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

by Unknown

  mith was busy the next day. Visiting the university, he spent two hours investigating the history of Professor Benedetto Dubitsky and another hour on the records of Mrs. Burdick’s Teddy. To his work as president of Trouble, Inc., he applied the same tenacity which had made him president of a prosperous greeting card concern.

  He then visited the Glickman Company’s huge chemical plant and learned that Mr. Theodore Burdick, formerly employed there, had been hired in the first place because of flattering recommendations tendered by the university.

  It dovetailed nicely. Just what it meant, Smith was not sure.

  With Angel, in the tiny office of Trouble, Inc., he had a dinner which consisted of cold lobster and ginger ale, purchased at a delicatessen.

  Angel was dressed, Smith thought, more like a devil. She had on a handsome evening dress that gleamed under a brilliant red opera cape. Its tiny hood was made to be drawn over her sleek hair.

  “Why the fancy set up?” he asked.

  “I thought you were going to buy me a dinner and dance. Instead I get this and a ride, I guess.”

  About that time Nick Plouffe, who had been calling every hour to make his report, phoned in again.

  Nick Plouffe was excited. “Only two minutes ago,” he wailed, “she give me the slip! I was watchin’ the Lester, see? Like I been doin’ right along. I’m standin’ there earnin’ the salary you don’t promise me, and all of a sudden she comes out with a couple of guys, and they get into a car.

  “This car is parked in front of the Lester ever since around eight o’clock, and there’s a ticket on it. I myself see the cop put the ticket on it. So they get into it, Mrs. Burdick and these two guys, and I pile into a taxi and tail them. And I lose them. On account of the taxi driver is dumb as all get-out, I lose them. Up around Mitchell Street and the Avenue is where I last see them.”

  “You get the number of that car?” Smith snapped.

  “Yeah, sure. C-3145.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “In a drug store on Mitchell.”

  “Get into your cab,” Smith ordered, “and come over here as fast as you can. You may be needed.” He cradled the phone and gazed solemnly at Angel. “C-3145, Angel. Think you can find out to whom that car is registered?”

  “I can try.”

  She called her newspaper and four minutes later reported: “The car belongs to Alvin McKenna, 92 Follett Street, vice president of the Glickman Company. Something?”

  Smith, at his desk, wrote the name and address on a pad and stared at them, clicking the pencil along his teeth as a small boy would rattle a stick along a picket fence.

  “McKenna—the Glickman Company—a ticket for parking,” he mused. “And two men. Not one man, Angel, but two. Dammit, what’s keeping Plouffe?”

  There was a knock at the door. Angel opened it and Plouffe entered, out of breath.

  “I got here quick like you told me, Mr. Smith.”

  “Now let’s have it all, Plouffe. Slowly. Begin with the car. Did you see it pull up?”

  “Sure I seen it.”

  “Two men in it?”

  “Now that’s funny,” Plouffe said. “When the car drove up there was only one guy in it. I was standin’ right there and I couldn’t’ve made no mistake. The guy parks the car in a one-hour space and goes into the Lester.”

  “What kind of a car?”

  “A Packard coupé.”

  “A man as wealthy as McKenna,” Angel declared, “would have more than one car, Mr. Smith.”

  “I realize that. Now, Plouffe, how long was that car there?”

  “More’n two hours.”

  “And when the two men came out, with Mrs. Burdick, there was a ticket on it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “One of those men was the driver?”

  “Yep. One was the guy who parked it there.”

  “Did you get a good look at Mrs. Burdick? Did she look scared?”

  “Without bein’ no authority on women’s looks, I would say she did. Definitely I would say she was at least uneasy.”

  Smith stared into space and drew meaningless circles and triangles on a desk calendar. The Smith brain was hard at work; you could tell by the roadmap of wrinkles that spread away from his eye-corners. He reached suddenly for the phone book, ran a finger down the long line of McKennas and impulsively snatched up the phone. Then slowly replaced it, shaking his head.

  “If you want my opinion,” Plouffe ventured timidly, “I’d say—”

  “Quiet,” snapped Angel. “He’s thinking.”

