The Man with the Lumpy Nose

by Lawrence Lariar

  The nurse whispered, “Cut? Oh, no, sir, she’s all right. She would have noticed a cut where that blood is. It would have hurt her something awful.”

  “I don’t know about that. People under strain are apt to forget a wound. I’m going back inside. I want you to examine her while I’m gone.”

  He rejoined McElmore, Dumbo and the coroner in Chance’s office. McElmore stood where he had left him, staring down at the desk angrily, his long arms akimbo; his hat far back on his head. Dumbo sat near the desk, his legs propped up dangerously near the dead man’s head. He wrote in a little notebook. The coroner was preparing to leave.

  McElmore still stared at the desk. Bull wondered what held the inspector’s eyes. He walked alongside McElmore and looked down at the corpse. “It looks pretty bad for that girl, McElmore,” he said. “Is she ready to talk yet?”

  “Soon. Why does it look bad for her?”

  “The whole story sounds phony, Homer, if Cassidy told it to me straight. He says—”

  “Why don’t you wait until she tells it to us? Then you can recheck with Cassidy and find out whether she slipped up.”

  There was a silence while McElmore lit another cigar. “On the other hand, she don’t look strong enough to have knifed this guy five times.”

  Dumbo snickered. “You never can tell until you wrestle with a dame like that, Inspector. She may be strong as a bull.” He took his legs off the desk. “Like the time I met this little babe at Irving Place. She was no bigger than my right arm, honest, but built like a cushion. Well, I took her down to the Automat and gave her a swell feed. Then we walked down to—”

  The nurse tiptoed in. “There’s no wound under that bloodstain, Mr. Bull.”

  “Bloodstain? What bloodstain?” snapped McElmore. “Why doesn’t somebody tell me these things?”

  The nurse said, “She’s up now. I think you can talk to her.”

  “Did she suspect anything when you examined her?”

  “No, I’m quite sure she didn’t know I was taking a look underneath that stain.”

  McElmore said, “We better not tell her she has blood on her chest, eh, Homer?”

  “Nonsense. She probably got that stain from the dripping knife of the murderer. He must have bent over her on his way out!”

  Marcia managed a half smile when they entered the reception room. She felt better now. The first big fright had passed. The three men who looked down at her seemed friendly enough. They were all smiling. And that little fat man, hadn’t she seen him before? She tried to remember, but gave it up and lit a cigarette instead.

  “Now, Miss Prentiss,” began McElmore, “I want you to tell me just exactly what happened tonight, from the time you entered this building. What time did you get in here?”

  “I got here at about half-past nine. I took the elevator—”

  Homer interrupted. “Do you remember what the elevator man looked like?”

  She fought with her memory. “Vaguely. He was—but really, I couldn’t be sure. You know how it is, after walking into office buildings all day long. All elevator boys look alike after a while—”

  “Then he was an elevator boy—?”

  Marcia was flustered. “I really don’t remember. I’m sorry.”

  “Never mind then, Miss Prentiss. What happened after you took the elevator?”

  “He took me up to the twenty-fourth floor. It was—”

  “Wait a minute,” said McElmore. “Didn’t you have to sign in down in the lobby?”

  She shook her head. “Nobody asked me to sign anything. I don’t think they have a book like that in this building, at least I’ve never seen one.”

  “The little lady’s absolutely correct, Inspector,” said Dumbo. “Now ask her the ten-dollar question.”

  “Quiet,” snarled McElmore. “Now go ahead with your story, miss.”

  “Perhaps I’d better start earlier in the evening,” she began. “I must explain that I had dinner with Mr. Chance over at The Black Pig. Mr. Chance invited me up to this office while we were having dinner. You see, he had bought some of my cartoons a few weeks ago, and I was quite excited about having dinner with him. He told me at dinner that he wanted me to come up here and look over a feature idea he expected I’d draw for his magazine every week.” Marcia looked into her lap. “He was very nice to me—matter of fact, he was so nice that I thought he was just asking me up here—”

  McElmore coughed.

