The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

by Otto Penzler

  From Miss Eveleth’s apartment I went down to the office on the first floor, where I found McBirney, the janitor, and his wife, who managed the apartment building. She was a scrawny little woman with the angular mouth and nose of a nagger; he was big, broad-shouldered, with sandy hair and mustache, good-humored, shiftless red face, and genial eyes of a pale and watery blue.

  He drawled out what he knew of the looting.

  “I was fixin’ a spigot on the fourth floor when I heard the shot. I went up to see what was the matter, an’ just as I got far enough up the front stairs to see the Toplins’ door, the fella came out. We seen each other at the same time, an’ he aims his gun at me. There’s a lot o’ things I might of done, but what I did do was to duck down an’ get my head out o’ range. I heard him run upstairs, an’ I got up just in time to see him make the turn between the fifth and sixth floors.

  “I didn’t go after him. I didn’t have a gun or nothin’, an’ I figured we had him cooped. A man could get out o’ this buildin’ to the roof of the next from the fourth floor, an’ maybe from the fifth, but not from any above that; an’ the Toplins’ apartment is on the fifth. I figured we had this fella. I could stand in front of the elevator an’ watch both the front an’ back stairs; an’ I rang for the elevator, an’ told Ambrose, the elevator boy, to give the alarm an’ run outside an’ keep his eye on the fire escape until the police came.

  “The missus came up with my gun in a minute or two, an’ told me that Martinez—Ambrose’s brother, who takes care of the switchboard an’ the front door—was callin’ the police. I could see both stairs plain, an’ the fella didn’t come down them; an’ it wasn’t more’n a few minutes before the police—a whole pack of ’em—came from the Richmond Station. Then we let the Toplins out of the closet where they were, an’ started to search the buildin’. An’ then Miss Eveleth came runnin’ down the stairs, her face an’ dress all bloody, an’ told about him bein’ in her apartment; so we were pretty sure we’d land him. But we didn’t. We searched every apartment in the buildin’, but didn’t find hide nor hair of him.”

  “Of course you didn’t!” Mrs. McBirney said unpleasantly. “But if you had—”

  “I know,” the janitor said with the indulgent air of one who has learned to take his pannings as an ordinary part of married life, “if I’d been a hero an’ grabbed him, an’ got myself all mussed up. Well, I ain’t foolish like old man Toplin, gettin’ himself plugged in the foot, or Blanche Eveleth, gettin’ her nose busted. I’m a sensible man that knows when he’s licked—an’ I ain’t jumpin’ at no guns!”

  “No! You’re not doing anything that—”

  This Mr. and Mrs. stuff wasn’t getting me anywhere, so I cut in with a question to the woman. “Who is the newest tenant you have?”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Jerald—they came the day before yesterday.”

  “What apartment?”

  “704—next door to Miss Eveleth.”

  “Who are these Jeralds?”

  “They come from Boston. He told me he came out here to open a branch of a manufacturing company. He’s a man of at least fifty, thin and dyspeptic-looking.”

  “Just him and his wife?”

  “Yes. She’s poorly too—been in a sanatorium for a year or two.”

  “Who’s the next newest tenant?”

  “Mr. Heaton, in 535. He’s been here a couple of weeks, but he’s down in Los Angeles right now. He went away three days ago and said he would be gone for ten or twelve days.”

  “What does he look like and what does he do?”

  “He’s with a theatrical agency and he’s kind of fat and red-faced.”

  “Who’s the next newest?”

  “Miss Eveleth. She’s been here about a month.”

  “And the next?”

  “The Wageners in 923. They’ve been here going on two months.”

  “What are they?”

  “He’s a retired real-estate agent. The others are his wife and son Jack—a boy of maybe nineteen. I seen him with Phyllis Toplin a lot.”

  “How long have the Toplins been here?”

  “It’ll be two years next month.”

  I turned from Mrs. McBirney to her husband.

  “Did the police search all these people’s apartments?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “We went into every room, every alcove, an’ every closet from cellar to roof.”

  “Did you get a good look at the robber?”

