Hue and Cry

by Thomas B. Dewey

  I jerked around with the flash and after a moment I pinned it down. It was somebody all right and he was heading back for the passage between the furnace room and the storeroom.

  He was in mud and I had a plank to walk on, so I beat him to it. I reached out, grabbed collar and hung on. I flashed the light in his face.

  It was Roy Blake.

  He was a sight. His clothes were wrinkled and muddy. His pants legs were solid mud to the knees. His face was streaked with it and his eyes stared out of it like two white saucers. He was scared to death and his lips were shaking. I eased up on my grip and he stumbled back and leaned against one of the pilings.

  “Well, well,” I said. “What are you looking for—gold?”

  He didn’t say anything, just lifted his arm and pointed vaguely and let his arm drop. I looked over in the corner where he’d pointed.

  Piled up on the ground was a bunch of old boxes, crates, and junk of one kind and another, and up on top of them was one of the planks from the floor, angled up from the pile of junk to the ledge of one of those little windows. Leaning against the pile was another plank that I guess he hadn’t got clear up yet.

  I looked at him.

  “You were trying to get out through that window?” I said.

  He nodded his head.

  “Why, boy,” I said, “you could never have got that window open. Those windows weren’t made to open.”

  “I could have broke it,” he said in a trembling little voice.

  “But why? You didn’t have any reason to sneak out of this hotel.”

  “I wasn’t sneaking out. I was hiding. I didn’t want to get caught on the street. I was going to wait for night. I was going away.”

  “What have you two kids got into?” I said. “Where did your pal, Granger, go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why didn’t you go with him?”

  “I didn’t think we ought to—then. But he went any way. Then I didn’t want to take the rap alone.”

  “The rap? for what? What’d you do? Kill somebody?”

  He shivered all over and tried to wipe some of the mud off his face with his sleeve. He only made it worse.

  “No,” he said. “We didn’t. We didn’t kill—anybody. Honest. Look,” he said, “you help me out of here, will you? I’ll go right home. Honest to God I will.”

  I was beginning to see a little light.

  “You went prowling around that schoolteacher’s room last night, didn’t you?”

  He didn’t answer that. He just said, “We didn’t kill her. Honest to God.”

  “So she was dead when you saw her.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Did you go in her room?”

  “No. We just looked in through the window.”

  “Was the shade up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You didn’t go in?”

  “No.”

  “How did you know she was dead?”

  “By the way she was lying there. And we could see the knife.”

  “So you were afraid somebody might think you did it, so you decided to lam out.”

  “Harley did. I said we ought to tell Pete Haley and stay here. Then when he went anyway and I was alone, I got scared.”

  I thought it over.

  “But how did you get your clothes?” I said.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Somebody had to help you. Who was it?”

  He still wouldn’t answer.

  “Was it Jack Pritchard?”

  He shook his head.

  Then all of a sudden there was somebody standing over me and a voice said: “Well, well, well. Two little Boy Scouts.”

  I looked up. It was Olson, Weaver’s bruiser, and right behind him was his brother officer. Olson grabbed Roy Blake and pulled him up tight.

  “Who’s the kid?” he said.

  “Go peddle your papers,” I said. “He’s not the killer.”

  “I’ll come to you in a minute, bum,” Olson said. “Stew, take the kid upstairs. I want to have a little talk with Mr. Spinder.”

  “Okay,” the other dick said. “Come on, punk.”

  He took Roy Blake’s arm and pulled him away.

  The kid threw me a look.

  “Go ahead,” I told him. “They’re cops, but don’t tell ’em anything. They’ll twist it.”

  Olson wiped the back of his hand across my mouth, hard.

  “Shut up, you.”

  The footsteps died away. Olson grabbed the flashlight out of my hand and flashed it on my face. “Now. We’re all alone. Nobody to bother us.”

  “All right. What do you want? A confession?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Get out your paper and pencil.”

