The Murder Megapack

by Talmage Powell

  “C’mon, Frank,” I apostrophized myself as the car went by me like a pay-wagon passing a bum, “the faster you walk the less chance you’ll have of wearing a wooden kimono. Shake it up!”

  I swung down Connecticut Avenue, turned east into the zoo for a short cut, and commenced singing to keep my cadence up:

  “Oh, we held you at the Marne,

  And we licked you at the Aisne—”

  “We gave you hell at Neuve Chapelle,

  And here we are, and here we are again,” a rich baritone voice took up the old marching song from the shadows behind me, continuing:

  “The French held you at Verdun, And we won’t forget Ypres—”

  “Holy Cuttlefish, Major!” I yelled, turning to the tall, erect figure in the big, caped overcoat striding toward me over the frozen snow. “What in the world are you doing here?”

  “Hullo, Frank!” He waved his heavy walking stick in greeting. “I’m taking a little walk for my health. Don’t sleep so well o’ nights any more. The question is, what are you doing here, dressed up in that head waiter’s outfit?”

  “Who, me?” I fenced? “Why—uh—er—I’m taking a walk for my health, too.”

  “Yes, you are!” he mocked. “I’ll bet five dollars you’re broke as the Ten Commandments and walking to save car fare.”

  “You win,” I acknowledged with a grin, “but you’ve come along like an angel of help to stake me—”

  “Yep, I’ll stake you to taxi fare and breakfast tomorrow morning if you’ll walk as far as Columbia Road with me,” he agreed.

  “Meantime—eh, what the devil’s all this?” He pointed his stick toward a figure stumbling toward us through the snow.

  I followed the direction of his pointed cane, and saw a woman, fur-swathed from neck to heels, bare-headed, and shod with French-heeled shoes, judging by her awkward gait, struggling with frantic haste over the rough hummocks of frozen slush. As she drew near us I realized she was half moaning, half sobbing to herself as she ran.

  “Pardon me, ma’am,” Sturdevant touched the brim of his black slouch hat, “can we be of any service? You seem to be in trouble.”

  “Oh—” the girl gave a little scream of startled surprise at his voice—“oh, yes, yes! You can help me; you can, you can!” Her voice rose to a pitch half an octave below hysteria. “Yes, please, please help me, I’m—”

  “Easy on, sister,” Sturdevant cautioned. “No need of getting nervous about it. We’ll see you through. What’s the matter?”

  “I—” she gulped sobbingly for breath—“I want to get to a street car—a taxi—any way to get home in a hurry, please. I—”

  “H’m,” Sturdevant nodded thoughtfully. “There’s no car line nearer than Columbia Road, my dear, or taxi-cab either. We’re going that way. If you’ll walk along with us we’ll find you a conveyance as near the Harvard Street entrance as possible. It’s too bad you have to walk all that way in those slippers, but there’s no help for it, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, no, no,” the girl declined fiercely, “not that way. I’m afraid. Please don’t take me back that way. He’s back there!”

  “Eh?” Sturdevant shot back sharply. “‘He? Who’s ‘he’?”

  “That—that man,” she panted nervously, half turning to resume her flight. “Oh, sir, whoever you are, please don’t make me go back. I’m—I’m afraid. Please!” Her teeth began chattering with mingled cold and fright.

  “Here, by George!” The Major’s booming voice drowned her frightened falsetto. “This won’t do at all, you know. What’s the trouble, and why are you afraid to go back with us? Is there any one back there that two healthy, able-bodied men can’t protect you from?”

  “I—” the girl began again, then deemed to take a sudden resolute grip on her nerves—“No, I’m not afraid while you’re with me, sir; I’ll go with you.” She swung round, catching step between us.

  “I was going home from a party at a friend’s house,” she began, speaking hurriedly, “my—my young man had to catch the midnight train for Philadelphia, and couldn’t see me home, so I was waiting on the corner alone for a car when a man drove by in an automobile and asked me if I’d like a lift—and—like a fool!—I said ‘yes.’ He—he took me in and asked where I wanted to go, and I told him to let me down at Fourteenth and Meridian Place, but he turned into the zoo park, and when he got down at the bottom of the hill he—he—Oh, I was so frightened! I jumped out and began to run, and—and—and I’m afraid, sir; I’m terribly afraid of him!”

