The Man with the Lumpy Nose

by Lawrence Lariar

  Sue looked up at Emma Dunkel through wet eyes. The old soul was a good egg, an old friend, a well-loved friend. She had been stupid to talk to the old lady that way. “I’m sorry, Emma,” she said soberly. “I acted like a fool a minute ago. Forgive me?”

  Emma disregarded the apology. “We—I’ve missed you, honey. Haven’t seen you since the last party Earl gave and that was well over a month ago, now wasn’t it?”

  Sue Bates fumbled her cigarette. “I’ve been rather busy, Emma, working and sketching—and drinking.”

  Emma poured herself a jot of brandy. She sat down on the wide couch near the window. She put an arm around Sue’s shoulder. “You haven’t seen him, then, since the party—?”

  Sue stared into her glass moodily. “I’ve seen him, yes. But it isn’t the same, Emma. I’m afraid it’s all over and done with. You knew that, didn’t you?”

  “Of course. Of course I knew it.” Mrs. Dunkel sighed. “But people fight and get over it, lots of times. Then when they get over it, they fight some more. Everybody has fights when they’re in love. I can remember the time when me and Adolph—”

  Sue walked to the window. “When is he coming? It’s well after ten, isn’t it? I hoped to see him tonight.”

  “He’ll be home soon, Suzie. You know he works late every Thursday night.”

  “I know. I thought of visiting him there.”

  “That would have been a good idea—why didn’t you do it?”

  Sue shrugged. “Earl never liked to be disturbed by contributors or anybody else on Thursday nights. Or does he?” She was thinking of the blonde in the lobby, wondering whether that blonde the waiter saw was Marcia Prentiss. “Maybe it’s just certain contributors who annoy him, Emma.”

  “Pooh!” Mrs. Dunkel breathed out hard. “Why don’t you try phoning him at the office?”

  The greatest female cartoonist in the world was on the verge of tears. “I wouldn’t dare.”

  “Do you want me to call him?”

  “He wouldn’t like it, Emma.”

  Mrs. Dunkel snorted. She reached for the phone, but before her hand touched it the doorbell rang.

  “That would be Mr. Chance,” said Emma, much relieved. “Now you just put some powder on your nose, honey.”

  She opened the door to two strange men. McElmore flashed his badge. “We got an appointment with Mr. Chance.”

  “Who are you? Mr. Chance isn’t in.”

  McElmore elbowed past her. “Ain’t that too bad. We’ll just come in a while, thank you, and wait for Mr. Chance to come back. Come on in, Homer.”

  They entered the living room behind the doughty housekeeper.

  “Don’t go away, honey,” she told Sue. “These are two policemen to see Mr. Chance, though they act more like stevedores if you ask me.”

  “But you’re wrong, Emma. These men aren’t both policemen—unless Homer Bull has given up writing Dr. Ohm for police work.”

  Homer shook her hand. “I hadn’t any idea my fame had spread to penthouses, Miss Bates. How did you know me in this disguise?”

  Sue Bates laughed a deep and throaty laugh. “You’re modest, Homer Bull.”

  “Touché,” said Homer. “Dick, this is Miss Sue Bates, the little lady who draws all those funny cartoons for The Country.”

  McElmore was overwhelmed. “No kidding? Say, my wife clips every one of your drawings, Miss Bates. Makes ’em into lamp shades and screens and stuff like that. She thinks you’re just about the best artist in the country. Always reading me your gags and telling me they sound just like her friends.”

  Sue filled two glasses with whiskey. “What in the world does Earl Chance want to see you for, Mr. McElmore?”

  “You got me, Miss Bates,” he sighed. “It isn’t often we get social invitations from editors.”

  “Perhaps it’s some idea he has for the magazine,” said Homer. “From what I’ve heard of Earl Chance, this sort of call seems quite usual. Perhaps he’s planning a series of articles on crime in the big city and wants you to act as expert adviser, Dick.”

  “Yeah?” mouthed McElmore. “Now that would be just dandy, wouldn’t it? I always wanted to be an author.”

  He looked at his watch. “What time do you expect him? He told us to be here at ten o’clock.”