  He laughed—if you could call it laughing. “Oh, no. It ain’t that simple. Anyway, I’d need witnesses.”

  “Okay. Let’s go upstairs. I’ll give you the whole story.”

  “Ain’t you smart? ‘Let’s go upstairs.’ Not yet, bum. I’m just going to get you in shape for it.”

  “You want me to hold the light?”

  I was just showing off. I didn’t feel that good, really. That big hunk of beef could make jelly out of me if I wasn’t lucky, and I didn’t expect to be lucky. He was at least six feet two and must have weighed two-fifty. I’m not over five-ten and I never weighed more than one-sixty.

  “You slug me just once,” I said, “and I’ll make life hell for you.”

  He laughed again. And slugged me. Pain shot through my head and I blinked. He came boring in with his left hand, giving it to me twice before I could gather myself together. He was holding the flashlight with his right hand.

  I ducked under his arm as he started another one and slammed my fist down onto his right wrist. The flashlight fell out of his hand onto the ground. It didn’t go out, but it didn’t throw much of a light on me, either.

  I straightened up and hit him in the belly with my right and tried to cross a left, but he stopped that one and hung one on my head again. My head was splitting by this time and I kept seeing flashes of blue and green. He hit me again with that left and I fell backward, slamming my head against the plank and rolling off into the mud.

  He waited for me to get up. I took my time about it, trying to clear my head, to get the knifelike pains out of it. My face felt twice as big as normal.

  I got to my knees and he started for me again, but I pulled my legs up under me and dived under his arms into his thighs. He went over my back. One of his feet caught me in the side of the head. I heard him flop into the mud and I got up and turned around. I had a clear road out of the cellar and I could have made a break and got upstairs, but I was sore and now that I’d got him down once I felt better about my chances.

  I let him get up to his hands and knees and then I walked up close and kicked him in the chest. But I was too cocky. He grabbed my foot and hauled up on it and I went flat on my back, banging my head again on the plank. Then he was all over me. He held me down with one knee on my chest and started pounding.

  I felt sick and cold. His big hands kept smacking my head from side to side. His knee was squeezing the wind out of me. I felt so damned helpless.

  Then I heard voices and saw a light coming. I opened my mouth and let out the loudest yell I could manage. The big dick lifted his arm over his head and started down. But it never landed. I heard Weaver’s voice saying, “Olson!” and slowly the big gorilla climbed off me and stood up.

  I picked up my flashlight, which was still burning, and got up, trying to brush some of the mud off my clothes. I flashed the light on Olson, then on Weaver. Behind Weaver I saw Singer Batts.

  Olson looked a little sheepish and Weaver looked worried.

  “Hello,” I said.

  After a moment Singer said to Weaver: “I don’t think Mr. Olson will be working for this county much longer. I’ll thank you now to remove him from this hotel, and, better still, from this town. Right away.”

  I had never
heard Singer lay it on the line like that before. It sounded pretty good. I grinned. It made my mouth feel like it was splitting.

  “I’ll see that Olson is taken care of,” Weaver said. “You needn’t bother to file charges.”

  I looked at Olson, then at Weaver.

  “What’s he got on you?” I asked.

  Olson made a growling sound in his throat and headed my way again, but Weaver grabbed his arm.

  “Go out to the car,” Weaver said, “and stay there.”

  Olson walked away.

  Singer beckoned to me. “You’d better come upstairs and take a shower.”

  We started off; then Singer turned back to Weaver, who hadn’t moved.

  “If you want to look around the cellar for evidence,” Singer said, “you’re welcome.”

  I looked back at Weaver.

  “Am I still under suspicion?” I asked.

  After a moment, Weaver said, “Certainly.”

  Beside me, Singer was laughing softly.

  “It’s funny?” I said.

  “Mr. Weaver is amusing in his stubbornness.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Isn’t he?”

  We went on upstairs and into the suite through the kitchen. I took off my clothes and went into the bathroom to clean up.