  “You were a very foolish girl,” Sturdevant interrupted, “and the young man was a—”

  “Oh—” the girl clenched our arms with sudden, fear-strengthened fingers, “—there are the lights of his car. He’s waiting for me. Oh, I’m afraid!”

  “Nonsense!” the Major took her trembling hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “There’s nothing to fear, child. Mr. Loomis and I will deal with this reptile.

  “See here,” he addressed the motor’s occupant. “What do you mean by such goings on, you scoundrel? How dare you do such a thing? By George, sir, I’ve a mind to give you a thrashing you won’t forget in a hurry.” He flourished his walking stick belligerently. “Who are you, sir? What’s your name? Speak up! Here, let’s have a look at you—” he placed one foot on the roadster’s step and raised his head to a level with the face of the man seated at the steering wheel—“come out of that, I want to see what a beast of your kind looks like!” He leaned suddenly forward, glaring through the darkness into the fellow’s face. Then:

  “Won’t answer, eh? Think you can brazen it out? We’ll see about that!”

  There was a rustle of garments as he plunged his hand into his overcoat pocket, then a sudden beam of sharp white light shot from his pocket electric torch and centered on the unknown man’s countenance.

  “Good God!” he recoiled a step, and the lamp’s beam wavered. “Frank!”

  “Sir?”

  “Look here, and keep tight hold of the woman!”

  I grasped the girl’s wrist and leaned forward as the flash from his light pierced the darkness again, then stepped back, my fingers involuntarily tightening on her arm.

  Seated bolt-upright in the long, yellow roadster, his gloved hands still grasping the wheel, was a heavy-set, blond young man, bareheaded, and with the collar of his ’coonskin ulster open from his throat. His light-blue eyes, probably always prominent, were wide open in a fixed, idiotic stare and fairly popping from his head. His mouth was open with a hang-jawed, imbecile expression, the tongue protruding slightly over the lower teeth and the chin resting on the fur of his turned-back collar. Across his forehead ran a series of irregular scratches, as though a brier-branch had been dragged over the skin.

  “Oh, oh,” the girl beside me let out a shrill, thin, squealing scream, “he’s dead—he’s dead!”

  “I’ll say he’s dead,” Sturdevant agreed grimly. “Dead as a last year’s oyster, and not dead by any natural means, either. Look here—”

  Placing his hand on the man’s sleek, fair hair, he moved his arm gently with a rotary motion. The head beneath his hand followed its pressure as though fastened to the shoulders by a loose-tensioned spring. “Neck broken,” Sturdevant announced laconically. “Been dead as a herring for half an hour or more.”

  He turned to the girl: “Was this why you were afraid to come back, young lady?” he demanded.

  “Oh, I didn’t do it—I didn’t do it; truly, I didn’t,” she answered in a thick-tongued voice. “He was alive—alive and laughing—when I ran away. Truly, he was!”

  “H’m,” the Major shut off his flashlight and climbed down from the car step, “probably you didn’t do it, but you’ll have some explaining to do before you’re clear of this mess. We’d best be on our way and find a policeman.”

  “A—a policeman—oh, I didn’t do it—I don’t know anything about it!” the girl cried chokingly, and slumped suddenly against me, then slid to the snow at my feet, unconscious.<
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  “Pick her up, Frank,” Sturdevant ordered as he proceeded to make a note of the car’s number in his pocketbook. “Here—so,” he restored the book to his pocket, grasped my wrists in his hands, forming a “chair” for the unconscious girl, “we’ll be able to carry her easier this way; she’s a frail little thing, anyhow.”

  “That’s why I think she’s telling the truth when she says she didn’t do it,” I answered as we trudged toward the Harvard Street exit with our burden. “She couldn’t any more have killed that fat slob back there than I could kick the ribs out of a hippopotamus.”

  “No-o,” he agreed, easing the girl’s dark head back against his shoulder, “I don’t believe she did—for a number of reasons; but somebody committed a cold-blooded murder less than an hour ago, and murder is still a cardinal crime. The Eighteenth Amendment to the contrary notwithstanding. It’s our duty to help the police all we can, son.”

