The Complete Cases of the Marquis of Broadway, Volume 1

by John Lawrence

  For the space of ten heart-beats, he stood blank-eyed, every nerve concentrated on the possible outcome, should he….

  Wishful thinking, undoubtedly, finally raced him to the conclusion that the idea might really work—might really be adaptable to any conditions, always assuming, of course….

  Nevertheless, it gave even the Marquis a hollow feeling as he realized the limb on which he would be treading. Yet he set his jaw suddenly, turned and walked swiftly to the desk, inquired for an all-night drug store. The attendant described one—at the other end of the same block that held this apartment house.

  He had barely pushed through the revolving doors into the night, when he heard the soft snarl of a police squad car rounding the corner ahead.

  Curious, he ducked into a black doorway, watched. The car swung up, nosed in—directly before the building the Marquis had just quitted—and a painfully lean man in a green trench coat and dark-green hat sprang out.

  He was Lebaron of the Homicide Squad. The rain had stopped now; the night was clear and chill. The light from the lobby shone plainly into his skeleton face and his green, narrow eyes as he pushed hastily inside. It was an instant before it dawned on the Marquis that Lebaron was, in all probability, pursuing him.

  The probability was strengthened a moment later when Lebaron hurried out, snapped at his driver: “There’s a damned drug store at the end of the block. Go there.”

  The car shot away. The Marquis waited only till it turned the corner, then nagged down a cruising cab and was driven to a drug store of his own choice, on Columbus Circle.

  He routed out the chemist from the pharmacy and showed him his badge.

  “I want some phosphorus,” he told him. “And some stannic chloride. I want the longest test-tube you have, filled with the stannic chloride—two-thirds full. I want a smaller test-tube filled with little chunks of phosphorus sunk down in the stannic chloride. And I want the top of the big one sealed over with cellophane. And I don’t want any talk about it. I’m in a hurry.”

  The pharmacist looked at him as if he were crazy, opened his mouth, shrugged, closed it, and vanished into the dispensary. In waves, the Marquis felt like a maniac while he waited—and over and over again had to face the fact that this was the only chance he could think of, and set his jaw.

  When the pharmacist finally came out, holding the two test-tubes, one bobbing inside the other, he warned the Marquis: “As long as you carry this upright, you’re all right. If you lay it down, in about ten sec—”

  “I know,” the Marquis interrupted him.

  He waited till he was outside the store, in a darkened vestibule, before he knelt down and with infinite care slid the test-tube upright under his garter. When he straightened up he was flushed, galled with embarrassment, but he set his teeth.

  Walking was difficult at first—mainly because he had no confidence. Within minutes—as he was reassured that the garter had a firm grip—it became surprisingly easier. He could not walk quickly but, at a moderate pace, he moved without inconvenience.

  His cheeks were burning, as he set out. And they were burning worse forty minutes later, as he descended from his third cab. He had gone to the Frontenac, loitered around the entrance for a few minutes, gone on. He had driven down below Forty-second, to the office when the girl and big Johnny were keeping their vigil. He had not risked going up, but from across the road he had phoned. They were still all right. He had even gone as close as he dared to his own unofficial headquarters—the McCreagh Theater Ticket Agency—skirted around it. In all these places, he walked boldly and openly.

  His scheme did not work. He found absolutely nothing. No one bothered him.

  Eventually, numb with disappointment he told his third cab to drive him to his own Central Park West apartment.

  AS THE cab shot away, he stepped back into the gutter and peered up at his own windows. They were still lighted. Asa McGuire was still here.

  He started across the sidewalk, under the blazing wrought-iron canopy.

  A piece of the dark stone, just beyond the downward beat of the canopy’s glare moved slightly. A gun flashed light. A soft voice said quietly: “All right, Marty—don’t stop. Just walk on past me down the street and climb in the driver’s seat of that heap at the curb.”

  For a second, the Marquis froze to the pavement. He could not move. For once in his life he was absolutely thunderstruck, dumbfounded because he had not even once thought of the possibility of a lurker waiting for him at his own door—but that was not the tenth part of it.