  CHAPTER 5

  When I came out of the shower and got some clean clothes on and a couple of patches on the cuts on my face I felt better. I went over and poured a drink.

  Singer had pulled his rocker in from the bedroom and was sitting over by his table, his feet up on the love seat, the bottle of whisky on the table beside him—it was half gone, I noticed—and a lot of papers spread out. He was opening his mail, and I could see that he was looking for something special. He’d pick up an envelope, look at it, and throw it onto the table. Finally I heard him give a little chortle and open one up. He was excited, for Singer, and I watched him.

  He pulled a letter from the envelope and opened it carefully, taking something out. He squirmed around in his seat and held the something up to the light. It was a photograph.

  Oh, Lord—no! I thought. Not that again.

  “What did they learn from the Blake kid?” I said, trying to get him started on something about the crime.

  “Hmn?” Singer said.

  “The Blake kid,” I said. “What did they learn from him?”

  He didn’t answer at all this time. I resigned myself. After a minute or two he looked over at me and said, in an uncertain little voice, “Joe.”

  “All right,” I said, and got up.

  I went over and stood behind his chair, looking over his shoulder. The photograph was the picture of a woman, maybe thirty years old, maybe forty. She wore glasses, and she had a snub nose and practically no chin. You could see that the photo had been retouched for all it was worth. In Singer’s lap lay the letter. It was written on blue paper under a flourishing letterhead: “The Belleforest Lonely Hearts Society—Every man needs a good wife; every woman a fine husband.”

  “Singer.”

  He looked at me like a little kid caught in the cookie jar.

  “I thought you gave this up a long time ago.”

  “But, Joe,” he said, “a man ought to have a wife. A man is only a shell without a wife. A man needs a home—a real—”

  “That’s not the way to get a wife,” I said. “This town is full of women who would jump at the chance to hook up with you. Why don’t you look around?”

  “Well, Joe, to be absolutely honest with you, I have yet to see in Preston a young woman whose intelligence is attractive to me.”

  “You don’t marry an intelligence,” I said. “You marry a woman. And you don’t marry a woman with a face like that.” I pointed to the photograph.

  “But beauty is only skin deep,” Singer said.

  “It’s more than skin deep on that mug,” I said.

  “Don’t be vulgar, Joe.”

  I laughed. “Look who’s saying ‘Don’t be vulgar.’ The Belleforest Lonely Hearts Society. For Christ’s sake!”

  He looked hurt. I guess I shouldn’t be so hard on him. This correspondence with lonely hearts clubs is Singer’s only vice—and I suppose it isn’t exactly a vice either. But I never could figure it out in him. About everything else he was smart. But he would keep on looking for a wife by mail. I think the true reason was that he was afraid to associate with real, living women and would never be able to bring himself to ask anybody to marry him.

  He laid the photograph and letter on his table.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re not vulgar. I know it. I hope you find a wife.”

  “Maybe—someday—” he said.

  He mixed himself another drink. That made me feel good because it showed me that he had started to think about the murder again.

  I went back to my chair and picked up my own drink.

  “They didn’t learn anything from young Blake,” he said.

  “How’d you happen to come down cellar and find us?”

  “The other detective came upstairs and brought young Blake in here. He told us that he had left you and Olson downstairs. I couldn’t imagine what you and Olson would have in common, so I insisted we go down and investigate.”

  “I’m glad. That bastard would have killed me.”

  “I have no doubt of it.”

  There was a pause. Then Singer went on, “I have made up my mind that we will investigate the death of Miss Marian Mason.”

  “Good,” I said. “Where do we start?”

  “We start in the only possible way. We start with certain assumptions. We assume that Marian Mason was killed by somebody in this town. We assume she was killed by someone who had known her for a certain length of time—a week, a month, three months. Of course, these assumptions may be incorrect. But they will do to start with, because we don’t have any better ones. And in line with these assumptions, Joe, our first step is to start checking on the history of Miss Mason in this town. It may be an interesting search. Because Marian Mason was a very beautiful girl, and the history of a beautiful girl is likely to be more interesting than the history of a girl who is not beautiful. Not always, mind you, but sometimes.”