  “Yeah. There’s a light in the hall outside of the Toplins’ door, an’ it was shinin’ full on his face when I saw him.”

  “Could he have been one of your tenants?”

  “No, he couldn’t.”

  “Know him if you saw him again?”

  “You bet.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “A little runt, a light-complected youngster of twenty-three or -four in an old blue suit.”

  “Can I get hold of Ambrose and Martinez—the elevator and door boys who were on duty last night—now?”

  The janitor looked at his watch.

  “Yeah. They ought to be on the job now. They come on at two.”

  I went out into the lobby and found them together, matching nickels. They were brothers, slim, bright-eyed Filipino boys. They didn’t add much to my dope.

  Ambrose had come down to the lobby and told his brother to call the police as soon as McBirney had given him his orders, and then he had to beat it out the back door to take a plant on the fire escapes. The fire escapes ran down the back and one side wall. By standing a little off from the corner of those walls, the Filipino had been able to keep his eyes on both of them, as well as on the back door.

  There was plenty of illumination, he said, and he could see both fire escapes all the way to the roof, and he had seen nobody on them.

  Martinez had given the police a rap on the phone and had then watched the front door and the foot of the front stairs. He had seen nothing.

  I had just finished questioning the Filipinos when the street door opened and two men came in. I knew one of them: Bill Garren, a police detective on the Pawnshop Detail. The other was a small blond youth all flossy in pleated pants, short, square-shouldered coat, and patent-leather shoes with fawn spats to match his hat and gloves. His face wore a sullen pout. He didn’t seem to like being with Garren.

  “What are you up to around here?” the detective hailed me.

  “The Toplin doings for the insurance company,” I explained.

  “Getting anywhere?” he wanted to know.

  “About ready to make a pinch,” I said, not altogether in earnest and not altogether joking.

  “The more the merrier,” he grinned. “I’ve already made mine,” nodding at the dressy youth. “Come on upstairs with us.”

  The three of us got into the elevator and Ambrose carried us to the fifth floor. Before pressing the Toplin bell, Garren gave me what he had.

  “This lad tried to soak a ring in a Third Street shop a little while ago—an emerald and diamond ring that looks like one of the Toplin lot. He’s doing the clam now; he hasn’t said a word—yet. I’m going to show him to these people; then I’m going to take him down to the Hall of Justice and get words out of him—words that fit together in nice sentences and everything!”

  The prisoner looked sullenly at the floor and paid no attention to this threat. Garren rang the bell and the maid Hilda opened the door. Her eyes widened when she saw the dressy boy, but she didn’t say anything as she led us into the sitting-room, where Mrs. Toplin and her daughter were. They looked up at us.

  “Hello, Jack!” Phyllis greeted the prisoner.

  “ ’Lo, Phyl,” he mumbled, not looking at her.

  “Among friends, huh? Well, what’s the answer?” Garren demanded of the girl.

  She put her chin in the air and although her face turned red, she looked haughtily at the police detective.

  “Would you mind removing your hat?” she asked.

  Bill isn’t a bad bimbo, bu
t he hasn’t any meekness. He answered her by tilting his hat over one eye and turning to her mother.

  “Ever seen this lad before?”

  “Why, certainly!” Mrs. Toplin exclaimed. “That’s Mr. Wagener who lives upstairs.”

  “Well,” said Bill, “Mr. Wagener was picked up in a hock shop trying to get rid of this ring.” He fished a gaudy green and white ring from his pocket. “Know it?”

  “Certainly!” Mrs. Toplin said, looking at the ring. “It belongs to Phyllis, and the robber—” Her mouth dropped open as she began to understand. “How could Mr. Wagener—?”

  “Yes, how?” Bill repeated.

  The girl stepped between Garren and me, turning her back on him to face me. “I can explain everything,” she announced.

  That sounded too much like a movie subtitle to be very promising, but—

  “Go ahead,” I encouraged her.

  “I found that ring in the passageway near the front door after the excitement was over. The robber must have dropped it. I didn’t say anything to Papa and Mamma about it, because I thought nobody would ever know the difference, and it was insured, so I thought I might as well sell it and be in that much money. I asked Jack last night if he could sell it for me and he said he knew just how to go about it. He didn’t have anything to do with it outside of that, but I did think he’d have sense enough not to try to pawn it right away!”

