The Detective Megapack

by Various Writers

  Possibly a newspaper man sees more singular things than most people, because he is looking for them. However, never have I seen anything more swift and shocking than the change in Madame de Lautenac. One moment proudly beautiful, the next she was shrinking in stark terror.

  Clancy offered his arm, and mechanically she accepted. The three of us went to the taxicab, and Clancy directed the driver. None of us spoke a word on the way, and when the short drive was ended, Clancy ordered the chauffeur to wait and the three of us went into the elevator and up to her floor.

  There, before her door, she paused and turned on us as though to resist or protest. She lost her nerve again, and produced a key.

  “Allow me, madame,” said Clancy, and opened the door. “Into the small salon, madame.”

  We followed her inside. She seemed dazed, hopeless, as she led us into a very beautifully fitted salon. Then, throwing aside her wrap, she faced us with returning composure and a hint of defiance. “What does this mean—”

  “It means we had better sit down, if madame will permit,” said Clancy. When she met his gaze, terror flickered again in her eyes. She seated herself abruptly.

  “What I would like most to know,” said Clancy reflectively, as though we were engaged in a light conversation over the coffee cups, “is the connection between Madame de Lautenac and the stamp dealer Colette. I refer, of course, to the antecedent connection.”

  “I never heard of such a man,” said the woman coldly, her self-possession returning.

  “No?” said Clancy softly. He looked at me and smiled, and spoke in English. “Did you notice that Colette’s inside coat pocket had the lining pulled out?”

  “Perhaps it had,” I said. “It had been disarranged by the surgeon, no doubt.”

  “No, not by the surgeon.” Clancy nodded and reverted to French. The woman’s eyes showed me she had understood every word perfectly. “I suppose, madame, it is useless to ask for the document you took from Colette’s pocket after you stabbed him?”

  Her pale face became yet paler, but her composure was perfect. Even her fingers, which had been nervously playing with a handkerchief in her lap, became still.

  “I know nothing of what you refer to,” she said calmly, her eyes fastened on Clancy.

  He nodded and turned to me.

  “Will you be good enough to invert the Dresden china vase at the left of the mantel?”

  I rose, went to the mantel, took the vase from it, and inverted it. Something heavy fell to the carpet, and I picked up one of those tiny miniature swords which can be found everywhere in Paris. This one was a rapier, perhaps six inches long, beautifully made and inlaid with gold. It might have served as a cabinet curio, as a hair ornament, or as anything. Halfway up the blade, toward the golden hilt, was a brownish stain.

  “Now, perhaps,” said Clancy quietly, to the woman, “you will tell me the antecedent connection between yourself and Colette?”

  “He was my husband,” she said, half whispering the words.

  There was a moment of silence—a moment can be a long time. Only the ticking of the clock on the mantel disturbed us, and I saw the woman’s eyes go to it with a sudden flash. She had remembered her appointment with Galtier—there was still hope!

  “The document,” said Clancy gravely, “is for the present immaterial. I wonder why you stopped to abstract a rare stamp from Colette’s safe, madame? There was your mistake.”

  “It is nothing to you,” she answered, calm again. A good antagonist, this woman! “I admit nothing. I know nothing.”

  “But,” said Clancy inexorably, “you expect to give that stamp to Jean Galtier in an hour or less.” She sagged a little, and her steady gaze flickered. Clancy saw it, and drove home at once. “Perhaps you’d better give me the stamp, instead.”

  “Very well,” she said, to my surprise.

  On the table lay a card-case. She reached out and took it, opened it, and extracted a tiny bit of paper. For a moment, it fell to me to see one of the world’s rarest stamps. Clancy held out his hand to take it.

  Instead, with a swift movement she shot it into her mouth and swallowed it.

  Clancy uttered an exclamation of dismay. So rapid was her action, neither of us had a chance to stop it, and Cleopatra’s vinegar destroyed no greater value than this little meal. Madame de Lautenac smiled slightly.

  “I do not know what stamp you are talking about,” she said calmly. “One cannot have committed a crime without evidence—”

  Clancy recovered, and pointed to the little rapier, which I had laid on the table.