  What caused his jaw to sag in incredulous, astounded shock was the identity of the man behind the gun.

  Angle Nate Heyworth’s thin, brown face and gray eyes were pinched, hunted, but they were unmistakable. He wore a shabby peaked cap and a black topcoat turned up around his throat and pinned by a safety pin. The hand that held the gun wore an old brown-leather glove—but he was Angle Nate Heyworth just the same.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Smoke Screen

  IT WAS actually a shock even to see the gunman in New York at all—in spite of the tip that he was here. He was a unique product. A complete gutter-rat, somewhere he had achieved a scheming mind. Without the taint of Avenue A on him, he might have schemed his way to the top. He had, once, been up. Labor-strike-worker, election-slugging—and he had blossomed out as a gambler’s bodyguard. In some way—unexplained as yet—the gambler had gone down and the man supposed to guard him had coolly appeared in his shoes. Catlike, his thin face smooth and dark, he became for a time, a Broadway figure. But he had been too much of a gutter-rat to play his hand cozily. He had grabbed for every dollar in sight, played any racket that promised one, wound up on a Federal needling charge that broke the back of his prestige, power, and bankroll.

  An attempted come-back had been aborted after a poker game with some of Manhattan’s sharks. For once, his schemes seemed not to have worked and he was picked clean. He had lost his head, turned wolf, attempted to take back his losing with a gun and—the gun had gone off. With a price on his head, he had been on the run, ever since—never, according to underworld gossip, able to raise a sufficient stake to buy his way out of the country. Yet—of all towns, New York was undoubtedly the hottest for him.

  In confused, blank, rising consternation, the Marquis at first had the illusion that this was some incredible scheme of the gunman’s to take the heat off him—that Heyworth, hunted by the Marquis’ men, hoped to utilize the Marquis’ person—God knew how….

  That illusion was shattered promptly. The instant he was inside the car, with the canny gunman in the back seat holding a gun against his neck, the even more surprising truth popped up.

  The gunman said grimly: “Just pass over your rod, Marty—and that little bronze key.”

  Completely jarred off his base, the Marquis passed over his gun meekly. He could not get the fog out of his thinking. How—how in the name of heaven did Angle Nate Heyworth get into this murderous picture? How….

  The gunman bit in his ear, “Damn you! Pass over that key!” and he realized that it was the second time it had been said.

  “Sorry,” he told him. “No got, Nate. You’ll find it at headquarters.”

  For a second the only sound was the quick breathing of the man in the back seat. Then—“Yeah? We’ll see. Get this can going, uptown, away from here.”

  The Marquis hesitated only a second. There was an undertone in the other’s husky voice—an undertone of near-hysteria. The Marquis started the car, sent it rumbling northward. As he drove, his brain was a scrambling muddle, trying to make some sense of this ironical twist. And then suddenly, like a breeze drifting aimlessly through his mind, he began to get it.

  He said suddenly: “So you’re the client!”

  “What client?”

  “George Mahaffey’s mysterious client—the client that wanted Purley Rentz followed.”

  For four long blocks, Heyworth did not answer. Then he said: “Yeah. I’m the client. Where would I fi
nd anyone else dumb enough to handle the job without me uncovering? Besides—” He made a queer grating sound, that the Marquis recognized with a sudden thrill, was supposed to be a laugh. He began to realize just how far the ex-gambler was gone in desperation. “Besides—ain’t he a pal? Give your business to your friends, I always say—especially when they got just exactly the degree of dumbness you can use.” He made the jittery laughing sound again. “I thought of him when I was still in Chicago. It was while I was coming back from slipping dough under his door that I ran through your territory!”

  The Marquis felt as though a chair had been pulled away as he sat down on it. It was all so beautifully simple—and so inescapable. And now his brain did go off like a rocket.

  He said casually: “What was the idea of the undertaker-named-Green gag?”

  “Why not? It was as good a way as any to look the little mutt over—see if he were pulling anything.”

