The Noir Mystery MEGAPACK ™: 25 Modern and Classic Mysteries

by Joseph J. Millard

  Cronin stopped short on the staircase, his face gray with the realization of what he had done. He turned quickly, his arm coming backward in a short arc. His elbow jabbed Pell in the mouth, and the detective was thrown against the wall. Cronin faced him snarling. His right fist, balled into a vicious weapon of hard knuckles, was coming up in a smashing uppercut, when Pell’s gun began to roar. Three times it kicked as he pulled the trigger. The slugs caught Cronin in the chest, and he toppled down the steps with a frightful cry that was drowned by the reverberations of the gunshots in the narrow hallway. He was dead when he hit the landing.

  TARAWA PAYOFF, by H. Wolff Salz

  Originally published in 10-Story Detective, June 1945.

  The pain-reddened fog lifted from his eyes slowly. Lying on his back, he stared up at towering dark buildings and thought, “What the hell are brick warehouses doing on Tarawa?” His hands groped out beside him and he thought. “What’s a concrete sidewalk doing where hot sands ought to be?”

  The pain, though—the numbing pain that sliced upward from his hip to the base of his skull, and the wet sticky feel of leaking blood under him—that was unchanged.

  He remembered slowly, a little incredulously, like reality probing tentative fingers into a nightmare. Tarawa and the hunk of Jap shrapnel in his hip were five months behind him. This was the States, and he was back on the force, where he’d been before the Marines. Before Guadalcanal, New Guinea, Tarawa.

  No sense to it. Why was he stretched on his back staring at the stars? Why the fire in his hip? The leaking blood? Why was his head going around like a Fourth-of-July pinwheel?

  Take it easy, Johnny Tobin. Take it easy.

  Remember Gin-Eye Macklin? They had told Johnny about Corporal Wesley “Gin-Eye” Macklin when he woke up on the hospital ship steaming back to Hawaii. Johnny would have bled to death where he fell on the beach, if Corporal Gin-Eye hadn’t scuttled out into the open in the face of blistering machine-gun fire and dragged Johnny back into the foxhole.

  You never did thank Gin-Eye for that little service.

  What’s the connection with now? With city sidewalks and dark warehouses? With the knifing pain in his hip and his head going around like a B-24 prop?

  Scraps of memory penetrated the fog of pain like fast-moving scenes through a rain-drenched train window. Ruth. She hadn’t wanted to marry him. No, that wasn’t right. She had wanted him to get a cushy office job. “Weren’t the foxholes and jungles and Japs enough excitement for you! Must you live your whole life doing a job where you’d never know when some rat’s bullet will reach out for you in the dark!”

  They had compromised. If he became a sergeant in six months she’d marry him. “If you get the promotion,” she’d agreed. “I’ll at least know there’s more of a future for you on the force than a lifetime of pounding pavements.”

  What’s the connection with Corporal Gin-Eye, Johnny?

  If his head weren’t going around so fast maybe he could think. Corporal Gin-Eye Macklin. He was a hero, coming home. The Congressional Medal. Something about knocking off forty monkeys and bringing a Jap general back alive. It was all in the newspapers. Corporal Gin-Eye was a local boy. He got a big spread, like he deserved.

  Johnny Tobin sat up suddenly. His lungs emptied of air in a gasp of agony as pain blitzed his nerves. The body was still there, awkward, lifeless, its middle-aged face white in the pale glow of the street lamp at the mouth of the alley, exactly as it had been before Johnny passed out. Like the words in the song, it all came back to him now.

  He’d been patrolling along quiet, respectable Parkmoor Place when the man darted from the dark house and ran for a car. The second man who came from the house was wounded, shot in the shoulder. He had blurted out the details to Johnny. He’d come home late with his wife and discovered the crook robbing his wall safe. The crook had fired one shot and escaped without the loot.

  But he had left an apple core in the safe.