  “The principal evidence, madame.”

  “Planted here by you, evidently during my absence.”

  Well shot. But Clancy only smiled.

  “And then, madame, have we also planted the text of the Franco-Italian treaty, which you removed from Colette’s pocket?”

  In a moment, her defiant beauty became haggard, she became an old woman. The glitter of her eyes swept into a frightful despair. Somehow, Clancy had nailed her this time.

  “How long is it since you left Colette?” demanded Clancy.

  “Six years,” she whispered. “Because—because he was a spy for Germany—in the war—”

  “And you,” said Clancy, pitiless, “take money from Moscow. Where is the difference? This treaty was signed three days ago in Paris. You were told at Cannes that Colette had it, for Germany. You were told to get it. You came and got it. Then—the stamp! Why the stamp?”

  “For—for Jean,” she whispered, her face terrible to see.

  “And he will be here for his stamp presently,” said Clancy. “Good. Then he, too, will become implicated in the murder—”

  She half came to her feet.

  “Stop, stop!” she cried out horribly. “He is innocent of it—he knows nothing of it—you must not drag him into it!” She thrust a hand into her low corsage and dragged out a paper packet, and flung it to the floor. “There is the treaty—take it, but do not bring Jean into it—spare him, spare him!”

  She sank back, put her handkerchief to her face, and huddled down in her chair.

  Clancy picked up the paper packet and broke it open. He nodded slightly, and put it in his pocket. Then he got out a cigarette and lighted it, and handed me one.

  ‘Well, Logan,” he said in English, “I think we’d better be getting along. We must not miss the ballet, you know. It wouldn’t do to be late.”

  “But—”

  I motioned toward the woman, who had not moved. Clancy sniffed slightly, and I started. In place of apple-blossom, a thin odor of bitter almonds was quivering on the air.

  “A prussic-acid capsule in her handkerchief,” said Clancy, with only a glance at her huddled, motionless figure. “No need to verify it. Shall we go?”

  We went. Phil Brady did not get much of a story out of it, after all.

  THE TATTOOED MAN, by William J. Makin

  “The tattooed man has died,” I said to Isaac Heron quietly. “I thought you would like to see the body before it is buried.”

  Detective Inspector Graves, swathed in a raincoat, his bowler hat dripping wet, exploded amazement and exasperation at his friend the gypsy. They stood on the edge of a fair-ground, where a gasoline lamp hissed and spluttered in the rain.

  “D’you really mean to tell me, Heron, that you’ve brought me from a comfortable fireside to this God-forsaken part of London to see a corpse! Good heavens, don’t I see enough bodies in the course of my work?”

  “But not tattooed bodies,” said Isaac Heron, with a queer smile.

  “But you said this tattooed man had died.”

  “Oh, everything is in order,” said the gypsy. “The doctor has signed the death-certificate, and the poor fellow is to be buried in the morning. Unless you stop it.”

  Detective Inspector Graves frowned.

  “But why should I? If the doctor is satisfied that the man died from natural causes—”

  Isaac Heron shrugged his shoulders.

&nbs
p; “Better come inside the tent out of the rain, anyhow,” he suggested.

  And because this well-to-do gypsy had on a number of occasions been of very real help in solving difficult cases, the Scotland Yard man followed the lithe figure of Isaac Heron into that maze of drenched light that called itself, ironically, a Fun Fair.

  They passed gaudy roundabouts churning out last year’s jazz. Booths with dart-throwers, shooting galleries with spouting celluloid balls, and lemonade stalls with bellied bowls of yellow liquid impeded their progress. Eventually pushing through an apathetic and drifting crowd of damp people they reached a dark, deserted booth where no lights were flaring.

  It was possible, however, to glimpse a gaudy painting of a man whose torso was smothered with fantastic and writhing designs.

  Graves stopped to read an announcement on a signboard which assaulted the eyes with the wording:

  SEE THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD!

  THE GREATEST OF ALL TATTOOED MEN

  ELMER HAYES

  HE BEARS 350 DESIGNS

  UNIQUELY ARTISTIC

  ON EVERY PART OF HIS BODY

  Walk Up and See Him for Yourself.

