The Mystery Megapack: 25 Modern and Classic Mystery Stories

by Talley, Marcia

  He put his revolver down on the floor and hurried through the papers. He wanted to be done and on his way. He turned his head away from her for an instant—

  A sudden swish of silken skirts! Morlan turned quickly. She was out of the chair, standing just before him, her eyes flashing and a terrible look in her face. And she held a wicked-looking automatic that covered him steadily.

  “Up with your hands!” she ordered. “Up, or you’re a dead man!”

  Morlan was caught fairly. The unexpectedness of it did for him as much as the sight of the automatic. He lifted his hands slowly, while his lower jaw sagged in surprise and his eyes bulged.

  “Clever little burglar, aren’t you?” she said sneeringly. “You swallowed that story neatly, put aside your gun, let me catch you. Not very quick-witted, are you? A few years in prison may improve your wits.”

  “You—you—” Morlan gasped.

  “Walk across the room and sit down in that chair!” she commanded. “And just try a trick, if you think it is best.”

  Morlan obeyed. He was alert, watching for a chance to make his getaway, but he did not have much hope. Something seemed to tell him that this girl would shoot at the slightest provocation.

  “I—was helpin’ you—” he stammered.

  “You fell for my story, that’s all! I got you to put aside your gun, turn away your head—”

  “What—you goin’ to do?” he asked.

  “What does a person generally do when a burglar is caught? You sit still, please.”

  She reached for the telephone on the table at her elbow. As she took down the receiver she held the automatic in her right hand, and not once did she take her eyes from his.

  She called a number. Jim Morlan knew that number well—it was police headquarters!

  “Send officers at once to 1720 Norton Place!” she ordered. “I’ve caught a burglar!”

  The receiver was returned to the hook, and once more she settled back in her chair, watching him.

  “On your way to prison,” she said. “I always had an opinion that professional burglars were clever, but it seems not.”

  “Let me go,” Morlan begged suddenly. “I—everything is there by the safe. I haven’t anything in my pockets except your rings. I’ll give those back—”

  “A man who transgresses the law must pay the penalty,” she told him.

  “I—I was driven to it,” Morlan whimpered. “Give me a chance, lady.”

  “And you’d be robbing somebody else tomorrow night.”

  “No! I’ll turn straight! If I got to prison now I’ll always be a crook. Give me a chance, lady, and I’ll turn straight.”

  “I am afraid not,” she said.

  She got up from the chair, and, still watching him, moved slowly to the hall door. She turned halfway from him, opened the door, glanced out into the hall, and closed the door again.

  “No use to call the servants,” she said. “I’ll just watch you until the police come.”

  “For Heaven’s sake, lady, let me go!” Jim Morlan implored. “I’ll run straight from now on.”

  “If I could believe that—” she said.

  “I swear it, lady,”

  “You’re frightened now because the police are coming. Tomorrow, over your fright, you’d decide that you had been a fool,” she said. “You’d turn burglar again. Prison is the best place for you.”

  “Ain’t you got any mercy?” he asked.

  “Mercy isn’t extended to criminals,” she replied. “You cut yourself off from mercy when you turned crook.”

  “Just give me a chance! I’ll never forget it, lady! And I swear to go straight!”

  Jim Morlan thought that he was a consummate actor. He had no more intention of going straight than he had of running for mayor. But he managed real tears and a dry sob or two. And meanwhile he watched her carefully.

  It was about time for the police to arrive, he judged. She seemed to think so, too. She got up again and once more moved toward the hall door.

  Jim Morlan took the chance. He was out of his chair like a shot and at the nearest window. He crashed through it, darted across the lawn, made for the nearest alley. And as he ran he exulted—he had her rings!

  He did not notice that the lights in the library went out immediately.

  CHAPTER III

  The following evening Jim Morlan ate his dinner in a restaurant frequented by those of the underworld. He was surly, mean. In the morning papers he had read of the robbery at the Blakeley house. Servants had been awakened, the story said, by the crashing of glass. It was evident that the thief had made his get away through a library window, and in a hurry. Evidently something had alarmed him.

