The Complete Cases of the Marquis of Broadway, Volume 1

by John Lawrence

  “As far as the Squad is concerned, I don’t see it’s any of our business. There never seems to be any kickback on any of the deals the boys have made and in view of the fact that they keep their hands off the hop and so forth, I think you could give them a break. After all, if there’s any beef to be made, it would probably be interstate and hence Federal, so why should we worry?

  “Incidentally, one Albert Kastner, who seems to be nephew of Silas, helps in store. Partnership insurance names Albert as beneficiary, if anything happens to Silas. (Signed) Zeke Immerman.”

  THE Marquis explained. “Immerman was one of the members of my squad until recently. Are you clamming because you’re afraid the business-insurance underwriters will balk if they find the joint is crooked—won’t pay off on you?” The old man looked dazed.

  “It’s nothing to us,” the Marquis said. “If you’re as clean as this report indicates, we won’t pass on what we know—if you talk now.”

  The old man croaked: “How—how long have you known this?”

  “Three years anyway. After all, friend, Broadway is my district. Now—who is sending you threats and pictures?”

  The old man licked his lips, gulped. “I—I think—two men named Enz. They—said that was their name.”

  “What have they against you?”

  “I—I made a mistake in—in prescribing for their sister.”

  “That’s the girl strapped to the bed? How—what mistake?”

  The old man suddenly put his skinny hands over his face, groaned. “We were in Dayton,” he blurted hoarsely. “I was alone in the store. These two crazy-looking Italians—I think they were Italians—came rushing in.

  “I could hardly understand what they were saying. They could scarcely speak a word of English. They roared and shouted at me, showed me a large bottle. I realized they thought they were in the same store where they had gotten the bottle in the first place. There were a few grains of light brownish stuff in it. They wanted more of the same. Their sister, as far as I could gather, was in pain, and this stuff gave her relief.

  “I tried to make them wait until Buell came back—tried to tell them they were in the wrong store. One of them whipped a knife from his clothes and almost ran it through my throat. They couldn’t understand me—they thought I was refusing to sell them what they wanted.

  “They were out of their heads—frantic. I thought they were excited enough to actually kill me. I tried to find what doctor had prescribed the dose. That sent them off again when I mentioned ‘doctor.’ They had gone to no doctor—were afraid of doctors. Some druggist had compounded the stuff. There was nothing for me to do but try and find the same stuff on our shelves.

  “I know nothing about pharmacy. All I can say is—I found a bottle on the shelf with what I would swear was the identical stuff. I filled their bottle with it and they paid me and ran out. When my—when Buell came back, he saw the cover ajar on that bottle. He cursed and told me it was a dangerous drug—pituitrin. I didn’t dare tell him I’d sold some. I found out in a roundabout way that it looked exactly like a compound of licorice—a simple physic. And I found out—from a book—the danger of the other stuff.

  “They’d mentioned their names in their wild talk. I remembered it—Enz. I started out to find them—and couldn’t. I spent two weeks looking for them. I—well, I could hardly go to the police. I found out—half by guess and half by things I ran across—that they were criminals—illiterate criminals new in the country. I guess that was why I couldn’t find them—they kept themselves hidden. I reached the point of desperation. I knew if the girl was taking that stuff regularly—or even semi-regularly—something was going to happen to her. And if they were as distrustful of doctors as they claimed, they would not call one when it did happen—and it would go on, getting worse.”

  “They never came back?”

  “No. The—the effects of the drug might not have shown up for weeks.”

  “What are the effects?”

  The old man’s eyes crawled to the crumpled photograph.

  “I see,” the Marquis said. “Your partner never knew any of this?”

  “No.”

  “Was it after you couldn’t find these Enzes that you came to New York? When time went on and you figured it was too late to repair the error—that they might come after you?”

  “Not—not exactly. I was dickering for Golding and Co., even before that. It—well, maybe it hastened my decision.”

  “And this picture is the first kickback you’ve had?”

  The old man nodded.

  “You don’t recognize the description of the blond girl who slipped this to you?”

