The Big Midget Murders

by Craig Rice

  She nodded silently.

  “What time did you get here? What time did he leave?”

  “We got here about one o’clock, I guess. And what business is it of yours if he did stay for a couple of hours? I like Allswell.”

  “So do we,” Helene said, “and we’d like to see him get out of jail. But the cops seem to think he murdered the midget.”

  “Oh no!” Angela Doll said. “No, he wouldn’t do a thing like that. Why, he’s as gentle as a child. You mean a bunch of dumb cops have gone and tossed him in the can? I’ll fix them!”

  Malone said, “Keep your shirt on.” He reflected that was hardly the phrase to use to a strip tease artist, paused, looked at her thoughtfully, and went on, “And speaking of shirts. Am I behind the times, or is that ensemble you’re wearing the latest thing in morning clothes?”

  “Oh, this,” Angela Doll said casually, glancing down at the lamé evening dress and pulling a corner of the evening cloak over her shoulder. “I slept in it. It does look a little odd at this time of day, doesn’t it? I just couldn’t be bothered to undress and go to bed after Allswell left last night. As a matter of fact”—she looked up at Jake, her eyes suddenly sharp and bright—“I don’t know what time it was when he left, because I was asleep. I know it was a couple of hours he was there, but I don’t know exactly when he left.” She looked anxiously at Malone. “You’re a lawyer. You get him out of this.”

  “I expect to,” Malone said sourly. “And all I expect to get for it is gratitude. Meantime”—he frowned at her—“don’t you talk to anybody except us.”

  “Oh, I won’t,” she promised. “Not even reporters.”

  “Especially not reporters,” Jake said.

  She sighed. “It’s all right about photographers, though, isn’t it?” she asked. “I mean, if they insist?”

  “If any photographers insist on getting a picture of you,” Jake said with a grim smile, “don’t struggle.”

  Angela Doll smiled back at him understandingly. “I guess I’d better go and get my clothes changed, in that case,” she reflected. “I should have changed them before I came down here, but you know how it is. I woke up, and right away I got to thinking about that dirty trick the midget pulled last night, and I got so mad I just came right down here to see you, without bothering about a thing. That little—” She began to blaze with anger again, suddenly caught herself and burst into a laugh. “Just the same, I wish I’d seen it. He was one of the meanest little bastards I ever knew in my life, but he was a hell of a good entertainer. That take-off on my strip must have been a riot.”

  “I didn’t think so,” Malone said. “I thought he should have been ashamed of himself for even thinking of it.”

  Angela Doll frowned at him coldly. “The trouble with you lawyers,” she told him, “is that you don’t understand art.” She rose, moved gracefully over to the door and stood posed there, looking like a small china angel. “Oh, Mr. Justus,” she said, in tones that should have been accompanied on a harp, “what I really came down to ask you about”—she put her head on one side and smiled at him—“you know I really should have been featured on the bill at the Casino all the time. And now that the midget’s dead—”

  Jake shook his head. “I’m sorry, dear,” he said gently. “But I’m getting another act to replace the midget. For a class night club—”

  Angela Doll turned an electric green with rage, and in a shrill scream went through the entire routine beginning with Little Eva at the age of six and ending with the seven hundred and fifty dollars it had cost to have the birthmark removed. She ended by shrieking, “Class night club! I’ve seen more class in the gents’ room of a grind house,” diving into the hall, and slamming the door.

  She left a vacuum-like silence in the room. It was a good two minutes before Malone said, “I wish I’d seen her as Little Eva.”

  Helene rose slowly, stretched, picked up a cigarette, and lit it deliberately. “Maybe I have a one-track mind,” she said thoughtfully, “but I keep getting back to the same thing. Malone, would you guess that Ruth Rawlson could be awake and stirring by this time?”

  The little lawyer shook his head. “She might be awake,” he said, “but I’ll bet the last hair on my head she isn’t stirring.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Helen said. “In that case”—She regarded the end of her cigarette as though it were a crystal ball. “Yes, I do have a one-track mind. Artie Clute knew the midget was dead. How? If Ruth Rawlson did tell Angela the midget was dead, she must have done it before she passed out last night. In that case, how did Ruth Rawlson know about it? And if Ruth Rawlson didn’t tell Angela, then—how does Angela know?”

