The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

by Deming, Richard

Tab codeine XXX TT ½ gr.

  Sig one tab. Q 3 H.

  Though he was unacquainted with pharmaceutical shorthand, Homer recognized the word “codeine” from his research on poisons. He couldn’t recall whether or not it was a dangerous drug, but he did remember that it was some kind of opiate. Simultaneously it dawned on him that he had a blank prescription sheet, and with the original as a model, it would be a simple matter to forge a duplicate.

  Instead of stopping at the drug store, he walked on two blocks to a branch public library, drew out a textbook of materia medica and retired with it to the reading room.

  He discovered that one of the primary uses of codeine was to lessen coughing, which explained why the prescription had been written. He also learned that it was a compound of morphine and was one of the active alkaloids of opium. It was listed as a safer drug than morphine, and he searched every indexed reference to the drug without finding an indication of how much constituted a fatal dose, or even any indication that it was a dangerous poison.

  However, he was certain it would be fatal in a large enough dose, for it was included under the general heading of “Brain and Spinal Cord Depressants,” along with opium, morphine and the illegal drug, heroin.

  Rechecking the prescription, he deduced that the figure “XXX” probably meant thirty tablets. At a half grain each, this came to fifteen grains, certainly enough of any opiate to kill a person.

  Satisfied that he had a poison which would work, he took out his fountain pen and carefully duplicated the prescription on the blank sheet. He forged a reasonable facsimile of the doctor’s signature, not taking too great pains with it because he knew it would not be subjected to the same scrutiny a bank might give a check. The office heading and the fact that the terminology was authentic were enough to make it acceptable to the average druggist.

  He walked six blocks to another drug store where he was unknown to get the forged prescription filled. Then he returned to his own neighborhood drug store to have the two filled which the doctor had written.

  When he finally got home, he received a sound tongue lashing from his sister for taking so long, but he accepted it stoically. For consolation he fingered the extra bottle in his pocket.

  For the first time in weeks Homer didn’t retreat into his world of fantasy. For now he had the reality of definitely planned action to replace his dreams. He was in such a state of anticipation all weekend he could hardly wait to get home Monday evening.

  If there had been any lingering qualms in Homer Withers’ mind about committing sororicide, they were extinguished by Samantha’s reception. Her normal unpleasantness had been aggravated by her cold until she was impossible.

  She greeted him with an ominous, “I suppose you forgot to mail the insurance premium again.”

  Time had on more than one occasion flitted by Homer unnoticed—it was a genuine surprise to him that a full month had passed since he had belatedly mailed the last premium.

  Samantha launched into such a blistering attack on his mental shortcomings, he retreated headlong up the stairs in the middle of her tirade. His hands shook as he wrote the check. He was downstairs again and on his way to the mailbox before his sister could get her second wind.

  The incident spoiled all chance of their last evening together being a pleasant one. Dinner was accompanied by a monologue by Samantha on her favorite subject: why didn’t Homer do her the favor of dropping dead? Afterward, as they sat in the front room, she froze him with a silence so forbidding, he was afraid to open his mouth.

  It was a relief when she finally indicated it was near bedtime by saying, “I’ll have my chocolate now, if you think you have sense enough to put it together properly.”

  Homer had the hot chocolate all made and poured into a cup before he realized his oversight. It would have been better to have crushed the thirty codeine tablets into a powder so that they would dissolve more easily. He swore mildly at his chronic forgetfulness. Pouring some of the tablets into his hand, he stared at them blankly for a moment. Then he got down an empty cup and began crushing them one at a time with a spoon.

  It was a slow process; he was but two-thirds finished when Samantha’s impatient voice called from the front room, “What are you doing, dreamer? Staring off into space?”

  His heart hammering in fear she would enter the kitchen, he called back, “It’s almost ready, Samantha. Just one more minute.”

  As rapidly as possible he crushed the remaining tablets, scraped the powder into the chocolate and stirred it vigorously. When it was completely dissolved, he touched his tongue to the solution and was panic stricken to find it faintly bitter. He shoveled in two extra teaspoonfuls of sugar, stirred it and tasted it again. It now tasted normal.

  He carried the cup and saucer out to Samantha who, after accepting it with a grunt, went through her usual ritual of pouring some into the saucer for Roger.

  Immediately the cat dropped from his favorite spot on the window ledge, padded to the saucer and tentatively explored the chocolate’s temperature. Then, instead of sitting back to wait for it to cool, he lapped the dish clean.

  Homer stared in horror, realizing that the time consumed in crushing the codeine tablets had allowed the chocolate to cool sufficiently to please the cat. Homer watched, fascinated, as the animal licked its whiskers, stretched and mooed itself against Samantha’s calf.

  Samantha took a sip from the cup, and exploded.

  “You idiot!” she screamed at Homer. “Can’t you do anything right? This chocolate is merely lukewarm!”

  Homer gulped, his eyes on Roger. Roger looked up at him.

  “Take it back to the kitchen.” Samantha ordered. “Heat it up. You know I want hot chocolate.”

