The Mammoth Book of Roaring Twenties Whodunnits

by Mike Ashley

  “I bought this gun the next day, and I’ve never received him without it since. Walsh, I knew then and I’ve known ever since – that your friend has a latent streak of homicidal mania in him. He’s probably fighting it, but it’s growing stronger all the time, and it’s going to come out some day –”

  “I’ve known him since we were both in school,” I said. “You’re talking through your hat!”

  She said bitterly, “A man can go through college with another man; room with him for years, be slated for bestman at his wedding, but when it comes to knowing that other man, the hidden recesses of the mind, the dark quirks revealed in unguarded moments, it takes a woman.”

  “Why didn’t you drop him then?”

  “I was afraid to. Afraid he’d turn on me and get me for sure if I antagonized him in any way. I couldn’t face it, the thought that he might be lurking downstairs by the door some night when I came home plastered, or get himself admitted up here and wait for me hidden in a closet. I told a couple of small-time racketeer friends of mine about it, and they went out to beat him up. That was their own idea, not mine. That scared me even worse, I begged them to lay off, let me handle it.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the police, then?”

  “Walsh,” she said drily, “a girl like me has no social standing, she has to take her own chances. Besides, he never actually threatened me, it was just that I never knew from one visit to the next when the thing was going to pop through the veneer of sanity that’s hidden it so well from you and everyone else.

  “When he first started going with Miss Planter, all I could think of was that meant an out for me, I’d finally get rid of him. I wanted to ring bells and blow whistles. But it was still there, only it had switched over to her. I’m a nice comfortable sort of person; other guys don’t hide much from me, I guess I had the same effect on him. He started in by saying that he still liked me better than her, but that he’d have to marry her, because she had all kinds of dough. Then pretty soon he was saying that he’d come back to me and show me what he really thought of me, once he got his hands on that dough. Leaving it sort of indefinite what would happen to her. Then finally it became less indefinite and less indefinite, until I couldn’t help knowing what he meant. He didn’t say so in so many words, but you couldn’t mistake his meaning – he was going to get rid of her some fine day –”

  I got my own drink this time. She was getting under my skin, but every pore was fighting her.

  “That’s bad enough,” she said, “that set-up. But there’s something worse to it, something worse than that. The real horror of it is, he doesn’t really want Marcia’s money, he doesn’t really want me. He just wants to kill someone. He’s sick in the head. Oh, I looked into his eyes for sixty minutes that night, with a sharp knife at my windpipe, and no one can tell me different! If it isn’t her, it’ll be someone else, sometime, somewhere – ”

  I looked at her like I hated her for doing this to me. “Proof,” I said huskily. “Proof. I’ve got to have proof. You’ve destroyed my confidence in him forever, damn you. But still I only have your say-so, your suspicions to go by. I’m with him day and night, I’ve never noticed anything. I’ve fallen between two stools now. You can’t leave me like this.”

  “I’ll give you proof,” she said. She got up and looked frightened, like she was trying to get her courage up for something. “I called him up once tonight. You were there. You didn’t hear what he said to me, though, did you?” She went over to the hand-set and dialled Butterfield 8-1200, our number. I read the slots over her shoulder.

  “Don’t ever tell him,” she breathed. “For God’s sake, don’t ever let him know about this – or I’m finished.”

  She sat down on the bench, and I sat down on it the opposite way with my head affectionately on her shoulder. We weren’t thinking of love, we were both listening to the same receiver. I was shaking a little.

  He got on and she said, “Hello, Tommy dear. Did I get you out of bed?”

  “Who is this, Fritzie? No, I just got in,” he told her. “I’ve been down at Police Headquarters until half an hour ago. Did you hear what happened?”

  She looked at me quickly and I shook my head; it mightn’t be in the papers yet. She said no, and he told her. He told her that the report from the chemical lab had come in while he was there, some kind of experimental stuff they’d been trying out for a weed-killer at the hot-houses had got on them by accident; they’d gone down there now to destroy all the rest of the bushes, and were sending out a warning to the various florists around town. “Walsh said that from the beginning,” I heard him say “but for a time they had me feeling damned uncomfortable.”

  She gave me a look, but I didn’t call that proof. “And will this delay your wedding?” she led him on.

  “Not if I’ve got anything to say about it,” he answered.

  “So it looks like I’ve got to lose you after all,” she crooned trickly.

  “I’ll be back at your door in six months, darling – a widower,” he whispered. An electric current went through me. Her eyes met mine; hers were frightened, seemed to say “I told you so”; mine were horrified, incredulous.

  “You don’t really mean – those things you’ve been saying all along,” she said, to spur him on.

  But he was too cagey. “I don’t want to talk any more over the phone,” he said. “See you soon.”

  The more we drank, the less able to get drunk we both seemed to be. “Proof enough?” she shivered, gorging on hers.

  I drew my hand across my mouth, as though I had a bad taste.

