The Second Pulp Crime

by Mack Reynolds

  All night he’d been thinking only of himself. Maybe it wasn’t so hot to be in her shoes, either, being born for something and not flinching from it, not running.

  He turned and stared out the window. A few lights met his gaze. But his mind was seeing something more; the dingy part of Pratt Street, the milling crowds on East Baltimore, the newsboy and bur-le-cue barker and penny arcade crowd. Johns Hopkins and life and death.

  Giovani and his kid Tony. Tony had died, sure, but every man had to die, and Tony might have died in the electric chair, or lived bitterly in and out of grey prison walls. And for all her wealth Marcellene Grayson could have died in the gutter, along with a poverty-stricken, uneducated pack of ratty little guys like Mouser Cline.

  He saw a red-headed rookie named Donnavan, polishing a nutty kind of gold with his life’s blood, and rows of white crosses over men who’d been fighting side by side with Donnavan even though oceans and thousands of miles had separated them.

  He saw Inspector MacLaren out in the night, heard the aged man’s words: It’s the way you got born, Brennan, the way your brain works and your body moves. And Mouser had said, You’re murdering me…

  He could take no credit for having these things Mouser didn’t have, either. He’d just got born that way. It wasn’t as if he’d created something with his own hands to have and to hold exclusively.

  Donnavan had tried to give, but hadn’t had it, only his life. And Brennan knew in that moment that a man who had those things, those workings of his brain and movements of his body, had no right to withhold them. No more than he did the air mankind breathed.

  And if he withheld those things—what was it MacLaren had said? Here’s hoping you’ll have a good time living with yourself…

  He would have a rotten time, Brennan knew now. Wondering how many Marcellene Graysons were sliding in the gutter; how many Giovanis were knowing their boys were going to the electric chair; how many Mouser Clines he had condemned to death and how many Mondellos were riding roughshod through life… And knowing, living with himself in the long years ahead, that the Donnavans had bled for nothing.

  Sure, he couldn’t do much in one lifetime, and he himself would die one of these days. But there’d be others born his way, lots of them, if he helped to make it possible now.

  He turned slowly from the window. His gaze met Jean’s. “These tickets—now that it’s here—I’d make a lousy insurance salesman, hon.”

  “I know you would,” she said. Then her arms were about him, clutching him very tightly. She was laughing, and tears were streaming down her cheeks. “I’m alive again—”

  He said, “You know, it’s funny. But I feel the same way myself.

  LUCKY BREAK, by Will F. Jenkins

  Originally published in Colliers, September 26, 1926.

  Alex Hunt believed that sooner or later everybody gets a lucky break, whether he deserves it or not. And he was right. Every­body does. But it happened that in his case fate, or destiny, or something, was a little more insistent than usual. So he cashed in.

  It started on a Friday evening when, briefcase in hand, he was jammed in the corner of the vestibule in a subway car. He did not notice the man with floppy ears, or notice that he carried a briefcase too. Not at first.

  The train stopped. People struggled to get out. People struggled to get in. Then Alex saw the man with the floppy ears. He wore a natty straw hat. He looked about right to be the cashier of some firm or other. He carried a brief­case. And he was scared. Badly scared. His eyes were panic-filled. And Alex suddenly realized that his fright was caused by four men who seemed strug­gling to get out but actually stayed close around him.

  A flood of passengers surged in. The man with the floppy ears was caught in the impact of their pushing. He reeled against Alex, and Alex heard him pant­ing as if in terror. Their bodies were jammed together for an instant. Alex’s briefcase was torn away. The next in­stant its handle slid back between his fingers.

  Then, suddenly, the floppy-eared man grew desperate. He dived for the door leading back to the following car. He darted out to the platform from there, his straw hat bobbing. The four men leaped after him.

  The train jerked into motion. Alex stood jammed in the corner of the vesti­bule, holding his briefcase in his hand. His eyes gleamed excitedly. Because the briefcase in his hand was not his—it belonged to the man with the floppy ears!

