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

by Unknown

  “Somehow when he got to town here he let it slip to Kline and Vogelsang, who must be old pals of his, who you were. He must have been bragging about the catch he’d made, counting his chickens before they’d hatched. But his two former pals decided to double-cross him and go after you for the reward.”

  The girl was staring up at his face and trying to pull away from him, but he was holding her tightly and looking at me through slitted eyes. “You’re wet!” he said through his teeth, and somehow it sounded vicious, like a threat.

  Mac was looking on, goggle-eyed, with his mouth hanging open. Louise Madden was listening too, but giving most of her attention to her brother, who was beginning to stir his arms and legs and mumble senselessly.

  “So I’m wet,” I told the kid. Up to then I had been guessing, following a hunch. “But how about that blood on your right cuff?”

  The kid was wearing a white shirt, and the starched cuffs extended about an inch below the sleeve of his torn jacket. The right cuff was stained with dark and crusted splatters of blood that I’d noticed before in Kline’s office. The kid glanced at it, stared up and said:

  “So what? I got that in the fight with Vogelsang and Kline.”

  I shook my head. “Oh, no. Those stains were dried and dark, just as they are now, when I saw you in Kline’s office. You’d got them before that. You got them when you stabbed Rufus Moore, that Swinnerton dick.”

  “What do you mean?” he snarled. “I wasn’t in the Nude Ranch. I was outside.”

  “You could have slipped outside in the confusion right afterwards,” I said. “When I mentioned the girl’s handkerchief and the clasp knife, Miss Ingraham here suddenly seemed very scared.” I switched my gaze to her. “Did you ever see a knife like that before, a clasp knife with a bone handle?”

  She nodded fearfully, grimacing, choked out: “It was—his! I saw him in the Nude Ranch, left you and went over to where he was standing. I said, ‘Johnny!’ and he shushed me, then sent me outside to wait for him, told me he’d be right out. All the time he was talking he was looking over his shoulder and pushing me toward the door. I went out, and those other two came up and walked me away so fast I didn’t know what was happening.”

  “Shut up!” the kid sobbed, gripping her by the shoulders and shaking her. “Are you crazy? You don’t know what you’re saying. I wasn’t there! What’s the matter with you?”

  “Not much you weren’t there,” I said slowly. “You even tried to frame Miss Ingraham by swiping her handkerchief and using it to hold the knife and wipe the fingerprints off the handle, but that still didn’t stop his blood from getting on your cuff; the handkerchief was too small. You knew the Swinnerton dick was on your tail, knew he was after Hildegarde, and when she walked up to you, you knew the game was up unless you acted fast—a fortune was slipping out of your hands.

  “So when he started to work his way toward you, you sent her outside, turned around and let him have it, covered by the gloom and the crowd who was all interested in the Nude Ranch gals. Probably the guy had been on your tail earlier in the evening at the Fair. You caught on he was following you, and deliberately lost the girl in the crowd and led him into the Nude Ranch, hoping to shake him there. But when she came in with us, that spoiled everything. You had to kill him. He must have been closing in for a showdown.”

  The kid’s face was tight and white and murderous. He kept holding on to the girl’s shoulders, glaring at me. “Nuts!” he bit out. “That pack of wild guesses doesn’t prove a thing. What’re you trying to do, frame me so you can get the girl and the reward?”

  “I don’t have to frame you,” I told him. “The girl’s testimony will send you to the gas chamber. The game’s up, bright boy, so relax. Let go of her.”

  “Sure,” Buck Madden growled, sitting up on the floor in the arms of his sister. “Sure. I seen dat guy in the Nude Ranch, just before dat private eye was stuck wit’ da toad stabber. The eye was waltzing over to him and da guy just must of slipped him da shiv and then turned and ambled out.”

  “That just about ties it,” I said. “Go call some cops.”

  Madden did a double-take. “Who, me?”

  The kid let his shoulders slump in apparent defeat, then jerked Hildegarde over in front of him and shoved her, sent her lunging straight for me and the gun in my hand. I tried to duck out of the way and keep him under the gun, but she slammed into me, falling, her arms hooking around me for support, dragging my gun arm down.

