The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original)

by Unknown

  Three hours later I figured he was bedded for the night, and went to a cheap hotel, adjusted my disguise in the washroom and got a room. At daylight I was back on the job in front of the Mintner Arms. My man came out at eight and went into a barber shop and got the works. At nine-thirty he took his complexion out into the open air and headed for the fashionable jewelry district.

  I was at the counter in Redfern’s Jewel Shoppe looking at the most expensive stones in the case when he made his spiel to old man Redfern. Five caustic comments on stones handed me had ensured the respectful silence of the clerk who was showing me the stones, and I got most of the spiel.

  The sheik introduced himself as Carl Schwartz, held out his hand, grasped Redfern’s and worked his arm up and down like a pump handle, reeling out his talk in the meantime. It sounded good.

  He was the representative, the special solicitor, of the Down Town Merchants’ Exhibit, and they were putting on a great jewel exhibit. All of the leading stores were to be represented. Space was to be sold by the foot, the exhibitors furnishing their own clerks and their own guards. Ten policemen would be in constant charge of the crowd. Admission would be by invitation only. The Exhibit would arrange to have the invitations given to the most influential and wealthy society leaders. The Exhibit would furnish music, a free talk each day by an expert on the intrinsic value of gems, the best mountings, the methods of judging stones, the appropriate gems for each occasion, and give photographic lectures on the latest mountings from Europe. The Exhibit would furnish an armored car to take the gems and the guards from each store to the place of exhibit. The Exhibit would also furnish daily flowers for decorative purposes.

  After that he let go of Redfern’s hand and produced a diagram of floor space. He was a glib talker, a convincing salesman, and Redfern was falling. The jewel business was pretty quiet, and an exhibit like that would go over big, provided they could get the society women to come, and bring their check books with them.

  “Now, Mr. Redfern, I don’t want you to say no right now, and I don’t want you to say yes. I want you to think it over, to study the diagram, to look up my references. Then, if I can convince you that we will absolutely have the cream of the cream there on the opening day; if I can get one of the society leaders to act as hostess on the opening days; if I can convince you that your exhibit will sell over twenty thousand dollars gross the first day, then will you sign up? The space runs from one hundred dollars a day to three hundred, depending on location. The first day we’ll have the society leaders. We’ll get a big write-up. The next day we’ll let down the bars a bit, and finally we’ll let in the New-Rich, the splurgers, the spenders, who’ll come to get in on the social advertising, to get their pictures in the paper, and they’ll buy. That’ll be understood before they get the invitations.”

  Redfern placed a fatherly hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  “It can’t be done, but have a cigar. Come into my private office. What are you doing for lunch? Let’s look at that space chart again.…”

  They moved off, and I waited five minutes and then got in an argument with the clerk, and stumped out of the door, pounding my cane, working my beard, a picture of white-haired indignation—one of the old boys who knew what he didn’t want and wasn’t going to be Smart-Alecked into buying it.

  I had food for thought.

  They would make money out of the exhibit alone, perhaps ten thousand dollars—perhaps not. But did they intend to make money out of the exhibit? Did they intend to get the cream of all the jewels in the city under one roof, a roof which had been especially prepared to receive them, and then make a grand haul which would take the best of every jewelry store in the city?

  It would be a wonderful thing, a supercrime, and if that was the game there were brains and money back of it. But how could they swing it? Each store would furnish its own guard. There would be an armored truck to transport the exhibits. There would be special policemen on duty. The insurance companies would be on the job. There would be a dead-line for crooks established. There would be watchmen, spectators, guards, police, and the exhibit would be in the crowded downtown section.

  Carl Schwartz made three calls that day.

  The evening papers featured the new jewelry exhibit, mentioned the prominence of the social leaders who would conduct the opening, hinted that invitations were confined to those whose standing was beyond question, and that others of the outer shell were bidding high for invitations. It was a good bit of publicity.

