AHMM, June 2005

by Dell Magazine Authors

  He stopped. He eyed Barney skeptically. “You couldn't possibly be as innocent as you look, could you? Because you'll have to do some quick lying, you know, if he suspects anything."

  Barney looked sheepish.

  "Here,” Babbing said, suddenly. He took a letter from the table and gave it to the boy. “Go into the bathroom. No. The door opens in. I'll go in the bathroom, and you can come to the door and deliver this telegram. Let's see how you do it.” And he went into the bathroom and shut the door on himself.

  Barney turned the letter over in his hands. He frowned a moment at the door. Then he went up to it and rapped. There was no answer. He knocked more loudly. A voice, disconcertingly gruff, asked, “What is it?"

  "A telegram, sir,” Barney answered.

  "Put it under the door."

  Barney smiled to himself—the cunning smile of a child in a game. “They said I was to see that you got it, this time. It's a repeat."

  The door was opened a few grudging inches. “What's that?"

  "They said I was to see that Mr. Cooper got it, this time. It's a repeat."

  "Well, I'm Mr. Cooper. Give it here.” He put his hand out, still blocking the half-opened door. Barney gave him the letter. The door shut in his face.

  Barney blinked at the panels. Then he knocked again sharply. Babbing opened the door.

  "Well, what is it?"

  "They didn't give me a receipt form,” Barney said. “Will you sign the envelope an’ give it back to me?"

  "Have you a pencil?"

  "No, sir,” Barney said.

  "Well, wait there till I find one."

  Barney tried the door slyly. It opened. He edged in, over the threshold. “If you want to send an answer, sir,” he said, “I can take it."

  Babbing caught him by the “cowlick” that adorned his ingenuous young forehead. “Get out of here,” he laughed, “or I'll have you arrested.” And Barney, as startled as if he had been wakened from a dream, grinned confusedly. “That's all right,” Babbing said. “If you do it as well as that."

  "Was I all right?” Barney cried, exulting. “Was I?” He knew that he was; he could see it in Babbing's face; but he wanted to hear it. And he spoke in the voice of a boy playing with a boy.

  Babbing changed his expression. “Yes, but this ‘Nick Carter’ stuff,” he said, pointing to Barney's coat on a hook, “you mustn't destroy your mind with that sort of thing. That must stop with your cigarettes."

  It returned Barney instantly to the hypocritical schoolroom manner of a pupil reproved by his teacher. “Yes, sir,” he promised.

  "Well, we'll see.” Babbing was non-committal and unenthusiastic. “You've a lot to learn, yet."

  Barney asked, shyly: “What's he been doin'?"

  "Who?"

  "Mr. Cooper."

  Babbing turned back to the bedroom. “That's my business, not yours. You do what you're told—in my office—and don't ask questions. And don't discuss cases. That's another thing to learn.... Come in,” he called to Corcoran's knock.

  The operative came in, taking a telegraph envelope from his pocket. He gave it to Babbing, cheerfully silent. The detective put on his glasses and scrutinized it. He took out the telegram and read it. He compared the “time received” with his watch. “That looks convincing,” he said. He moistened a finger tip and delicately wetted the gummed flap. “We can give it a couple of minutes to dry.” He handed it to Barney. He went through his pockets for silver. “There are tips you've received. A dollar on account of salary. He may ask you for change.... Now don't be over-anxious. If this doesn't work, we'll find some other way. If he gets suspicious and telephones to the desk—or anything of that sort—just get in here as quickly as you can, and we'll protect you. Sit down a minute.” He turned to the papers on his table. “Jim,” he said, “you remember the disappearance case we had in Dayton—the little girl."

  "Yes?"

  "Our theory worked out all right. They've got a confession from the suspect and found the body in the bushes where he buried it. Here's Wally's report."

  Corcoran took the paper and sat down to read it. “I hope they hang him,” he said piously.

  Babbing consulted his watch. “Mr. Bell-boy,” he said at last, “You have a telegram for Mr. Cooper in eight-eighteen. Go ahead and deliver it."

