by Jerry eBooks
“My resignation! Are you requesting my resignation? I demand an explanation!”
“Did you send for that woman to come to your apartment last evening?”
“I did.”
“And she spent the night there?”
“She did.”
“While in your apartment you paid her a certain sum of money—fifty dollars to be exact?”
“I did.”
“Your wife, and the other members of your family are out of the city?”
“They are.”
“That is all, I believe.”
“Oh, that is all, is it? Well, let me tell you, Mr. Mayor, that is not all! I demand to be heard.” The executive nodded, and the commissioner turned with blazing eyes upon Clieve. “What is the meaning of this? Where is the leak? Speak out, confound you! Tell them why I sent for that girl.” The detective smiled brazenly into his face. “I guess it’s pretty evident why you sent for her, ain’t it?”
“Tell them what you told me about that scoundrel levying graft upon her!” The commissioner pointed a finger shaking with rage at the captain. “And tell them why that money was turned over to her. And why it was marked.”
“What are you trying to do, make me the goat? I never saw that woman till you sent me to her flat. And, as for graft, as far as I know, the word never passed between us. When I found out what kind of guy you was, I made up my mind to show you up—me and Holden, both. We figured money would pass from you to her, so we marked them bills. It’s a cheap bluff you’re trying to pull, Mr. Commissioner—but one that’s so flimsy it wouldn’t fool even a blind man. If you want to go any further, though, there’s your man, Grimes. He can tell about the carryings on in the library.”
The commissioner was very white—and very calm. He turned to the girl.
“And you?” he asked. “Will you speak out here and now, and tell these men why I paid you that money? Will you tell them that I ordered Clieve and Holden to mark it for the purpose of trapping that scoundrel? And will you repeat here before his honor, the mayor, the story of rottenness and graft that you told me last night? Will you tell how you have paid for the privilege of committing crime in the very heart of the city? Oh, are you just another tool of these damnable plotters?”
A long moment of silence followed the commissioner’s words, during which the girl did not raise her face from her hands.
“Come, speak out, can’t you?” The voice of the captain of police rasped harsh, and the girl shuddered.
“I—never paid nothing—to no one for—anything,” she faltered. “I told you it was risky for me to go to your rooms—”
“That will do.” The voice of the mayor was cold. “I think, William, that, under the circumstances, if I were you, I should lay my resignation on that desk. Of course, you can stand on your rights and demand a public hearing, or carry your case into the courts, but there is your family to think of. This way, you avoid publicity. No one will know why you resigned. My explanation will be simply that we were not in accord on certain points connected with the administration of the department.”
The commissioner’s eyes flashed. He would fight—would force them to prove their trumped-up charges! Would air before the world the rotten system—the system that had victimized him, and duped the mayor of the city. With an expression of infinite contempt his glance traveled from face to face—the complaisant captain, the brazen Clieve and Holden, the shrinking figure of the girl, the mayor, upon whose countenance was blended sorrow, anger, and bitter disappointment.
Suddenly his face went gray—these were the witnesses against him! There was even Grimes, his servant. What weight would his unsubstantiated work carry before any investigating committee—before a jury, against the testimony of these, borne out, as it would be by the facts he himself must admit? His wife and his daughter—they would believe in his innocence—would know that despite these filthy accusations, he was clean in mind and body. And his friends? He glanced once more into the face of the mayor. Well, some friends, perhaps—the majority of them, business associates—neighbors—would accept as a matter of course the verdict.
Once again his thoughts turned to his wife and his daughter—the believing ones—the loyal. Theirs would be the harder lot, for they must brave the women—the good women, and the average, that made up their little world of acquaintance—the open snubbing, the studied coolness, the purring sympathy that sheathed the venom-tipped claws of the little-souled among them, the me-and-thou scorn of the righteous—his glance strayed to the desk. Conspicuous upon its broad expanse of flat top was a heavy iron inkstand, a pen, and a dozen sheets of police letterheads.