  That evening I tailed Schwartz. He was a cinch after one got to know his habits. Always at the start he took great precautions to see that he wasn’t followed, and then, when he had convinced himself there was no one on his wind, he went simply about his business without so much as a glance at his backtrail.

  At eleven he was at The Purple Cow, a cabaret and night club of the wilder sort, and there he was joined by the girl I had lost, the girl I knew as Maude Enders, the girl with the mole on her left hand. That was the break I had been looking for.

  By that time I was willing to hazard a bet that the girl was living at the Brookfield Apartments. If Schwartz was in touch with her every night that would explain his visit to the Brookfield the night before.

  I knew this girl as a member of the gang of Icy-Eyes, the master crook. I knew that she was a close worker, an inner lieutenant, and somewhere along the line she would report to the man himself. Was Schwartz a crook? Going to Moe Silverstein’s would indicate that he was. Perhaps he was merely being played by the girl with the mole. Icy-Eyes had the girl with the mole under his thumb. There was the matter of that murder I had stumbled on.… Perhaps Maude Enders hadn’t killed that man, but the simple facts of the case would look pretty black before a jury, and Icy-Eyes had those facts, had planted witnesses who would see and hear. Maude Enders would do as he said or …

  I knew the girl had the eye of a hawk when it came to penetrating disguises, and I had enough of a lead for one night. I sauntered back to my hotel without hanging around The Purple Cow.

  At the hotel I got a shock. The police were on my trail. I knew it even before I got in the lobby. There were too many people hanging around the front of the hotel. There was the car with the red spot-light on the right-hand side. I ducked in an alley and slipped off my disguise. I had another concealed in a little bag under my left armpit, a disguise that was good enough to fool the police.

  I slipped into the lobby and listened. There was no doubt of it. The clerk was explaining volubly as he took back my room key. I got a glimpse of the number as it was hung back on the board.

  “He’ll probably be in any time now,” said the clerk.

  The flat foot who was holding him under the hypnotic stare of the police department’s best glare shifted his cigar and tried to look tough.

  “Give me the office when he shows up. We’ve a straight tip on this thing.”

  I sauntered over and sat in the lobby behind a palm tree and did some thinking. I hadn’t been followed when I came to the hotel. My disguise would fool the police. Somewhere I had slipped. Probably there had been someone watching Schwartz, and that someone had picked me up as I took a hand in the game. After all, I was playing against a big combination, a clever combination, and they were pretty keen to have me out of the way. The police in California had nothing on me, but with my record they didn’t need much. Just the faintest bit of circumstantial evidence, and they’d have me before a jury, and the jury would take one look at my past record, and the verdict would be in inside of ten minutes.

  I went out, took off my disguise so that I was myself once more, and set my feet toward the Brookfield Apartments. I was just a little hot under the collar. I’d respected my immunity in California, and hadn’t gone after other people’s property. As a result the California police, the California crooks didn’t know the real Ed Jenkins. I’d only bestirred myself when there was something in the wind, when someone had tried to frame something on me, and then, nine times out of ten, I’d handled the
thing so smoothly, and kept in the background so entirely that the crook who had got his didn’t know that the peculiar coincidences which had betrayed him were really engineered by the man he was trying to frame.

  It wasn’t difficult to get the girl with the mole located. It took ten dollars and five minutes. That mole on her left hand was a big help. She had come in alone fifteen minutes ago.

  I went to her apartment, and selected a pass key before the door. It was probably a little ungentlemanly to walk into a girl’s apartment that way, particularly when she might be retiring, but I couldn’t very well stand in the hall and carry on a conversation through the closed door, telling the whole world the message I was going to deliver to that girl.

  The second key did the trick, the lock slipped back and I was inside. The room I entered was illuminated by a silk-shaded reading lamp, furnished after the manner of furnished apartments, and filled with the odor of some subtle perfume. There was no one in the room, but there came the sound of rustling garments from a little dressing closet that opened off of the back end.

