Jerry Tracy, Celebrity Reporter

by Tinsley, Theodore A.

  Yager dived at the floor like a flash. His uninjured left hand clutched at his fallen weapon and he swung the barrel upward with a crashing spurt of flame. Tracy was on the floor too, trying desperately to hold the killer’s hand. He felt the hot recoil of the barrel and saw Tommy Fleeter stagger. Fitz couldn’t shoot; Jerry’s body was in the way. Again the hot barrel under Tracy’s fingers jerked with flame and Fitz threw himself sidewise. He tripped over a chair and fell headlong, his gun arm twisted under his body.

  Tracy tried to kick at Yager with stiffly outflung feet. He could see in a queer hazy flash, the figure of Tess Roland tiptoeing forward with a gun in her hand. Her face was like a clay mask. She had picked up Tracy’s gun, the one that Fleeter had hurled across the room in their first insane encounter.

  Yager was on his feet, glaring at the fallen Fitz. He fired, and the sleeve of Fritz’ arm jerked. Tess Roland swung her clubbed gun at the back of Yager’s skull. There was a sound like a bat meeting a baseball. Yager’s teeth crunched together. He fell forward and his nose dug into the trampled rug. He lay there, queerly poised on face and knees like a Mussulman at prayer.

  “Okey,” Tess gasped.

  Fitz was on the fallen killer like a staghound. He kicked him over on his back. There was a flash of handcuffs and a curt click.

  Tracy paid no attention to either cop or killer. His arm was about Tess’ jerking body. He couldn’t shake the spasmodic hysteria out of her. He shoved her to the bed and held her grimly horizontal. His voice beat through her hysterical moaning like a silken whip.

  “It’s all right, Tess. It’s all over. Quit it, quit it, quit it. … ”

  By degrees he got her out of it. Fitz touched the columnist’s rigid back. “She all right now?”

  “Yeah. Get her a glass of water.”

  “I’m—I’m all right,” Tess whispered jerkily.

  “Lay still. You’re shaking like a tambourine.” He took the glass from Fitz. Her teeth made clicking sounds on the rim. On the other side of the bed Ethel Fleeter was moaning. Her father dropped to his knees beside her.

  He saw Tracy staring at him, and he got up and shuffled towards the columnist. His face was a deep, unhappy red.

  “Jerry, I—I don’t know what to say. If I’d had any sense at all, I’d have guessed that this thing was a frame. But I—I was mad with grief and rage. If only I’d been able to talk to you—”

  “Why didn’t you?” Tracy said somberly. “My God, Tommy, you know I am your best friend. Yet you rushed out of the gym without giving me a chance to—”

  “I didn’t,” Fleeter contradicted. “I tried to talk with you but you were gone—you ran out the minute I turned my back—and I naturally thought that you had rushed off to your penthouse to try and hide my—my daughter before I could—”

  Tracy said sharply: “Wait a minute! Did you go down to the locker room?”

  “Yes. Not five minutes after you did.”

  “And I was gone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who said so?”

  “Otto. He stopped me at the door of the rubbing room and told me. He said that you’d climbed into your clothes in a hell of a hurry, asked him for the key to the side door, and ran out like a streak through the bowling alley. He said you looked scared and white.”

  “He did, eh?” Tracy’s tone was grim. “That, of course, was a damned lie, I was in the shower. I wonder how much Yager paid Otto to lie to you. … Don’t you see, Tommy? They didn’t want you to talk to me. It would have spoiled the whole plot. They had to keep us apart, make each of us suspect the other.”

  Fleeter nodded haggardly. His hand groped out in a dazed gesture and Tracy gripped it. “Forget it, Tommy. I’d have done the same in your place. It was a cleverly stage-managed nightmare—thank God it’s over.”

  He turned to Inspector Fitzgerald. “How did you and Tess team up so neatly, Fitz?”

  “I met Tess rushing into the lobby downstairs. She’d got leery and tried to phone you. Operator told her your phone was off the hook, so she piled down here in a hurry. Some gal! Sergeant Killan is holding that doorman downstairs. He’s a phoney. Yager substituted him for the regular attendant. That’s how he got the girl in here so easy and fixed up the plant.”

  “How did you get in?”

  “Fleeter left the door open when he followed you.”