  Homer took the cup and carried it to the kitchen. Dumping the contents into a sauce pan, he turned the gas on full. Just before it boiled he removed the pan from the flame, poured the chocolate back in the cup. He got back to Samantha just as fast as he could.

  For once Homer did an efficient job. Too efficient. The chocolate was too hot to drink. After sampling it by taking the barest sip, Samantha set the cup aside to let it cool.

  As Homer watched the cat in an agony of apprehension, precious minutes dragged by. He knew he could never get Samantha to pick up the cup.

  Roger was back on the ledge, purring, begging, Homer felt sure, for more chocolate. If Roger would just die quietly there, Samantha would never know.

  Homer took a deep breath as Samantha finally raised the cup to her lips. She paused, said in an impatient voice, “Oh, all right, Roger, you may have a drop more.”

  The cat sprung off the window ledge, wobbled on his feet, looked up once more at Homer. The animal took a step toward the saucer, and suddenly his front legs collapsed.

  Samantha stared at Roger in puzzlement, and Homer watched in terror, as the cat struggled to his feet, took another aimless step and fell over on his side. His eyes rolled and his breathing began to grow heavy.

  Samantha glanced from the cat to her brother. Her eyes narrowed, and she said, “You drink my chocolate this evening, Homer.”

  Homer gibbered an unintelligible refusal. Roger’s heavy breathing stopped.

  “You actually meant to kill me, didn’t you?” she said in a tone of soft satisfaction.

  Homer gazed at her without immediate understanding. She added gently, “My dear brother, two can play at that game.”

  He understood her sudden air of satisfaction then. His act had given her the moral excuse she needed to turn her often-expressed hope into reality, and Homer knew he was lost. He had no idea of where to obtain more poison, and no murder plan aside from poison.

  But Samantha was different. She was efficient. She would be able to devise any number of alternate plans.

  Any of which would work.

  THE PRICE OF FAM
E

  Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, March 1964.

  Harry Cannon always cased his jobs carefully. For ten days he had studied the layout of Gilbert’s Liquor Store. He knew what time the place opened in the morning and when it closed at night. He knew the busiest hours of the day, and that the period just before the nine p.m. closing was the deadest. He knew what hours the two clerks worked and that the second-trick clerk left at eight p.m., leaving proprietor Arthur Gilbert alone for the last hour. One night he had even followed Arthur home to Long Island, so that he knew where the man lived.

  But best of all he knew that Arthur Gilbert went to the bank only on Friday morning. Which meant that Thursday night, somewhere in the place, an entire week’s receipts were hidden.

  Cannon pulled up in front of the liquor store at exactly 8:55 p.m. Through the glass front window he could see the plump, balding proprietor checking out the cash register. There were no customers in the place.

  From the seat alongside of him Cannon lifted a false rubber nose attached to some black frames without lenses. When he fitted the frames over his ears, his appearance totally changed. His thin face seemed broader, and the contraption gave him a bulbous-nosed, owlish look in place of his usual pinched, scowling expression. It also added ten years to his bare twenty-eight.

  It was both an effective disguise and a safer one than a mask, for from a distance it didn’t look like a disguise. There was always the danger of a mask being spotted from some nearby window or passing car. As he was, casual passers- by, unless they got too close, would merely take him for a rather ugly man.

  Slipping from the righthand door of the car, Cannon shot a quick glance in both directions, straightened his lanky form and strode briskly into the liquor store. The plump proprietor glanced up from his register with a customer-welcoming smile which disappeared the moment it began to form. His expression turned wary and he slowly raised his hands to shoulder height even before Cannon drew the thirty-eight automatic from his pocket. The instant reaction made Cannon feel a bleak sort of pride in his growing reputation.

  “I guess you know who I am,” he said between his teeth, stepping behind the counter and aiming the gun at the proprietor’s belt buckle.

  “Yes,” the plump man said without fright, but still wearing a wary expression. “I won’t give you any trouble. The money’s right there in the drawer.”

  Contemptuously Cannon motioned him through a door immediately behind the counter, followed as the man backed into the storeroom, his hands still at shoulder height. After a quick glance around the room to make sure no one else was there, Cannon pushed the door partially shut to block the view from the street but still allow him a view of the main part of the store.

  “Turn around,” he ordered.

  The man presented his back. “You won’t have to shoot me,” he said quietly. “I’m not going to try anything.”

  “You think I shoot people for nothing?” Cannon inquired sourly.

  When there was no reply, Cannon said in a sharp voice, “Well, do you?”

  “I know you have shot people,” the plump man said carefully. There was no fear in his voice, but it was extremely cautious. “I was merely pointing out that you have no cause to shoot me. I intend to cooperate fully.”

  “Well, now. Then you can start by putting your hands down.”

  Slowly, carefully, the man lowered his hands to his sides.

  “Get on your stomach,” Cannon directed.

  Without haste, but without delay either, the man dropped to hands and knees, then stretched full-length on the floor.

  “Stay there until I tell you different,” Cannon directed.

  Glancing through the partially open door of the storeroom, he saw that no one was passing on the street. Opening the door wide, he thrust the gun into his belt and stepped out to the cash register.