  I walked in toward the light.

  “Come in, Ed Jenkins, draw up a chair. I’ll be with you as soon as I have my kimono on.”

  It was the voice of the girl with the mole, and she was in the dressing closet. She couldn’t see me. How did she know who I was? It was too many for me. This gang was more confoundedly clever than I’d given it credit for, but I wouldn’t show surprise.

  “Take your time,” I said. “You got my card?”

  If she was going to act smart I’d pretend I’d sent up a card and see what that got me.

  It got me a laugh, a low, rippling, throaty laugh.

  “No, Ed, I didn’t; but after I saw you at The Purple Cow this evening, and after you had to fit two keys to the door in order to get it open, I didn’t need any card. In fact I rather expected you. The others thought you’d spend the night in jail, but I knew you better.”

  With that she walked out, a rose-colored kimono clinging to her youthful form, one bare arm outstretched and her soft, white hand held gracefully out.

  I took the hand and raised it to my lips.

  “Why the sudden deference?” she asked.

  “Merely a recognition of your cleverness,” I answered. “You know, Maude, I should hate to have to kill you—after all.”

  “Yes,” she rippled, “I should hate to have you.”

  I bowed. “About the murder of R. C. Rupert. I happened to stumble across some witnesses, some witnesses who saw a girl with a mole running frantically down the stairs just about the time of the killing. They claim they could identify the woman if they should see her again.”

  Her hand went to her throat, her face white.

  “Ed,” she gasped, “Ed … It wasn’t you! You didn’t do that job?”

  There was such genuine emotion, such horror in her tone, that I was puzzled. My whole plan of action began to dissolve into nothing.

  “I kill him?” I said. “I never saw the man in my life. I had thought you killed him.”

  She shook her head, her eyes wide.

  “I came into the apartment just after he had been struck down. In fact the blow was delivered just as I stepped inside the door. It was dark, and by the time I found a light I saw what had happened, and then I knew I had walked into a trap. For once I lost my head and dashed down the stairs, and there was that man and woman coming up, and then I knew, knew that they were there to see me as I burst from the apartment, knew that some people wanted to hold a murder charge over my head—and now when you sought to use that club I thought that it was you.”

  I looked her over narrowly. She was one woman I couldn’t read. She might have been telling the truth, but a jury wouldn’t believe her. I wasn’t sure that I believed her. I had followed her that night, and she had left my apartment, gone to this flat, entered the door, and then there had been a blow and a gasping cry, the sound of a fall, and she had come tearing out. R. C. Rupert had been stabbed, and he hadn’t so much as raised a hand to protect himself. There was no sign of a struggle, just the man, the knife and the blood.

  And while I studied her, she studied me, studied me in just the same way, searchingly, wonderingly, seeking to penetrate to my thoughts. It was masterly acting.

  I waved my hand.

  “We’ll forget about that, only I know where those witnesses are. It is only incidental, anyway.

  “You were with me when I was taken to the head of your gang. In fact you took me there, and you saw him hand me an envelope containing papers, papers which were to be my reward for opening a safe. There were two papers missing from that collection. I played fair and earned the papers, and I got shortchanged. I want you to do this for me. Get me into the hangout of this crook who is the head of the crime trust. Let me talk with him.”

  She looked at me narrowly.

  “Ed, I believe you’d kill him.”

  I looked her squarely in the eyes.

  “I’ll kill him if he so much as tries to use those papers.”

  She laughed, a rippling laugh of good-natured amusement.

  “What a wonderful actor you are, Ed! You know you wouldn’t, know you couldn’t, and yet you almost look as though you would. The head of that crime trust, as you call it, is too well protected, protected by money, position, power, pull, and by the fact that no one knows him. In all the underworld there are only two people who can get to that man at will.”

  “And you are one?”

  “Yes, Ed. I am one.”

  “And you’ll take me?”

  She laughed again and shook her head.

