The Man with the Lumpy Nose

by Lawrence Lariar

  “Of course. But you never had stopped on that floor before after hours?”

  “Never. Anyhow, I stopped the car at the third, fool that I am. It was dark as a devil’s dishrag in that place. If I’d had any brains I would’ve jerked my head back in that elevator and beat it—fast. But I didn’t. I kept my head stuck out and somebody hit me with the side of the building. Next thing I know, I’m wakin’ up in that broom closet down in the lobby and an intern is feedin’ me brandy.”

  “You don’t have a book in the hall? People don’t sign in after hours?”

  “No book. I usually ask ’em where they’re bound, then take ’em up. Never had any trouble that way.”

  “Then why did you stop at the third floor when you knew you didn’t take anybody up there?” McElmore asked.

  “I thought I told you, mister—that maybe somebody in that outfit was working late. You get me? I mean, suppose some bigshot in that outfit takes it into his head to just stay up there after hours. Get it? How do I know somebody up there never left, the place, just sat there working until nine-thirty?”

  “Can you remember the others you took up?”

  “Matter of fact, I can,” said the old man. “I took up just five people tonight. One was the blonde girl, but before her I took up Mr. Ornstein. He went to the twelfth floor to his advertising outfit. Then came Miss English. She’s the good-looking young piece works for Arthur Hammett, the photographer.” The old man winked slyly. “After Miss English came Arthur Hammett, of course. Then came the blonde who went to Chance’s office. After her came Chance himself. That’s all.”

  “Is there any other way of getting in the building?”

  “There’s the back entrance. Alex here would have known how to get past that door. Probably had a key for it.”

  “No way of coming in the front without passing you, then?”

  “No way.”

  “Of course,” said Homer. “The easiest way to get into a big building after hours is to get into the building before five o’clock and just stay in until after dark. Isn’t that right, Pop?”

  “Sure that’s right,” said the old man. “Never thought of that. Clever, that way is.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Bull said, “I think we’d better go back for another look at Chance’s office, Dick. There are a couple of things I’d like to check before we leave this place.”

  “Like what, for instance?”

  “His desk, for instance.”

  They rode the elevator up. In the reception room, Dumbo helped Marcia Prentiss into her coat. McElmore cautioned her to stay in town. She flashed Homer a shy smile and walked slowly to the elevator.

  The police had taken the corpse out of Chance’s room. The blotter, too, was gone, along with every other item that bore a bloodstain. Everything was in perfect order otherwise. Chance had been a neat editor. His desk was arranged with an eye for system. His papers were stacked neatly. They were, for the most part, manuscripts and cartoon sketches. Homer thumbed through the cartoons carefully. McElmore leaned over his shoulder. He laughed at a few.

  “This is no time for laughing at funny pictures, Homer. Where’s it getting us?”

  “Don’t be a spoil sport,” mocked Dumbo. “These gags are good.”

  Homer folded the sketches and pocketed them. “Make a note of this, Dick—I’m holding these cartoons for a while. These artists might kill me next if they know I’ve got their gags. Tell them you’ve filed these sketches away for a while if anybody asks for them. I want to check the names of these cartoonists.” He turned back to the desk again. “I’m afraid there’s nothing else here for us. Did you examine his wallet?”

  “Sure. He had a few hundreds, a twenty and some singles.”

  “That’s odd. There seems to be an abundance of hundred dollar bills floating around this building. Do you suppose there’s any connection?”

  “Connection?” McElmore scratched hard at his head. “I’ll be damned—I never thought of it that way. You think that maybe Chance might have been robbed?”

  Bull laughed. “That’s not smart. Why would a thief take only five one-hundred dollar bills and leave the man change? No, it’s more likely that Chance, perhaps, paid out those five notes to the man found dead downstairs.”

  “A fetching theory,” Dumbo laughed. “Man pays off janitor. Janitor is overcome with size of pay envelope. Janitor sulks downstairs and, filled with remorse, commits hara-kiri on the way down. Aren’t you boys outsmarting yourselves? Who killed the janitor? Don’t we want the man with the knife?”

