The Complete Cases of the Marquis of Broadway, Volume 1

by John Lawrence

  He heard the jerky voice say: “… swear to God I can’t wait any longer. Really can’t…. Got to do something or I’ll—I don’t know what I’ll do. But murder—God!”

  “It’s that or nothing! You know that. You’ve got to make up your mind to it or forget the whole thing.”

  “I—I don’t want to burn in the chair.”

  The other voice became tighter, more rapid. “You won’t burn in any chair. I’ve spent weeks, considered every possible plan, angle, contingency. I’ve lain awake nights, planning every smallest move, over and over. We can’t be caught.”

  The jerky voice got so hoarse that its next sentence was completely lost.

  The other said: “Yes. They’ve got to go—both of them! We can never be safe if either lives. They may not be such fools as we take them for…. What?”

  “—did do it, couldn’t we do it—well, secretly? This theatricalism is what frightens me. What if the police—it’ll be like slapping them in the face. The newspapers will go crazy.”

  “You can’t do it secretly. It will be a Broadway sensation, no matter what we do. We’ve got to face that, bank on it—use it! I tell you, I’ve examined every alternative. I know the weak spots in my plan and by handling it right, those spots will become our strongest ones.”

  “But if the police even—even suspects me it’ll mean the whole thing’s wasted effort—useless….”

  “How can they suspect you? We will both have absolute, air-tight alibis that no one can break down. And no one will even think of us in connection with it anyway.”

  There was a tense, sulphurous silence, then the jerky voice—“You—you understand: I—I won’t do it—do the thing myself.”

  “Are you crazy? I’ve explained a dozen times that you won’t have to do a thing! That is, except to make the girl think….” The voice dropped to a low, urgent whisper, scratched steadily.

  Once, the nervous voice interrupted. “What? Like what?”

  “A clergyman—a priest! That is the most important of all. It’s the perfect disguise. Anyone has confidence in a priest—he can get in anywhere. And they’ll be looking for a priest—see? for the most sensational killing on Broadway in ten years. They’ll never make sense of it.”

  There was another hot silence, then the jerky voice said: “You—you said you got the fake letterheads?”

  “Yes.”

  They were silent for so long that Mallon thought they must have gone out. Then the jerky voice said in a desperate croak: “All—all right.”

  The other voice became more incisive. “That’s better. Let’s duck out of here before someone finds us. We mustn’t be seen together.”

  There was the faint whine of the adjoining door being opened, hardly loud enough for the trembling little pickpocket to hear it. He shrank back into the farthest corner he could find, half fearful that they would take a look into his cubicle, but they didn’t. They passed soundlessly on, toward the stairs, and, after five minutes, he breathed again. Yet there was sweat on his forehead. If the toothy man with the smoked glasses below should mention to those two that he, Leo Mallon, had been in here….

  He darted to his own door, opened it a crack, took the chance of slipping out and into another room, far down the hall. When the toothy man finally came to tell him the coast was clear, he found the courage to say casually: “Thought you told me there was nobody up here. I heard somebody go by my door a few minutes ago. I like to have a fit.”

  The other grunted. “You hop-heads. There was nobody up here.”

  Even that failed to restore Mallon’s courage. As he hurried back to his hotel, he had only one thought, hot in his mind—to get as far away from New York as possible, as quickly as possible. The rub there was that he hadn’t the price of a getaway.

  HE TRIED to raise it next noon, was caught with his hand up to the elbow in a Greek’s pocket on Times Square, and knocked kicking into the gutter by a big, shaggy blond giant with a scar-shiny face and a too-small hat on top of his great head—Johnny Berthold of the Broadway Squad.

  Following the usual procedure in such cases, the detective took the name and address of the complainant, herded the glum little dip into the back room of a convenient lingerie shop for a frisk. When the net haul—less than two dollars—lay on the detective’s enormous, thick-knuckled hand, he growled: “Well, it looks like six months or so, pally. Come on.”

