Death Locked In

by Douglas G. Greene (ed)

  He stopped and glowered around the room. “The three shots that were heard by the two witnesses were the ones already on the tape recorder! Cozzens even remarked that were somewhat muffled!. . . The tape recorder ran itself out silently again, till Gertie, in the excitement that followed the discovery of Gosling’s dead body, managed to flip the switch off.”

  “Good God!” muttered somebody in the room.

  Banner cleared his throat with a big sea lion noise. “Haaak! Although Gertie had been terrorized into helping Lockyear remove a threat to his existence as a spy, she wanted desperately for one of us to know the truth. She knew she was being watched by everybody, their side as well as ours, so she couldn’t come right out and tell us about it. She drew two circles, one inside the other, on a piece of paper. She didn’t dare hint further. She was trying to call our attention to the reel of the tape recorder—circular. Yunnerstand? And she was trying to help us, boys. If she had completely obeyed the instructions of the murderer, I never would’ve found the tape still on the recorder in that office—she would’ve destroyed it. Last night the murderer killed her as a safety measure, thinking that his trail on tape had been completely wiped out.”

  Impossible Disappearances

  The Mystery of Room No. 11 by Nicholas Carter

  John Dickson Carr once remarked that the impossible disappearance “is perhaps the most fascinating gambit in detective fiction.” It is, therefore, somewhat surprising that one of the earliest and cleverest stories of a vanishing appeared in an 1890s dime novel featuring that master of improbable disguises and idol of our great-grandfathers, Nick Carter, who was not known for ingenuity. Probably, however, some of the cleverness should be credited to Arthur Conan Doyle, one of whose Sherlock Holmes stories was cribbed for part of the plot. The syndicate hiding behind the authorial “Nicholas Carter” turned Doyle’s idea into a miracle problem, and wrote the whole thing in the marvelously declamatory language of the dime novels.

  It has been said that great series characters never die: That certainly is the situation with Nick Carter. By the 1930s he had become a pulp magazine hero keeping the world safe from gangsters. During the next decade he starred in movies and on the radio, and for the past twenty years at the spry age of about 130 he has been saving civilization in a series of more than 200 “Killmaster” thrillers.

  Willie Gray’s Astonishing Adventure

  WILLIE GRAY was a lucky youth. He had everything he wanted that was good for him, and a number of things that were not. All his father’s pockets seemed to be full of money, and Willie never had to ask twice for any reasonable sum. He had once heard his father and mother discussing the propriety of giving him an unusually expensive present—a trick pony, that could do sums in addition, and stand on his forelegs.

  “My son,” said Mr. Gray, in settling the question, “is going to have all the things that I wanted and couldn’t get when I was a boy; and there are a good many of them.”

  It is needless to say that Willie regarded this as sound doctrine, and hoped that his father would stick to it. He was gratified to note, also, that his mother had everything she desired. He believed she was the best-dressed woman in New York; and this was one of a hundred reasons why he was proud of her.

  When Willie was seventeen he was a student in the College of the City of New York. One of his best friends there was a boy whose fortunes were the reverse of his own. He never had any money, or swell clothes; in fact, his parents could barely afford to keep him at school. One afternoon Willie was on his way to his friend’s home—a tenement on the far East Side.

  As he passed across Avenue B, he was greatly surprised to see his own mother coming up the avenue, and about halfway between the spot where he stood and the next street below. Though she was veiled and dressed in somber black, he knew her the instant that his eyes rested on her. It flashed across his mind at once that she must be making a visit of charity. He knew that she went regularly to the homes of poor people. But where was her carriage which she always used in making such calls? Probably she had left it in a neighboring street.

  He was interested at once in the mission which had brought her there, and he hurried down the avenue to meet her, and ask her about it. He had taken only a few steps, however, when his mother suddenly disappeared in a narrow doorway, which led to one of the largest and most squalid of the tenements. Evidently she had not seen him.

  He quickened his pace, and darted into the doorway on the run. The contrast with the bright day outside made the hall seem black as midnight. He hesitated a moment, then, perceiving a flight of stairs, he rushed up them, three steps at a time, regardless of the darkness. The next thing he knew, the gloom was illuminated by a vast number of stars, and he found himself sitting on the steps, with an indefinite notion that he had acquired three or four extra heads, and that all of them were very sore. He had run full tilt against an angle of the wall, with a violence that might have fractured his skull. For several minutes he sat there, dizzy and confused. At last the building stopped flying round and round, and he recovered full command of his senses.

  “I’ve got a horrible lump on my head,” he muttered: “A little cold water would be the best thing for it. If I can find my mother, she’ll get me a chance to wash it.”

