Jerry Tracy, Celebrity Reporter

by Tinsley, Theodore A.

  “Git back, Jerry!” Butch panted.

  Butch’s big fists came up, the left fiddling, the right cocked. He started his invincible one-two.

  A fist flashed under his upraised hands. The impact against his belly sounded like somebody whacking a carpet on a clothes line. Butch went down and Tracy backed up.

  He took a glancing blow in the ribs. A right hook grazed his jaw and almost tore his ear off. Tracy ducked desperately away and managed to get both hands on a heavy flower vase at his elbow. He shoved it like a spear at his foe’s face, pushing him back. Then the vase lifted and came down.

  Tracy found himself suddenly a little sick at his stomach, clutching a hunk of broken vase in his bleeding fingers. It wasn’t much of a cut. Neither was the gash on the fallen man’s scalp. The fellow was still conscious, but badly dazed. He was a young man with pale blue eyes and tight, curly hair, the color of hemp. There was something vaguely familiar about his wide mouth and drum-tight cheek-bones. The bronzed skin made Tracy think about brown rotogravure.

  Suddenly he remembered. “You’re Richard Druse!”

  The blue eyes cleared and focused. The young man got up slowly. Tracy’s hand tightened on his jagged weapon, but he didn’t have to use it. The smack on the skull had taken the fight out of Druse.

  “Who are you?” he said thickly.

  Tracy told him succinctly. Druse looked scared at the mention of the Daily Planet. He didn’t say anything. On the floor behind them, Butch was swaying to his knees, making hiccupping noises. He got no attention from either man.

  “How did you get in here so neatly, Druse? Your own key?”

  “None of your damned business.”

  “You’re not acting very smart.” And Tracy explained why, in a nasty tone, with special reference to the newspaper business and his own nationally syndicated column. It did the trick. Druse swallowed with a click like a billiard ball.

  “Did you expect to find Linda dead?”

  “My Gawd, no!”

  “Yet you didn’t make any outcry. Do you usually take the death of a girl you’re in love with so calmly?”

  Druse didn’t resent Tracy’s deliberate baiting. His face was flushed, but he held his temper in check.

  “I was stunned.”

  “So stunned that I had to bust you over the head with a vase to keep you from doing wholesale mayhem?”

  “I didn’t realize you were newspaper men. I thought—”

  “You thought maybe we had killed Linda?”

  “Nobody killed Linda. She committed suicide.”

  “You expected her suicide?”

  “No, I didn’t. But I should have guessed it from her note. I—I thought up till now that it referred to something else.”

  “Let’s see the note.”

  “Why?”

  “It seemed two different things to you. It might seem a third to me. Murder, for instance!”

  Richard Druse didn’t lash out with his fist. But the effort of self-control drained even his lips of blood. He spoke in a monotone.

  “Listen, you cheap, stinking, little garbage vender! Linda is not to be dragged through the dirty pages of your rotten tabloid, do you hear? She quit life gallantly by her own hand, for a reason you wouldn’t understand. If you try to twist Linda’s life, or her death, into something vulgar and mean to build up your moron circulation, I’ll kill you!”

  It was raw hate, distilled to a barely audible murmur. Tracy gave no sign that it scared him. He continued to watch his man narrowly.

  This Richard Druse had been Linda’s last stab at romantic love before her formal betrothal to Paul Voisin. Druse didn’t have a dime. He was younger than Linda, a fairly recent college graduate who had never quite caught on. He was a neighbor of Linda’s father in Connecticut, on the wrong side of the ridge. He did odd jobs on trees and bushes and called himself a scientific horticulturist.

  Linda had really had quite a case on him. It was enough to pull her away from the night-club set, but not enough to make her want to ditch her fabulous inheritance for an honest, cotton-underwear marriage. Cass Payton had read the riot act to Linda. After that Paul Voisin took over, and the lawyers and genealogists stitched up the deal.

  Tracy was itching to get hold of Linda’s note. Druse’s involuntary gesture told him it was in Druse’s pocket. But he changed the subject.

  “Have you any idea whom Linda invited for dinner tonight?”

  “Of course. She invited me.”

  “Then what was Paul Voisin doing here?”

