The Collection

by Fredric Brown

  "Ordinarily, yes. But in cases where unusual factors influence the amount of the premiums, I generally get called in. The regular salesman gets a cut, too, but turns the closing over to me and I help advise the amount of the premium."

  "And what was unusual about this policy?"

  Bell grimaced. "Just that Lee insisted on wearing that rock twenty-four hours a day, which made the risk much greater than is ordinarily the case with jewelry that valuable. Most people keep their stuff in safes or vaults, and wear it on special occasions. And then there was his occupation to consider, of course. A gambler, who goes to all the places a gambler goes to, and associates with the kind of people--well, I had to talk the company into issuing the policy at all."

  "Leaving you out on a limb, now that the ring is gone?" McCracken grinned. "Any chance that Slimjim might have sold the ring himself?"

  "Not an earthly one," Bell said. "That ring was his luck, he thought. He'd have sold his shirt and shoes first. I've sat in on games with him, and knew him well enough to be positive of that."

  "Ever met this Perley Essington?"

  Jerry Bell nodded. "Wait until you see him, Mack. A crackpot of the first water. I never thought he'd pull anything like this--if he really did. Cap Zehnder says he has him cold, but I don't know what the evidence is."

  "How well you know him?" McCracken asked.

  The insurance man laughed. "A month ago, he wanted to take out an insurance policy on--believe it or not, Mack--on his whistle! How could you insure a whistle? That was when he first got his engagement at the Bijou. He'd been 'at liberty' for a long time before that. I think Slimjim loaned him money to live on."

  "You didn't issue the policy?"

  "Heck, no. I saw him a few times and pretended to give it consideration only because he was a friend of Lee's. I wanted to keep Slimjim's good will, and that meant I had to go easy with Perley."

  At Headquarters, they found Zehnder alone in his office. He barked an order into his desk phone.

  "I'm having your Mocking Bird sent up here," he said. "If you want to talk to him in private before you go, Mack, you can do that in his cell when we send him back. Okay?"

  McCracken nodded. "Sure. It won't matter, if he's innocent. And if he's guilty, I don't want it."

  Zehnder chuckled. "Then I'm afraid you're out twelve bucks."

  "Any news on the ring?" Bell asked.

  The captain shook his head, but before he could add to the negation, the door opened.

  A fat little man, whose head was as devoid of hair as a banister knob, came in. A uniformed turnkey was behind him, but stepped back into the hall and closed the door from the outside when the captain signalled to him.

  "Mack," said Zehnder, "this is Perley Essington. Your client, maybe. You said you already know him, Bell?"

  McCracken put out his hand and shook the pudgy, moist one of the little bird imitator.

  "Tell me about it, Mr. Essington," he said. "All I know now is what I read in the paper."

  The little man beamed at him. "I saw the paper," he said. "It's right as far as it goes. I wasn't home when Jim Lee came there at midnight."

  "How do you know he came at midnight, then?" asked Zehnder.

  Tim McCracken frowned at the captain. "Tut, tut, Cap. It says so in the paper. Don't you read the Blade? Or haven't you got three cents?" He turned back to the vaudevillian. "Where were you at midnight, Mr. Essington?"

  "Call me Perley, Mr. McCracken," the actor said. "Why, at midnight, I was just walking. After the show I went for a walk in the park. It was a warm night, and I didn't get home until about two o'clock. I didn't know Jim was coming around last night."

  "See anyone you knew while you were out?" McCracken asked.

  "Nope." Essington shook his head. "And you'll ask next if I stopped in anywhere. I didn't. I sat on a park bench for awhile and listened to a nightingale. I had a sort of conversation with him. Like this."

  He pursed his lips, and suddenly the little room was filled with a sweet, lilting melody. The clear notes throbbed to silence. McCracken saw that Jerold Bell, who was standing behind Perley's chair, was grinning at him.

  McCracken cleared his throat. "Say, that's good, Perley. You that good on other birds?"

  "Better," said the little man complacently. "On some, even the birds can't tell the difference. On the stage, I'm a wow. And I have a line of patter with the whistling that knocks them out of their seats and rolls them in the aisles. Just last week, the manager was telling me that I was the greatest--"

  "That's fine," interrupted McCracken. "But let's get back to Slimjim Lee. How well did you know him?"