  “Certainly not. You don’t want me to. You’re really just running a big bluff, trying to frighten that man from using those papers. Listen, Ed, it can’t be done. He knows no fear—knows no mercy. He is planning to use those papers and use them he will. He can afford to ignore you because you are helpless, but you mustn’t make any trouble or you will go out—like a candle.”

  I thought for a bit. She was lying to me, stringing me along. The man did fear me, or he wouldn’t have put the police on my trail, wouldn’t have sent Squint Dugan with a gun to get revenge. It hadn’t been Dugan who had located my apartment. It had been a far shrewder man than the loud-mouthed killer. Why should the girl lie to me, why taunt me with my helplessness? When a woman taunts a man with being helpless she usually gets him into a condition of blind rage. Did she want to get me so worked up that I would kill old Icy-Eyes, would shoot him down as soon as I came face to face with him? Did she plan to do that and thereby remove the man who held a murder charge over her head?

  I could not tell. Women are peculiar; and she had known I was coming, had planned her story, had donned an elaborate negligee, and was sitting there beneath the silk-shaded lamp, her rose-colored kimono drawn apart, revealing a glimpse of lace, an expanse of gleaming silk hose, and was laughing at me, her bare arm toying about beneath the gleaming light, her red lips parted in a smile as she taunted me with my inability to accomplish anything definite.

  I arose and bowed. Again I took her hand and raised it to my lips.

  “What for this time?” she asked.

  “Respect again, m’lady. You seek to have me remove a man you fear. You are clever, and I salute you for your cleverness.”

  Her face fell.

  “Ed, you are clever—clever as hell.”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “That is something I won’t argue about; I admit it. When a woman pays me compliments I admit them and become twice as cautious as before. Here is something you can do, though. Tell this icy-eyed master crook of yours that until he has returned those papers to me his life is not safe. More, you can tell him that he can’t pull a single crime of any magnitude and get away with it.

  “I shall be watching the underworld, and I will balk him in any crime he tries to pull off if it’s worthwhile, and if it’s a small, petty crime I’ll just dump enough monkey-wrenches into the machinery to throw out a gear here and th
ere. Tell him that.”

  There was a strange light in her eyes, an inscrutable light.

  “You mean that, Ed?”

  I nodded.

  For a long minute she studied my face.

  “If that’s the case, leave by the back entrance. There is a car parked in front with gunmen in it. You are to be killed as you step on the sidewalk.”

  I could feel my face redden.

  “You said I was clever,” I told her, “and yet you think you have to warn me of that! Bah! As soon as you said that you’d rather expected me, that the ‘others’ had thought I’d spend the night in jail, but that you knew me better, you gave me my cue to vanish by the rear door. That showed that you had told the others about recognizing me at The Purple Cow, showed that I had been discussed, and that you had said I would probably come to call on you.

  “The others thought I would spend the night in jail because they had located my hotel. When they realized that I was on guard, that I knew of their plans, knew that the police had visited my room, then they knew you were right, and they would have a closed car waiting. I appreciate the warning, but don’t again tell me of the obvious.”

  With that I bowed my good-nights and left her, and as I stepped out into the corridor there was a gleam of admiration in her eyes as she stood there, her kimono forgotten, falling from her, her hand outstretched, her lips parted, her eyes warm with emotion. And yet she was cold. There was nothing of physical charm about her despite her wonderful figure, her flashing arms, her heaving breast, her shapely stockings. She was a girl with brains, and she admired but one thing in life—brains. There was no sex appeal about her. She was merely a reasoning machine. Her body was merely the vehicle for her brain—and she was most damnably clever.

  At that I didn’t take the back entrance. I went up to the top floor, and then out on to the roof. It was cold and there were wisps of fog drifting in from the ocean, leaving globules of moisture on the stucco coping of the roof. Yet I could see the street clearly. It was as she had said. There was a machine parked there, a closed car with motor running, curtains drawn.