The Big Book of Rogues and Villains

by Otto Penzler

  The Colonel lowered his eyes modestly.

  “And of course with Eddie having it in for the guy anyway and leaving to join the Marines in the morning—”

  Mr. Garvey grinned. Then he thought of something else. “What gave you the idea, in the first place?”

  The Colonel looked longingly at the bottle-covered table, sighed and turned resolutely toward the bedroom. “I—I was living in the past, my dear boy,” he chuckled from the threshold. “Ha. Just so. Remember our talking about the old wire racket earlier in the evening? How the—er-r—confidence man ensnared his victim by pretending to get advance notice of racing results. Ha. I see you do. Well, I just got to wondering how one of the wonders of—hum—modern science—like radio, for instance—might be adapted to this be-whiskered gyp of the Gay Nineties—in reverse, so to speak.”

  Villain: Dr. B. Edward Loxley

  Footsteps of Fear

  VINCENT STARRETT

  CHARLES VINCENT EMERSON STARRETT (1886–1974), one of the greatest bibliophiles in the history of the American book world, produced innumerable essays, biographical works, critical studies, and bibliographical pieces on a wide range of authors, all while managing the “Books Alive” column for the Chicago Tribune for many years. His autobiography, Born in a Bookshop (1965), should be required reading for bibliophiles of all ages.

  He also wrote numerous mystery short stories and several detective novels, including Murder on “B” Deck (1929), Dead Man Inside (1931), and The End of Mr. Garment (1932). His 1934 short story, “Recipe for Murder,” was expanded to the full-length novel The Great Hotel Murder (1935), which was the basis for the film of the same title and released the same year; it starred Edmund Lowe and Victor McLaglen.

  Few would argue that Starrett’s most outstanding achievements were his writings about Sherlock Holmes, most notably The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1933) and “The Unique ‘Hamlet,’ ” described by Sherlockians for decades as the best pastiche ever written.

  A charming story involves his young daughter, who offered the best tombstone inscription for anyone who is a Dofob—Eugene Field’s useful word for a “damned old fool over books”—as Starrett admitted to being. When a friend called at his home, Starrett’s daughter answered the door and told the visitor that her father was “upstairs, playing with his books.”

  “Footsteps of Fear” was originally published in the April 1920 issue of Black Mask—the magazine’s first issue. It was first collected in Starrett’s The Quick and the Dead (Sauk City, Wisconsin, Arkham House, 1965).

  FOOTSTEPS OF FEAR

  Vincent Starrett

  DR. B. EDWARD LOXLEY (jocularly called “Bedward” by the gossip columnists), the wife-murderer for whom hundreds of police had been scouring the city for three weeks, sat quietly at his desk in the great Merchandise Exchange reading his morning mail. The frosted glass door beyond his outer office read simply William Drayham, Rare Books. Hours by Appointment. After three weeks of security he was beginning to feel complacent. For three weeks he had not left his hiding place and he had no intention of leaving it immediately, except feet first.

  It had all been thought out beforehand. The office had been rented a month before the murder of Lora Loxley, and he had quietly taken possession and begun his new personality buildup as William Drayham. He had been accepted by his neighbors in the sixth floor corridor. The elevator starter was getting to know him. He breakfasted, lunched, and dined at the several restaurants in the building, was shaved by a favorite barber, and was—he had every reason to believe—an accepted fixture. His neighbors were inoffensive, unimaginative workers who did not question his identity, and the words Rare Books on the door were formidable enough to frighten away casual visitors.

  Lora Loxley, murdered by suffocation, had long been buried and even the newspapers were beginning to minimize the sensational story. The feeling was growing that Loxley, himself, also might have been murdered and a desultory search for his body continued when the police had nothing better to occupy them. As his window overlooked the river where, in addition to the normal traffic, police boats occasionally plied, he was enabled to watch their activities with amused appreciation of their effort. He had now spent two lonely Sundays watching the holiday traffic with a pair of binoculars, waiting for any active renewal of police attention. He was on excellent terms with the watchmen in his part of the building, who were accustomed to seeing him around at unlikely hours.

