by Otto Penzler
The cat-woman staggered back, spitting vile oaths, lips curling, eyes flashing, her words sounding like the explosive spats of an angry cat. The knife had clattered to the floor and lay at my very feet. The green-handled dagger, the jade-hilted knife which had been taken from my apartment. At that instant a shadow blotted the light from the hallway and a voice shouted:
“Hands up, Ed Jenkins!”
The cat-woman gave an exclamation of relief.
“Thank God, officer, you came in the nick of time!”
There was the shuffling of many feet; peering faces, gleaming sheilds, glinting pistols, and I found myself grabbed by many hands, handcuffs snapped about my wrists, cold steel revolvers thrust against my neck. I was pushed, jostled, slammed, pulled, dragged down the stairs and into the library.
The cat-woman followed, cajoling the officers, commenting on their bravery, their efficiency, spitting epithets at me.
And then H. F. Morton walked into the open door, took in the situation with one glance of his steely eyes, deposited his hat and gloves on a chair, walked to the great table, took a seat behind it and peered over the tops of his glasses at the officers, at the cat-woman, at myself.
The policemen jostled me toward the open front door.
The lawyer held up a restraining hand.
“Just a minute,” he said, and there was that in the booming authority of the voice which held the men, stopped them in mid-action.
“What is this?” he asked, and, with the words, dropped his hands to the table and began to drum regularly, rhythmically, “rummpy-tum-tum; rummpy-tum-tum; rummpy-tum-tumpty-tum-tumpty-tum-tum.”
“Aw g’wan,” muttered one of the officers as he pulled me forward.
“Shut up, you fool. He’s the mayor’s personal attorney!” whispered another, his hands dragging me back, holding me against those who would have taken me from the house.
The word ran through the group like wildfire. There were the hoarse sibilants of many whispers, and then attentive silence.
“’Tis Ed Jenkins, sor,” remarked one of the policemen, one who seemed to be in charge of the squad. “The Phantom Crook, sor, caught in this house from which he kidnapped the girl an’ stole the necklace, an’ ’twas murder he was after tryin’ to commit this time.”
The lawyer’s gray eyes rested on my face.
“If you want to talk, Jenkins, talk now.”
I nodded.
“The girl, Jean Ellery. She is the daughter of Arthur C. Holton.”
The fingers stopped their drumming and gripped the table.
“What?”
I nodded. “It was supposed that his child was a boy, a boy who died shortly after birth. As a matter of fact, the child was a girl, a girl who lived, who is known as Jean Ellery. A crooked doctor stood for the substitution, being paid a cash fee. A nurse originated the scheme, Miss Hattie M. Hare. The boy could never be traced. His future was placed in the doctor’s hands before birth and when coincidence played into the hands of this nurse she used all her unscrupulous knowledge, all her cunning. The girl was to be brought up to look upon the nurse as her aunt, her only living relative. At the proper time the whole thing was to be exposed, but the doctor was to be the one who was to take the blame. Hattie M. Hare was to have her connection with the scheme kept secret.
“But the doctor found out the scheme to make him the goat. He had in his possession a paper signed by the nurse, a paper which would have foiled the whole plan. He used this paper as a basis for regular blackmail.
“It was intended to get this paper, to bring out the girl as the real heir, to have her participate in a trust fund which had been declared for the child of Arthur C. Holton, to have her inherit all the vast fortune of the oil magnate;—and to remember her aunt Hattie M. Hare as one of her close and dear relatives, to have her pay handsomely for the so-called detectives and lawyers who were to ‘unearth’ the fraud, to restore her to her place, to her estate.
“And then there came another development, Arthur C. Holton became infatuated with the arch-conspirator, Hattie M. Hare. He proposed marriage, allowed himself to be prevailed upon to make a will in her favor, to make a policy of life insurance to her.