  * * * *

  In his own room, Alex opened the briefcase. The breath went out of him when he looked. The briefcase was full of bank notes! He counted eighteen thou­sand, one hundred and seventy dollars in ten- and twenty-dollar bills. In pack­ets, with elastic bands around them.

  Shivering, he looked for the name of the owner. He picked out the packets of money. No bankbook. No memorandum. No bank slips. The briefcase and its contents were anonymous.

  “But—how am I—” Alex gulped. “How am I going to take it back? I—want to be honest.…”

  Then, quite suddenly, he knew that he had lied. He shivered again. He remem­bered that his own briefcase carried no identifying mark and that nothing in it bore his name or that of his firm. There was no possible way for anybody to trace the other briefcase to him! Trembling, he hid the briefcase and the money.

  This was Friday night.

  * * * *

  On Monday night, he had not spent a penny of the money, but nobody had come for it, either. At the end of ten days nothing had happened. Nor at the end of twenty. Thirty. But if it were found now, he’d be considered to have stolen it. The thought scared him. Ten—twenty years in jail.…

  He knew the man with floppy ears would haunt the subway—the Lenox Avenue line—hoping to see him again.

  So he changed his manner of life in one respect. Every evening he went from the office to the public library for an hour, and then went home—and not by the Lenox Avenue line. He studied the work he did in the office. He gave the impres­sion of an ambitious young man pre­paring himself for a betterjob. He dodged all possibility that the man with floppy ears would find him. And he had hidden the money so that no search of his room would disclose it.

  Four months passed. Five. Six…

  Now, at last, he felt that he was safe. He had only to resign his job on the plea of a better one offered him, dis­appear from the city, enjoy himself in leisure.

  Then he went to redeem his overcoat. Everything was prepared. He’d re­signed his job. It was amusing that the big boss had sent for him and offered him a five-dollar raise. He’d talked im­pressively of Alex’s new-found dependa­bility and interest in his work. A better job was almost ready for him.…

  Alex laughed to himself, as he turned into the pawnshop.

  A frizzy-haired young man took his pawn ticket. He vanished in the rear. He was gone for what seemed a long time, during which Alex’s heart pumped louder and louder. It seemed so silent.…

  The young man came back with Alex’s coat. Alex paid, slipped it on, and went out into the rain.

  And then a man stopped short, and stared at him. He swore luridly in sheer surprise. It was the man with floppy ears.

  “What’d you do with the stuff, fella?” he asked conversationally. “Got any­thing left?”

  Alex Hunt’s world had crashed. A desperate despair filled him.

  “Y-yes.” He choked. He said thickly, “I’ll g-give it all back—”

  The other man started perceptibly. He caught at Alex’s arm. There was a papery rustling.

  “Y’got it yet?—Y’got it in y’coat!”

  Alex could not reply. Sheer terror filled him. The other man dragged him swiftly to the doorway of the closed store. He tore at the overcoat with practiced fingers. Alex could not resist. The lining ripped. Bank notes. Tens. Twen­ties. The man with floppy ears looked at them hungrily and swore. For a moment there was silence. Then, resignedly, the man with the floppy ears tore the ba
nk notes across. He tore them into shreds. He brushed them away.

  “I shoulda known,” he said philosophi­cally. “There ain’t nobody would take that stuff now. Yeller. Brittle. Y’couldn’t pass it on a baby!”

  He shrugged and looked tolerantly at Alex.

  “The fella that made it was slick,” he confided; “he hadda stunt that made his paper damn good. But it wouldn’t stay that way. This stuff’s all gone now. Phooey!”

  He grinned at Alex. And Alex, dazed, said hoarsely, “You mean—you mean it’s counterfeit?”

  “What? Sure!” said the man with floppy ears. “Nothin’ else.” He turned up his coat collar. “The dicks were closin’ in on me, so I shoved it off on you.”

  He swung out of the doorway and was gone.

  Alex stood rocking on his feet in the store entrance. Presently he sobbed. Be­cause he had believed that sooner or later everybody gets a lucky break, whether he deserves it or not. And now that belief was gone; he could no longer expect, even in dreams, anything that he had not earned for himself.

