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

by Unknown

  She went at last to the telephone booths. She spotted the contact man almost at once. He was tall and had iron-gray hair. He was wearing a white mess jacket, and highly polished black shoes. She could not distinguish his nationality; he looked cosmopolitan, smooth. He smiled when he saw her: one of her own kind of smiles—with his teeth.

  “Ah, my dear,” he said.

  She looked arch. “Pardon me?” This was a come-on; there had to be some come-on, she thought. Marlene Dietrich had always had one in those films that played down by the Bund.

  “But, my dear Rita,” said the man, which gave the perfect rhythm to everything.

  She nodded, and he went on: “Shall we go upstairs to the balcony?”

  “All right.”

  “You have the papers?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  She allowed him to escort her up a flight of steps to a room over the main part of the club. It was rather dark, and the windows faced the street. He turned on a light, but it was only a colored Oriental lantern. His face seemed softer, somehow flushed in this illumination.

  She lifted the packet of papers from her breast and handed them to him. He inspected them briefly in the half-light, and then he looked up smiling.

  “Everything is here, I believe,” he said.

  “Then I can go? I can have some money, and then I can go—”

  He bowed slightly, from the waist. “But of course.”

  It was then that she saw the small automatic in his hand. She turned to run from it. But another man was walking slowly up behind her.

  “We’ve waited for this a long time, Rita,” one of them said.

  She saw now what it was. These men were agents from a government which opposed the one for which Rita Turner had been working. They had deliberately set a trap for her.

  Bitterly in that flashing, horrible second, she remembered the entire telephone conversation. She had thought she was leading the man out; in reality he had been leading her; he had tipped her to Frenchie’s to get her here. He had believed she was Rita, and he believed it now; the rest of these men believed it.

  Rita must have been an elusive secret agent whose identity had never been entirely revealed, but the papers Anna had just handed the man with the iron-gray hair were sufficient to sign her death warrant.

  This realization came to Anna quickly, suddenly, even as the men were closing in on her, and it did her ego no good to look back upon it and reflect that the real Rita Turner would never have fallen so blindly into an enemy trap. It was only she, Anna, the fool, playing a game she knew nothing about.

  “It is too bad, Rita,” she heard one of the men saying.

  She knew it would do no good to protest that Rita Turner was already dead. They would merely laugh at her, deride her protestation. She saw from their expressions that Rita Turner must have been dangerous to them, for they meant now to kill Anna. They intended wasting no time or effort.

  Anna saw a knife flash, and knew in a moment that it would pierce her throat. There was no way she could turn. There was nothing she could do. She hadn’t time even to cry out, for all the good that would do her.…

  For a moment there was only silence here in the half-light, and the men closed in so that they facaded up about her in a wall. And in this moment Anna was looking back at murder and wondering now what had finally happened to the Frenchman who had stabbed the man and laughed—for she knew now about crime and punishment, and that punishment wasn’t something in storybooks so that little boys would go to Sunday school.

  She knew, too, that there was no escape for murder, even in war. She knew that she had come to her last second on earth, and even in that there was too much time, to reflect, to listen to the echo of laughter down the long memory of years, to hear the screams of dying Chinese which would seem like a song now by comparison.

  She saw again the baby sitting in a pool of blood, and a sailor, A.W.O.L. from his ship in a suit of clothes that were half torn off his back.

  And she knew suddenly why the sailor downstairs had followed her. He had fallen in love with her at the club, poor fool, and he had ditched off from his ship to come and marry her; to come and marry her because he knew that she was a White Russian and she couldn’t get out of Shanghai unless she was a Navy wife!

  He had been sorry for her, and he had been willing to marry her so that she could be evacuated honestly as Anna on the big transport that was going to America by way of Hong Kong.

  It was all clear now, in this final instant of life, that he had been following her to tell her, to marry her and take her away; and if she had remained at her apartment, if she had not gone to commit murder, this would have happened, and she now would be safe and free!

