The Perfect Murder

by Ruskin Bond

  She bustled about, tidying up the room, his leaden eyes following her as she collected the beef-tea and a tray and carried them out.

  ‘Nice thing I did yesterday,’ she remarked, as she came back. ‘Left the missus’s bedroom window open. When I opened the door this morning I found that beautiful Chippendale glass of hers had blown off the table and, smashed to pieces. Did you hear it?’

  Goddard made no reply. In a confused fashion he was trying to think. Accident or not, the fall of the glass had served its purpose. Were there such things as accident? Or, was Life a puzzle—puzzle into which every piece was made to fit? Fear and the wind…no: conscience and the wind… had saved the woman. He must get the powder back from her drawer…before she discovered it and denounced him. The medicine…he must remember not to take it…

  He was very ill, seriously ill. He must have taken a chill owing to that panic flight into the garden. Why didn’t the doctor come? He had come…at last…he was doing something to his chest…it was cold.

  Again…the doctor…there was something he wanted to tell him…Hannah and a powder…what was it?

  Later on he remembered, together with other things that he had hoped to forget. He lay watching an endless procession of memories, broken at times by a glance at the doctor, the nurse, and Hannah, who were all standing near the bed regarding him. They had been there a long time, and they were all very quiet. The last time he looked at Hannah was the first time for months that he had looked at her without loathing and hatred. Then he knew that he was dying.

  WHEN AL CAPONE WAS AMBUSHED

  Jack Bilbo

  When he was twenty, Jack Bilbo was robbed by an American gangster on Broadway. A week or so later, down and out, he meets this same gangster again who gives him food and offers him work with ‘the gangs’. Not until this German boy has been working with them for some time does he learn that he is part of Al Capone’s giant organization. His story opens now, when O’Connor, one of Al Capone’s lieutenants, got him enrolled as the Boss’s personal bodyguard.

  At eleven-thirty O’Connor came to the house, and called me. ‘I have told the Boss about you,’ he said. ‘You are to start work as his bodyguard on trial. I hope that all will go well.’

  We started off with Conny—eight of us—in two cars. On the way Conny explained my new job to me.

  ‘The bodyguard is responsible for the safety of the Boss,’ he said. ‘Your job is based on the assumption that his life is always being threatened, usually by enemy gangs but sometimes by the police. We gangsters can’t even trust the police these days. There are thirty-six men in the bodyguard team and eighteen of them are on duty each week. Six men, with a leader, are always on duty at his home or in his office; the watch changes every eight hours. In your spare time you can do outside “jobs” if you want to, but nothing that will bring you in danger.’ He paused, then continued, emphasizing every word, ‘Remember—no stranger is allowed closer to the Boss than five paces. If any one acts suspiciously, shoot him first and ask questions later.’

  Conny introduced me to the man sitting next to me, a swarthy individual called ‘The Captain’, who looked like a Mexican. I learned later that he was from St. Louis and had been in Mexico in some bandit gang or the other. ‘You keep an eye on young Sauerkraut,’ Conny told him. The Captain gave me two passwords, the names of flowers, ‘phlox’ and ‘daisy’.

  As we travelled through the streets of Chicago to Capone’s home I noticed that we were not bound towards one of the posh residential districts, where I had supposed Capone would live, but towards the better part of the business section. We stopped in front of a three-storey building, where no one would have expected to find a private apartment. Two small signs announced that the building contained the offices of a wholesale stocking firm and of ‘Smith and Weber’. As I found later, both firms actually existed and did a regular and good business. But the stocking agency served as a weapon storage place for Capone while ‘Smith and Weber’ were used as a secret address.

  We entered the vestibule of the building. A giant African-American operated the extraordinarily big elevator that we found there. I saw no signs of any staircase, and learned later that there was none. As the elevator moved slowly upwards the man made a telephone call from a phone in the elevator.

  We arrived at the third floor and stepped out into a tiny vestibule that scarcely held the eight of us. A massive bronze door barred our way. It had neither lock nor handle on the outside, and could be opened only from within. Suddenly, without a sound, the door opened, sliding into the wall.