  “That sounds wonderful. What, actually, do we do?”

  “We build the history of Marian Mason, out of everything we can find about her. I want to start with you. Tell me about her. How long had she been living in the hotel?”

  “About ten days,” I said. “Before that, she was living with Mrs. Fogarty. I don’t know why she moved. In a town like Preston she wouldn’t have much more private life in a hotel than she would anywhere else.”

  “Is there anything you can think of that might have driven her out of the Fogarty home?”

  “No. She went around with Bill Fogarty for a while, just after she came here last fall. But Bill’s been in the army since before Christmas. She stayed on for six months.”

  “What other romantic interests did she have in Preston?”

  “She went around with Tommy Rowe and Don Eastman.”

  “Both at once?”

  “Well, the three of them were together a lot. Tommy was her real boyfriend. I think Eastman just went along for the ride. Or maybe he had a girl in some other town.”

  “Eastman—he lives in the hotel, doesn’t he?”

  “He does. On the same floor where Miss Mason used to live.”

  “Didn’t Eastman ever go out with local girls?”

  “Sometimes,” I said. “He’s been known to run around some with Elsie Schaffner.”

  “Who is Elsie Schaffner?”

  “She’s a very sweet little girl, lovely to look at. Her father owns the filling station down at the end of town near the bridge. She’s in high school.”

  “How old is Eastman?”

  I shrugged. “Twenty-eight—thirty maybe.”

  “How old would you say Tommy Rowe is?”

  “He looks forty,” I said, “but he’s under thirty really.”

  “Wou
ld you say, in general, that Miss Mason was a bad girl?”

  “I wouldn’t say,” I said, “because I don’t say things like that. The School Board didn’t think she was so good. I know they didn’t renew her contract.”

  “Wasn’t she a good teacher?”

  “She was a good teacher, I guess. But you know how it is in a little town. She smoked, she was always running off to the City with Tommy Rowe, she never went to church. They expect a schoolteacher to be a gilded angel.”

  “Then Miss Mason was no gilded angel, I take it.”

  “What are you trying to do, trap me?” I said. “I don’t claim she was a gilded angel.”

  “That’s very chivalrous of you, Joe.”

  “Nuts,” I said.

  “Did you ever know her before she came to Preston?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “You don’t know of any jealousies revolving around her, jealousies that might have furnished a motive for murder?”

  “No. Bill Fogarty probably didn’t like it when she took up with Tommy Rowe. But Bill wouldn’t kill her.”

  “He wouldn’t?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Has Bill Fogarty been home on leave lately?”

  “Yeah, he came home a couple of weeks ago. Just went back last night.”

  “Was he seen with Miss Mason at that time?”

  “I don’t know. I never saw him with her.”

  There was a noise like thunder on the stairs outside. The door of the sitting room flew open and Harry Baird came in. He was panting, and red in the face again, and you could see that he was getting sore at somebody. “What’s up?” I said.

  “My God,” said Harry Baird, “you’d think I committed some crime myself. He wants that salesman, the one checked out of here five-thirty this mornin’. He claims he’s got the case all figured. He tells me to get hold of that guy’s address in Detroit so’s he can have him picked up.”

  “Mr. Weaver thinks a traveling salesman did it?” Singer said.

  Harry snorted.

  “Got it all figured out. Crime of passion. Guy got up in the night, busted into Miss Mason’s room, got rejected, and flew off the handle. Killed her.”

  “With a butcher knife,” Singer said.

  “Sounds goofy, don’t it?” Harry said. “Funny thing is, though, this guy sold butcher knives. All kinds of cutlery. That was his line. He showed me last night when he come in. Had two sample cases full of knives.”