  He began to climb the stairs. Just at that moment somebody dashed in front of the street, and went flying by him at a pace that made the rickety house shake. As the noise of the hurrying steps died in the regions above him, there came the sound of a loud whistle from the street.

  “Police after somebody,” muttered the boy. “This is a nice place for my mother to be in. I must find her.”

  Doors were opening in all the halls as he ascended, and women were thrusting their heads out to learn the cause of the disturbance. Willie halted before one of the doors and asked the woman standing there if she had seen anything of Mrs. Gray, using, of course, a description and not his mother’s name.

  “She’ll be in number eleven, on the fourth floor,” replied the woman. “I know her. She comes quite often to see Mrs. Manahan?”

  “Who’s Mrs. Manahan?”

  “Ask herself,” said the woman; and she shut the door. Another flight of stairs brought Willie to the fourth floor. There he learned by inquiry that number eleven was the last tenement in the rear. As he walked quickly down the hall he saw that the door of number eleven was open, and that a woman was standing there. She drew back hastily as he approached, and seemed to be startled at the sight of him.

  “It’s the blood on my face,” he muttered, drawing his handkerchief across his forehead, and glancing at the red stain on the linen. “I must be a tough-looking object. But mother’ll patch me up in a jiffy.”

  He knocked at the door of number eleven, and again, for his first summons brought no response. Then the door was slowly opened by a short Irishwoman, with a large basket on her arm. It was she whom he had seen as he came down the hall; or, at least, he would have said so confidently, had he been asked.

  “I’m looking for Mrs. Gray,” he said. “She’s my mother. You know her, don’t you?”

  “Shure, Oi know her,” replied the woman; “and a good, kind lady she is. Well, well, so you’re her son! an’ a fine bye. Oi’ll be bound.”

  “Thank you. Is my mother in your rooms?”

  “No; she’s just gone away.”

  “Is it possible? Why, I came right up the stairs, and I’m sure she didn’t pass me.”

  “She went the other way.” As she said this, Mrs. Manahan pointed to a narrow flight of stairs which led down from the hall at the rear.”

  “Where does that go?” asked Willie.

  “To the alley that runs behind all these tinimints to the street beyant. Hurry, an’ you’ll catch her.”

  During most of this conversation, Mrs. Manahan had been fumbling with the lock of her door. At the last words she succeeded in turning the key; then, without another word, she hurried toward the stairs at the front of the building. Willie made the be
st speed possible by the other route.

  “Hold on there!” exclaimed a man, with a particularly loud voice, as the lad was about to make his exit into the alley. It was too late for Willie to “hold on.” He was going too fast; and the consequence was that he ran straight into the arms of the speaker, who was a large and strongly built man.

  “I beg your pardon!” exclaimed the boy, attempting to free himself.

  The man hung on to him. Willie lost his temper. He was an unusually big boy, and an artist in football tactics.

  “Let go of me!” he yelled, and instantly performed the elbow trick with such vigor that his antagonist narrowly escaped falling headlong into the hall of the tenement house.

  Recovering himself, the man blew a shrill blast on a whistle; and Willie, who was careering down the alley, found himself confronted by a burly policeman. The lad had no desire to resist the constituted authorities, and he surrendered at discretion. It seemed to him that he was having more trouble in a quarter of an hour than he had had before in all his life.

  He was led back to the door, where he told his story to the policeman and the other man, who proved to be a ward officer in citizen’s dress.

  “That don’t go,” replied the latter. “Your mother hasn’t come out of this door.”

  “How long have you been here?” asked the boy.

  “About four hours,” was the reply.

  “Four hours! Oh, I see. You’ve been on the watch for somebody. Then my mother must be in the house.”

  “If she came in within twenty minutes she’s there now. Both doors and the roof are guarded. Nobody is allowed to come out. There’s a fellow inside that we want, and we’re going to have him.” As he spoke, three more policemen appeared in the alley.

  “Now we’re ready,” said the ward man.

  One of the policemen was left at the door, revolver in hand. The remainder of the party went into the house. Willie made a move to go with them; but they told him to remain at the door.

  “You’d better let me go,” he said. “I was on the other stairs when the man you want came in, and I believe I can tell you what part of the house he’s hidden in.”

  “Who is this chap?” asked one of the policemen.

  “Says his name’s William Gray,” replied the ward man; “and that he’s looking for his mother, who came here on a charitable visit. Seems to be a straight boy.”

  “Who split his head open?”

  “Says he bumped it coming upstairs.”

  “Queer story.”

  “Maybe true, though. Come along, my lad; and if you can give us any tip on Reddy Gallagher, we’ll be much obliged to you.”

  “He’s on the fourth floor,” said Willie decidedly. “There’s no use in looking for him lower down than that.”