  Frail or not, the girl’s weight seemed to increase in geometrical progression with each step we took, and my arms were nearly pulled from their sockets by the time we struggled up to Columbia Road and hailed a taxi.

  “Don’t be afraid to cut corners, son,” Sturdevant told the chauffeur as he slammed the vehicle’s door, “we’re in a hurry.”

  “Gotcha,” the driver responded as he headed his car southward.

  “Quick, Jerry,” the Major ordered as we carried the still unconscious girl into his house. “Get me some sherry and some aromatic spirits of ammonia, and make haste!”

  “Yas, suh,” the old colored man replied, shuffling reluctantly away. Habituated as he was to the Major’s strange callers, the bringing of unconscious young females into the house during the small hours of the morning was something outside his ordinary experience, and, with the Negro’s inborn curiosity, he longed to remain in the study to await developments.

  “Get the District Building on the wire, Frank,” Sturdevant commanded, laying the girl on the deep, old-fashioned couch; “see if Inspector McClellan is there. Ask him to come here, toot sweet, if he is.”

  I got my connection and asked for the Chief Inspector.

  “Yes, this is McClellan speaking,” a bass voice rumbled back over the wire; “what’s on your mind, Loomis?”

  “Can’t say exactly, sir,” I replied, “but Major Sturdevant wants to know if you’ll pop up here for a moment.”

  “What is it?” he asked somewhat testily. “Government business?”

  “No, sir, I reckon it’s more in your line,” I told him. “The Major and I just ran into a tidy little murder out in the zoo park—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” he broke in; “another murder? Loomis, I’ll go ravin’ bugs if this sort o’ thing keeps up. That’s the fourth murder reported so far tonight, and I’m gettin’ the Willies every time I hear the phone ring for fear it’ll be another one. How’d this bird o’ yours get bumped off?” He paused, and I could almost hear expectancy radiating from him as he awaited my answer.

  “I can’t say for sure, sir,” I replied, “but I think his neck was broken—”

  “You think his neck was broken!” he shouted. “You know dam’ well it was! All their necks were broken, every dam’ one of ’em. Everybody’s neck’s broken. I wish to heaven my neck was broken; then I couldn’t be sittin’ here talkin’ to you. All right, tell Sturdevant I’ll be up there in three minutes. Three minutes, get me? God A’mighty! Is this a police department or a bloody madhouse I’m workin’ in?” and he hung up the receiver with a bang which shocked my eardrum.

  “He’s coming right up, sir,” I reported, turning to Sturdevant.

  “So I gathered,” he answered with a sardonic grin.

  “Why, could you hear him—” I began, but he cut me short with a laugh.

  “How could I help hearing him?” he countered. “He was shouting himself hoarse. If he’d just flung up the window and stuck his head out we shouldn’t have needed a telephone at all.” He paused, measuring a dose of ammonia into a glass of water with the accuracy of a pharmacist.

  “I take it the Inspector has lost his goat,” he finished, as he lifted the girl’s chin, and placed the rim of the glass against her lips.

  “Here, my dear,” he ordered, “drink this and try to pull yourself together. There’s a nice, fat dose of real Spanish sherry waiting for you when you can sit up.”

  The girl drank the rich, heady wine greedily and looked around her in bewilderment. “Where am I?” she demanded. “This isn’t the police station, is it? Oh—” the hysteria she had exhibited when we first met her began to return—“don’t have me arrested, sir, please. I haven’t done anything wrong. Please, please, let me go home—my mother will be terribly worried.”

  “That’s all right, daughter,” the Major soothed. “You won’t be arrested, and we’ll fix everything with Mother, too; but there’s a gentleman coming here in a few minutes, and I want you to tell him all you know.”

  “Who—who is it?” she began tremulously, but an announcement from Jerry answered her half-formed question as though he had been an actor waiting his cue.

  “’Spectuh McClellan ter see Majuh Sturdevant,” he pronounced from the study doorway, standing aside to let the irate detective stride into the room.