  The old man hesitated, his eyes feverish. “N-no, I guess I don’t. There—well, it might fit almost any blond girl, Marty. For a minute, I had a crazy idea that it sounded like a little tramp that Buell has been running with—Corinne Lane. She lives at the Drummond, but—oh, hell, it couldn’t be.”

  “We’ll see,” the Marquis said. “Johnny, call the Drummond and see if you can get hold of her. If you can, get the Inspector.”

  After a minute, Johnny Berthold hung up the phone receiver and said: “She checked out at noon today.”

  For a second, the old man’s eyes went wide with surprise, then he said: “Oh! Oh—that’s right. She may have gone to Atlantic City with Buell. He left at noon for a little trip.”

  “Did he now?” the Marquis said. He hesitated a moment, in thin-eyed thought, then turned toward the bedroom. “Excuse us a minute,” he said to Kastner.

  Inside the closed bedroom, he told big Johnny Berthold: “Go catch me that partner—the one for Atlantic City.”

  The blond giant blinked. “Hey—you— But hey, these Enz boys!”

  “How do they suddenly crop up on Kastner’s trail? If this partner wanted to wash the old man out, tipping them off would be a nice clean method.”

  “What would he win? The business—which isn’t worth ten thousand bucks all told?”

  “I don’t say he did. But I’d like to hear him say he didn’t.”

  “You ever see the guy? A big, easy-going, good-natured fat guy. Outside his own stuff, I don’t think he knows the time of day.”

  “Maybe he learned. Phone Dayton, Henri.”

  TEN minutes later they had sketchy descriptions of the two Enz brothers—illiterates, dangerous hold-up artists and positive killers, according to the Dayton police, but cunning enough to keep loose. Actually, they had never been arrested. Dayton headquarters knew what little they did know only through tips of stool-pigeons that never wound up anywhere. The Enzes were Latins, small-time outlaws, vicious as snakes, and it was the opinion of the officer to whom the Marquis talked that it was not improbable that they would kill for pleasure as well as profit—go completely mad-dog in a matter of revenge.

  When they walked out into the sitting-room, the Marquis told the glazed old man: “Detective Henri, here, will take you home. Where do you live?”

  Kastner croaked an address in the West Fifties.

  “I know the drum,” the little Frenchman said. “It’s easy to cover.”

  “Don’t be frightened,” the Marquis told Kastner. “We’ll get these gents.”

  The telephone rang. The Marquis nodded at Johnny and the big man hung over the phone on the library table, answered. His startled words stopped the Marquis and the others on their way to the door: “Huh?” he said. “Who? Kastner?… Yeah, wait a minute.”

  The Marquis asked swiftly, as the old man blinked: “Who knew you were here?”

  “N-nobody,” the other gulped. “Good God—who—”

  “Answer it,” the Marquis said, and took five swift steps into the bedroom.

  He got the extension phone by his bedside to his ear just about the time Kastner’s frightened voice blurted, “Hello,” into the other instrument.

  There was no sound on the wire. Then suddenly, came a series of quick frantic hammerings followed by a fear-crazed woman’s muffled scream—repeat
ed again and again. By the time the second one split his eardrums, the Marquis had shouted, “Henri—trace it!” and the little Frenchman was streaking for the hall door of the apartment.

  CORINNE LANE had been puzzled and frightened all evening. The black-looking neighborhood in which they stopped did nothing to make her less so. She looked in quick anxiety at the round-faced, cheerful plump man at her side, then at the almost deserted, dark pavements stretching up and down, along the very edge of Harlem.

  “Now what?” she demanded.

  “Just a phone call—in the drug store there, honey. Gosh sakes, don’t be so hard to get along with. Once I get this out of the way, we’re off for the seashore.”

  “I don’t get it,” she complained. “You make me check out of the hotel at noon, then we spend the afternoon at the movies instead of starting on the trip. We fool away the whole evening. You send me into a floating crap joint to stick an envelope in your partner’s pocket for some stupid joke. And now at two in the morning, you have to get the brainwave to stop on the toughest street in town to make a phone call.”