  Fully aware that jail was probably the worst possible spot for him—the most easily accessible place for the two he had overheard, should they prove to have been professional criminals of any standing—Mallon gulped and blurted: “You—you don’t want to jug me, Johnny. I—I know something, see? Something that oughta mean plenty to you—and to the big shot, Lieutenant Marquis, too.”

  By the time the Marquis got to see him, in the back room of MacCreagh’s theater-ticket agency on Times Square, Leo Mallon was pretty well battered around, but he stuck to his story without alteration. More banging around did not change it. Presently, he had to be believed.

  After the pickpocket had finally been kicked sprawling into the street, the Marquis’ small round face was very thoughtful, but Mallon’s story had been so sketchy that there seemed nothing to do but wait.

  And wait they did, for two weeks, with nothing happening whatever. Yet the Marquis, for one, did not lose the vaguely troubled look in his small, bright blue eyes. If there were any truth in what the little dip had bleated, it looked as though it lay squarely within his own jurisdiction. It happened to be a touchy time, politically, for anything—much less a sensational crime—to break on Broadway. So, when he saw the clergyman, he was instantly alert.

  THE man had a gaunt, long face, pallid-looking in the last rays of the sun, long sideburns. He was in clericals—gaitered, his black felt hat low-crowned, wide-brimmed above his slightly fanatical face. He would have been out of place on Broadway at any time, but darting and scrambling through the teeming six o’clock traffic he was a complete anomaly. When a skittering, hair-raising leap took him to temporary anchor in the center of the street and a shiny, nickeled revolver bounced out of his sober clothes to the pavement, the Marquis’ eyes came to intent, sharp life.

  He was in the Naylor Building—an ancient twelve-story rookery—the only antique corner structure left facing Longacre Square. It had an elevator shaft on its southwest side and windows up and down this shaft were all halfway open against the unseasonable, blazing heat of the spring day. Riding down, the Marquis directly overlooked the swarming cars on the floor of the canyon below.

  The traffic was moving at a speed incredible to anyone unfamiliar with New York hackers. Intersection corners were patronized even by confirmed jaywalkers at this hour. So when the clergyman jumped from the curb in the very middle of the square—not even at a corner, but in the center of the block—and came crouching, leaping wildly across the street, he was out alone in the tide.

  The open windows down the dark shaft were like the shutters of a motion-picture machine across the Marquis’ line of vision as the elevator dropped, and it was from the sixth floor that he saw the clergyman’s gun go spinning, saw the man clutch his hip, spin around.

  From the fourth and third floors, the Marquis could see the man’s strained expression as he abandoned the flying gun, flung a gaunt, quick look toward the curb ahead of him, danced desperately, trying to get through.

  The elevator set the Marquis down in the lobby, only a step from the street door, and he went on out, craning his neck. He saw the strained face of the ecclesiastic over the hoods of passing cars, saw him suddenly fling himself through an opening in the outer line—and saw the frantic terror in his eyes as he tried to go back.

  A speeding cab leaped at him. When he tried to check, whirl back, he was almost under the wheels of a limousine. He had to throw himself forward. He flung his arms over his face and hurled himself toward the Marquis in a hopeless, frantic dive.

  The taxicab’s rubber screeched in an ugly dry-skid. It clipped him ju
st under his gaitered knees and he was exploded, screaming hoarsely, straight up into the air, his legs tangled, spinning—and pitched into the gutter on his forehead with terrific force, his back arched. The crunch of his skull and the sharp crack of his neck snapping was sickening. He seemed about to somersault over, arms and legs lifted, then flopped back like a grotesque scarecrow and was slowly pulled over onto his side.

  Apparently the Marquis, breaking through the suddenly halted crowd, was the only person who saw the shiny metal disc spill from the flying man’s pocket, roll along the gutter and settle under a parked car forty feet away.

  At any rate, when he sliced through the stunned mob, to reach the dead man at the same time two shacked bluecoats arrived from the other side, no one seemed to be paying it any attention. One of the bluecoats yelled, as the Marquis went down to his hunkers: “Hey! Get away from— Oh, it’s you, Lieutenant.”

