by Otto Penzler
The Patent Leather Kid chuckled.
A machine gun was held on the barred window, waiting for him to emerge. He swung the glasses in the other direction, wondering if the other corner would disclose another enemy.
His quest was rewarded.
The man who was partially concealed behind a packing case held an automatic in either hand, and those automatics were resting upon the wood of the packing case, ready for instant action.
Beyond doubt the mob of Beppo the Greek had acted upon the tip the young woman had relayed to them, had ascertained that the barred window of the jewelry store had been tampered with, and had ensconced themselves.
They wanted The Patent Leather Kid, and they wanted him badly enough for his own sake. But how much more of a prize would he be when he had emerged from the jewelry store, laden with valuables which only he could have obtained.
For the uncanny skill of The Patent Leather Kid was only too well known in crook circles. He was one man who could walk unscathed through a maze of burglar alarms which would have balked any other member of the profession. And he could open safes that defied the efforts of the most thorough-going and ruthless crooks.
So Beppo the Greek would win a double victory with the death of The Kid.
Dan Seller strolled back to the front of the store, picked up the wires of the burglar alarm in front of the safe, and deliberately pressed the two ends together.
Nothing happened so far as he was concerned.
He merely saw the naked ends of two wires come in contact.
But Dan Seller knew that plenty was happening in other sections of the city. The company which sold the burglary insurance and safeguarded the protective apparatus would have a watchman on duty constantly. That watchman would detect a certain red light which flashed on at the moment those wires came in contact. And a bell would ring in harsh clamor.
That light would remain on until an adjustment made at the other end of the wire put it out.
Seller looked at his wrist watch.
The watchman would just about be getting the police on the wire now. Now the riot cars would be roaring out of the nearest precinct station, packed with grim men, armed with sawed off shotguns.
Dan Seller walked to the front of the store, peered out through the plate glass show window, keeping himself concealed behind an ornamental screen.
There was no chance for escape. A touring car, side curtains concealing the interior, was parked at the corner. A man stood, leaning against a mail box, on the other side of the street.
The Patent Leather Kid chuckled.
He took the ornamental screen in his hands, his finger tips holding each side, raising it gently, just the merest fraction of an inch from the floor. Then he started shuffling toward the window, moving nearer and nearer.
When he had placed the screen in just the right position, he deposited it on the floor, straightened, turned, and walked once more to the back of the establishment. He dropped his wrapped, addressed, and stamped packages in the mailing chute. They would, he knew, be shipped out as a matter of course in the morning. In the meantime there was nothing incriminating upon him save certain electrical equipment.
He had technically violated the law in that he had broken and entered. But he had removed nothing, not directly. The very employees of the store would do that in the morning when they took the packages and sent them to the post office.
The Patent Leather Kid looked at his watch, smiled, walked back to his place of concealment behind the screen, waited. He had less than a minute to wait.
IV
A big machine skidded around the corner. Men debouched from it, started toward the store. At that instant the touring car started into motion. The man who had been lounging near the mail box, turned, waved a hand at the touring car, started to run toward it.
A man called a sharp command.
The touring car spat forth a vicious shot. The man jumped behind the mail box. His gun barked. The touring car roared into speed.
At the same moment there came the sound of a shot from the rear of the store. Then a police whistle trilled its warning sound. A machine gun sputtered into a rat-a-tat-tat. A police sawed off shotgun bellowed—twice. There were no further sounds from the machine gun.
From the front of the store the action swept to the corner. The police officer who had crouched behind the mail box, emptied his gun as the car lurched into the turn at the corner.
But there were other officers scattered along the sidewalk. And the big police car was roaring in pursuit. The touring car vomited a belching hail of death. Little tongues of stabbing flame darted from the cracks in the side curtains of the car.
Then a police bullet found the left rear tire as the car was midway in the turn.
It faltered, swung.
The driver flung his weight against the wheel. A shotgun bellowed, and the driver went limp. The car swung, toppled at the curb, skidded up and over, went sideways across the strip of sidewalk.
Plate glass crashed. Woodwork splintered. Metal screamed as it was wrenched apart. Then there was an instant of comparative silence.
Footsteps beat the pavement.
Men were running toward the car. Pedestrians ran screaming from the scene of the conflict. Men were rushing from the back of the store to the front. Flashlights gleaming here and there took in the confusion of the interior, the open safe, the littered contents.
But Dan Seller, masquerading as The Patent Leather Kid, was nowhere in evidence. He had vanished as into the thin air.
Sounds of battle continued to punctuate the silence of the night. Police whistles were blowing constantly. Sirens wailed in the distance, screamed as they swept nearer. The tide of battle swung through the dark alleys, and then became silent.
An ambulance came with clanging bell. Officers established a cordon and pushed the curious back, out of the active zone. And the crowd gathered with swift rapidity. There were people clothed in pajamas and slippers, with bathrobes or overcoats thrown over their night garments. There were men and women dressed in evening clothes with that overly dignified bearing which characterizes persons who are trying to impress the world with their sobriety.
