The Big Book of Rogues and Villains

by Otto Penzler

  Tight-lipped, Mr. Garvey watched the hand through. Eyebrows won it with aces back-to-back. His hairy arms, bare to the elbow, went out to garner the harvest. Mr. Garvey turned away from the slaughter with a groan he found difficult to stifle. The old mark was getting tighter by the minute.

  His journey back to the grateful dimness of the putty-colored settee in the corner was broken by the shrill summons of the telephone. Mr. Garvey crossed to the instrument. A male voice asked for Colonel Flack.

  “For you,” Mr. Garvey said, gesturing with the receiver.

  The Colonel levered himself upward with difficulty.

  “Flack here….Eh? What?…Oh, Parker! No, I haven’t given the matter any—hah—further consideration. I—I’m leaving for the South in the morning….Eh?…Yes, I know. But consider the low coupon rate, my dear man. Suppose I bought ten thousand dollars’ worth?…I know they’re high-grade bonds. Ha. Without question. But at one hundred and seven, the yield is less than three per cent….Eh?…So am I. Some later offering, perhaps.”

  He pattered back to the table in the center of the room. The old chump’s guests were impatiently awaiting his return. Jackals awaiting their prey, Mr. Garvey thought. He plucked nervously at his wrist. Nearly a half hour to go.

  “Broker chap,” the Colonel explained to the table. “Well, well. Perhaps the fellow changed my luck. Ha. Eh?…Another stack of chips, my dear Calder.”

  This washes me up, Mr. Garvey assured himself fervidly. When I get out of this jam I’m traveling on my own.

  His ulcers began to yell. A waiter brought two great platters of sandwiches. Mr. Garvey closed his eyes. The next time he looked at his watch, it was one minute after eleven.

  He arose and stretched with elaborate carelessness. The Colonel, busily engaged in an unsuccessful attempt to draw to an inside straight, seemed to miss the movement completely. Mr. Garvey moved aimlessly in the direction of the radio.

  “Now they’re out in the middle of the ring, ladies and gentlemen. One minute and fifteen seconds of this fifteen-round bout for the light-heavyweight championship is over. And the boys—”

  The Colonel bounded out of his chair. “Bless my soul!” he sputtered. “The Cooney-Peyskisk go! I—I had forgotten all about it….Leave it on, my dear Garvey! Leave it on!”

  “Cooney will cut that guy to pieces,” Mr. Garvey predicted for the second time that night.

  The Colonel’s eyes popped with interest. “You think so, my dear boy? Really? Of—of course, I don’t know much about boxing myself. Next to—hah—nothing. But Eddie, the bell captain here, was talking about it to me this morning. He seems to think it will be all Peyskisk. Ha. Without a doubt. Apparently, he had made quite a substantial wager on the chap. Betting with the wise money was the way—hum—he put it.”

  Mr. Garvey stared at the mountain of chips before Billings, swiveled his eyes to the Captain’s pile and went on to take in the substantial assets of the remaining guests.

  “I’m afraid the poor chump doesn’t know any more about wise money than you do, Colonel,” he sneered.

  Billings spoke around his cigar, “Meaning what, Claude High-pocket?”

  Mr. Garvey felt the color flood his face at this insulting reference to his financial conservatism. But the Colonel halted the angry retort which rose to his younger associate’s tightly pressed lips.

  “Now, now, gentlemen!” he pleaded hastily. “No personalities, eh? A—a friendly little gathering. My—my young friend here is not well. He—hum—suffers from ulcers….I—I’m sorry if his dislike for cards seemed to reflect on your—er-r—luck, Billings. Ha….I’m sure nothing of the kind was intended, eh, my dear boy?”

  Mr. Garvey eyed him stonily, obstinately.

  “How about a little bet on the outcome of the event?” the Colonel proposed, obviously covering the awkward situation as best he could. “Garvey, here, likes Cooney. But he’s not a—hah—betting man. The wise money seems to prefer Peyskisk. Ha. Exactly. Whom do you gentlemen prefer? Billings? Purdy?”

  The radio bellowed: “Cooney lands two light rights to the face. Another right and a left. The Polished Pole took the last two going away. Now both men are back in the middle of the ring. Now it’s Peyskisk who’s handing it out. A looping right which caught Cooney on the side of the face, and then two hard lefts to the champion’s midriff and one in the face. They go into a clinch. Peyskisk—And there’s the bell, for Round One, ladies and gentlemen. Now George Maxwell for Bellows Shaving Lotion. Come in, George.”

