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

by Unknown

  “You really had it figured out, didn’t you? By planting this will in the safe you made yourself seem the least likely suspect. Who would accuse you of doing the planting when you thought exposure of the will completely disinherited you?”

  “Nobody,” Jimmie Harmon answered promptly. “And nobody will ever believe I planted it there. For, in spite of your stooge’s beautiful theory, it’s nothing but a theory. You’ve got nothing against me but circumstantial evidence.”

  He calmly lighted a cigarette and blew the smoke into Keever’s face. Mickey O’Hara had stood loyally by him until now, but she edged away. The revulsion she felt was shared by the rest of us, but we knew the truth was reflected in Keever’s face. He and the rest of us knew that Harmon’s taunt was painfully true—we had nothing but a theory.

  I faced Keever.

  “I think it’s time I should tell you that I’ve been holding out again. My theory didn’t just come out of my head. I had something concrete to go on. When I got conked tonight I got a glimpse of the guy that conked me just before I passed out. It was Harmon. I guess there’s something more than circumstantial about that.”

  Harmon whirled upon me. “You’re a damned liar! You went out like a light!”

  I grinned in his face. He started, saw that his slip was fatal. He wheeled, ran toward the door. Sam Peterson casually thrust out his foot. Harmon tripped and fell sprawling. The two headquarters men dragged Harmon ignominiously to his feet. He was blubbering as they took him out.

  “So you held out on me again?” said Keever. “How am I going to cure you?”

  “You don’t have to. I didn’t hold out this time. Harmon was right—I’m a damned liar. I passed out like a light.”

  Keever shook his head. He smiled at Louise Harmon, who looked stunned.

  “Don’t feel so badly about it. Your brother will get off with life—his murder of Waxman was only second degree because it was not premeditated but done in anger. As for the will, I must say that Waxman was really trying to make a sucker out of your brother. It isn’t any will at all. Evidently your father didn’t know he was supposed to have witnesses to his signature. Anyway, there are none, so you’ll each get half of your father’s estate, though Jimmie won’t get much of a chance to spend his share unless he spends it on lawyers.”

  Louise Harmon didn’t seem at all relieved. She looked first at Mickey O’Hara, who was quietly sobbing, then at Peterson. She turned to Keever.

  “Must this man be prosecuted? Will he have to go to the penitentiary for life?”

  Keever hesitated. Peterson spoke up.

  “Thanks for your sympathy, Miss Harmon, but I don’t need it. You see, I had quite a talk with Mr. Waxman before he was murdered. He told me something about my trial for the robbery of your brother’s safe. I was tried both for breaking and entering and grand larceny, but when the jury returned a verdict of ‘guilty as charged in the indictment,’ they didn’t specify which offense I was guilty of. Mr. Waxman said that though grand larceny is an offense listed in the Habitual Criminal Act, breaking and entering isn’t. He says the jury’s verdict would have to be strictly construed in my favor, so I’d be shown to be guilty only of breaking and entering, which isn’t a crime in the eyes of the Habitual Criminal Act. Is that the McCoy, Mr. Keever?”

  “That,” said Keever, “is the McCoy.”

  Murder in One Syllable

  John D. MacDonald

  JOHN D(ANN) MACDONALD (1916–1986) was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, moved to Utica, New York, received a B.S. from Syracuse University, then an M.B.A. from Harvard. He worked as a businessman without much success, then joined the army, serving from 1940 to 1946, achieving the rank of lieutenant colonel in the OSS. When he returned to the United States, he began to write full-time, selling sports, adventure, fantasy, science fiction, and mystery stories to pulp magazines and such slicks as Liberty, Cosmopolitan, and Collier’s. His 1949 move to Florida gave him access to the water and boating, which served as the background for many of his novels, notably those about Travis McGee, who lives on a houseboat named The Busted Flush, which he won in a poker game. One of the great characters of mystery fiction, McGee is a combination private detective and thief who makes his living by recovering stolen property and, while living outside the law, victimizes only criminals. He is not a private eye in the Raymond Chandler sense of being a knight, though he fills that role more often than not as an avenger, coming to the aid of (invariably) beautiful women who fall for the rugged outdoorsman. There are nineteen McGee novels, mostly paperback originals, beginning with The Deep Blue Good-by (1964). His suspense novel The Executioners (1958) was filmed twice as Cape Fear (in 1962, with Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, and Polly Bergen, and in 1991, with Nick Nolte, Robert De Niro, Jessica Lange, and Juliette Lewis).

