The First Mystery Novel

by Howard Mason

  Desperately he strode over to the wall which held that black-painted, iron-web-protected, high-up window. Standing on tiptoes, he reached up and seized the iron webbing with his fingers; and by powerfully muscled arms that had been kept so by rigorous attendance at his athletic club—and by planting his feet against the wall—climbed, muscled himself up, a handgrip at a time above the level of the other hand, till, like a monkey, he was clinging to the entire grating, knees on the bare edge of the sill, trying to catch one last peep through the cracks in that paint at dear, wonderful New York. Moving his eye wildly about, he found a scratched or fallen away area, perhaps an inch in width, considerably below the level of his face, however, but through which something twinkled brightly, brilliantly. Moving his head a bit to one side, he peered squintingly through it. And knew that he was now looking downward—dizzily downward—and downward of the street, a full block, as well—at no less than the foyer entrance of his own theatre, at the other end of the block. The marquee facing him was literally shrunken to a mere brilliant oblong, in spite of the fact that it was the largest marquee in New York City—in all the East, in fact—with its full 32 feet of width. And now Parradine peered squintingly at it. The letters on it facing him seemed almost microscopic at the distance—so foreshortened that he had to squint harder yet to separate them—but perhaps because he possessed that amazing vision for line detail that had baffled more than one New York oculist, he was able to read that sign. The entire sign had just finished spelling itself out—was standing for its 1-minute-long announcement. And it read:

  “DIE YOU WHELP!”

  Comedy Scream with

  BROOME SHERWOOD

  Showing at

  7:11, 9:25, and 11:04

  Special fight films tonight

  “KID” NAPOLEON vs. CASEY O’KELLY

  The effort of clinging there like a monkey, however, was too great, if not for Parradine’s muscles, then for his fingers! And he came down again. But having glimpsed, while up there, a slightly sprung-out section of the fireproof metal window casing—at the very top thereof, and hence invisible below—an idea had come to Parradine. Not an idea to save himself, but an idea by which those who tore down Parradine Tower, a hundred years or more from today, might know the strange tragedy that had occurred here this night in the 20th century!

  Chapter XXV

  THE PERFECT “SNATCH”

  For that sprung-out section of metal windowcasing was wide enough, in extent, to slip in a paper. A narrow paper anyway. Or, say, a folded paper—like one of the blank end-sheets of that book over by the radio. Once poked down inside, it would remain in the hollow metal windowcasing for all time to come. Safe against fire—against anything. Slipshod work, of course, that windowcasing installation. But slipshod, no doubt, because it had been installed in the very last room to be completed in Parradine Block. And once inside the casing, the paper would remain there. And some day—some day in the 21st century—when tall buildings like this were drugs on the market, archaic structures which would not even rent—when airplane travel had leveled skyscrapers, and scattered offices and habitations all over the State—workmen would be tearing down this tower—ripping out that windowcasing—withdrawing that sheet which would tell exactly how Gilbert Parradine had been abducted and killed in the 20th Century.

  Within a trice, Parradine was over squatting cross-legged atop his blankets. Even more, ripping out a blank end-sheet from that book. And within but a few seconds more was hastily writing on that sheet, laid atop the flat top of the small radio, with the stub of a pencil that he had been permitted to retain. And, 8 minutes after that, was reading what, in almost microscopically small letters, thanks to the fortunately sharp point of the pencil, he had written. And which, covering both sides of the end-sheet, and fully so, ran:

  To Whom It May Concern,

  In that 21st Century,

  When This Shall be Found!

  I sit tonight, in a room atop a tower of my own building, doomed to die.

  For I have been “snatched,” as the term today is. And so cleverly that nobody in New York dreams that I am here.

  The man who evolved and conducted the “snatch” is one Louis Rocco, an electrician whom I befriended—to whom I even gave full and exclusive control of my theatre-foyer and marquee lighting—who has, as his bulbs and special electrical-materials room, the room in this tower just underneath this one where I sit a prisoner—and, in turn, his own quarters in the room beneath that one. Thus I sit, a prisoner of Rocco and his henchmen, in virtually his own quarters.

  For no elevator runs to this story—this room, considering that in the tower there is but one room to a story. Indeed, the one tower-ascending elevator runs only as far as the 12th story, where my own office is. From there, access to Rocco’s quarters, on the floor above, is by the building-stairway only, but which stairway terminates there; access to the room above Rocco’s quarters is by a flight of metal stairs inside of Rocco’s quarters; and, finally, access to this room, the so-called control-room for the theatre marquee, is only an iron ladder and close-fitting fireproof iron trapdoor.

  Thus I am cut off from the world by many doors and floors—and all in Rocco’s own domain!

  The men who helped Rocco in the “snatch,” at least here at the New York end, are a pockmark-nosed German called Heinz, and a one-eyed Italian called Blinky. Two men operating in Chicago are evidently known, according to things I heard dropped, as Silk and Chopper.

  The fifth man, operating in both cities, so to speak, is, God help me, no less than my double. And about whom I shall speak more, later in this letter.

