by Otto Penzler
“Gone for the night.”
The inspector turned his head.
“Well?”
“Nothing, sir,” came a respectful answer from the hall. “Everything seems to be all right. We’ve covered the house.”
“Is Devlin satisfied?”
“I’ll ask him to report, sir.”
The inspector looked again at the big, confident, easily interested young man who occupied the middle of the floor. Nothing could have been more reassuring, more solid and untroubled than that same young man.
“Perhaps I forgot to close the door when I came in,” he was saying. “Perhaps I even touched the alarm. I’m not very familiar with the arrangements. Anyway—” He waved a casual hand while he dropped the revolver carelessly in his dressing-gown pocket. “Anyway—here is the house, and here am I. Quite at your service, but in no danger that I know of.”
The inspector hesitated….
In the pause, through the attendant group in the doorway, came thrusting an awkward, undersized man in common clothes who dropped a suit case at the inspector’s feet with a bang and grinned with a most evil squint.
“Well, Devlin?”
“Front room—found ’em under th’ bed in the front room,” announced the newcomer, in a quaint, chuckling cackle. “Jes’ give ’em the once over!”
He kicked open the suitcase as it lay.
Every man within eyeshot stood transfixed….
“As classy a set of can openers as y’ll ever see!” observed Mr. Devlin, rubbing his hands with extraordinary gusto. “Money can’t buy no better. They ain’t made no better. Poems! A package of poems in steel, sir. That’s what they are—poems!”
The inspector looked up sharply.
“That all?”
“Except that the boy who owned ’em has been makin’ hisself damn comfortable in that front room this evening! Reg’ler lordin’ it. Must ’a’ took a nap in there. Nerve! How about it for nerve?”
“You hear this, Mr.—Rangely?”
The host shrugged in frank surprise.
“Extraordinary! Apparently some one has been here—after all.”
The meager individual who had brought the suitcase turned toward the speaker, dropping his head with a curious twist. A misshapen finger plucked the inspector’s arm….
“Who does he say he is?”
“Young Rangely.”
“Huh! Well, he ain’t,” cackled Devlin, squinting. “Herbert Rangely’s about the size an’ shape of a stewed prune. This boy’d make six—Look out!”
A flash of steel from the dressing-gown pocket was swift, but no swifter than the thin spurt of yellow flame that jumped to meet it….
The report was drowned in a shock of sound like the thunder of a torrent, prisoned and plunging for freedom, a roar that pulsed with the wild fury of untamed forces, cornered and struggling.
Through the haze of the electrics on that third-floor stage a gigantic figure flailed amid a writhing mass of blue, and drove with mighty limbs toward the nearest window.
Steadily it made its way, like some slow-moving polyp of the depths, impeded but unmastered by clinging incrustations.
It seemed that nothing could stop it.
It reached the window, it caught the grille, it hurled itself bodily at space in one magnificent heave….
But there it stayed….
The captors would not loosen. They were many, and others came to help. The whole invading force joined the tussle. And the many were too many—
After a moment of swaying doubt the center of the fight collapsed. The group bore back and drew its vortex with it. The roaring ceased. Silence, rushing in, was like an ache in the ears.
A rippling police whistle called the last of the inspector’s reserves—
—
But there was no more resistance in the giant.
Standing once more in the middle of the room under the lights, half naked, great breast heaving, legs wide apart, he submitted while they snapped his wrists together behind his back, defiant, cursing them with his blazing beast’s eyes, but beaten.
“By God!” broke from him in a gust. “You’d never ’a’ got me if you hadn’t put that bullet through my arm!”
“Don’t y’ fool y’rself!”
It was the detective, Devlin, who answered. He was peering up at the captive with button-bright eyes and rubbing his hands briskly.
“Don’t y’ fool y’rself. We got y’ because y’r time had come! How about that for a little suggestion? Two years ago y’d ’a’ popped through that window, bullet and all, cops and all, and hell itself couldn’t ’a’ stopped y’. Y’ could ‘a’ done it then. But not now. Not now. It ain’t in y’ no more!…How d’y’ like the notion?”
The prisoner snarled down at him, crimson-faced.