  “Sounds like an even match.” The drawling observation came from the elegant Captain lounging in the doorway leading into the bedroom. The bathroom lay beyond the bedroom. The self-styled military man had carelessly sauntered out of the parlor just as the Colonel’s challenge had been pinched off by the increased volume of the radio.

  The Colonel turned, pivoting on another hiccup. “How about you, Calder?”

  The Captain lit a languid cigarette. “I always trail along with the wise money your friend Mr. Garvey seems to dislike,” he said, with a smile which bared even white teeth beneath a small elegant mustache. “I like Peyskisk. Would you like a hundred or two on Cooney, just to put a little extracurricular interest into the broadcast?”

  “I’ll take five hundred!”

  “You’re a—a—Don’t be a fool!” Mr. Garvey snarled. “The odds are seven to five on Peyskisk. I—I was only giving you my personal opinion.”

  “I have great confidence in your—hah—fistic judgment, my dear boy,” the Colonel chided him with unheeding cheerfulness. “Ha. Hic! Indeed.” His watery eyes swiveled challengingly around the room. “Any other supporters of—hah—the Pole?”

  “I’ll take a couple of hundred,” the gremlin’s uncle said eagerly. He spoke after one quick look at the Captain.

  “A hundred,” Dolan, the alleged bottom-of-the-deck artist, said quickly. He licked his gray lips.

  “Calder usually knows what he’s doing,” Spertz said over a poised siphon. He made the observation sound like a question. “A hundred for me,” he said suddenly.

  Garvey heard them through an agony of apprehension. He faced the teetering old fool savagely.

  “Don’t be a patsy!” he cried with passionate earnestness. “You—you’re tight as a fiddler’s toupee! I—I only said I thought Cooney—”

  “You mustn’t—hah—deprecate your—er-r—talents, my dear Garvey,” the old monkey reproved him. He tugged gently at his port mustache. “No. No. Besides, I have a hunch that Cooney may change my—hum—recent bad luck.”

  “…The referee is now between the two men,” the staccato voice of the announcer rattled on as the Colonel paused to lift his glass. “Cooney’s right eye apparently was slightly hurt by Peyskisk in that volley during the closing seconds of the first round. He keeps brushing it with his right. Now the contender tries two lefts to the chin and another looping right to the head. Now they’re trading rights and lefts to the body. The Pole tries a left hook and the men go into a clinch as the bell rings….Now back to George Maxwell and a message from the makers of the shaving lotion with a lift.”

  Mr. Garvey suddenly resolved never to use a bottle of the stuff as long as he lived. Words foamed up to his lips and were smothered in helpless rage. While the rest of the party munched sandwiches and lapped up liquor, the announcer spattered the room with four more rounds of give and take. Too much take on the part of Cooney to keep the fever from glistening in Garvey’s eyes.

  “Telephone down for another spot of soda, my dear chap,” the Colonel begged him after the fifth round. In this round Cooney’s right optic was realistically described by the announcer as bearing a startling resemblance to an oyster with high blood pressure.

  “I’m having a double rye,” Mr. Garvey informed him thickly. He started recklessly for the array of bottles and glasses. He was busy pouring when the seventh round began. In the middle of the operation he replaced both the bottle and the glass on the table and started unsteadily for the be
droom. Cooney was down. He was up at the count of five, however, but Mr. Garvey did not stop. He went through the darkened room and snapped on the lights in the bathroom. For several minutes he ran cold water on his wrists. Then he sprinkled some of the Colonel’s imported toilet water on his forehead and eyelids.

  Back in the bedroom he sat down on the edge of the far bed and lit a cigarette. He wondered how many years a first offender got under the Defrauding-an-Innkeeper Act.

  —

  Time has a hackneyed habit of standing still in moments of great mental stress. Mr. Garvey had no idea how long he sat there on the bed, before the door leading into the parlor was suddenly flung open to flood his harassed, weary eyes with a blaze of golden radiance.

  “Garvey! My dear boy! Where are you? Ha. Come out! Come out immediately! Your judgment has been vindicated! Ha. Completely! Cooney retains his title!”