  A man of Asian nationality and of uncertain age, dressed in dark-blue livery received us. He led us down a corridor, walking noiselessly on cork soles. I tried to imitate his quiet walk; the others tramped along noisily. As we passed through the hall I looked into one room, through the open door. It was furnished with Renaissance furniture. Then we came to a large, well-lit room at the end of the corridor, furnished likewise. Before the big window, at a huge desk, sat a man, with his back to us. I saw that his head was big, humpy, covered by thick black hair. His head was slightly drawn in between the wide shoulders and rested on a short, bull-like neck.

  He rose quietly and, for his weight, lightly. He was about five-feet-seven in height. He walked towards us, smiling, taking long, sure strides. He wore a dark suit, elegantly cut, a flashy tie. He greeted all of us, shaking hands all round, first with Conny and the last one was me.

  ‘You are the German boy?’ he asked, in a deep, almost hoarse, voice.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Were you in the War?’ he continued, asking the same question which Alphonso had asked.

  ‘I was too young.’

  ‘The Germans were good fighters,’ he remarked.

  Most of the pictures of Capone do not show him as he is. True, he did have a certain animal-like wildness in his face, a wildness reminiscent of a wild-cat. He carried his head erect, despite his short neck. He had strongly protruding cheekbones, an energetic chin, hair slightly receding, black bushy eyebrows almost joined together. His eyes were small, with a very white background that offset brown pupils. His glance was piercing, strong, cunning, and perhaps a trifle sad. His nose was flat, his mouth was big, broad, thick, and his lip curved as if in scorn. His teeth were white. A scar ran down the length of his left cheek, a scar received in a fight in a Brooklyn bar-room long ago. His face had a dull dark-blue shadow from his heavy beard. He looked distinctly Italian but other blood also flowed in the veins of some of his ancestors.

  After greeting us, Capone sat down at his desk and put a menthol cigarette between his lips. He began talking with Conny. The three of us were sent out to wait in another room.

  This room was also furnished similarly to the others, and on close examination I found that the furniture was genuine antique. All around us were bookcases; I found later that it was Capone’s library.

  ‘We can’t hear anything of what’s going on in the other room,’ I said to one man called ‘The Count’. ‘Supposing Capone wanted us?’

  The Count, without a word, pointed to an alarm bell overhead.

  I stepped up to the bookcases to see what Capone liked to read. The Count smiled. ‘You’ll find the Boss has good taste,’ he said.

  First I saw a big collection of erotic books. There were a lot of books which were valuable old prints. I saw a large number of books on Napoleon, some of them in expensive leather binding. Quotes by Napoleon, seemed to have been often read. There were thumbed-through books on every possible subject—science, business management, salesmanship, anarchism, naval warfare, architecture, grape-growing, history of the Civil War; books by Roosevelt, Ford, Mark Twain, Upton Sinclair, Stevenson, Hergeshimer, and Karl Marx. Everything was in English except for some of the French erotic literature.

  I was glancing through one of the books when the door behind us suddenly opened and Capone burst into the room, livid. He waved a crumpled newspaper.

  ‘It’s enough to make you go nuts,’ h
e said, ‘when fellows like Michael Hughes use my name to gain shabby publicity for themselves. I have never seen this fellow Hughes, and he had better not let me see him. He can be fresh, but not more than that. Look at this!’ He pointed to a headline:

  ‘Hughes, police commissioner, says he has stopped work of Capone and gang in Chicago and Cook County!’

  ‘All I can say is that if he wants to do that he’ll have to get up a hell of a lot earlier,’ Capone said, dropping into an arm-chair. He continued to fume. A telephone call took him back into his room.

  ‘I wouldn’t like to be in Hughes’s shoes,’ I said to the other two in the room.

  ‘You wouldn’t risk much at that,’ said the other man, a tall blond called Andy. ‘You probably don’t know who made this Hughes Police Commissioner. Big Bill Thompson did it—Big Bill, the new mayor of Chicago, who is going to keep King George’s snout out of American affairs, and who declared just yesterday that he was as wet and wetter than the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. And who had Big Bill elected? Who defeated Dever? The Boss!’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the Count.

