by Craig Rice
Malone whirled and jerked open the door for the police.
“You see,” Malone went on, “being a father was one thing George Weston could never do.”
HIS HEART COULD BREAK
John J. Malone shuddered. He wished he could get the insidious melody out of his mind—or, remember the rest of the words.
“As I passed by the ol’ state’s prison,
Ridin’ on a stream-line’ train—”
It had been annoying him since three o’clock that morning, when he’d heard it sung by the janitor of Joe the Angel’s City Hall Bar.
It seemed like a bad omen, and it made him uncomfortable. Or maybe it was the cheap gin he’d switched to between two and four A.M. that was making him uncomfortable. Whichever it was, he felt terrible.
“I bet your client’s happy today,” the guard said cordially, leading the way towards the death house.
“He ought to be,” Malone growled. He reminded himself that he too ought to be happy. He wasn’t. Maybe it was being in a prison that depressed him. John J. Malone didn’t like prisons. He devoted his life to keeping his clients out of them.
“Then the warden told me gently—”
That song again! How did the next line go?
“Well,” the guard said, “they say you’ve never lost a client yet.” It wouldn’t do any harm, he thought, to get on the good side of a smart guy like John J. Malone.
“Not yet,” Malone said. He’d had a close call with this one, though.
“You sure did a wonderful job, turning up the evidence to get a new trial,” the guard rattled on. Maybe Malone could get him a better appointment, with his political drag. “Your client sure felt swell when he heard about it last night, he sure did.”
“That’s good,” Malone said noncommittally. It hadn’t been evidence that had turned the trick, though. Just a little matter of knowing some interesting facts about the judge’s private life. The evidence would have to be manufactured before the trial, but that was the least of his worries. By that time, he might even find out the truth of what had happened. He hummed softly under his breath. Ah, there were the next lines!
“Then the warden told me gently,
He seemed too young, too young to die,
We cut the rope and let him down—”
John J. Malone tried to remember the rhyme for “die.” By, cry, lie, my and sigh. Then he let loose a few loud and indignant remarks about whoever had written that song, realized that he was entering the death house and stopped, embarrassed. That particular cell block always inspired him with the same behavior he would have shown at a high class funeral. He took off his hat and walked softly.
And at that moment hell broke loose. Two prisoners in the block began yelling like banshees. The alarms began to sound loudly, causing the outside siren to chime in with its hideous wail. Guards were running through the corridor, and John J. Malone instinctively ran with them toward the center of disturbance, the fourth cell on the left.
Before the little lawyer got there, one of the guards had the door open. Another guard cut quickly through the bright new rope from which the prisoner was dangling, and eased the limp body down to the floor.
The racket outside was almost deafening now, but John J. Malone scarcely heard it. The guard turned the body over, and Malone recognized the very young and rather stupid face of Paul Palmer.
“He’s hung himself,” one of the guards said.
“With me for a lawyer?” Malone said angrily. “Hung himself—” He started to say “hell,” then remembered he was in the presence of death.
“Hey,” the other guard said excitedly. “He’s alive. His neck’s broke, but he’s breathing a little.”
Malone shoved the guard aside and knelt down beside the dying man. Paul Palmer’s blue eyes opened slowly, with an expression of terrible bewilderment. His lips parted.
“It wouldn’t break,” Paul Palmer whispered. He seemed to recognize Malone, and stared at him, with a look of frightful urgency. “It wouldn’t break,” he whispered to Malone. Then he died.…
“You’re damned right I’m going to sit in on the investigation,” Malone said angrily. He gave Warden Garrity’s waste-basket a vicious kick. “The inefficient way you run your prison has done me out of a client.” Out of a fat fee, too, he reminded himself miserably. He hadn’t been paid yet, and now there would be a long tussle with the lawyer handling Paul Palmer’s estate, who hadn’t wanted him engaged for the defense in the first place. Malone felt in his pocket, found three crumpled bills and a small handful of change. He wished now that he hadn’t got into that poker game last week.
