The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

by Otto Penzler

  Beaver’s eyes widened.

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  Sergeant Ackley laughed.

  “Plenty. They starve the birds and then take ’em out on their boats. They clamp a ring around their necks to keep ’em from swallowing. The bird sees a school of fish and flies over, swoops down and scoops up a whole beakful of ’em, an’ a pelican’s beak holds a lot. Then the bird tries to swallow ’em, but the ring keeps the fish right where they belong. The Jap pries the bird’s bill open, spills out the fish, and sends him away after more fish.

  “Now this guy, Leith, has been lucky. I ain’t giving him credit for any great amount of brains, but for a lot o’luck. He’s managed to dope out the solution of a few crimes from having the facts told to him, and he’s always thrown us off the trail by kidding us along with a lot o’ hooey.

  “This time he ain’t going to kid nobody except himself. He’s got the hiding place of those diamonds figured out, and he’s going there to cop ’em off. Well, I’m going to just stick the ring around his neck, and let him cop. Then when he tries to swallow, he’ll find that we’ll just pry his jaw open an’ make ’m spill the goods.

  “See? He’ll be just like the trained pelican. He’ll go get the stuff for us, then we’ll shake him down and take all the credit for solving the case. After that we’ll cinch the stolen goods rap on this guy, Leith, and fry the murderer. And if we can’t find the murderer, we’ll just hang the whole works on Leith, frame him for the murder, and fry him.”

  Beaver sighed.

  “It sure sounds nice the way you tell it, Sarge, but I wish you’d find out what he’s goin’ to do with that there canary before we get into this thing too deep. Somehow or other I got a hunch that canary is goin’ to be the big thing in this case …”

  Sergeant Ackley’s face turned red.

  “That’ll do, Beaver. You go ahead and obey orders, and don’t ball things all up trying to get intellectual. You leave the thinkin’ to me. You do the leg work.

  “That’s where you’ve always gummed the works before. You let this guy drag some red herring across the trail, and you go yapping off on that side trail while Leith gets his stuff across and ditches the swag.

  “Now I don’t want to offend you, but I’m in charge of this case, and I’ll do the thinking. You beat it on back to Leith’s apartment, and telephone me in a report whenever anything breaks. I’m going to play this hotel end of it my way.”

  The undercover man started to say something, thought better of it.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, saluted, turned on his heel and walked out.

  CHAPTER V

  Leith Finishes Arrangements

  Lester Leith stared around him at the hotel rooms.

  There was nothing to indicate that one of these rooms had been the scene of a grewsome murder. Hotels have press agents who thrust forward certain favorable facts and keep others very much in the background when it becomes necessary.

  The newspaper accounts of the Cogley murder had only mentioned the location of the crime as having been in a “downtown hotel.” They had been indefinite as to the name and location of this hotel and none of the accounts had so much as mentioned the floor on which the room had been situated, let alone the number of that room.

  People have a superstitious dread of sleeping in a bed in which a murder has been committed, and some persons shun a hotel merely because a crime of violence has been committed under its roof.

  The girl stared at Lester Leith with uncordial eyes.

  “You’re leavin’ that connecting door unlocked?”

  “Yes. I want to get into this room without going down the hallway.”

  She sneered.

  “Well, don’t walk in your sleep.”

  Lester Leith bowed.

  “I am a sound sleeper. When you are in the room you can lock the door. But when you are absent I want to be free to come and go.”

  “And you want me to do my stuff?” asked the girl.

  “Meaning?” inquired Lester Leith.

  “Copping watches and that sort of stuff?”

  He nodded.

  “But you don’t want me to do anything with ’em, hock ’em or anything like that?”

  Lester Leith shook his head vehemently.

  “No. I want you to give everything you take to me.”

  The girl sighed, half turned, slid the hem of her dress up along the silken contour of a shapely limb.

  “Hell,” she said, bitterly, “somebody’s always taking the joy outta life. Here it is!”

  And she tossed a hard object to the hotel dresser, an object that rattled, that rolled and sent forth sparkles of scintillating fire.

  Lester Leith stared at it.

  “Where did that come from?”

  “The hotel clerk’s necktie, of course,” she said. “You didn’t think I’d pass up anything like that, did you?”

  Lester Leith stared at her in appreciative appraisal.

  “Good work! Did you get anything else?”

  She shook her head.

  “I lifted the bell hop’s watch, but it was a threshing machine movement, so I slipped it back again.”

  Lester Leith smiled, crossed the room to the telephone.

  “Can you shed any tears?” he asked the young woman.

  She shook her head.

  “Never shed a sob in my life. I never regretted anything I did bad enough. All I ever regretted was gettin’ caught, an’ that was somethin’ somebody else did.”

  “Can you look meek and regretful?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Okay. Get gloomy then, because I’m getting the clerk up here.”

  Lester Leith took down the telephone receiver.

  “The room clerk,” he said.

  There was a pause, then the click of a connection.

  “A most unfortunate occurrence,” muttered Lester Leith apologetically into the transmitter. “Please come up right away to room 407. I’ll explain when you get here. Come at once.”