Devlin cackled.
“Don’t like it, eh? It’s true. Two years more of success—two years more of easy money—two years more of night clubs and speakeasies—two years more of loafin’ and fifty-cent smokes, of gamblin’ and women—that’s what’s done it for you, ol’ boy!”
He plucked a roll of fat along the big man’s ribs. He prodded his grossness. He pointed out the sag of the cheeks and the thinning at the temples, while the captive raged.
All with the veriest nonchalance, the impersonal interest of the clinical demonstrator….
Only his glittering little eyes betrayed a more concrete meaning behind.
“That’s what’s the matter, ol’ boy. Pret’ tough! But you must ’a’ seen it comin’. A man like you, with such opportunities! Hell, you must ’a’ seen the time comin’. The time when y’d be done, like all the rest.”
The big man had gone from poppy red to wax white.
“Damn you!” he choked. “Shut up, you little fiend. You don’t know anything about me!”
“Oh, don’t I?” cackled Devlin, springing back and pointing a crooked finger. “I wonder! I wonder if I don’t—Mr. Meadow. Mr. Silver-gilt, Silk-stocking Meadow, Mr. Sportin’-life, Top-notcher Meadow, Mr. Jim Meadow, of Nowhere, wanted Everywhere, last seen Somewhere, and headed Anywhere!…I wonder if I don’t!”
A babble of excited tongues burst at the name.
“Are you sure, Devlin?” cried the inspector. “Meadow! He’s never been caught!”
“Look at his face,” triumphed the detective. “It’s writ there. He’s never been caught, no! That’s why I got his goat so easy. Look at him!”
In fact the prisoner could not control himself to put on a denial. Chagrin and rage held him helpless.
“James B. Meadow,” chuckled Devlin. “Million-dollar thief, kid-glove crook, gentleman burglar—the master that never yet did a day in stir! I got one flash at him once, and that’s as near as anybody has ever come to him before….
“There he is! And we got him, because his time was come. Ripe. He was ripe and we picked him, that’s all!”
It was a bit of theatricalism to have suited the taste of the prisoner himself, had the lines, and the supers, and the properties been somewhat altered.
He held the center. The police gathered about him with avid, exultant eyes, like a pack of hounds that have brought the biggest boar of the chase to bay.
“I only wish we’d got him at work,” observed the inspector, dwelling on him fondly. “It’s too tame a way to grab a guy with his record!”
But in the interval Devlin had discovered the wall cabinet. He swung it wide with a cackle.
“Oh, I guess it ain’t so tame as you think! That’s the Rangely safe, chief. You may have heard of it!”
“Cracked?”
“You bet!” Devlin’s eyes were like points of fire. “And chief—this—this is where the Rangely diamond lives!”
But the inspector was the first to find the inner compartment—empty!
“Then it’s moved,” he commented dryly.
Devlin forgot to cackle.
“Don’t tell me—” he began, and stopped.
He scratched his
head.
“By golly, let’s see them tools.”
He swung around to the suitcase and pounced on the steel gems it contained.
“Meadow,” he snapped, jumping up. “You never cracked that safe!”
“Didn’t I?” sneered the prisoner.
Devlin was at the cabinet again, examining the mechanism.
“No, you didn’t! The outer door’s been worked with its proper combination. Not cracked at all. Them glass drawer knobs have something to do with it—and I shouldn’t wonder—
“And if it was you who used the combination, why’d you bring all them tools, and a pint of soup? No! You came expectin’ to blow her. Don’t tell me!”
The prisoner smiled superior.
“The inner box has been forced all right,” continued Devlin. “But the guy never had your beauty outfit. He wouldn’t need it. He used a plain jimmy. And he didn’t work like you!”
“No?”
“I know your signature, ol’ boy….See here, what’s it mean?”
The prisoner shrugged.
Devlin shook an ugly finger under his nose.
“That diamond’s been took, Meadow! If you got a pal—”
Meadow laughed at him.
“No, not that,” acknowledged Devlin, totally at a loss. “You never took one. But there’s been a hell of a funny evenin’ around here, first and last. Come across, ol’ boy. What was it?”
The prisoner smiled….