  Barney had a sensation of peculiar heaviness in the knees as he walked stiffly to the door. ("They said I was to see that you got it, this time.") Outside, he paused to close the door with unnecessary gentleness and made sure that the corridor was empty. ("It's a repeat.") Where was 818? He saw 819 across the hall to his left. He put a finger down the back of his neck, and eased his collar. He cleared his throat of nervousness. He walked boldly to 818, raised his small knuckles to a panel, and knocked.

  There was no answer. He had put up his hand to knock again, when the door opened and a tall man in slippers and bathrobe asked, “Well?"

  "A telegram for Mr. Cooper,” Barney said steadily. “They tol’ me to see that he got it, this time. It's a repeat."

  Cooper stood back. “Come in.” His voice was pitched low. “What did you say?"

  Barney came across the threshold and Cooper closed the door on him. “It's a repeat,” Barney said, “an’ they told me to see that you got it, this time.” He held out the telegram.

  Cooper took it nervously. He was a gaunt-featured, long-nosed, lean man, with deep lines from his nostrils to the corners of his thin lips. There was a little patch of lather drying on one cheek-bone, and Barney understood that he had been shaving. He wiped his hand on his bathrobe before he took the telegram, and he fumbled over it. Barney found himself suddenly cool and confident. He noticed that Cooper's hands were very thin and very hairy; and he looked at them and then slowly looked Cooper over with a curious feeling of contempt. It was the contempt that accounts for half the daring of spies and detectives. People are so easily deceived, so easily outwitted. Their attention is so easily caught with one hand while the other goes unwatched. Barney was learning his trade.

  "Why!” Cooper said. “I got this last night."

  "Maybe you didn't answer it,” Barney suggested. “It's a repeat."

  He puzzled over it. “Well,” he said, “I—” His voice faded out in the tone of abstraction. He turned and shuffled across the room to his writing desk, his eyes on the telegram. Unconscious of Barney's craning watchfulness, he took a small cloth-bound volume from an upper drawer of the little escritoire and turned the printed pages, comparing the words in the message with words in the book. The code book!

  "If you want to send an answer,” Barney said boldly, moving down towards him, “I could take it."

  He did not reply. He sat down to the desk and took a pencil and wrote, and consulted the book carefully with his pencil point on the page, and came back again to the message, and returned to find another page in the book. “No, that's all right,” he said, finally. He tore the telegram and retore it into tiny pieces. “There's no answer.” He made as if to throw the torn paper into the waste basket, and then he checked himself. “Wait a minute,” he said, rising; and Barney understood that he was to have a tip.

  Cooper shuffled off to the bathroom in his slippers.

  Barney, as pale as a thief, darted to the secretary and crammed the little code book into his pocket.

  When Cooper returned to the room, the bell-boy was standing near the door looking up at a framed engraving. He took the dime that Cooper gave him, and said stiffly, “Thanks,” but without raising his guilty eyes. As he went out, he glanced back and saw that Cooper was returning to the bathroom. Gee!

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  III

  He was so obviously—so breathlessly—excited when he burst in upon the detectives that Corcoran came to his feet at sight of him. “What's the matter?"

  Babbing jerked off his spectacles. “What has happened?"

  "I go-got it,” Barney stammered, tugging at the book that stuck in his pocket.

  "Got wh
at?"

  "His—his book."

  "What!” Corcoran grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and snatched the volume from his hand. He glanced at its brown cloth cover. “What?” he cried. And that second “What” expressed the extreme of incredulous disgust. He held out the book to Babbing who had not moved from his seat at the table. “He's swiped the man's dictionary!"

  Babbing looked at it. It was a “pocket Webster,” a cheap abridged edition, on cheap paper. “Where did you get this?” he asked; and there was no kindly personality showing in the cold malevolence of his flat eyes.

  "On his desk. I—"

  "Why did you bring it?"

  "Oh, hell!” Corcoran muttered. “This kid business!"

  "That'll do!” Babbing flared out at him. “I'm in charge of this case."