  She looked scornfully at her accomplice.

  “See what you’ve done!” she accused him.

  He fidgeted and pouted at his feet.

  “Ha! Ha! Ha!” Bill Garren said sourly. “That’s a nifty! Did you ever hear the one about the two Irishmen that got in the Y.W.C.A. by mistake?”

  She didn’t say whether she had heard it or not.

  “Mrs. Toplin,” I asked, “making allowances for the different clothes and the unshaven face, could this lad have been the robber?”

  She shook her head with emphasis. “No! He could not!”

  “Set your prize down, Bill,” I suggested, “and let’s go over in a corner and whisper things at each other.”

  “Right.”

  He dragged a heavy chair to the center of the floor, sat Wagener on it, anchored him there with handcuffs—not exactly necessary, but Bill was grouchy at not getting his prisoner identified as the robber—and then he and I stepped out into the passageway. We could keep an eye on the sitting-room from there without having our low-voiced conversation overheard.

  “This is simple,” I whispered into his big red ear. “There are only five ways to figure the lay. First: Wagener stole the stuff for the Toplins. Second: the Toplins framed the robbery themselves and got Wagener to peddle it. Third: Wagener and the girl engineered the deal without the old folks being in on it. Fourth: Wagener pulled it on his own hook and the girl is covering him up. Fifth: she told us the truth. None of them explains why your little playmate should have been dumb enough to flash the ring downtown this morning, but that can’t be explained by any system. Which of the five do you favor?”

  “I like ’em all,” he grumbled. “But what I like most is that I’ve got this baby right—got him trying to pass a hot ring. That suits me fine. You do the guessing. I don’t ask for anymore than I’ve got.”

  “It doesn’t irritate me any either,” I agreed. “The way it stands the insurance company can welsh on the policies—but I’d like to smoke it out a little further, far enough to put away anybody who has been trying to run a hooligan on the North American. We’ll clean up all we can on this kid, stow him in the can, and then see what further damage we can do.”

  “All right,” Garren said. “Suppose you get hold of the janitor and that Eveleth woman while I’m showing the boy to old man Toplin and getting the maid’s opinion.”

  I nodded and went out into the corridor, leaving the door unlocked behind me. I took the elevator to the seventh floor and told Ambrose to get hold of McBirney and send him to the Toplins’ apartment. Then I rang Blanche Eveleth’s bell.

  “Can you come downstairs for a minute or two?” I asked her. “We’ve a prize who might be your friend of last night.”

  “Will I?” She started toward the stairs with me. “And if he’s the right one, can I pay him back for my battered beauty?”

  “You can,” I promised. “Go as far as you like, so you don’t maul him too badly to stand trial.”

  I took her into the Toplins’ apartment without ringing the bell, and found everybody in Frank Toplin’s bedroom. A look at Garren’s glum face told me that neither the old man nor the maid had given him a nod on the prisoner.

  I put the finger on Jack Wagener. Disappointment came into Blanche Eveleth’s eyes. “You’re wrong,” she said. “That’s not he.”

  Garren scowled at her. It was a pipe that if the Toplins were tied up with young Wagener, they wouldn’t identify him as the robber. Bill had been counting on that identification coming from the two outsiders—Blanche Eveleth and the janitor—and now one of them had flopped.

  The other one rang the bell just then and the maid brought him in.

  I pointed at Jack Wagener, who stood beside Garren staring sullenly at the floor.

  “Know him, McBirney?”

  “Yeah, Mr. Wagener’s son, Jack.”

  “Is he the man who shooed you away with a gun last night?”

  McBirney’s watery eyes popped in surprise.

  “No,” he said with decision, and began to look doubtful.

  “In an old suit, cap pulled down, needing a shave—could it have been him?”

  “No-o-o-o,” the janitor drawled, “I don’t think so, though it—You know, now that I come to think about it, there was something familiar about that fella, an’ maybe—By cracky, I think maybe you’re right—though I couldn’t exactly say for sure.”