  The Merchandise Exchange was a city within a city. It contained everything he needed—restaurants, laundries, barbershops, tobacconists, dentists, news stands, banking facilities, a gymnasium, even a postal station. He was known by name in the restaurants and barbershops. He bought all the newspapers. Occasionally he dictated a letter to a public stenographer, ordering or rejecting books. As William Drayham he had a sufficient banking account downstairs for his immediate needs. The rest of his wealth, in cash, was in Paris with Gloria.

  His principal bogies had been watchmen and cleaning women. He had little fear, however, of the cleaning women, a friendly trio who liked candy and who readily agreed to visit his office while he was having a late dinner. His domestic arrangements were simple. He slept on a couch in his inner office, which held also a vault to which he could retire in an emergency. To date there had been no emergency.

  Dr. Loxley pushed the mail aside impatiently. Too early perhaps to expect a response to the little ad he was running in a Sunday book supplement. But not too early for the coffee that Miss Marivole Boggs served at all hours. What luck to have found so admirable a creature in the same corridor, and even in the same line. Rare books and antiques went very well together. She had been responsible for a number of his infrequent customers. He glanced at his expensive wristwatch and left William Drayham’s rare books behind him without a pang.

  M. Boggs, Antiques, as she described herself on the show window of her small shop at the end of the corridor, looked up at his entrance.

  “Hello,” she said. “I was hoping you would come in.”

  “I couldn’t miss,” he said. His brown eyes took in the familiar room, resting for a moment on the suit of antique armor that dominated one corner of the shop and the Spanish chest that was Miss Boggs’s pride and joy. “Well, I see nobody has bought either of them yet.” It was one of their standing jokes that some day, when the rare book business was better, he would write a check for them himself.

  As she poured his coffee she said, “The newspaper stories about that doctor are getting shorter every day. I’m beginning to believe he really was murdered.”

  They often discussed the missing Dr. Loxley, as indeed the whole city was doing. At first it had been Miss Boggs’s idea that the “society doctor” had murdered his wife over some glamorous patient who was now living in sin with him somewhere on the Riviera.

  Dr. Loxley had thought not. “Too romantic, Boggs. I still think he’s in the river or somewhere on his way to the Gulf of Mexico. That scarf they found on the river banks looks like it.”

  “Anyway, the police seem to have stopped looking,” said M. Boggs.

  “Anyway, this is good coffee, Boggs. I hope you’ll leave me the recipe. Do you still plan to leave this month?”

  “At once,” she said. “I’m flying to New York tomorrow, if I can get away. I want to be in London for the Exhibition; then on to Paris, Rome, Switzerland, and what have you. I’m enormously relieved that you’ll be here to keep an eye on things, Bill. Coffee at all hours, eh?”

  “Morning, noon, and night,” he agreed, rising to leave. Her change of plan had startled him for a moment; but he was quick enough to see an advantage in it for himself. “Never fear, I’ll be here waiting for you when you return.”

  Strolling back to his own shop, humming a jaunty air, he became aware of a man leaving the doorway of the office directly opposite his own. Something about the man’s carriage seemed familiar. He was turning toward the elevators and walking fast. In an instant they would meet.

 
And suddenly Dr. Loxley realized that the man was, indeed, familiar. He was his own brother-in-law, Laurence Bridewell.

  His first instinct was to turn and flee, his second to turn back to M. Boggs, Antiques. His final decision, made in a split second, was to see the encounter through. His disguise had fooled better men than Larry Bridewell, although none who knew him better. With his neat little beard and moustache gone, and his blue eyes transformed by brown contact lenses, he was another man. After an appalling moment of indecision, he fumbled for a cigarette, realizing that after three weeks of complacent safety, he was about to face a supreme test.

  He tried and failed to light the cigarette….Then they were face to face, looking at each other as men do in passing, and the test was over. Or was it? Bridewell continued on his way to the elevators, walking fast, and Loxley stumbled to his own door.