  She remembered the sailor saying: “Babe, I love you like seven hundred dollars on Christmas day,” and then she felt the point of the knife at her throat; and as she slid to the floor, the only sound that came through the silence was the familiar whistling of someone leaning in the front of the building outside whistling: “The Lady Is a Tramp.”

  Ask Me Another

  Frank Gruber

  FRANK GRUBER (1904–1969) was born in Elmer, Minnesota, and worked as a bellhop, ticket taker at a movie theater, writer and editor of trade journals, and creative writing teacher at a correspondence school before he became a full-time writer. He was still in his twenties when he sold his first story, beginning a career that produced more than four hundred stories, sixty novels, and more than two hundred film and television scripts, mainly in the mystery and Western fiction genres. Among his mystery novels are The Silver Jackass (1941, as Charles K. Boston), The Last Doorbell (1941, as John K. Vedder), The Yellow Overcoat (1942, as Stephen Acre), and, under his own name, more than thirty others, including Simon Lash, Private Detective (1941), about a bibliophile private eye, filmed by PRC as Accomplice in 1946, starring Richard Arlen as Lash. He also wrote more than a dozen novels featuring the amateur detective Johnny Fletcher and his partner, Sam Cragg, a pair of always broke con men who made their debut in The French Key (1940), which Gruber wrote in seven days yet which made most of the year’s top-ten lists; it was filmed by Republic in 1946, with Albert Dekker as Fletcher and Mike Mazurki as Cragg. Perhaps his most beloved character, however, is Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia, whose seemingly infinite knowledge of even the most arcane subjects helps him solve crimes in a long series of pulp stories. Ten of the tales were collected in Brass Knuckles (1966).

  “Ask Me Another” was published in the June 1937 issue.

  Ask Me Another

  Frank Gruber

  OLIVER QUADE WAS READING THE morning paper, his bare feet on the bed and his chair tilted back against the radiator. Charlie Boston was on the bed, wrapped to his chin in a blanket and reading a copy of Exciting Confessions.

  It was just a usual, peaceful, after-breakfast interlude in the lives of Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia, and Charlie Boston, his friend and assistant.

  And then Life intruded itself upon the bit of Utopia. Life in the form of the manager of the Eagle Hotel. He beat a tattoo upon the thin panels of the door. Quade put down his newspaper and sighed.

  “Charles, will you please open the door and let in the wolf?”

  Charlie Boston unrolled himself from the blanket. He scowled at Quade. “You think it’s the manager about the room rent?”

  “Of course it is. Let him in before he breaks down the door.”

  It was the manager. In his right fist he held a ruled form on which were scrawled some unpleasant figures. “About your rent, Mr. Quade,” he said severely. “We must have the money today!”

  Quade looked at the manager of the Eagle Hotel, a puzzled expression on his face. “Rent? Money?”

  “Of course,” snapped the manager. “This is the third time this week I’ve asked for it.”

  A light came into Quade’s eyes. He made a quick movement and his feet and the front legs of the chair hit the carpeted floor simultaneously.

  “Charles!”
he roared in a voice that shook the room and caused the hotel manager to cringe. “Did you forget to get that money from the bank and pay this little bill?”

  Charlie Boston took up Quade’s cue.

  “Gosh, I’m awful sorry. On my way to the bank yesterday afternoon I ran into our old friend John Belmont of New York and he dragged me into the Palmer House Bar for a cocktail. By the time I could tear myself away, the bank was closed.”

  Quade raised his hands and let them fall hopelessly. “You see, Mr. Creighton, I just can’t trust him to do anything. Now I’ve got to go out into the cold this morning and get it myself.”

  The hotel manager’s eyes glinted. “Listen, you’ve stalled—” he began, but Quade suddenly stabbed out a hand toward him. “That reminds me, Mr. Creighton, I’ve a couple of complaints to make. We’re not getting enough heat here and last night the damfool next door kept us awake half the night with his radio. I want you to see that he keeps quiet tonight. And do something about the heat. I can’t stand drafty, cold rooms.”