  Johnny had used the house owner’s roadster in the wild chase. Dark streets, screaming tires, around corners on two wheels, and finally to this river warehouse district.

  Johnny had known who the crook was. The Apple Eater. The man who had robbed a hundred wealthy homes and always left his queer signature behind. An apple core. The man whose long series of jewel thefts had the top men on the force tearing their hair. And the commissioner had promised a promotion to the man who ended the Apple Eater’s career.

  He remembered thinking, as he sent a slug into the fleeing car’s rear tire, This guy’s for you, Ruth, for the promotion the commissioner promised, and the wedding bells and orange blossoms.

  It all came back to him now—with a wrench that twisted his heart and a lump that choked his throat. The leap out of the roadster as the fleeing sedan crashed into a store window. His quick shots as the Apple Eater jumped out of his car and darted for the alley. The crook’s answering shots, and the slug that knifed into his thigh and crumpled him to the sidewalk. Then his last shot that brought the crook down like a clay pigeon.

  The Apple Eater was dead when Johnny reached his side, from a slug that had gone through his heart.

  Johnny remembered the slug. Biting his lips against the pain that cut through his body, he crawled towards it, scooped it up and went back to the dead man’s side. From the distance came the wail of sirens.

  Johnny fought off the dizziness that returned with his movements. He wrenched the crook’s gun from the stiffening fingers and laid his own gun on the cold hand. Painfully, he groped across the sidewalk, found the lip of the sewer at the curb and tossed the dead man’s revolver in. The death slug from his own gun followed it.

  The sirens were approaching fast. He inched back to the lifeless body, fumbled through the dead man’s pockets. Nothing incriminating. Only one thing left to do before the enveloping fog overwhelmed him. The wallet and letter that still lay on the sidewalk beside the body had to be returned to the dead man’s pocket.

  The wallet with the identification card that said, Lester R. Macklin. And the V-mail letter that had traveled halfway around the world from the South Pacific. The letter that started, Dear Pop and was signed, Gin-Eye.

  Corporal Gin-Eye Macklin, who was following his letter home as a hero.

  Two squad cars arrived at the same time. Somebody put an arm around Johnny, held him up.

  Johnny heard himself talking, in a voice that sounded as if it came from a tomb. “The Apple Eater...chased him...shot his tire. He ran to alley. I followed. He got me. That man...lying there...was walking by...tried to help me...took my gun...started to chase Apple Eater. Apple Eater shot and killed him. Got away.”

  He heard a gruff voice growl, “Practically had the Apple Eater in his hands and let him get away! How do you like that!”

  Another voice said, “You mean how’ll the commissioner like that!”

  The first voice said, “This dead guy, here. He sure had guts, grabbing Tobin’s gun and going after the Apple Eater. Plenty guts! Like a hero, if you ask me.”

  Somebody was helping Johnny to his feet. A tourniquet had been tied around his thigh. They were helping him towards a squad car. There was a blur in front of his eyes. The spinning wouldn’t stop. What was it he wanted to say to the dead man? He couldn’t seem to think.

  “That was for Gin-Eye,” he murmured. “For services rendered.”

  WRONG NUMBER, by John L. Benton

  Originally published in Thrilling Detective, Feb. 1948.

  Mary Marshall fumbled in her evening bag, seeking the key to the apartment door. From an open window at the far end of the long seventh floor corridor a chill wind swept toward her, and she remembered it had started to snow as she got out of the taxi and entered the lobby.

  “Having trouble?” a voice asked.

  She turned to find a man standing in the open doorway of the apar
tment across the hall. The room behind him was dark and he loomed tall and shadowy in the doorway, his dark eyes gazing at her intently. His suit was blue and his shirt a dark gray, his tie bright red.

  The suit and shirt blended with the shadows so that only his face and necktie were clearly visible.

  “No trouble, thank you,” Mary said, and she found it hard to make her tone casual and impersonal. “I was just looking for my key.”