  The two men stared at her helplessly.

  “I see what you meant about the dropped stitches,” she said to Malone. “And I don’t blame you for looking right now as though you might start unraveling any minute.”

  “Damn it!” Jake it. “All I’m trying to do is to run a night club. And all Malone’s trying to do is get his client out of being jailed for a murder he didn’t do. And all you’re doing is—”

  “All I’m doing,” Helene interrupted him, “is trying to find out about Annette Ginnis. Malone—”

  Someone knocked at the door. Helene moved between it and the two men.

  “I don’t care who it is,” she declared. “This time I’m going to have my question answered. Malone, did she get married or didn’t she?”

  “No,” Malone said. “No, she didn’t.”

  “All right,” Helene snapped. “Now, the second question. What’s happened to her? What’s the matter, that she’s sending for you at four o’clock in the morning?”

  “For the love of Mike!” Jake exploded. “All this hasn’t anything to do with the midget.”

  The knock at the door was repeated, a little more thunderously.

  “But it does,” Malone said suddenly. “It has everything to do with the midget. Because the trouble with Annette is that she’s been scared right up to the point of a nervous breakdown.”

  “But what’s scared her?” Helene demanded.

  “The midget,” Malone said in a hoarse, almost screaming voice.

  Helene caught her breath. “Then why don’t you tell her he’s dead?”

  “She knows he’s dead,” Malone said. His face had turned a sickly white.

  A third knock at the door set all the ornaments in the room to trembling.

  “She knows he’s dead,” Malone repeated. “That’s it. Now she’s more afraid of him than ever.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The man who had been knocking at the door turned out to be Pendleton Reddick.

  His impeccably tailored dinner jacket had been changed to a faultlessly draped set of tweeds, and his scarf-tie was knotted with exactly the right degree of carelessness. But there was the beginning of a growth of beard blue against the pale skin of his square jaw, and his dark, deep-set eyes were burning with fatigue.

  “Where is she?” he demanded hoarsely, skipping the formality of a greeting.

  Jake blinked. “If you mean Angela Doll,” he began, “she just—”

  “Betty,” Pen Reddick said. “Betty Royal. She isn’t here, is she? Then where has she gone?”

  “The answer to the first,” Helene said calmly, “is, obviously not. The answer to the second is, we don’t know. Sit down and have a cigarette, and don’t look so alarmed.”

  Pen Reddick obeyed, substituting looking puzzled for alarmed. “But where else would she go?” he asked helplessly.

  “For the love of Mike,” Jake said. “Chicago is full of places where she might have gone. The beauty parlor, or a milliner’s, or—”

  “No,” Pen Reddick said. “It isn’t anything simple like that. Because she was terribly upset over this business last night. More than you’d expect her to be over just—her brother’s elopement. And when I left her at her door, she asked me to come back for her at ten this morning. I did, but she’d gone out hours before, and
she’d left a note for me saying just that she’d found out something.” He rubbed a hand over his forehead. “I thought she must have come here. But now I don’t know what to think.”

  Malone frowned. “I seem to have missed something here. What’s all this about Betty Royal being upset about her brother’s elopement? And who did he elope with?”

  “According to you, he didn’t elope with anybody,” Helene said. “Because he was going to elope with Annette Ginnis.”

  “This is where I came in,” the lawyer groaned.

  “This is where you’re going to come in,” Helene said firmly. “Because this was no ordinary elopement. Tell him the whole story, Pen.”

  Pen Reddick did. When he reached a description of the man Ned Royal had been seen with throughout the evening, Malone stopped him with a scowl.

  “That sounds like one of the Hook’s boys. But Annette said—” He paused.

  “Go on, Malone,” Helene urged.

  Malone shook his head. “Later. What’s the rest of it, Mr. Reddick?”