He picked up the pen, tested its point upon the nail of his thumb, drew the paper toward him, dipped the pen, and began slowly to write. At the end of five minutes he arose, and, with bowed head, silently left the room. In the chair the girl sobbed dryly. Clieve and Holden passed out by another door. Grimes followed them, and the captain turned to the girl. “Beat it!” he said gruffly, and when she had gone, he glanced toward the mayor, who stood staring out the window.
“Excuse me, your honor, I don’t want to butt in with any suggestions of my own. If I seem impertinent, tell me so. What I’m saying is said only to help you, and to give the city the benefit of greater efficiency in the department. Bankers run the banks—railroad men run the railroads—why not have a policeman run the police department?”
The mayor paced the room in silence. Suddenly he turned to the officer. “Who is this man?”
“Lieutenant Regan, sir.”
“Send for him.”
“He should be here now.” He called the outer office. “Hello, Coulter, is Lieutenant Regan there? Just came in? Send him here at once.” As the lieutenant entered the captain left the room. An hour later he reentered. The new commissioner of police sat in the captain’s desk, smoking one of the captain’s cigars. He was alone. The captain offered his hand, and as he took it, the exlieutenant grinned.
“System, cap—you can’t beat system. And, by the way, that Spanish Mary—she knows too much.”
“You mean—”
The lieutenant jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Up the river—and see that she gets about ten.”
A SHRIEK IN THE NIGHT
Sewell Peaslee Wright
A woman’s cry for “Help!”—an eerie wail over the telephone, “like some monster screaming in agony”—and young Dellert rushes into the night on a wild and dangerous chase.
MONTY DELLERT leaned back more comfortably in a chair that was built for comfort and nothing else. He ground out the coal of his cigarette in a hammered-copper tray and looked around his bachelor apartment with mingled content and dissatisfaction.
Not bad. Not as bachelor diggings go. Comfortable, substantial, masculine furniture. Leather upholstery—good leather, applied by master craftsmen. A few severely-framed prints on the wall. An odd cup or so, trophies of almost forgotten feats of athletic prowess; open shelves of odd-looking old volumes, worn and scuffed. A conventional bookcase crammed with ponderous legal tomes bound in calfskin. The hospitable, sophisticated scent of good tobacco in the air. Still Monty’s idle gaze drifted across a battered brief-case thrown down carelessly on the table in the far corner of the room, and his rather heavy black brows crowded together in a sudden frown.
The brief-case was the one he carried to and from the office; it was associated, in his mind, with the office and its affairs. It served to remind him of something he was trying to put out of his mind.
It was ridiculous that he should be in love with his secretary. Utterly ridiculous! As a lawyer, used to dealing with facts, he recognized the absurdity of the thing.
He had known her only a week—or was it two weeks? Two weeks, yes Miss Frazee had quit on a Saturday, and then Betty—that is, Miss Storey—had come to work on a Monday. Two weeks ago. You don’t fall in love with your secretary—not in two weeks, anyway. Not even as charming a young woman as Bet—Miss Storey.
; Monty selected another cigarette, rolled it carefully between his fingers to loosen up the tightly packed tobacco, and was just about to apply a light, when his telephone rang sharply.
“Hello!”
“Mr. Dellert?” gasped a voice high with fear and excitement. “This is Miss Storey. Listen! I must see you at once—at once, you understand! And bring a gun. You’ll need—Oh, here they come! The address is twelve thirty-one—ah!”
There was a stifled gasp, the sound of a brief struggle, and then a noise like some monster screaming in agony; a sound that rose to a clamorous crescendo of frenzy, a mingled roar and shriek, a metallic outpouring of sound that was both thrilling and horrible. It mounted almost instantly to a thunder of cataclysmic sound that clattered the diaphargm in the receiver, and started to die away just as quickly.
Then, suddenly, there was a sharp click as the receiver was banged into place on the other end of the wire, and then—silence.
Monty, his grey eyes narrowed with excitement, rattled the hook.