  Dared he look back? Had Bridewell turned to look back at him? Moving casually, he stole a glance along the corridor. There was no doubt about it—Larry was looking back, too. Perhaps he had merely been troubled by a fancied resemblance….

  Dr. Loxley made some difficulty about opening his own door, and just before he closed it, it occurred to him to look at the name on the door of the office from which his brother-in-law had emerged. Actually he knew very well what he would find there: Jackson & Fortworth, Attorneys at Law. And below, the significant word Investigations.

  He tried to take himself in hand and was annoyed to find himself shaking. Experimentally he ventured a little drink to see what it would do for him. It helped considerably. But the whole incident haunted him and gave him a bad night. In the morning, however, his fears had vanished. He was his confident self again until, a few hours later, a second incident shook his nerve. Returning from the cigar stand in the lobby he had to pass the De Luxe Dog Salon in one of the street level corridors and paused, as he had often done before, to look in at the windows at the fashionable dogs in process of being barbered, an amusing spectacle. But as he turned away an appalling thing happened.

  A well-dressed woman was approaching the salon with a sprightly French poodle on a leash. She looked familiar. God’s teeth! She was familiar, and so was the dog. She was Mrs. Montgomery Hyde, no less, an old patient. His heart seemed to stop beating. Would she recognize him?

  It was the dog that recognized him. With a yelp of joy the poodle jerked the leash from the woman’s hand and flung himself rapturously against the doctor’s legs.

  With an effort Loxley recovered his balance and somehow recovered his poise. It was his worst moment to date. Automatically he disengaged himself from the poodle’s embrace and pulled the black ears.

  “There, there fellow,” he said to the excited animal in a voice that he hoped was not his own. “I beg your pardon, Madam. Your dog appears to have made a mistake.”

  To his intense relief, Mrs. Montgomery Hyde agreed.

  “Do forgive Toto’s impulsiveness,” she begged, snatching up the leash. “He loves everybody.”

  Dr. Loxley left the scene in almost a hurry. She had not recognized him! It seemed to him a miracle, but again he was annoyed to find himself shaking. And yet, could it not be a good omen? If Mrs. Hyde and his own brother-in-law had failed to recognize him, what was there to fear? Immediately he began to feel better. But when he had returned to his office William Drayham again treated himself to a stiff drink.

  In a moment of alert intelligence he realized that for three weeks he had been too complacent. His meeting with Mrs. Hyde had taught him something that was important to remember. He had almost spoken her name. In his first moment of panic he might well have betrayed himself. If it was important for him not to be recognized, it was equally important that he must not recognize someone by accident.

  It was clear to him that this cat-and-mouse existence could not go on indefinitely. He must remain in hiding only until it was safe for him to emerge and get out of the country. Then William Drayham would ostentatiously pack his books and remove to New York. After that, the world was wide.

  For several days the chastened doctor lived cautiously, visiting M. Boggs, Antiques at intervals for coffee and to admire the suit of armor and the Spanish chest, which continued to fascinate him. He had promised Boggs, now on her travels, not to cut the price on either.

  Twice, returning from the antique shop, again he had caught a glimpse of his brother-in-law entering the law office of Jackson & Fortworth, and had hastened to lock himself in his own quarters before Larry could emerge. What the devil did the fellow want with a firm of investigators anyway?

  The visit of Jackson, the lawyer, to the bookshop one morning took him by surprise or he might have locked the door.

  “I’ve been intending to look in on you for some time, Mr. Drayham,” said the lawyer cordially. “I’m Jackson, just across from you. Rare books have always interested me. Mind if I look around?”

  Loxley rose from his chair abruptly, knocking a book from his desk to the floor. An icy fear had entered his heart. Was this it, at last, he wondered.

  He shook hands effusively. “Glad to know you, Mr. Jackson. Sure, look around. Is there anything I can show you?”

  But Jackson was already looking around. When he had finished he strolled to the window. “Nice view of the river you have,” he said appreciatively. “My windows all look out on a court.” He strolled to the door. “Just wanted to meet you. I’ll come in again when I have more time.”

  “Any time,” said Loxley with perfunctory courtesy.

