The First Mystery Novel

by Howard Mason

  “You, Gilbert. And I’m so glad you called me, for I was just about to call you.”

  “Were you?” He was puzzled. But knew that would be cleared up soon. “Well, this is what I want to get said, darling, while things are sort of peaceful and quietlike, and plane-callers not yelling and planes landing and taxiing all about. This is it: I’ve just purchased a book, darling, that I want ever so badly for my Chinese collection; purchased it, from and by way of a dealer in lower New York, who will have to obtain it himself first from—oh, it’s somewhat complicated, but if he gets it, he’s to deliver it to you, and I’ll want you to hold it for me, safe and sound, till I get back from Chicago.”

  “Oh-oh!” Muriel Ordway laughed. “I will say, Gilbert, that that will be a bit complicated!”

  “Why, darling?”

  “Because, Gilbert, I just received a cable from Dunaway and Kinsolving, London, offering me two weeks at the Coliseum—same fees as that last engagement at the French Opera House, New Orleans, but with Clipper fare over and back included.”

  “Well, well!” he said enthusiastically. “That’s making ’em reach out for an attraction! And—but when would you be leaving?”

  “Well,” she said, almost regretfully, “I’d be leaving, Gilbert, day after tomorrow. Presuming my cable of acceptance, just now filed, gets in turn accepted on the other end!”

  “There would be no doubt about that,” he acknowledged frankly. “Well, I’m glad. To see you have a London triumph before you go and—and toss this all over your shoulders as you insist you must, to marry me and—but all right. Then about the book, which now is not so important, if it reaches you before you leave, perhaps you’ll be willing to— But say, will you still be up here tomorrow night, just the same, to catch the act of that young negress, Rosa Moggs?”

  “Oh my yes, Gilbert. Yes, indeed. That girl is going to be the world’s greatest singer, some day in the not far distant future. I want to watch, and enjoy, her whole act.”

  “Okay. Then, if the book—the name of which, by the way, is The Way Out—has by any chance reached you by tomorrow night, you might, if you don’t mind, turn it over to a certain one of my employees up here. A chap who, though he has a complete absence of interest in literature or books himself, is at least a very careful man about taking good care of anything vital. Or about following instructions, such as I’ll be giving him now. Louis Rocco is his name. You know who I mean? The theatre electrician? The sallow fellow with the—”

  “Oh—Gilbert! To think that an actress wouldn’t know well who is the one man who can make or break her act—by arranging the wrong lighting? I have already seen to it, while up there, that I put myself into the complete good graces of this important czar. Since my farewell to the American Public is to be in Parradine Moderne. Yes, I’ve ingratiated myself with your Rocco. Or at least so I hope!”

  “Oh, he’s all right, darling. He wouldn’t sabotage an act; in fact, leaves stage lighting strictly up to the special chap who handles that. Well, all right, then. I’ll speak to him in but a few minutes now about the book’s possibly getting into final safekeeping with him. And so if you’ll pass it to him—if, that is, you get it, the which there’s quite no telling—then he can turn it over to me when I get back. And you’re singing away there in far-off London. All clear?”

  “Completely so, Gilbert. And now, darling, I want to ask you a very small favor.”

  “Of course. Of course! Ask away.”

  “It’s that I don’t see you off today at the airfield.”

  “Why, of course not, if you’re busy. You don’t need to—”

  “Oh, I’m not busy at all, Gilbert. But this is the exact reason. You see—”

  “Now—now—don’t explain. It’s not necessary at all—foolish even to come ’way up there so far north as—”

  “But I want to explain, Gilbert. I want to! And here are the facts: I was going to see you off, you know, if only to kiss you goodbye. But you see, I got a call on the phone a short while ago, from someone representing, or speaking for, one of my oldest and dearest friends. A friend who is passing through New York for no more than 30 minutes, on his way from France to the Orient, and who wants to surprise me to death—by a visit.”

  “I see. Who is—but that’s a foolish question, isn’t it? For if he aims to surprise you, then you don’t know who it is.”