  They glared at each other, as if they were old enemies, with old jealousies concealed and long injustices unforgiven. Corcoran turned with a shrug and sat down on the bed. Babbing rounded on the boy again.

  "Why did you bring this?"

  "Well, gee,” Barney defended himself. “As soon as he got the telegram, he beat it to his desk an’ yanked this book out of a drawer, an’ began to hunt the words up in it, an'—"

  "Wait a minute. Corcoran, get on watch out there. If you hear anything, come back for this boy. Take him in to Cooper and tell him you're the house detective—that you caught the boy with this book and he confessed he'd stolen it from eight-eighteen. Give it back and ask him not to prosecute—because it would hurt the hotel. He won't anyway. And that'll hold him quiet till we can get time to turn around. Otherwise, we've tipped our hand."

  Corcoran was already at the door. He went out on the final word.

  "Now,” Babbing said, with perfect suavity, “take your time. Show me exactly what he did."

  "Well, look-a-here!” Barney took the book. “He got this out o’ the drawer, an’ then he sat down this way, an’ got a pencil, an’ then he wrote down the telegram—"

  "Wrote it down? Where? On what?"

  "On a piece o’ paper. An’ then he looks in the book, this way, an’ gets a word. An’ then he looks at the telegram. An then he goes back to the book an’ turns over the pages. An’ then he—"

  Babbing reached the dictionary from him. “Wait.” He put on his spectacles and wrote on the back of an envelope: “Thunder command wind kacaderm.” Below that he wrote it again, reversed, and then several times with the words transposed and permuted in all possible orders. He turned to the word “thunder” in the dictionary. It was at the bottom of the first of the three narrow columns that filled the page. He studied it. He studied the words around it. He turned the page, and his eyes widened thoughtfully on the word “through” at the bottom of the third column. The line read “Through, (throo) prep. from.” And on the margin the point of a pencil had made a light indentation. He turned back to “Thunder"; and on the margin there, the pencil mark showed in a raised point.

  He wrote, under the word “thunder” on his paper, the word “through."

  He turned to the word “command” in the dictionary, but after a prolonged scrutiny he wrote nothing.

  He turned to “wind.” And he found, on the same page but in another column, the word “will” touched with a faint pencil mark. He sat back in this chair and his face became meditatively blank.

  His eyelids constricted sharply. He wrote: “Murdock will come through.” Turning back to the dictionary to the word “command,” he found “come” standing directly beside it in the parallel column of print on the page. He looked at Barney and nodded. “Got it!” he said, grimly. “Go and bring Corcoran."

  Barney, almost running—but on his tiptoes—with the secrecy and the excitement, saw himself vindicated to the surprised Corcoran. He saw himself the hero of the occasion. He had solved the mystery! He had discovered the cipher! He signaled imperiously to Corcoran in the hall. The operative came scowling.

  When they returned to the room, Babbing said: “Sit down there, boy, and keep quiet. You scuttle like a rat.... Jim, I've got his method. I want you to send off some messages while I'm translating these. Wire our Chicago office: ‘Case 11A393. Case completed. Immediately arrest Number Two on information in your files.’ Wire Indianapolis in the same words to grab Pirie. He's Number Three. And have Billy ‘phone the office to get papers and an officer up here, at once, for our friend next door. I'll hold him till they come. Go ahead. I'll finish this."

  He settled down to his task studiously, copying out cipher telegrams, and writing between the lines the translated words as he found them in the dictionary. And in a room that was quiet and sunny, working with a little complacent pucker of the lips occasionally, or raising his eyebrows and adjusting his spectacles in a pause of doubt, he looked anything but sinister, anything but the traditional “bloodhound” on the train in a man-hunt. There was something Pickwickian in his small rotundity. The nattiness of his business suit gave him an air of conventional unimportance.

  Barney watched him fascinatedly. His plump little hands—his rather flat profile with its small beaked nose and the owlish spectacles—his dimpled chin—all reminded the boy of some one incongruous whom he could not place. When Babbing took out a white silk handkerchief to polish his glasses and buried his nose in it before he replaced it in his pocket, Barney remembered. It was a bishop who had once graced the closing exercises of the parochial school by conferring the prizes. He had given Barney a “Lives of the Saints."