  Which was his lucky break. He real­ized it later on—after he had become moderately rich. Everybody does get a lucky break, whether he deserves it or not. It simply happened that in Alex Hunt’s case fate, or destiny, or some­thing, was a little more insistent than usual. So he cashed in.

  A DEVIL’S HIGHBALL, by G. T. Fleming-Roberts

  Originally published in Ten Detective Aces, July 1933.

  Fortunately, Gavin Clark considered the whole affair calmly, else the thinning walls of his aorta might have been broken, and its rushing, red cargo of life would have been given up. Since the doctor had told him that he might live nearly a year longer, if he avoided excitement, he had taken everything calmly—even the unfaithfulness of his wife.

  Perhaps he had got used to the idea of death. Perhaps that is why he had contemplated murder with greater passiveness than a society woman contemplates another tea.

  Since that evening when Clark had unintentionally overheard a conversation between Randolph Shortly and Madeline Clark, he had plotted coldly and impassionately. It was to be simple—this murder, for only simple murders succeed. In the one week that Randolph Shortly had been staying at the Clarks’ he had shown himself to be a hog for drink. That fact alone simplified matters. Then at the inquest, it would be called suicide. Clark would see to that.

  Gavin Clark took a piece of paper from his pocket and for the eleventh time compared the writing on it with the writing on a letter that Shortly had sent from the mountains. Clark chuckled. He could have made fortunes at forgery, he thought. He had wisely written it on a sheet torn from Shortly’s note book. It ran:

  Dear Madeline:

  What I saw in your eyes last night makes it impossible for me to go on living. Without you, I can’t live, yet with you I could never face the sun. There is one honorable way out. I have taken it.

  Clark chuckled again. He hadn’t attempted a signature. It would have been tricky and entirely unnecessary.

  He pocketed the note and drew a small vial from his pocket. The white and red label read:

  TRIOXIDE OF ARSENIC—DEADLY POISON!

  Rat poison it was and to be used on a rat.

  Rat! Clark thought that was putting it rather mild. Had he not been Shortly’s best friend, “rat” would have done nicely. But he had been Shortly’s best friend. It was he, Gavin Clark, who had staked Shortly when Shortly had been broken in health and finance. It was Clark who had sent Shortly to the mountains to regain his health. And Shortly had regained his strength. He was now disgustingly healthy—for through the green eyes of a chronic invalid, health is disgusting. This man—this Randolph Shortly, had returned from his mountains to steal another man’s wife, and at that, a man who had one foot—nay, more than that, in the grave.

  Tonight would be the time. Madeline had to preside at some sort of a club meeting. Shortly would be far gone in drink. Clark would prepare a friendly night-cap that would be a cup of true darkness, and all would be over.

  Why hadn’t Madeline and Shortly had the decency to wait until he was dead? But no, he was glad he had learned the truth, for now Shortly would pay!

  Even at that moment, Clark could make out the voices of Madeline and Randolph coming in low blurred tones from the sun-room. Perhaps they were arranging the details of their flight. He wanted to hear what they were saying; yet he feared that some sentence would arouse passions that would hasten that rupture which spelled death. No, he must live—live to attend Shortly’s funeral.

  Thus, determined to put eavesdropping beyond temptation, Gavin Clark took up his hat and wandered out into the garden.

  Let them talk! He knew the truth.

  * * * *

  Unfortunately, Gavin Clark didn’t know the truth. Had he listened to that conversation between his wife and Randolph Shortly, the arsenic would have found its way down the kitchen drain, for at the moment that Clark left the garden door, Randolph Shortly was waging the one decisive battle of his pampered life.

  “Don’t you see, Madeline,” Shortly was saying, “I can’t do this thing to Gavin! Can’t you realize what a real friend is? Can you imagine the man you love being weak enough to take advantage of that friendship? Everything that I have I owe to Gavin Clark. Yet, you would have me betray him in order that we might go away together.”

  He paused, watching the lovely shoulders of this woman, watching every movement of those shoulders, shaking with sobs, trying to watch them as he would have watched the shoulders of a marble statue shaken by a quake.