  The counter blocked the view of the prone man by anyone who might pass the front window, or even come into the store, but Cannon could still see him from the register. He kept flicking glances that way as he scooped bills from the open drawer and stuffed them into his suit-coat pockets. He ignored the change.

  When the register was empty of bills, Cannon stepped back into the storeroom and partially closed the door again.

  In a cold voice he said, “I guess you’ve read about me in the papers, haven’t you, mister?”

  “Yes,” the man admitted.

  “Tell me what you’ve read.”

  After a momentary hesitation, the man said, “They call you the Nose Bandit.”

  “I mean everything you’ve read.”

  “Well, you’ve held up a lot of places. I believe you’ve killed three people.”

  “You’d better believe it. What else?”

  “The police advise not to resist you in any way.”

  “That’s right. Why?”

  The prone man said quietly, “I have no desire to make you angry.”

  “The only way you’ll make me angry is not to do exactly as I say. Why do the cops advise people not to resist?”

  With a sort of resigned caution, the man on the floor said, “They say you’re a psychopathic killer. That you’ll kill on the slightest provocation.”

  “Now you’re coming along,” Cannon said with approval. “Do you believe that?”

  “I only know what I’ve read. If you want me to believe it, I will. If you don’t, I won’t.”

  “I want you to believe it,” Cannon said coldly. “That psycho stuff is window dressing because the fuzz is too dumb to catch me, but you’d better believe I’ll kill you if you give me any lip. You know why we’re having this little conversation?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Because I figure it will save me a lot of time in the long run. You wouldn’t refuse to tell me anything I wanted to know, would you, Mr. Gilbert?”

  “I doubt that it would be safe,” the proprietor said quietly.

  “You are Arthur Gilbert, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I cased this job real thoroughly, Arthur. You keep a money box with the real cash in it. That chicken-feed in the register was just today’s receipts. You bank once a week, on Friday, and this is Thursday night, so that money box ought to be real full. I figure I’ll get to it faster if you tell me where it is than if I have to hunt for it while you lie here dead on the floor. But it’s up to you. I’m going to ask you once. If I don’t get a fast answer, I’m going to blow your brains out. Understand?”

  “Perfectly. It’s behind the cognac on the bottom shelf over there in the corner.”

  “Point,” Cannon instructed. Raising one hand from the floor, Gilbert pointed.

  Cannon had to remove two rows of cognac bottles before he found the square metal box behind them. It wasn’t locked, so he was spared the irritation of having to make Arthur Gilbert produce the key. There was nearly five hundred dollars in bills in it, plus a stack of checks. He pocketed the bills only.

  Walking over to the storeroom door, he glanced out, then drew back again when he saw a young couple slowly walking past the plate-glass front window. He waited a few moments, looked again and saw that the street in front was now clear of pedestrians. Pulling the door wide open, he momentarily turned back to the man on the floor.

  “You stay in that position for five minutes, Arthur,” he instructed. “If I see your head above the counter, I’ll blow it off. Understand?”

  “I understand,” Gilbert said.

  Without hurry Cannon walked from the store, climbed into the car in front of the store and drove away. A quarter block away he removed the fake glasses and false nose, folded them and put them into his inside breast pocket. Six blocks farther he abandoned the car in an alley across the street from a subway entrance, first caref
ully wiping the steering wheel and shift lever with a handkerchief. Ten minutes later he was on a subway to Brooklyn.

  Within a half hour of the time he had left the liquor store, Cannon was ascending to the street from the Fulton Street station. He found his car parked where he had left it, a dozen yards from the subway entrance. He parked in front of his rooming house exactly at ten p.m. Tiptoeing past his landlady’s room, he went up the stairs without her hearing him. He always left for a job surreptitiously and returned as quietly. You never knew when a landlady’s testimony that you had been in your room all evening might come in handy.

  In his room he counted the take. It came to five hundred and sixty-two dollars. It wasn’t exactly in a class with the Brinks robbery, he thought, but with his simple needs it would carry him for weeks.

  * * * *

  Part of the enjoyment Harry Cannon derived from his chosen profession was the newspaper writeups he got. There was a scrap-book in a suitcase at the back of his closet containing news clippings of every job he had pulled. There were twenty-two news accounts in all, the coverage on each progressively more detailed. The first, dated a little more than two years earlier, was a back-page, one-paragraph item describing a Bronx drugstore stickup by a man wearing a dime-store false nose and lensless frames. The latest was a full-column front-page spread headlined: NOSE BANDIT STRIKES AGAIN.

  Cannon spent many quiet evenings in his room reading over his scrapbook. He particularly enjoyed comparing the sensational treatment his more recent exploits received with the routine coverage of his early jobs. Three kills had made him about the hottest news copy in town.

  On Friday morning he was up early to buy all the New York papers. Back in his room again, he went through them one by one with growing puzzlement.

  There wasn’t a single mention of last night’s robbery.

  After some thought, it occurred to him that it was possible Arthur Gilbert had died of a heart attack after he had left the store, his body had been found and no one knew there had been a robbery. The man hadn’t appeared particularly frightened, but that may have been mere surface control. Beneath it, he may have been scared to death. Then too, he had read that fat people were more subject to heart attacks than others.