  Ethel Fleeter was wide awake, whimpering. Fitz glowered at her. “Did you see Yager kill Clancy?”

  “Yes. Yes. … Clancy thought something was wrong. He was suspicious of Tess and went up to see her. He—he saw me come out. He picked me up in his car and brought me to the gym to talk over what he ought to do. Yager came in, killed him and—and—”

  “You saw Yager bat Clancy to death with that bronze statue?”

  “Yes. … Clancy accused him of trying to frame Fleeter and Tracy. They fought all over the room. I—I tried to run, but Yager caught me. … It—was horrible.”

  “Eyewitness,” Fitz said and nodded. “That’s nice.”

  A rumbling voice filled the room with sudden echoes.

  Butch’s massive body was recoiling with amazement on the threshold of the bedroom. Behind him was the seamed face of McNulty, Tracy’s Chinese servant. For the first time in his slant-eyed imperturbable life, McNulty looked dazed.

  “Where have you damned fools been?” Tracy snapped.

  Butch shook his big head and made gagging sounds. He was beyond talk. But McNulty wasn’t. The fear went out of his slant eyes and was replaced instantly with righteous anger.

  “Why you tell lies over telephone?” he hissed. “You say Bootch come quick, bring McNulty. You say big spot, tough jam, come like hell Mount Vernon. You theenk that very funny, huh? You theenk McNulty is boy scout, make runaround like fool. I feenesh, Mister Tlacy. I quit. Confucius say—”

  “Shut up!” Tracy roared. “Get into your kitchen and stay there. By the lord, I’ll take you by the neck and kick the Confucius out of—”

  McNulty grinned. “You velly stlong man when you angly, Mister Tlacy. Me like. Me stay.”

  Tracy turned towards Tess Roland. Her face was set in the old sullen lines. Once more she was the Storm Signal, the gal who hated his guts.

  “You sure don’t like me, do you?”

  “I sure don’t. I hate to be made a sap of by a guy like Yager. But if it was just you, Boy Friend, you’d have been croaked and be damned to you before I’d have lifted a finger. It’s Tommy Fleeter I like and that sweet kid of his. Where’s my hat? I want to get out of this lousy dump of yours.”

  “Why?” Tracy asked her huskily.

  “You know damned well, you dirt slinging little heel!”

  “Why?” Jerry repeated. There was a humbleness about him, a slow flush in his face that made her look at him with tight lips.

  “You want to know? Okey. You did me dirt with that rotten column of yours. Something that only a cheap snipe like you would pull. You put me out of a job, damned near got me killed by hinting at something that was filthy, dirty—and a lie from beginning to end! I got out of the jam you caused, because I’m a gal who can take care of myself. But I’ve hated that wizened little pan of yours ever since—and that was two years ago. Last September.”

  “Wait a minute!” Tracy’s eyes were suddenly wide. “September, you say? Two years ago?”

  “September the twenty-third. And I swore then that if I ever got half a chance to bump you—”

  She grinned haggardly. “And then Tommy and Ethel Fleeter get mixed in the thing and I have to save your dammed life. That’s a laugh on me.”

  “It’s a laugh on me, too,” Tracy said quietly. “I didn’t write that squib, Storm Signal. I wasn’t in town. I was down in Florida covering the races and the racketeers. A hurricane roared into Miami and blew down all the wires. I wrote no column for three days. Those three columns were banged out in a hurry by a sub of mine in New York.”

  “You’re lying,” Tess snapped.

  “Look it up. Che
ck on me.” His voice was as bitter as hers. “If you’d have opened your trap and told me what was biting you—”

  “Who wrote it? Who was the guy who subbed for you?”

  “That,” Tracy said dryly, “is something you’ll never learn from papa. I don’t want to encourage homicide.”

  His feeble grin drew a wry smile from her lips. “Okey, Jerry. Let it lay that way. For a couple of wise birds, we don’t seem to be doing so well by each other. Is there a drink in this joint? I could do right now with a big one.”

  “If there’s anything in this house that you want, Storm Sig—”

  Tracy stopped short, his face red as he realized he was calling her by the sardonic nickname that she loathed.

  “Go get me that drink,” Tess Roland told him in a funny kind of voice. “And Storm Signal is all right by me, you—you heel. I guess you kinda got me used to the damned monicker!”