  “That’ll do!” Garren grunted in disgust.

  An identification of the sort the janitor was giving isn’t worth a damn one way or the other. Even positive and immediate identifications aren’t always the goods. A lot of people who don’t know any better—and some who do, or should—have given circumstantial evidence a bad name. It is misleading sometimes. But for genuine, undiluted, pre-war untrustworthiness, it can’t come within gunshot of human testimony. Take any man you like—unless he is the one in a hundred thousand with a mind trained to keep things straight, and not always even then—get him excited, show him something, give him a few hours to think it over and talk it over, and then ask him about it. It’s dollars to doughnuts that you’ll have a hard time finding any connection between what he saw and what he says he saw. Like this McBirney—another hour and he’d be ready to gamble his life on Jack Wagener’s being the robber.

  Garren wrapped his fingers around the boy’s arm and started for the door.

  “Where to, Bill?” I asked.

  “Up to talk to his people. Coming along?”

  “Stick around a while,” I invited. “I’m going to put on a party. But first, tell me, did the coppers who came here when the alarm was turned in do a good job?”

  “I didn’t see it,” the police detective said. “I didn’t get here until the fireworks were pretty well over, but I understand the boys did all that could be expected of them.”

  I turned to Frank Toplin. I did my talking to him chiefly because we—his wife and daughter, the maid, the janitor, Blanche Eveleth, Garren, and his prisoner, and I—were grouped around the old man’s bed and by looking at him I could get a one-eyed view of everybody else.

  “Somebody has been kidding me somewhere,” I began my speech. “If all the things I’ve been told about this job are right, then so is Prohibition. Your stories don’t fit together, not even almost. Take the bird who stuck you up. He seems to have been pretty well acquainted with your affairs. It might be luck that he hit your apartment at a time when all of your jewelry was on hand, instead of another apartment, or your apartment at another time. But I don’t like luck. I’d rather figure that he knew what he was doing. He nicked you for
your pretties, and then he galloped up to Miss Eveleth’s apartment. He may have been about to go downstairs when he ran into McBirney, or he may not. Anyway, he went upstairs, into Miss Eveleth’s apartment, looking for a fire escape. Funny, huh? He knew enough about the place to make a push-over out of the stick-up, but he didn’t know there were no fire escapes on Miss Eveleth’s side of the building.

  “He didn’t speak to you or to McBirney, but he talked to Miss Eveleth, in a bass voice. A very, very deep voice. Funny, huh? From Miss Eveleth’s apartment he vanished with every exit watched. The police must have been here before he left her apartment and they would have blocked the outlets first thing, whether McBirney and Ambrose had already done that or not. But he got away. Funny, huh? He wore a wrinkled suit, which might have been taken from a bundle just before he went to work, and he was a small man. Miss Eveleth isn’t a small woman, but she would be a small man. A guy with a suspicious disposition would almost think Blanche Eveleth was the robber.”

  Frank Toplin, his wife, young Wagener, the janitor, and the maid were gaping at me. Garren was sizing up the Eveleth girl with narrowed eyes, while she glared white-hot at me. Phyllis Toplin was looking at me with a contemptuous sort of pity for my feeble-mindedness.

  Bill Garren finished his inspection of the girl and nodded slowly.

  “She could get away with it,” he gave his opinion, “indoors and if she kept her mouth shut.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “Exactly, my eye!” Phyllis Toplin exploded. “Do you two correspondence-school detectives think we wouldn’t know the difference between a man and a woman dressed in man’s clothes? He had a day or two’s growth of hair on his face—real hair, if you know what I mean. Do you think he could have fooled us with false whiskers? This happened, you know, it’s not in a play!”

  The others stopped gaping, and heads bobbed up and down.

  “Phyllis is right.” Frank Toplin backed up his offspring. “He was a man—no woman dressed like one.”

  His wife, the maid, and the janitor nodded vigorous endorsements.

  But I’m a bull-headed sort of bird when it comes to going where the evidence leads. I spun to face Blanche Eveleth.