  The look that had been in Perley's eyes while he talked of the stage faded to awareness of the present.

  "Very well," he told them. "I guess he was just about my best friend, and vice versa. Yes, I know most people think--thought--it was funny, because Jim and I are--were--so completely different. But I guess that was why we liked each other."

  "You saw him often?"

  "He came to see me two-three times a week. Generally after the evening show. We'd play chess or whistle until nearly morning."

  "Whistle? Late at night?"

  "Sure. He liked whistling. But he couldn't very well, and I was teaching him how. He just couldn't get the knack of it."

  "But didn't the other roomers--"

  "Not in a place like that, Mack," Jerry Bell cut in. "They're all slightly nuts. It's liberty hall. Last time I was there, there were acrobats jumping off the banister at four o'clock in the morning. Slimjim took me there after a game."

  Zehnder nodded. "Yeah, I've been there," he said, "and I'd believe anything. We picked up a guy there a month ago."

  "Cap," McCracken asked, "could that have any connection with this case, maybe?"

  "No. Simple theft case, and the guy's up now, doing three years. He was a stranger to the rest of the mob there, anyway."

  McCracken glanced at Perley for confirmation, and got it.

  "None of us knew him well," the whistler said. "He wasn't an artist like the rest of us. He painted pictures."

  McCracken closed his eyes for a second, then opened them and asked the bird imitator:

  "What do you know about Jim Lee's affairs? I've heard he was broke, or nearly so. If you're a. friend of his, you ought to know about that."

  "I do, Mr. McCracken. He was hard up, that is, for him. He ran a lot of bookie places, you know, or rather he backed them. Then the syndicate--the Garvey-Cantoni group that runs the numbers game--moved in and took them over. He didn't fight them about it. He wasn't a gangster and he didn't want to start a war. And that's what it would have been if he'd tried to buck them."

  Zehnder cut in.

  "Perley's right about that. We're working on that syndicate, and we close a place now and then, but we haven't got much on them yet. They're bad boys, though."

  "Then why," McCracken wanted to know, "suspect Perley when you've got some really tough mugs that might have a motive?"

  "But they haven't," said Perley. "Jim Lee wasn't fighting them. Of course, they could have killed him for his ring, but--" He shrugged.

  "What about that crochet needle Lee was killed with, Perley?" McCracken asked. "Was it one of yours? The captain says crocheting is your hobby."

  For the first time, the little man seemed on the defensive as he answered.

  "The police seem to think it's funny that I should like to crochet," he complained. "That's silly. Why, lots of men do. And it's good for the nerves, and it gave me something to do when Jim and I played chess. He took so long between moves."

  "Was it one of your needles?" McCracken demanded.

  "It could have been." Perley shrugged again. "I have lots of them."

  "It was exactly like others in his room," said Zehnder.

  Jerold Bell was getting restless.

  "The devil with crocheting needles," he said. "I just dropped in here to see if there was any news on the ring. I think I'll go on around to Vermont Street
and help the boys there look for it. Coming, McCracken?"

  "In a minute, Jerry." He turned to Zehnder. "Listen, Cap, the main thing I want to know, is why you're holding Mr. Essington? Thus far there isn't any evidence against him, except that he hasn't an alibi he can prove."

  Zehnder grinned. "It ain't that he can't prove he wasn't there. It's that we can prove he was, see? He says he didn't get home before two. But two people there heard him in his room, between half past eleven and half past twelve."

  "You mean they heard someone in his room?"

  "Nope. Him. Like always when he's in his room alone, they said, he was whistling to himself. Bird calls and stuff. Even a dog imitation."

  Perley Essington whirled indignantly. "Dog imitations!" His voice was shrill with indignation. "Why, I--"

  "How do you know it wasn't Slimjim Lee they heard, waiting for Perley?" McCracken asked Zehnder. "If he was learning how to whistle --?”

  Again Perley, still indignant, interrupted.

  "Mr. McCracken, that isn't possible," he said. "Nobody would mistake Jim Lee's whistling for mine. They couldn't. He was just learning, and he just whistled straight, whistled, not bird calls."