  The manager let out a weary sigh. “All right, I’ll look after it. But about that rent—”

  “Yes, of course,” cut in Quade, “and your maid left only two towels this morning. Please see that a couple more are sent up. Immediately!”

  The manager closed the door behind him with a bang. Oliver Quade chuckled and lifted his newspaper again. But Charlie Boston wouldn’t let him read.

  “You got away with it, Ollie,” he said, “but it’s the last time. I know it. I’ll bet we get locked out before tonight.” He shook his head sadly. “You, Oliver Quade, with the greatest brain in captivity, are you going to walk the streets tonight in ten below zero weather?”

  “Of course not, Charles,” sighed Quade. “I was just about to tell you that we’re going out to make some money today. Look, it’s here in this paper. The Great Chicago Auditorium Poultry Show.”

  Boston’s eyes lit up for a moment, but then dimmed again. “Can we raise three weeks’ rent at a poultry show?”

  Quade slipped his feet into his socks and shoes. “That remains to be seen. This paper mentions twenty thousand paid admissions. Among that many people there ought to be a few who are interested in higher learning. Well, are you ready?”

  Boston went to the clothes closet and brought out their overcoats and a heavy suitcase. Boston was of middle height and burly. He could bend iron bars with his muscular hands. Quade was taller and leaner. His face was hawk-like, his nose a little too pointed and lengthy, but few ever noticed that. They saw only his piercing, sparkling eyes and felt his dominant personality.

  The auditorium was almost two miles from their hotel, but lacking carfare, Quade and Boston walked. When they reached their destination, Quade cautioned Boston:

  “Be sharp now, Charlie. Act like we belonged.”

  Quade opened the outer door and walked blithely past the ticket windows to the door leading into the auditorium proper. A uniformed man at the door held out his hand for the tickets.

  “Hello,” Quade said, heartily. “How’re you today?”

  “Uh, all right, I guess,” replied the ticket-taker. “You boys got passes?”

  “Oh, sure. We’re just taking in some supplies for the breeders. Brr! It’s cold today. Well, be seeing you.” And with that he breezed past the ticket-taker.

  “H’are ya, pal,” Boston said, treading on Quade’s heels.

  The auditorium was a huge place but even so, it was almost completely filled with row upon row of wire exhibition coops, each coop containing a feathered fowl of some sort.

  “What a lot of gumps!” Boston observed.

  “Don’t use that word around here,” Quade cautioned. “These poultry folks take their chickens seriously. Refer to the chickens as ‘fine birds’ or ‘elegant fowls’ or something like that.… Damn these publicity men!”

  “Huh?”

  Quade waved a hand about the auditorium. “The paper said twenty thousand paid admissions. How many people do you see in here?”

  Boston craned his head around. “If there’s fifty I’m countin’ some of ’em twice. How the hell can they pay the nut with such a small attendance?”

  “The entry fees. There must be around two thousand chickens in here and the entry fee for each chicken is at least a dollar and a half. The prize money doesn’t amount to much and I guess the paid admissions are velvet—if they get any, which I doubt.”

  “Twenty thousand, bah!” snorted Boston. “Well, do we go back?”

  “Where? Our only chance was to stay in our room. I’ll bet the manager changed the lock the minute we left it.”

  “So what?”

  “So I get to work. For the dear old Eagle Hotel.”

  Quade ploughed through an aisle to the far end of the auditorium. Commercial exhibits were contained in booths all around the four sides of the huge room, but Quade found a small spot that had been overlooked and pushed a couple of chicken coops into the space.

  Then he climbed up on the coops and began talking.

  The Human Encyclopedia’s voice was an amazing one. People who heard it always marveled that such a tremendous voice could come from so lean a man. Speaking without noticeable effort, his voice rolled out across the chicken coops.

  “I’m Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia,” he boomed. “I have the greatest brain in the entire country. I know the answers to all questions, what came first, the chicken or the egg, every historical date since the beginning of time, the population of every city in the country, how to eradicate mice in your poultry yards, how to mix feeds to make your chickens lay more eggs. Everything. Everything under the sun. On any subject: history, science, agriculture, and mathematics.”