  Plainclothesmen, traffic officers with shrilling whistles, poured up. The roar of shouting, squealing rubber, bumping metal, began to increase instantly as the traffic police flung themselves savagely into what had become in a split second, almost a hopeless snarl.

  One of the detectives kneeling down beside the Marquis suddenly burst out: “Say—that’s no preacher! That’s Danny Carstairs!”

  “Who’s he?”

  “An actor—a would-be actor! He lives in the same hotel with me.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Girl in the Watch

  THE Marquis stood up, let himself be crowded aside. He sifted slowly along the curb. The crowd had bulged in, barring the automobile under which the metal disc lay unheeded, but this was more a help than a hindrance. He squirmed through the fringe of staring, white-faced gawkers, keeping to the curb, and had no difficulty in picking up the piece of shiny metal without being noticed. In the second that he dropped it in the tight pocket of his smoothly tailored, lightweight Chesterfield topcoat, he saw there was a photograph pasted on the disc. As he wormed his way back from the curb toward the building fronts, his small, black-gloved hand fingered it curiously. He realized that he had the back of a watch.

  A tall, English-looking man with a pointed blond mustache, his face and faded blue eyes looking as though they had been weathered in the tropics, almost bumped into him. The Marquis looked up, growled: “Harry! Get in there and get a line on the dead man. Also see what he had on him—particularly his watch.”

  The other blinked. “Dead man? Was a guy killed? Oh—O.K., chief.”

  “I’ll be here.” The Marquis nodded toward the building front.

  He palmed the metal disc in one small, black-gloved hand, glanced down at it. The light was failing now and he stepped into the glare of the show-window of a hole-in-the-wall pawnshop adjoining the Naylor Building.

  The picture, cemented into the back of a thin, platinum watch, was of a very pretty, shy-eyed dark girl, in a clinging dark dress.

  Hot breath came on his neck and he jerked somber blue eyes over his shoulder. The Marquis had not noticed the paunchy, near-bald, wrinkled-faced man in canary-yellow polo-shirt with matching galluses, who had been lounging motionless against the inside of the cubbyhole entrance, and who had now joined him in examining the picture.

  He said dully, “Hello, Solly,” and pocketed the picture.

  “Ymmmhanh!” Solly exploded. “That guy was follyin’ her!”

  “What?”

  “That feller that got hit by the car. He was follyin’ that goil.”

  The Marquis’ eyes were startled. After a second, he asked: “Where is she—where did she go?”

  “Right in that there building you just come out of. Only she was all dressed up like, you might say, for one of these fancy dress pa’ties. Kinda gray dress with all sorts of flossy stuff and a gray het with a big bunch of flowers on it.”

  “How do you know he was following her?”

  “Well, I seen him. I see her come along the coib over there, then him after her. She ducks across the street and then the treffic started and he tried to get acrosst after her. Looked like he was in a hurry to reach her before she got into the building.”

  THE elevator boy said: “Sure. I took her up. She was a beaut but she sure was got up. I dropped her on the seventh.” When he had put the car to that floor, he leaned out and pointed. “She went that way. I dunno which office.”

  The third office that the Marquis tried had large gold letters on its ground-glass reading: Max Sokolow, Attorney-at-law, and smaller ones which said: Theatrical Enterprises. He walked into a dingy, dirty reception-room, flanked by gloomy cases laden with law books. It was unswept, its trash baskets unemptied, spilling over. There was a desk for a receptionist but no receptionist. The door to the private office was ajar and as the Marquis closed the hall door behind him, he heard a pleading, worried man’s voice.

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I never wrote that letter. I don’t know nothing about it. It’s a fake. See—that ain’t my stationery, even. Somebody’s been pulling a gag. I never even heard of you. Now, please, like a good girl….”

  The Marquis touched his tight black silk scarf with one black-gloved hand, shifted the neat Chesterfield higher on his blocky little shoulders and strolled through the partly opened door into a just-as-shabby private office.