  ‘Yah,’ Andy continued. ‘Then this louse Thompson, after the election, said that he wouldn’t prosecute small alcohol cookers and bootleggers, but that he would drive “Crime and Capone” out of Chicago. That’s us! Drive out those who had him elected! A lot of words—that’s all, and the same with this Hughes. They just get publicity this way. We’re here, and we stay here—no matter what these little newspaper fleas may write. But what makes the Boss sore is that Hughes used to be one of the best customers in Higgins’s money-lending bureau. If the Boss wanted to, he could write a nice little piece about Hughes for the papers.’

  ‘Hughes is in luck,’ said the Count. ‘The Boss has more to worry about now than about him.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Andy. ‘There are strange gunmen in this city—Aiello’s men, from St. Louis, New York, and Cleveland, who would like to get Capone. The gangster armistice is perforated like the hide of a hijacker. Competition for business is active again, and some of these strangers have even dared to turn up in the 42nd and 43rd Wards—Capone’s own district! Hymie Weiss, the only one who could have hurt us, is dead. The Boss today controls all that was allotted to him by the armistice, and probably more, but new gangs with ambitions are being formed out of the remnants of the old O’Bannion crowd, and their goal is to get Capone.’

  ‘And just think,’ the Count chimed in, ‘we can’t ask Mr Hughes to protect us!’

  ‘Him?’ Andy asked. ‘We can look out for ourselves. Hughes doesn’t know anything. Wouldn’t the famous Mr Hughes like to know the identity of the well-dressed man with the big diamond ring on his hand and the roll of bills in his pocket who was found dead in the Loop the other day? Ten bullets in his body. Hughes couldn’t give you his name any more than he could name the man who shot him. To hell with Hughes! We’ve got these other mugs to look out for.’

  ‘During the armistice not a shot was fired in Chicago for ninety days, Sauerkraut,’ the Count explained. ‘Those days are over,’ Andy added. ‘We may have some hot times again.’

  They laughed, and I laughed with them. I didn’t quite understand all this, for some of the links were missing. I had to understand how all these things fitted together. Sooner than I hoped, I was to find out—in theory and in practice.

  The Captain stepped into the room.

  ‘Hurry up, boys. The Boss is going to visit “Poor Mike’s.” Is everything ready, German?’

  In two seconds we were in the hall. Without a sound the bronze door opened. At a signal the Count and I jumped on the small platform between the door and the elevator. Immediately after us the Boss stepped out and behind him the others. Capone was laughing.

  At the kerb a dark-blue sedan was waiting. Capone jumped lightly into it. The Captain put George in the front seat, beside the chauffeur, while he, Andy, and I sat in the rear with Capone. Two men, mounted on motorcycles, followed right behind us. ‘You watch the left side of the road,’ the Captain said curtly to me.

  I sat in my place, my eyes focused on the road as we sped by, ready to shoot at the slightest sign of trouble. But there was nothing suspicious in sight. With great speed we travelled along the Lake boulevard, bound for out of town.

  ‘Lovely weather,’ said Capone suddenly.

  We ‘Yessed’ him and continued our silent watch.

  We left the city and hit the open road. On each side were trees and shrubbery. We had not gone far when it happened, and it happened so quickly that it is difficult to remember all the details.

  I was conscious of a fast car overtaking us. As it passed the car seemed to spurt streaks of fire. The noise of shooting rose above the whirr of the motor.

  At the first shot Andy and the Captain threw themselves on Capone. I also covered him instinctively. Andy had one hand free and was firing at the black car that stayed beside us. I did the same.

  Suddenly George, in front, slumped in his seat, and blood spurted from his head. A moment later our chauffeur dropped over the wheel. Our car swerved, skidded, and turned over. And all this happened in about twenty seconds!

  The time it took us to scramble out of our car seemed like a torturous eternity. Once out we kept shooting at the black car, now slowing down ahead of us, but we were badly covered. We made for the trees beside the road. The road which had been full of passing cars a few moments before was now desolate. A hundred feet away the black car was stopping. The two motorcycle men had not chased it, but were with us.