  MURDER MAZE

  Murder has Jerry Tracy on the run

  BUTCH, WATCHING JERRY TRACY moving leisurely about the ornate living-room of the penthouse, scowled and made urgent snapping sounds with his big fingers. “For the luvva mud, Jerry, why don’t you git started? You’re gonna miss that show! You make me noivous, hoppin’ around like one o’ them premeer bally—bally—”

  “Bally who? Trying to go British on me, keed?”

  He swerved towards the ringing telephone, cupped it at his ear. “Oh, hello, Ned. … Sure thing; swell. How come you’re up my way? I thought you never left Times Square without dog teams and dried reindeer meat. … Thanks for the lift. Be right down.”

  He banged the phone and headed for the door.

  “That was Ned Wortman. Calm the furrowed brow, Butch. Ned’s driving me over to the Garfield.”

  Downstairs Wortman grinned and started the car promptly. He was one of the town’s lesser theatrical producers. A big man, definitely on the fatty side, he was perspiring freely. The evening was hot and sticky. He glanced at the Daily Planet’s famous little columnist and there was envy in his grunt.

  “Kid Kool himself! You look like an ad for an icebox.”

  “Why get sweated over a first night, Ned? I’ve seen a thousand. So have you.”

  His boyish chuckle belied his words. He knew everyone, went everywhere. He liked cops, newsboys, letter carriers, taxi-drivers—the people closest to the pavements of Manhattan. You could argue with Jerry, but you couldn’t get sore at him. One of Tracy’s envious rivals—and there were a few of those, too—summed it up one night at Lindy’s: “I wish I could hate the mugg. He makes my own column look as stale as last year’s almanac. The guy is Broadway, damn him! Kick him in the pants and he’d honk like a Checker Cab; slice him open and you’d find a tintype of Times Square.”

  Ned Wortman drove southward with deft speed and turned into the noisy hullaballoo of West 44th. A whistle shrilled and he swung his sedan in towards the curb. All of New York seemed to be packed in front of the Garfield Theatre. Over the marquee amber lights were a hot dazzle: Summer Scandals. Movie lights flared as celebrities rubbed elbows with a packed mob of hero gawkers wriggling like ants behind stolid-faced cops.

  Tracy beamed at the uproar. “Come on, Ned. You shove and I’ll push!”

  Wortman shook his head, smiling faintly. “Don’t wait for me. I’ll park the car.”

  “Okey.”

  A hand swung the door open and Tracy alighted. He stepped right into what appeared to be a rather one-sided wrestling match. The Garfield’s starter was tussling angrily with a sharp-eyed eager-faced boy. The kid had darted from the crowd and swung Tracy’s door open in the expectation of a tip and a quick scram. The doorman tried to boot him away but he hung on.

  “Leggo, you big chiseler,” he piped shrilly. “It’s my dime! I opened the door didn’t I?”

  His eyes swung towards Tracy. There was appeal in them, and a tense urgency that Tracy instantly understood. He knew this kid. Eddie Frayne. One of a small group of ragged, city-wise kids who picked up news nuggets for the column in places where grown-up stooges couldn’t get. Tracy had spotted Eddie’s old man in a decent job, had plucked the kid away from petty thieves and saved him from a reform school. Eddie adored the grinning Tracy and had given him a few hot tips for the Daily Planet column that every editor in town had missed.

  “Let him alone, Mike,” Jerry told the starter sharply.

  “Okey, Mr. Tracy, if you want to encourage the little rat.”

  “What’ll it be, kid? A dime and beat it—or will you match me for a quarter, pay if you lose?”

  “Match you for the quarter!”

  A cop, who had walked across, grinned and drifted away. That was exactly what Tracy wanted. He bent closer to the kid, took his time handing him a buck. His smiling lips barely moved.

  “Something, Eddie?”

  “Yeah. I seen something that looked kinda screwy. I beat it over here because I knew you’d—”

  “Make it fast. People are watching us.”

  “You know that guy Ala Dhinn? The dago with the turban that the papers say ain’t allowed to talk to no women? On account of he’s a swummy or somethin’?”

  “A swami, Eddie. What about him?”

  “I seen him with a dame about an hour ago. In his big limousine. They pulled down the curtain when they seen me watchin’, but it was this Ala Dhinn guy all right—and the dame was Peggy

  Arlen. I wouldn’t have beat it here so fast, only I knew you like the girl.”

