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

by Unknown

  “Why were you looking for me?”

  “I thought perhaps you were interested in locating Mr. David McCracken.”

  I turned around on the seat and looked at him. He was whistling softly through his teeth, staring straight ahead at the street and seeming very pleased with himself.

  “Do you know where McCracken is?”

  “I do,” he said. “Indeed I do.”

  “Where?”

  “That is a long story, Sandy. I was hired two days ago, by a Mr. Roscoe Jancey, of New York City, to locate Mr. David McCracken. Tonight, having accomplished the job with my usual ease, I was embittered to learn that Mr. Roscoe Jancey is now a corpse who will never pay my fee. But it occurred to me, after hearing the story, that you might be willing to take Mr. Jancey’s place. It occurred to me that locating Mr. McCracken might help you to prove you had not murdered Mr. Jancey.”

  “How do you know I didn’t?”

  “I am a student of human nature,” Dud said. “You are not capable of cold-blooded murder.”

  I promised that I would borrow a hundred bucks in the morning and pay him—that was the price he insisted on, and I wasn’t in any spot to argue. He gave me an address which was only a couple of blocks from the point we were passing, and at the next corner he stopped and let me out.

  I watched the red tail-light of his car as he drove away. The idea that Dud Harris was mixed up in this was something new. Maybe he was right that I couldn’t commit a cold-blooded murder, but I’d bet that Dud could stab a man in the back any time he needed to.

  The house McCracken was supposed to be in was between City Park and Canal, a small place with shrubs growing in the yard. The blinds were pulled, so that at first I thought there were no lights inside; then I saw a narrow yellow thread under the front door. It was cold and the wind flapped my top coat against my knees as I started up the walk.

  I wished suddenly I had a gun. I had a creepy feeling that I was going to need one. But I didn’t have one with me, and I couldn’t go home to get one because the cops would be watching my apartment house.

  I went up the steps quietly and tried the knob without knocking. The door swung open.

  I stood in the doorway looking in.

  David McCracken was walking across the floor with a half-filled glass of whiskey and soda in his hand, walking like a man who has been at it a long time, back and forth. He looked worried and frightened. He spun around as I entered, turning so fast some of the liquor spilled from his glass. “What—What …” His mouth hung open.

  I let him have it. I said, “I want to know why you killed that man in your hotel room.”

  He’d been frightened before, but now he looked as though he was going to faint. His face got green and he just stammered without making any sense. He didn’t seem able to say anything but, “What? What? What?”

  “The dead man in your hotel room,” I said. “A Roscoe Jancey. Why did you kill him?”

  The whiskey glass slid out of his hand and broke on the floor. He didn’t notice it. His mouth was working with froth coming out of it like he was a horse who’d run the mile and a quarter in mud. Finally he said, “I didn’t kill anybody. I haven’t been in that room in three days.” He swallowed hard. “Who’d you say was killed?”

  “Roscoe Jancey, of New York.”

  “I never heard of him.”

  I was watching him when he said it, and I would have sworn he was telling the truth. It gave me an empty feeling in the stomach, because I’d counted on something here that would help. This made the whole mess crazier than ever.

  And then the door on the far side of the room opened and Mary came in, looking as pretty and cute as a puppy. She was smiling with her mouth, but her eyes were a little worried. Her black hair waved smooth down to her shoulders and she must have just finished putting on fresh make-up. “I thought I heard your voice,” she said. “What was all the excitement in front of the hotel just as Mr. Smith and I were leaving?”

  “You didn’t want to see.”

  “I wanted to. But Mr. Smith said that if I wanted to find Uncle Dave I’d have to hurry.”

  I stared at her, trying to make sense out of her words. “Who said what?”

  “Mr. Smith said he’d take me to Uncle Dave, but there wasn’t any time to waste. I knew you’d understand.”

  “I don’t. Isn’t Dave McCracken your uncle?”

  It was her turn to stare.

  “Why, of course.”

  I was really confused now.