  “He works at his office on Thursday nights,” said Mrs. Dunkel, and winked at Sue slyly. “A smart policeman would maybe call him up.”

  McElmore turned wrathfully in his seat. “Oh, yeah? And I heard once that smart housemaids keep their traps shut, too!”

  Mrs. Dunkel stalked out of the room, a shivering barge of offended flesh.

  The phone rang when she neared the door. “It’s for you, inspector,” she snorted. “Some lunatic by the name of Cassidy wants to talk with you.”

  “For once you’re right,” said McElmore. “Hello, Cassidy.”

  Cassidy was excited. “I’m up here with the boys, at The Country building on Forty-Seventh Street. I woulda called you quicker, but I didn’t want to bother you on account of the way this thing came in on the phone. This girl calls up—” There was the sound of much noise behind Cassidy’s voice. “The newspaper boys just got here, Chief. Maybe you better come over quick, huh—and take charge; these guys are getting in my hair!”

  “Newspaper boys? What’s up?”

  “Plenty,” sighed Cassidy. “There’s been a guy knocked off up here. Knifed.”

  “I’ll be right over, Cassidy. Relax.” McElmore reached for his hat. “We can’t wait for this man any longer, Homer. I’ll drop back first thing in the morning.”

  Homer rose reluctantly. “Must we go?”

  “There’s been a murder.”

  “Anybody important?”

  “I don’t know.” McElmore handed Homer his hat. “Man was just killed in an office building. Forty-Seventh Street somewhere.”

  “Forty-Seventh Street?” Sue Bates dropped her cigarette holder. “Where? Where was it on Forty-Seventh Street?”

  McElmore was edging Homer into the hall. “That magazine building. The place where they put out The Country.” He tugged hard at Homer’s sleeve. “Let’s go.”

  Homer watched Sue Bates go pale under her rouge.

  “Hold on, Dick,” he said from the foyer. “Perhaps we’d better stay a while longer. The little lady’s fainted!”

  Dick McElmore and Homer Bull brushed past the two policeman at the entrance to The Country building. Near the elevators a small group of men bent over an old man.

  “That,” said Homer, “would be the night man.”

  “That is absolutely correct,” said Dumbo Waddell, a newspaper reporter. Dumbo was called Dumbo in the trade because of his large ears, his large body and his elephantine brain. “Hello, Homer! What are you doing here? I thought you were writing comic strips. This case is a beauty. I’ve already ordered tonight’s headline for Earl Chance. The Leader is having straight Gothic with a shpritz of Vermouth and we’re giving it all a dash of fresh magenta and green. Keen, isn’t it?”

  “Keen,” said Bull, turning to look at the old man. He was in a chair, leaning against the wall. An intern bandaged his bloody head. “Has the old man talked yet?”

  “Only in his sleep,” said Dumbo.

  McElmore poked the intern. “You think he’ll be up soon?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Let me know when he wakes. I’ll be upstairs.”

  Dumbo went with them.

  They got off at the twenty-third floor.

  “What’s the idea, Homer?” Dumbo bent over him when he talked. Dumbo was a big boy. “This is what kills me with detectives. A murder on the twenty-fourth floor and you two beagles get off at the twenty-third. What are we looking for here?”

  Bull didn’t say. They walked through the corridors from one end of the floor to the other. The twenty-third
floor was unlike the twenty-fourth. It housed many small offices. They paused at the fire door. “Don’t touch this knob,” said Homer. “I think you ought to have a man take prints down here, Dick. And after he gets finished on this floor, send him up to the twenty-fifth.”

  “Good idea,” said McElmore.

  “Ducky,” said Dumbo, making a note in his book. “Finger-prints on twenty-third floor might be important?”

  McElmore turned to snarl into the reporter’s face. “Go home, you ape. You’re bothering me!”

  Dumbo shrugged, smiled, and followed them.

  The twenty-fourth floor was bedlam. The thundering herd included two dozen assorted newspaper photographers and reporters, many uniformed policemen, a dozen detectives, two interns and a nurse.