“Hello! Hello!—”
“Number, please?” said a calm, impersonal feminine voice.
“Listen, Central,” snapped Monty, “what was the number of the party who just called me? It’s a matter of life and death. I must—”
“I’ll give you the supervisor,” interrupted the girl, and there was a clicking of circuits being completed. After a few seconds another voice, a more austere voice this time, snapped “Supervisor.”
“I must have the number of a party that just called me,” Monty explained hurriedly. “It’s a matter of life and death. The party that called is in trouble. She was interrupted before she had a chance to give me the address. Hurry!”
There was a momentary, maddening silence. “It will be impossible, sir,” said Supervisor coldly. “We can not—”
Bang!Monty slammed the receiver onto the hook angrily and jumped to his feet.
What did you do in a case like this? Call the police? If she’d wanted the police, why hadn’t she called them? Why had she called him, anyway?
Why should he bring a gun? What was the danger she mentioned? And what had made the terrible sound that had poured from the receiver? Nothing human, Monty was sure.
A formless thought was struggling frantically in the back of his brain; a thought that concerned the wailing shriek he had heard. That din, that clamor.
“Ah!” He snatched up the ‘phone again and jiggled the hook.
“Number, please?”
“Mam O!”he snapped. “Quick!”
MONTY’S fast little roadster swept down the silent and nearly deserted street.
Two arterial highways, at which he should have stopped, he crossed without slowing down Half a dozen times he had narrow escapes at intersections, and left angry, cursing drivers behind him in his mad flight. He turned a corner and slowed down just enough to enable him to catch a glimpse of the street signs.
He was in a seedy, run-down residential district, a part of town that had once been favored by the finest families, but now deserted and left to its fate. It was unfamiliar territory to Monty, but at last he found the street for which he was searching—a street even shabbier and more run-down than the one he had been following.
Now and then Monty caught a glimpse of a house number: eighteen thirty-seven, sixteen nineteen, fifteen naught one, thirteen fifty-five, twelve sixty-one, twelve thirty-three—Monty drew his car up to the curb quietly and cut his ignition. The house next to twelve thirty-three would be, of course, twelve thirty-one. The house he was looking for!
Twelve thirty-one was a house much like the others; a big old house, set well back from the street, with a large, weed-grown yard, a generous piazza, several turreted, bulging bay windows at the corners of the second story, and a look of general desolation.
There were no lights showing anywhere, and as Monty strode up the walk he could see that the windows were blank and curtainless.
Monty looked up and down the street. There was not a soul in sight. He tightened his grip on the automatic in his coat pocket; his forefinger crooked around the trigger, his thumb resting on the safety catch. With jaws clamped together, he walked up on the porch and tried the front door.
To his surprise it swung open at his touch. For an instant Monty was undecided, fearing a trap. He realized, however, that the next move was up to him. He made it. Quickly and quietly, he dodged inside, and closed the door.
He decided, even before his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, that the house had been occupied recently. There was no trace in the air of the staleness common to long-closed houses.
Monty’s eyes had accustomed themselves to the darkness by now, and he could see, by the aid of the dim light that came in through the front window, that he stood in a large reception hall. On the left an arch, barred at the top with elaborate carved wood filigree work, gave into what had been, some decades ago, a drawing-room. Straight ahead a door, standing partly ajar, gave entrance to a narrow hallway that presumably led to the rear of the house.
Monty considered. The ‘phone would probably be on the ground floor. The upstairs, then, could wait. He had a feeling that there was no one in the house, anyway. It sounded empty; it felt empty.
The ‘phone was in the next room; the one that had been the drawing-room. It lay on the floor in a tangle of dusty, twisted brown cord. The dust brought an idea to Monty’s mind. He glanced out of the big bay windows and saw that nobody was passing. Then, stooping low, he carefully lit a match and inspected the dusty floor. Footprints were visible all over the room.
With difficulty he followed these footprints, and in a little dark room, which from its appearance had been a library or study at one time, he found where the girl had been tied to a chair. The ropes that had bound her lay on the floor nearby.