  “Then you mean this man here isn’t McCracken?”

  “Certainly not. But he said he knew where Uncle Dave—”

  McCracken jumped. I never saw anybody move so fast. I was spinning sideways but he got his left hand on my coat, and held on. He was bigger than I was and the top coat handicapped me. I hit him twice in the face with all I had, but he still held on. And then he had the gun out of his hip pocket and slammed me over the head with it.

  The room began to spin around in easy circles, but I could tell I was on hands and knees, and I could feel the blood running down my forehead from the cut the gun had made. I heard somebody screaming, away off, it seemed; and then I knew it was right there in the room with me. It was Mary. She was backed into a corner and McCracken was going for her.

  I tried to get up and I stumbled and fell. My head hit the arm of a chair. I went down flat—and cold.

  came to on the floor where I had fallen. My wrists and ankles were tied and I was gagged and my head hurt like hell. There was dried blood in my eyes and I couldn’t see very clearly.

  I blinked a few times and twisted around and there was Mary on the floor across the room from me. She was tied up the same way I was and her hair wasn’t in smooth waves anymore; but she was conscious and she didn’t seem to be hurt. She tried to grin at me, which is quite a job when you have a lemon in your mouth with a handkerchief tied outside to keep it there.

  My head hurt worse than a homebrew hangover, but I started wiggling around, trying to get loose. McCracken had been hurried and frightened and he’d done a lousy job of tying me up with some neckties. In five minutes I knew I was going to make it. It took about fifteen minutes altogether. Then I untied Mary.

  “Well, well,” she said, “fancy meeting you here.” She began to laugh. She was scared almost sick, but she was fighting against it. That girl had what it takes.

  “Where’d McCracken go?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “McCracken. At least, he’s the fellow I knew as David McCracken. You called him Smith.”

  “That’s what he told me his name was. The one thing I’m certain of; he’s not my uncle.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “I don’t know. But don’t you think we better leave here before he comes back? He might,” she swallowed, “might do worse next time.”

  “Wait a minute. Maybe I can find a gun.” I searched the house and the only thing of interest was a small batch of drawings done in pencil. They were pretty good. One of them showed a horse and jockey and under the picture was written: Sandy Rice on Morning Glory.

  I said, “Well, I’ll be damned!” But I didn’t find a gun.

  Mary and I walked two blocks before we located an all-night drug store and I phoned for a cab. My watch showed ten minutes after four. It was cold, that wet kind of New Orleans cold that soaks through you so you feel as cold in the middle of your stomach as outside.

  Mary was explaining, “I was waiting for you in the lobby. You must have been gone nearly a half hour. And the clerk who’d been at the desk—”

  “Sam?”

  “I think that’s the one. He’d left the desk a few minutes before. Then this Mr. Smith, or whatever his real name is, came up and asked for my uncle’s mail. I heard him and so I asked him if he knew where Uncle Dave was. He looked frightened, and then he said yes, he knew where Uncle Dave was, and he’d take me to him. As we were getting in his car we heard the shooting and I saw you run out; but Mr. Smith shove
d me into the car. He said Uncle Dave was already in trouble and couldn’t afford any more. He brought me to that house, and he said for me to wait until Uncle Dave came. After two or three hours you came in.”

  We were waiting for the cab, drinking black scalding coffee at the soda fountain. I asked, “After he bopped me, what?”

  “He tied me up; he didn’t hurt me once I quit fighting. Then he tied you and walked up and down the room like he didn’t know what to do next, until finally he turned around and said he would be back later, and went dashing out the door.”

  It looked to me as though I had part of this crazy matter worked out; but I still couldn’t be sure. I told Mary about the murder and she said she had never heard of a Roscoe Jancey; as far as I could tell the world wasn’t going to miss Roscoe Jancey very much. Nobody seemed to have heard of him. He was a hell of a man to get sent to the electric chair about.

  “What about a Mr. Linden Blumberry?” I asked.

