Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  His voice boomed above Norma’s low, terribly calm reiterations of hatred, and contempt, and grief, grotesquely mingled.

  Barrett started to answer, then changed his mind. He hardly expected the detective to understand his feelings regarding the evening’s strategy.

  “I hope they’ve killed him!” shrieked Norma, her calmness breaking.

  The telephone in the closest booth rang. Healy, who had given his men the number, snatched the receiver. He listened for a moment; and during that moment Barrett felt strangely empty, and futile. He poised himself on the balls of both feet . . . his fists were clenching painfully tight . . . he forced himself not to think of anything . . .

  “All clear, Dave!” roared Healy’s voice after several age-long seconds. “Simpson’s okay!”

  Barrett slowly exhaled the breath he had been holding. He listened again to Norma’s invective, once more low-voiced. Then he smiled, shook his head.

  “John, drive her out to the airport and see she gets out of town—charter a plane if necessary, but get her out, or her life’s not worth a dime.”

  He hitched his belt, redistributed the weight of the emptied pistols, and shrugged as he heard the grief stricken girl’s final appraisal of him.

  “C’est la guerre!—or something like that. They oughtn’t have used live bait . . .”

  Will You Die If a Dog Howls Under Your Window?

  Suppose a stray dog chooses your window, from all the windows in civilization, to howl under tonight.

  Will it give you bad dreams about dying a horrible death?

  This is the dread superstition of American farmers, and those living in open spaces. In any hamlet you may find old wives who will tell you how Mr. So-and-So was kicked to death, or mangled by his threshing machine, say, after a dog howled under his window.

  What is the origin of this superstition?

  Like so many beliefs in evil, it had a definite beginning in an actual experience. That is, if one may believe the folklore of Europe. And, like so many beliefs in evil, it has been distorted with the passing of centuries. It was the screech of a hawk, not the howl of a dog, that began the superstition. This is the story, according to old folk-tales:

  In the heart of the Black Forest—this was before Columbus dreamed of sailing Westward—lived a princess. A beautiful maiden, in a tower. She had been seen once, at a tournament, by a knight from far lands. He lost his heart to her. And she smiled, once and beguilingly, at him.

  On Walpurgis Night—when the fairies come out and dance in the moonbeams—the knight sallied forth to rescue the maiden from her tower. He and his retainers drew close to the pile of stone.

  The moon shone clearly. Through the trees the knight saw his beloved, languishing at a high window. He stepped into a clearing, and waved to her. She waved back. He and his men rushed toward the tower.

  Suddenly an owl, perched in a cranny of rock beneath the maiden’s window, screeched.

  The sound startled the princess—so runs the legend—and she fell from the window. The fall killed her.

  The story of the princess in the tower, and the screech of the owl that caused her to fall, spread throughout Europe. British warriors, home from forays on the Continent, told the yarn as they gulped their musty ale.

  “The screech of an owl under a window always brings death,” an old wiseacre exclaimed, with a knowing shake of the head. And so came the superstition to America, with some of the first settlers. But owls are scarce here, especially in the treeless spaces. Dogs are plentiful. And nothing is more terrifying than the sudden howling of a dog under one’s window on a dark, silent night. Especially a dog, moaning for its sick master. And when the master dies—the superstition lives!

  PAID IN BLOOD

  Anthony Clemens

  JOHN CRANDALL breathed a sigh of relief when a zigzag shaft of lightning illuminated the rain-swept night and showed him the Griggs house at the top of the hill. His headlights were out—there was a “short” somewhere. And no wonder, after driving thirty miles from the nearest village through that deluge. He had not known there was such sparsely populated country in upstate New York.

  As the car skidded to the door, the motor sputtered, coughed, and died. He cursed. He had known the gas was low, but he hadn’t passed a single service station since leaving the village.

  He turned up his collar, felt of the automatic in his topcoat pocket, then opened the door of the car and made a dash for it through the downpour.

  They must have heard him coming, for the door of the house was swung open to allow him to slide in, bringing along a gust of the storm. The one who admitted him was a leathery old man in the seventies. His hair was plentiful, but pure white. Slate-gray eyes looked keenly out of a weathered countenance, the skin of which was seared into deep-set wrinkles.

  As the door closed, Crandall’s gaze swept down the long hall, and despite the bright lights, a peculiar, disturbing feeling swept over him.

  “I’m Crandall,” he announced, “from Mr. Avery’s office.”

  “Aye,” the old man boomed, “ye’ll be the investigator. Mr. Avery is waitin’ fer ye—they’re all waitin’ fer ye—” he lowered his voice, “—and fer death!”

  Crandall looked up at the old man, and he felt a queer constriction about his heart “Why—have there been any more—deaths?”

