Son of Gun in Cheek

by Bill Pronzini

  Now if that isn’t an alternative plot you can sink your teeth into, I don’t know what is.

  Florence Mae’e prose, of course, is down to its usual standards throughout the Beau Quicksilver series. As in the following bright examples from “A Tooth for a Tooth”:

  [The chief] flung himself into his car waiting at the curb. He stepped on the gas until the motor shot ahead like an enraged comet. It reminded him of Beau Quicksilver on the chase—playing a hunch with every nerve strung to capacity speed and acuteness.

  The chief leaned forward purposively. He breathed of leonine strength.

  The peevish irritability of a moment before had vanished. It was as though dark and rumbling clouds had suddenly been blown away by a whiff of quickening ozone. Again the air was surcharged with mystery. It quickened him like some dose of super-strychnine.

  The hush of death was upon [the room]. The air breathed of the untoward. It smelled of crime.

  His shoulder breadth would have made him an admirable model of Atlas. Its girth was splendid. It suggested the far spaces and twelve-cylinder lungs.

  “Were you in the house last night?” instantly lunged Beau Quicksilver.

  And now, the Florence Mae Pettee pièce de résistance: one of her Digby Gresham stories, “Death Laughs at Walls,” a locked-room short-short that would have left John Dickson Carr gasping, reprinted for your delectation in its entirety. This lump of alternative gold first appeared in the January 1930 issue of a Fiction House pulp called (appropriately enough, though not for the reason its publishers intended) Detective Classics, It represents Florence Mae in all her glory and magnificence; and I think I can guarantee that after you’ve read it, you’ll never again feel quite the same about either the mystery short story or the English language.

  DEATH LAUGHS AT WALLS by Florence M. Pettee

  “The thing savors of the incredible, Sibly. It isn’t human. How can a man come to his death in so mysterious a way? There he sits, stark and stiff, in the cold gray light of the morning. Both doors into his study are locked and bolted. The windows just above the gray wall are securely screened and locked. I ask you, Sibly, what possible grounds you can have—you or the police—for suspecting murder?”

  John Sibly crossed a lank leg. He knew that Gresham, a private detective of considerable reputation, was only trying to draw him out. Inwardly, he smiled at the attempt, although he replied soberly enough.

  “I look to foul play as the answer to the riddle of Harrison Clay’s death because—I am his doctor.”

  “Well? Are you hinting at poison, since you have intimated that sudden death from organic disease was impossible?”

  “I am not hinting at the manner of death. I merely state that I know Harrison Clay came to his death by murder.”

  “Hm,” murmured Gresham drily. “Well, the police are also working on that assumption. What more do you want? Why are you consulting me?”

  “Because the chief, who is a good friend of mine, has told me sub rosa that the department is shortly to arrest the dead man’s son, young David.”

  “Why David?”

  “Unfortunately the young man has a high temper. When he was honorably discharged from service, he became set on a naval career. Now, Clay, senior, was keen for the young man to follow science—chemical research. He was rabid against the marine program. They had heated words over the affair, even the day before Harrison Clay was found, a corpse sitting rigidly in a chair before his desk in an entrance-proof room. Several heard the rash words, among which were hints of disinheritance in favor of his nephew, Percival Clay. On close bullying by the police, these witnesses have testified to the unfortunate scene between the dead man and his son. The police, completely balked at the way foul play could have been consummated, propose to show their rigorous investigation by arresting young Clay. Subsequently, they hope to worm out of him the mysterious way Harrison Clay was done to death.”

  “Just who testified to the police about the quarrel between young Clay and his father?”

  “Let me see. There was the nephew, Percival, the old cook, Malinda, Mr. Arthur Armstrong, a scientific friend of the deceased, who was visiting at the house when the dead man was found, and Johnson, a servant.”

  “Hm,” reflected Gresham. “Well, why your haste to prevent young Clay’s arrest? Of course you don’t believe him guilty. But I recall him as a husky fellow whom the incarceration in jail won’t floor. Besides, this act of the police, provided young Clay is innocent, will draw a red herring across the suspicions of the real criminal, so to speak. What’s your perturbation?”