  “It’s in him,” she said. “And if it isn’t her, it’ll be somebody el—”

  “Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” I breathed it as though afraid of the sound of my own voice. “D’you remember when that Andrea girl was killed about a year and a half ago – that case that was never cleared up – did you know him then? He got all excited, dwelt on it, that was all he could talk about for days –”

  “Yes, yes!” she agreed. “I noticed that too. He came to see me the night after it happened. He brought in three papers with him, not one, and sat and read every word in them aloud to me. His face was all flushed, he seemed to get a thrill –”

  “You scratched him too, didn’t you, that night – no, it was the night before that he came home from here all marked up, I first saw it that morning, and he laughed and told me how ‘emotional’ you’d gotten –”

  She put an ice-cold hand on my wrist, so cold I jumped at the touch of it. “He wasn’t with me the night before. By all that’s holy I swear it! I was out at a bar with another man when the news of the Andrea girl came over the radio. I didn’t give him those marks. I noticed them myself the second night – he told me they came from improperly manipulating one of these new electric razors he’d just bought – ‘burns’ he called them –”

  I said it so low it’s a wonder she could hear me. “He’s never owned one, never brought one into the place from first to last –”

  We were awfully quiet, awfully scared. We were both thinking the same thing. We didn’t want to know for sure; I had to go back and sleep under the same roof with him, she had to receive him the next time he took it into his head to drop in on her. We didn’t want to know for sure.

  I left there at three that morning. I left an entirely different girl than the one I’d called on before midnight. I’d called on a slinky, jealousy-crazed vamp, who had pursued the life out of my room-mate and wasn’t ready to give him up even yet, not if she had to murder her rival.

  I came away from the flat of a girl who was no plaster saint, who wouldn’t have thought of refusing a “present” from an admirer when it was offered in the right spirit, but who, far from pursuing Tom, had been living under the shadow of death’s outspread wing for the past year or more, had never received him without having a gun handy, ever since she’d found out –

  I came away with that gun of hers on me; she had urged me to take it with me herself. “I
’m going to get out of here,” she said. “First thing in the morning! He’ll find out sooner or later I told you –”

  “No he won’t,” I said. “He won’t come near you again, don’t worry.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He’s – my friend.”

  The janissary came up with the car. I liked him; he didn’t want to kill anybody. I gave him fifty bucks downstairs in the lobby. He nearly sat down on his fanny. “You’re a good guy,” I said. “Look after – Miss Fortescue, will you? She’s a good guy too.”

  Her “What are you going to do?” followed me away from the place. I didn’t know what to do. He hadn’t poisoned those flowers, he hadn’t done anything. He was going to do things – some day. Fritzi and I both knew that. An accident that looked like murder had revealed – a real murder, far in the future, not yet committed. That and a suspicion of murder already committed, far in the past.

  I couldn’t go to the police; he hadn’t done anything they could hold him for. I couldn’t just sit by either, and watch Marcia Planter or some other girl drift slowly to her doom. I had my own life to live, but I’m funny that way. I couldn’t have gone through the months and years with that hanging over me, not knowing when –

  It would have been better not to know. But I knew now. And I didn’t know what to do.

  The latchkey was under the mat when I got back. That riled me for some strange reason. I felt he should have cowered behind a locked door, away from me and what I’d found out. I made faces while I unlocked, closed the door again after me. Faces like a guy going into a place where there’s vermin.

  I gave the foyer the lights, took off my topper, shied it into the dark living-room, not caring if I ever saw it again. I went in through the open bedroom-door and gave that the lights. He was sound asleep, a long cylinder under the covers, on the bed nearest the window. I stood there looking at the place, looking at him. A fistful of change and crumpled bills on the dresser, where my jack always went too at nights. How many times we’d had a friendly row the next morning, trying to separate the two. “That fin was mine, y’ highway-robber! You only had singles!” Each feeling at the same time that the other guy would have given him the shirt off his back.

  I’m not trying to be stagey, but put yourself in my place. A thousand pictures flashed through my mind, like a shell-shocked newsreel. The two of us in the Varsity Show. At proms. Trying out for football. Boning for exams. Getting chased in a second-hand roadster by a State motorcycle cop and piling it up against a tree. Standing together on the stag line at a hundred deb-parties, both going for the same wows and both dodging the same clucks.

  And now, here he was. Showing a rotten spot, like an apple. Not showing it, rather, but having it in him. It didn’t make me want to break down and cry, it had just the opposite effect, made me sore as blazes – because it was such a dirty trick on me, I guess.

  “Get up,” I growled. “Get up, you!” My voice rose as I went along. “Get up and get out of here! Murderer! Warped brain! Get out of this flat, before I –!”

  He was awake then, startled, stiff-armed against the bed, blinking at me. “What’s the matter with you, one too many – ?!”

  “Get out of here – beat it, quick!” My mouth felt all lopsided. “Dirty murderer!”