  His voice rose now:

  "No, nor anybody else whistling, either. Nor a phonograph record, or anything like that. One young whippersnapper of a policeman suggested that. There isn't another artist in the country who could possibly have been mistaken for me by the people who room there and who know my work."

  "Fine," said Captain Zehnder. "Then it must have been you they heard?"

  "I don't know," said Perley. "But they couldn't have mistaken anybody else for me. Listen, have you ever heard anybody else who can do this?"

  He pursed his lips and began to run a gamut of bird calls that sounded like feeding time in an aviary. The calls tumbled upon one another's heels so rapidly, that McCracken could almost have sworn that two or three birds were singing simultaneously.

  The insurance man, standing behind the little bird imitator, looked at McCracken over Perley's head and winked. He circled his forefinger at his temple, than reached forward at Perley's bald head, and--with the exaggerated gesture of a stage magician--pretended to pluck something from Perley's scalp. He held it up so McCracken could see that it was a tiny feather.

  It was funny, but Perley was looking, and whistling, directly at McCracken and the private detective couldn't laugh without hurting Perley's feelings.

  He wondered if Bell was right, and if Perley had really passed the borderline between eccentricity and outright screwiness. If he hadn't, he was putting himself in a bad spot by refusing to admit that his fellow-roomers could have been mistaken about whom they had heard.

  Zehnder tapped Perley on the shoulder to stop him.

  "Anything else you want to tell McCracken?" he said.

  Perley stopped whistling and shook his head. He looked at Tim McCracken.

  "You'll take the case?" he said. "I'm sorry I can't pay you more than--"

  "Sure," said McCracken, "I'll take it." He looked at Zehnder. "You going around with us, Cap?"

  Zehnder crossed and opened the door before he answered, and nodded to the turnkey who had been waiting outside. After shaking hands with McCracken, Perley was led down the hallway toward his cell. Mingling with his footsteps, there floated back the trilling notes of a thrush.

  Zehnder grinned at McCracken. "That's the answer," he said. "The crackpot doesn't even know he's doing that. It's a habit, a reflex. Last night, in his room, he probably didn't even know he was whistling." He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and took out an envelope, and handed it to McCracken. "Well, here's your retainer, Mack. You can't get him in any deeper than he is, so I wish you luck."

  McCracken put it in his pocket, grateful to Zehnder for not having embarrassed him by mentioning the amount.

  "You didn't answer me, Cap," he said. "Coming with us?"

  "Part way. Just for routine I want to see the Bijou's doorman, to check on that call Perley says he got."

  "What call? He didn't say anything about a. call."

  Zehnder snorted. "He did last night, but he probably decided it sounded too thin and to forget about it. Come on, I'll tell you on the way. You follow us in your car, Jerry. We'll just stop there a minute."

  As he drove north on 24th Street, the captain explained about the call:

  "It was from a fan, Perley told us. Wanted him to listen to something he thought was a pink-crested tootwhistle, or something."

  "A what?"

  "I dunno what, but it doesn't matter. Perley says the guy said he was a fan of his and a member of some Audubon society, and he'd heard a night-singing bird in Winslow Park he thought was something or other that's rare. He wanted Perley to meet him there and help identify it."

  "So that's why he went to the park instead of home? And the guy didn't show up?"

  "Not unless it was that nightingale that called Perley up . . . Here's where the doorman lives."

  Zehnder swung the car into the curb and climbed out. McCracken followed him into a rooming house where a brief conversation with a half-awake old man in a nightshirt brought out nothing of interest. As far as the doorman knew, Perley Essington might have got a call just after the show, or might not have. Lots of the performers got calls. He didn't remember.

  Zehnder drove on to the Vermont Street address. It was a brownstone front just like its neighbors, except that there was a cop in front. Jerold Bell parked just behind Zehnder's car and joined them.

  "I'm going back," the captain told them, "but I'll get you past Regan here. Are the Homicide boys still here, Regan?"

  "Just left, fifteen minutes ago, Captain," answered Regan. "Don't think they got anything new. I heard one of them say something about grilling Essington again."

  "Okay, Regan. Let these fellows mosey around inside. You know Mack. This other guy's from the insurance company."