The warden’s dreary office was crowded. Malone looked around, recognized an assistant warden, the prison doctor—a handsome gray-haired man named Dickson—the guards from the death house, and the guard who had been ushering him in—Bowers was his name, Malone remembered, a tall, flat-faced, gangling man.
“Imagine him hanging himself,” Bowers was saying incredulously. “Just after he found out he was gonna get a new trial.”
Malone had been wondering the same thing. “Maybe he didn’t get my wire,” he suggested coldly.
“I gave it to him myself,” Bowers stated positively. “Just last night. Never saw a man so happy in my life.”
Dr. Dickson cleared his throat. Everyone turned to look at him.
“Poor Palmer was mentally unstable,” the doctor said sadly. “You may recall I recommended, several days ago, that he be moved to the prison hospital. When I visited him last night he appeared hilariously—hysterically—happy. This morning, however, he was distinctly depressed.”
“You mean the guy was nuts?” Warden Garrity asked hopefully.
“He was nothing of the sort,” Malone said indignantly. Just let a hint get around that Paul Palmer had been of unsound mind, and he’d never collect that five thousand dollar fee from the estate. “He was saner than anyone in this room, with the possible exception of myself.”
Dr. Dickson shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t suggest that he was insane. I only meant he was subject to moods.”
Malone wheeled to face the doctor. “Say. Were you in the habit of visiting Palmer in his cell a couple of times a day?”
“I was,” the doctor said, nodding. “He was suffering from a serious nervous condition. It was necessary to administer sedatives from time to time.”
Malone snorted. “You mean he was suffering from the effect of being sober for the first time since he was sixteen.”
“Put it any way you like,” Dr. Dickson said pleasantly. “You remember, too, that I had a certain personal interest.”
“That’s right,” Malone said slowly. “He was going to marry your niece.”
“No one was happier than I to hear about the new trial,” the doctor said. He caught Malone’s eye and added, “No, I wasn’t fond enough of him to smuggle in a rope. Especially when he’d just been granted a chance to clear himself.”
“Look here,” Warden Garrity said irritably. “I can’t sit around listening to all this stuff. I’ve got to report the result of an investigation. Where the hell did he get that rope?”
There was a little silence, and then one of the guards said, “Maybe from the guy who was let in to see him last night.”
“What guy?” the warden snapped.
“Why—” The guard paused, confused. “He had an order from you admitting him. His name was La Cerra.”
Malone felt a sudden tingling along his spine. Georgie La Cerra was one of Max Hook’s boys. What possible connection could there be between Paul Palmer, socialite, and the big gambling boss?
Warden Garrity had recognized the name too. “Oh yes,” he said quickly. “That must have been it. But I doubt if we could prove it.” He paused just an instant, and looked fixedly at Malone, as though daring him to speak. “The report will read that Paul Palmer obtained a rope, by means which have not yet been ascertained, and committed suicide while of unsound mind.”
Malone o
pened his mouth and shut it again. He knew when he was licked. Temporarily licked, anyway. “For the love of mike,” he said, “leave out the unsound mind.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” the warden said coldly.
Malone had kept his temper as long as he could. “All right,” he said, “but I’ll start an investigation that’ll be a pip.” He snorted. “Letting a gangster smuggle a rope in to a guy in the death house!” He glared at Dr. Dickson. “And you, foxy, with two escapes from the prison hospital in six months.” He kicked the wastebasket again, this time sending it halfway across the room. “I’ll show you from investigations! And I’m just the guy who can do it, too.”
Dr. Dickson said quickly, “We’ll substitute ‘temporarily depressed’ for the ‘unsound mind.’”
But Malone was mad, now. He made one last, long comment regarding the warden’s personal life and probably immoral origin, and slammed the door so hard when he went out that the steel engraving of Chester A. Arthur over the warden’s desk shattered to the floor.
