The Man with the Lumpy Nose

by Lawrence Lariar

  “And the friend? You spoke to him?”

  “The friend was a lady. A Miss Emma Ost.”

  Bull’s eyes opened. “The little lady on the back of the photograph! Don’t tell me you’ve located Emma?”

  “I wish I could,” moaned Hank. “But you can’t say that I didn’t try. The cleaning woman gave me an address up in the Bronx. Your secret agent immediately boarded a Bronx Express and lammed it up into the hinterlands. The landlady wasn’t at home, but the housemaid knew that Miss Ost was out—and permanently. Miss Ost had moved out early this morning.”

  “And, of course, she left no forwarding address?”

  “None. The maid told me that she received a telephone call early this morning and was packed and ready to leave the joint before breakfast.”

  “Did you ask the maid what time that phone call came through for Miss Ost?”

  Hank grinned horribly. “Am I the smart one? Of course I asked. Miss Ost got that phone call about two this morning.”

  Bull paced the floor, toying with his cigar. “That’s strange. The woman left in a great hurry—and not long after the death of her friend Alex Smith. By the way, did the housemaid know Alex?”

  “The housemaid knew nothing. She suggested that her boss, the landlady, might be acquainted with the gentleman. He came to visit Miss Ost quite often.”

  “You didn’t examine Miss Ost’s room?”

  “I even thought of that, Homer. But the wormy housemaid wouldn’t let me upstairs unless I showed her a police badge. I promised that I would buy her a Cadillac roadster with white side-wall tires, but she didn’t take the bait. Said I would have to come around and Mrs. Oberhover, or Obervender or something would let me go upstairs. Mrs. Oberhover is the landlady.”

  Bull slapped his knee affectionately. “You’ve done a good job, Hank. And now I’ve got another little chore for you.”

  “Ohmigawd!” moaned Hank. “Not more walking?”

  “No walking at all.” Bull produced the collection of cartoon sketches he had taken from Earl Chance’s desk. “You know all of these artists? Can you pick out the ones who have sold to The Country?”

  MacAndrews thumbed the sketches, smiling wanly at the jokes. “That’s an easy job. If you are a reader of The Country, that is.”

  “Name the ones you know. I don’t read the magazine.”

  “Lucky you. Here’s Sue Bates, well, you know her, too, don’t you? This next one is Sim Simonson. Sim’s a good boy—one of the nicest in the business.”

  “Never mind the character analyses. Just pick out the artists who appear regularly in the magazine.”

  “I get it. Well, then, forget Simonson—he’s never sold them a drawing.” He held up another sketch. “This is Tim Alfonte—another man who never sold them. Here’s Harry Bimmer—a steady contributor. George Chaney—also steady. Larry Morris, who sells ’em once in a while. And this one”—he held up a large drawing of two kids in a park—“you know his work … Lincoln Winters, than whom there is no steadier contributor. And here we have Dino Bragiotto, who hasn’t yet sold the great magazine, though he should—he’s a good artist. Next, this one is Marcia Prentiss. I think Marcia has sold Chance a few.”

  Bull returned the drawings to an envelope and studied the rug. “You know these boys pretty well, Hank. Would you say that any one of them might have killed Chance?”

  “What a question,” whistled Hank. “How can I answer that one?”

  “How about Dino?”

  MacAndrews got up and walked to the window nervously. “You’ve got me on the spot, Homer. I don’t like to talk, I tell you. How would you feel if he were your friend?”

  “Terrible. But I think I’d talk. Do you think Dino might have murdered Earl Chance?”

  Hank stared out of the window. The sun had gone behind a reef of clouds, but long rays stretched down over the rooftops. It was dark, suddenly. A sparrow skittered around in the dry dust in the yard.

  Homer slapped his friend on the shoulder. “I know how you feel, Boy Scout. Come on downtown with me. I’m paying a visit to Marcia Prentiss.”

  They walked down Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village.

  “The New York magazine cartoonists are a pretty normal bunch of people,” said Hank. “They come from all parts of the country, settle in the big town and before you can bat an eye they’re professional New Yorkers, living in flats, in walk-ups, in penthouses and even out in Westchester and Connecticut.”