  It was a bull’s-eye. It knocked Druse off his pins. He quivered as if Tracy had slapped him. But he said nothing.

  Tracy gave Butch a barely perceptible nod. Butch had shaken off the effects of the belly punch and had moved close to Druse. He moved closer.

  Tracy kept talking about Voisin. He told about the Frenchman’s peculiar method of arrival and departure. Druse listened rigidly, his pale blue eyes like blank stones.

  “Take him!” Tracy yelled suddenly.

  Druse’s fist swung an instant too late. Butch anchored him in a bear hug that yanked him off his feet. The two men pitched to the floor in a writhing tangle. It was primitive stuff—knees and elbows and teeth. Butch was too busy to remember his scientific one-two. Druse’s heels drummed spasmodically on the floor under Butch’s gutter treatment.

  Tracy’s lean fingers poked into the melee. He jerked a small envelope from Druse’s pocket. He opened it and read the folded note:

  “Dear Ricky:

  I have burned the candle at both ends—and I find the game is not worth the candle. I’ve decided on a clean break. I want you to know it first. Will you come to dinner with me Thursday night? There’ll be no servants present—for reasons you’ll understand after you arrive.

  Linda.”

  Dismay flooded Tracy as he read the note. It knocked the props out from under his murder theory. And yet …

  He started to read it again.

  Police put an end to that. They came boiling in through the unlatched front door of the apartment. There were yells and some prompt thumping action. Butch was hauled off the struggling Druse. He was jammed into a chair so hard that one of its legs cracked. Druse was pinned against the wall by another cop. The note was snatched out of Tracy’s hand.

  It was a lot like a Grade B crook picture.

  Tracy was sure the picture was Grade B when he recognized the face of the inspector in charge of the wrecking crew. He had expected Inspector Fitzgerald. His heart sank as he saw Dominick Carlson. Carlson was making more noise than anybody. His red, beefsteak face was less than two inches from Tracy’s.

  “What’s the idea, punk? Trying to mess things for that comic rag of yours?”

  “If I have police news, I’ll tell it to Fitz.”

  “You tell it to me, damn you! What was the idea of phoning your paper before you called Headquarters?”

  “It’s a strange journalistic custom,” Tracy snapped.

  “Yeah? For two cents I’ll play stick-ball with that skull of yours! You can tell that to Fitzgerald, too!”

  Carlson was Fitz’s assistant. City politics, the backroom kind, had moved him close to the top. According to rumor, Carlson was being groomed to replace Fitz. No fool, Fitz had tried to make things tough for Carlson. Tracy had helped the counter-attack along with his column. He couldn’t prove that Carlson was a crook. But he could—and did—show up the assistant inspector’s consistent stupidity in every case he tackled. It made for a nice gut-hating set-up between them.

  Carlson’s own men quieted the noise. Butch gave up the struggle to go to Tracy’s side to protect him. A sock on the jaw convinced Druse that he had no further chance to attack Tracy. Carlson quit roaring. His squad got to work.

  Druse told a meek, plausible story to the police. He hadn’t realized Linda’s intention to kill herself when he had received her note. Druse knew Linda loved him; but he knew, too, that Linda had decided to obey her father’s wishes and marry Voisin.
To Druse the “clean break,” the “want you to know it first” had meant only one thing: A dismally gallant last toast to the ashes of their love. He couldn’t face it. He had walked around for hours before he could make up his mind at last to come. That was why he’d been late.

  He said nothing whatever about Paul Voisin’s strange behavior. It puzzled Tracy why Druse held that back after Tracy had gone to the trouble to tell him. Tracy decided to keep his mouth shut, too, until he could see Fitz.

  The note to Druse and the girl’s dramatic symbolism with the double-lighted candle tied in neatly with the single poisoned glass. Inspector Carlson grunted and waved a fat, bored hand.

  “Plain and simple suicide!”

  Jerry Tracy laughed curtly. Carlson’s ears reddened at the jeering sound.

  “What’s so damn funny?”

  “It’s not plain,” Tracy said, “and far from simple. You say it’s suicide. The Daily Planet says it’s murder.”

  “For instance?”