  He barely had to glance at the watch disc in his hand to identify the picture with the small girl in sleazy, ruffled gray-and-pink, with the craziest top-heavy hat he had ever seen. She would have been lovely if she had left herself alone. She had a heart-shaped, delicate face, on which she had daubed rouge, lipstick and mascara with a lavish, artless hand. She looked as though she were hiding behind something. Her long-lashed eyes were soft, melting, pansy-purple, her dainty hourglass figure exquisite, and her skin milk-white, satiny, young, her chestnut hair softly waving under the awful hat.

  Max Sokolow jumped a full foot from his seat, clutching his wild mop of black hair, his wizened face and snapping black eyes terrified. He shouted hoarsely: “It’s a frame, Marty! It’s a frame! I swear it!”

  “What is?”

  “What—whatever brought you here.”

  The girl looked desperately from one of them to the other. Max Sokolow gulped: “This is Lieutenant Marquis of the Broadway Squad. Kind—kind of God, around here. This is—is Eve Scudder. I swear I never saw her in my life before.”

  The Marquis’ round, apple-cheeked face was somber. “Do you know an actor named Danny Carstairs?”

  “I? I—why, no!” She had a frightened, little-girl’s voice.

  Max Sokolow blurted: “What is it, Marty? What’s the picture?”

  “There was a little accident downstairs. An actor with that name was killed. He was following Miss Scudder.”

  The girl gasped. “He—he was following me?”

  The lawyer’s eyes were bewildered, hunted. He pressed hands to his forehead. “Marty, can I see you private a minute?

  “In a minute. What’s all this?”

  The lawyer swallowed. “Some—somebody sent Miss Scudder a letter in Davenport, where she lives. It’s supposed to be on my letterhead, signed by me—only it ain’t! It’s a fake! Look—” He snatched up a letter from the desk and a blank letterhead. His own blank letterhead was full-size, white bond, the legend at the top engraved. The letter he tendered was on undersized gray paper and the lettering above was plainly a printing job, in imitation of the other. The letter read—

  Dear Miss Scudder:

  It has been brought to my attention that you are exhibiting considerable talent in some of the theatricals of your local organizations, such as your church, the Rotary Club, the Lions, etc.

  I have been sent a picture of you as you played in your last Christmas entertainment and I believe that you have a type of beauty for which I have been seeking vainly, to fill a role in an impending Broadway production. As it happens, the part would require a minimum of previous professional experience and would be a good opportunity for you to acquire familiarity with the Broadway theater, sho
uld such a career be of interest to you.

  At any rate, my confidence in the person who recommended you is great enough for me to offer you at least six weeks’ work—more, should the production be successful. I can offer you only one hundred dollars a week but that too can be adjusted if the production goes over. I am enclosing, as evidence of good faith, three hundred dollars, which I sincerely urge you to use in reaching my office at the earliest moment possible.

  You are at perfect liberty to check my standing through your local Chamber of Commerce or any other agency you see fit.

  Sincerely Yours,

  (signed) Max Sokolow.

  “It ain’t my writing! It ain’t my letterhead,” Sokolow said desperately.

  The girl suddenly broke in huskily: “Please—please don’t make me go back, Mr. Sokolow. Please give me a chance. I—I’ll do anything.”

  Max Sokolow licked his lips, kept his eyes away from her. “Marty, you—you take her away, please! I haven’t laid a hand….”

  Her long-lashed eyes went frantic, two big tears welling up. “I—I can’t go home! I quarreled with them about coming here! I gave up my position! Please—oh, please—I really have some talent—I don’t know how much! Please—look—I can dance!”

  She dropped her gray bag, snatched back her skirts. Her gray-stockinged legs were lovely, black garters accentuating them.

  “Not right now,” the Marquis said prickly.

  “You—you’ll take her away?” Max Sokolow pleaded.

  The Marquis’ eyes were hot, puzzled. “I guess so,” he said after a minute. “Wait a second.”

  HE LIFTED the lawyer’s phone and called the MacCreagh Ticket Agency but big Johnny Berthold was not there, nor any other member of the squad. He hung up and strode out to the hall of the building, summoned an elevator boy.