The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

by Penzler, Otto

  “Well, sure….”

  “Hurry, Gus! It’s very important!”

  “You ain’t sick, are you, Mr. Bly? You sound—”

  “Gus!” Bly exploded. “Hurry up!”

  “O.K. Sure. Hold the wire.”

  Bly heard the receiver bump as Gus put it down, and then there was nothing but the empty hum of the open circuit. He waited, feeling the sweat gather in cold beads on his forehead. Johanssen had come quietly closer, and Bly could catch the black slick glint of the automatic, leveled a foot from his head.

  After centuries of time the receiver bumped again and Gus said cheerfully: “Sure, I got it. What you want I should do with it?”

  Bly leaned back in his chair, sighing, and nodded once at Johanssen. “All right. What now?”

  Johanssen’s eyes had lost their frosty glint. “This Gus—he is an honest man?”

  Bly nodded weakly. “Yes.”

  “Tell him to open the sack and the envelope.”

  “Gus,” Bly said into the telephone, “inside the sack you’ll find an envelope. Take it out and open it.”

  “Sure, Mr. Bly. Wait.” Paper crackled distantly and then Gus’s voice suddenly yammered frantically. “Mr. Bly! It’s money! It’s thousands—millions! Mr. Bly! Mr. Bly!”

  “Take it easy, Gus,” Bly said. “It was put in there by mistake. I’m going to let you talk to the man who owns the money. He’ll tell you what to do.”

  “I don’t want so much money here! I’m gonna call a cop! I’m afraid—”

  “Here’s Mr. Johanssen. Talk to him.”

  Johanssen took the telephone. Gus was still shouting at the other end of the line, and Johanssen nodded several times, beginning to smile a little more broadly, finally managed to get a word in.

  “Yes, Gus. Yes, yes. It is my money. No. Don’t call a policeman. Just keep it for me.” The receiver fairly crackled at that last and Johanssen held it away from his ear, wincing. “No, no. No one will rob you. All right. Lock yourself in. Yes, I will knock three times and then twice. Yes, I will bring a writing from Mr. Bly. All right. Yes. Just be calm.”

  He hung up the receiver and nodded at Bly. “That is a good man.” The flat automatic had disappeared.

  Bly wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. “Yes. Gus is a swell old gent. He has a tough time.”

  “And you have had a tough time,” said Johanssen. “Yes. I am very sorry, Mr. Bly. I beg your pardon. Can I do something for you to show I am sorry, please?”

  “No,” Bly said. “No. It’s all right.”

  Johanssen watched him. “Mr. Bly, I am very anxious to find the man who was in that apartment. You may still have the reward if you will tell me anything that will lead me to him.”

  Bly shook his head wearily. “I don’t know anything.”

  “Think,” Johanssen urged. “Something small, perhaps. Some little thing you may have noticed. Some impression.”

  “No,” said Bly woodenly.

  Johanssen shrugged. “So it will be, then. But please let me do something to show I am sorry for this today.”

  “No,” said Bly in an absent tone. “If you want to do something for somebody, give Gus a couple of hundred out of the five thousand so he can get free of that shark I work for.”

  “I will do that. Surely.”

  “I’ve got to go,” Bly said. “I’m—in a hurry.”

  “Surely,” said Johanssen, opening the door. “I am so sorry, Mr. Bly. Please forgive me.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE BLACK MITTEN

  LY took a taxi back to the : office. All the way there he leaned forward on the seat, t pushing forward unconsciously trying to hurry the taxi’s progress. When it stopped at the curb in front of the office building he was out of it before the driver had time to open the door. He flung a crumpled bill over his shoulder and raced up the steep stairs, past the second floor and Janet’s office, up to the third floor and down the corridor.

  The hammer of his feet must have warned J. S. Crozier, because he was just coming out of his private office when Bly burst through the front door. Bly closed the door behind him and leaned against it, panting.

  “Well,” said J. S. Crozier, “you’re back in a hurry, Bly. And I don’t see any customer. Have you some more excuses to offer this time?”

  Bly was smiling. He could feel the smile tugging at the corners of his lips, but it was like a separate thing, no part of him or what he was thinking.