  “No. Not since Mr. Avery phoned ye.” The old man pointed a bony forefinger at him. “But mark ye, lad, there’ll be more tonight. Right after Avery talked to ye on the phone, it went dead. The wires must be cut som’eres. We can’t get the police, we can’t get the doctor, an’ ol’ Phineas Griggs has took hisself another stroke. He’s paralyzed—can’t talk or move. Ye’ll get no sleep tonight, lad.”

  He turned to lead the way down the hall.

  “I thought at first,” said Crandall, “that you were Mr. Griggs.”

  The gaunt old fellow laughed shortly. “No. An’ I wouldn’t be ol’ Phineas fer all the pearls of Ceylon. No, sir, I wouldn’t be in his boots tonight! I’m Quincy—Joshua Quincy. Used to be his mate on the Nancy Griggs thirty-odd years ago. An’ now when I look him up, thinkin’ maybe the two of us could be together a little in our last years, I find him paralyzed, and I find this terrible plague on his household. It’s a retribution, I tell you, a retribution!”

  They had reached the end of the corridor, and now turned into an old-fashioned sitting room. Crandall saw a strange group—three men and two women. One of the men was Frank Avery, his employer. Avery was old Griggs’s lawyer. Crandall had done some work for him in the past.

  Avery arose and greeted him. The elderly attorney seemed distraught, nervous, in the grip of a gloomy mood. “Glad you made it, John,” he said. “It’s a load off my shoulders. We can’t get to the police—there are two cars in the garage and they’ve both been tampered with.” His shoulders sagged wearily. “It would have been too much for me to cope with alone.”

  Crandall looked around the room. “All right, suppose you introduce me, and then tell me what it’s all about. You didn’t tell me much on the phone, but I gathered someone’s been killed.”

  One of the two women raised her voice in a wildly hysterical laugh. “Killed!” she mouthed between spasms. “Killed!” The second word was uttered in a shriek. Then suddenly she buried her head in her hands while terrible sobs racked her plump body. A man with a patch over one eye, who stood beside her chair, shook her roughly. “Stop it, Sis!” he growled.

  Avery whispered to Crandall, “That’s Georgia Skane, Phineas Griggs’s daughter. It’s her husband who’s dead upstairs.”

  “Who’s the gentle guy with the eye-shade?” Crandall asked.

  “That’s Anselm Griggs, her brother. He was a captain during the World War. Since then he’s been—adventuring. Come now. You must meet old Phineas.”

  HE led him across the room to the wheel chair where Phineas Griggs sat. The old man was motionless, except for his eyes, which seemed to strain against the prison of their helpless
body. He was flabby, double-chinned. The skin of his hands, which rested along the chair arms, was white and soft.

  Crandall shuddered inwardly at the thought that this hulk of a man had once been the master of a ship that ventured into the distant ports of the world. He nodded at Avery’s introduction, and threw a glance at the door where Joshua Quincy stood. Mentally he compared the invalid to the man who had once been his mate. They were both about the same age—probably well into the seventies—but what a difference!

  He shook hands with Captain Anselm Griggs, and bowed to Mrs. Georgia Skane, the woman who had just sobbed hysterically. There was left one more woman. She was a girl in her twenties, black-haired, small, and very pretty. There was a marked resemblance to Anselm Griggs, and Crandall learned that she was his daughter, Mary.

  She arose to shake hands with him. “We are all sure you will do something about this, Mr. Crandall,” she told him. “Mr. Avery has nothing but praise for you.”

  Crandall smiled grimly. “I’ll do my best, miss,” he said, “as soon as I find out what it’s all about.”

  Avery sighed. “I suppose it’s time to—take you upstairs. Come along.” At the door he said to the others, “I will ask you all to remain in this room till we return. It may be safer—in case there is further danger.” He crooked a finger at old Joshua. “You, Quincy, see that everything is locked up downstairs here.”

  Quincy nodded “I’ve made the rounds once tonight, but I’ll do it again to make sure.” Following the old lawyer up the creaking staircase, Crandall felt that there was something sinister enveloping this lonely house and its occupants. He sensed that Avery had a nameless dread of going up to view the dead body.

  Avery was saying, “I’ve seen death in many forms in my long life, John. But this that I’m going to show you now—” There were beads of sweat on his forehead. “—I’m almost afraid to look at it again.” He stopped and put his hand on Crandall’s sleeve. “John, Richard Skane’s body is upstairs in his bathtub—and there’s no blood left in the body!”

  Crandall’s eyes opened wide, then he quickly veiled them. “Did he bleed to death?”

  “There’s no blood in the bathtub!”