  “You’ve gone crazy,” he said. “What happened to those flowers was an accident, I waited down there till they had a full report on it –”

  “Yes,” I said bitterly, “that’s the joke of it. An accident came along, and through a chain of circumstances, revealed a murder – in the making! A murder that hasn’t happened yet – and that I’m going to see doesn’t happen!”

  I sloughed a chair around, sat down heavily on it, back to front, took out Fritzie’s gun and broke it open. I took out a bullet and put it in my pocket.

  He made a move toward his pants. “No, wait!” I said. “You’ll go back to her, won’t you, that poor little Fortescue hustler, and you’ll do her in – for telling me!” I took out a second bullet. “Or you’ll go to Marcia Planter and you’ll say, ‘Let’s get married right away, let’s give them all the slip and leave town.’ And then some fine day she’ll have an accident, won’t she, fall out of a window or be swept overboard from a ship – or any one of a million things?” I took out the third bullet and put that away. “No she won’t! She loves and trusts you, she deserves a better break than that.”

  “That lying little tart –” he said.

  “You spoke into my ear over the phone an hour ago.” I took out the fourth bullet. “And it isn’t even that – I’d steer clear of you maybe, but I’d be able to understand – if it was just the money. But it’s killing for the sake of killing, that’s got you. I saw how you ate up the papers when the Andrea girl was throttled. I don’t know if you did that or not, and I don’t want to know.” I took out the fifth bullet, and I clicked the gun closed.

  I saw how pale he’d gotten at the name, and how he shrank back a little.

  “Whether you did or not, one thing’s sure. The insulation had already started to wear in by that time. And now there’s not very much left. It’s going to be someone – real soon. Maybe someone you haven’t even met yet. The guy that I went through school with, that I’ve roomed with all these years, wouldn’t want that to happen – even if you do. Only Fritzie and I know.” I stood up and looked at him, and he looked back at me. “And she’s – nobody. And I’m – your friend. Still your friend. Think it over.” I pitched the gun away from me on the bed. My own bed, not his.

  I turned and I went to the door. “Think it over,” I said, without looking at him any more. I closed it after me and I went out.

  It hit me awfully quick, I’d hardly gotten halfway through the small-sized foyer outside when it hit me. Seemed to hit me in the back, and lift my heels clear of the floor. A boom that rattled the closed bedroom-door on its hinges.

  I didn’t look around at it. I went over to the phone and dialed Headquarters. I asked for Doyle, why I don’t know. I guess I wanted to talk to somebody I knew, no matter how slightly, rather than just some stranger.

  He was still there and they got him for me.

  I said dully, “This’ Dick Walsh, I don’t know if you remember me or not, from the Park-Ashley and the florist-shop tonight –”

  He liked me as much as ever. “Sure I do,” he said sarcastically. “The amateur detective!”

  “My friend just had an accident, better come around.” Something like a sob popped in my throat without my meaning it to. “You can have your job. I’ll never play detective again. You find – crawling things under the stones you turn up.”

  Endnotes

  1 A devotion to the silent film was but another feature of Vance’s many-faceted personality. He was the author of Epistemological Symbolism in the Films of William S. Hart; Elmo Lincoln, the Renaissance Man; and Broncho Billy Anderson and Aristotelian Tragedy – all highly regarded by film scholars.

  2 We finally settled on Malcolm McGregor.

  3 Sitt’s natural reticence prohibited his playing this role to its best advantage, but some of the other Kop-costumed servants, hired especially for the occasion, presumably from a casting bureau, gave a more uninhibited performance. Additionally, Austin had found a brace of serving men who bore startling resemblances to the comedy duo of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

  4 The reference here, of course, to the portly Pallette of his later years. The more svelte-figured Pallette, to whose heroics in the French tale of Intolerance audiences of 1916 thrilled, would never have been mistaken for the good Sergeant Heath.

  5 In mid-evening Kronert made a startling costume change, suddenly appearing in full evening dress, thus illustrating the recent change in Ray’s screen character from country boy to man about-town. Kronert’s feet remained bare, however, symbolizing the unfortunate Ray’s failure to make a completely successful transformation.

  6 The fourth partner, D. W. Griffith, wa
s not represented at the party. It was hoped that Griffith himself might be present, but the motion-picture pioneer had sent his regrets at the last moment.

  7 Vance had several penetrating observations to make about the origin, design, and artistic merits of the weapon. Were this a full-length novel, I would reproduce those remarks here, since they would undoubtedly be of interest to collectors. Unfortunately, the short-story form offers less latitude for the introduction of such peripheral matters.

  8 The Chief Medical Examiner, who had figured in several of Vance’s previous cases.

  9 He said nothing worth footnoting on this occasion.

  10 Egyptology was yet another of Vance’s many so-called “dilettante” interests.

  11 S. S. Van Dine’s “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories,” Rule Number 3. “There must be no love interest in the story.”