  Dr. Loxley sat down at his desk and reached for the lower drawer. Another little drink wouldn’t hurt him. What had the fellow really wanted? What had he hoped to find? Or was he really one of the many idiots who collected books?

  One thing at last was clear. Any day now he might have to leave the building and the city. If he was suspected, the blow would fall swiftly. At any minute the door might open again, and perhaps Jackson would not be alone. Why not get the hell out of this trap immediately? What was there to stop him? His stock—three hundred volumes of junk bought at a storage house—could be left behind if necessary.

  What stopped him was Gloria’s cable from Paris: “Trouble here. Phoning Friday night.”

  This was Thursday. Whatever else, he had to wait for Gloria’s call. His hand moved toward the lower drawer, then was withdrawn. Coffee, not whiskey, was what he needed; and after luncheon he spent most of the afternoon with M. Boggs’s weird collection of antiques. There, he had a fair view of Jackson’s door, and was not himself conspicuous. If Larry Bridewell was among the lawyer’s visitors, Loxley did not see him.

  Exploring the antique shop he paused, as always to admire its two star exhibits, the almost frightening suit of armor and the massive Spanish chest. In a pinch, either would do as a hiding place—if there were time to hide.

  That evening he was startled to find his picture in the paper again. The familiar face of Dr. B. Edward Loxley as he had looked with the neat little beard and moustache before he murdered his wife. It appeared that he had been arrested by an alert Seattle policeman, but had denied his identity.

  Dr. Loxley drew a long breath of relief. After all, perhaps he was still safe. But what could Gloria have to say to him that required a call from Paris? Bad news of some kind. Bad for somebody.

  In spite of his new fears he hated to leave the building that had been his refuge. It had been his hope to live there indefinitely, undetected; never again to venture into the streets until Dr. Loxley was as forgotten as Dr. Crippen.

  Again he slept off his fears and spent an uninterrupted morning with his view and newspapers. He was beginning to feel almost at ease again, indeed, when the insufferable Jackson knocked on his locked door and called a hearty greeting. There was somebody with him. Through the frosted pane the shadowy outline of another man was visible.

  “May we come in?” asked the lawyer. “I’ve got a couple of friends here who want to meet you.”

  Loxley rose uncertainly to his feet and moved to the door. So it ha
d come at last! He had been right about his damned brother-in-law and this sneaking lawyer. This is it! And suddenly he knew what he had to do.

  He unlocked and threw open the door. “Come in, gentlemen,” he said without emotion. “What can I do for you?”

  Jackson was beaming. “These are my friends, Sergeants Coughlin and Ripkin, from Headquarters. They hope you will come quietly.” He laughed heartily at his own witticism.

  “Come in, gentlemen, and sit down.” Loxley forced a smile. He seated himself at his desk, stamped and addressed an envelope, and stood up. “I was just going to the mail chute with an important letter. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”

  “Sure,” said the two cops genially. “Take your time.”

  Dr. Loxley closed the outer door behind him and almost ran for M. Boggs, Antiques. As he locked the antique shop door he was relieved to see the corridor was still empty. They would follow him, of course. Every office in the building would be searched, probably this one first.

  It had to be the chest!

  It stood open as always, and he squeezed down inside—an uncomfortable fit—then lowered the heavy lid until only a thin crack remained for air. Faintly now he could hear footsteps in the corridor. He drew a deep breath and closed the lid.

  There was a sharp click, then only intense darkness and suffocating silence….

  —

  Twenty minutes later Sergeant Ripkin said to his partner, “Wonder what’s keeping that guy. We’ve still got sixty tickets to sell, Pete.”

  “Oh, leave them with me,” said Jackson. “I’ll see that you get your money. Drayham’s a good fellow.”

  The two policemen, who had been hoping to dispose of a block of tickets for a benefit ball game, departed leisurely.

  —

  The disappearance of William Drayham, a “rare book dealer” in the Merchandise Exchange, attracted less attention than that of Dr. B. Edward Loxley; but for a few days it was a mild sensation.