  “That’s about all,” Pen Reddick said. “Except that apparently the elopement didn’t come off, because when I went back to the Royal house this morning at ten, I found out Ned had arrived home, with no wife. So I don’t see—” He looked up anxiously. “Maybe I’m imagining things. But it seems to me there’s something behind all this that’s—that’s not nice.”

  “You’re damned right,” Malone said, chewing savagely at his cigar. “If that was one of the Hook’s boys with young Royal last night, then I admit I don’t know what the angle is. Because while I couldn’t get much out of Annette Ginnis this morning, all I did get out of her was, ‘The midget, the midget, the midget’.”

  “Oh God!” Pen Reddick said, burying his face in his hands. “He seems to have been mixed up with everything.” He looked up at Jake. “Look. There’s something else. Do you know where the midget would have kept his private papers?”

  Jake stared at him for a moment, puzzled. “I’m not sure. He had a box, a leather-covered metal strong box—”

  “That’s it,” Pen Reddick said excitedly. “Where is it?”

  “In the safe at the Casino,” Jake said slowly. “I suppose the police will be coming after it as soon as I get there to open the safe.”

  “No!” the young man exclaimed. “That would be terrible! Listen, Mr. Justus. The police—nobody—must get that box. Nobody! Do you understand?”

  “For Pete’s sake!” Jake said mildly. “What’s in it?”

  “I—” Pen Reddick looked at him imploringly. “You’ll have to trust me, Mr. Justus. Let me go with you, and we’ll get that box out of the safe. We’ll open it together, and—I’ll let you examine the contents. I’ll—have to trust you too. If you don’t agree with me that—whatever is in it should be destroyed, I’ll let you do whatever you want to with it—”

  “Come now,” Malone said. “If it’s something the midget’s been blackmailing you with, then the chances are you murdered him.”

  The young man managed a wan smile. “If I had,” he said, “don’t you think I would have told you?”

  Malone thought it over for a minute. “Come to think of it,” he said pleasantly, “I guess you would. You wouldn’t have confided it to anybody else, but you’re smart enough to know a good lawyer when you see one.” He turned to Jake. “I think you ought to take up the young man’s proposition. Especially as there may be other things too in that box—things you ought to know about.”

  Jake nodded slowly. “All right. I’ll do it. But—damn it,” he sighed, “there’s so confounded many things to do, and all of them need to be done at once.”

  Helene tried to look like an executive. “They’ll all get done. Malone, you’ve got to go and see if your patient has waked up yet.”

  “Oh Lord yes,” Malone said. “I should have been there hours ago.”

  “I’ll go with Pen,” Jake said, “and Malone can go there, and you can get a few hours’ nap.”

  Helene shook her head. “I’m going to see Annette. She knows me and she likes me and she trusts me, and I bet I can get things out of her that neither of you ever could.”

  “It’s not a bad idea,” Malone said. “If you could find out the connection between the midget and Max Hook, and why she was so deathly afraid of the midget—”

  “Leave it to me,” Helene said confidently. She found an almond-green scarf that matched the soft wool of her dress, and knotted it skillfully over her gleaming pale hair. “And meantime, if any of us happen to stumble on who murdered the midget, romp right down and get poor Allswell out of jail, because I have a hunch he doesn’t like it down there.”

  “Hell,” Malone growled. “With everything else on my mind, I have to have that too.”

  “Don’t complain,” Helene said. “He’s your client.” She slid into her fur coat and picked up her gloves. “I’ll meet you all back here at twelve o’clock.”

  They rode down the elevator together, parting at the front door of the hotel. Front-page headlines of the papers for sale in the lobby had complained about unseasonable weather. Now, out on the sidewalk, Jake looked at the grass in the parkway, already turning green, at the trees that were beginning to bud, and at the snow which insisted on falling, incongruously, on them.

  “Ah, April!” Malone declaimed.

  “Careful of the walks, Mr. Justus,” the doorman said. “It’s bad underfoot.”

  “It’s worse overhead,” Jake observed. “Oh well, it’s only a little way. We’ll walk.”