  Marcia’s apartment was simple. There was a big room that served as studio, bedroom and kitchen. Overhead, a huge skylight allowed the midafternoon sun to stamp a square of bright light on the Mexican grass rug. The big room was skillfully decorated. On one wall a giant photo mural of a kitten made a pattern of greys and blacks against the blue green paper behind it. Marcia’s handiwork, dolls and figurines cut from paper and brightly colored, lay scattered about where they would catch the eye. Another wall was covered with original cartoons by all the big names in the field. A studio couch of cerulean blue spotted with assorted pillows lent a note of comfort to the lightest corner.

  Marcia was delighted to see them. She had on a purple robe that gave her blonde hair an added lustre.

  Marcia Prentiss hadn’t slept at all last night. Now, facing Homer and Hank and the incongruous Dumbo Waddell, she felt a bit better. There was something comforting about the fat little man in the mashed felt hat. He wasn’t at all like a policeman. She gave them some coffee and toast and lit a cigarette. When she lit the cigarette her hand trembled.

  “You came up to talk about Dino, isn’t that right, Homer?” Her voice shook a bit.

  “You want me to be frank, Marcia? Yes, I did come to ask you about him.”

  She rolled the cigarette holder in her fingers. “He’s gone.”

  “Gone?” gasped Hank. “What do you mean? Where did he go?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve tried to reach him at his apartment all morning. He never leaves his place until after lunch. Never.”

  “Are you sure? Suppose we run over and take a look,” said Bull. “He may be asleep. Perhaps he got drunk last night—”

  Marcia shook her blonde curls. “No. He’s not there. Don’t you understand—I’ve been over there already. He didn’t come home last night. The doorman told me—he’s on duty all night—and he told me that Dino never returned.”

  “Has this ever happened before?”

  “Never.” She bit her lip. She was almost crying now.

  “Do you think that he knew you were out with Chance last night?”

  She looked inquiringly at Hank. “He couldn’t have known. You didn’t tell him, did you, Hank?”

  MacAndrews shook his head. “Of course not.”

  Bull frowned. “You’re quite sure, then, that he didn’t know you were out with Chance? Good. We’ll assume that he didn’t. Did you have a date to meet him after you saw Chance?”

  “No. Well, I thought I’d be with Earl Chance for quite a while. He had the assignment for me and I knew we’d need time to go over it.”

  “Where do you think Dino might have gone after the meeting?”

  She thought a moment. “It broke up rather early, didn’t it? He’d probably go right home. He usually works until after midnight. Still—he could have gone down to a movie, or something. Or else”—Marcia turned to Hank—“isn’t there a bar in the midtown section that the boys use for a hangout?”

  “You mean The Quill?” said Hank.

  “That’s it!” She brightened. “Perhaps he had too much to drink and decided to stay in the neighborhood, at a hotel, maybe.”

  “Has he ever done that before?”

  Marcia blushed. “Once or twice. Dino likes to drink.”

  “We’ll go down there now,” said Homer. He took Marcia’s hand and patted it gently. “No need to worry, Marcia. And—by the bye—t
his isn’t at all delicate, I know, but do you have a key to Dino’s flat? I’d like to run over there and take a look around.”

  She blushed prettily again, but managed a smile and produced a key to Dino’s apartment. “I’ll be here in case you need me,” she said.

  CHAPTER 14

  Raleigh Peters left his Brooklyn home whistling a gay tune and tapping the rhythm of it on a large orange portfolio. It is the God-given right of young cartoonists to be joyful about the little things in life.

  Raleigh was happy because, in his small mind’s eye, he imagined he had done a huge job of work. He had burned the midnight oil. Last night, in the cobwebby reaches of his basement, Raleigh had spent three hours flipping the aged pages of many back numbers of The Country, The Saturday Evening Post, The New Yorker, Liberty, and many another magazine in search of the work of his idol, Lincoln Winters.

  Luck was with him. He had found over four dozen old issues of these journals, returned to his mother’s kitchen and clipped a Lincoln Winters cartoon from each.