  I was held, bound and tied to a considerable extent, over the afternoon of the “snatch,” and all the evening thereafter, in the special materials room above Rocco’s quarters, probably to have me handy pending Rocco’s hearing how things were proceeding in Chicago. And only after midnight, and the tower elevator had stopped running, making it possible for Rocco’s men later to get out of the building unseen, was I hoisted by all three, my body bound tightly with ropes, up the last step of the way—the iron ladder—to this control room. And now unbound, shoved into an area off of it cut entirely off from the control board by powerful iron webbing so that no materials that might ever be stored in the unused space can ever come in contact with the board itself. And perhaps catch fire from the arcs resulting from the breaking of the different circuits.

  There was to be a delivery of bulbs to the room below me next morning. Whether I could have gotten an alarm through the thick floor, and tight-fitting trap-door, I do not know. Probably not. But Rocco took care of that! For he gave me, before dawn, a can of salt fish to eat. And then, just before dawn, crazy with thirst, I was given a pan of water which, as I gulped it, I noticed tasted slightly bitter. I thought it was the tin. Instead, it was drugged. For I went out like a light. And came to only in the late afternoon. When the materials delivery below was over and done with. So much for that.

  And now, for purposes of my record, to write of the fifth man in the “snatch,” because of whom the “snatch” has been a success. A complete success—according to certain radio accounts I have listened to up here. He is one Albert Magwire, of Webb Crossing, New York. A corn-doctor and, it seems, amateur magician. Unmarried. He is my perfect and absolute double—possessing, consequently, identical vocal cords and head cavities, and with practically my own voice. He happened, a half year ago, to see my picture, by chance, in a theatrical magazine: and so while in New York dropped up, out of curiosity, to see me, his double. Because of my having to work late that night, he had come up after midnight—just before taking a train out—and it was Rocco himself who operated an elevator for him, brought him up. Rocco evidently saw an amazing possibility in the existence of this man—had him followed—later contacted him—found he plainly had the potentialities of those of the world of crookdom, and needed money—and so the plot, or scheme, was evolved.
And so, on that terrible day of yesterday, when I was about to leave for Chicago, Rocco asked me secretly to come upstairs to his quarters before leaving, to view a lighting exhibit. I did so around 3 in the afternoon. And was grabbed.

  I was forced, under partial torture and threats of more, to sign a Palmer House hotel-registration card which they had obtained somehow; to write out a demand on the Acting Trustees of my Estate to pay $100,000 ransom for me; and to also write out a slip of manila paper reading simply “The two men with me are kidnapping me—summon police quick.”

  Everything went off perfectly. For, according to the facts in the case—facts of which I know the truth, but no one else does—my double went to Chicago, leaving the broadest of trails behind him. The elevator man here took him down, from my floor; the cabman he flagged on the street to take him to the airport happened to know me, and recognized him as me; by more luck for Rocco’s gang—or was it luck?—I was even “recognized,” aboard the airliner, by the pilot and the hostess with whom I had travelled before. I was of course “recognized” at the Palmer House, by many of the employees who knew me from previous stays. Most ingenious part of the Snatch appears to be the way in which my double checked “me” and not himself into the Palmer House! (And I picked up enough from the gangsters’ conversation to know that this was the way it was to be done—plainly later was done.) For it seems that my double, about to sign the hotel registry card, or perhaps having just signed it, and waving it in the air to dry it, presumably “recognized” a friend across the lobby, stepped over to the latter, found it was a “mistake,” and came back with—through simple prestidigitation—the substituted card with my real signature. Thus I conclusively checked in. And it was thus that next evening, when I presumably came down the elevator with two men with me, hands in their pockets—and “I” slipped the surprised elevator boy a folded dollar bill for “all his trouble”—and a handwritten manila slip was found in it two hours later announcing I was being kidnapped—well, it was plain I had been grabbed, practically before the noses of the police, in Chicago, home of gangsterism and gangdom.

  Thus the hunt, going on all the time, centers for me in Chicago and its environs. A city in which I am “known”—absolutely and unequivocally—to have disappeared.

  The Perfect Snatch.

  The gang has asked $100,000 in cash money. And forwarded my pay-order to pay it. The Acting Trustees of my Estate who have more or less free handling of my monies and interests even without written orders—but most particularly so with—are even now, according to one news bulletin on the radio, trying to effect the “pay-off contact” there in Chicago. The validity of the pay-off being verifiable in some way by the manner in which my pay-order was torn. A case of matching edges, or something. But they do not know, of course, that when they have paid the money—I will die. Because I know who did the job. And did it right here in New York. And I can do quite nothing about it.

  I want this communication to be found in the 21st century and to be a record, at least, of the foul and rotten things that were done in the 20th.

  Gilbert Parradine.

  Now, Parradine rose from his blankets with set teeth. Went over below that window again. Folded, almost-microscopically-written end-sheet letter in teeth, he seized the webbing above his head. Went up again, like a monkey. And, once up, poked it down into that windowcasing aperture. Well in, till it vanished. Wondering dully just what the workman who someday would see it flutter forth, when that casing was ripped off, would think—on a date when everyone living in this century was dust and ashes.