“The girl ceased to be an asset, but became a menace. She must be removed. Also Arthur C. Holton must die that Miss Hattie M. Hare might succeed in his estate without delay. But there was a stumbling block, the paper which was signed by Hattie M. Hare, the paper which might be connected with the substitution of children, which would brand her as a criminal, which would be fatal if used in connection with the testimony of the doctor.
“Doctor Drake demanded money for his silence and for that paper. He demanded his money in cash, in a large sum. The woman, working with fiendish cunning, decided to use me as a cat’s-paw to raise the money and to also eliminate the girl from her path as well as to apparently murder the man who stood between her and his wealth. I was to be enveigled into apparently stealing a necklace worth much money, a necklace which was to be insured, and the insurance payable to Miss Hare; I was to be tricked into kidnapping a girl who would be murdered; I was to be persuaded to make threats against Mr. Holton, and then I was to become the apparent murderer of the oil magnate. My dagger was to be found sticking in his breast. In such manner would Miss Hare bring about the death of the man who had made her the beneficiary under his will, buy the silence of the doctor who knew her for a criminal, remove the only heir of the blood, and make me stand all the blame, finally delivering me into the hands of the law.
“There is proof. I have the signed statement in my pocket. Doctor Drake will talk. Harry Atmore will confess….There she goes. Stop her!”
The cat-woman had seen that her play was ended. She had realized that she was at the end of her rope, that I held the evidence in my possession, that the bound and gagged girl upstairs would testify against her. She had dashed from the room while the stupefied police had held me and stared at her with goggle eyes.
Openmouthed they watched her flight, no one making any attempt to take after her, eight or ten holding me in their clumsy hands while the cat-woman, the arch criminal of them all dashed out into the night.
H. F. Morton looked at me and smiled.
“Police efficiency, Jenkins,” he said.
Then he faced the officers. “Turn him loose.”
The officers shifted uneasily. The man in charge drew himself up stiffly and saluted. “He is a noted criminal with a price on his head, the very devil of a crook, sor.”
Morton drummed steadily on the desk.
“What charge have you against him?”
The officer grunted.
“Stealin’ Mr. Holton’s necklace, an’ breakin’ into his house, sor.”
“Those charges are withdrawn,” came from the rear of the room in deep, firm tones.
I turned to see Arthur C. Holton. He had dressed and joined the group. I did not even know when he had entered the room, how much he had heard. By his side, her eyes starry, stood Jean Ellery, and there were gleaming gems of moisture on her cheeks.
The policeman grunted.
“For kidnappin’ the young lady an’ holdin’ her. If she stayed against her will ’twas abductin’, an’ she wouldn’t have stayed with a crook of her own accord, not without communicatin’ with her folks.”
That was a poser. I could hear Jean suck in her breath to speak the words that would have freed me but would have damned her in society forever; but she had not the chance.
Before I could even beat her to it, before my confession would have spared her name and sent me to the penitentiary, H. F. Morton’s shrewd mind had grasped all the angles of the situation, and he beat us all to it.
“You are wrong. The girl was not kidnapped. Jenkins never saw her before.”
The policeman grinned broadly.
“Then would yez mind tellin’ me where she was while all this hue an’ cry was bein’ raised, while everyone was searchin’ for her?”
Morton smiled politely,
urbanely.
“Not at all, officer. She was at my house, as the guest of my wife. Feeling that her interests were being jeopardized and that her life was in danger, I had her stay incognito in my own home.”
There was tense, thick silence.
The girl gasped. The clock ticked. There was the thick, heavy breathing of the big-bodied policemen.
“Rummy-tum-tum; rummy-tum-tum; rumiddy, tumptidy, tumpy tum-tum,” drummed the lawyer. “Officer, turn that man loose. Take off those handcuffs. Take…off…those…handcuffs…I…say. You haven’t a thing against him in California.”
As one in a daze, the officer fitted his key to the handcuffs, the police fell back, and I stood a free man.
“Good night,” said the lawyer pointedly, his steely eyes glittering into those of the officers.
Shamefacedly, the officers trooped from the room.