“Mr. Malone,” Bowers said in a low voice as they went down the hall, “I searched that cell, after they took the body out. Whoever smuggled in that rope smuggled in a letter, too. I found it hid in his mattress, and it wasn’t there yesterday, because the mattress was changed.” He paused, and added, “And the rope couldn’t of been there last night either, because there was no place he could of hid it.”
Malone glanced at the envelope the guard held out to him—pale grey expensive stationery, with “Paul Palmer” written across the front of it in delicate, curving handwriting.
“I haven’t any money with me,” the lawyer said.
Bowers shook his head. “I don’t want no dough. But there’s gonna be an assistant warden’s job open in about three weeks.”
“You’ll get it,” Malone said. He took the envelope and stuffed it in an inside pocket. Then he paused, frowned, and finally added, “And keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. Because there’s going to be an awful stink when I prove Paul Palmer was murdered.…”
The pretty, black-haired girl in Malone’s anteroom looked up as he opened the door. “Oh, Mr. Malone,” she said quickly. “I read about it in the paper. I’m so sorry.”
“Never mind, Maggie,” the lawyer said. “No use crying over spilled clients.” He went into his private office and shut the door.
Fate was treating him very shabbily, evidently from some obscure motive of personal spite. He’d been counting heavily on that five thousand buck fee.
He took a bottle of rye out of the filing cabinet marked “Personal,” poured himself a drink, noted that there was only one more left in the bottle, and stretched out on the worn red leather davenport to think things over.
Paul Palmer had been an amiable, stupid young drunk of good family, whose inherited wealth had been held in trust for him by an uncle considered to be the stingiest man in Chicago. The money was to be turned over to him on his thirtieth birthday—some five years off—or on the death of the uncle, Carter Brown. Silly arrangement, Malone reflected, but rich men’s lawyers were always doing silly things.
Uncle Carter had cramped the young man’s style considerably, but he’d managed pretty well. Then he’d met Madelaine Starr.
Malone lit a cigar and stared dreamily through the smoke. The Starrs were definitely social, but without money. A good keen eye for graft, too. Madelaine’s uncle was probably making a very good thing out of that political appointment as prison doctor.
Malone sighed, wished he weren’t a lawyer, and thought about Madelaine Starr. An orphan, with a tiny income which she augmented by modeling in an exclusive dress shop—a fashionable and acceptable way of making a living. She had expensive tastes. (The little lawyer could spot expensive tastes in girls a mile away.)
She’d had to be damned poor to want to marry Palmer, Malone reflected, and damned beautiful to get him. Well, she was both.
But there had been another girl, one who had to be paid off. Lillian Claire by name, and a very lovely hunk of girl, too. Lovely, and smart enough to demand a sizable piece of money for letting the Starr-Palmer nuptials go through without a scandalous fuss.
Malone shook his head sadly. It had looked bad at the trial. Paul Palmer had taken his bride-to-be night-clubbing, delivering her back to her kitchenette apartment just before twelve. He’d been a shade high, then, and by the time he’d stopped off at three or four bars, he was several shades higher. Then he’d paid a visit to Lillian Claire, who claimed later at the trial that he’d attempted—unsuccessfully—to talk her out of the large piece of cash money, and had drunk up all the whiskey in the house. She’d put him in a cab and sent him home.
No one knew just when Paul Palmer had arrived at the big, gloomy apartment he shared with Carter Brown. The manservant had the night off. It was the manservant who discovered, next morning, that Uncle Carter had been shot neatly through the forehead with Paul Palmer’s gun, and that Paul Palmer had climbed into his own bed, fully dressed, and was snoring drunk.
Everything had been against him, Malone reflected sadly. Not only had the jury been composed of hard-working, poverty-stricken men who liked nothing better than to convict a rich young wastrel of murder, but worse still, they’d all been too honest to be bribed. The trial had been his most notable failure. And now, this.
But Paul Palmer would never have hanged himself. Malone was sure of it. He’d never lost hope. And now, especially, when a new trial had been granted, he’d have wanted to live.