  “That’s it! I’m given to know only that he’s an old and dear friend. But my goodness, Gilbert, when I think of all the people, all over the world, that have been friends to me, and even dear to me, I—”

  “I get it!” he smiled. “A case of wondering which needle, in a haystack prickling with needles, you’re supposed to look for, eh?” Now he even laughed out loud, amusedly. “Well, a woman’s curiosity would hardly have been able to surmount that one! I mean, the tantalizer your old friend has handed you. So-o—” And he gave a philosophically resigned and tolerant inclination of his head toward the instrument in his hand.

  “Well,” she admitted quite frankly, “woman’s curiosity—mine included—is an awful thing; but on the other hand, Gilbert, an old and dear friend whom I may never see again in this world, because bound for the Orient—well, I just felt a strange compulsion not to say him nay. So I told him—or rather the party who was speaking for him—that I would be right on tap for the next hours. Now you won’t feel—”

  “Come—come!” he chided her. “That’s every bit of all right. After all, we had a goodbye. And a swell one! Now don’t worry about it further. Send me then, by trans-Atlantic airmail, to the Palmer House, Chicago, the reviews of your opening there in London, and a program, if you will. Will you?”

  “That I most certainly will, Gilbert. In fact, those reviews will be about the last, I guess, on Muriel Ordway! For after I return, and give my week to Parradine Moderne, and we’re married, there—there won’t be any more appearances. Just the making of a home for you and me.”

  “And with one great appreciator of your talent left high and dry—I refer to that certain bookdealer who is doing something for me. Trying to, anyway. For he said, less than 10 minutes ago, that you had a voice of—now get this—‘cool molten gold’!”

  “Oh—how nice of him! Cool molten gold? That’s a real review. Even if unpublished.”

  There was a pause.

  “Well, darling,” Parradine now said, “I’ll be getting on out of here. For I’ve some’at to do before going to the airfield. So I’ll say goodbye. Let me know who the friend was, won’t you? And good trip across the briny—good ever’thing—and will expect to hear from you soon. ’Bye!”

  “’Bye, my own,” she said.

  They hung up together. And he turned from the phone, thinking satisfiedly and tenderly of this wonderful woman he loved so well and so deeply; and who plainly loved him.

  And now reaching out to the vertical mahogany hat-rack at his elbow, he abstracted the broad-brimmed purple velour hat which hung on the topmost arm, and placed it on his head; he felt for his airplane transportation in his breast pocket, felt also to make sure that his money was in his trousers pocket; then he reached down and picked up the green alligator travelling bag.

  And taking one last and final careful look around, to make sure that nothing was forgotten, nor overlooked, he prepared to leave. Was, in fact, but 3 seconds later, crossing the floor, opening the door and letting himself out, and drawing the door to, till its very latch clicked sharply.

  And now, suddenly and for the first time, he felt curiously lonely, forlorn, isolated in a great world of people.

  “Too bad,” he said a bit regretfully, “that Muriel won’t be seeing me off. However—” he made a quizzical grimace towards the door, “—an old, old friend, skipping across the world, and with but 30 minutes to spend in New York—well, that is a real complication. The complication of all complications, all right, all right.” He frowned, howeve
r, as he turned toward the elevator shaft. “Odd that he wants to surprise her, and won’t reveal his name.”

  Though not so odd at that, had Gilbert Parradine but known it. Since the one essential of what was to be one of the most famous kidnap cases in all history was that Muriel Ordway be not at Arrow Field when Gilbert Parradine’s plane took off!

  Chapter XVII

  THE SNATCH

  As Gilbert Parradine, traversing the scant bit of marble-tessellated floor permitted at any of the tower levels, including this one, in view of the space available for tower room, single elevator shaft, and stairway beyond, reached that single elevator shaft, the elevator itself, on its upward run, came to a stop, a few feet under its complicated hoisting mechanism built in the shaft at about ceiling level. The operator, plainly catching from inside some vision of the outside, flung the doors open. He was a pleasant red-haired chap with freckles.

  “Caught you, eh, Mr. Parradine, just before you rang?”

  Parradine, in the act of continuing past the elevator to the stairway, stopped and turned. “Oh, I wasn’t going to ring, Red. I’m running upstairs first to see Rocco about some lighting stuff. But I will be going down with you in about 15 minutes or so.”