  John Sibly shifted uneasily. Then—”Hang it all, Gresham, I suppose you will call me an old fogey and all that. But it goes against this crabbed brain of mine to have this son of my old friend and patient hauled into jail as a suspect of patricide. I don’t want David Clay so branded, even temporarily.”

  ‘Then—” suggested Gresham tentatively.

  “I want you to get at the truth. I want you to discover how Harrison Clay was killed and who committed the outrage.”

  Red Gables, the summer estate of the dead Harrison Clay, occupied some acres beside the surf in the aristocratic shore-colony. A red tiled wall shut in the stucco house with its scarlet roof. Red Gables itself loomed a bright red-topped pile close by the wall sheering down to the heavy surf. Harrison Clay’s den and laboratory combined, where he lay dead, was situated on the first floor at the rear of the house overlooking the sea-wall which sheered up close.

  Digby Gresham was admitted through the gates guarded by the blue-coats. The police department did not resent his introduction to the case. Rather did they welcome it. The strange death of Harrison Clay had disturbed them mightily from the moment they had been summoned by young Clay, who had already broken down the door and found his father lifeless.

  Fortunately for Digby Gresham the coroner in charge of the untoward in that little summer colony was away. For the seaport had been heretofore a model, free from major or minor crimes. Much difficulty had been experienced in locating the coroner. Hence Digby Gresham congratulated himself on his rare good fortune in arriving in the death-chamber before the body had been disturbed—the body or its surroundings. Only a trusted inspector of the department had investigated there. And he had immediately posted a man outside the door with the orders that no one should enter, except by his permission.

  So Gresham entered the somber house. Respectfully a uniformed man stepped aside, permitting him to enter the room of death.

  With a quick eye Gresham saw the glass topped experimental benches, the intricate electrical equipment in the room, the vials, retorts and burners. For Harrison Clay was a private investigating scientist of unusual ability, albeit the investigations he pursued had been largely of a mysterious nature. Gresham’s eyes traveled to the two lone windows. Although they were not closed, yet they were heavily screened with fine-meshed wire netting. And the screens were strongly locked on the inside, making ingress from the sea-wall without an impossibility. Then Digby Gresham’s eyes went to the dead man sitting there.

  In the swivel chair before the wide-topped desk sat Harrison Clay, rigidly, like some wooden martinet.

  The figure leaned back against the chair, one hand lying across his knee, the other grasping the arm of the chair stiffly. The latter stood so close to the desk as to bring the knees of the dead man against its wood. The head slumped forward on the chest almost as though Clay were asleep. Only the eyes themselves, glassy and basilisk, belied this assumption. They seemed starting from their sockets as though their owner beheld some fearful apparition. Yet the dead man sat side wise to the window with papers strewn over his desk. Beyond him yawned the wide fireplace.

  Digby Gresham examined the flue. It was too small to permit even the entrance of a kitten. Yet there were other animals smaller than kittens which had been trained in Oriental countries to bring about subtle and insidious death. A monkey now—

  Frowningly Digby Gresham turned to the stiff figu
re. He made swift and microscopic examinations. Yet the cubicle seemed unbroken. No tiny pin-point showed to whisper of some fine and poison-dipped point. Yet the coroner’s autopsy would prove that fact more absolutely.

  But if Harrison Clay had not met death by some such subtle poison, how had he, a man organically sound, come to his sudden, inexplicable death?

  Intently Digby Gresham scanned the dead man’s features. He looked at the papers spread out carelessly on the desk. Chemical formulae they were, betokening a man highly trained in such research. Swiftly Gresham went to the glass-topped tables, He looked over their contents expertly. For Digby Gresham was no mean dabbler in chemistry himself. His laboratory was one of the finest private ones in his own city.

  Digby Gresham whistled softly. He strode back to the desk and the dead man sitting there.