  On the return trip to the basement he almost tripped over another large pile of old magazines, an accident which was to hold him enthralled for an hour longer. This second pile of periodicals was a rare find indeed, for the lot contained many back numbers of art magazines, in which Raleigh discovered valuable reproductions of such master comic men as Hogarth, Cruikshank, Leech and Rowlandson.

  Armed with all these “finds,” Raleigh turned his steps in the direction of Georgie Cobb’s house. Georgie Cobb, too, was a young and hopeful cartoonist. Georgie would appreciate and envy Raleigh’s collection of reproductions. This is a part of every artist’s ego, to find important research and deliberately wave it in a friend’s face.

  Georgie withheld his enthusiasm.

  “So what?” he sneered. “Where is it going to get you, collecting all that stuff? I don’t get the angle.”

  “Naturally,” countered Raleigh. “You don’t get the angle because you didn’t have it all explained to you the way I did. You know Sim Simonson’s work?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, it might interest you to know that Sim told me to do this. He said the best way to learn how to be a professional is to copy somebody you like, you understand?”

  “No, I don’t. Isn’t that swiping when you copy that way?”

  Raleigh clucked impatiently. “Don’t be a dope, Georgie—all the old masters copied from their teachers. It’s the easiest way to learn. You take a guy you like and keep doing stuff the way he does it. Like me, I’m after Lincoln Winters’ stuff—that’s why I got so much of it here.”

  Georgic thumbed through the reproductions with feigned boredom. His eyes lit up suddenly, however, when he discovered the old English cartoonists in the batch. Georgie was a collector of Cruikshank. He fingered the three Cruikshank drawings casually.

  “Where’d you get these, Raleigh?”

  “Oh, those—I found ’em in an old art magazine. Nice, aren’t they?”

  “So-so. You collecting Cruikshank, too?”

  “Not especially. Me, I like Rowlandson.”

  Georgie’s eyes lit. “You do? How about swapping me a couple of these Cruikshanks for a couple of Rowlandsons?”

  “Okay, if I haven’t got yours in my collection.”

  “Sit down a minute; I’ve got some downstairs I’d like to show you.” Georgie bounced out of the room and ran through the hall.

  Raleigh surveyed the room with a bright eye. He was sometimes cursed with a casual kleptomania, a minor mania that runs amuck in art stores, newsstands and the studios of friends in the business, reaping a harvest of pen nibs, erasers, small magazines and such. With a spry, sly step Raleigh circled the room, alert and eager for small thievery. His eyes found a soap eraser. His hands pocketed it.

  On the small desk near the window he discovered a pamphlet. His lingers thumbed the pages expertly, paused at a full page cartoon signed Rowlandson. Raleigh quickly folded the pamphlet into his jacket pocket. Georgie was coming upstairs.

  They made their exchange and Raleigh left, now whistling louder than ever, for kleptomania does things to a man’s soul. On the subway he studied the Rowlandson drawing in the pamphlet and felt sorry that he had taken it. This one was useless. The pamphlet was a political paper and the artist had used the style of a great master to present a modern political idea—and a stupid idea, at that.

  For a while Raleigh studied the drawing, then flipped the page to scan the text. It was just the sort of literature he had expected Georgie Cobb’s brother Herb would read. Everybody knew that Herb was a member of the crackpot Brooklyn youth organization that fostered hidden arsenals in homes like the Cobbs’. The text was only a monotonous diatribe of Germanic junk. He stuffed the pamphlet into his orange portfolio for future perusal, drew out a small sketch pad and commenced to sketch a pert red-head at the far end of the train. She was a pretty little thing, he mused, almost the same type as Dino’s gal.

  He wondered whether Dino would be glad to see him this morning. In Raleigh’s imagination, the information he had given Dino last night made them fast friends. It created a mysterious bond between them, a friendship born of comradely whisperings and tales told out of the depths of a great brotherly concern. His hunch about Dino had been correct. Dino, he remembered, had scowled a deeper scowl than usual and then, with an imperceptible sigh, asked for the details. The invitation to Dino’s studio came easily after that.