  “For instance, the other glass. Why was it washed out? To remove poison? Druse says he misunderstood the note. Maybe a murderer counted on that. A suicide pact would have been twice as good from the murderer’s point of view. But Druse was late and Linda poured herself a sherry while she was waiting. So the murderer had to change his plans. He washed out the extra glass to fit the altered picture.”

  “Nuts! The maid washed the glass before she left.”

  “And left it wet to discolor the table? Maids don’t do tricks like that in this sort of society.”

  “Oh, so you’re in society now! Tell that joke to your Broadway stooges over at Lindy’s. I’m too busy to laugh.”

  Tracy kept his temper.

  “All right, laugh these off, too! The service door wide open. A bottle of cedar oil upset in an otherwise neatly arranged pantry closet. The knobs of that closet door were wiped by somebody, or I’ll eat that soup-stained tie of yours!”

  “Any more deductions, Philo?”

  “Sure. Linda could have lit that candle at both ends, but she never could have held on to it. Not with cyanide chewing at the inside of her belly! The murderer did that stunt to fit in with the note.”

  Carlson turned promptly toward Richard Druse. “Did anyone besides you ever see the note?”

  “No. I can’t prove it, but it’s God’s truth. I showed that note to no one.”

  He stared at Tracy, rather than the inspector. Druse was not lying, Tracy decided swiftly. Whatever else had happened, Druse was honestly convinced that no one but himself had ever laid eyes on Linda’s message. How then could any murderer know enough to add that final convincing suicide touch? Jerry’s dismay showed in his face. It was enough to spark Carlson into action.

  “Out!” he roared. “You and that flat-footed floogie of yours! Toss the pair of them out of here!”

  “Who’s a floogie?” Butch growled.

  He didn’t get a chance to argue that point. He and Jerry were bum-rushed to the corridor. The front door slammed. Butch was all for breaking down the door to go back for a little rebuttal on the argument. But Tracy grabbed him by the arm with a grip that made Butch squeal. He hurried him to the elevator and down to the street.

  Butch had seen the Little Guy hot Kinder the collar many times, but never any hotter than this. Tracy headed straight for a drug-store and slammed himself into a phone booth. He called the Daily Planet. He was fit to be tied.

  So was the Planet’s managing editor!

  “Why’d you hang up? What goes on, anyway? I called back the apartment and Carlson told me to fly a kite.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you get Fitzgerald as I told you?”

  “I tried to. Fitz wasn’t at Headquarters. They’ve put him in charge of that blasted motorcycle cop murder. You’ll have to soft-soap Carlson somehow. Don’t let the dirty son throw you.”

  “He already did,” Tracy howled wrathfully over the wire. “I’m out on the street with a toe-mark on my behind! Carlson doesn’t want any Daily Planet advice. He says the thing is suicide.”

  “Is it?”

  “Mike, that thing smells funny to me. It’s murder!”

  “What have you got?”

  Tracy told him. Mike snorted.

  “Too risky a guess. We’d only be sticking our necks out.”

  “My neck, not yours! Run it under my by-line, just as I’ve told you. You know how to copper bets like that. Let the main Planet story handle the facts and the color. Play up my murder theory as a feature Jerry Tracy article. Lay into Inspector Carlson with both feet. Remind the public how Carlson came up with a handful of nothing on the last three cases he tackled. If I’m right, we’ll laugh that pot-bellied political hack off the force. We’ll do Fitz and ourselves plenty good!”

  “Are you sure about your slant, Jerry?”

  “Have I ever missed a big one?”

  “No, but … ”

  “Then roll those presses!”

  Tracy hung up, feeling tight and triumphant. He didn’t realize what a spot he had let himself in for until he began to cool down. He cooled fast. The Planet was in the clear no matter which way the cat jumped. But what about Jerry Tracy?

  His white face and blazing eyes scared Butch.

  “Is anything wrong, keed?”

  “Yeah. I’ve just burned my britches behind me. If Carlson’s dumb guess turns out correct after all, I’m due to have some bare skin burned.”

  A taxi was rolling aimlessly along the avenue. Tracy shoved two fingers in his mouth and stopped the cab with an ear-splitting whistle. He and Butch took a quick ride to Tracy’s garage.

  Ten minutes later they were in Tracy’s car, heading for the city line.