  The kid was right behind her, his face a tight grimace of desperation. I couldn’t swing the gun and fire it without danger of hitting the girl. She was hanging on like a drowning swimmer, throwing me off balance so that I had to stagger sideways and brace myself to keep on my feet.

  Seeing the spot I was in, the kid actually grinned, closed in fast and straight-armed the girl again between the shoulder blades. That did it. She sobbed and her feet got tangled up with mine. I started to go down and she carried me to the floor, lit on top of me. Mac was coming up behind the kid on tiptoe, the black-jack swinging from his wrist. But the kid was at the door, jerking it open.

  I couldn’t roll free from the girl, but I wrenched around and stuck out my foot, making a longer leg than I thought I had. I got my toe hooked in front of his instep, jerked it up and back, tripping him as he plunged out the door. He went onto the porch in a headlong dive. I scrambled around frantically, fighting to get untangled and on my feet. By the time I made it, Mac was at the door and on through. I followed him out.

  The kid had picked himself up and made it to the bottom of the steps. Mac took off from the top step and landed on his back, carried the kid forward so they both spilled on the walk and rolled off, struggling. Mac had the black-jack, but otherwise was no match for the kid’s strength, and the kid in jerking around had got hold of Mac’s right wrist, was twisting it.

  They rolled across the lawn, a squirming, fighting vortex of movement in which neither figure was distinguishable. It was comparatively dark out here anyway after the inner brightness. I jumped down off the porch, yelling:

  “Hold it, Mac! I’ve got him covered.”

  Then I jerked the trigger and let a couple of shots fly over their heads and out into the sand dunes. A bellowing voice echoed the reports: “Hey! Quit it!”

  I almost jumped out of my skin. Someone was out there in the dark, and I might have hit him. During the momentary distraction, Mac had stopped fighting, going stiff and rigid to give me a chance at the kid. But the kid didn’t stick around. He left Mac like a shot and was bounding away like a jackrabbit, making for the dunes and the cover of darkness.

  “Stop!” I yelped. “You damn fool, stop!”

  didn’t want to shoot the guy even if he was a murderer, and besides, there was someone else out there in the dark whom I might hit if I missed the kid, and I wasn’t such a good shot that I couldn’t miss.

  The kid was fading fast into the night and I lowered the heater. Then I heard a smack and a grunt, as if he’d run headlong into something solid. There was a brief threshing and a crunching thud of sound, then silence. Mac was on his knees and we waited, staring.

  A figure loomed up out of the dark, a tall lean man in a gray topcoat and hat, walking toward us and dragging something behind him. He had hold of the back of the kid’s collar with one hand, and the kid was a limp, dead weight. He dropped him on the grass, said:

  “Here’s your man. He ran smack into me in the dark. He tried to fight so I tapped him one and put him to sleep.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “He’s a killer and he was getting away. Who are you?”

  The automatic in his hand had a dull black gleam. “The name is Daly. I’m a private investigator. You say this guy’s a killer?”

  “Yeah.” A light had dawned. “You’re a Swinnerton dick.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I just guessed.” I jerked my chin down at the kid. “It’s lucky you stopped him. He’s the guy you want. He used that shiv on Rufus Moo
re.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned.” The man’s tone was hard. He turned and looked down at the still figure on the lawn. The kid was lying flat on his back with his face turned up to the stars, but right now he couldn’t see them. His face looked relaxed and young and handsome. Staring down at him, the dick let his gun drop to his side and he swore with a brief and bitter harshness, muttered: “If I’d known that for sure I’d have really put the slug to the lousy ——. He must be Baby-face Blythe.”

  “Baby-face Blythe?” I said.

  He looked at me. He had a lean, haggard face. He nodded. “Rufe said the girl was with someone and he thought the guy was Baby-face Blythe. He’s wanted in Chi on a manslaughter charge. Or he was—until tonight. Now, California can have him for the murder of Rufe. He’s Baby-face Blythe, all right, the dirty son!”

  I knew then that most of what I’d guessed before must be right. Blythe had recognized Moore and had to kill him if he wanted to stay free, whether he could marry the girl and her fortune or not.