  The scattered persons in the auditorium began to converge upon Quade’s stand. Inside of two minutes three-fourths of the people in the building were gathered before Quade and the rest were on their way. He continued his preliminary build-up in his rich, powerful voice.

  “Ask me a question, someone. Let me prove that I’m the Human Encyclopedia, the man who knows the answers to all questions. Try me out, someone, on any subject: history, science, mathematics, agriculture—anything at all!”

  Quade stabbed out his lean forefinger at a middle-aged, sawed-off man wearing a tan smock. “You, sir, ask me a question?”

  The man flushed at being singled out of the crowd. “Why, uh, I don’t know of any … Yes, I do. What’s the highest official egg record ever made by a hen?”

  “That’s the stuff,” smiled Quade. He held out his hand dramatically. “That’s a good question, but an easy one to answer. The highest record ever made by a hen in an American official egg-laying contest is three hundred and forty-two eggs. It was made in 1930 at the Athens, Georgia, Egg-Laying Contest, by a Single-Comb White Leghorn. Am I right, mister?”

  The sawed-off man nodded grudgingly. “Yeah, but I don’t see how you knew it. Most poultry folks don’t even remember it.”

  “Oh, but you forget I told you I had the greatest brain in the country. I know the answer to all questions on any subject. Don’t bother to ask me simple poultry questions. Try me on something hard. You—” He picked out a lean, dour looking man. “Ask me something hard.”

  The man bit his lip a moment, then said:

  “All right, what state has the longest coastline?”

  Quade grinned. “Ah, you’re trying the tricky stuff. But you can’t fool me. Most folks would say California or Florida. But the correct answer is Michigan. And to head off the rest of you on the trick geography questions let me say right away that Kentucky has the largest number of other states touching it and Minnesota has the farthest northern point of any state. Next question!”

  A young fellow wearing pince-nez put his tongue into his cheek and asked, “Why and how does a cat purr?”

  “Oh-oh!” Quade craned his neck to stare at the young fellow. “I see we have a student with us. Well, young man, you’ve asked a question so difficult that practically every university p
rofessor in this country would be stumped by it. But I’m not. It so happens that I read a recent paper by Professor E. L. Gibbs of the Harvard Medical School in which he gave the results of his experiments on four hundred cats to learn the answer to that very same question. The first part of the question is simple enough—the cat purrs when it is contented, but to explain the actual act of purring is a little more difficult. Contentment in a cat relaxes the infundibular nerve in the brain, which reacts upon the pituitary and bronchial organs and makes the purring sound issue from the cat’s throat.… Try that one on your friends, sometime. Someone else try me on a question.”

  “I’d like to ask one,” said a clear, feminine voice. Quade’s eyes lit up. He had already noticed the girl, the only female in his audience. She was amazingly pretty, the type of a girl he would scarcely have expected to find at a poultry show. She was young, not more than twenty-one, and she had the finest chiseled features Quade had ever seen. She was a blonde and the rakish green hat and green coat she wore, although inexpensive, looked exceedingly well on her.

  “Yes, what is the question?” he asked, leaning forward a bit.

  The girl’s chin came up defiantly. “I just want to know why certain poultry judges allow dyed birds to be judged for prizes!”

  A sudden rumble went up in the crowd and Quade saw the sawed-off man in the tan smock whirl and glare angrily at the girl.

  “Oh-oh,” Quade said. “You seem to have asked a delicate question. Well, I’ll answer it just the same. Any judge who allows a dyed Rhode Island Red to stay in the class is either an ignorant fool—or a crook!”

  “Damn you!” roared the little man, turning back to Quade. “You can’t say that to me. I’ll—I’ll have you thrown out of here.” He started pushing his way through the crowd, heading in the direction of the front office.

  “If the shoe fits, put it on,” Quade called after him. Then to the girl, “Who’s he?”

  “A judge here. Stone’s his name.”

  “Well, let’s get on with the show,” Quade said to the crowd. “Next question?”