  ‘Come on to the black car,’ Capone ordered, taking command.

  The six of us, keeping as well covered as possible, sneaked from tree to tree and from bush to bush, firing at the car as we advanced. One of the motorcycle men, Sascha, led the line. He was the first to reach the last tree before the car. He acted as a feeler, a periscope. He stuck his head out from behind the tree, but jerked it back quickly as if he did not trust the seeming lack of gun fire from the black car. Then with one step he jumped at the car. I loaded my gun for the third time. Capone, in front of me, was hurrying to the car, his face as emotionless as a steel plate.

  We had nothing further to fear from the black car. We peered inside. Nothing stirred within. There lay four men in little pools of blood. We did not recognize any of them.

  ‘These men are not gangsters,’ Capone said suddenly, breaking a long silence. ‘In the first place, they didn’t work quickly and smoothly enough to be gangsters. Search them quickly.’

  For the first time in my life I searched the pockets of a corpse. I found nothing. There was nothing to identify the men in their pockets or otherwise.

  ‘Let’s get to the hospital with our men,’ Capone commanded. ‘We have to get away from here immediately.’

  It was dangerous for us to stay around. We found that our chauffeur was dead, so we left him in the overturned car. Sascha and George were badly wounded. I had been slightly grazed by a bullet. I carried George on my shoulder who was unconscious and weighed like a sack of lead: We had to move slowly along the road. Not a person was in sight, although the road was lined with houses. Strangly enough there was no sign of the police either.

  ‘Where can Commissioner Hughes be?’ Capone asked mockingly.

  Suddenly a taxi turned from a side street into the road we were walking down. Sighting us, the car made a desperate attempt to turn and head in the other direction. We must have looked pretty wild, or perhaps the driver saw me carrying George and thought that he was dead. Andy fired a shot into the air and the taxi stopped.

  The Boss went to the driver and handed him a ten-dollar bill. The Captain opened the door and we got in. We put George between Andy and myself. The taxi-driver disappeared and the Captain drove.

  After ten minutes George showed some signs of consciousness. Andy pulled out a flask and poured whisky down his mouth.

  Suddenly George put his hand to his head.

  ‘Where the hell is my left ear?’ he asked angrily.
<
br />   It was gone—shot off.

  George cursed so completely and satisfactorily that we knew he was in no serious danger.

  ‘Better have no ears at all,’ Andy said to him, ‘than to have the kind you had that stick out at right angles. No wonder your left ear stopped a bullet.’

  I was not too worried about George now. But Sascha was in a serious condition. I asked Andy if the hospital to which we were going was dependable, meaning whether it took good care of its patients. Andy misunderstood me.

  ‘You bet it’s dependable,’ he said. ‘We control it. No police can get into it.’

  George seemed to have recovered, but Sascha was groaning. Andy tried to fix him up with an emergency bandage, but his pain was excruciating. The second half of our journey was covered in silence.

  Capone had said nothing the whole way. Suddenly he let out one loud curse, and added, ‘I know! We received threats from the Ku-Klux-Klan. It wants to rid America of me. Well, they’ll have to learn to shoot better first.’ After this he said no more.

  The hospital was an attractive two-storey building, built in a colonial style a distance away from the road. Two nurses took charge of George and Sascha. It was in this hospital that ‘Poor Mike’ lay. Capone asked for the number of his room and went up to it with the Captain. We stayed downstairs and drank whisky.

  In ten minutes the Boss was back. He looked gloomy and silent and none of us dared question him. We were in the car and on our way to Chicago before he said a word.

  ‘Poor Mike is dead,’ he stated simply. ‘He was a good gunman.’

  THE LODGER

  Marie Belloc Lowndes

  ‘There he is at last, and I’m glad of it, Ellen. ’Tain’t a night you would wish a dog to be out in.’

  Mr Bunting’s voice was full of unmistakable relief. He was close to the fire, sitting back in a deep leather armchair—a clean-shaven, dapper man, still in outward appearance what he had been so long, and now no longer was—a self-respecting butler.