  “And so he’s dead, eh?” said Graves.

  “Died in front of a crowd of thirty people who had paid threepence each to see him.”

  “Well, I suppose they thought they’d had their money’s worth!”

  Graves stumbled up the wooden steps, across a little platform, and followed the gypsy into the booth.

  A strange scene was revealed. A single low-burning lamp was slung from the canvas roof. A group of figures, as fantastic as any painted by Goya, were clustered beneath it. The Fat Lady, in a baby frock, glycerine-like tears squeezing from her eyes. The Lion-tamer, uncomfortably tapping his stained riding-breeches with a whip. Three dwarfs standing on chairs to peer over the shoulders of others. Shirt-sleeved men from the booths, and a solitary Italian icecream vendor.

  The group fell apart as Isaac Heron advanced, and in the dim light their faces seemed filled with genuine sorrow. For a moment Graves hesitated; then, with an uncomfortable feeling, he removed his hat. He found himself regarding two trestles which upheld a coffin in which lay the body of Elmer Hayes, the Tattooed Man.

  Even in death that purple-pricked body was exhibited. The huge chest displayed a series of fantastic designs—butterflies, snakes, airplanes winging among purple clouds, hearts with daggers in them and purple blood dripping, a Union Jack and the American Stars and Stripes, a clipper on a rough purple sea—there was no end to the conglomeration of pictures.

  But it was to the now rigid face that Graves turned his gaze. Although the eyes were closed and the face possessed a semblance of peace in death, there was something drawn, something tortured, in those features that suggested the end was no happy one.

  “He must have suffered,” muttered the Scotland Yard man.

  “Poisoned!” wheezed a voice at his very elbow.

  The detective turned. A mustached man with eyes magnified by spectacles was standing there.

  “What d’you mean by that—poisoned?” snapped Graves.

  “Just what I said, poisoned,” went on the mustached man. “Poisoned by his tea, I should say. He would eat mussels, and drink any sort of liquid that was given to him. That was the tea he had before he died. I warned him against it. Told him his stomach couldn’t stand it. But of course he paid no attention. Nobody ever does, to me. But I come in at the death.”

  He cackled, in a grim fashion.

  “Who are you, anyhow?” asked the Inspector.

  “A doctor,” replied the other, twisting his mustache importantly. “They call me the shilling doctor, but I don’t always get my shilling.”

  “And you say this man was poisoned?”

  “By himself! Acute toxins resulting from indigestion attacking the heart. Or as we physicians call it, gastric enteritis. You’ll find that on the death-certificate.… Have you a match?”

  His tobacco-stained mouth was slanting a cigarette at the detective.

  But it was Isaac Heron who obliged.

  “I’d like my friend to see the designs on the back of the body, Doctor, if you’ve no objection,” he said, holding a match to the cigarette.

  “None at all. Delighted,” said the medical man. “Allow me.”

  He plunged his hands into the coffin and with a deft twist of powerful wrists turned the body over. The back of the corpse was revealed, also smothered in purple-pricked designs.

  “I think I’ve seen enough,” grunted Graves. There was something about this group of freaks and the sardonic “shilling doctor” that made him feel sick, and he was anxious to regain the rain-slashed darkness of the open air.

  “But I particularly want you to see this design, Graves,” insisted the quiet voice of Isaac Heron.

  Reluctantly, the Inspector followed the pointing brown finger and bent his head nearer. For among that phantasmagoria of dragons and flaming torches and yawning crocodiles was a tombstone. And marked on the tombstone, minutely pricked but clearly discernible were the words:

  SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF

  ELMER HAYES

  Died Nov. 30, 1935.

  Y.S.

  “And when did this poor fellow die?” asked Graves.

  “Yesterday,” replied the doctor importantly. He was not looking at the body. “You will find it on the death certificate, which is quite in order. ‘Gastric enteritis. November 30, 1935.’”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” said Isaac Heron.

  “But—but has he seen this?” blurted out Graves.