  Garvey made him out finally. The Colonel stood on the threshold. The light from behind caught the triumphant ends of his mustaches and danced gleefully on his huge bald pate.

  “What—” he managed to say before the Colonel was off again.

  “In the eleventh round, my dear boy. Ha. A miracle! Exactly. Without a doubt. The—the Pole had battered him to a—hum—pulp. Ha. Quite. But our boy did not give up. No! No! The—the typical American spirit. He kept boring in. And then a lucky punch! A—a truly lethal affair. Come out, my dear fellow. Our—our guests wish to congratulate you on your—hum—acumen.”

  The world rolled gently off Mr. Garvey’s chest. He stood up. He tugged his red-and-green foulard out from under his ear, whither it had slipped during his stay in the bathroom.

  “I told you Cooney would cut him to pieces,” he said for the third time since dinner.

  But he still was not done with the observation. Two hours later, when the parlor of Suite 902 was a quiet shambles of empty bottles, sandwich fragments, ashes, and scattered poker chips, he perched himself on the arm of one of the room’s easy chairs and repeated it again.

  The Colonel was seated at the big table in the center of the room, busy with pencil and paper as he hummed another of his favorite tunes. It was The Letter Edged in Black.

  For a moment Mr. Garvey digressed. “How much?” he inquired eagerly.

  The Colonel sat back in his chair and removed the heavy horn-rimmed reading glasses which he had adjusted at the start of his book-keeping.

  “After—hah—adequate allowance for my poker losses of recent weeks and setting aside all moneys due and owing our hostel,” he reported with a broad smile, “I find that we are in the black to the extent of three hundred and fifteen dollars and—hum—sixty-five cents. Ha. Three hundred and fifteen dollars. Not bad, eh? By the way, did you notice how the other guests seemed to—hah—regard the gallant Captain with marked disfavor after the fight?”

  Mr. Garvey’s nod started out to be gay enough, but before it could flower fully it became slightly frostbitten.

  “Suppose Cooney had lost?” he inquired with a shiver.

  The Colonel had risen from his bookkeeping labors to mix himself a nightcap. His huge head twisted benignly at the question.

  “Eh? Then I wouldn’t have bet on him, my dear boy. I would have maneuvered the situation so that my money would have been on Peyskisk. Ha. Exactly. Perhaps by offering odds which would have appealed to my—hum—sporting guests. Or, if that failed, I had in mind suggesting that each of us put one hundred dollars into a pool. The money to go to the man picking the winning round. Or then I might have recouped our battered fortunes by betting them I could name the round in which the fight would end. Ha. I fancy this would have got me some—hum—juicy odds.”

  Mr. Garvey slid down into the easy chair.

  “Am I gazing at a seventh son of a seventh son?” he demanded incredulously. “Am I looking at Swami Flack in the flesh? Were those hiccups of yours really phonies? Are you standing there telling me in all sobriety that you knew Cooney was going to win that fight in the eleventh round by a lucky punch?”

  The old gentleman stirred his drink thoughtfully. He looked like a sporting peer after a hard day at Ascot. “Put it this way, my dear boy,” he said blandly: “I did not know Cooney was going to win the fight—in advance. Ha. No. No. But I did know that he had won the fight in the eleventh round—before I made any wagers.”

  Mr. Garvey thought of something. “That telephone call! Parker!”

  The Colonel took a long, appreciative pull at his nightcap.

  “Eddie, the bell captain,” he corrected the younger man softly. “He told me it was Cooney.”

  “But that couldn’t be,” said Mr. Garvey. “The—the fight didn’t go on until eleven o’clock.”

  The Colonel brushed the golden drops from his mustaches. His watery eyes twinkled merrily. “Earlier in the evening,” he rumbled benignly, “you called me a confidence man. Ha. Eh? Exactly. I—I protested that I lived by my wits. The two aren’t necessarily synonymous. This evening—my little party—is a case in point. I arranged it after I noticed by the paper that this fight was being carried by the local radio station, starting at eleven o’clock. Ha. Exactly. It struck me that this was rather a late hour for a—hum—bout of this importance.”

  “A difference of time could account for that,” Mr. Garvey pointed out.

  “It could, but it didn’t. I took the trouble to call up the radio station and inquire. I was informed that because of prior commercial commitments the station could not carry the fight at ten o’clock—when it actually occurred. So they were carrying an electrical transcription of the entire affair, exactly as it occurred, at eleven o’clock. Ha. Exactly. A rebroadcast.”