  That puzzled Jim Morlan to a great degree. Did not the woman—he supposed she was the daughter of the house—tell the police the truth?

  And there was more to puzzle him. The robbery had been discovered by the servants just after the breaking of the window. And the safe was open, papers scattered about, currency, old jewelry, and rare coins missing.

  Jim Morlan thought it all over again and cursed beneath his breath. There was some mystery, he supposed. At least he had the diamond rings, and they would repay him. He would wait for a few days, and then carry them to the fence. Perhaps that story in the newspapers was a trick of the police, a trap. They often had resorted to such tricks before.

  Into the cafe came two men Jim Morlan knew well—”Burley” Bell, a pickpocket, and Harry Carls, a swindler. They sat down at the adjoining table and nodded at Morlan, and he nodded in return.

  He gave them no attention for a time, and then suddenly he pricked up his ears.

  “Have mercy, lady!” Bell was saying. “For Heaven’s sake, lady, let me go!” Carls replied. “I’ll go straight from now on!”

  “Don’t call the police, lady,” said Bell. “I was driven to it! I swear I’ll go straight!”

  Jim Morlan’s eyes bulged, and then his face turned red. He glanced at the others, and saw they were laughing.

  “Great stuff!” Bell said to Carls. “It’s the laugh of the district! This bird goes ahead and opens the safe and piles out the loot, and then Maizie comes along and gobbles it all in. And the boob gets away with a bunch of paste rings worth about fifteen dollars retail. My eye!”

  “Let me go! I swear I’ll run straight!”Carls grunted, tears of laughter running down his cheeks. “I was driven to it!”

  “Here comes Maizie now,” said Bell.

  Jim Morlan glanced down the aisle from the corner of his eye. Along it, dressed in a neat blue suit, came the woman of the night before. She sat down at the table with Bell and Carls.

  And then Bell got up and walked across to Jim Morlan.

  “Come over and meet Maizie, Carls’ girl,” he said. “She’s some moll, educated and all that. She’ll tell you about a funny little trick she pulled last night, Morlan.”

  “Go to—” Morlan began.

  “Oh, don’t get rough about it!” Bell said. “You had it comin’ to you. No honor among thieves for you! You’re a crooked crook, Morlan, but this’ll finish you in this town. You’re a huge joke to everybody in the know. Clever of you to open the safe and get out the loot for Maizie.”

  “I’ll—”

  “You’ll take your medicine and clear out—or stay here and be laughed to death,” Bell said, suddenly stern. “We’ve got enough to do watchin’ cops, without watchin’ a crooked crook, too. You were easy, Morlan. We had it all planned. We’d been watchin’ you for a couple of weeks. Maizie played the game good, too. And that telelphone call to the cops—wires cut outside, Morlan, by yours truly. It may interest you to know that the swag brought Maizie a nice little roll. You may retain the paste rings, you boob!”

  Bell turned and went back to the other table, said something under his breath, and Carls and the woman laughed.

  “Have mercy!” said Carls. “I was driven to it! Let me go, lady, and I’ll swear to run straight—”

  Jim Morlan, in a r
age, his dinner half eaten, grasped the check and his hat and hurried toward the cashier’s cage. Behind him there was a gale of laughter. The eyes of the cashier were glistening.

  “Some joke, Morlan,” the cashier said. “Let me go, lady—”

  Jim Morlan rushed out into the night. He knew when he was licked. He had a little money and there was a train leaving for the West in half an hour.

  Jim Morlan caught the train.

  THE DAUGHTER OF HUANG CHOW, by Sax Rohmer

  I

  “DIAMOND FRED”

  In the saloon bar of a public-house, situated only a few hundred yards from the official frontier of Chinatown, two men sat at a small table in a corner, engaged in earnest conversation. They afforded a sharp contrast. One was a thick-set and rather ruffianly looking fellow, not too cleanly in either person or clothing, and, amongst other evidences that at one time he had known the prize ring, possessing a badly broken nose. His companion was dressed with that spruceness which belongs to the successful East End Jew; he was cleanly shaven, of slight build, and alert in manner and address.