  Marcia needed the nurse; she was sick with fear. Her eyes were closed and she was on the verge of sleep from the sedative the intern had given her. The nurse patted her hand and said, “All right, honey. Get some sleep, honey. It’ll be all right. All right.” She said this over and over again in a professionally whispered monotone. But Marcia didn’t hear her. Marcia slept now, thinking about the man in the next room, the man who was found dead, a knife in his back. Marcia was dreaming, too, of the big hand, the fat and pudgy hand that clicked off the light and then stifled the scream in her throat. Marcia was shocked. The two interns agreed that Marcia was shocked.

  “This girl is suffering from shock,” the tall one told McElmore. “I put her to sleep for a while, but I wouldn’t drive her too hard when she wakes up. Hysterical.”

  “Right,” said McElmore. “How long before she’ll be out of this? I mean back to normal?”

  “She’ll come out of this soon enough. However, I must warn you not to excite her. I’d hate to see her again in the condition we found her,” said the short intern.

  “Exactly,” added the tall one, a man who was destined later to transplant his bedside manner to the far reaches of Nassau County and become the biggest specialist in childbirth on Greater Long Island. “Exactly.”

  “I get it,” said Dumbo, and accompanied the two doctors to the elevator. “You just give me your names, men, and I’ll feature you in my exclusive story for The Leader. You guys got personality.”

  The tall one beamed. “You’re a liar!”

  Dumbo concentrated on the short one. “I wasn’t talking to your partner, doctor. He’s ripe for the Kings Park Nut House. But, you—what did you say your name was?”

  The short one paused, removed his glasses; polished them. “My name? My name is Professor Samson Sanders.”

  The tall one said, “Sucker!” and left them alone.

  Dumbo dropped a heavy arm around the little doctor’s shoulder. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions, Sam?”

  CHAPTER 8

  In Earl Chance’s Beekman Place apartment Sue Bates woke up moaning and trying to claw at the air. But she couldn’t claw because her hands were tightly bound behind her back. She couldn’t scream because her mouth was well gagged. She lay in the small library off the living room. This Sue knew because, as her senses returned, she easily distinguished the silhouette of the Chinese lamp against the blue black of the dark sky.

  She wondered how long she had been asleep. It seemed only a few minutes ago when that funny detective and the fat Homer Bull had been talking to her. Her head throbbed as she remembered Earl Chance. Had they found him safe and well at his office? She stifled a sudden urge to scream out, to try her voice against the tight-bound gag in her mouth.

  She sat up, her head swimming. Was that a noise nearby? There was somebody in the room with her. Somebody was breathing near her. A quick wave of fear brought the sweat to her brow and once again she felt faint. But the vague odor of a perfume revived her. That perfume was familiar!

  Mrs. Dunkel’s favorite odor. She commenced to squirm gently toward the other side of the room. Her foot hit flesh and she rolled over to Mrs. Dunkel’s side.

  The sound of voices in the living room froze her again. Two men were talking, one in a low-pitched voice, almost a whisper. The other voice was brittle and distinctly local in origin. This voice was the voice of a taxi driver or a subway guard.

  Brittle voice said, “Shut up with that talk! How many times I got to tell you to talk English!”

  “Never mind. Have we got enough of this?”

  “I don’t know. Keep lookin’.”

  Papers rustled.

  “This is the last desk,” said the whisperer.

  “You sure?”

  “As sure as I can be. Shall we go again into that room with the women?”

  “What for? Might wake ’em up. Then you’d have to hit the old lady again.”

  “That is nothing. Shall we go again in there?”

  “Shut up a minute. Lemme think.”

  More papers rustled. A flashlight flickered across the room and into the library.

  The whisperer said, “They are still out. I think I go back in there again. That desk near the wall, I think should be looked at more.”

  “Be careful of them dames. Don’t wake ’em.”

  There was a low laugh. “If they wake now, I put them to sleep for a long time, no?”

  Sue Bates squirmed back toward the spot where she had awakened. Would this whispering fiend remember where she had been? She saw the light flicker closer as she neared the door. Then it blinked out, suddenly. The brittle voice was talking again.

  “Never mind,” said the brittle voice. “I think I got it.”