  His victory over himself was complete. He understood her now. She had been a child of love and had become a woman of love. The wound that he had created would soon be healed. He decided to leave on the morning train. He would never see her face again—except in dreams.

  Night came quickly for Madeline and Randolph, but slowly for Gavin Clark. Madeline had given up all thoughts of going to her club, but she could not endure her husband’s roof for that night. She would go to her sister’s for the weekend.

  How this decision pleased Gavin Clark! How it relieved Randolph Shortly!

  Two hours of cribbage with drinks. Two hours of drinks without cribbage. Four hours all told and Randolph Shortly gazed over the rim of his glass at two Gavin Clarks.

  Gavin was a good pal, but there wasn’t any use of there being two of him. Now if there had been two Madelines… Shortly’s thoughts were becoming tangled.

  With a hilarity that was genuine, though not drunken, Clark extended one of two tall glasses towards Shortly.

  “Come on, Ran,” he urged, “you’re not going back on me? Have this last glass with me, won’t you? Just what you need to pull you up the stairs.”

  “S’ help me!” Shortly gurgled.

  The mud-sloven swine! thought Clark.

  “S’ help me! Never went back on a pal yet. Not goin’ to now.”

  Clark’s right hand held two glasses—two glasses that were Siamese twins. Two swell glasses in one hand. That was funny, Randolph thought.

  “Where ’n hell zit?”

  “Right here,” said Clark, drinking from his own glass.

  “Shur?” Shortly seized at the twin glasses with both hands. The liquid slopped as he raised it to his lips.

  Clark stood watching the man’s Adam’s apple slide up and down as he gulped.

  “Good stuff!” exclaimed Shortly as he crumpled into his chair, his head and shoulders flopping on the table.

  It sounded like the carcass of a dead cat being thrown over the alley fence, thought Clark.

  Gavin had no idea that arsenic worked so fast. Perhaps Shortly was only asleep. Anyway, he wouldn’t wake up in a long time.

  Clark took the empty arsenic vial from his pocket and placed it on the table. Then he took one of Shortly’s clammy hands and pressed it against the bottle.

 
So much for fingerprints! Now for the note!

  He placed the scrap of paper on the table near Shortly’s glass. Then he tiptoed up the stairs.

  He was glad the house was new. He hated creaking floors.

  Chuckling softly, he made his way to his own room, undressed, and got into bed. He went to sleep almost instantly—for murderers do sleep.

  * * * *

  How long Clark slept he did not know. It was still dark when he awoke. But why had he awakened? What was the rushing sound that seemed to come from his pillow, or even from his own ears?

  His heart!

  The thought boomed on his brain.

  But why did it murmur so loudly in his ears? What was that noise—that noise in the hall?

  Clark listened intently—as intently as he could with that terrifying lub rushsh—lub rushsh sound in his ears.

  There was something walking—walking up and down the hall outside his door. Something that walked as Shortly had walked. It was the same stride that had taken Shortly up the highest peaks of the mountains.

  And Shortly was lying dead below, Clark kept repeating. There were four lethal doses of arsenic in his belly!

  Gavin stared dry-mouthed at the darkness.

  Lub rushsh, went his heart.

  He must get up! He must see who walked with Shortly’s walk, up and down the hall! Quickly out of bed! Quickly press the light switch! Quickly open the door!

  Dry-mouthed, Gavin stared into the dimly lighted hallway.

  God! It was Shortly! Shortly’s ghost?

  Lub rushsh—lub rushsh—rushsh—

  Not a cry escaped Gavin Clark’s lips as he tottered and fell at Shortly’s feet.

  Shortly glared half-drunkenly at the clay thing on the floor.

  “So you’d poison me, huh? Make out I’d killed myself, huh?”

  Clark didn’t hear. He would never hear.

  “Poison me, would you!” Shortly’s voice shook. “Dam’ lucky for me I’ve been taking big doses of arsenic regularly up on those mountains to strengthen my wind and ease my nerves. You get used to that stuff after a while. Gavin, you must be crazy!” He kicked gently at the body.