  “Not yet. I think our best move is back to Chance’s apartment. Our next best move is in the direction of Alex Smith.” He picked up the phone and dialed his own apartment. “Hank? Are you wide awake? Good. Now get this: Earl Chance has been murdered. I’m up here with McElmore, following through. Here’s what I want you to do. Get in touch with the superintendent of The Country building. I don’t care how you get him. Wake him up if you have to. Yes, right now. An ex-janitor of theirs, man by the name of Alex Smith, was killed here tonight, too. I want to know where he lived. No—that’s all, just his address, get me? Good. When you get me the information, call Chance’s apartment—I’ll be there. Thanks.”

  In Chance’s apartment, McElmore stared down at the figure of Mrs. Dunkel like a man hypnotized. His mouth half open, he held his cigar a few inches from his lips in a frozen gesture. He watched the intern fussing over the old lady and shook his head sadly. There was an ugly blot of blood behind the old woman’s head—a huge stain that formed a carmine backdrop for her grey hair. Her face was green and grey, her eyes shut, her thin lips drawn into a hard line of pain, as though the awful blow had just been struck. She scarcely breathed.

  “Is she going to be all right?” the inspector asked.

  The spindly intern didn’t know. “She’ll be in the hospital for a long time, I expect. You never can tell with these head injury cases. Might be a concussion—might be a fracture. Then again, in a person of her age—it might be the end.”

  McElmore clucked sympathetically. “And the other one?”

  “She’ll come around. Just fainted is all.”

  “She faints easily,” said Homer. “Perhaps you’d better take her to the hospital with the old lady.”

  “What for?” barked McElmore. “We have got to ask that dame a couple of questions!”

  “Do we? Take a look around these rooms, Dick. I think we have all the answers spread out around us.”

  “Huh?”

  “Certainly. These two women were surprised by someone at the front door—obviously thugs. They entered the penthouse, knocked out the old lady, robbed the place and left.”

  “Maybe,” said McElmore grudgingly. “But why would they knock out the old lady and leave the young dame alone?”

  “Probably because the old lady resisted and our friend Sue Bates took the easier way out—she just fainted.” Homer strolled to the end of the library and gazed at the small desk, a masterpiece of disorder. The thieves had removed every paper, every book, every clip, and these lay scattered in unsightly heaps on the rug. “These boys were thorough, if nothing else. I wonder what they were after?”

  “The usual stuff, of course. Money and jewelry, I suppose.”

  Homer sank into a chair, lit a cigar and closed his eyes. The intern and his assistant were lifting Mrs. Dunkel onto the stretcher. They had already taken down Sue Bates. McElmore stood at the long window in the living room, his hat far back on his head, staring at the interns as they worked.

  “Let me know down at headquarters as soon as she can talk to us, boys. It’s kind of important that the old lady says a few words, you understand?”

  McElmore walked to the door with them. He locked the door and came slowly back to Homer. His simple face was filled with a great worry. He sat down heavily, sighed and lit a cigar.

 
; “So, the crooks came for money and jewelry, says McElmore?” Homer spoke softly, as though he were sharing a great confidence with the inspector. “Doesn’t it strike you as being rather strange, Dick, that these thieves attempted robbery just a few minutes after Chance was murdered? I find it hard to believe that the robbery is just a coincidence. I think that these men came up here to find something of Chance’s that they wanted desperately. They were working under pressure and time was very important to them. They came up here quickly because they wanted to beat us to the punch.”

  “What punch?” The inspector held up his hand to stop the flow of words. “You mean these boys came up here after they bumped off Chance?”

  “Maybe. My point is that the men who robbed this place may be tied up with Chance’s murder, whether or not they’re members of the actual murder expedition on Forty-Seventh Street. They might have come up here as part of a plan.”

  “To get something, or just knock hell out of the old lady?”