  His straightforward manner produced an impression. The police proceeded at once to the fourth floor. They searched thoroughly till they came to Mrs. Manahan’s door; but the criminal was not to be found. The ward man knocked, but there was no response from number eleven. A skeleton key was produced, and the door was opened.

  When Willie Gray entered this tenement with the officers, he was in a state of excitement the like of which he had never known before. The strangeness of this affair was pressing upon him more and more strongly. He had begun to be a prey to a kind of panic terror. He knew that his mother had entered that house. Mrs. Manahan admitted having seen her, and said that she had gone away. That had been proved to be false. Then she must still be in the house. But, if so, where? And why did she not appear?

  When Willie had been convinced that she had not gone out by the back way, he immediately concluded that she had visited some other person than Mrs. Manahan. But on his way up he had seen the occupants of all the tenements at their doors. They had been questioned by the police. If Mrs. Gray had been at that time with any family in that house, her presence would almost certainly have been discovered. There was a mystery here which frightened the lad, though he was possessed of splendid nerve.

  Mrs. Manahan’s rooms were very bare. There were three of them. One was evidently a workroom. It contained the things which a washerwoman would find necessary.

  “Everybody takes in washing in this building,” remarked one of the policemen. “That’s why it’s called ‘Soapsuds Hall.’ “

  They glanced through the rooms. All seemed to be empty. The policemen opened the doors of three small closets, but discovered no one.

  “Reddy isn’t hidden here,” said one of the officers, as he flung open the last of the closet doors.

  Young Gray, who was just behind him, uttered a loud cry. “Those things are my mother’s!” he exclaimed; and, darting by the officer, he snatched from the closet a lady’s hat and cape.

  “Well, they evidently don’t belong to anybody who lives here,” said the ward man. “They cost too much money.”

  Willie had taken them to the window, the ward man following. “They’re hers!” cried the boy.

  “Let me look at that cape,” said the officer, in a peculiar tone.

  He took it from the boy’s hand. “What do you call this?” he said in a low tone to one of the policemen.

  “Blood!” exclaimed the policeman, “and recently shed. Why, it’s not dry yet!”

  The Strange Conduct of Mr. Gray

  “We’ve tumbled onto a queer case,” said the ward man. “In the face of this, I can’t fool away my time on Reddy Gallagher. Search the house thoroughly from top to bottom. If you find Gallagher, take him to the station; but don’t stop the search. We must find out what’s become of Mrs. Gray. If Mrs. Manahan has been stopped at the door, send her up; but not too soon. I want to look around here first.”

  Willie had been thunderstruck by the finding of his mother’s garments in that room; and that later and most terrible discovery of the blood upon the cloak had, for the moment, deprived him of speech or motion. As the policemen hurried away to make their search, he recovered possession of his faculties. He sprang toward the ward officer who was still closely examining the cloak.

  The blood stains were small and few in number, but they were perfectly distinct. There could be no doubt that several drops of blood had fallen upon the garment.

  “She has been—hurt!” he cried. He would not speak the word that came into his mind. He could not bear even to think of his mother as the victim of an assassin.

  The ward officer, Stephen Burke, laid the cloak down upon a chair carefully, so that the blood stains would not come in contact with anything. Then he hastily searched the room. There was scarcely anything of value in it; but in one of the drawers of a rude dressing table were some clothing of the washerwoman’s. The policemen pulled it about without any definite object. Something clinked heavily on the bottom of the drawer. Burke plunged his hands under the clothing, and drew out a lady’s gold watch, and a small purse with silver clasps.

  “My mother’s!” gasped the lad, with pallid lips.

  “This looks mighty bad,” said the officer.

  He opened the purse. It contained over a hundred dollars. Burke put the articles into his pocket, and continued his search of the room. He discovered nothing else which seemed to have any bearing on the case. As he finished the search, Mrs. Manahan, accompanied by a policeman, appeared at the door. A second policeman followed, and announced to Burke, in a low voice, that Gallagher had been caught hiding in a room on the fifth floor, and had been sent to the station. The remainder of the house had been searched, but no trace of Mrs. Gray had been found.

  “It’s a certainty that she came in here, though,” he whispered. “Our man on the avenue saw her. He corroborates the boy’s story. There’s a woman on this floor who saw Mrs. Gray come out along this hall, but didn’t see her enter this tenement.”

  “But Mrs. Manahan admits that she came in here!” exclaimed Willie, who had pressed up behind Burke and overheard the policeman’s report.

  “Mrs. Manahan admits nothin’,” said the washerwoman. “What’s all this fuss
about, Oi’d loike to know? Oi’m an honest, hard-workin’ woman, Oi am, an’ the loikes avyez ha no roight in me apartmints.”

  “Look here, Mrs. Manahan,” said Burke, “this is a mighty serious matter, and you’re very foolish to allow it to go any further without an explanation.