  “What’n ’ell’s it all about, Marc?” McClellan demanded as he stormed in; then, as he caught sight of the girl: “Beg your pardon, ma’am, didn’t see you here.” Again he turned to the Major:

  “What the devil does all this murderin’ mean?” he demanded. “Here’s three bimbos killed as dead as the League o’ Nations within ten minutes of each other, an’ now you and Loomis go and lug another one in on me. Loomis tells me your man’s neck was broken, too.”

  “Yes, someone saved me the trouble of breaking it,” the Major answered acidly. “I was about to give him the beating of his life when I discovered he was dead—”

  “Eh? The devil!” McClellan exploded. “What was the grand idea?”

  “He was a human weasel,” Sturdevant replied, “a sneaking, good-for-nothing—here, Miss—er—Miss What’s-Your-Name—tell Inspector McClellan just what you told me when we met you in the park.”

  Speaking scarcely above a whisper, twisting her diminutive handkerchief to shreds between nervous fingers, the girl retold the story of her adventure, ending with our finding the dead man and her own lapse from consciousness.

  “What was the number o’ that car?” the Inspector snapped as she concluded her recital.

  “Y-4236-722,” Sturdevant answered, consulting his memorandum book, “and Jim,—” as McClellan reached for the telephone—“before you call the license bureau, let me have the names of the other three dead men, please. I’ve an idea these crimes may run in series.”

  “All right,” the Inspector barked, extracting a slip of paper from his pocket and tossing it on the desk, “here they are. Gimme Main 6000,” he called through the phone.

  “H’m,” the Major studied the list of names attentively a moment, then took a thick, red-bound volume from the revolving bookcase beside his desk and began thumbing through its thin, closely- printed leaves. “H’m, h’m; I shouldn’t be surprised. I—shouldn’t—be—surprised,” he repeated musingly to himself, running his keen old eyes over the pages.

  “That’s right,” I heard McClellan answer at the telephone. ‘Y-4236-722. What’s the name?”

  A pause, then: “Atwater, Percival G.? The devil! All right; thanks.”

  He turned to the Major, but Sturdevant was already speaking. “‘Atwater, Percival G,’” he read from the volume open in his lap, “‘born Peoria, Illinois, June 6, 1897, son Dr. George D. and Sophia A.; educated private schools and Harvard College; moved to New York 1914; served in French Foreign Legion 1914 to 1917, A. E. F. 1917 to 1918; traveled in Africa, Europe and Asia 1919-22. Clubs, Cherry Blossom, Explorers’, Union League, University. Address: Lotus Club, Washington, D. C.’”

  “Yeah, I know all about that,” McClellan replied shortly. “He’s one
o’ those rich Willie boys with nothin’ to do but get in trouble. Been pinched for speedin’ so many times he ought to be black an’ blue all over. Nearly ran down one of our traffic squad night before last. I’m not weepin’ any to think he’s gone—it’s a dam’ good riddance, if you ask me—but who killed him? Who in hell killed him?”

  The network of tiny humor-wrinkles about Sturdevant’s wise old eyes deepened as he regarded the Inspector.

  “Pour yourself a drink of that sherry, Jim,” he advised, “it’s good for your nerves. Ah, that’s better. Now try to be calm a moment. It appears that our precious Atwater’s blurb in Who’s Who is almost identical with those of the other three murdered men. Leland, Cleaton and Holmes were all, apparently, wealthy idlers, like Atwater, and all four of them were approximately the same age, went to the same schools—classmates, most likely—belonged to the same clubs, and traveled in Asia at the same time, probably in company.”

  “What do I care when they traveled in Asia?” McClellan almost shouted. “What do I care if they traveled in Greenland and Tierra del Fuego with a street carnival company? What I want to know is: Who killed ’em—an’ why?”

  “Precisely,” Sturdevant concurred as he placed his long, white fingers tip to tip, “precisely, Jim. Who did kill them—and why? You say all three of the others died from broken necks?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah!”

  “‘Ah,’ the devil!” the Inspector retorted. “What’s there for you to be ‘ahing’ about? I might just as well be on my way if you can’t say anything more intelligent than ‘Ah’.”

  “So you might,” Sturdevant agreed mildly, “and Loomis and I might just as well go with you. Have you examined the bodies personally?”

  “No, time enough to do that before the autopsy tomorrow.”

  “Not if you want to solve the mystery in a hurry,” the Major retorted.