The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

by Penzler, Otto

  “I can show him Martin Penn all right,” I said. “Mr. Penn is now residing in the morgue. There’s a headline for your rag. Martin Penn was shot and killed two days ago in his New York apartment. He was killed before his brother Wilbur was, only nobody knew it. I’ll meet Harvey at the train. So long.”

  How I was going to pick John Harvey out of the welter getting off the Golden Arrow I didn’t know, but I made a try. I went up to Pennsy and tipped a porter to page John Harvey when the crowd came off the ramp. But I didn’t locate him in the crowd and no one answered the name. I had lunch at a drugstore fountain and then went downtown again.

  When I got there, Mr. Harvey was waiting for me.

  He was a little man in an old suit, his hair touched with gray, and he smoked cigarettes without touching them. The one I saw just hung in his mouth and he handled it wonderfully with his lips. He had a big mole on the right cheek.

  “Sure am glad to meet you, Mr. Dill,” John Harvey said. “I guess you don’t know how out-country editors kind of idolize the way you do things. When that Penn murder broke I said to myself, what a break it would be if Daffy Dill could help us out on the New York end.”

  “Well, I was helping you,” I said. “I didn’t wire you but I got out on the rounds and I telephoned you this morning and got Woolsey. Then I went up to the station to meet you.”

  “You went up to meet me?” he said. “I didn’t see you, and I’d have recognized you from your pictures, I think. I went out the cab way and got right in a cab. I’ve still got my luggage with me here.”

  I glanced down and saw he had two bags with him.

  “Well,” I said, “I suppose you’ve heard the news.”

  “I just arrived. I’ve heard nothing.”

  “Martin Penn is dead, shot and killed before your friend Wilbur ever was. Did you know a man named Fenwick Hanes?”

  “Of Babylon? Certainly I did. Nasty old coot. Used to hang around with Wilbur and Martin Penn and Maxwell Green. The four of them pulled together quite a while.”

  “He’s in New York,” I said. “Dead too.”

  Harvey stared at me. “Dead in New York? I saw him in Babylon on Wednesday.”

  “At the morgue,” I persisted grimly. “With a tag on his toe.”

  “My God,” he said huskily.

  “Now listen,” I said, “you’re supposed to go over to Police Headquarters. Lieutenant William Hanley wants to talk with you. He thinks you can give him some dope on the backgrounds of these corpses, and I think you can too. We need help. We’re stymied.” I watched him light a cigarette and he glanced down at the match as he did so, and I said, “The little brown fox jumped over the big high fence.”

  “Well,” said Harvey, looking up, “I’ll run down there then and help them out, and then I want to see you again, and get the story on this for my own paper. Will I find you here?”

  “You will,” I said, “as soon as you come back.”

  “May I leave my things here? I’ll put up at a hotel when I come back. I don’t know New York at all. Never been here before in my life.”

  “They’ll be right here,” I said.

  As soon as he had left, I telephoned TWA airlines and I said, “Did you have a plane leaving from Babylon, Iowa, yesterday morning at ten a.m.?”

  “No,” they said. “But the Des Moines plane left at ten a.m. and Des Moines is only twenty miles from Babylon. If you wanted to fly to New York, you’d run over to Des Moines and get the plane there.”

  “When did that ship come in?”

  “Three yesterday afternoon.”

  “Thanks very much.” I hung up and Dinah came over. I pointed at the grips and I said, “A very careless guy, my hollyhock. For instance, how would you get a TWA tag on your luggage if you’d come east on the Pennsy’s Golden Arrow?”

  “Simple, dolt,” she said. “It’s a tag from a previous trip.”

  “Could be,” I said, “but ain’t for one reason. Guy says he’s never been to New York before in his life. Tag says Destination N. Y. So?”

  “You’ve got something there,” Dinah said. “And you can have it.”

  “The little brown fox jumped over the big high fence,” I said.

  “Have you gone crazy?” Dinah said. “What has the fox got to do with the high cost of living?”

  “Not a thing,” I said. “But when I told John Harvey about the little fox, he didn’t seem to worry about it at all. Never even noticed I said it.”