  “Boy, this story will make me an editor yet!” blurted Dumbo, reaching for his notebook.

  “Do me a favor and go home and write it!” McElmore stood over the reporter menacingly. “Get rolling!”

  The reporter shuffled out of the room. “I’ll be downstairs, if you need me, Homer.”

  “Go ahead, Miss Prentiss.”

  Marcia went on, slowly. “He said something to me in the restaurant that I thought was an insult. I got up and left—”

  “What did he say?” asked McElmore.

  She colored. “I can’t remember, exactly. Perhaps it was more the way he said it that made me feel offended. He was—he had a way of staring at you when he spoke that was positively evil. Anyhow, I left the restaurant and took a walk by myself. I walked for a long time, just thinking over what had happened in the restaurant and wondering whether or not I was acting like a fool. At about nine fifteen, I was at the library on Forty-Second Street when it came to me that I was being silly about the whole thing. You see, this meant more to me than you can imagine. It meant that I might be throwing away the chance to sell one drawing a week to The Country. It also meant that my future was being thrown away quite casually, too.” She put out her cigarette with a little sigh. “Anyhow, I decided that I’d take the risk and come up here to see what Mr. Chance wanted me to do for him. I reached this building at almost exactly nine-thirty.

  “I don’t know exactly how long I waited for Mr. Chance,” she said. “You know how it is with cartoonists—I began to read back issues of The Country, and pretty soon I was thinking of cartoons and gags and all that. It seemed quite a while before he walked in. We talked for a few minutes and then he told me to wait for him. He said he was going inside for some sketches of my new feature.”

  “What was this feature?” asked Homer.

  “A cartoon idea, to be run as a weekly affair in the magazine.”

  “You didn’t have any knowledge of this feature?”

  “Vaguely,” she said. “You see, that was the reason why he asked me up here tonight. He wanted the first drawing in a rush, and had forgotten to bring the rough draft of it to the restaurant.”

  “So you never really saw the feature?”

  “No. I sat out here waiting for him and sketching in my notebook. I must have been completely absorbed in my work, because I didn’t hear the man who walked in and put these lights out.”

  “You’re sure it was a man?”

  “Oh, quite. I turned around quickly as soon as the lights went off. I was thoroughly frightened because of the shock of darkness while sketching and concentrating on my art work. He came toward me from the hallway, so that all I could get was a rather quick, vague sort of picture of him. Then another flash of his silhouette. After that I felt his hand on my neck and I guess I fainted.”

  “Just a minute, miss,” McElmore interrupted. “When you say you saw a ‘silhouette’, do you mean that you couldn’t see this man’s face at all? You couldn’t see his features?”

  “I did, for a second. He had a coarse face, and a very big, broad nose. I couldn’t forget that nose. After that, I saw the silhouette of his figure against the hall light.”

  “And, of course, since Miss Prentiss was taken by surprise, she only has a mental record of the bulk of the silhouette,” explained Homer. “Isn’t that right, Miss Prentiss?”

  Marcia frowned. She was struggling with the memory of that
awful figure in the darkness. “More or less. He was a big man—a very tall man and strong. I remember that he held my arm with one hand. I guess I must have fainted when he touched me—I can’t remember anything after that.”

  “You were sitting on the settee when he entered?”

  “Exactly where I am now.”

  “And you’re sure that he entered from the hall?”

  “I can’t be sure. I saw his figure silhouetted against the hall light.”

  “Then he might have entered this room quietly through that door to the editorial offices?”

  “He might have.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Homer walked to the door leading into the inner offices. This door was set in the wall against which the settee rested, not more than six feet from where Marcia sat. The switch was on the wall near this door. A man could have left the editorial rooms, discovered Marcia sitting in the reception room, switched out the light and left. But why would he attack the girl, if he could have walked away without her discovering him?

  “What happened when you awoke? The light, of course, was still off?”