  “Murder in One Syllable” was published in the May 1949 issue.

  Murder in One Syllable

  John D. MacDonald

  STARTLING MYSTERY-ACTION NOVELETTE

  Bullets for breakfast were on the menu for thrill-hungry Cynthia Darrold—when she picked up the right guy in the wrong tavern.

  CHAPTER ONE

  PAUL JANUARY

  IN CHILDHOOD THERE HAD BEEN A sentence, a trick sentence, to punctuate. That that is is that that is not is not that that is. “That that is, is.” The sodden handkerchief, growing crusty furthest from the wound, was an actuality. It was wedged under his belt, just above the watch pocket of his gunmetal gabardine slacks.

  Nor could the existence of a small bit of lead be denied, though its presence within him was more the result of circumstantial reasoning. There was a hole for entrance, yet no discernable hole of exit.

  Though conscious of the absurdity of his reasoning, he tried to tell himself that the handkerchief was where it belonged, crisp and fresh, in the left-hand pocket of his rayon cord jacket. Not tucked under his belt at all.

  And that, of course, meant corollary reasoning. The bullet was still in the gun. Possibly the gun was still in a pawnshop. It had looked to be that sort of a gun.

  And it also meant that the girl was somewhere other than on her back in the cerise and white kitchen where he had left her, with a bullet in her head.

  He swallowed hard and wondered whether his nausea came from the memory of the girl, or from his own weakness.

  The sun was very warm and it was remarkably difficult to walk, as though there was no hole in the taut belly muscles just over the watch pocket, no sticky handkerchief balled and wedged under the gray and white belt against the white mesh fabric of the shirt.

  It was easier to think that the handkerchief was in his pocket, the bullet still in the gun, the girl out riding in a convertible, the wind in her hair, her eyes half shut, a warm and secret smile on her lips.

  Try as he might, it was almost impossible to swing his right arm gracefully and naturally. He kept wanting to press the inside of his arm against the lump of the handkerchief.

  He realized he was heading toward a rather shoddy section of the strange city, but wisdom dictated that he continue. It would be rather suspicious to be looking around to see if he were followed. To stop and retrace his steps would court suspicion.

  A candy store was directly ahead of him. The buildings all reached to the edge of the rather narrow sidewalk. Two narrow-faced little children came whooping out of the candy store, sucking on ice cream sticks. They stopped dead and stared at him.

  “Whacha walkin’ like that for, mister?”

  Apparently I am not walking properly. Straighten up, Paul, old man.

  He gave them a peaceful smile, wondering if it looked more like a grimace. The effort required to straighten up was surprisingly great. He felt as though his flesh and bone had been doubled over, crimped or stapled in place, felt as though it tore him to straighten up.

  The children solemnly sucked the ice cream and regarded him coldly. He went on and did not look back.

  His feet had begun to feel as though they dangled inches above the
hot pavement, as though by no effort could he stretch them down to an intimate contact with reality. He walked over and got into a parked cab.

  As they neared the station he gave the driver a wise smile and said, “Look, old man, there’s a woman waiting in there for me and I want to avoid her. Here’s my check for two suitcases. Would you mind awfully?”

  The driver winked at him. “I know how it is, mac.”

  Ten minutes later the taxi driver let him off at the bus station. He overtipped the man. The sun was getting low. His suitcases made long solid shadows on the dusty sidewalk. He knew it was going to be one of the most difficult things he had ever attempted. As he lifted the two bags, the sweat jumped out on his forehead and the world darkened around him. His shoulder struck the doorframe and he knew his mouth was drawn down in an absurd grimace. After he had sat on the hard bench for a few moments, his breathing quieted and he could see clearly once more.