  J. S. Crozier noticed the smile. “Bly, what on earth is the matter with you? You’ve got the queerest expression—”

  “I feel fine,” Bly said. “Oh, very fine. Because I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”

  “Bly! What do you mean? What are you talking—”

  Bly stepped away from the door. “You’ve had a lot of fun with me, haven’t you? You’ve bullied and insulted and humiliated me every chance you got. You knew I had to take it. You knew I had a brother in college who was dependent on me and my job. You knew I wanted to get ahead, but that I couldn’t unless I had more training. You knew when I came here that I was taking courses in a night school, and you deliberately gave me work that kept me late so I couldn’t finish those courses.”

  “Bly,” said J. S. Crozier, “are you mad? You can’t—”

  “Oh, yes I can. I can tell you now. You’ve had your fun, and now you’re going to pay for it. You’re going to pay pretty heavily and you’re going to know I’m the one who made you pay.”

  “You’re being insulting,” J. S. Crozier snapped. “You’re fired, Bly. If you don’t leave at once I’ll call the police.”

  “Oh, no,” said Bly. “You won’t call the police, because that’s what I’m going to do. How does it feel to be a murderer, Mr. Crozier?”

  “Eh?” said J. S. Crozier. The color washed out of his cheeks and left the lines on them looking like faint indelible pencil marks. “Wh-what did you say?”

  “Murderer.”

  “You—you’re crazy! Raving—”

  “Murderer,” said Bly. “You murdered Patricia Fitzgerald.”

  “Bly! You’re a maniac! You’re drunk! I won’t have you—”

  “You murdered Patricia Fitzgerald and I’m the one who knows you did it. I’m the one who will get up on the stand and swear you did it. I’m the one—Bly, the poor devil it was so much fun for you to bully because you knew I couldn’t strike back at you. Was the fun worth it, Mr. Crozier?”

  J. S. Crozier’s mouth opened, fish-like, and closed again before he could find words. “Bly! Bly! Now you can’t make mad accusations like that. You’re insane, Bly! You—you’re sick.”

  “No. I happened to remember a couple of small things. When I came to Patricia Fitzgerald’s door last night and she opened it, she was wearing what I thought was a black fur mitten. It wasn’t. It was that wig of yours—your toupee. She had it wrapped around her right hand. She had been laughing at how you looked without it, or perhaps she had been trying it on herself.”

  “You lie!” J. S. Crozier shouted, putting his hand up over the bulging toupee protectively. “You lie!”

  “No. I saw it. I’ll swear I saw it. And another thing. Just a little while ago, when you were speaking about the Marigold Apartments and how luxurious they were, you said, ‘Judging from that hovel you live in….’ You knew where I lived, but you’d never been in my apartment— until last night. You were then. You broke in the window after you murdered Patricia Fitzgerald.”

  Under the toupee the veins on J. S. Crozier’s forehead stood out like purple cords. “You’re a liar and a fool!” He laughed chokingly. “You think that evidence is enough to base a charge of murder on? Bah! Get out! Go to the police! They’ll laugh at you! I’m laughing at you!” His whole body shook with insane raging mirth.

  The door opened quietly and Johanssen stepped inside the office. “May I laugh, too, please?” he asked softly.

  S. CROZIER’S breath hissed through his teeth. He seemed to shrink inside his cl
othes. The toupee had slipped down over his forehead and it fell now and lay on the floor like an immense hairy spider. J. S. Crozier’s own hair was a blond, close-clipped stubble.

  Johanssen smiled and nodded at Bly. “You should never play poker, Mr. Bly. Your face gives you away. I knew you had remembered something, so I followed you here. It is nice to meet you again, Mr.—ah—Crozier.”

  “Bly,” J. S. Crozier said in a shaky whisper. “Run for help. Quick. He’ll kill me.”

  “Mr. Bly will not move,” said Johanssen gently. “No.”

  Bly literally couldn’t have moved if he had wanted to. He was staring, fascinated, from Johanssen to J. S. Crozier. Johanssen had his right hand in his coat pocket, but he apparently wasn’t at all excited or in any hurry.

  “I have been looking for you for a long time,” he said. “It is so very, very nice to see you at last.”