Devlin watched him with bright, squinting eyes, head dropped askew, boring at him.
“By gol!” he breathed.
“By gol, I might have guessed! Of course. Somebody beat y’ to it! Waterloo! It’s y’r Waterloo, this night. Fat, and flabby, and off y’r game, and y’ fall asleep in the next room while somebody beats you to it! The time had to come. It came tonight—all at once—all in a swoop. First y’ lose one of the best cribs y’ ever tackled, and then y’ get pinched on the spot. Dished! Pinched beside another feller’s leavin’s!…Dished!…Done!”
He cackled into the captive’s face.
Meadow had gone white again under the jeering lash of the detective so skillfully wielded. But he held himself with an effort.
“Think so?”
“I know so. And—tell y’, Meadow. Let me tell y’ one thing….Listen—”
He laid finger into palm, and emphasized each word slowly.
“The crook that got that diamond—whoever he was—is a better crook than you. He may be a slob. He may be a green hand—likely he was, with that jimmy. But to come and crack the crib you was after, under your nose, and such a crib! And to get away with the plum!
“Meadow, I’m glad to get you. But if I had a chance to bargain I’d exchange you in a minute—yes—ten like you, like what you are now—for just one good look at that feller!…
“He’s goin’ to make trouble, big trouble. It may take years to find him. It may be years before he loses his punch and goes off his game like you. I tell you, you’re done! You’re no account! And him—he’s just comin’!”
The quivering captive could endure no more. His pride, his self-love, his egotism—the monstrous bloated egotism of the criminal—had been slashed to the quick.
He cried out under it, as Devlin had meant he should.
“Is that so?” he yelled hoarsely. “Well, that’s all the good you are, you shrimpy sleuth! Done? I may be a little out of training. I may have run into a rotten string of luck. But I’ll show you whether I’m done or not.
“Yes, there was another guy on this job! Yes, he tried to butt in on my crib! And how far did he get with it, do you suppose? How far do you think I let him travel with my swag?
“He was a sniveling little wharf rat. Somehow, by dumb luck, he had picked up the combo of that safe. By more dumb luck he got the diamond. And then—I blew him back where he belonged….
“I’m done, am I? Feel here—in what you’ve left of my vest. The right-hand pocket!”
Devlin sprang to him, smiling.
“I hand it to you, Jim,” he cackled. “You’re a wonder! Gents—”
He fumbled in the pocket while the bluecoats pressed eagerly around.
“Gents, we have here that well-known wonder of the world, famed in song and story—the Rangely diamond!”
There was a moment’s strained silence in the rear room of the third floor, on that lighted stage offered to the windows of the night….
Then Devlin’s curiously hushed addition cut across it.
“Rangely h-ell! It’s glass!…It’s one of them blasted glass knobs off—that—blasted—safe—front!”
Such was the crisis of that impromptu midnight drama. It is likely that it might have afforded further interest.
But the audience did not wait to see. The audience had had enough. The audience was quite content to leave the action at that point, and to slip gently down the vine-laddered rear wall of the conservatory.
Safely started, he began a circumspect flight over the fences and through the yards to the far end of the block, unsuspected and unpursued….
He was noiseless. He was sure. He was quick. He gave his undivided attention to the immediate problem of getting back to his lair. He was the keen hunting prowler of the night. He had made his kill. He had done more, he had stricken down and removed from the meat trail a competitor who had interfered with his quest, a rival whose cunning had failed to match his own, a fellow wolf whose day was done.
Now he was hurrying away with his unsatisfied hunger and his lusting appetite, hurrying toward the appeasement of that hunger and that lust. But even in his triumph, even in his hour of success, he did not slacken a nerve from his savage tension, his readiness, his craft, his precision. For he was perfectly fitted for the work of prey. And he had never yet known satiety….
Only once he relaxed, when it was quite safe.
—
Under the edge of a garden wall, where the moonshine filtered among the lilac bushes, he took from his pocket and held in the cup of his hands for a moment a Thing, a glorious, delicate drop of shimmery light….The Rangely diamond.
Villain: ?