  “Oh.”

  Smith seized the phone, dialed a number. Angel relaxed. “McKenna?” she asked softly. He nodded, waiting for the connection.

  “I still think,” Plouffe insisted, “that—”

  “Quiet.”

  Smith registered impatience while waiting. He looked worried. Finally he slapped the phone down and stood up. “They don’t answer,” he said curtly. “Let’s go.”

  “Out there?” Angel asked.

  “Yes! Don’t you see through it? McKenna’s car—first one man, then two—and a deliberate ticket? It’s plain as day!”

  “Not to me it isn’t,” Plouffe complained.

  Smith favored him with a scornful glance and went past him, grabbing at Angel’s hand as he jerked open the door. Plouffe followed, not knowing what else to do.

  “If you’re thinking what I’m thinking you’re thinking,” Angel said on the way down the corridor, “I’ll bet my year’s pay that you’re wrong. It’s just your evil mind at work.”

  “You mean it’s yours,” Smith retorted. “Mine’s way ahead of you. Come on, you two.”

  cKenna’s house was a twenty-room affair with an acre of manicured lawn cut by a driveway and a colored fountain out front. Alvin McKenna, forty-nine, was a widower worth plenty.

  The house was in darkness. The car crunched up the drive and stopped, and Smith jumped out. Before ringing the bell he tried the front door. It was locked. After ringing the bell he waited only a moment, then broad-jumped a flower-bed and hurried around the side. Every window he tried was locked.

  He paused, baffled, and Angel caught up with him. “Sometimes,” she said pleasantly, “you surprise me, Philip. So athletic!”

  He ignored her. To Plouffe he snapped: “How do we get in here?”

  “You want to get arrested?” Plouffe gasped.

  “I want to get in!”

  “Well, it could be done easy enough, but—”

  “Do it!”

  Plouffe looked around, shaking his head, and then sidled to a window. It wasn’t easy but in a few minutes with a penknife he managed it. With a boost he was over the sill.

  “I still don’t like this,” he complained.

  Ignoring him, Smith leaned out and gave a hand to Angel. She climbed. Half-way over the sill she said, “Oh!” and when inside she looked down at her legs and said: “I’ll send you a bill for that. My best stockings!” Then she said soberly: “What do you expect to find here, Mr. Smith?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just full of premonitions.” He produced a flash-light, drilling the darkness with a thin sliver of illumination. “I hope,” he said grimly, pacing forward, “I’m at least half wrong.”

  It was a bedroom. With Plouffe and Angel trailing, he went down a long hall to the front of the house, through two huge living-rooms, along another hall to a library. The house was a tomb.

  Its owner was in the library.

  Smith’s light missed him at first. It played over the walls, yellowing rows of books, a small wall safe, a few large portraits. There was no need to illuminate the floor until he began to pace forward. Then he almost stepped on the thing because it lay just a few feet from the threshold.

  He looked down, holding the light on McKenna’s face, and behind him Plouffe said explosively: “Hey!” Angel put a trembling hand on Smith’s arm and was silent. McKenna gazed at the ceiling.

  He was a big man, wearing an expensive b
lue dressing gown over white flannel trousers and a white sport shirt. The white sport shirt was now a Jap flag, with its red moon of blood.

  Smith stared a moment, then bent over him. “Shot,” he said softly. Then he straightened and focused the light on the wall to his left.

  The tiny beam came to rest on the wall safe. Smith strode forward, looked at the safe, looked down at McKenna again.

  “Have you a finger-print outfit at your office, Plouffe?”

  Plouffe nodded solemnly.

  “Take the car and go get it,” Smith directed. “Come back as fast as you can and don’t say a word about this to anyone.”

  “But the cops oughta know about it! We’ll get in trouble!”

  “They’ll know in due time. You do as I say.” Smith glared at him and he went out wagging his head, mumbling protests. Smith and Angel heard him fumbling along the hall in the dark.

  “Who did it, Philip?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you know something, or you wouldn’t have come here.”

  “I think I know who’ll be blamed for doing it. That’s all.”

  “Who?”

  “Burdick.”