  She found the key and drew it out of the bag, and then glanced up. He was still watching her. She wondered how long he had been standing there. She was sure his door had not been open when she left the elevator and came along the hall, and yet she had heard no sound until he had spoken.

  “You are Miss Mary Marshall,” he said finally. “I’m Lansing Cooper, and I have a message for you.” He stepped out from the shadows and she saw he was older than she had thought at first. “A rather strange message.”

  “A message for me?”

  The wind that blew along the corridor was stronger now. Mary could feel the damp chill through the mink cape she wore—a breeze ruffled her blonde hair. She unlocked the door of her apartment, swung the door open, then turned to Lansing Cooper.

  He closed the door behind them as he followed her along the short hallway of the apartment. She switched on the lights in the big living room and turned to face him again. His hair was thick and dark, but there was a lot of gray at the temples, his face was lean, and he wore his clothes with the casual air of one who selects the best of everything as a matter of course.

  “I’ve been trying to think of a way to explain about the message without sounding completely wacky,” Cooper said with a smile. “It is hard to do.”

  “At least it sounds intriguing,” Mary said. “Do sit down.”

  She tossed her cape aside and sank into a chair. The clock on the mantel over the fireplace told her it was just two-thirty in the morning. She wondered if she hadn’t made a mistake in going to a night club with Tom Bradford after the show, for she was very tired. Still she was very fond of Tom. He was young, attractive, and his work as a first grade detective gave him so little time off that it had been nice to do as he wished tonight.

  “About the message?” Mary asked, noticing Cooper was staring at her strangely.

  “Oh, yes, about midnight my phone rang,” he said. “I answered and a man asked if I lived in the same apartment house with Mary Marshall the actress. I said I believed you lived across the hall from me, though we had never met. He said he had been trying to reach you all evening, but got no answer.”

  “Naturally, since I was at the theater acting in the show,” said Mary. “Go on.”

  “Here’s the silly part of the whole thing,” said Cooper. “The man on the phone said, ‘Give Mary Marshall this message—tell her this is Barton Thorne calling and she is going to die before morning.’”

  “Barton Thorne!” Mary stared at Cooper, and there was fear in her lovely eyes. “But he’s been dead for ten years!”

  “I told you the whole thing was silly.” Cooper rose to his feet and began to pace the floor. “Probably the work of some crank who knows you’re a popular actress and wants to annoy you.” He paused and stared at her. “Though I didn’t like the way he said you were going to die before morning. That sounded like an actual threat.”

  “You mean you think I might be murdered?” Mary asked like a frightened little girl.

  “I doubt it,” said Cooper. “But there’s no sense in taking any chances. Perhaps we had better report the whole thing to the police.”

  “And have them think it is just an actress trying to work a publicity stunt?” said Mary. “They will think that you know.”

  “I guess so.” Cooper dropped into a chair. “Tell me about this Barton Thorne, who was he and what happened to him?”

  “He was an actor,” Mary said slowly. “We both started our careers together fifteen years ago. Just a couple of kids who wanted to go on the stage, and were lucky enough to get a break. We did a dance routine in one of those reviews with a lot of young people in the cast. After that I went in for dramatic acting and Barton kept on as a dancer.”

  “And you were a success and he never amounted to much,” said Cooper. “That it?”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” Mary shook her head. “He was drowned while swimming at a beach in New England one summer about ten years ago. The body was never found.”

  “Then there is no reason for his threatening your life, even if he was still alive,” said Cooper, getting to his feet. “That message must have been a joke. I’m going now, and if I were you I would forget all about it, Molly.”

  She just sat staring at him as he went toward the short hallway between the living room and the front door of the apartment. For the first time she noticed that he walked with a decided limp. She heard the door open and then close softly.

  “Ten years,” she thought. “I was eighteen then and Barton was twenty-seven. He did resent my becoming more successful than he was and told me so before he went to New England that summer.”