  “Seen what?” asked the physician. He bent down over the corpse. “Umph! That’s queer. November 30th. The very day he died. I wonder how he got that tattoo mark?”

  “It seems fairly recent to me,” said Heron.

  The doctor nodded. “Yes, it is. Very recent.” He swung round upon the little group of freaks. “Has anybody been fooling about with this body?”

  His eyes were blazing behind the spectacles.

  A shirt-sleeved individualpushed his way forward.

  “P’raps I can explain, guv’nor!”

  “Who are you?”

  The shirt-sleeved individual jerked his head in the direction of the body.

  “He was my show. I paid him his wages.”

  “And what do you know about this tattoo mark?” demanded Graves.

  The showman scratched his head.

  “Well, guv’nor, all I can say is he had it done hisself. He was allus anxious to add a new picture to his collection, as it were. Most big towns we stopped at, he would look round for a tattooer and ask for a new picture. That one you’re looking at now was done about a week ago. Leastways, that’s when Elmer started going to a new tattooer he’d found.”

  The doctor grunted.

  “Well, that explains it,” He turned to the Scotland Yard man and the gypsy. “Seen enough?”

  “Quite enough, thank you, Doctor,” said Isaac Heron.

  Deftly the body was turned over. As the men moved away, the group of show people, the freaks, the dwarfs, and the workers closed in again upon the coffin and resumed their silent staring mourning.

  “There’s Elmer’s daughter,” indicated the shirt-sleeved man. “Poor girl, she misses her father, shocking!”

  Isaac Heron, followed by the detective, moved over to a figure sitting on an upturned bucket and crouched in an attitude of grief.

  “My dear,” he murmured.

  A shock of black hair was raised, revealing a face whose slightly yellow tinge, high cheek-bones and oblique eyes emphasized an Asiatic origin.

  “Her mother was a Jap,” whispered the showman. “She died when the girl was born, so Elmer told me.”

  “Is there anything I can do for you?” asked Heron.

  The girl shook her head.

  “Nothing—nothing. Father is dead—and that’s all.”

  Sobs choked the rest of her utterance. Sadly the gypsy turned away. He whispered something to
the showman, who nodded. It was the shilling doctor who broke in upon them.

  “Well, I suppose there’s a queue of patients waiting for me. You won’t need me any more.” The end of his glowing cigarette was almost burning his lips. “Everything is in order. You’ve got the death-certificate.… Good night, gentlemen.”

  And peering through his spectacles, he shuffled away into the night.

  Five minutes later Isaac Heron and Detective Inspector Graves were standing once more in the rain on the edge of the fair-ground.

  “Well?” asked the Scotland Yard man. “Queer, isn’t it, that Elmer Hayes should die on the very day that the tattooed tombstone on his back indicated?” observed the gypsy.

  “Might be coincidence,” said Graves.

  “And it might be murder,” Heron rejoined quietly.

  The Scotland Yard man started. “1 saw no indications of that.”

  “Not even the redness and swelling beneath the tattooing of the tombstone?”

  “Heavens, no! Are you suggesting—”

  “Poison!” nodded Isaac Heron. “Certainly not gastric enteritis. That shilling doctor is overworked and careless. And once he’s signed a death-certificate, he believes in it implicitly.”

  Graves stared at his companion. “Aren’t you rather jumping to conclusions?”

  “Maybe I am,” admitted the gypsy. “But here’s a taxi. Let’s take it. There’s something else I want to show you tonight.”

  Graves was too bewildered to protest.

  * * * *

  “I saw the body of Elmer Hayes earlier in the day,” explained Isaac Heron, leaning back comfortably in the taxi. “And incidentally, I spotted that peculiarly new tattoo mark.”

  “Who told you of his death?” asked Graves.

  “A brother of the black tents,” smiled the gypsy. “News travels fast among show folk. And I confess to a Barnum-like fascination for freaks. Yes, I went to see the body of that poor fellow out of sheer curiosity.”

  “And having seen it?”

  “I telephoned for one of the best tattooists in London to come and see it. You probably know the man. He has his shop, or studio, as he prefers to call it, near Waterloo Bridge.”