THE Marquis was in a squadroom at headquarters, reading a report and listening to big Johnny Berthold’s profanity, which interspersed sharp clinks from a corner where the big blond giant was pitching pennies with a Safe-and-Loft sergeant, Mullins.
Berthold had just sidled over to the Marquis, his scarred, huge face flushed and self-conscious. He thumbed his too-small hat back on his shaggy mop of hair and said: “Will you let me take fifty, Marty? This tramp—” when the door opened and a bald-headed inspector put a tired face in the room.
“Is Lieutenant Marquis…. Oh, Marty—can I see you for a minute?” And when he had him outside in the musty hall, “Am I wrong or were you asking about a man named Miles Jones this afternoon?”
“Yeah.”
“What was it about?”
The Marquis took a sheaf of folded papers from his pocket and spread them open. “Johnny pinched a hotel thief this afternoon. His mouthpiece showed up before we could really ask him questions. He had these on him and a couple hundred dollars. These got me curious. There’s no Miles Jones in the directory and we didn’t feel like phoning every hotel in town to find one. You understand—this hotel thief must have prowled a room somewhere belonging to this Jones, some time before we caught him in another one.”
“What are those things?”
“Reports of trades made for Jones by two brokerage houses. Big trades, too. Naturally, this being Sunday, we couldn’t get in touch with the brokers, but I figured to do it in the morning.” He stepped to the table and spread out six filled-in printed forms, all indited to ‘Miles Jones’ and, instead of an address, all carrying the notation Hold till called for.
The three forms on the left were on printed blanks of the firm Peabody, Gooch & Co. The three on the right were headed: Masterton, Fish & Clark.
“These are darned funny trades,” the Marquis said.
“Why? Remember—all this stuff is Greek to me.”
“This is Greek to anybody. Day before yesterday—Friday—apparently Jones called Peabody, Gooch and had them buy him five thousand United Motors at fifty. And at the same time, he called Masterton, Fish & Clark and had them sell exactly the same amount at the same price—five thousand at fifty. That’s those two forms. These two, as you can see, are simply calls from the two firms for margin on his account. They each want ninety thousand dollars. Those are also dated Friday.
“These other two confirmations are dated the next day—Saturday. They simply cancel the former trades. In other words, he had Peabody, Gooch—the brokers who had originally bought five thousand at fifty—sell them out again, also at exactly fifty. And he had Masterton, Fish—the ones who originally sold—buy back.”
The inspector’s eyes were muddy. “Where does that leave him—Jones?”
“In the hole for over two thousand dollars expenses—commissions and taxes. He didn’t make or lose a cent on the stock movements. He couldn’t. No matter if he made money on the buy, he would lose an equal amount on the sell and so forth. There was no time during the transaction that he ever could have made or lost a dime.”
“Then why would he do it?”
“Ask me tomorrow after I’ve located and talked with him.”
The inspector told him what had happened, thus bringing the Broadway Squad into a killing which ordinarily would never have touched them.
When the Marquis stepped back into the squadroom, Johnny Berthold’s anxious big face lighted. “Hey, Marty—will you let me take fifty? These cheap heels—”
“Get your car around in a hurry, you boob. You’re apparently the only man on the force that doesn’t know Mullins has a lead penny that lands dead.”
Berthold roared, “What?” and spun round, but the door at the far end was just closing behind the Safe-and-Loft man. The Marquis snatched at Berthold with a small, black-gloved hand as the giant tried to plunge after, whirled him into the hall.
“Your social affairs can wait.”
WHEN they stepped from Berthold’s car in now flood-lighted Atwater Street, they were only a few yards from the two blanket-covered mounds on the sidewalk. Half a dozen prowl cars had arrived and the morgue wagon waited significantly across the street. Arkwright, the rookie patrolman who had shot the killer, was smugly on guard over the bodies. He recognized the Marquis, of course—the Broadway solon’s small, compact body, his tailored black Chesterfield and tight black silk scarf, his carefully pressed dark clothes and small, shining black shoes were familiar to every copper, as were his neat black gloves and imported hard hat. Arkwright recited eagerly while they stood in the gutter, the Marquis’ round, weather-ruddy face and deep-set, bright blue eyes somber and attentive. He gave the rookie a glow by congratulating him, and they skirted the corpses.