  It would be a long visit, mused Raleigh. There were many questions to ask Dino. Last night, after the meeting, he had written a list of important questions about the cartoonery trade that Dino should be able to answer easily. It would be interesting to hear, for instance, what Dino Bragiotto thought of Sim Simonson’s theory of copying. Then, too, there were his own cartoons for Dino to criticize. It might take hours. Perhaps he would even have lunch with the great man.

  He ceased his whistling at the entrance to the apartment. This apartment was class! A man would have to earn a lot of money to support a studio in such a place.

  When he stepped out of the elevator at the sixth floor his heart fluttered. He pressed the bell again and again, but nobody came to the door. This irritated him. Was Dino in bed, perhaps, deliberately refusing to come to the door? He pressed the bell again. The portfolio was sweating in his grip. He looked down at his palm, then wiped the orange paint on his coat. Raleigh’s eyes lit with a hard gleam. So Dino Bragiotto was trying to break the appointment? Raleigh took off his jacket, loosened his bow tie and sat himself calmly at the threshold. And, because he had burned the midnight oil last night, he soon fell asleep.

  He awoke fifteen minutes later. Hank MacAndrews was prodding him with a gentle toe. Two other men were smiling down at him.

  “Hello, Raleigh,” said Hank. “Is this where you sleep?”

  Raleigh bounded to his feet, embarrassed. “You’re Hank MacAndrews, aren’t you? I remember you, now. I had a date with Mr. Bragiotto, but I guess he isn’t up yet.”

  Bull unlocked the door and they entered a small apartment, decorated simply in the modern style. Raleigh followed them into the hallway and stopped there, his mouth half open in wonderment.

  “Come in, sonny,” said Bull. “You say you had an appointment with Dino? When did you make this date?”

  “Last night, at the Club meeting.”

  Bull gave him a chair and he sat on the edge tentatively. “Have you ever been here before?”

  The boy nodded dumbly. “Yes; I mean, no. I visited Dino when he had another studio—downtown.”

  Dumbo winked at Homer. “Not a very old friend of his, then, are you?”

  “Who says I’m not?” said Raleigh with an air of disdain. “You ask Dino about that.”

  “I’ll make a note of it,” said Bull. “By the bye, son, when was the last time you spoke to Dino?”

  “Last night, of course.�
�

  Homer stared fixedly at the boy. “Sure you didn’t, talk to him after the meeting?”

  “I told you when I saw him, didn’t I? I had my dinner at about eight o’clock. Then I walked past The Black Pig, and when I got back to the meeting, it was—”

  “Hold on,” said Bull. “You say you walked past The Black Pig? Did you, by any chance, see Marcia Prentiss inside?”

  Raleigh blushed until the color of his cheeks almost matched his hair. “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

  “Haven’t you read the papers this morning? Earl Chance was murdered last night!”

  Raleigh let the portfolio slide to the floor. “I didn’t know,” he gasped. “Then you think that Dino—”

  “We don’t think anything,” said Bull. “But it’s rather important for me to know now whether you told Dino what you saw at The Black Pig. Did you?”

  He dropped his head. “Yes.”

  “What did he say when you told him?”

  “Nothing. He just asked me a few questions. He asked me whether I was sure it was Marcia and Earl Chance. Then he sort of shook his head, and that was the end of it.”

  Bull left the group and began a systematic search of the apartment. Raleigh stood at the entrance to the hall, biting his fingernails.

  Hank felt sorry for the boy. “Look, Raleigh, suppose you leave that portfolio of yours with me, eh? I’ll look over your stuff and then we can make a date to talk about it.”

  Raleigh’s face lit again. “Gosh, that would be swell, Mr. MacAndrews.” He handed Hank the portfolio. “About when do you think you can make it?”

  “I don’t know. The way things look, I won’t be caught up with my work for some time.” He shook the boy’s hand. “But it’ll be as soon as I can make it.”

  Raleigh strode briskly to the elevator. He was whistling again.

  Bull directed the taxi to the Mercy Hospital and settled back into his seat. At the hospital there was a short delay while a nurse got in touch with Mrs. Dunkel’s room.