  "Now, young man,” Babbing said, “get off that uniform. I'm going in to get a statement from your Mr. Cooper. If any one rings me up, take the number. If any of the men come in here, tell them where I am. I'm registered as A. T. Hume. Wait here till I come back.” He had taken a small blue-metal “automatic” from his hip pocket and put it in the side pocket of his coat. He gathered up his notes and the dictionary. “Don't make the mistake again of exceeding your instructions. You've forced our hand, already."

  "Yes, sir,” Barney said, contritely. But the door had scarcely closed before he was capering. He did a sort of disrobing dance, his face fearfully contorted with grins that were a silent equivalent of whoops of delight. And it was an interpretative dance. It expressed liberation from drudgery and the dull commonplace. It welcomed rhythmically a life of adventure, in which a boy's natural propensity to lie should be not only unchecked but encouraged—that should give him, daily, games to play, hidings to seek, simple elders to hoodwink and masquerades to wear. He danced it, in his shirt sleeves, waving his coat—and in his shirt tails waving coat and trousers. It stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and he darted into the bathroom to be ready in case he should be called upon.

  He was clothed and sober—rocking himself to an ecstatic croon in one of the Antwerp's bedroom rockers—when he heard a thudded report in the hall. It sounded to him as if two books had been clapped together. He sat listening.

  Babbing came in. “Get out of here, boy. What have you done with that uniform? Put it in my valise. Snap it shut. Hurry. Report to the office to-morrow morning at eight-thirty.” He was at the telephone. “Give me the house detective,” he said. “What? Mr. Dohn, your house detective.” He put his hand over the transmitter. “How much have you been earning?"

  "Six dollars a week—with the tips."

  "You'll start at twelve. Hurry up. Get out of here. To-morrow morning at eight-thirty."

  Barney started for the door, reluctantly.

  "Hello. Dohn? This is Babbing. Get up here as quick as you can with a doctor. That Chicago swindler in eight-eighteen has shot himself. Through the mouth. He's blown the back of his head out. Hurry up!"

  Barney, slamming the door behind him, fled down the hall, frightened, aghast, but with a high exultant inner voice still crooning triumphantly: “I'm a de-tec-tive! I'm a de-tec-tive!” Through the mouth! The back of his head out! Even in his horror there was a pleasurable shudder, for he had all a boy's healthy curiosity about murder, shootings and affairs of bloodshed. “I'm a de-tec-tive!” A
nd he hurried to tell his mother of his new job, aware that she would cry out against it—till he explained: “I start at twelve a week.” That would settle it with her. “I'm a detective! I'm a detective!"

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  Unsolved by Robert V. Kesling

  Leda Delatorre gave an inward sigh of relief when she spotted Customs Officer Ernest Chekov at JFK International Airport. Lining up the ten couples of her Magnificent Morocco tour group and giving them specific instructions, she hurried forward.

  Leda and Chekov were well acquainted, for she had been regularly clearing Customs with her clients every two weeks for years. “Ernie,” she confided, “I may be bringing you a problem."

  "How so, Leda?” he asked.

  "Frankly, I've never had a group like this one. They refused to stick together, wandering off and doing Lord knows what before returning with suspicious alibis. My intuition tells me you'd better check their luggage thoroughly."

  "Those your problem kiddies lined up at checkpoint B?"

  "The very same."

  "Tell me about ‘em."

  "Very well. One wife is named Ellen. Each couple shares a distinctive kind of luggage, and—

  1. As you can see, the women include three blondes, three redheads, and four brunettes, but no two with the same hair color stand next to each other. The blondes are Doris, Mrs. Unser, and the lady with blue leather luggage. The redheads are Mrs. VanDusen, Allen's wife, and the lady with the green fabric luggage. And the brunettes are Iris, Mrs. Washburn, Dan's wife, and the one with the black leather luggage.