  “Yes. I groped around and found the switch. I must have gotten over my faint quickly, because I distinctly remember hearing the elevator working somewhere in the building. This frightened me, although I don’t remember why. I guess it was just the noise—hearing any sort of noise in such complete blackness and quiet. You see, whoever it was who attacked me had put out the hall light, too, before leaving. Anyhow, I found the switch in this room and felt a little better with the light on. Then I remembered Earl Chance. I knew that something must have happened to him, that the man who came at me must have done something to Earl or else he would have found me in my faint long ago. I walked over to that door and stood there for a long time. I was afraid. I remember that I was trembling all over—afraid to open that door and walk through the narrow corridor to where I imagined Mr. Chance’s office would be.”

  “Then you had never been inside to Mr. Chance’s office?”

  “Never. I wandered down the hall, poking my head in each office I saw. When I finally reached his room, it was almost dark in there, but I could see from the light in the corridor that he was hurt. I saw the blood on the desk blotter, too. I guess I screamed several times after that and ran down the corridor to the reception room again. But the sight of the dark hallway to the elevator made me even more afraid, so I ran back into the first office through that door and phoned the police.”

  McElmore had been listening politely. Now he beckoned to a policeman in the hall. “Get Cassidy up here,” he whispered. “Tell him to bring the elevator man—the night man.” He turned to Marcia. “Tell me, miss, you got any idea who might want to kill this man Chance?”

  She stiffened. “I didn’t know Mr. Chance socially, Inspector. I thought I told you—”

  “Now, now,” soothed McElmore, “I’m not saying you knew him socially, miss. I just asked you whether you knew anybody who might, say, like to hit this man Chance. One of your boyfriends, maybe?”

  “Nobody I know might want to kill Mr. Chance.”

  The elevator clicked to a stop outside and the door slammed open. Dumbo walked briskly, toward them, his mobile face alive with news.

  “May I come in?” he said. “I bring good tidings.”

  “What do you want?” snarled the inspector. “I thought I told you to stay out of here?”

  “I’m not in yet, am I? Besides I came up to talk to Homer.” He made a comic motion with his finger. Homer followed him into the hall, smiling. “This is special for you, chum,” said Dumbo. He drew the little fat man close to him and whispered in a very loud whisper. “I just found the knife!”

  “You found what?” McElmore joined them. “Did I hear you say knife?”

  Dumbo drew himself up to his full height. He was clowning again. “Go away. I’m not talking to you. I don’t open my ruby lips again for an ungrateful detective. You are all cads! Aren’t they, Homer?”

  McElmore said, “Cut it, Dumbo. You really found the knife?”

  “Oh, I found that knife all right!” The reporter was serious, suddenly. The memory of all the fresh blood he had just seen was bright in his brain. “You’ll find the damned thing down below, on the twenty-first floor. I was taking a look around down there, and I ran into it. It’s on the landing to the fire stairs.”

  “What part of the landing?” asked McElmore.

  “Oh, you can’t miss it, detective,” smiled Dumbo, wryly. “You’ll find it sticking in a little man down there!”

  The little man on the landing of the twenty-first floor had been stabbed to death and the knife left in him. The knife was a peculiar-looking instrument, not at all like any other knives Homer had seen. It was quite long, with a short, knobby handle and yet the blade was broad almost all the way down to the tip.

  The dead man lay on his back with his head resting against the wall. He was dressed shabbily in a dark blue serge suit, so dark that it appeared black even under the bright light in the hall. He had on a shirt of a winish tinge striped with blue. His necktie was black. His face, bloodless in death, was the face of a quiet man. His eyes were small under bushy brows.

  McElmore bent to go through the dead man’s pockets. His jacket yielded a package of Chesterfields—half gone and badly treated—many toothpicks, matches of the old-fashioned variety, a small penknife with one blade missing, a handkerchief, fifteen cents in change, a stub of a pencil and a few pipe cleaners. In his vest there was an Ingersoll watch (It had stopped at 10:17), more toothpicks and half a stick of chewing gum.