  “To get something.”

  “What?”

  Homer laughed out loud. McElmore could be funny at times. “That’s our problem. We must discover what it was our thieving friends were after.” He kicked out at the mass of papers at his feet. “It would seem to me that the boys came up here for a piece of paper.”

  “You serious?”

  “Perfectly. Take a look around you. Why should crooks concentrate so diligently upon desks? In the living room they’ve opened the two small desks near the mirror, even though one of them is a disguised radio. You’ll notice that the phonographic attachment is wide open. It wasn’t open when we left here and I don’t think Sue Bates was in the mood for music after we walked out. Again, the other one is torn apart and all of Chance’s papers are decorating the floor. Why? Our friends were searching for a paper, or perhaps a group of papers. In order to find these papers they were forced to go through every desk in the place with great care. They didn’t find their paper in the living room and came into the library. Perhaps they found what they were after in the library. At any rate, everything else is in good order throughout the house.”

  “Why didn’t they search the bedroom?”

  “They might have searched the bedroom without creating such disorder, Dick. After all, there’s no need to scatter shirts and underwear, is there, when you’re looking for a document? Then again, they might have found this document before they left the living room and library.” Homer strode into the hall, turned on his heel and surveyed the apartment thoughtfully. “Do you suppose there might be a wall safe in this place?”

  “Could be,” said McElmore gloomily. The inspector crossed the living room and searched behind the pictures in the library, but to no avail. The rest of the house was devoid of pictures. Every inch of wall space lay open and uncovered, for the decor was modern.

  He returned to Bull crestfallen. “Not a sign of a safe in the joint, Homer. We’re licked.”

  Homer was bent over the library desk, thumbing through a bundle of papers. He pointed to a portable type writer, opened on the desktop. “Our man Chance was a prolific writer, Dick. Take a look at the ribbon on that machine. It’s almost worn through.”

  “So it is. But that don’t mean a thing. My boy Tom wears his ribbons out, too, and he isn’t any writer.”

  “If he wears out ribbons, he writes.”

  “Sure, but only homework.”

  “Editors don’t have homework. Editors edit. Chance must have been working on some manuscript or other.”

  “Maybe that’s what the boys goniffed.”

  “We’ve reached the same conclusion, Dick. I’m almost positive that they found what they wanted.” He stuffed the papers into the top drawer.

  The phone rang. It was Hank.

  “I located the super of The Country building,” he said. “He was an all right guy. Took me down to the central office, on Fifth Avenue and Fifty-Eighth Street. We went through his card index together, looking for this man Alex Smith. We found his card quickly.”

  “Good! Where does he live?”

  “He doesn’t.”

  “No address?”

  “Oh, yes, there was an address on his card. But it’s the house where ‘The Little Man Who Wasn’t There’ lives. Smith gave his address as 2198 West 77th Street. No need to follow that lead, Homer; 2198 West 77th Street would be located about a quarter of a mile out in the Hudson River! I couldn’t find a cab to take me there.”

  On the street McElmore hailed a cab to return to his office, a man plagued by a hundred worries. “I’ll be down there all night,” he told Bull. “I got to have myself a good thinking session. You going to sleep?”

  “You can reach me at my flat if you need me.”

  It was after midnight now, but in Beekman Place many lights still glowed in the tall cliff dwellings that lined the street. Homer walked toward the river, puffing slowly on a fresh cigar. A cab raced into Beekman Place and ground to a stop beside him. Dumbo jumped out.

  “Now I know I’m lucky,” he said. “Just been down to the office with a small piece of the story and what do you think? I got my raise. Was I happy? Right away I said to myself, ‘Go up and thank Homer Bull. He is the man who handed you this raise.’ Then I remembered you were on your way to Chance’s apartment. I figured, I’m not sleepy—Dumbo never sleeps. So I grabbed a cab and here I am.”

  Bull kept walking.