  “Okay, Mr. Parradine. Just ring.”

  The doors closed, the elevator went down. And Parradine continued on beyond it to where the single heavy door, with powerful compressed-air check, bore the white-painted words: STAIRWAY.

  With some effort, for Parradine was not an athletic man, he drew the massive thing open, and stepped past it, hearing it close ponderously and tightly in back of him. And now he was on the iron stairway which was the only means of further traversal up to Rocco’s quarters.

  He was up to the next level in short order, and opening a similar heavy door, the door check of which, unlike the one on the floor below, gave forth this afternoon, for some unaccountable reason, an unearthly vibratory machine-gunlike rattle over the course of every inch of the door’s opening; but which, nevertheless, once he had passed the threshold of the partial opening, drew the heavy door silently, and ponderously, and snugly shut after him. He was even now crossing the quite elevatorless hallway lighted with only a hanging electric bulb, and merely wood-floored here, though the floor was a bit larger than the hall-floor below, thanks to the fact that that elevator shaft had never been extended up this far. And reason enough—since Parradine Tower’s proud builder, after construction was practically finished, had decreed that his beautiful and artistic tower should be a full one-story higher than that blatant, gaudy monstrosity of a tower down at 157th Street, which called itself—

  Now, bag in hand, he stood in front of the single door that presented itself in a position identical with his own, on the floor below.

  Knocked amiably on it—a sort of facetious rat-a-tat-tat!

  It opened with such celerity that he was startled. But Louis Rocco, standing there in rolled-up shirtsleeves, and with a wire-cutters in one hand, was smiling welcome.

  “Ah, come in, Mr. Parradine.”

  Parradine did so, as Rocco closed the door behind him and shot the heavy, clumsy bolt on the door. A thing he never failed to do, as Parradine well remembered: an action betraying the true Sicilian love of complete secrecy in everything—or else the Sicilian fear of enemies. Which it was, Parradine knew not, and cared less.

  The 13th floor room, in which Rocco lived, so as best to superintend the theatre lighting down the street, and be immediately close to the electrical-materials room above, was furnished with Rocco’s own furniture. Wicker stuff, all of it, suitable for summer or winter. The rug was gaudy and highly flowered, in colors that pained the eye. An amorous-looking couch-bed along one wall was carelessly shrouded with a cover that seemed literally as though made from a dozen gypsy dresses. Brilliant crimson drapes were at the sides of the windows, all of which latter, at this particular high level, gazed blankly, completely minus skylines or silhouettes, against a blue sky with idly drifting clouds; those crimson drapes moreover were tied, all of them, with equally brilliant and voluminous green tiepieces. Highly Italian—highly Sicilian, indeed—was the whole ensemble. Even to the tall black folding screen standing in the corner opposite, embroidered with birds and flowers in every color and kind of silk.

  In the other corner off from the doorway—the one not occupied by the screen—was the one-time-black iron stairway providing the only access to that once inutile, but today used as the so-called materials room above. Now, under Rocco’s occupancy, the stairway was painted a vivid ochre, with zigzag green stripes! A cabinet above a washbowl in the third corner showed a gleaming silver coffee percolator. Completing a room that, while bedroom at night, and kitchen at breakfast, could yet be one for ladies to visit. Sicilian ladies, with hanging gold earrings, and strident laughter. For Parradine had viewed some of them, oft and again. And—

  But Rocco was speaking.

  “Sit down right there, Mr. Parradine—yes, the big chair facing yonder screen. I’ve the exhibit all ready in back of the screen. But I want to hook in this plug first.”

  True enough, as Parradine could now note, a long flexible cable ran about the edge of the room, and back of the screen. Evidencing the exhibit was to be revealed to him for the first time, under full lights.

  So, moving slightly to the left, he did sink into the big flat-handled wicker chair that stood conveniently facing that embroidered screen. Setting his alligator bag off to one side on the floor, and his purple velour hat carefully atop it. He could hear Rocco fiddling away in back of him, at the wall-socket, with a tool.

  So Parradine craned his head about, and talked to the other, who was kneeling.