  He hung up the telephone, turned to the girl.

  “Pull out the handkerchief and droop the eyes,” he said.

  She sat down on the edge of the bed, hung her head.

  “Okay, but don’t put it on too thick, or I’ll giggle.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  The clerk, white faced, wide-eyed, stood on the threshold. Back of him was a lantern jawed individual with pig eyes. Out in the corridor, two men were engaged in a casual conversation of greeting, exclaiming that it was a small world after all, shaking hands with a fervor that was too audibly exclamatory to be entirely genuine.

  The clerk stepped into the room.

  “Meet Mr. Moses,” he said, nervously.

  Lester Leith bowed.

  “The house detective, I take it?”

  The clerk cleared his throad nervously, but the big form of the man with the lantern jaw barged forward.

  “Yeah,” he growled, “I’m the house detective, if that means anything.”

  Lester Leith was suavely apologetic.

  “So glad you came, so glad we can have this little conference. I’m so sorry it all happened, but so glad we can discuss it privately.

  “You see my niece is suffering from a nervous disorder. In short, gentlemen, she’s a kleptomaniac. Her hands simply will not let other people’s property alone. She’s particularly hard on department stores.”

  The house detective glowered at the girl who sat on the edge of the bed, head hung in shame, her hands clenched.

  “Klepto—hell!” he exclaimed. “What you mean is that she’s a shoplifter. I’ve heard of lots of these here cases of nervous troubles, but they’re all the same. They used to be just plain sneak thieves until some slick lawyer hired a crooked doctor, and then they all became kleptomaniacs. Now, don’t you try to pull nothing in this hotel, because …”

  “No, no!” exclaimed Lester Leith. “You don’t understand. The girl has everything she could wish for, everyt
hing that money can buy. She simply has an irresistible impulse to steal. Now what I wish to do is to assure you that if there is anything taken from any of the guests of the hotel I will be financially responsible. I will make good the loss.”

  The house detective sneered.

  “Daddy, eh!” he said.

  Lester Leith paid no attention to the interpolation.

  “I had intended to have my niece examined by the best brain specialist in the city. But unfortunate symptoms have developed which make me realize that there is an acute attack developing, and I cannot reach the brain specialist. I think, perhaps, your house physician would be able to handle the situation until we could secure a specialist.”

  The clerk fidgeted, looked at the house detective.

  The house detective yawned, visibly and audibly.

  “Bushwa!” he said. Then, after an interval, added: “Baloney!”

  Lester Leith extended his hand toward the clerk.

  “Permit me,” he said.

  He opened the hand.

  “Good God!” exclaimed the clerk, his hand darting to the knot of his tie, drifting down the glistening silk, “That’s my stickpin!”

  Lester Leith was smilingly suave.

  “Exactly,” he said.

  The detective got his feet in under him, half raised his body from the chair he had been occupying, then settled back. The clerk clutched at the diamond pin.

  “Now,” purred Lester Leith, “perhaps you will be so good as to call the house physician.”

  The clerk and the detective looked at each other.

  The house detective carefully twisted his head to one side and closed a surreptitious eyelid.

  “I think,” he said, “I got a friend who’s a specialist on this sort of a case. I’d better get him. The house sawbones ain’t no good for anything except liquor prescriptions … And,” he added, ruefully, “he ain’t no good for those anymore. His book’s used up.”

  Lester Leith arose, bowed politely.

  “As you say, gentlemen. I will endeavor to keep my niece under restraint until the physician arrives. I hope I don’t have to confine her in an institution.

  “In the meantime, remember that I will be responsible for any loss which occurs in the house. And perhaps it would be advisable to notify the occupants of the adjoining rooms that there is an … er … unfortunate case located here. They could be asked to report promptly on anything they might find … er … mislaid.”

  The clerk sniffed.

  “And spread it all over the hotel that we got a criminal stuck in one of the rooms! Not much. We’ll go get this brain specialist, and then you get out!”

  The house detective yawned, stretched, and as he stretched, managed to move his leg so that his toe gently kicked the shin of the indignant hotel clerk.

  “Now don’t go talkin’ that way,” he soothed. “People can’t help it when they get that kleptomania, any more than they can help sleep-walkin’ or coke-snuffin’.”

  Leith flashed him a grateful glance.

  “I’m certain,” he muttered politely and deferentially, “that you’re an expert in your line, Mr. Moses.”

  “You said it,” said Moses, and nodded his head to the clerk.

  “C’mon,” he said.

  They shuffled out. The door closed. The girl raised an unpenitent face and grinned.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  Lester Leith regarded her gravely.

  “If you had to build an ironclad, copper-riveted alibi, what would you do?”

  She puckered her lips, narrowed her eyes in thought.

  “Absolutely ironclad?” she asked.

  Leith nodded.

  The girl grinned.

  “Well,” she said, “I’ve pulled a stunt once along that line that ain’t never been improved on. I let a cop who was pretty well up in the big time date me up. He was married. It would have been a swell alibi if I’d had to use it; only I didn’t have to use it.”

  Leith took out a wallet.

  “I think,” he observed, “it would be a fine time to start building an alibi.”