  Then the crime sleuth examined the doors meticulously. But no enlightening scratch rewarded him there. He studied the strongly locked and fine-meshed screens at the windows. They were absolutely without marks of tampering. Obviously, no poison-point could have been shot through them as had been done in the case of the Pulsifer poisoning.

  How had Harrison Clay been killed?

  For certain facts which Digby Gresham had already unearthed led to his absolute belief in the theory of murder.

  Until the autopsy should disclose whether or not the stomach or the intestines showed traces of poison administered before Harrison Clay locked himself in his room, Gresham went noiselessly about the house and grounds.

  Finally his tall figure climbed to the tiled top wall. There he continued until he stopped just outside the fatal room.

  “No, sir,” said Malinda, the cook, “I know the master couldn’t have died at the hand of his son. David is quicktempered enough, but not that hot-headed.” A canny look sifted across her face. She whispered dramatically, “I think the master killed himself.”

  “Why?”

  The woman moved restively. She picked uneasily at her dress. “B-be-because he’s been acting queer o’ late.”

  “Then why didn’t the doctor notice it?” shot out Gresham.

  “Oh, doctors!” flung back the woman scornfully. “What they don’t notice would fill books! I’ve been with Mr. Harrison for years, and I know him. And he has been acting very nervous and excited of late. He would work far into the night, behind locked doors in that room of his. I think he went suddenly crazy from overwork and killed himself.”

  Narrowly Digby Gresham studied the cook. Why had she voiced the insanity theory and most surprising of all, suicide? Was it an offensive or defensive suggestion? Just what lay in back of it?

  “How did he kill himself?” asked Gresham gently.

  She shrugged. “He’s got stuff in those bottles of his to kill a hundred men.”

  “But,” insisted Gresham, “Dr. Sibly gave no intimation of a nervous breakdown, of coming mental trouble.”

  “Humph, he wouldn’t. I wouldn’t have him to a sick cat!”

  “Then you don’t think David Clay killed his father?”

  Her eyes flashed balefully. “Of course not! Ridiculous!”

  Thoughtfully Gresham next interviewed the servant Johnson. He was a short, florid man with straw-colored hair, wide blue eyes and a red complexion. He looked the part of English butler to perfection.

  Johnson added nothing except a nervousness of manner which all those implicated in the affair displayed.

  But the nephew, Percival Clay, was strong in his suspicion of his cousin.

  “David was always hot-headed,” he declared. “He’d fly off the handle at the least thing. Not that I’m hinting at anything,” he interposed hastily, yet very clumsily, Gresham thought. “And the war, too, has blunted him to any form of death.”

  Percival Clay shivered.

  “You were not in the service?” questioned Gresham quietly.

  Percival Clay regarded him over his heavy-bowed spectacles. “Defective sight prevented my acceptance,” he said stiffly.

  Gresham’s interview with Arthur Armstrong elicited nothing further. And David Clay himself only stoutly averred his innocence.

  Then came the coroner’s report.

  “I find, Mr. Gresham,” said that official, “no trace whatsoever of any known poison in the entrails of the dead man. Moreover, the skin discloses no scratch or suspicious prick where poison could have been intruded into the system in that manner. I confess that I am absolutely in the dark as to how Harrison Clay met his death.”

  Some hours later Digby Gresham received a bulky communication in answer to a hastily sent wire. And the long legal envelope bore the imprint of the government’s official rank.

  Then Gresham drove away to a neighboring city. There he was gone some hours. When he returned, some of the frowns had been smoothed from his forehead.

  He called up the police headquarters and addressed himself to the chief of the department.

  “Send over to my quarters a couple of men in plain clothes. Let them come heeled and with entirely dependable steel bracelets.”

  “What for?”

  “I am out to take the murderer of Harrison Clay”

  Shortly Digby Gresham, accompanied by the men from headquarters, parked outside the main door of Red Gables.

  “Station yourselves in the shadows behind the portieres here,” ordered Gresham, for dusk was already heavy in the hall. “When I make the accusation and flash on the lights, you snap on the bracelets. Keep your man covered, for he is a dangerous one.”