Johnny Berthold suddenly swore and halted, hoisted one ankle up across his knee while he attempted to pluck a fresh wad of chewing gum from the sole of his big foot. It came away in places, leaving streamers.
“You got a clue there,” the Marquis told him patiently. “Now we know that one of the dead men was chewing gum.”
They went eventually into the building, the big man still cursing, walking on his heel. The curving staircase was utterly dark and rubbishy as they went up to the darkened second-floor hall and passed through a knot of uniformed men into a surprisingly luxurious office. The reception-room was of soft, dark mahogany, paneled to the ceiling, also of the dark wood. On bookcases, tables and the receptionists’ typewriter desk, small ship’s-models were encased in glass. Open doors at each end of the room had lights behind them.
At one end was a small room with a high book-keeper’s desk, files, floor-safe, appurtenances of accounting. There were three people in the office. All of them showed more or less the signs of having been dragged from bed at three in the morning. The Marquis was conscious of the frightened, awed blue eyes of a kindly-looking little Foxy Grandpa, the hard brown stare of a young dandy with a pointed blond mustache and clenched jaws and, behind them, seated, a sobbing girl looked up. She was dark, beautiful even in spite of her tears, dark intimate eyes were reddened under long lashes; she was long-limbed, heavy-breasted, with fresh warm skin, a pouting, generous mouth.
There was one detective in the accounting-room with them, two patrolmen in the waiting-room. All the rooms were thickly carpeted in maroon and the Marquis’ unimpeded progress was silent as they went through a cubbyhole office, barely large enough to hold a desk and which was only a sort of vestibule for the large private office beyond. This was the office, presumably, from which the dead man had fallen.
Angry, raised voices came from this office.
A bitter, impatient voice said: “Your murder is all cleared up. Mr. Prouty here has identified the killer your cop shot, as a time-keeper discharged from his Jersey plant for payroll padding. There’s your motive—and your criminal lies outside. Now let me get to my investigation of this counterfeit badge, will you?”
“My murder is like hell cleared up,” a choleric voice exploded. “Maybe we got the criminal, but we got no explanation to cover all the facts. Furthermore, we ain’t found eighty-five thousand dollars in cash which is around here loose—and that’s a damn sight more important than your funny old buzzer.”
From the door, the Marquis saw four men in the room. One—a gray-faced man with lines of sorrow and disappointment dragging down his squarish, dogged face, his blue-gray eyes seeming stunned, uncomprehending, stiff gray hair rumpled, the Marquis guessed to be Prouty, partner of the dead man. He held a bowler hat in one horny, square hand and, in the V of his neck, a collarless stud gleamed.
Two of the others were homicide detectives, one of them unknown to the Marquis, the other a loud, red-faced bulging short man with small, red-brown eyes. He wore a bright blue suit and tan shoes, a creamy gray fedora on his bristling red hair—Quackenbush, a sergeant.
THE fourth man, tall, raw-boned, looking not unlike a cowboy but with an undershot jaw and brittle gray eyes—was Fielding of the Department of Justice.
The Marqu
is cursed silently. There are lots of local law enforcement agencies at odds with the federal men, mostly for none too savory reasons. Because of the way the Marquis ran Broadway—literally by terrorism, by making of himself and his squad, little tin gods which thieves profaned at far greater peril than was laid down in the statute books and because, in order to maintain this Prussian iron-handed rule he had to pick most of the outlaws of the department for his squad, Washington had tagged him as a crook.
It was, in a way, understandable. With twenty-two lone men to hold his command over his sector, hold down real viciousness he had to condone a certain amount of lawlessness. There was nothing he could do about it. They did not understand his problem—the fact that he controlled more than half the thieves in New York City—and that half, the shrewdest, most ruthless crew in the world, shooting at the richest market for grafters the world ever knew—Broadway. The Marquis had respect for the D-J agents, but no man can feel cordial in such a situation.