  She took the bill he handed to her, let her eyes widen, whistled, thrust the money down the top of her stocking, and grinned.

  “I like,” she said. “You’d rate a good-by kiss if I hadn’t just smeared my mouth all up pretty for the clerk. As it is, you’re a good guy. G’by.”

  “Good-by,” said Lester Leith.

  The girl turned to go.

  CHAPTER VI

  The Hiding Place

  She went out the door, as graceful as a slipping shadow. The hallway seemed to be unduly active. Three men were strolling along. A fourth man was arguing with a porter about the cost of transporting a trunk.

  Lester Leith smiled.

  He locked the door, walked through room 407 to room 405, took a small leather packet from his pocket, extracted a tiny drill. With this drill he bored a very small hole in the panel of the communicating doorway which led to room 403.

  When this hole was completed, Lester Leith applied his eye, saw that the room was dark and vacant, nodded sagely, and took additional tools from the leather case.

  After some ten seconds the bolt twisted and the communicating door swung open.

  The room showed that it had been occupied for some time. The furnishings were those of the stock hotel bedroom, but there were individual touches, photographs on the walls, a pennant or two, a sofa cushion, and a special reading lamp.

  Lester Leith noted them, noted also that the clothing had been unpacked from the suitcases and trunk and placed in the closet of the room, the drawers of the bureau. The massive trunk was presumably empty, but it was tightly locked.

  Lester Leith nodded, as though he was finding exactly what he had expected, and set to work. He dragged the bulky trunk into room 405, then across the floor into room 407. He pulled the clothes out of the bureau drawers, took the suitcases, then reading lamp, the sofa cushion, even the photographs on the walls. He denuded the room of every single item of individual furniture.

  Then he retired once more to room 405, locked the communicating door, applied his eye to the peep hole he had gimleted in the panel, and waited.

  He had something over an hour to wait.

  His room was dark, save for such light as came through the windows, light which ebbed and flowed with the regularity of clockwork, marking the clicking on and off of some of the intermittent electric signs which were on the roofs of adjoining buildings. The noise of the side street came to his ears in a confused roar. The blare of automobile horns, impatiently trying to move traffic more expeditiously, the muttered undertone which marks the restless motion and conversation of hustling throngs, all blended into an undertone of sound.

  Lester Leith remained at his post, silently observant.

  His vigil was at last rewarded.

  A key clicked in the lock of 403. The door swung open, showing light from the corridor, the silhouette of a chunky man. The door closed. The bolt clicked, and the light switched on.

  Lester Leith could see the look of stunned amazement on the face of the man in the adjoining room as his horrified vision appraised him of what had happened.

  The man was in the early forties, alert, broad shouldered, self-sufficiently aggressive. But now his self-sufficiency melted away from him. His face writhed with conflicting emotions. He glanced back of him at the door through which he had just entered, then at the doorway where Leith watched.

  For some ten seconds he stood motionless, apparently adjusting himself. Then his hand slipped beneath the armpit of his coat, abstracted a snub nosed automatic, and he tiptoed toward the door behind which Lester Leith crouched.

  Softly, silently, he twisted the knob of that door, and found that the door was locked. Then he stepped back, letting light once more come through the small hole Leith had bored.

  The man walked on the balls of his feet to the telephone in the corner of the room, took down the receiver.

  “R
oom clerk,” he rasped, and his voice sounded with the strain of his feelings.

  That voice was rising in a vibrant emotion which was akin to nervous hysteria as he recounted his troubles to the hotel clerk. Lester Leith could not catch all the words, but he could hear the tone, and gather the import of the conversation.

  Then the man in the adjoining room hung up the telephone, crossed swiftly to the window, pulled down the shade, went to the door, made certain it was locked, looked at the transom, making sure it was closed.

  Then he secured a chair, stood on it, and unscrewed the brass screws from one of the wall lighting fixtures. The fixture lifted out, disclosing a cunningly designed hiding place. In that hollowed out hiding place, at one side of the spliced electric wires which conveyed current to the wall fixture, was a chamois bag.

  The man opened this bag with fingers that quivered.

  Then he gave an exclamation of relief. For several seconds his greedy eyes stared down at the bag, and the contents of the bag, sending scintillating shafts of light upward, were, in turn, mirrored in the man’s eyes, until the reflections seemed to turn the eyes to cold fire.

  Then the man hastily closed the bag, pushed it back into its hiding place, paused for a moment’s consideration, and then replaced the screws in the wall fixture. He got down from the chair, moved it so that its back was against the wall, unlocked the outer door, stepped into the corridor, and closed the door, locking it from the outside.

  Lester Leith worked with swift rapidity.

  He opened the communicating door, glided into the opposite room, pulled the chair back to the place directly underneath the wall fixture, untwisted the screws with a rapidly geared screwdriver, opened the chamois bag.

  There were many gems in that bag, gems that sparkled and glittered. But Leith was careful to take only a certain limited number, a very few, but those few the best. Then he closed the bag, pushed it back into its recess in the wall, screwed back the light fixture, replaced the chair and slipped from the room into his own room, number four hundred and five.