  Since he was up there again, he took another glance, through the tiny gap in the black paint on the window-pane, downward and down-block. People galore were filing into the show, along the plaza-like sidewalk. Either the fact that its owner had been snatched in Chicago—or else the fact that this British comedian was funny, indeed—was bringing business to the Parradine Moderne tonight. And Parradine wondered which of the two reasons it could be. He even wondered—but what did it matter, at that?

  And because of the effort of clinging up there, like a fly, he came down again.

  Walked restlessly over to his blankets—his radio. Leaned down. Turned it on gently. That being, alas, the only way it could be turned on! He even essayed to turn it exactly on to what would be the latest news broadcast. And was just in time to catch, in fact, the words:

  “—but the controllers of Mr. Parradine’s interests, fully authorized in writing by the theatre-owner to pay the ransom, have refused the Chicago police and G-men all details of how the ransom money is to be passed—where or by whom—claiming that their employer’s life is worth more than the doubtful efficacy of the bungling attempts of the police to capture these gangsters; but the controllers of the Parradine interests do, at least, vouchsafe the information that the ransom money is to be passed within 1 hour and 50 minutes from now, and in Chicago, in full compliance with the absolutely police-proof method which the thieves have worked out to obtain it. The controllers expect the return of Parradine within but a couple of hours or so afterward, for—”

  With a sharp snap Parradine turned off the radio. His face was very white. And automatically, he picked up his book of ancient Chinese wisdom to read as he paced—to keep from going stark crazy. For he was now, he knew, a dead man sure!

  CHAPTER XXVI

  DETECTIVE HAGERUP TURNS IN HIS TRACKS

  Plainclothesman Harfy Hagerup, who had been in and out of the Uptown Broadway Police Station tonight a half dozen times on the McWilfred Murder Case, which had broken today in 190th Street, was now coming out again for the umpteenth time!

  He went down the stone steps in deep reflection, and turned up street.

  But hardly had he proceeded 30 feet than he noted that people around him were staring curiously, fixedly up ahead. So he too, being a detective—even if a stocky little one in a tweed suit, with a practical, round red face—and interested at least in staring people, did the same.

  And, doing the same, his lower jaw fell.

  For about a full minute did weird chaotic thoughts course deviously through the gargantuan intricacies of Detective Harfy Hagerup’s brain; then he dashed back to the station steps, up the steps, and into the booking-room presided over by his Chief, Sergeant Wylon Mallory.

  The latter, sitting patiently back of the wicket, his corpulent form shrouded tightly in blue, and bedizened with shiny brass buttons, and with great braided cap on head, looked at Detective Hagerup bewilderedly.

  “Hi, Chief,” the latter said, passing a hand helplessly over one cheek. “Come outside, willya—to the sidewalk—with me?”

  “What do you want me out there for?” asked Mallory quizzically. “To help you arrest somebody who spit on the sidewalk?”

  “Hell no, Chief. No!”

  “Come, come, Harfy,” said Mallory, “tell Uncle Mallory what’s on your mind?”

  “Damn it, Chief, I—I can’t even tell you—you’ll have to come outside.”

  “Okay! My bump of curiosity has never been sawed off yet.” And Mallory bestirred his great blue-clad frame out of his chair back of the wicket, and followed the puzzled and excited Hagerup out of the station, down the stone steps, and onto the sidewalk. Two men, coming along the sidewalk at the time, stopped dead in their tracks, looking ahead—then at each other.

  But at this Mallory did not pay so much attention as he did to what Harfy Hagerup was pointing at, a full block upstreet, where the brightly lighted marquee of the Parradine Moderne Theatre crossed the unusually broad sidewalk. And on which, at that very second, was just being added, to some letters which already had become lighted up, a final letter—at least judging from the fact that no more proceeded to light up; in short, the whole was now standing unchanged for its usual 1-minute-long fixed announcement. But which announcement—facing Mallory and Hagerup—and the two men who were transfixed, and heaven knows who else?—held the
somewhat curious wording:

  ROOM

  1 5 1

  KID NAP CASE

  “What—what the hell do you make of it, Chief?” Hagerup was demanding. “Is it a joke? Or is it—”

  “Get back inside there,” ordered Mallory gravely. “And bring out Tutweiler, Meekins, McGurk and Consequeency. Crazy as it sounds, Hagerup, I think we’ve touched the Parradine Case!”

  CHAPTER XXVII

  MR. PARRADINE’S ORDERS!

  It took less than 3 minutes for the 5 men, quickly assembled, and led by Mallory, to reach the office of Parradine Block, midway between the theatre and Parradine Tower. It was open tonight, though only a boy with red hair worked away stamping letters, presumably rent notices. An open rear door gave into a further room, fitted up like an office, in which could be seen a huge grey-painted safe.

  The boy looked up, mouth open, as the assemblage filed in.

  “Where will we find the man,” demanded Mallory, “who is manager of Parradine Block?”

  “You—you want Mr. Blacksell,” said the boy. “He’s—he’s in there.” He pointed at the rearward office.

  But here an elderly man, with long nose and gold pince-nez on the end of it, came through the door, a large cloth-bound ledger in his hand.