The raw-boned Fielding turned as the Marquis came in and his voice snapped harshly: “Ah, the great Lieutenant Marquis.”
Quackenbush’s red eyes did not seem any too pleased.
Prouty, the gray-faced, stunned man said in a dull, incurious voice: “Excuse me, Mr. Quackenbush, but I—I don’t quite understand about this eighty-five thousand dollars you say is missing. Where—where did it come from?”
“Oh, yeah,” Quackenbush said. “We covered that before you came in. Your accountant—the old gent, Cramer, says he’s been away on a week’s vacation. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we found the list of your employees there in that drawer and called ’em all up and had ’em come down.
“The minute Cramer—that’s the old gent’s name, isn’t it?—looked at the checkbook he let out a yelp. Seems your partner, Mr. Jones drew a check himself, last Wednesday, for eighty-five thousand dollars—practically wiped out your bank balance.”
The Marquis asked: “Was it drawn to the order of a broker?”
“It was not. It was made out to cash and here’s the funny part. We called the cashier of the bank and talked to him. He said the guy that cashed it—well, he described him—and so help me, the guy was that little Smitz lying outside there. He remembers it—the cashier does—because he wouldn’t cash such a large check without calling up Jones. Jones O.K.’d it and said he expected to have the money back in the bank by Monday morning. So he paid it.” His voice grew bitter and with a jerk of his thumb, he indicated the grim-jawed federal man, “and Whiskers here tells me my case is cleared up!”
“You mean this Smitz came here Wednesday, took a check over to be cashed for Jones, and then came back here tonight, Sunday night, apparently to kill him?”
“That’s what it looks like, don’t it?”
The old man, Prouty, suddenly sat down on a chair, shielded his eyes with one horny hand. He muttered something that sounded like, “Had to take that, too.”
Quackenbush’s sharp eyes jumped. “Eh? What’s that? How do you mean, ‘too’?”
A PATROLMAN appeared behind the Marquis and Berthold. “Excuse me, chief, but those three in there want to know if you’re finished with them.”
“I guess so.” Then he looked uncomfortably at the Marquis, “Unless the lieutenant…?”
“I can always find them if I want them,” the Marquis said.
“Wait a minute,” the federal man said. “I want to speak to them.” He strode out.
The Marquis said to the slumped Prouty: “You were going to tell us that your partner took something else from the firm, too?”
The sunken man seemed hardly able to rouse himself. “Just about everything we own. We’re bankrupt as it is.”
“What?” Quackenbush yelped. “Why —Dunn and Bradstreet rates you at a million—”
“That was a year and a half ago,” Prouty said wearily. “Between ourselves, I’ve been looking for a job for the last three months.”
“How did you get bankrupt so quickly?” the Marquis asked.
Prouty’s horny hand made a small, hopeless circle. “One contract did it—the government contract.”
“What government contract?”
“Jones bid in on a government contract, a little over a year ago—a contract for eighteen hundred engines, replacement business on lifeboats. He—he had some sort of a deal cooked up—or said he did—with some politician. I never did understand it and I never knew who the politician was. That’s not my end of things. He—Jones—got the orders and made the prices. I manufacture the merchandise. We never questioned each other.
“He asked me what the cost would be on the engines and I gave it to him. He—and his politician friend—cooked up something and Jones submitted the bid at a trifle under cost. He kept telling me not to worry—that we were all right, that our profit would be forthcoming.
“Naturally, we had to load up with materials to handle the contract. All our capital went into it, practically, and we borrowed heavily. We delivered the first three hundred engines—they’re to come in relays, you understand—two months ago and—well, Jones admitted that he’d been double-crossed—that our profit would be postponed, but that we’d get it sometime. I thought he was lying but I’d never questioned him before and he kept putting me off.” The gray-faced man made a movement with his shoulders. “I—guess this is the answer to it all.”
The Marquis asked: “Couldn’t you get out of the contract?”
“We tried.”
There was an interruption from below, as one of the patrolmen came up and reported that the M.E. wanted to take the bodies away. There was no objection and presently the bulk of the cars parked in front of the office had gone.