Jean threw herself into my arms.
“Ed, you came back because of me! You risked your life to save mine, to see that a wrong was righted, to see that I was restored to my father! Ed, dear, you are a man in a million.”
I patted her shoulder.
“You were a good pal, Jean, and I saw you through,” I said. “Now you must forget about it. The daughter of a prominent millionaire has no business knowing a crook.”
Arthur Holton advanced, hand outstretched.
“I was hypnotized, fooled, taken in by an adventuress and worse. I can hardly think clearly, the events of the past few minutes have been so swift, but this much I do know. I can never repay you for what you have done, Ed Jenkins. I will see that your name is cleared of every charge against you in every state, that you are a free man, that you are restored to citizenship, and that you have the right to live,” and here he glanced at Jean: “You will stay with us as my guest?”
I shook my head. It was all right for them to feel grateful, to get a bit sloppy now that the grandstand play had been made, but they’d probably feel different about it by morning.
“I think I’ll be on my way,” I said, and started for the door.
“Ed!” It was the girl’s cry, a cry which was as sharp, as stabbing as a quick pain at the heart. “Ed, you’re not leaving!”
By way of answer I stumbled forward. Hell, was it possible that the difficulty with that threshold was that there was a mist in my eyes? Was Ed Jenkins, the phantom crook, known and feared by the police of a dozen states, becoming an old woman?
Two soft arms flashed about my neck, a swift kiss planted itself on my cheek, warm lips whispered in my ear.
I shook myself free, and stumbled out into the darkness. She was nothing but a kid, the daughter of a millionaire oil magnate. I was a crook. Nothing but hurt to her could come to any further acquaintance. It had gone too far already.
I jumped to one side, doubled around the house, away from the street lights, hugging the shadow which lay near the wall. From within the room, through the half-open window there came a steady, throbbing, thrumming sound: “Rummy-tum-tum; rummy-tum-tum; rummy-tum-tummy; tum-tummy-tum-tum.”
H. F. Morton was thinking.
Rogue: The Patent Leather Kid
The Kid Stacks a Deck
ERLE STANLEY GARDNER
AS WAS TRUE of so many of the characters created by Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970), Dan Sellers, known as the Patent Leather Kid, works on both sides of the law. Much like another Gardner character, Sidney Zoom, Sellers hates injustice and will put himself at great risk to right wrongs. This generally involves going up against powerful gangsters and performing illegal acts, inevitably forcing the Kid to elude two antagonists: a gang of crooks and the police.
The Patent Leather Kid is an elegant, cultivated crook, hiding his identity with a mask, gloves, and shoes all made out of black patent leather. In reality, he is a wealthy socialite who appears to be a parvenu, dabbling at one thing or another, but he is an enemy of the underworld and devotes his life to battling it. The Depression was an era that spawned the rise of gangsters and the Kid chose to abandon his comfortable life to serve an unsuspecting public, however nefarious his methods might be. He has a bodyguard, Bill Brakey, to help out when the going gets tough.
The stories follow a formula, first featuring Sellers at his club chatting with other members. When he learns of a particularly egregious example of injustice, he leaves the club and his identity as an idle millionaire to don his costume. His nemesis is Inspector Brame, who has no luck in catching the Kid and so loathes him, going so far as to take no action when he learns of a gangster’s plot to kill him.
“The Kid Stacks a Deck” was originally published in the March 28, 1932, issue of Detective Fiction Weekly; it was first collected in The Exploits of the Patent Leather Kid (Norfolk, Virginia, Crippen & Landru, 2010).
THE KID STACKS A DECK
Erle Stanley Gardner
DAN SELLER noticed the dummies in the window of the jewelry store because he made it his business to notice everything which was out of the ordinary. And this window display was certainly unique enough.
To the uninitiated, it would seem that a fortune in jewels was separated from the avaricious grasp of a cosmopolitan public only by a sheet of plate glass.