A scrap of paper, fresh-looking, caught his attention. The little crumpled ball was lying partially concealed in a corner formed by a projecting bookcase and the wall. He snatched it up and read it through by the light of a match.
The note was addressed to him, gave his full name and business address and was written in a hand that he recognized as Betty’s:
Whoever finds this rush it to the above address. Reward will be given. They are after the Vanetti confession. Guard that and your life. Danger! Will phone if I can.
E.S.
For the first time Monty began to see through the amazing riddle that confronted him.
“So that’s it!” he muttered, shoving the paper into his pocket.
Vanetti was a lad of spirit. He refused to be a goat. He refused, to the horror of gangland, to keep his trap closed. He talked. Plenty. Monty was his attorney. The confession which Monty was to spring at the trial reposed in his safe—or did it? Enough to hang four of five men in that confession; enough to put the skids forever under Cold Deck Harrison and his machinations.
Monty ran through the empty house, darted through the door and slammed it behind him, and raced down the steps and out to his car. The starter growled under his impatient foot, the engine caught with a roar, and the car shot forward down the empty street.
The boulevard lights flashed by like the pulsing of a heart. At the intersections Monty sounded his horn, gritted his teeth and hoped nobody was in as big a hurry as he was.
Monty whirled into one of the principal business streets and cut his motor to a reasonable speed. There would be police here, and he had no time for explanations.
There were few cars parked along the curb by the building in which Monty’s office was located, for it was late, and the theatre district was blocks away. Monty drew up in front of the building, and leaped from the car. It was a hot night, and old Dad Sands, who ran the elevator after business hours, was standing outside, looking down the street.
“Hustle up, Dad!” cried Monty, grabbing the old man by the arm and hustling him into the lobby. “Shoot me up to my floor. Quick!”
“All right, all right!” muttered Dad testily. “Everybody in a hurry t’night. G
ood Gosh! Hot weather warn’t meant to rush ‘round in so.” He jerked the lever over and they shot up to the seventh floor.
“Wait!” Monty called back over his shoulder as he ran down the echoing marble hall, and Dad leaned in the open doorway of the cage and watched with wondering old eyes as Monty disappeared around the corner into the passage that led to his office.
There was no light inside, but Monty realized now that he had been thrown up against a tough proposition; that he was interfering with the plans of as cold-blooded a gang as ever took a man for a ride, with a sub-machine gun to write finis to the trip. He turned his key in the lock, swung open the door and jumped aside.
There was no sound from within save the busy ticking of the clock on his desk.
One of three things had happened, Monty reasoned as he stood there; he had figured wrong in believing that they would make a direct try for the confession, they had already come and gone, or he had beaten them to the office. Or—they might still be there, waiting. He drew his gun from his pocket, and with his left hand clicked on the lights.
There was no doubt then as to what had happened. The office, ordinarily neat and orderly almost to the point of primness, was in utter confusion. There were muddy footprints on the thick rug, there were papers scattered everywhere by a careless, impatient hand, and the ponderous door of Monty’s big safe was ajar.
One glance inside told him that they had got what they wanted. Monty cursed in a manner most unbecoming to a legal light, rammed his gun back into his pocket and turned out the lights. He banged the door behind and raced down the hall back to the elevator. Dad was still waiting for him, chewing placidly and spitting at intervals into the white sand of a convenient receptacle.
“Listen, Dad,” rasped Monty, “my office has been broken into. I’ve been robbed. Now, don’t get excited! But—have you taken anybody to this floor tonight? Anybody that doesn’t belong here?”
“That’s them, b’gad!” said Dad, dropping the elevator at amazing speed. “I thought ‘twas funny they was in such a hurry. Maybe you can git ’em yet, Mr. Dellert! I was watchin’ ’em when you come up. They started away in such a tarnation hurry I thought it served ’em good and right. A big car whammed into them at the next corner and took a hunk outa their rear tire. You should of heard it! They was changin’ it when you come up.”