  “You just told him to meet you at—outside—Green’s undertaking parlors? He didn’t know which one—and tried them all?”

  “So what?”

  “You’ve certainly gotten afraid of your own shadow if you think a rabbit like that would cross you.”

  The other’s teeth clicked. “Ever try being on the dodge—when your money runs out?”

  “Where’s your girl-friend?”

  “None of your business. Turn east here. And shut up till we get there.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Just turn up when you get to Avenue A. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

  The Marquis set his teeth. “Avenue A, eh?”

  “Sure,” the other snarled. “I’m a sentimental guy.”

  One nervous part of the Marquis’ mind became a little steadier. His hair-brained scheme would work in an Avenue A tenement—if it would work at all. But—would it work at all?

  When he turned the shabby car grimly in to the wide, broken, slum thoroughfare, the Marquis bit: “What’s the idea of bringing me over to this part of town?”

  “I like the view. What’s the matter—gettin’ the wind up? I won’t hurt you. I won’t do nothing to you.” His voice dropped a little and the ugly edge came into it. “That is—nothin’ that your bunch o’ cut-throats wouldn’t do to me if they caught me.”

  There was no answer to that. The Marquis drove on.

  “Next block. There’s a little narrow building squeezed in between two big ones. Leave the heap this side of it a piece. And get this. I’ll drop you in a second if you try any funny business—or even anything that looks like funny business. Do you believe that?”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ll give you a chance for your stinking, dirty skin, if you do what I tell you. Try fenagling—and I’ll blast you.”

  “Who’s fenagling?”

  THEY went into the rickety, narrow, six-story building. The blast of foul air that met them in the hall almost turned the Marquis’ stomach. Rickety, worn, greasy stairs stretched up ahead in the dim light of an unshaded weak bully somewhere far overhead.

  “Go on,” Heyworth prodded him. “And you can get your hands up a little. My penthouse is on the fourth floor. Don’t slip—or a chunk of lead might hold you up.”

  The Marquis did not slip.

  As they climbed the third flight of stairs, the gunman said: “Right there. The second door.”

  There were four doors along the hall.

  It seemed incredible that this cramped little building could hold four apartments, but each door had a painted numeral on it. The Marquis stopped in front of the one designated, stood with his hands a little above shoulder height.

  Keys jingled. “Turn around—back up a little,” Heyworth snarled.

  His eyes held the Marquis burningly. He fumbled for the keyhole without looking at it.

  The Marquis’ mind was churning. Under the circumstances, this was the spot to…. He almost forgot to breathe as he nudged his left toe up behind his right leg, slowly pushed the test-tube up out of his garter band—and hastily clamped his trouser tight to his leg as he felt the slippery glass tube tilt over.

  It was a dead tie between the darkened gunman’s getting the key in the lock and the Marquis easing the test-tube down behind his right heel.

  When the door was open, Heyworth snapped: “In there!”

  The Marquis took a long chance and suddenly coughed loudly covering his mouth. He let the glass tube slip silently to the floor. “O.K.” He walked smartly through the door into a low-ceilinged, dirty living-room. He held his breath till he heard the door close behind him.

  “Plaster yourself up against that wall—and keep reaching, just as high as you can.”

  When he had emptied the Marquis’ pockets of blackjack, two handkerchiefs, the registration card from the Frontenac, the torn special-delivery envelope, penknife, wallet, keys and money, Heyworth threw them on the rickety table in the room’s center. A single bulb, fly-specked, hung from the ceiling. It had been lighted when they came in. There was a closed door in one wall, and the room was windowless. A chair, a shapeless lump of dirt that might have been a couch and the tattered remnants of a rug, completed the furnishings.

  “Turn around.”

  The Marquis turned, dark-blue eyes somber in his round, shining-cheeked face.

  “Get over to that steam pipe.”

  The Marquis backed somberly over to the pipe that ran through ceiling and floor. The fox-faced gunman followed cautiously, bringing a huge roll of adhesive tape from his shabby coat pocket.

  “Put your hands around the pipe—and your heels against it.”