  “Maybe he’s just polite.”

  “And on the other hand, maybe the laddy is deaf. He spoke with me all the time, watching my lips carefully. I gave him the fox business when his eyes were off my face, and he never heard it. He’s deaf. He reads the lips. He didn’t come in on the Golden Arrow. He came in on the Sky Chief yesterday, in time to bump off Fenwick Hanes last night at eight bells. And I’ll bet you dough he’s only sticking around to grab off someone else. He knocked off Wilbur Penn himself, and I’ll bet you a fin he was in town two days ago on Tuesday to slip the slug into Martin Penn up in Beeker Place. How? We see now.”

  I telephoned the Babylon Gazette again long distance and got hold of Woolsey once more. “This is Daffy Dill again,” I said. “I want some info, my friend, and for it I’ll promise to hand you the biggest scoop your rag ever printed, and you’ll have it on the streets before the Des Moines papers ever see it. Tell me one thing: where was John Harvey on Tuesday? He wasn’t in town, was he?”

  “Oh no,” Woolsey said. “John left Sunday afternoon to take a little fishing trip up in Michigan. He likes to go after muskellunge up there. He got back here Wednesday morning.”

  “Does a Maxwell Green live in Babylon?”

  Woolsey hesitated.

  “He used to, but he lives in New York now. Him and Martin Penn are lawyers together, somewhere in New York.”

  “That’s all I wanted to know,” I said. “Thanks.” I hung up.

  “All right, brainstorm,” Dinah Mason said dryly. “What’s up?”

  “Get me a telephone book,” I said, “and we’ll soon see.”

  Dinah threw hers over and I looked up Maxwell Green. He was there all right. He lived on West 56th Street and I gave him a ring.

  “Hello?” a voice said.

  “Maxwell Green?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of Babylon, Iowa?”

  “That’s right,” he said. “Who is this? Harvey?”

  “Yes.” I said it on the spur of the moment to see what would come.

  “Look here, Harvey,” Maxwell Green said heavily, “I told you I’d see you at eleven-thirty and it’s nearly that now. You said it was important enough for me to remain at home. Now you’d better get here and get here fast with your important matter. I haven’t got all day to waste on you.” He slammed up.

  Victim number four. And he didn’t even know it. “Hello, Poppa,” I said a few minutes later. “Is Harvey still there?”

  “Still here?” Poppa Hanley said. “He hasn’t been here yet.”

  Oh yes, I saw the gag nicely. Never been in New York before. Must have got lost. But meanwhile John Harvey was on his way to 56th Street to kill a man.

  “Hanley!” I snapped. “Get over here fast. Pick me up. Bring a rod. We’re going to stop another one! Now make it fast, Poppa, we’ve got no seconds to lose!” I gasped. “No—wait a minute, Poppa. No time. You haven’t time to pick me up. Meet you there!”

  I gave him the address, hung up and called Maxwell Green back. “Listen, Mr. Green,” I snapped, “and get it straight the first time. This is Daffy Dill of the New York Chronicle—”

  “No statement,” he snapped and hung up.

  The damned old fool. I rang him again but he wouldn’t answer.

  I got my faithful old grave-scratcher out of the drawer, tore downstairs and grabbed a cab. I waved a bill under the driver’s nose and we went north like a bat out of hell. We took the west side express highway up to 52nd and cut off and then doubled back. We made it damned fast.
When we pulled up in front of the building I saw that I had beaten Poppa Hanley there and I went in like a Roman ram.

  The doorbells said that Maxwell Green lived on the fourth floor. I tried the vestibule door but it was locked, so I broke the glass with my gun butt and opened the door from the inside. I went up the stairs like a madman, and I heard Poppa Hanley’s siren approaching down the street. It was a nice thing to hear, believe me.

  When I reached the fourth floor I was in a blind panic. I went from door to door looking for the name Green and finally found it and tried the knob. The door was locked.

  From across the hall I charged at that door and hit it with my shoulder. I weigh one eighty and I was glad of it then because I knocked that lock clean out of its socket, split that door in half and nearly rooked my shoulder.