  J. S. Crozier began to shake. His whole body shuddered. “Johanssen,” he begged hoarsely. “Wait. Wait, now. Don’t shoot me. Listen to me. It was an accident. I didn’t mean—Johanssen! You can’t just shoot me in cold blood! I’ll pay back the money I stole from you! I—I’ve made a lot! I’ll give it all to you! Johanssen, please—”

  The door opened in back of Johanssen, pushing him forward. He stepped aside quickly and alertly, and Vargas came into the office. His eyes were bright and beadily malicious.

  “Police,” he said casually to Crozier. “Hello, Bly. I’ve been following you around today. Checking up.”

  J. S. Crozier caught his breath. “Officer!” he shouted hoarsely. “Arrest this man! He’s going to kill me!”

  “Which man?” Vargas asked. “You mean Johanssen? Why, he’s a respectable businessman. Are you thinking of killing anyone, Johanssen?”

  “No, Mr. Vargas,” said Johanssen.

  “See?” said Vargas to Crozier. “You must be mistaken. Well, I’ve got to run along. Behave yourself, Bly.”

  “No!” J. S. Crozier pleaded. “No, no! You can’t! Take me with you!”

  “What for?” Vargas inquired reasonably. “I couldn’t take you with me unless I arrested you for something. And what would I arrest you for—unless it was maybe for murdering Patricia Fitzgerald last night?”

  J. S. Crozier swayed. “That—that’s absurd!”

  Vargas nodded. “Sure. That’s what I thought. Well, so long.”

  J. S. Crozier held on to a desk to keep upright. “No! You can’t go and leave me to this—this … Wait! Johanssen thinks I stabbed him and robbed him! You’ve got to arrest me for that! You’ve got to lock me up!”

  Vargas looked at Johanssen in surprise. “Did he stab you, Johanssen?”

  “I have not said so.”

  “So long,” said Vargas.

  J. S. Crozier’s face was horribly contorted. “No, no! You can’t leave me alone with— with—”

  Vargas stood in the doorway. “Well? Well, Crozier?”

  “Yes,” Crozier whispered hoarsely. “I did it. I killed her. I knew—the way she looked and acted after Bly went for the sandwiches. I twisted her arm and—and she told me …” His voice rose to a scream. “Take me out of here! Get me away from Johanssen!”

  Vargas’ voice was quick and sharp now. “You heard it, both of you. You’re witnesses. Farn-ham, come on in.”

  Farnham came stolidly into the office. “Come on baby,” he said in his heavy indifferent voice. J. S. Crozier’s legs wouldn’t hold his weight, and Farnham had to half carry him out the door.

  “Could have nailed him anyway on that toupee business,” Vargas said, casual again. “But this way made it more certain. Johanssen, you stick around where I can find you.”

  “I will be very glad to testify. I will also wish to witness the execution, if you please.”

  “I’ll arrange it,” Vargas promised. “Kid, that was clever work—that business about the toupee.”

  “It just—came to me,” Bly said shakily. “It seemed all clear at once—after Mr. Johanssen told me about the arrangement for him to wait in the hamburger stand. I knew then that Patricia Fitzgerald was playing her radio loud on purpose. She thought Gus, the janitor, would come up and then she would have sent him for the sandwiches. And then I remembered the black mitten….”

  High heels made a quick tap-tap-tap along the corridor and Janet ran into the office. “Dave! Are you all right? I saw Mr. Crozier going downstairs with another man. He—he was crying….”

  Bly said: “It’s all right now, dear. Mr. Crozier was the man who murdered that girl in my apartment house. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “I’ll be going,” said Vargas. “Bly, you stick around where I can find you.”

  “That will be easy,” Bly said bitterly. “Just look on the handiest park bench. I was so clever I thought myself right out of a job.”

  “I will go also,” said Johanssen, “but first there is this.” He took a black thick wallet from his pocket. Carefully he counted out five one-thousand-dollar bills.

  “The reward, which I have offered legally and which I have advertised in the papers. Mr. Vargas is a witness that you earned it and that I paid it.”

  “It’s yours,” Vargas said. “He made a public offer of it. If he didn’t pay you, you could sue him.”

  “Yes,” said Johanssen. “And then there is this.” He took a folded sheet of blue legal paper from his pocket. “This is a lease for my apartment at the Marigold, paid a year in advance. It is too big for me. For two people it would be good. You will take it, please, Mr. Bly.”