  Paul January went to the ticket counter.

  Behind the ticketseller was a map of the bus lines marked heavily in red. He squinted at it and picked out a name.

  “One-way to Rockwarren, please.”

  “That’ll be two eighty-five, sir. Next bus leaves in twenty minutes out that side door over there.”

  Paul held himself very straight as he went back to his bench.

  An old man sat beside him, lean jaw stubbled with white, shapeless gray cap, reddened eyes, roving in constant wariness. The old man jerked a pint bottle out of his side pocket, took long swallows, his seamed throat convulsing. He lowered the bottle, wiped his mouth on his hand, gagged and slid the bottle back in his pocket.

  Paul January separated two dollars from the wadded bills in his pocket. “I’ll give you two dollars for the rest of that bottle,” he said.

  The wary old eyes regarded him. “You look like you need it, friend.”

  He slid the bottle over, pocketed the two dollars. Paul January, ignoring the baleful eye of a matron on his right, tilted it up and finished it without once taking it from his lips.

  The liquor hit his stomach, radiated warmth and strength in all directions.

  The driver put the suitcases in the side compartment. Paul January went to the third seat behind the driver, inched in close to the window. He pulled his cocoanut straw hat low over his eyes. He was asleep by the time the bus started.

  CHAPTER TWO

  OLIVE MORGANTINE

  She was a muscular and angular woman in her late fifties with teeth as white, as carefully tended and as artificial as the low white picket fence surrounding her tiny footage and white cottage. Though Henry Morgantine had died eighteen years before, Olive still talked about him in a manner which had sensitive guests on the verge of glancing quickly over their shoulders.

  Her living room, a twelve-by-twelve cube, was jammed. In solitary and muscular splendor, Mrs. Olive Morgantine moved carefully among her possessions, dusting, oiling, polishing.

  Her most startling variation from type was an addiction to very gay and quite youthful clothes, horridly embellished by whole areas of clattering, clanking costume jewelry.

  During the past six months Olive Morgantine had been kept in a state of outrage. It was all due to the “development.” She failed to see why the empty lot near her cottage, adjoining it, in fact, had been shrewdly split into two tiny lots, and a white house erected on each.

  As if that were not enough, the couple who purchased the house nearest to hers had been of “a very low type, my dear. The things I could tell you!”

  The facts were a silver thread running through her fabric of woe. A couple had bought the house next door. He was some sort of a salesman. She was a coarse-looking young woman, pretty in a rather vulgar way, blatant in her dress and her habits.

  Olive Morgantine did not mind the shrill quarrels when the husband was home. Nor did she mind the lateness of their parties. She could have adjusted to those factors. The one thing she could not stand was the fact that Mrs. Darrold “stands out on that stupid little back porch and hurls, just hurls, mind you, all of the empty bottles and cans down to the foot of the yard. You have no idea what it is doing to the neighborhood. I suppose when their yard is full they’ll start hurling them into my begonias!”

  Cynthia Darrold’s habits were just sufficiently regular to react on Mrs. Morgantine in the same way as the ancient torture of the slow dripping of water.

  With her husband away, Cynthia Darrold apparently arose around eleven. She made her breakfast and loafed until late afternoon. At that time she would make herself some cocktails, quite a number, in fact, and later have a can of soup before going out.

  Thus, every day, somewhere between four and six, a bottle or a can would be hurled out into the yard. No matter how Mrs. Morgantine tried to avoid hearing the noise, she would always hear it.

  There was another factor in Cynthia Darrold’s life that bothered Mrs. Morgantine a great deal. She was always asleep when Cynthia came home. And, rather too often, sometime during the following day, a strange young man, usually a different one, would walk from the Darrold house and disappear down the street headed toward the nearest bus stop.

  Never did Cynthia stir herself to climb behind the wheel of the powerful red roadster and take the young man back to wherever he belonged.