  A quick grin broke like a breaker over Mr. Garvey’s tanned face. “That was why you were so particular about the time I turned the radio on. If we had caught the first minutes of the broadcast, we—your guests would have realized that it was a transcription and—and—” He paused. “I suppose you cut off the closing announcement too?”

  “Exactly.”

  Mr. Garvey stood up. His ulcers had disappeared.

  “Clever!” he said admiringly. “And—and my natural anxiety made it look like the McCoy, didn’t it?” he added with thoughtful modesty.

  “A great job, my dear boy,” the Colonel agreed, and Mr. Garvey’s suddenly suspicious eyes found only guileless enthusiasm in the crimson face behind the words. “Splendid. Ha. Quite. But perhaps it didn’t work quite the way I’ve just described it at all.”

  The younger man sat down suddenly. “I—I don’t get you.”

  “Ask yourself these two questions,” the old gentleman suggested solicitously: “Wouldn’t it have been rather—hum—dangerous for me to assume that a group of gamblers—to—hah—name them gently—would not know the exact time of a big-time bout?”

  “Lots of people don’t stop to think about things they read in the paper,” Mr. Garvey pointed out. “I didn’t.” Then he added hastily, “What’s the second question?”

  “Didn’t it strike you that the boys were a bit—hah—avid to get their money down on Peyskisk?”

  “That was Calder. He’s a smart cooky. You said so yourself. They followed his lead.”

  “Exactly.”

  Mr. Garvey lit a cigarette. He blew smoke at his partner. “So what?”

  The Colonel beamed over his fondly clasped nightcap. Then he sat down and crossed his plump knees tenderly. “Eh? Oh. So I took out some insurance, my dear boy. Ha. Just in case. Or I protected my exposed flank, as they say in—hah—military circles.”

  “I get my military news over the radio,” Mr. Garvey pointed out sourly.

  Colonel Humphrey Flack ignored both the acid and the observation. “Put yourself in the wily, quick-thinking Captain’s shoes,” he urged gently. “A slightly—hah—inebriated, innocent old gentleman of means with whom he has been playing cards—at a profit—is leaving town. At a farewell party given by this old gentleman a radio happens to be turned on about eleven o’clock, just in time
to catch the opening minutes of the first round of a prize fight. The wily Captain, being a follower of such things, knows the fight really started at ten o’clock, hence this must be a rebroadcast. Luckily, this fact is not apparent, because the radio was not tuned in when the opening announcement was made. Ha. Quite. Now! Even as the wily Captain is figuring on how to turn this situation to his financial—hum—advantage, the old gentleman hands him the idea on a platter—with a convincing hiccup.”

  “The bet?”

  “Right. So what happens? The Captain saunters unobtrusively in the direction of the bathroom. But his real destination is the telephone in the bedroom. The radio will cover his—er-r—quick, guarded inquiry. A moment later he emerges. He offers to bet on the man whom he has just been told has won the fight. Exactly. Peyskisk! He is betting on a sure thing. He can’t lose. The fight is over. Ha. Hum. A wink is as good as a word to his friends. Ha. Indubitably. They hasten to—hah—get in their wagers.”

  “The guy he telephoned gave him the wrong boy.” Mr. Garvey’s dark head nodded understandingly. Then he frowned. “But it still doesn’t add up,” he protested plaintively. “How could you be sure Calder would get the wrong boy? How could you control his call? He might have called some pal or a newspaper office or a dozen different gambling joints?”

  The Colonel finished his nightcap and arose. He pulled out his stomach watch and stared at it.

  “Nearly two o’clock, my dear chap. And we must be up and away to the sun-drenched Southland in the morning….Eh? Oh, the telephone call, of course. It was very simple. Elementary. I had stressed the fact that Eddie, the bell captain, had a substantial wager on the fight, that he was a rabid boxing enthusiast. Remember? To be sure. Calder had no time to waste. The sucker might cool off while he was waiting around for a number. Ha. Then there was always the danger that if he did too much talking he might be overheard. Against all this was the simple, quick, and direct path! Pick up the telephone. Ask for the bell captain. Inquire about the fight. A few seconds and the whole thing was over. It was just the bait for a wily captain.”