  The trip to Connecticut was based on trigger-quick thinking. Carlson’s first official move would be to phone Linda’s old man and get him into town for a formal identification. Suicide is always an ugly fact in any family. Cass Payton would fight the idea. Tracy’s hope was to nail the millionaire on the way into town and sell him a murder. If Tracy could plant a few seeds of doubt in Cass Payton’s mind, it might stymie Inspector Carlson’s easy suicide solution. No New York cop would dare to give a tycoon like Payton the run-around. Through Payton, Tracy could force Carlson to do his dirty work—in short, to get busy on Tracy’s own murder angle.

  Tracy headed for the Hutchinson River Parkway, speeding as fast as he dared. The parkway was Cass Payton’s natural route to the city. It was pretty dark, and Payton would be driving into town at a terrific clip; but Tracy wasn’t worried about the problem of identifying and halting the millionaire’s big foreign-made car. He knew the parkway like a book. He had already decided on the exact stretch of road where he intended to pull off his nervy job of deception.

  He avoided cops as if they were the plague; but he ran into quite a bunch of them near the city line. They were huddled at the side of the highway on the lonely stretch between the Boston Post Road and Eastchester Road. Tracy bit off an oath as he saw the white-thatched head of Inspector Fitzgerald in the bright glow of a police torch.

  This was evidently the spot where somebody had clubbed in the skull of a motorcycle cop—an unlucky nuisance that had pulled Fitz away from Headquarters just in time to mess up Tracy’s whole evening with the dumb and antagonistic Carlson.

  Ordinarily Tracy would have halted and poured out his troubles to Fitz. But recognition was the last thing he wanted now. He hunched low over the wheel and eased quickly past. Fitz was too busy to swing his head around. Tracy sighed with relief as he hummed over the city line into alien territory.

  He increased his speed. Butch was fascinated by the climb of the speedometer needle.

  “Hey, some time kin I let the boat out like that?”

  His eyes popped at Tracy’s savage rejoinder.

  “That’s why I’ve got you here, dope! Your turn comes on the way back. I want you to trail me into town in case I need the car again. You’ll probably have to do a hell of a lot better than I’m doing—just to keep P
ayton’s chauffeur in sight.”

  “Jeez, Jerry, thanks! You’re a pal!”

  Presently the little columnist slowed down. He curved off the side of the Connecticut highway to keep out of the way of traffic. The road at this spot ran as straight at a die. It climbed gradually to a distant rise, fully two or three miles off. Tracy kept his engine throbbing. He watched distant headlights pop into view over the crest, estimated their speed as they grew larger in the darkness.

  There weren’t many to watch. Traffic was sparse. But every time twin lights glared, Tracy quivered. He was as nervous as a man on the verge of suicide—which wasn’t too remote a possibility, at that!

  When the car he was waiting for showed at last, Tracy knew it in a second and a half. It whizzed over the black crest of the distant hill with a violence that bounced its bright beams skyward. The lights were all that Tracy could see. They grew fast!

  Tracy straddled his own car on the center line of the road. It was a narrow enough stretch to make that a damned dangerous thing to do. Tracy’s bright lights glared into those onrushing eyes. He took his hands off the wheel and grabbed Butch’s arm to keep himself from swerving his car away. They both sat tight—and terrified.

  It was like facing a streamlined express on a cleared track.

  But the guy driving that other car wasn’t feeling happy, either! His hurricane speed slackened as the power went off. He swerved left, realized he couldn’t pass without risking the ditch—and then his brakes went on. They screamed for a nerve-racking century that was probably thirty seconds. Tracy’s guts were tied in small, tight knots. But there was no collision. That chauffeur knew how to handle a boat! This one looked like an ocean liner. It skidded sideways to an abrupt stop a couple of feet away. Its tires smelled like a fire in a rubber factory. Tracy was out in the road before the chauffeur could swallow his tonsils and yell a frightened foreign oath. The car was foreign, too. Tracy recognized it. Cass Payton was in the back seat with a woman. Tracy flung up his palm briefly and let the cupped badge do his talking. It was an honorary deputy sheriff’s badge, one of the ornamental gee-gaws of official favor that Tracy always carried. The quick flash made it look like a plain-clothes detective’s shield. Payton thought so, anyway. The Planet’s granite-faced columnist didn’t correct him.