  She stood there in the dark, scowling at him. “But why?”

  “It wasn’t McKenna who visited the Lester Hotel tonight,” Smith declared softly. “It could have been, of course, but it probably wasn’t. That’s where you had me wrong when you tried to read my mind, Angel. This isn’t any ten-cent clandestine love affair. Can’t be. Too many angles.”

  “You think someone borrowed McKenna’s car?”

  “And deliberately got a ticket.”

  “Why?”

  “Look. Burdick is missing. His wife goes to Plouffe for assistance. Guided by Plouffe, she takes a room at the Lester. Meanwhile this other thing—whatever it is—is moving on relentlessly to some kind of climax. Part of that climax is the planned murder of McKenna here. And McKenna’s murderers are clever, clever enough to plan the alibi before the crime. They swipe McKenna’s car, take it to the Lester, leave it parked where it’s bound to catch a ticket. No one can deny now that McKenna’s car was parked in front of Mrs. Burdick’s hotel; the proof is down in black and white. You see? McKenna visits Mrs. Burdick at hotel with a bad reputation. McKenna is found dead. Angry young husband is arrested for murder.”

  “You’re guessing.”

  “It’s the best I can do. We’ll know more when Plouffe gets back.”

  She was silent a moment, and the silence of the big house crept in to take possession. Then she said, “Why the finger-print outfit, Philip?”

  “Why is McKenna dead?” he countered.

  “You mean the safe?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “A man as brainy as McKenna wouldn’t keep any big amount of money in a house like this.”

  “Maybe not, Angel. But money isn’t the only thing worth stealing. You’re forgetting that McKenna was vice president of a chemical company.”

  Angel voiced a little snort. “You’ll be telling me next that you’re a G-man, tracking down scurrilous agents of a mysterious foreign power!”

  “I’m not, really. I’m waiting for a street car.”

  Very shortly Plouffe returned, with a small black case wedged under his arm and a flash-light gripped in his left hand.

  “You have any trouble?” Smith asked.

  “Me? Oh, no.”

  “Get to work then. What I want to know is this: Has anyone recently opened that safe, and if so, who.”

  Plouffe opened his finger-print case and timidly stepped up to the safe. While he worked, Smith held the light for him, cupping it carefully to keep the glow from striking the room’s only window.

  Plouffe was good at this sort of thing. In a few moments he said definitely: “It’s been opened all right. There’s fresh oil from the hinges smeared down the side. Not long ago, either.”

  “I thought so.”

  “You see, Plouffe,” Angel said sweetly, “Mr. Smith is really very smart. He sees all, knows all, tells nothing.”

  “This here,” Plouffe declared, ignoring her and handing Smith a thin sheet of celluloid, “is a pretty fair thumbprint.”

  “Good. Can you get a print of McKenna’s thumb?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Be careful,” Smith warned, “where you leave your own prints around here.”

  “You’re damn right I’ll be careful!”

  Finished with the safe, Plouffe knelt beside the dead man. In a moment he rose, handed over a slip of paper. As an afterthought he stooped again and with a handkerchief carefully wiped a smudge of ink from the dead man’s thumb.

  “Looks the same to me,” he said, “though I ain’t no expert.”

  “So it was McKenna who opened the safe. Probably forced to and then killed so he could never identify the thief. We can go now, Angel. We’ve a job to do. A most important job, and one that may take a long time. We’ve got to find Mrs. Burdick. And her husband.”

  Angel twisted her lovely mouth into a scowl. “All we have to go on,” she said, “is that car. The one Plouffe trailed.”

  Smith shook his head. “No go. It’s probably right here in McKenna’s garage by now.”

  “It is,” Plouffe said. “I seen it when I come back. I was meaning to tell you.”

  “Then,” said Angel, “we’re stymied. Unless,” she added, glancing suspiciously at Smith, “that brain of yours is working overtime again. Sometimes that brain amazes me.”

  dgerson did some serious thinking as he drove away from the elaborate home of the slain McKenna. It was high time, he realized, to do some thinking. Up until now this affair had been little more than a pleasant diversion, a relief from the monotony of being president of a greeting card concern. A hobby, like amateur theatrics or peephole photography. Now it was murder.