  “How did you get here?” I asked.

  Daly said, “I just came from Kline’s office. Rufe and me were working together trying to locate Hildegarde Ingraham. He’d traced her here from Chicago, got a line on Blythe and was following him, hoping he’d lead him to the girl. Blythe spent some time with Kline and Art Vogelsang, and so when I heard Rufe had been knifed, I knew who’d done it and went to Kline’s office, looking for him. I found Vogelsang and Kline out on the floor and I shook ’em into admitting that Blythe had been there. They were sore at him and gave me this address.”

  “When thieves fall out …” I breathed and looked up at the porch. The light had come on and all the others had come out of the house, were standing there, staring. A car was coming fast along the street, its headlights rushing toward us. From the porch, the girl we’d just rescued said in a voice brittle with a touch of hysteria:

  “So—he was a crook and a chiseler all the time! He tried to deceive me, the lousy heel.” Her tone was scathing, contemptuous, in spite of its shrillness.

  We turned to look at the car as its brakes squealed and it slewed to a stop before the house. Art Vogelsang dived out from behind the wheel, came dashing over, hammering words:

  “Hey, don’t forget we get cut in on that reward! Don’t forget.”

  He was blustering, coming up to me and the Swinnerton dick, with fat Kline waddling along behind. I told him:

  “You’ll be damn lucky if you get off without being stuck with a kidnaping rap.”

  “Nuts to that.” He gazed down coldly at the man on the lawn. “So you got him. We’re going to testify against Blythe, so we’ll be able to make a deal with the D.A.—don’t worry about that. Where’s the girl?”

  I nodded toward the porch. “Right there.”

  Vogelsang started for her, and she shrank behind Louise and Buck Madden.

  “Wait a minute,” Daly’s voice clipped out.

  Vogelsang stopped and looked back.

  “Who’s that?” the dick asked, nodding toward the porch where the girl was trying to hide herself.

  “That’s Hildegarde Ingraham, the gal you’re after,” I said.

  For the first time, Daly smiled—a brief ironic twist of his lips. He pulled a folded newspaper from his topcoat pocket, snapped it open and passed it to me. It was an early morning edition, off the presses less than an hour.

  “Read that,” he said, jabbing with one finger at a column on the front page.

  By tilting the paper at just the right angle so that light from the porch hit it, I could make out the print. A head read:

  MISSING HEIRESS FOUND IN RENO

  Hildegarde Ingraham Marries Butcher Boy

  I blinked and swallowed, feeling like a suddenly bursted balloon.

  “What is it, Beek?” Mac croaked in my ear.

  “We’ve been double-crossed, pal,” I told him weakly. “We don’t get any reward. This is the wrong gal.”

  “Give me that!” Vogelsang snapped, and grabbed the paper out of my hands.

  “Well, starch my diapers!” Mac said in a dazed tone. “Pardon me, I think I’ll go out and get measured for a straitjacket.”

  He wandered away across the grass, mumbling to himself. I marched to the porch and up the steps, reached for the doll-faced gal with the dyed blond hair, jerked her out into the open.

  “You’re not Hildegarde Ingraham—so who are you?”

  “Me?” She blinked her eyes rapidly, looking up at me with an expression of injured innocence. “Why, I’m just Daisy May Huggins. Don’t you remember, I told you? Miss Ingraham hired me in Reno to impersonate her and lead the detectives she thought were on her trail away. I met that heel Blythe and he let me think he was Johnny Foster, so I just sort of played him along for the good time that was in it, when all this happened. I—gee, I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry!” I said, and felt my jaw. “To think I took a beating and risked my neck to rescue someone who turns out to be a ringer! So I get left holding the sack again. Somebody kick me. I’ll bend over.”

  A big hand slapped me on the back, and Buck Madden growled with true sympathy: “Gee, mister, dat’s tough. I’m sorry I busted ya one. I apologize.”

  “Forget it,” I told him. “I made it even, didn’t I—and you and your sister had it tough enough without all this.”

  The girl smiled at me tremulously, almost hopefully. Coming up to the porch, Daly, the Swinnerton dick, said:

  “She had us fooled too. She led Rufe and me on a wild-goose chase”—his voice went harsh—“that got him killed. But anyway, you helped catch the killer and that’s the way things break sometimes.”