  The two men from headquarters slid out of sight, although they were but three feet from Gresham’s elbow. In the dim half-light the detective rang for a servant.

  A little silence followed. A big car roared by.

  Heavy footsteps came through the corridor. They paused just before Gresham.

  “Yes, sir?” inquired Johnson. “You rang, sir?”

  “I did,” Gresham gestured alertly. “I arrest you for the murder of Harrison Clay.”

  Blinding lights dissipated the darkness as the two officers followed their instructions to the letter.

  Johnson, white and hard-eyed, regarded the detective.

  “Perhaps, sir,” he said with his usual dignity, “you will explain what you mean. If it is a joke you are playing, it is a mighty poor one.”

  “It is no joke, Nicolai Dombrosky,” retorted Gresham. “I have it on good authority that you have patented several admirable though diabolical devices for your government. I have specified knowledge as to the nature of these patents. Moreover, I can pretty well surmise why you killed Harrison Clay. A man of your stamp, still aiding your country by the inventions you have disposed of would be a bitter enemy of a man like Harrison Clay.

  “For Clay perfected many admirable devices for the United States government, although these were done in secret and were quite unknown. Even at this time Clay was perfecting a new high-power explosive which could be manufactured at a surprisingly low cost and from common materials we have at hand. The formulae for this invention of which he apprised the government are missing from his private effects. But I found them, hidden away under the carpet in your room, Dombrosky.

  “You felt a bit too secure, because nothing seemed to implicate you, and because young Clay was suspected. Harrison Clay’s new explosive would have been a big boom to the dastardly archfiends you serve.”

  “B-but,” interposed one of the men from headquarters, “I see why Clay was killed, but I can’t for the life of me understand how.”

  Gresham answered, “One of this man’s recently patented inventions on file in Washington is a pistol for shooting liquid gas—lethal gas. I have no doubt but that this weapon for shooting fatal gas was held against the screen in the open window and a charge of the death-dealing fumes shot into the room—killing Harrison Clay almost instantly. I was immediately struck by the appearance of the dead man. His eyes seemed strained from their sockets as they would when the lungs had suddenly been filled with suffocating and deadly gas.” />
  The erstwhile Johnson started to answer.

  “Don’t deny it,” interrupted Gresham, pulling something from his pocket. “For sewn inside the feathers of one of your pillows I found irrefutable proof of your guilt.”

  In his handy Digby Gresham held forth a rubber gasmask.

  Black Mask was not the only top-line detective pulp to bring forth an alternative classic of the short persuasion. Both Detective Fiction Weekly and Dime Detective not ony published but cover-featured one, the former in 1934 (Anthony Rud’s “The Feast of the Skeletons”) and the latter in 1950 (Michael Morgan’s “Charity Begins at Homicide”).

  The Rud mini-masterpiece, like his full-length payloads for Macaulay, stars that celebrated private dick, Jigger Masters. One of a series of Masters short stories written for Detective Fiction Weekly in the early thirties, “The Feast of the Skeletons,” was ballyhooed on the cover of the August 25, 1934, issue as an example of “Strangest Crime.” The crime it concerns is pretty strange, all right—a sort of clever reverse twist on the Yellow Peril theme Rud used to such stunning effect in The Stuffed Men, in that Orientals— specifically, Japanese—are the good guys. They’re also the victims, and several of them die horribly—but what the hell, you can’t expect too much compassionate innovation out of a pulpster working in those dark days of 1934.

  Four emissaries of the Japanese government, who have come to this country to discuss ways and means of establishing peaceful coexistence with the United States, have mysteriously disappeared in the general vicinity of the Long Island estate of Ambassador Robert Gormely, where they were supposed to have met with members of the State Department. Not only that, but photographs were sent to the Japanese government following each abduction, each snapshot showing a long table set for a banquet, each one adding a new guest clad in dinner jacket, shirt, collar, and tie. But this is no ordinary banquet; it is one at which “sheer terror is toastmaster.” For all four of the nattily attired figures in the last photograph are human skeletons.