  “You think? Or are you sure?”

  In the brief pause for an answer, the whisperer stood in the darkness. At this moment Sue Bates saw his silhouette against the great window in the living room, and her head reeled dizzily once more. She looked up at him from below eye-level and thought at once of Frankenstein and Boris Karloff and all the wild monster men of fiction. She closed her eyes to wipe away the fear. But she couldn’t close her ears.

  She heard Brittle voice say: “What the hell—maybe you better take another look in the library, at that.”

  When the first footfall sounded on the bare floor of the living room, Sue Bates gurgled feebly under her gag. Then she fainted dead away.

  Homer Bull and McElmore entered the editorial offices.

  The coroner, a meaty little man named Millett, shook Homer’s hand briskly. “Hello, Bull. Glad to see you again. Is this case already a problem then, Dick?”

  McElmore resented the inference. “Homer and me were together when this call came in, Joe. Anything I should know about the way he died?”

  “He was knifed. Several times. The murderer struck through his back, drew out the knife and hacked away again. He stabbed the man at least five times.”

  They walked into Earl Chance’s private office. Chance lay spread out over his desk blotter, his head turned so that he rested on the flat of his cheek. His arms hung crazily over the desk edge. There was much blood on the blotter, on the chair and somehow even on the small lamp near the edge of the desk.

  Homer examined the lamp. “How do you account for the blood on this, Joe?”

  Millett examined the lamp. “The knife must have been dripping when he yanked it to stab again. See, take a look here on the rug. There are quite a few drops of blood scattered about just to the left of the chair.”

  “And on the chair, too. How long has he been dead?”

  “Within the hour, Homer.”

  Dumbo came in, uttered a small scream, covered his eyes and said, “Horrors! I haven’t seen so much blood since the battle of Guadalajara. Have you found out who killed him yet, Homer?”

  McElmore went mad. “I thought I told you to scram, Dumbo! Why don’t you be a good little boy and go home to your paper?”

  “Don’t be a brute, McElmore. Homer wants me to stay, don’t you, Homer? Look, I just got you information, real stuff r
ight from the feedbox. You know what one of those interns just told me? He told me that the knife blade that killed Chance must have been specially made for the job!”

  Dumbo watched the effect of his words upon McElmore. McElmore’s right eyebrow went up. McElmore was curious. “Still want me to go home?”

  McElmore didn’t say. Bull said, “Did you notice anything like that about the wounds, Joe?”

  “I haven’t checked them carefully yet,” said the coroner. “But they did seem huge wounds at first glance. The knife must have been especially big, like a meat knife, perhaps.”

  “Not a dagger, then?”

  “Oh, no, never a dagger. Much too broad for that type of weapon.”

  McElmore shouted down the hall for a cop. “Williams! Take some men and search this floor for a knife. A big knife!”

  Homer strolled into the reception room. Marcia was much improved. She was a very, very beautiful creature, thought Homer. She had the hands of an artist, long and pale and slender, yet strongly built. She sat now, relaxed in the corner of the settee, her legs drawn up on the cushions. They were beautiful legs.

  Her face, lit up by the thin glow of the lamp, fascinated him. She had a classic beauty, her features were regular, small, delicate, yet around the eyes they were masculine and hard. Her brows, frowning gently in repose, were arched, delicate lines on her forehead, as though an artist had drawn them there with a bold stroke. He liked her mouth. This was a woman’s mouth, a mouth to love, not small, not large, but right for kissing.

  All these things Homer studied, for he was a thorough man.

  He saw, too, that her white gloves were tucked into the top of her handbag so that only a few of the fingers hung out. The gloves intrigued him.

  He bent over the settee to reach for the handbag. When he looked down at Marcia Prentiss, he was above her head, directly above her blouse. His eyes stopped there. There was a small spot of blood on her blouse. He beckoned to the nurse. “Have you seen this?”

  She looked down, startled for a moment. “What? Oh, the blood, you mean? Yes, I noticed that when I arrived. I couldn’t understand it at all.”

  “What do you mean? Isn’t she cut underneath that blot of blood?”