  “The man doesn’t answer,” continued Dumbo. “Did you boys find anything upstairs? Are you licked? Maybe you’re going home to bed? What’s with the murderer?”

  They were at the river. From somewhere in the gloom a tug moaned. The shoreline across the water blinked with a thousand lights. The city was dozing off, resting, sinking into sleep, snoring with a thousand dull snorts.

  “This man Earl Chance,” said Bull, “what do you know about him?”

  “Lucky you,” laughed Dumbo. “I’ve just rewritten his stuff in the newspaper morgue. I’ve even compiled an obituary, you might say. Earl Chance? Born on September 15th in 1901. Attended Groton, and later Harvard College, where he shone as an athlete. All-American football, best pitcher in college history, crew champ, too. Earl was a leader in all the romantic sports. Created a sensation as editor of The Lampoon for two years. Wrote articles damning certain college profs—a red hot radical, in a way. Also—”

  “Radical, did you say? Did you ever read those articles?”

  “No. No, I can’t say that I have.”

  “Have you any other record of his writings? Did he write at all after he hit The Country?”

  “Sure, he’s written some. Earl was an article fiend. He started the vogue for a certain type of interview with famous people, you might say. Wrote up celebrities for quite a while for The Country before he was made editor.”

  “Nothing radical about those interviews?”

  “Naturally not. They were ordinary statement-of-fact articles, satirizing the celebrity usually. The articles were built to entertain readers and written in a light, almost humorous tone.”

  “Interesting,” murmured Bull. “Who were some of his subjects?”

  “Well, the opening article he wrote was a squib about Sue Bates, the white-haired girl cartoonist. Earl built her up with that piece, as I remember it. She became somewhat of a celebrity from the moment the magazine hit the stands. After that one came a longish article on Gene Tunney. Then another about Walter Winchell. Then Norma Shearer. Then—”

  “I see. In each case he catered to the popular heroes and heroines?” Homer turned away from the water and they began to walk toward the west. “What else did you discover about Chance?”

  “Very little. He was a bon vivant, a man about town, a lady-killing Lochinvar, best-dressed man in the café belt, best-looking editor in The Magazine Club, and the least liked.”

  They had wandered back to the lobby of Chance’s a
partment house.

  “Want to do a job of work?” asked Bull.

  “You going back up to his flat?”

  “No, I think we’re finished with the penthouse.”

  At the desk, he said, “The Chief of Detectives has ordered me to examine the basement. Where will I find the night man?”

  The girl at the switchboard smiled up at him weakly. “You want Mr. Plimmer,” she said. “Take that first elevator downstairs. I’ll phone him that you’re coming.”

  The doorman, a red-faced man with menacing eyebrows, sauntered up to the desk. “What is the matter now? They are going back to Mr. Chance’s apartment?”

  The girl smiled up at him dumbly. She would enjoy torturing this new lackey. He was always butting in—always poking his nose in her window. She hadn’t liked his face from the very first day he reported for duty. “You got me, mister,” she said.

  He scowled at her menacingly. “Mister Mathew.” He said, and made the “s” a hiss. But his manner changed, suddenly. He leaned over toward her and grinned. “You are mad at me?”

  She gave him a look of contempt and chewed her gum more rapidly than ever. “Go away—you bother me!”

  The color rose in his face until two red blots burned high in his cheeks. But he swallowed his bile and moved slowly and majestically out onto the street. For a moment he stood under the canopy. Then he strolled casually to the left and ran across the street to peer up at Chance’s penthouse. The eyebrows lowered into a black frown. He ran back to the right of the canopy and down the steps to the basement entrance. Here he tiptoed along the long passage that stretched the full length of the house and stopped at the door to the basement.

  He opened the door quietly. He heard voices. It was easy to recognize Plimmer’s high-pitched accent.

  “That’s all I took down from there,” Plimmer was saying.

  Papers rustled.

  “I’ll take them all,” said another voice. “But I want you to try to locate the rest of the waste paper you took from Mr. Chance’s apartment yesterday.”