  I didn’t fall. I was careful not to fall. I balanced my weight when I hit the door so that I was standing in a fixed position with my gun hand ready when I came to a stop.

  I was right.

  John Harvey was standing there. He had forced Mr. Maxwell Green into a chair and in Harvey’s hand was a .32 caliber Colt revolver with the hammer back and his index finger flexing on the trigger.

  I think if John Harvey had been able to hear, he might have shot me dead when I hit that door. But he couldn’t hear. He saw the expression on Maxwell Green’s face, and only because of that did he know something was amiss. By the time he turned, he was rattled, and when he saw me, he was more rattled.

  He fired twice at me before he had his gun all the way around. He put two bullets through the window, only one of them had an urn in front of it and there was a hell of a crash.

  I didn’t want to kill that guy because he knew too much that Hanley wanted to know in the way of explanation, but what can you do when someone is throwing lead at you? You don’t aim carefully down the barrel and then break a kneecap. You just keep fanning the trigger and aiming low from instinct and hoping your next one will put him down. But he stands there too long; you think he’s never going to fall. He stands there and you see the red spit of his gun and a bullet cracks by your ear. Close, that means. They only crack when they’re close to your ear. Otherwise, it’s a buzz and that means it’s away from you.

  Harvey went to one knee after my third shot and I was already down, hit in the side. It was as though the dog had bit the hand that fed it, for Harvey had not hit me. Maxwell Green had. He picked up a book end and flung it at Harvey and missed and hit me. He nearly broke a pair of ribs.

  The next thing I knew Harvey was limping past me and had reached the door. I couldn’t do a thing about it. I was trying to get a breath into my lungs and couldn’t. The damned brass book end had knocked the wind clean out of me and I just couldn’t manage to get a breath of fresh air.

  Harvey made the door at exactly the same time that Poppa Hanley made it. They were both going in opposite directions. I tried to yell to Poppa to stop the lug, but you don’t have to tell Poppa what to do. He can scent trouble very easily, and he can scent a killer even more facilely.

  Poppa just pulled up without a word and rapped Harvey across the jaw with a gun barrel and then followed it with a lovely left hook which dropped the Babylon editor right in my lap where I rapped him one more for not getting in the way of that book end and getting clipped with it instead of me, who is frail and fragile when it comes to such things.

  That was the business. Harvey wasn’t out and he made a try at his gun, tried to jam it into his ear and pull the trigger, but Poppa kicked it out of his hand and growled, “Can’t face the Musica, eh?”

  Which, I thought later, was really a very good crack, and I told Dinah so when I saw her. Maxwell Green seemed to know what it was all about.

  “Yeah,” Poppa Hanley told him, “the first one he knocked off was Martin Penn. He came to New York on Tuesday instead of taking a fishing trip as he said, and he bumped Martin. Then he went back home and bumped Wilbur Penn, Martin’s brother. He telegraphed Daffy merely to insure his being in Babylon when the body was discovered. Having done that, he told his assistant he was taking the train for this town. Instead, took the plane, got here early, knocked off Fenwick Hanes, and he planned to knock you off this morning.”

  “Why, he called me last night and made an appointment with me this morning,” Green exploded. “To kill me!”

  “That’s right,” I said, “and you’re a lousy shot with a book end, incidentally.”

  “Knowing all that,” Poppa Hanley said, “have you got any ideas on why this deaf plug-ugly was pulling this round robin of homicides? Not just to keep the police department on its toes, certainly.”

  Maxwell Green sat back in his chair and sighed. “Yes,” he said. “I think I know the answer.”

  “Then give, mister. I want to wrap this thing up for the D.A. before this guy thinks up some excuse a dumb jury will like.”

  Maxwell Green said slowly, “Wilbur Penn was the man whom Harvey wanted to get.”

  “All right,” I said. “But you and Martin Penn and Fenwick Hanes were all too smart. I mean, you knew that Harvey would be the one to kill Wilbur. Three wise men of Babylon. So to kill Wilbur Penn, John Harvey had to kill four men.”