  Zehnder got back into his car. McCracken, following Bell, turned back a moment.

  "Who all's here, Regan?" he asked.

  "This LaVarre dame, for one. She's asleep. Want me to go wake her up for you?" There was a faint note of hopefulness in the voice of the policeman.

  McCracken shook his head. "Who else?"

  "The landlady. And this Carson guy, the comic. He's one of the two that heard Essington in his room. He's in Number Two. Essington's is Number Six, right across the hall from the parlor where they found the stiff. It's unlocked."

  "How's the LaVarre woman fixed for alibis?" McCracken asked.

  Regan grinned. "Triple-barreled. She was out with three guys all at once. I heard the Homicide gang questioning her. Sure you don't want me to wake her up for you?"

  "Keep your mind on your work, Regan. I suppose somebody's in back, on guard there?"

  "Sure. Kaplan. You know him, don't you?"

  McCracken went down along the dark hallway to the parlor. Bell was looking around painstakingly. McCracken's gaze went about the room quickly, noted the position of the body that had been marked in chalk on the floor before the sofa that stood diagonally across one corner of the room. There were half a dozen flash bulbs in the wastepaper basket in the corner.

  "He must have been sitting there," said Bell, pointing to the sofa. "If he was stabbed and fell off, that'd put him in about the position those chalk marks show. The killer could have been hidden right behind that sofa when he came in and sat down. Then he stood up, reached over his shoulder and stabbed him."

  McCracken nodded. "That's about it. And if it is, that means he was killed early, almost as soon as he got here. Say, a crocheting needle isn't so long, is it? Must have been fitted into some sort of a handle, like an ice pick. Well, we can find about that later. You don't think you'll find the ring in here, do you?"

  Bell shrugged. "Probably not. Probably never find it, but I've got to turn in a report to the company. I want to be able to tell 'em I went over things with a fine-tooth comb."

  McCracken crossed over and looked out the wi
ndow.

  "Whoever hid behind that sofa could have come and gone this way," he mused. "And come and gone by the alley. There's a cellar door right outside. You can come in this way easy."

  Bell nodded. "There's fingerprint powder on the sill there. The Homicide boys thought of that, too. But what about Perley? He's too screwy on his story to figure out of it. Why'd he lie about not having been here until two o'clock?"

  McCracken grunted. "That's the only thing against him, really. I want to talk to one of the persons who heard him, or say they did."

  He walked out into the hall, down two doors, and knocked. After a minute, a tall man in a worn bathrobe came to the door and said, "Yeah?" He had the sad, bored air most comedians have when they aren't working at the trade.

  "Carson?" McCracken asked.

  "That's me, yeah."

  "You like this Perley Essington? Was he a friend of yours?"

  "Huh? Sure, he's a swell little guy. A bit nuts, maybe. But he's good on the boards."

  "As good as he thinks he is?"

  "Well, maybe not that good," Carson said. "Maybe none of us are. It's an occupational disease. What do you want?"

  "I want to hear your side of what happened last night." The tall man put a hand to his head. "Oh, Lord! Again?" He started to close the door. "Four cops, and three reporters, and --"

  McCracken caught the door and held it. "Then once more won't hurt you," he said. "Besides, I'm on Perley's side. I'm working for him, trying to punch some holes in the case against him."

  "Why didn't you say so? Come on in." He walked back to the dresser to get the bottle standing on it. "Have a drink?"

  "Two fingers. The main thing is are you sure it was Perley you heard?"

  "Yes and no. I wouldn't swear it was him, but if it wasn't, it was somebody pretty good. There aren't many that can come close to him on that warble stuff. I've heard lots of imitators. Straight whistling, yes, but not on the imitations."

  "What time did you hear it first, and what time last?"

  Carson lifted a glass and clinked it against the one he'd handed McCracken. When he'd downed the glass' contents, he said:

  "I got home about ten-thirty, maybe eleven. I had a good mystery story I wanted to finish, and I was reading." He rubbed his chin. "It was sometime between then and midnight that it started. And kept up maybe half an hour, off and on. And it was in Perley's room. I went past the door when I went to the bathroom once about twelve, so I'm sure of that."