It had been murder. But how had it been done?
Malone sat up, stretched, reached in his pocket for the pale gray envelope Bowers had given him, and read the note through again.
My dearest Paul:
I’m getting this note to you this way because I’m in terrible trouble and danger. I need you—no one else can help me. I know there’s to be a new trial, but even another week may be too late. Isn’t there any way?
Your own
M.
“M.”, Malone decided, would be Madelaine Starr. She’d use that kind of pale gray paper, too.
He looked at the note and frowned. If Madelaine Starr had smuggled that note to her lover, would she have smuggled in a rope by the same messenger? Or had someone else brought in the rope?
There were three people he wanted to see. Madelaine Starr was one. Lillian Claire was the second. And Max Hook was the third.
He went out into the anteroom, stopped halfway across it and said aloud, “But it’s a physical impossibility. If someone smuggled that rope into Paul Palmer’s cell and then Palmer hanged himself, it isn’t murder. But it must have been murder.” He stared at Maggie without seeing her. “Damn it, though, no one could have got into Paul Palmer’s cell and hanged him.”
Maggie looked at him sympathetically, familiar from long experience with her employer’s processes of thought. “Keep on thinking and it’ll come to you.”
“Maggie, have you got any money?”
“I have ten dollars, but you can’t borrow it. Besides, you haven’t paid my last week’s salary yet.”
The little lawyer muttered something about ungrateful and heartless wenches, and flung himself out of the office.
Something had to be done about ready cash. He ran his mind over a list of prospective lenders. The only possibility was Max Hook. No, the last time he’d borrowed money from the Hook, he’d got into no end of trouble. Besides, he was going to ask another kind of favor from the gambling boss.
Malone went down Washington street, turned the corner, went into Joe the Angel’s City Hall Bar, and cornered its proprietor at the far end of the room.
“Cash a hundred dollar check for me, and hold it until a week from,”—Malone made a rapid mental calculation—“Thursday?”
“Sure,” Joe the Angel said. “Happy to do you a favor.” He got out ten ten-dollar bills while Malone wrote the check. “Want I should take your bar bill out of this?”
Malone shook his head. “I’ll pay next
week. And add a double rye to it.”
As he set down the empty glass, he heard the colored janitor’s voice coming faintly from the back room.
“They hanged him for the thing you done,
You knew it was a sin,
You didn’t know his heart could break—”
The voice stopped suddenly. For a moment Malone considered calling for the singer and asking to hear the whole thing, all the way through. No, there wasn’t time for it now. Later, perhaps. He went out on the street, humming the tune.
What was it Paul Palmer had whispered in that last moment? “It wouldn’t break!” Malone scowled. He had a curious feeling that there was some connection between those words and the words of that damned song. Or was it his Irish imagination, tripping him up again? “You didn’t know his heart could break.” But it was Paul Palmer’s neck that had been broken.
Malone hailed a taxi and told the driver to take him to the swank Lake Shore Drive apartment-hotel where Max Hook lived.
The gambling boss was big in two ways. He took in a cut from every crooked gambling device in Cook County, and most of the honest ones. And he was a mountain of flesh, over six feet tall and three times too fat for his height. His pink head was completely bald and he had the expression of a pleased cherub.
His living room was a masterpiece of the gilt-and-brocade school of interior decoration, marred only by a huge, battle-scarred roll-top desk in one corner. Max Hook swung around from the desk to smile cordially at the lawyer.
“How delightful to see you! What will you have to drink?”
“Rye,” Malone said, “and it’s nice to see you too. Only this isn’t exactly a social call.”
He knew better, though, than to get down to business before the drinks had arrived. (Max Hook stuck to pink champagne.) That wasn’t the way Max Hook liked to do things. But when the rye was down, and the gambling boss had lighted a slender, tinted (and, Malone suspected, perfumed) cigarette in a rose quartz holder, he plunged right in.
“I suppose you read in the papers about what happened to my client, Palmer,” he said.