  Green nodded. “But I don’t doubt he would have enjoyed the extra work involved,” he said bitterly. “Four years ago, John Harvey and Wilbur Penn were in love with the same woman, but she married Harvey. Well, that was all right. They had a youngster, a little girl, cute little trick. But it seems that Margaret Harvey, John Harvey’s wife, came into some money. Her uncle left her nearly one hundred thousand dollars. And Harvey began to run around with other women.

  “Next thing, Margaret Harvey was found dead. Gas in the kitchen. Wilbur was county attorney at Babylon then, and when he found Margaret, he also found a live canary in the same kitchen. Now, a canary doesn’t live through a gassing that kills a grown woman.

  “Wilbur could have put Harvey in the electric chair, but he didn’t. He didn’t because of Margaret’s daughter. Wilbur got quite fond of her. And Margaret’s will left her money to her daughter, so John Harvey had outfoxed himself.

  “Wilbur told Harvey the truth, told him that if he ever stepped out of line again, or ever tried to regain custody of the daughter—whom, incidentally, Wilbur took over, with Harvey’s consent, of course—he, Wilbur, would prosecute Harvey to the full extent of the law. And if anything happened to Wilbur, the rest of us, all former law partners, would take up the task.”

  “I get the setup,” I said. “This little rat without any hearing got desperate for money. He wanted to get his daughter back, contest the will, and get some of the mazuma. To do that, he had to knock off Wilbur, but he also had to knock off the three men Wilbur Penn had put wise to the mess.”

  Green nodded.

  Well, it was easy to prove. I had to make a trip to Babylon and it wasn’t as bad a town as it sounds. Harvey’s daughter, little Meg, was a cute trick, and she was too young to know what was going on. She’s living now with Uncle Maxwell, as she says, and John Harvey is only a memory.

  Dinah still kids me about the allergy I have for book ends, but if you’ve ever been cracked in the ribs with a well-flung one—or maybe you’re happily married—you’ll bear with me and understand.

  The Adventure of the

  Voodoo Moon

  Eugene Thomas

  DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY, one of the most successful of the mystery pulps, liked to run two or three true crime stories each issue. Easily one of the most popular featured a female spy named Vivian Legrand, who was no sweetheart. Beautiful, intelligent, and resourceful, she was also a liar, blackmailer, and thief who was responsible for her own father’s death. Her exploits, which were reported by Eugene Thomas (1894-?), began to appear so regularly that doubt was cast upon their veracity—with good reason. Without apology, DFW conxin-ued to run stories about the woman dubbed “The Lady from Hell,” now acknowledging that the tales were fictional. Were any of the stories true? Was there really a woman na
med Vivian Legrand? There is little evidence either way, but only the most gullible would accept the notion that all the stories published as true had any genesis in reality.

  Thomas, the author of five novels, created another series character, Chu-Seng, typical of many other fictional Yellow Peril villains. A Chinese deaf-mute with paranormal abilities, he works with the Japanese in their espionage activities against the United States in Death Rides the Dragon (1932), The Dancing Dead (1933), and Yellow Magic (1934). He is thwarted by Bob Nicholson, an American agent, Lai Chung, a Mongol prince, and a team of lamas who counteract Chu-Seng’s powers with their white magic.

  “The Adventure of the Voodoo Moon” first appeared in the February 1, 1936, issue of DFW.

  The Adventure of the Voodoo Moon

  Eugene Thomas

  And then she saw Wylie. He was tied to a post in the clearing.

  Undaunted in the Face of Outlawed

  Death, Vivian Legrand Makes

  Strange Magic—and Beats a

  Rascal at His Own Game

  CHAPTER I

  CROOKS ON HOLIDAY

  THE LADY FROM HELL was standing on the upper deck of the little inter-island steamer as it neared the coast of Haiti. Her crown of flaming red hair was beaten back from her smooth forehead and her white dress modeled tightly to her body by the strong trade wind.

  She and her companion in crime, Adrian Wylie, had just completed one of the most amazing coups in their whole career, and were now on a vacation. The Lady from Hell had been emphatic on that point before leaving Havana.