  She remembered the note that had been found in Barton Thorne’s coat on the beach. He had evidently plunged into the sea fully dressed save for that coat, and in the pocket had been a suicide note addressed to her. “I’m a failure and you are a success, so this is goodbye.” the note had read.

  Mary stood up feeling very old and tired. Here she was the star of one of the most successful plays on Broadway this season, and only twenty-eight, yet nothing seemed to matter much.

  She walked over to the large doll with the wide hoop skirt that stood on a table in one corner of the living room. She hesitated and then turned away. She picked up her fur cape and went into her bedroom. The apartment seemed strangely lonely, almost sinister. Her maid went home nights.

  In the bedroom Mary undressed, got a nightgown and went into the bath and took a shower with the door closed. When she had finished she put on the nightgown and came out.

  The phone rang and Mary went to it and picked up the handset.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Mary?...This is Tom Bradford...I don’t know why, but I have been worried about you.... Everything all right?”

  Mary glanced at the mirror of her dressing table as she listened to Tom’s voice coming over the wire. Suddenly a hand holding a large pair of scissors appeared from behind a curtain to her left. She screamed as the scissors cut the telephone wire near the base.

  She dropped the phone and ran into the living room. She was standing in front of the hoop-skirted doll a few moments later, when Lansing Cooper stepped out of her bedroom, the sharp pointed scissors still in his hand.

  “I’m glad you didn’t try to get away,” he said as he moved nearer to her. “That you didn’t rush to the door and scream for help. I wouldn’t have liked that at all. You see I have planned this for a long time.”

  “I know, Barton,” Mary said. “You see I really thought you were dead. I didn’t recognize you at first, your face is changed.”

  “That’s right.” He nodded. “I was badly injured in a train wreck ten years ago after I faked that drowning in New England. Plastic surgery gave me a new face. I have been in South America for the past ten years. I didn’t want to come back to this country until the war was over.”

  “You lied to me about having received a phone message, of course,” Mary said. “Made the whole thing up to frighten me. But why, Barton?”

  “Because I want you to suffer as I have,” said Barton Thorne. He glanced at the scissors in his hand. “I wonder if your face was scarred and disfigured if you still would be such a great success, Molly.”

  “You always called me Molly instead of Mary,” she said. “That’s why I realized you were Barton Thorne when you left me a little while ago. You forgot and called me Molly then.”

 
; “But I didn’t leave,” said Thorne. “I merely opened and closed the door from the inside and waited there. When I heard the shower running I sneaked into the bedroom and waited for you to come out of the bath.”

  The way he glared at her frightened her, but she knew that she had to keep him talking, to prevent him from slashing her face with those sharp scissors he held.

  “Why do you hate me so, Barton?” she asked. “It wasn’t my fault that I became a dramatic actress and you decided to keep on as a dancer. There are lots of successful dancers in show business—you could have made good if you really had tried. But you didn’t try—you just blamed me for your failures.”

  “That’s enough!” He moved closer to her. “I’m tired of talking. Now I’m going to slash that pretty face of yours to ribbons—”

  “No, you’re not!”

  It was a husky, dark haired young man who spoke as he stood at the entrance to the hall covering Thorne with a gun.

  “Tom!” exclaimed Mary, moving away from Thorne. “Oh, I’m so glad you got here in time.”

  “Who in blazes are you?” demanded Thorne, glaring at the other man.

  “Tom Bradford, Headquarters Detective Bureau,” said Bradford. “And I’ve got someone listening on the phone and taking down everything that has been said here in short hand.”

  “On the phone!” exclaimed Thorne. “But the phone is useless. I cut the wire.”

  “You cut the wire on the extension phone,” said Mary, picking up the hoop-skirted doll and revealing a second phone on the table. The handset was off the pedestal. “You see I took this phone off the hook as soon as I came in here. I hoped that Tom might still be connected and he was.”