  He stood for a moment watching Helene and Malone, headed down toward Oak Street, and wondering if any girl in the world had legs as beautiful as Helene’s. Indeed he would have stood there, imagining her, long after she had vanished, if Pendleton Reddick hadn’t muttered something about the need for hurry. Then with a long sigh, he started up the street in the direction of the Casino, the young man swinging along at his side.

  Pen Reddick glanced at him. Jake’s lean, pleasantly homely face was pale and set in grim, hard lines.

  “I don’t think you’ll regret this, Mr. Justus,” he said, “once you know what it’s all about.”

  Jake shrugged his shoulders. “I have a hunch I’m going to regret everything connected with this business,” he said gloomily, “before I’m through with it. And this blasted box is the least of my worries right now.”

  “It’s not the least of mine,” Pen Reddick said.

  “So it seems,” Jake said. “I thought you were so all-fired worried about finding Betty Royal.”

  “I am,” Pen Reddick told him. “It just happens this has to come first.”

  Jake walked half a block in silence before he spoke again. “I suppose the midget was managing a little quiet blackmail, as a sideline. I wondered where all that extra dough of his came from.”

  Pen Reddick shook his head. “No, it wasn’t blackmail.”

  “But this business of the box”—Jake frowned. “And he certainly was spending more money than he made as an entertainer.”

  “It wasn’t blackmail,” Pen Reddick repeated grimly. “It was something more damnable—something deadlier.”

  Jake lifted his eyebrows, said nothing.

  “You’ll have to wait till you see what’s in that box,” Pen Reddick told him. He drew a long breath.

  Jake waited a moment or so before he tried again. “Have you known the midget long?”

  Pen Reddick smiled with one side of his face. “A surprisingly long time. And yet I’ve never spoken to him in my life.”

  Jake decided to save any more questions until the box had been located and opened. He did steal a look at the young man out of the corner of his eye. Pendleton Reddick III, heir to the Reddick fortune and family name, the one as considerable as the other. He thought of Pendleton Reddick II—this one’s father—who had inherited the fortune made in Civil War days and added to it, who had been an Ambassador to England, and who had accumulated one of the most notable collections of Oriental art in
the world. He thought of Pendleton Reddick’s mother, a famous Virginia belle, of whose two sisters one had become a leader of New York society, and the other a Duchess in England. Now, Pendleton Reddick III—an orphan, handsome, intelligent, gifted, and rich. What in the name of heaven could be the connection between him and Jay Otto, the Big Midget?

  “I have the damnedest feeling,” Pen Reddick said suddenly, under his breath, “that we’re not taking this little stroll unaccompanied.” He walked on steadily, his face a mask.

  Jake glanced around, saw no one.

  “Someone in a green overcoat,” the young man said in the same casual tone. “He was across the street when we left the hotel. As a matter of fact, I think he followed me there. He just popped into the cigar store on the corner, and I suspect that when we turn into the next street, he’ll come right along.”

  “It could be the police,” Jake suggested.

  Pen Reddick nodded. “I thought of that. And in that case”—He paused.

  “If he is tailing you, instead of me,” Jake said, “maybe you’d better not come along when I open the safe.”

  “That’s what I was wondering,” Pen Reddick said.

  Jake thought for a minute. “Look here,” he said suddenly. “At this next corner we’ll say goodbye, and you go straight back to my hotel and wait for me in the lobby. I’ll make sure that no one’s watching me when I go in the Casino, and if there isn’t I’ll just open the safe, get the box, stick it in a briefcase, grab a cab, and beat it back to the hotel. Then we can go up to our apartment and open up the box.”

  Pen Reddick nodded. “Good idea.” He walked on to the corner, paused there, shook hands with Jake and wished him goodbye as though not expecting to see him again for a month, turned sharply and strode back in the direction of Goethe street.

  Jake waved a farewell to him, and turned into the last half-block that led to the Casino.

  He unlocked the side door of the Casino, let himself in, and turned on the light. It was a dismal, shivery place at that hour of the day. The cleaners had finished their work and gone home, and he was alone. For the first time he wished that it wasn’t so big.