  He scowled at the windshield and mentally fitted together the pieces of the puzzle as he saw them. The pattern was a bit startling. “You know, Angel,” he said, “the safest thing we could do right now would be to go straight to the police, tell them all we know and then go for a nice long ride into the country.”

  “Nonsense!” she said scornfully.

  He sighed. “We’ll do the next best thing. Plouffe, we’ll leave it to you to phone the police and report McKenna’s death. You can do it from a booth somewhere without leaving a trail.”

  “And what’ll you two be doing?” Plouffe demanded.

  “Pushing our noses deeper into affairs that don’t concern us.”

  “Well,” Plouffe said, “I don’t like it.”

  “Neither do I.”

  Smith stopped the car at a restaurant. “There should be a phone inside,” he said. “Use it, then go home. If we need you again, I’ll call you.”

  “I still don’t like it,” Plouffe muttered, but he got out.

  “And now,” said Angel, when the car was under way again, “just what do we do?”

  “What time is it?”

  She looked at her watch. “Four-ten. Fine time of night to keep your best girl out.”

  “We drive to Warren Avenue now,” Smith declared calmly, “and get out of bed a young man named Timothy Kenson. I don’t believe you know Timmy.”

  “Who is he?”

  “He works at the office. But for the past several hours he’s been working at the Krashna Tobacco Store, downtown.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll see,” Smith said, “in due time.”

  She didn’t like that. She glared at him. “He knows all, sees all, tells nothing.” Smith ignored her and she adjusted her red cape about her angrily.

  He drove in silence. The streets were deserted, and it was difficult to realize that on so calm and peaceful a night murder had been done. But Smith’s mind, agile now, was ahead of the murder and groping for the motive.

  He knew, or thought he knew, the elaborate steps leading up to McKenna’s death, and the probable aftermath. But the motive still evaded him. Unless
, of course, the answer lay at the Glickman Company.

  He turned the car into Warren Avenue and stopped. “You wait here,” he told Angel. Climbing the steps of a brown cottage, he put his thumb against the doorbell. In a moment a light winked on and the door opened. A young, red-haired man in wrinkled pajamas blinked at Smith and said, “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Edgerson.”

  “Any luck, Timmy?”

  “Sure thing. He came in late this afternoon. I been trying to get you ever since.”

  “A tall, dark man, Timmy? With a beard?”

  “Nope. He was a little runt. Crummy-looking.”

  “Oh. You followed him?”

  “Sure thing. He walked down the street a ways and got into a taxicab. So I did like you said. I jumped into another taxicab and told the driver to keep him in sight. He went into a house on Canal Street, down near the river. Wait a minute and I’ll get you the number. I wrote it down.”

  He was back in a minute or two with a slip of paper which he thrust into Smith’s hand. “Here it is, Mr. Edgerson. Number 23 Canal. Just a couple of doors down from the McCullen Warehouse, if you know where that is.”

  “Timmy,” John Smith said, “you’re a genius!”

  “It was easy,” Timmy said.

  “It was masterful. Tomorrow you get a raise in pay.”

  Smith hurried back to the car, stuffing the slip of paper into his pocket. He said nothing to Angel, but the triumphant smirk on his face gave him away.

  “You look,” she said, “as if you just ate the goldfish. What’s up? Where are we going now?”

  “To the hideout of the dark foreigner who smokes long black cigarettes.”

  “What?”

  “It was really quite simple. While you were holding down the fort I visited the only two tobacco stores in the city where a man can buy long black cigarettes. They’re Cuban, you know. I discreetly asked questions. The man in the place on Fernald Street told me he used to carry them because he had a customer who came regularly, twice a week, for a large supply. The customer was Professor Dubitsky, and the fellow had sold no Cuban cigarettes since Dubitsky’s death. But in the second store I had better luck, Angel. The man there informed me that he did carry them. He hadn’t used to, he said, but about three months ago a customer placed a standing order with him, and the customer called twice a week to pick up his supply.”