But the eye of Dan Seller, steel gray, coldly appraising, was not an uninitiated eye. He stared for some ten seconds, and, at the end of that time, knew that the majority of the stones were clever imitations.
The window of the big store was made to represent the interior of a drawing room. There were four people at a table playing bridge. A rather sissified looking young man, clad in the very latest of fashion in evening clothes, balanced a cup of tea upon the arm of a chair.
Another stiffly conventional figure leaned against a mantel, match in one waxen hand, cigarette in the other. Over in a corner a woman was extending a welcoming hand to another woman, both of whom glittered with jewels. The effect was impressive to the average spectator.
The men were introduced apparently for the effect of contrast, since they showed no jewelry beyond the conventional shirt studs, cuff links, and elaborate wrist watches. But the women were beautifully gowned, and the lights of the windows were thrown back in myriad sparkling reflections from the diamonds that occupied every point of vantage.
The display was a distinct departure from conventional jewelers’ windows, and marked the opening gun of a new merchandising policy on the part of Hawkins & Grebe.
The display attracted a small crowd. Dan Seller had no doubt, but what it would also attract the attention of crooks. He filed away both facts for future use, and strolled toward his club.
Dan Seller was a man of mystery so far as his associates were concerned, and he was greeted with varying degrees of cordiality by the little group of members who were discussing the latest news bulletins.
Pope, the hard bitten explorer of the tropical jungles was there, taking a brief rest between expeditions. He gripped Seller’s hand with a cordial clasp. He liked Seller, and didn’t care who knew it.
Renfore, the banker, was more conservative. He knew that Seller maintained an active account which ran into large figures, but he had never been able to ascertain just what investments Seller made, and that fact nettled him. He bowed, did not shake hands.
Hawkins, part owner of the jewelry store, nodded and smiled. He knew Seller as a good customer. Inspector Phil Brame let his eyes get that coldly penetrating stare with which he customarily regarded every one about whom he was not quite certain. He knew Seller, and liked the man, but he could never entirely overlook those mysterious disappearances.
For to all of these men, Dan Seller was a mystery.
He was wealthy. Of that there could be no doubt. He was reserved, yet friendly. He was likeable. He was well posted. Outwardly he was an idler. Yet that failed to explain his character. There was a certain hard fitness about the man which made him seem as crisply active as Bill Pope, the jungle explorer.
Both in body and in mind he was hard, and fit. Yet he seemed to idle his time away. He
laughed at life, strolled in and strolled out, was always interested in people and in things, always posted on recent developments. Yet he never played cards, never mentioned losses or gains in the stock market, never complained of business conditions.
And, occasionally, he disappeared.
At such times, he vanished utterly. Even Riggs, his valet, could give no information as to the whereabouts of his master. Twice there had been important matters at the club which had necessitated getting in touch with Dan Seller, and upon each of those occasions Seller had been where no one had been able to locate him. On the second occasion, Inspector Phil Brame, himself, had undertaken to locate Seller.
The inspector had ascertained that Seller had left the club, headed toward a charity bazaar for which he held a ticket. Seller had never arrived at that bazaar. Nor had he been heard from for a week.
At the expiration of that week he had appeared once more at the club, smiling, debonair, affable. Questioned as to his whereabouts, he had left no doubt whatever that he considered the affair purely a private matter.
Because of the fact that Dan Seller lived at the club, maintained a suite of magnificent rooms, sumptuously furnished, his comings and goings were within the knowledge of several members and his mysterious disappearances were bound to excite comment.
But Dan Seller lived his own life, talked interestingly upon many subjects, seemed always familiar with the latest book, deprecated all attempts to inquire into his personal life, and yet remained popular.
That he was of the finest stock, without a blemish upon his record, was evidenced by the fact that he had been admitted to the club at all. And, after all, a man’s private life was his own.
—
Hawkins puffed upon his cigar after Seller joined the little group, and then continued with a discussion of the subject which had evidently been been the subject of the conversation before Seller had arrived.