Portrait of a Murderer
Q. PATRICK
OKAY, TRY TO FOLLOW THIS, if you can. The Q. Patrick pseudonym is one of three pen names (the others being Patrick Quentin and Jonathan Stagge) used in a complicated collaboration that began with Richard Wilson Webb (1902–1970) and Martha (Patsy) Mott Kelly (1906–2005) producing Cottage Sinister (1931) and Murder at the Women’s City Club (1932). Webb then wrote Murder at Cambridge (1933) alone before collaborating with Mary Louise (White) Aswell (1902–1984) on S.S. Murder (1933) and The Grindle Nightmare (1935). He found a new collaborator, Hugh Callingham Wheeler (1912–1987), for Death Goes to School (1936) and six additional Q. Patrick titles, the last of which was Danger Next Door (1951); all were largely traditional British detective stories. Wheeler and Webb moved to the United States in 1934 and eventually became U.S. citizens.
Wheeler and Webb created the Patrick Quentin byline with A Puzzle for Fools (1936), which introduced Peter Duluth, a theatrical producer who stumbles into detective work by accident. The highly successful Duluth series of nine novels inspired two motion pictures, Homicide for Three (1948), starring Warren Douglas as Peter and Audrey Long as his wife, Iris, and Black Widow (1954), with Van Heflin (Peter), Gene Tierney (Iris), Ginger Rogers, George Raft, and Peggy Ann Garner. Webb dropped out of the collaboration in the early 1950s, and Wheeler continued using the Quentin name but abandoned the Duluth series to produce stand-alone novels until 1965.
Wheeler and Webb also collaborated on nine Jonathan Stagge novels, beginning with Murder Gone to Earth (1936; published in the United States the following year as The Dogs Do Bark). The series featured Dr. Hugh Westlake, a general practitioner in a small Eastern town, and his precocious teenage daughter, Dawn.
Wheeler went on to have a successful career as a playwright, winning the Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Music
al in 1973, 1974, and 1979 for A Little Night Music, Candide, and Sweeney Todd.
“Portrait of a Murderer,” written by Wheeler and Webb under the Q. Patrick byline, was originally published in the April 1942 issue of Harper’s Magazine; it was first collected in The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow under the Patrick Quentin byline (London, Gollancz, 1961).
PORTRAIT OF A MURDERER
Q. Patrick
THIS IS THE STORY of a murder. It was a murder committed so subtly, so smoothly that I, who was an unwitting accessory both before and after the fact, had no idea at the time that any crime had been committed.
Only gradually, with the years, did that series of incidents, so innocuous-seeming at the time, fall into a pattern in my mind and give me a clear picture of exactly what happened during my stay at Olinscourt with Martin Slater.
Martin and I were at an English school together during the latter half of the First World War. In his fourteenth year Martin was a nondescript boy with light, untidy hair, quick brown eyes, and that generic schoolboy odor of rubber and chalk. There was little to distinguish him from the rest of us except his father, Sir Olin Slater.
Sir Olin, however, was more than enough to make Martin painfully notorious. Whereas self-respecting parents embarrassed their children by appearing at the school only on state occasions such as Sports Day or Prize-Giving, Sir Olin haunted his son like a passion. Almost every week this evangelical baronet could be seen, a pink, plump hippopotamus, walking about the school grounds, his arm entwined indecently round Martin. In his free hand he would carry a large bag of chocolates which he offered to all the boys he met with pious adjurations to lead nobler, sweeter lives.
Martin squirmed under these paraded embraces. It was all the worse for him in that his father suffered from a terrible disease of the throat which made every syllable he uttered a pathetic mockery of the English language. This disease (which was probably throat cancer) had no reality for Sir Olin. He did not believe that other people were even conscious of his mispronunciations. At least once every term, to our irreverent delight and to Martin’s excruciating discomfort, he was invited to deliver before the whole school an informal address of a religious nature—or a pi-jaw as we called it. When I sat next to Martin in Big School, suppressing a disloyal desire to giggle, I used to watch my friend’s knuckles go white as his father, from the dais, urged us “laddies” to keep ourselves strong and pure and trust in the Mercy of God, or, as he pronounced it, the “Murky of Klock.”