  His trousers were empty, save for a wallet in which McElmore found a photograph of a woman and five one-hundred-dollar bills.

  The inspector held up the bills and whistled. “The original poor little rich guy.” He examined the photograph and handed it to Homer with a sigh. “Good-looking dame.”

  Homer studied the picture. It was a faded snapshot, obviously taken with a cheap camera. On the back, in a sharp hand, were the words:

  To Albrecht,

  —With all my love,

  Emma Ost—

  “The little lady who wrote this message was a foreigner, Dick,” said Homer. McElmore scowled down at the writing. “This script is typically European, as foreign as his trick shirt and dirty blue serge suit. I haven’t seen a suit messed up like that since my Pernod days at The Dome. Foreigners have a penchant for wearing suits to death.”

  Homer fingered the photograph and then pocketed it. “I’d like to study this thing—photographs prove very helpful sometimes. Is there any name on the wallet?”

  “Not a sign of a name … only this green folding stuff. Wonder what a jerk like him was doing with so much money? You think maybe he was in on the job upstairs?”

  “Hardly likely. Why should he be killed if he were in on it? It’s more possible that our friend here saw what he wasn’t supposed to see. If he came into the building as an accomplice, his pal the killer wouldn’t have had to murder him here, would he?”

  “You can’t tell.” McElmore rubbed his chin. “These guys who go around knifing people aren’t exactly right in their heads all the time, Homer. Maybe the guy upstairs, after he did the job, took it into his dome to get rid of his assistant. That would save part of the payoff.”

  “And leave his assistant with a knife in his chest and five hundred iron men in his wallet?”

  “He might have been in a hurry to get out of here. Might have heard somebody coming.”

  Cassidy appeared in the doorway, gaped down at the new corpse. He beckoned to an old man in the hall. “This is Charley Arkim, the night man.”

  Charley eyed the corpse with a shiver, and muttered a weak and faltering phrase.

  McElmore said, “What’s up, Pop?”

  “Alex Smith,” said the old man. “Alex Smith.”

  “Smith?
” Homer smiled. “He looks more like a Smitkovitch. Or a Schmidt. You know this man, Pop?”

  “Sure I know him. He’s that fool Alex Smith. Used to work here.”

  “Yeah?” said McElmore, suddenly alive. “What did he do here, Chancy?”

  “He was a sort of janitor and handy man.”

  “So he was a janitor, hah?” The inspector was making copious notes in his little book.

  The old man paused to think again, his mind full of many muffled rumblings from the crack on the head not too long ago. “He left here, Alex did—wasn’t fired. Said something about getting a better job at the time. Left here about six months ago, I guess it was. Maybe more.”

  “Then you haven’t seen him since then?”

  “No. Didn’t see him at all. Queer sort of bird, he was.”

  “Yeah, sure,” said McElmore. “But why did he quit?”

  The old man shrugged. “You got me, mister. Maybe you better ask the superintendent Mind if I sit down a bit, boys? I’m awful tired and my head hurts me something awful.”

  Cassidy got him a chair. McElmore gave him a cigarette. Dumbo poured a stiff drink of rye into a lily cup for him.

  Bull said, “Now, Pop, tell us what happened to you.”

  “Me? Nothing much, mister. I mean it didn’t take more’n a minute or two. I was sitting down at the elevator at a little after nine-thirty when Mr. Chance walks into the lobby. Well, I’m used to seeing Chance in the building on Thursday nights. He comes down to work every Thursday night at the same time. But tonight I got to laugh to myself a little because I remember the good-looking little blonde girl I took up to his floor just a while before he came in. Well, that’s his business, of course.

  “Anyhow, I took him up to the twenty-fourth floor and then I started down again. Well, on the way down I get a flash from the third floor. This strikes me as very funny because the third floor is taken by one outfit—The Consolidated Investments—and I can’t remember anyone ever working late in that place. But, of course, I got to stop there because if I pass ’em by and there is someone working late, you know what happens to me?”