The crowd became thicker until a squad of officers started pushing through it, dispersing the people, sending them to their homes. The ambulance carried away inert bodies of reddened flesh. The broken doors and windows of the jewelry store were sealed and guarded. Peace and order once more held sway.
—
Dan Seller lounged in the club, smoking a black cigar, watching the afternoon shadows climb slowly up the walls of the buildings on the opposite side of the street.
All about him men were discussing the robbery of the jewelry store. The subject of conversation had been in the air all afternoon, but it had been given fresh impetus by the arrival of Commissioner Brame. The Commissioner was discussing the affair with Hawkins, senior partner of the firm of Hawkins & Grebe, and neither party to the conversation seemed in a very agreeable humor.
Dan Seller managed to unobtrusively join the little group.
“Congratulations, Commissioner. You seem to have rounded up a pretty tough gang of crooks. Quite a wonderful record I’d say. Do you know, I happened along just as the shooting was at its height, and had an excellent view until the police started dispersing the crowd. I told them I was a friend of yours, but they sent me on about my business just the same.”
The Commissioner glared.
“Very proper for them to do so!” he rasped. “Too damned much interference from bystanders cost us the biggest crook of them all.”
“What,” exclaimed The Patent Leather Kid, in mock surprise, “do you mean to tell me some one slipped through the cordon of police you threw about the place?”
“Huh,” said the Commissioner, “that ain’t half of it. He just made monkeys out of the bunch of us. We got the straight tip from a stoolie. It was The Patent Leather Kid that did that job at the jewelry store. Beppo’s mob wasn’t in on it at
all.
“They just had a grudge against The Kid, and they were scattered around, ready to give The Kid the works when he should come out with the haul. When we swooped down and caught them by surprise they naturally showed fight. But The Patent Leather Kid got away, and I’d have given five years of my life to have had my mitts on him and eliminated that thorn in the flesh.”
Dan Seller raised his eyebrow.
“Why, Commissioner, you surprise me! The man has done you a service. He has enabled you to cover your department with distinction, show the very efficient police protection you are giving the community, and he’s wiped out the Beppo gang! He seems to me to be a public benefactor. But how did he escape?”
Commissioner Brame became apoplectic.
“Benefactor!” he stormed. “Know what he did? Damn him! He took some of the best of the haul, all of it that’s been checked as missing, in fact, and mailed it to the wife and myself as presents.
“Put me in a deuced embarrassing predicament. I had the devil’s own time explaining to the wife that she had to send it back. A wrist watch and a necklace! Damn it! And as for escaping, you tell me, and I’ll tell you. He just vanished into thin air!”
Dan Seller frowned, then struck his palm with his clenched fist.
“By Jove,” he said, turning to Hawkins. “How many men were in the window dummies you displayed, Hawkins?”
The jeweler grunted a brief answer.
“Four,” he said.
“That,” said Seller, “explains it all. When I first reached the store I noticed the window display. The cops were just breaking in, pushing the people this way and that. There was a lot of confusion. And I noticed the fact that there were five men in the window display, five dummies, sitting motionless, staring straight ahead. And I was impressed by the fact that there were five men and but four women. And I happened to notice the shoes on the man who sat in the corner, near the screen. They were patent leather, and…”
Commissioner Brame made a noise that sounded like the noise made by a man who is choking over a glass of water.
Hawkins stared dourly at Dan Seller.
“Well,” he snapped, “I wish I had that diamond pendant back. It’s still missing.”
Dan Seller smiled.
For the diamond pendant had also been one of the packages which had gone forward by mail. But that package had been addressed directly to the wife of Commissioner Brame.
He fancied there would be some further explanations in order in the family of Commissioner Brame one of these days.
And it was bad enough as it was. Brame was pacing the floor, cynosure of several amused eyes.
“Dummy, eh? Posed as a dummy, eh? Right under my nose! When the papers get hold of this!…Damn that rascal! I’ll get him one of these days! And when I do…!”
Dan Seller made a deprecatory shrug of his shoulders.
“Well,” he said, “I’ll toddle along for a stroll in the park. Better watch the blood pressure, Commissioner. And, by the way, Hawkins, you said it was impossible for any one to rob your store. I told you at the time that ‘impossible’ was a pretty big word. I wish I’d had the foresight to place a small wager on the affair. Oh, well, better luck next time! And, in the meantime, the enemies of Beppo the Greek must be chuckling. I rather fancy the underworld will be doing some speculating—it won’t hurt the prestige of The Patent Leather Kid. Well, so long, old grouch faces!”
And he was gone.
Rogue: Nick Velvet
The Theft from the Empty Room
EDWARD D. HOCH
WITH THE PASSING of Edward Dentinger Hoch (1930–2008), the pure detective story lost its most inventive and prolific practitioner of the past half century. While never hailed as a great stylist, Hoch presented old-fashioned puzzles in clear, no-nonsense prose that rarely took a false step and consistently proved satisfying in most of his approximately nine hundred stories. He was named a Grand Master by Mystery Writers of America in 2001.