  Having ordered and paid for two whiskies and sodas, the Jew, raising his glass, nodded to his companion and took a drink. The glitter of a magnificent diamond which he wore seemed to attract the other’s attention almost hypnotically.

  “Cheerio, Freddy!” said the thick-set man. “Any news?”

  “Nothing much,” returned the one addressed as Freddy, setting his glass upon the table and selecting a cigarette from a packet which he carried in his pocket.

  “I’m not so sure,” growled the other, watching him suspiciously. “You’ve been lying low for a long time, and it’s not like you to slack off except when there’s something big in sight.”

  “Hm!” said his companion, lighting his cigarette. “What do you mean exactly?”

  Jim Poland—for such was the big man’s name—growled and spat reflectively into a spittoon.

  “I’ve had my eye on you, Freddy,” he replied; “I’ve had my eye on you!”

  “Oh, have you?” murmured the other. “But tell me what you mean!”

  Beneath his suave manner lay a threat, and, indeed, Freddy Cohen, known to his associates as “Diamond Fred,” was in many ways a formidable personality. He had brought to his chosen profession of crook a first-rate American training, together with all that mental agility and cleverness which belong to his race, and was at once an object of envy and admiration amongst the fraternity which keeps Scotland Yard busy.

  Jim Poland, physically a more dangerous character, was not in the same class with him; but he was not without brains of a sort, and Cohen, although smiling agreeably, waited with some anxiety for his reply.

  “I mean,” growled Poland, “that you’re not wasting your time with Lala Huang for nothing.”

  “Perhaps not,” returned Cohen lightly. “She’s a pretty girl; but what business is it of yours?”

  “None at all. I ain’t interested in ’er good looks; neither are you.”

  Cohen shrugged and raised his glass again.

  “Come on,” growled Poland, leaning across the table. “I know, and I’m in on it. D’ye hear me? I’m in on it. These are hard times, and we’ve got to stick together.”

  “Oh,” said Cohen, “that’s the game, is it?”

  “That’s the game right enough. You won’t go wrong if you bring me in, even at fifty-fifty, because maybe I know things about old Huang that you don’t know.”

  The Jew’s expression changed subtly, and beneath his drooping lids he glanced aside at the speaker. Then:

  “It’s no promise,” he said, “but what do you know?”

  Poland bent farther over the table.

  “Chinatown’s being watched again. I heard this morning that Red Kerry was down here.”

  Cohen laughed.

  “Red Kerry!” he echoed. “Red Kerry means nothing in my young life, Jim.”

  “Don’t ’e?” returned Jim, snarling viciously. “The way he cleaned up that dope crowd awhile back seemed to show he was no jug, didn’t it?”

  The Jew made a racial gesture as if to dismiss the subject.

  “All right,” continued Poland. “Think that way if you like. But the patrols have been doubled. I suppose you know that? And it’s a cert there are special men on duty, ever since the death of that Chink.”

  Cohen shifted uneasily, glancing about him in a furtive fashion.

  “See what I mean?” continued the other. “Chinatown ain’t healthy just now.”

  He finished his whisky at a draught, and, standing up, lurched heavily across to the counter. He returned with two more glasses. Then, reseating himself and bending forward again:

  “There’s one thing I reckon you don’t know,” he whispered in Cohen’s ear. “I saw that Chink talking to Lala Huang only a week before the time he was hauled out of Limehouse Reach. I’m wondering, Diamond, if, with all your cleverness, you may not go the same way.”

  “Don’t try to pull the creep stuff on me, Jim,” said Cohen uneasily. “What are you driving at, anyway?”

  “Well,” replied Poland, sipping his whisky reflectively, “how did that Chink get into the river?”

  “How the devil do I know?”

  “And what killed him? It wasn’t drowning, although he was all swelled up.”