  FOUR minutes later, when he stepped back, the Marquis’ arms and legs were plastered to the pipe and to each other like glue. He stood, staring calmly.

  The gunman took a long breath and asked: “Where’s that key?”

  The Marquis let a cloud come into his eyes. “Talk straight, Nate. I don’t know what key you want.”

  The other’s bloodshot gray eyes narrowed and his thin lips tightened. “I’m warning you, Marty—”

  “Wait a minute. There was a little bronze key—if that’s what you mean. I left it in Rentz’s room—on the bureau at the Frontenac. It came in that envelope. The manager thought it might be a key to a safe-deposit box or something.”

  The other’s eyes were hot, driving. He whirled round on the table, snatched up the envelope.

  The Marquis said: “All I wanted was the envelope—for handwriting. I found out it was Rentz’s own handwriting—but I didn’t see anything in the key, Nate.”

  The other’s hollow eyes blazed into the Marquis. Through tight teeth, the gunman said: “If you’re lying….”

  “Lying? What about? It seems plain enough, doesn’t it—Rentz got this offer from you—so much for the key. He knew it was precious—you probably overplayed your hand a little. When he went out on these undertaker tours, he put it in a self-addressed envelope, ready to drop in a mailbox if he thought he was going to be held up. They’re cagy, these country boys.”

  “His lousy brother was,” Heyworth ground. “He made me tie up— Wait a minute. You mean this little rabbit actually did see the guy that killed him—saw him coming and had time to get rid of—”

  “Yeah, Nate.”

  For a minute the other was silent, rushing thought burning behind his hollow eyes. Sweat gleamed on his thin, dark face. Then his eyes jerked back to the Marquis—and there was vicious hate unconcealed in them now.

  He said softly: “I get it. And I guess that lets you out, copper—I don’t need you any more.”

  The Marquis stared at him blandly. “No, Nate, I guess not—if you’re sure I’ve told the truth.”

  “You—!” The gunman’s face grew purple. He jumped forward, gun half swung back, his teeth showing—and it was at that moment that the first wild shriek of fire sounded in the hall outside.

  Angle Nate Heyworth went gray.

  NO PERSON raised in tenements ever loses terror of fire. It was as though somebody had le
t the life out of the dark-faced gunman. He gasped, jumped back, his gun still on the Marquis, but his eyes white-ringed at the door.

  They flickered wildly, crazily, back and forth for an instant, between the Marquis and the door. Then he crouched, keeping the Marquis still covered, backed hastily to the door, fumbled with the lock behind him. Suddenly he jerked the door open, swung to peer out—and slammed it shut. A billowing, choking cloud of smoke drove him back gasping, coughing—and he whirled in the center of the room. His bloodshot eyes weren’t sane—and then for one blazing instant they were—

  His gun shook in his hand, and his eyes went to the closed door in the side wall. His lips curled away from his small white teeth as he looked at the Marquis. He dived at the door.

  The Marquis gasped. “Nate—good Lord—you’re not going to let me be roasted ali—”

  “It won’t hurt, copper—much!”

  “Nate—if my men get you—you know what’ll happen to you for this!”

  The other snarled hoarsely as he whipped open the door, “If I get that key, copper, your men—nor nobody else will ever get me—” and ran through.

  He slammed it behind him. The Marquis heard his panicky footsteps pound across a board floor, heard a window slam up—and heard faintly the gunman’s vicious croak—“This’ll do for you, too, chippy.”

  Outside in the hall, feet were pounding, women shrieking. Somewhere down the street sounded the siren and bells of a clanging fire engine—and even the Marquis was a little white.

  Calmly and methodically, he worked his hands in the tape. Minutes went by and a little sweat came out on his face. It came—but slowly—even, he was beginning to think—a little too slowly. Finally, it was done and he was clear. He stood a moment, chafing his wrists, then stepped over to the table, re-pocketed his belongings. Bitterly, as he walked over to the closed door, he thought: if this were a real fire, the place would be hopelessly gone before the engines got within a block—and many would be trapped.