  “I know him. He had charge of Uncle David’s estate. And by the way, when I was waiting for you in the lobby I thought I saw him coming down the stairs, but then somebody got in the way and, when I looked again, I decided I was wrong.”

  “He was there.” The cab was blowing outside and we went out to it. It was cold in the taxi and we sat close together. “Downtown,” I told the driver. And then I asked Mary, “What about this Blumberry?”

  “I always had an idea he’d be crooked if he needed to.”

  “Well, he’s a lawyer, isn’t he?”

  She laughed and said I must not like lawyers and I started to tell her about the time I got sued for breach of promise by a girl I had never seen but once in my life—that was when I was riding and in the money—but I skipped it. I asked her if she had ever heard of a Nell Parker, a good-looking redhead.

  Mary looked up at me, frowning a little. “No … Why?”

  “The redhead who came rushing into your uncle’s hotel room tonight said that was her name.”

  Mary was quiet a moment. “When you asked me why I didn’t go to the police about my uncle,” she said, “I didn’t tell you the exact truth—at least not all of it. Maybe I should.”

  “It’s about time.”

  “When I telephoned Uncle David the day I got to New Orleans, the first thing he said when he heard my voice was: ‘Nell, darling!’ He said it in a way Uncle David has assured me he never spoke to women. He was pretty much of a Puritan. When he didn’t turn up, I thought perhaps this Nell was mixed up in it somewhere, and if I went to the police and they found him—and her—he might not be in the humor for lending me money. I thought it was better to find him privately.”

  “I think it’s time we found her,” I said.

  “Do you believe Uncle David’s with her?”

  I looked at her squarely. “I believe your Uncle David is dead. I believe he has been dead for a month.”

  The morning papers were on the street by now. I read that I was wanted on suspicion of murder. From what Lieutenant Pete Murphy had told the reporters, there didn’t seem to be much suspicion; Pete was sure. Cops were ordered to shoot if necessary. It gave me a sort of weak feeling in the stomach.

  The paper also listed the names and addresses of everybody mixed in the affair. Nell Parker was staying in a small apartment hotel in the French Quarter. We went there.

  It was one of these old places with a courtyard. Fog was coming in from the river and you could smell the river and once or twice hear a ship’s horn moaning. There was a kind of gray light mixed in with the fog, but you still had to feel your way along. Inside the house it was almost as bad; a hall down each floor that was almost as wide as the rooms on either side and just a small globe at the end. The whole building had a damp cold smell.

  “How’ll you know which room is hers?” Mary was whispering, though I had told her not to.

  “I’m guessing there’ll be somebody awake in her room, and talking.” So I went from door to door, listening. It was on the second floor at the back I heard the voices.

  A man was saying, “—never meant to let myself in for murder! They’ll pin it on me sure! We’ve got to get away from here!”

  A woman said something I couldn’t understand.

  Then the man said, “We’ve got enough. We’ve got insurance.”

  I didn’t know what to do. If I went for the cops and this man and woman got away, I was a sure thing for the electric chair. And once the cops got their hands on me, they weren’t likely to look farther; it would take a long time to convince them, probably too long. But I didn’t have a gun.

  I decided to take the chance this fellow wouldn’t shoot. I motioned to Mary to stand back, raised my hand, and knocked on the door.

  The voices in the room stopped as though I had hit them with a hammer. There wasn’t a sound at all. Way down the river somewhere a foghorn tooted.

  I knocked on the door again.

  There was about ten seconds of quiet and I thought, “Maybe they are taking it on the lam out the window,” then I heard the clacking sound a woman’s mules make and the door was unlocked and opened. The redhead from the hotel stood there, wearing a negligée. I moved with the door as it opened and got inside before she could stop me.

  Except for the redhead, the room seemed empty. But on the far side there was a closed French window onto a balcony. I thought I saw something move there, a little gleam of light on metal. I kept wondering if the man was going to shoot, and I had the weak sensation you get as you start down the highest drop on a roller coaster.