  “See here, old pal,” said Cohen. “I know ’Frisco better than you know Limehouse. Let me tell you that this little old Chinatown of yours is pie to me. You’re trying to get me figuring on Chinese death traps, secret poisons, and all that junk. Boy, you’re wasting your poetry. Even if you did see the Chink with Lala, and I doubt it—Oh, don’t get excited, I’m speaking plain—there’s no connection that I can see between the death of said Chink and old Huang Chow.”

  “Ain’t there?” growled Poland huskily. He grasped the other’s wrist as in a vise and bent forward so that his battered face was close to the pale countenance of the Jew. “I’ve been covering old Huang for months and months. Now I’m going to tell you something. Since the death of that Chink Red Kerry’s been covering him, too.”

  “See here!” Cohen withdrew his arm from the other’s grasp angrily. “You can’t freeze me out of this claim with bogey stuff. You’re listed, my lad, and you know it. Chief Inspector Kerry is your pet nightmare. But if he walked in here right now I could ask him to have a drink. I wouldn’t but I could. You’ve got the wrong angle, Jim. Lala likes me fine, and although she doesn’t say much, what she does say is straight. I’ll ask her tonight about the Chink.”

  “Then you’ll be a damned fool.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I say you’ll be a damned fool. I’m warning you, Freddy. There are Chinks and Chinks. All the boys know old Huang Chow has got a regular gold mine buried somewhere under the floor. But all the boys don’t know what I know, and it seems that you don’t either.”

  “What is that?”

  Jim Poland bent forward more urgently, again seizing Cohen’s wrist, and:

  “Huang Chow is a mighty big bug amongst the Chinese,” he whispered, glancing cautiously about him. “He’s hellish clever and rotten with money. A man like that wants handling. I’m not telling you what I know. But call it fifty-fifty and maybe you’ll come out alive.”

  The brow of Diamond Fred displayed beads of perspiration, and with a blue silk handkerchief which he carried in his breast pocket he delicately dried his forehead.

  “You’re an old hand at this stuff, Jim,” he muttered. “It amounts to this, I suppose; that if I don’t agree you’ll queer my game?”

  Jim Poland’s brow lowered and he clenched his fists formidably. Then:

  “Listen,” he said in his hoarse voice. “It ain’t your claim any more than mine. You’ve covered it different, that’s all. Yours was always the petticoat lay. Mine’s slower but safer. Is anyone else in with you?”

  “No.”

  “Then we’ll double up. Now I’ll tell you something. I was backing out.”

&
nbsp; “What? You were going to quit?”

  “I was.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the thing’s too dead easy, and a thing like that always looks like hell to me.”

  Freddy Cohen finished his glass of whisky.

  “Wait while I get some more drinks,” he said.

  In this way, then, at about the hour of ten on a stuffy autumn night, in the crowded bar of that Wapping public-house, these two made a compact; and of its outcome and of the next appearance of Cohen, the Jewish-American cracksman, within the ken of man, I shall now proceed to tell.

  II

  THE END OF COHEN

  “I’ve been expecting this,” said Chief Inspector Kerry. He tilted his bowler hat farther forward over his brow and contemplated the ghastly exhibit which lay upon the slab of the mortuary. Two other police officers—one in uniform—were present, and they treated the celebrated Chief Inspector with the deference which he had not only earned but had always demanded from his subordinates.

  Earmarked for important promotion, he was an interesting figure as he stood there in the gloomy, ill-lighted place, his pose that of an athlete about to perform a long jump, or perhaps, as it might have appeared to some, that of a dancing-master about to demonstrate a new step.

  His close-cropped hair was brilliantly red, and so was his short, wiry, aggressive moustache. He was ruddy of complexion, and he looked out unblinkingly upon the world with a pair of steel-blue eyes. Neat he was to spruceness, and while of no more than medium height he had the shoulders of an acrobat.

  The detective who stood beside him, by name John Durham, had one trait in common with his celebrated superior. This was a quick keenness, a sort of alert vitality, which showed in his eyes, and indeed in every line of his thin, clean-shaven face. Kerry had picked him out as the most promising junior in his department.

  “Give me the particulars,” said the Chief Inspector. “It isn’t robbery. He’s wearing a diamond ring worth two hundred pounds.”