve was going and that maybe I was going to get a chance and get the needle out of my ear without dying. I said, “Then why did you kill her, you poor kid?”

  Sympathy and women. Yea verily. Always works.

  “Al came and then left. I hid in the bathroom. Jane told me that she wanted the gun or she would talk. I’d forgotten she could talk. She said she’d write a newspaper column on the thing that would put Al in the chair. I got in a panic. She went for my bag to get my gun—”

  “You should have got rid of it right away,” I said, friendly as all get-out. Why not? The needle was still there.

  She smiled wryly.

  “I know, but I didn’t. We wrestled for the gun and she got it and put it in her pocket and told me to go. She sat down and began to type and I walked over and took the hatpin and killed her.”

  I said, “Leibowitz is a good lawyer for that. He might get you off. No premeditation. But if you kill me, no good.”

  She smiled, but sort of grimly, and I felt the cold perspiration begin to ooze as she said:

  “I left my handkerchief at Jane’s. Al picked it up when he was there. That was my handkerchief he gave you. He didn’t even know it.”

  “So you got it back by shooting me and shooting Marian. You’re a shooting girl. And using that same gun. A giveaway. Just reopened the whole case against your husband.”

  “I had to. It was touch and go. Hurry. And the gun was in my bag—”

  “You did all that for the love of Al Myers,” I said. I was sweating again because I could suddenly sense resentment, and her hand had stopped trembling. I had the buzzer for the nurse in my left hand at the side of the bed and I pressed it. “Have a heart. I’ve got a girl coming to see me, a girl I’m in love with (how you talk when you’re stalling for time!) and you’ve shot me up enough as it is.”

  “You spoiled it all for me,” Elsie Whittaker said coldly and suddenly. “Why shouldn’t I pay you back for it?”

  * * *

  —

  The muscles of her hand tensed, and Miss Jones opened the door. It threw her off a second. I ducked my head. I felt the hatpin against my lower jaw. A snap, and the hatpin broke and the dame ran for the door, pulling the gun from her bag and yelling at Jonesy to get out of the way. Jonesy got out of the way and neatly tripped Whittaker as she went by and Whittaker stumbled out of the door and ran straight into a powerhouse haymaker flung by the one and only William Hanley, of Centre Street. I winced. The sound of that crack hurt me more than the inch of hatpin in my cheek. Then another thud when she hit the floor. Poppa picked up the gun and stared at the celluloid buck teeth, the black wig, and the plain glass cheaters. “Hmm,” he said. “An actress, eh? Ham, sister, all ham!”

  Jonesy came over and picked the hatpin out of my jaw and washed the wound and said it was all her fault and whatnot.

  “Oh, cut it out,” I told her. “It was my own fault letting her get that close. Never mind cauterizing. I’m so glad to get stabbed in the jawbone instead of the eardrum I feel like a million bucks! Bring me a bandaid and, Hanley, give me police protection.”

  Hanley came in looking sheepish. He had the cuffs on the girl and an interne was trying to bring her around. “It seems like I always arrive at the right time, but I didn’t mean to. I got downstairs and I figured Babcock could match those prints so I called him at headquarters and told him to
do it, and I came right back up again.”

  My doctor was there then. “I forbid it!” he roared. “We’ve got to have peace and quiet around this room! No more shenanigans, I don’t care who murdered whom, you’ve got to stay still and rest or I’ll not have responsibility—”

  The telephone rang.

  Nurse Jones whistled. “Daffy, everything happens to you.”

  “I forbid you to answer it,” said the doctor.

  But forbidding didn’t do any good right at that point.

  I picked up the handset. It was long distance. It was Dinah. “Oh, darling,” she said, “I just read it in the papers. Are you all right? Are you hurt? It says you’re in a hospital! Are you dying? I’m taking the first plane—”

  “Dinah, listen!” I snapped. “Chance for a scoop. The killer of Jane Willis and Marian Hans is Elsie Whittaker. You stay down there and beat it over to the Whittaker place with Smootsy and get the lowdown. You get the first statement out of the Whittakers and then scram. Got that?”

  “I’ve got it,” Dinah said. “But are you all—”

  “How can I help but be all right?” I said. “You ought to see the nurse I’ve got! One look at her eyes and a dead man would resurrect himself. I’m not kidding.”

  “Neither am I,” Dinah said grimly. “I’ll get your darn statement, but then I’m grabbing the first plane north and when I get there, that hussy had better be out of town, or I’ll scratch her eyes out and pull her hair off and knit a basket with it. Get me?”

  “I get you,” I said dreamily. “Stroke my left temple now, Miss Jones. Yes, I get it, Angel-Eyes. Hurry home.” And I hung up and smiled at Hanley and told Miss Jones that she had served her purpose and that as a safety precaution, she ought to take a trip to California.

  “And he,” said Poppa with finality, “ain’t kidding.”