  “Well, it’s business, honey.”

  “Well, if you think I’m going to sit out here alone, you’re crazy. I’ll go in and hang around inside. There’s too many funny-looking people in these doorways.”

  The dingy, open-all-night drug store was utterly silent. The counters were cluttered, the floor dirty and the mirrors behind the soda-fountain were fly-specked. It had a greasy smell of candy. Two telephone booths were in the rear corner of the store and to reach them, plump Tommy Buell had to force his bulk between and around two sets of counters.

  The girl trailed worriedly at his heels.

  She was standing with her back to the opening in the piled-high counters through which they had reached the phone-booth-niche, and he was inside the booth, dialing a number, when the gun-muzzle pressed against her side.

  A husky, tense voice whispered in her ear: “Don’t mek’ no sound. Justa walk in udder boot’, sist’. No get hurt. Iss stick-up.”

  If he had not added the last sentence, she would have screamed a warning. But she was momentarily fooled. The gun prodded her and she stumbled into the booth. The door was slid shut so quickly that she had not time to turn around and see the man behind her. But she did see, from the corner of her eye, in the instant that she stumbled in, a swarthy, rock-faced man slip from concealment beyond the far end of the booths.

  And in the instant that she whirled round, to see the broad back and soft gray hat of her captor, holding the door of her booth closed, the rock-faced man crashed open the door of the cubicle which held Tommy Buell and she knew her supreme error. Tommy’s voice abruptly ceased with a sharp yell of surprise. There was flailing motion—and then the phone suddenly made a thumping, vague, ringing sound. Tommy Buell cried out wildly—and the cry was cut off instantly—cut off by the sound of a split-second choked gurgle.

  The girl’s heart turned to ice. She screamed, flung herself against the door of the booth, screamed again and again—beating with her fists as desperation sent her brain flaming.

  The door before her suddenly whipped open. She saw a plump, swarthy-pink face with long sideburns, a fury-twisted mouth that gibbered sounds at her. Then something hit her and she collapsed.

  WHEN she came to, it was to find the Marquis’ sympathetic blue eyes on her face, his dapper small figure in a chair beside her hospital bed. Big Johnny Berthold loomed behind him.

  Her voice was husky, controlled, but so low as to be almost inaudible. “Is he dead, Marty?”

  The Marquis nodded slowly. “They strangled him with the telephone cord, kid. I don’t see any use in kidding you.”

  She said nothing, but turned her cheek to the pillow and closed her eyes. Two tears glistened on her long lashes.

  When they had received what information she could give and were in the hospital corridor, big Johnny gulped and said: “This makes me mad, this does. It doesn’t make sense. Your hunch on the partner looked like the goods—only, damn it, he’s the corpse!”

  “We still want those Enzes. That’s the main chore.”

  In a waiting-room downstairs the haggard Kastner sat staring at the floor, as though dazed.

  The Marquis nodded at the jet-eyed, dapper little Henri. “Stay with him.”

  The stringy old man’s voice was dry, toneless. “A bodyguard won’t help me! They’ve made their intentions plain now. They’re out to kill! They didn’t give Tommy a chance! They’ll kill a dozen bodyguards to—to get me! Get them for God’s sake, Marty—find them—throw them in a cell before they find me.”

  The Marquis was stiff-jawed as he left the hospital, rode a cab to Broadway. For an hour, he filtered swiftly through his district, letting it be known in certain places that he wanted the Enzes.

  He wound up at Dave’s Restaurant.

  There was a report there for him from Henri that Kastner was home safe in bed.

  IT was light by the time the Marquis found the dapper little Frenchman, staked out in an areaway across from Kastner’s apartment house.

  “He’s safe enough in there,” Henri assured him. He looked up at the modestly exclusive graystone apartment house—one of the dozen that lined the block. “There’s no back entrance except the fire exit and it’s a solid sheet of steel that can’t be opened from outside. That’s the delivery entrance there—beside the building. Nobody’s gone in either there or through the front door since I’ve been here and nobody will—without seeing me first.”

  “Where’s Kastner’s apartment?”