  The redhead said, “What the devil do you want?”

  “I’m looking for your husband.”

  She took a long breath. It made her breasts stand tight against the silk negligée. “For who?”

  Arthur Andrews supposedly had been killed at the race track the time I first saw McCracken. But I felt sure now he was alive. I looked at the window.

  “For Mr. Arthur Andrews,” I said. The light glint outside moved and I said quick, loud: “I know he didn’t kill that man at the hotel. I just want him to help me prove it.”

  Her face got very pale, but set. She had green eyes like those of a cat. “Didn’t you kill him?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Then who did?”

  I’ll admit it was part guess work, but I had to give her and Andrews something because I needed them. The whole thing had to come clean before the cops would believe me. And I didn’t know who was on the balcony. I knew part of it but not all. I didn’t know I was practically trying to commit suicide.

  I said, “The real McCracken’s lawyer killed him. That Mr. Linden Blumberry.”

  On the balcony the light beam moved fast. A man yelled and I dived sideways. There was a hole in the glass window with lines spider-webbing out from it and the sound of the gun came smashing through.

  I was rolling sideways, trying to get out of range, when the second shot blasted. The bullet ripped into the floor by my face. Then I got both hands on a straight chair and flung it. It was a big chair, but when you’re scared as I was, you’re stronger than you think.

  The window went out with a crash. And there was another sound that wasn’t part of the window breaking; that kind of screeching noise a nail makes when it’s pulled out of wood, and the crackle of iron.

  A man screamed. He really screamed. Then there was a kind of soggy bump and the scream stopped with it.

  I stood up and was surprised my knees would hold me, and even more surprised that my stomach didn’t give way and let my shoulders settle down on my knees. But somehow I got over to the balcony. There was a man standing there looking down where the rail was gone. As I came up the man turned around. It was David McCracken. At least, he was the fellow I had thought was McCracken; the fellow who told Mary his name was Smith. His name actually was Arthur Andrews.

  I looked down to where there was something dark in the courtyard. “Who’s that?”

  “I don’t know. When you knocked, I ducked out here and he was here
. I’d never seen him before. When he tried to shoot you I grabbed him. We were wrestling and—and …” He swallowed.

  We went down and looked at him. It was Linden Blumberry, the lawyer. He wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t going to get up soon. His back was broken.

  ary was ready to go back to medical school and I had said I would take her to the train. We started a couple of hours early so as to have time for a drink or two. Mary was sipping a martini and I was drinking gin with her, a Kinney fifty-fifty, which is a smooth mixture of rum, grapefruit juice, the white of an egg, and gin.

  Mary said, “Now tell me how you knew that Mr. Blumberry, Uncle Dave’s lawyer, had killed that man.”

  I said I hated to admit it, but it was part guess work. “But I did have some things to go on. When he found me in the room with the corpse, he said the man hadn’t been dead more than ten minutes. But he hadn’t even touched the body, except to stumble against it. He’d hardly glanced at it—and it had stopped bleeding. In that light he couldn’t even tell if the blood was dry or not. I wondered from the first how he could be so sure.”

  “And you guessed from that?”

  “With what you told me. You said you saw Blumberry coming down the hotel stairway. In other words, he had already been upstairs, and was walking down again. Yet he claimed to have come up only once, in the elevator. All I needed was a motive. The cops have got that straight now.”

  “Explain it,” she said.

  “It was some kind of South American government bond which had been defaulted years ago and was considered worthless. I don’t understand much about these things, but it seems this government was trying to get some fresh American cash and, to make a good impression, they were going to redeem those old bonds. Your uncle had nearly a hundred thousand dollars in them. The redemption had been kept under cover and Blumberry was trying to buy them from your uncle for five thousand, buying them under another name and selling your uncle on the idea he’d found a sucker. The trouble was, your uncle was supposed to go to Boston to close the deal. And he couldn’t go because he was dead. And Andrews couldn’t go because he’d be recognized as a fake.”