  It was four o’clock and Mrs. Morgantine was beginning to get her daily case of nerves over the routine of the tin can or the bottle. She stood well back from her windows and watched the Darrold house. At noon a tall young man had walked away from the Darrold house. He had been rather a good-looking young man, wearing gray slacks and one of those cotton sports coats. Of course, she could not say but what he had arrived just before she saw him leave, as she had been rather busy in her bedroom, sorting her jewelry.

  Surely any minute now she would see signs of Cynthia’s moving about in the kitchen. And then, indolent and sloppily dressed, Cynthia would shuffle out onto her porch, brace herself and throw a can or bottle down the yard.

  Mrs. Morgantine made herself some tea, drank it, paced restlessly about, looked at her watch. A little after five. And still no crash and clatter in the back yard. Yes, the red car was still parked beside the house.

  Five-thirty … quarter to six … six … five after six.

  Mrs. Morgantine stood up. She had been sitting by her beautifully polished dining room table, drumming on it with businesslike fingernails.

  Mrs. Darrold had never been this late.

  She went to the phone. “Information, please. Do you have a phone listed for a Mr. Gaylord Darrold on Hillside Drive? Thank you very much.”

  She dialed the number they had given her. She cocked her head on one side and listened. Yes, she could hear the distant ringing of the Darrold phone. She counted the rings. After it rang twenty-four times, she hung up, began to tap on her front teeth with the back of her thumbnail.

  Cynthia Darrold surely could not be sleeping that soundly!

  Mrs. Morgantine paced back and forth through the little house. She made her decision. Of course, if Cynthia came to the door, it would be a very neighborly thing to have done, and might mean that the Darrold woman would be in her hair until she could successfully freeze her out again.

  Mrs. Morgantine emptied a small sugar bowl back into the big sugar tin. She put a wide, shallow smile on her knobbed face, walked briskly down to her garden gate, stepped delicately over the maze of cans and bottles and climbed the warped steps to the Darrold back door. The buzzer inside was startingly loud.

  After giving the buzzer seven long rings, she thumped heartily on the door with a capable fist. No answer. She half turned, then, lips compressed, snatched the doorknob and turned it. The door opened readily.

  She tiptoed into the back hall. A big refrigerator hummed. A distant clock ticked. Sunlight fell in a fading pattern on the rather grubby linoleum.

  Holding her breath and clutching the sugar bowl, Mrs. Morgantine tiptoed her way into the kitchen.

  The blue sugar bowl slipped from her finger
s and smashed on the floor. The first three screams were high and thin. She stood staring down at the dead woman and screamed again and again until her voice itself was almost gone and had become a hoarse bellow.

  It was then that she realized that with the as yet unoccupied house on one side and with her own empty house on the other, and with no houses across the street, screaming was a singularly empty procedure.

  She moved sideways to the sink, turned on the cold water, cupped her hand and liberally spattered her face. It felt very good.

  Mrs. Morgantine’s appetite for the mystery story was almost insatiable. She began to think in terms of “murder weapon” and “motive” and “suspects” and “scene of the crime.”

  She found the weapon, a disappointingly inoffensive-appearing automatic, on the far side of the kitchen, almost under the kitchen table. She knew enough not to touch it. She regretted touching the faucet.

  She backed out of the kitchen, scurried down the steps and began to run down toward her garden gate.

  She was standing impatiently in front of the Darrold house when the white police sedan appeared five minutes later. She gave them no chance to ask questions. As she followed them up to the front door of the Darrold house, both policeman had begun to walk with their knees bent, as men who brace themselves against a storm.

  CHAPTER THREE

  DORIS LOGAN

  She wrinkled her nose at the ripe stink of alcohol as she took her seat beside the sleeping man. She half stood, lurching as the bus started, but there were no other vacant seats. Well, if he kept sleeping, he’d be no trouble.

  She wondered vaguely why she was always getting entangled with amorous drunks. Doris Logan was remarkably devoid of pride or pretense. When she thought of herself, which was seldom, she thought of a girl who was too tall, with a mouth that was too wide, hair of a strange red color, eyes that were an odd greeny-pale. She did not know that it all added up to a striking attractiveness.