  “Uh-huh,” I breathed resignedly, and looked out across the lawn, trying to forget about the reward that I’d thought was in the bag.

  Daly had handcuffed Blythe, who was still dead to the world. Vogelsang and fat Kline had slunk away, back to their car, and as I looked it started up, wheeled around in a U-turn and went away very slowly. Little Mac was sitting on the curb holding his head in his hands. I sighed.

  I said, “O.K. I’ll testify against Blythe. With the girl, that will be enough. But you’ve got to agree to keep the Maddens out of it. They’ve gone through enough.”

  Daly nodded. “If you say so. All I’m interested in is to see that Blythe gets the death penalty.”

  The sudden relief on Louise Madden’s face and her smile of thanks were almost enough to pay me for what I’d been through. I began to feel better.

  “Well, that’s settled then,” I said. “But I still wish somebody would kick me.”

  “I’d rather kiss you,” she said.

  The Key

  Cleve F. Adams

  CLEVE F(RANKLIN) ADAMS (1895–1949) was born in Chicago and had a variety of jobs, including copper miner, art director for films, life insurance executive, and detective, all of which helped provide background details for his fiction.

  His first work appeared in such pulp magazines as Detective Fiction Weekly and Double Detective, but his major creation was private detective Rex McBride, who appeared in his first novel, Sabotage (1940), and subsequently in And Sudden Death (1940), Decoy (1941), Up Jumped the Devil (1943), The Crooking Finger (1944), as well as the posthumously published Shady Lady (1955). Unlike Philip Marlowe’s ethos of a private detective being the equivalent of a knight, McBride borders on being a fascist, screaming that “an American Gestapo is what we goddamn well need” in a fit of extreme pique, and a racist, with ethnic slurs abounding in McBride’s adventures. It is evident that Adams was neither, as he goes out of his way—oddly, it must be said—to make his own protagonist seem ridiculous and boorish.

  Adams published three pseudonymous works as John Spain: Dig Me a Grave (1942), Death Is Like That (1943), and The Evil Star (1944), as well as a collaboration with Robert Leslie Bellem, The Vice Czar Murders (1941), as Franklin Charles.

  “The Key” features the Los Angeles cop team of Lieutenant Canavan and Lieutenant Kleinsch
midt; it was originally published in the July 1940 issue of Black Mask.

  The Key

  Cleve F. Adams

  Lieutenant Canavan’s trouble was dames—toward whom he behaved as a sort of cross between Walter Raleigh, Galahad and a bull in a china shop. It was a rare gal indeed who could appreciate his interesting efforts to be helpful when murder was on the loose.

  CHAPTER ONE

  NIGHT-COURT GALAHAD

  HE DIDN’T LOOK LIKE the sort of girl they usually hauled into Night Court. There was nothing tawdry about her, nor defiant, and Canavan, always on the alert for the unusual, paused on his way up the far aisle for a second look. The courtroom was packed, every seat filled and perhaps fifty or sixty spectators lapping over into the U-shaped aisle surrounding the rail. These last made a sort of human picket fence against the walls. Canavan, trying not to obstruct someone else’s view, found himself wedged between George Kolinski and Terence O’Day.

  Kolinski, known around town as Big George, was really big. Taller even than Canavan, and a hundred pounds heavier, he was a jovial, opulent picture of what the rackets could do for the man at the top. Dewey, being three thousand miles away, hadn’t gotten around to him yet.

  Terry O’Day ran a daily column in the Meteor called “Night and O’Day.” Night Court was only part of his beat. He was believed to have a speaking acquaintance with every crook, cop and play-boy in the whole city. He wore expensive clothes sloppily, as though he didn’t give a damn what people thought—which he probably didn’t—and his long, horsily waggish face was as apt to be seen in the Biltmore Salon as in Tony the Greek’s Greasy Spoon. His stuff was brilliant and cynical and, on occasion, could tear the heart right out of you. A lock of thinning sandy hair usually straggled out from beneath a hat that was as familiar as the face under it.