  “By the way, Rocco,” he instructed, “while I’m gone, Miss Ordway will probably—so I hope—be turning over to your care a book of Chinese wisdom which I’m getting hold of through a bookdealer—again, so I hope! For she’s leaving the city, you see. So will you take the very best of care of that book, till I get back?”

  “Sure—sure, Mr. Parradine.” Rocco spoke virtually back of himself, busy as he was tightening a loose screw in the socket base.

  “Okay. But this book, now, isn’t just altogether another item in my collection of things Chinese, remember. It’s—it’s—well, it’s a first edition as well. If you know what that means? It means a copy with some misprints in it, see? And therefore valuable. And so, for Lord’s sake, don’t let any of your—er—lady friends of the black eyes and long gold eardrops carry it off, now will you? Since I can’t replace it.”

  Rocco, throwing his weight against his screwdriver, laughed understandingly.

  “Those little bitches—er—gals, Mr. Parradine, are plenty light-fingered, at that. No, I lock everything up tight against the gals of my race—and your book’ll be doubly so.”

  “Fine!” And Parradine swung his gaze around frontward, to relieve his twisted position, and sat back waiting.

  But at this juncture one of two telephones on the wall next to the door shrilled. Whether it was the outside phone, or the inter-building phone, even Parradine didn’t know. But evidently Rocco did, for with a grunt, and coming around in front of Parradine, he unerringly took up the right one. The outside one—as evidenced by his later words.

  “Lou Rocco speaking.

  “Who?

  “Oh—the bulbs-supply comp’ny?

  “No, I can’t take d’livery just now—I’ll be tied up this afternoon—but any time t’morrow.

  “Yeah, at any time all day. If I ain’t in my quarters, I’ll be downstreet around the theatre. All ri—say—wait a minute. Do you understand d’livery is to be to our materials room? And not on the top landing of the elevator shaft?

  “’At’s what I said! Mr. Parradine specified that. He—he told me he did. You’ll have to trot ’em by foot the extra story, from the top elevator landing. Then across my quarters, and then one more flight up to our
materials room.

  “Yeah? Well, I didn’t build Parradine Block—Mr. Parradine did—and he specified, moreover, when he signed that contract with you, that—what’s that?”

  “Is there plenty o’ room? Hell, the room is empty as a grandmother’s mouth, waiting for them 5000 bulbs. You let me know when you get here, I’ll throw her open, and all you need to do is to stack the cases anywhere in it you want, except around the doorway, and give me back the key when you’re done.

  “Okay. T’morrow then—any time.”

  Rocco hung up, and turned from the phone.

  “Those babies sure like to get out o’ work, Mr. Parradine. They were all set to lay about 5000 bulbs right outside the elevator downstairs, and call it ‘d’livery.’ After you tellin’ ’em exactly what was involved.”

  “Good thing I did,” nodded Parradine. Then asked curiously: “How long will it take ’em to trot the bulbs up the last flight here, through here, and upstairs?”

  “Oh, a couple hours or so, Mr. Parradine, since they’s no stalling to be done. The room is prat’cally empty, y’ see. Well, back to my wall job again!”

  And again Rocco disappeared in back of Parradine, and again came the sound of a tool evidently tightening a loose wall plug.

  The while Parradine continued to wait. Tapping the toe of one foot idly on the rug, wondering, with the intensest of interest, just how that exhibit back of that screen would really look when revealed—all lighted up, by that feed-cable Rocco was endeavoring to insert. Wondering whether—

  But of a sudden—and almost automatically—Parradine rose to his feet. Startled. Even gasping. As three men, clattering forth from both sides of the screen, and plainly at some signal from behind Parradine, advanced menacingly, grimly, unsmilingly toward him. Fanning out sidewise from each other, as they did so. And all looking sinisterly intent. No—no birthday surprise party this, Parradine realized! One man, fully as sallow as Rocco himself, fully as Sicilian-looking, had but one eye, and the socket of the missing eye, in his shaven olive-shaped head, looked like a black crater. While another of the trio, red of face and broad of head, with cold blue eyes surmounted by a short grey pompadour, with long powerful arms like those of a gorilla, and with bulbous pockmarked nose, was plainly a German!