  The Frenchman pointed to the fifth floor, the east side of the building’s front. “I don’t think he slept much. The light was on all night.”

  When they went up the old man didn’t look as though he had. He was haggard, stringier than ever, his eyes bloodshot and feverish. He winced, dropped down on a rust-colored chesterfield and buried his face in his hands when he saw the Marquis.

  His voice had a kind of glazed desperation. “Have you got any line on—”

  “We have and we haven’t,” the Marquis evaded. “Have you any explanation as to why your partner sent his girl to plant that picture on you.”

  The other groaned. “No—no!”

  “It looks like he put the Enzes on your trail—even helped them throw a scare into you.”

  “Oh my God—why? He didn’t even know about the Enzes! And he’d nothing to gain by it. Our business is worth very little. And why would they kill him if he did?”

  “It’s a puzzle, all right. Well—don’t you take any chances. Don’t put your nose outside.”

  “I shouldn’t go to business?”

  “No. I’ll drop by your plant and tell them to phone if they want anything.”

  THE store was on Fifty-seventh, with a narrow show-window containing, against dark walnut, little piles of obscure chemicals without labels.

  The interior of the store was old-fashioned, dignified and very small. Through an archway at the rear, bumping sounds came and men’s muffled voices. Presently a studious-looking man of thirty appeared, his thick brown eyes anxious behind shell-rimmed spectacles. He had a smudge on one sallow cheek.

  The Marquis showed his badge—a rare necessity—and said: “If you’re Albert, I’d like to ask you a question or two.”

  The other’s face became more pinched and anxious. “I—I’d prefer to wait, if you don’t mind, till Mr. Kastner arrives.”

  “He isn’t going to arrive. If you want to ask him anything, you’ll have to phone him.”

  “Well, I—you see, we’re just receiving shipments and are—putting the day’s deliveries on the truck and—”

  “I needn’t interrupt it. I’ll come back with you.”

  The faint hope aroused by the clerk’s attitude did not materialize to anything. They went back to the storeroom at the back of the store.

  A man in truck-driver’s uniform was complaining fretfully: “What damned fool marked this. Hell, it weighs two hundred pounds.
” He pointed to an express-tagged box with black crayon markings—Ephedrine sulphate.

  The harassed clerk directed that the packing-box in question be stored in the vault till Mr. Kastner arrived. The truck-driver and his assistant, plus a weedy-looking junior clerk, were moving boxes to the loading-platform at the rear of the store and the jumpy be-spectacled Albert at the Marquis’ side called out shrill orders, most of which seemed to be ignored.

  Between times, he managed to impart irritably the scant information that when Mr. Buell had left for lunch on the day before, he, Albert Kastner, had heard him say that he would be back in an hour, that Mr. Buell was apparently in excellent spirits—as he always was—and that he was an expert pharmacist of years standing. He could make no explanation of the ghastly thing that had happened. He acted as though he didn’t care greatly.

  It was while the Marquis was still in the storeroom, trying to think of more questions, that the phone call came.

  When the weedy-looking junior clerk finally got it through his head that the call was for the Marquis and called him to the phone, a booming, excited voice said quickly: “It’s Patrolman Haines, Lieutenant. I’ve got one of them Enz fellows you sent out the broadcast on. He’s shot in the head and he’s dying. I thought I’d call you first before reportin’ to the prec—”

  “You’ll be glad you did,” the Marquis cut in. “Where are you? Did you shoot him?”

  “Huh? No, no. I heard a shot while I was patrollin’ me beat and I went in to investigate and here he is, dyin’—”

  “Where?”

  The patrolman gave an address on Columbus Avenue and the Marquis clipped: “I’ll be there in five minutes. Don’t report yet—I’ll cover you. Does anybody know the man’s been shot?”

  “Apparently not. Or else these folks mind their own business. I just come up the stairs and there was the door standin’ open. There’s a phone in the room, but there ain’t nobody around even yet.”

  “Well, I shot him,” the Marquis said. “Have you got that? If anybody reaches you before I get there—I shot him and took after the other one.”