They questioned Prouty for ten more minutes, without gaining anything more, finally let him go home.
Quackenbush received two or three telephone reports and said bitterly: “Well, where’s that money? I’ve had this Smitz’s room fanned and there isn’t a smell of it. Old Prouty doesn’t seem to care about it, but it’s still eighty-five Gs.”
“Why don’t you find the politician that Jones was dickering with?” the Marquis suggested. He looked at the grim-jawed Fielding with somber blue eyes. “Eighty-five thousand dollars and somebody connected with the federal government—it sounds like a natural combination to me. Come on, Johnny.”
The phone rang as they turned. It was for Fielding and they started on out, were barely in the reception room when the federal man’s shout stopped them. He came running after them.
“So! You guys have evidence we don’t know anything about, eh?”
“Have we?” the Marquis said mildly.
“My office just called and said you had stuff to show Jones was playing the stock market in big chunks. That’s important evidence. Do I have to get tough to get it, or—”
“You’re more than welcome,” the Marquis said and gave him the confirmations and notices. Quackenbush yelped and the two went back in the office.
THEN, for the first time, the Marquis realized that the girl was still standing inside the accountant’s office, that she had not gone away with the rest of the staff. She came out stiffly, dabbing at her desperate eyes. Her voice was low and husky.
“You—you are Lieutenant Marquis—the one they call the Marquis of Broadway?”
“Yes.”
She hesitated a minute, looked down at her hands then drew herself up and trembled. “I want you to know,” she said huskily, “that I was supposed to marry Mr. Jones. He—called it off last Thursday. Mr. Pennington was—was engaged to me before. I—he was always trying to get me to marry him, to give up Mr. Jones. I—I just feel it in here that he—he somehow did this thing.”
The Marquis nodded gravely. “Thank you for telling us, Miss—”
“Cramer,” she supplied.
The Marquis blinked. “Is Mr. Cramer—the accountant—your—any relative of—”
“My father.”
She went on out. The Marquis stared at the
carpet a minute with a wrinkled forehead, then started in her wake.
Inside the private office the telephone pealed sharply and they heard Quackenbush answer: “Who?… Oh. No, sorry. The Marquis left a few—”
The Marquis was striding back swiftly. “No, he didn’t,” he told the Homicide and walked back into the office and took the phone.
A choked voice, trying hard not to be afraid said: “Lieutenant, this is Prouty calling.”
The Marquis blinked. “Yes.”
“I—I’m sorry to trouble you but—but my life has just been attempted. I—I am absolutely at a loss to account for it and—well, frankly, I am frightened. Could—would it be too much to ask you to—to give me some protection?”
“Where are you?”
“In—in the subway station. I am phoning from the change booth.”
“I’ll be right there,” the Marquis promised.
When they ran down the stairs of the Canal Street subway station, the change booth man said excitedly: “Sure, I’m sitting here dozing, see? Bang, bang, bang! Shots go off—right up near the top of the stairs and this gent comes piling down, falling. I think he’s shot and I try to run out, but he’s up like a flash and asking me if I mind if he comes in my booth. Scared as he was, I must say he’s a perfect gent.”
Prouty’s face was green and his eyes sick. He was wiping his hands again and again on a white handkerchief. He gulped: “I—I’m afraid I’m not very used to being shot at.”
“You haven’t any idea why anyone would want you dead?” the Marquis insisted.
“I haven’t—the faintest.”
After a minute, the Marquis said: “Well, come on. Mr. Berthold has his car waiting.”
The manufacturer swallowed and said: “That—that’s very kind of you.”
He lived on Central Park.
IT WAS a long ride north. The Marquis had a gun on his knees all the way, as did big Johnny Berthold. His eyes were glued to the rear window, alert for any sign of pursuit, but there seemed none.
They rode the elevator of the modestly exclusive apartment house to the fourth floor. When they were in the hall, the Marquis checked Prouty. “How is your apartment laid out?”
The Complete Cases of the Marquis of Broadway, Volume 1 Page 9