  There was a sudden anxious look in the eyes of the Daily Planet’s columnist.

  “Where did you see all this?”

  “Over on Fifty-fourt’, near Eighth.”

  “You’re certain it was Peggy Arlen?”

  “Yeah. I took a good look to make sure. The guy in the turban seen me and he yanked down the shade and the car breezed away in a hurry. An’ that ain’t all. I—”

  A hand touched Tracy’s arm. He turned and the tension went out of his eyes as he saw Ned Wortman grinning at him.

  “Still giving the public a free look at you, Jerry? Who was the kid with the dirty face?”

  Tracy’s head whirled. Eddie was gone, lost somewhere in the packed crowd. “He opened the car door and I gave him a buck.”

  “Pretty good pay—a buck.”

  “Not for that kid,” Tracy said quietly.

  He followed the producer into the theater. The lights were beginning to dim.

  “See you after the show,” Wortman whispered, and Jerry nodded to his friend and hurried up the aisle to his free seat in the fourth row center.

  The opening number was magnificent but Tracy found himself unable to concentrate on the stage. He was thinking of the turban-swathed head of Ala Dhinn; his olive face, the black, inscrutable eyes. Tracy had wondered lately what the guy’s real racket was. Plenty of money, apparently, and no visible means of support. A couple of Oriental servants, a brownstone house in the elegant Eighties and no graft discernible to the naked eye. Set-ups like that always interested the canny columnist. To him the “swami” stuff was just so much baloney.

  Eddie’s tip gave Tracy a sharp sense of worry. Why should this smooth Ala, who so ostentatiously fled the society of women as degrading, be riding in his limousine with a sweet little blonde like Peggy Arlen? Lightweight, Jerry called her, because she was like a drifting feather when she danced in the spotlight of the Club Onyx, and because she was as scatterbrained and impulsive as a monkey. A slim, satin-skinned little girl with clear blue eyes. The daughter of Peter Arlen; left in Tracy’s care by a grand old actor whom Jerry had reason to love with affectionate gratitude.

  Pete had been Jerry’s first friend in New York—when he had arrived broke and hungry. It was something Jerry never talked about. But he had never forgotten the one man out of six million who had fed and sheltered a small, thin-faced kid named Tracy. Arlen had noticed him hunched and shivering on a chilly corner, had stopped and talked to him. Arlen could have handed him a dime and walked off, but that wasn’t Pe
te’s way of doing things. He staked Jerry to a meal and a room, found out he was a cub reporter from a country paper, and pestered his newspaper friends until he’d landed a small job for Tracy. Jerry had long since paid back the money—but not the debt. The debt would last as long as Arlen lived.

  Now he was out in Arizona, dying with gentle dignity from tuberculosis. Jerry’s money was tactfully paying the bills. But the money was nothing—it was Lightweight herself that mattered. “A good girl,” Pete Arlen had whispered weakly. “Jerry, will you—for the sake of old times—” Jerry had. She was a graceful dancer, beginning to attract a little attention. Pretty as a tea rose, and as level and straight as a ruler. Jerry enjoyed the duty of dropping in regularly to see her. He did it deftly, so that she was unaware of his friendly surveillance. His army of stooges had strict orders to keep an eye on the girl and report the presence of grifters or phoney guys. Eddie’s whispered tip was the first hint of trouble that Tracy had received.

  He thought, uneasily: “I’ll call her up at the Onyx Club during the intermission.”

  Eddie had seen the swami and Lightweight at Fifty-fourth and Eighth. … That was where Lightweight had her hotel apartment. … What was she doing there instead of dancing for the dinner show at the Onyx? And how did she happen to know this swami well enough to pop into his luxurious limousine? It must have been damned important, or Ala Dhinn wouldn’t be risking this publicity gag of his concerning women. …

  Tracy reached suddenly under the seat for his hat and tiptoed down the dark aisle to the rear. The doorman gave him a puzzled glance, said softly: “Not running out on a hit, are you, Mr. Tracy?”

  “Nope. Be right back, Mike.”

  He walked with long strides to the drug-store on the corner. He squeezed into a phone booth and called the Onyx Club. Purdy, the dance director, sounded as sore as hell.

  “No, she ain’t here and didn’t send no excuse,” Purdy snapped. “If you see her, tell her she’s fired!”