Born in Rochester, New York, Hoch (pronounced “hoke”) attended the University of Rochester before serving in the army (1950–1952), then worked in advertising while writing on the side. When sales became sufficiently frequent, he became a full-time fiction writer in 1968, producing stories for all of the major digest-sized magazines such as Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, The Saint, and Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. Hoch wanted to create a series character specifically for EQMM, and he came up with the professional thief Nick Velvet (whose original name was Nicholas Velvetta), his attempt to create an American counterpart to the hugely successful adventures in books and films of James Bond. The character quickly changed because Hoch didn’t like the idea of his protagonist being a woman-chasing killer; Velvet remained faithful to his longtime girlfriend, Gloria Merchant, whom he met while he was burgling her apartment and who had no idea that he was a thief until 1979. The first Nick Velvet story, “The Theft of the Clouded Tiger,” was published in the September 1966 issue of EQMM. Two major elements in the stories have made them among Hoch’s most popular work: first, since Velvet will not steal anything of intrinsic value, there is the mystery of why someone would pay him twenty thousand dollars (fifty thousand in later stories) to steal something, and, second, the near impossibility of executing the theft itself (which involved stealing such items as a spider web, the water from a swimming pool, a baseball team, and a sea serpent).
“The Theft from the Empty Room” was first published in the September 1972 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine; it was first collected in The Thefts of Nick Velvet (New York, Mysterious Press, 1978).
THE THEFT FROM THE EMPTY ROOM
Edward D. Hoch
NICK VELVET sat stiffly on the straight-backed hospital chair, facing the man in the bed opposite him. He had to admit that Roger Surman looked sick, with sunken cheeks and eyes, and a sallow complexion that gave him the appearance of a beached and blotchy whale. He was a huge man who had trouble getting around even in the best of condition. Now, laid low with a serious liver complaint, Nick wondered if he’d ever be able to leave the bed.
“They’re going to cut through this blubber in the morning,” he told Nick. “I’ve got a bet with the doctor that they don’t have a scalpel long enough to even reach my liver.” He chuckled to himself and then seemed about to drift into sleep.
“You wanted to see me,” Nick said hastily, trying to focus the sick man’s attention.
“That’s right. Wanted to see you. Always told you if I needed a job done I’d call on you.” He tried to lift his head. “Is the nurse around?”
“No. We’re alone.”
“Good. Now, you charge twenty thousand—that right?”
Nick nodded. “But only for unusual thefts. No money, jewels, art treasures—nothing like that.”
“Believe me, this is nothing like that. I’d guess it’s one of the most unusual jobs you’ve ever had.”
“What do you want stolen?” Nick asked as the man’s head bobbed again.
“First let me tell you where it is. You know my brother, Vincent?”
“The importer? I’ve heard of him.”
“It’s at his country home. The place is closed now for the winter, so you won’t have any trouble with guards or guests. There are a few window alarms, but nothing fancy.”
“You want me to steal something from your brother?”
“Exactly. You’ll find it in a storeroom around the back of the house. It adjoins the kitchen, but has its own outside door. Steal what you find in the storeroom and I’ll pay you twenty thousand.”
“Seems simple enough,” Nick said. “Just what will I find there?”
The sick eyes seemed to twinkle for an instant. “Something only you could steal for me, Velvet. I was out there myself a few days ago, but the burglar alarms were too much for me. With all this fat to cart around, and feeling as bad as I did, I couldn’t get in. I knew I had to hire a professional, so I thought of you at once. What I want
you to steal is—”
The nurse bustled in and interrupted him. “Now, now, Mr. Surman, we mustn’t tire ourselves! The operation is at seven in the morning.” She turned to Nick. “You must go now.”
“Velvet,” Roger Surman called. “Wait. Here’s a picture of the rear of the house. It’s this doorway, at the end of the driveway. Look it over and then I’ll tell you—”
Nick slipped the photo into his pocket. The nurse was firmly urging him out and there was no chance for further conversation without being overheard. Nick sighed and left the room. The assignment sounded easy enough, although he didn’t yet know what he’d been hired to steal.
—
In the morning Nick drove out to the country home of Vincent Surman. It was a gloomy November day—more a day for a funeral than an operation—and he wondered how Surman was progressing in surgery. Nick had known him off and on for ten years, mainly through the yacht club where Nick and Gloria often sailed in the summer months. Surman was wealthy, fat, and lonely. His wife had long ago divorced him and gone off to the West Indies with a slim handsome Jamaican, leaving Surman with little in life except his trucking business and his passion for food and drink.
Surman’s brother, Vincent, was the glamorous member of the family, maintaining a twelve-room city house in addition to the country home. His wife Simone was the answer to every bachelor’s dream, and his importing business provided enough income to keep her constantly one of New York’s best-dressed women. In every way Vincent was the celebrity success, while Roger was the plodding fat boy grown old and lonely. Still, Roger’s trucking business could not be dismissed lightly—not when his blue-and-white trucks could be seen on nearly every expressway.
Nick parked just off the highway and walked up the long curving driveway to Vincent Surman’s country home. The place seemed closed and deserted, as Roger had said, but when Nick neared it he could see the wired windows and doors. The alarm system appeared to be functioning, though it wouldn’t stop him for long.