  “No!” Bly said. “I couldn’t….”

  “Bly,” said Vargas conversationally, “I’ve been standing around here wondering when you were going to kiss this girl of yours. Don’t you think it’s about time you did?”

  The Crimes of Richmond City

  Frederick Nebel

  WRITING IN THE MIDST of the Great Depression, Frederick Nebel (1903-1967) wrote prolifically for Black Mask, Dime Detective, and other pulps, producing scores of relatively realistic hard-boiled stories about such fixtures of their era as Cardigan, the hard-as-nails Irish operative working for the Cosmos Agency in St. Louis; tough dick Donny Donahue of the Interstate Agency; and, most important, the long-running stories about Captain Steve MacBride and the ever-present local reporter, Kennedy, who frequently takes over a story and does as much crime solving as the official member of the police department.

  Nebel had two mystery novels published during his lifetime, Sleepers East (1934) and Fifty Roads to Town (1936). The Crimes of Richmond City, a powerful depiction of violence and corruption, has never before appeared in book form. It was published as five separate episodes in Black Mask in the issues of September 1928 through May 1929.

  Publishing novels in serial form was common for Black Mask in this era, as it was responsible for such important works as Dashiell Hammett’s first four novels, Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, The Maltese Falcon, and The Glass Key, as well as Paul Cain’s Fast One and many of Carroll John Daly’s books.

  Raw Law

  Frederick Nebel

  A city of graft and crime; a man ys buddy, a victim; then the deadly game of vengeance—and justice

  I

  APTAIN STEVE MacBRIDE was a tall square-shouldered man of forty more or less hard-bitten years. He had a long, rough-chiseled face, steady eyes, a beak of a nose, and a wide, firm mouth that years of fighting his own and others’ wills had hardened. His face shone ruddily, cleanly, as if it were used to frequent and vigorous contact with soap and water. For eighteen years he had been connected, in one capacity or another, with Richmond City’s police department, and Richmond City today is a somewhat hectic community of almost a hundred-thousand population.

  MacBride sat in his office at Police Headquarters. He sat at his shining oak desk, in a swivel chair, smoking a blackened briar pipe, with the latest copy of the Richmond City Free Press spread before him. In one corner a steam radiator clanked and hissed intermittently. There were a half dozen chairs lined against
the wall behind him. The floor was of cement, the ceiling was high and, like the walls, a light, impersonal tan. About the room there was something hollow and clean and efficient. About the borders of the two windows at MacBride’s left there were irregular frames of snow left by a recent blizzard. But the room was warm and, except for the clanking of the radiator, quite silent.

  Reading on, MacBride sometimes moved in his chair or took his pipe from his mouth to purse his lips, it seemed a little grimly and ironically. Once he muttered something behind clenched teeth, way down in the cavern of his throat. Presently he let the paper drop and sat back, drawing silently on his pipe and letting his eyes wander back and forth over the collection of photographs tacked on the bulletin board on the wall before him—photographs of men wanted for robbery, murder, and homicide. One of the telephones on his desk rang. He took off the receiver, listened, said, “Send him in.” Then he leaned back again and swung his chair to face the door.

  It opened presently, and a man neatly dressed in a blue overcoat and a gray fedora strolled in. A cigarette was drooping from one corner of his mouth. He had a young-old face, a vague smile, and the whimsical eyes of the wicked and wise.

  “Hello, Cap.” He kicked the door shut with his heel and leaned against it, indolently, as if he were a little weary—not in his bones, but with life.

  “Hello, Kennedy,” nodded MacBride. “Sit down.”

  “Thanks.”

  Kennedy dropped into a chair, unbuttoned his overcoat, but did not remove it.

  MacBride creaked in his chair, looked at the newspaper on his desk and said, with a brittle chuckle, “Thanks for the editorial.”

  “Don’t thank me, Mac.”

  “Your sheet’s trying to ride us, eh?”

  “Our business is to ride everybody we can.”

  “M-m-m. I know.”

  Kennedy knocked the ash from his cigarette. “Of course, it’s tough on you.” He smiled, shrugged. “I know your hands are tied.”