  Crandall took his employer’s elbow and urged him up. “Let’s look. He probably bled to death and the blood drained out of the tub.” Avery shook his head. “There’s more to it than that, John. Wait till you see.”

  Crandall asked, “How many people live in this house?”

  “All of them that you saw downstairs—except Captain Anselm. He—wanders.”

  “He’s vaguely familiar to me, somehow—that Anselm. Did he serve in Palestine during the war?”

  Avery threw him a startled glance. “That’s right. I forgot you were a major in the Intelligence there. Yes, he did. That’s probably where you knew him.”

  Crandall snapped his fingers. “Of course I remember him. It’s that patch over his eye that threw me off. I never knew his name, but I recall seeing an officer standing before a line of soldiers. And a brigadier was tearing epaulets from his shoulders!”

  Avery nodded grimly. “It was hushed up back here. Let’s not talk about it. It can have no bearing on this business.”

  Crandall said, “Maybe not!”

  THEY had reached the upper hall. Avery opened a door and they went through a bedroom into the adjoining bathroom. Avery bent down and pulled away the sheet from the thing that lay in the tub, and Crandall, for all his self-possession, felt the hair on his scalp tingle with a dreadful chilliness.

  The body was merely a bag of bones. Not a drop of blood was left in it. The eyes were closed, the cheeks hung flabby and white.

  “That,” said Avery in a whisper, “is all that is left of Richard Skane—Phineas Griggs’s son-in-law!”

  Crandall bent over the tub. The entire surface of the body was covered by minute little punctures. A rope hung loosely about the wrists, and there was a knotted handkerchief around the neck.

  Crandall said, “He was tied and gagged and put in here.”

  Avery bent beside him and asked, “What do you make of those punctures? They look like pin pricks. Can you imagine what agony he must have endured? Look, his skin is covered with them!” Involuntarily he glanced behind him. “The fiend that did it must be in the house yet!”

  Crandall kicked something with his toe. It was the bathtub stopper. It lay on the floor with about six feet of string attached to it. “Whoever did it took the time to pull out the stopper and let the blood drain off. But I can’t see why more of it didn’t stick to the tub. There are only a few drops here and there.”

  The old lawyer stroked his thinning hair with a scrawny hand. “Perhaps he was killed elsewhere, and carried here. And those pin pricks—”

  Crandall laughed harshly. “Draw yourself a picture of anyone carrying that bag of bones! No, Mr. Avery, he was killed and tortured right in this tub. And those punctures covering his skin aren’t pin pricks. Notice that they come in sets of three, like the three points of a triangle.”

  Avery shivered. “You’re right, John. I hadn’t noticed that.” Impulsively, fearfully, he clutched the detective’s sleeve. “John, there’s something terrible—something horrible—hiding in this house!” He fumbled in his pocket and produced a crumpled letter which he handed to Crandall. It consisted of four lines of block capitals crudely printed in pencil:

  PHINEAS GRIGGS:

  Remember the Brotherhood of Hirudo? No one will live to enjoy the wealth you took from Ceylon! They will die—the way I did. And you last.

  There was no signature. Crandall looked from the note to the body of Richard Griggs. “If it weren’t for that,” he pointed to the tub, “you could call it the letter of a crank—harmless. Especially that crack—‘They will die the way I did.’ When did this thing arrive?”

  Avery placed a shaking forefinger on the letter. His voice was low. “That wasn’t written by any crank. It must carry a dreadful meaning for old Phineas Griggs. It came two weeks ago, and when he read it, he just collapsed. He’s been paralyzed ever since. Mary—that’s his granddaughter, the girl you met downstairs—took it. She didn’t show it to the others. What with taking care of the old man and running the household she had plenty on her mind. But when this happened, she thought of the letter first thing, and gave it to me.”

  “How do you come to be here?”

  “I came out this morning with Phineas’ will. He insisted that I bring it down from the safe in our office—wanted me to read it to the family so they’d know where everybody stood. That was two weeks ago, before he got the stroke, and this is the first chance I’ve had to come.” They were startled by the creaking of the boards in the corridor outside. Avery jumped. Crandall snapped around, his hand going involuntarily to his coat pocket where he had placed the automatic on removing the raincoat. He relaxed when he saw that it was old Joshua Quincy.

  THE old sailor was tall. He filled the doorway. He kept his eyes studiously from the horror in the bathtub. “They couldn’t wait fer ye,” he said. “Georgia Skane was set fer gettin’ another fit o’ hysterics. So Anselm took her to a bedroom on the ground floor. They’ve all gone to their rooms, and I wheeled Phineas to his’n.” His eyes glowed somberly. “They’re just waitin’—to see who it’ll git next!”

  Avery said, “I hope they all locked their doors?”

  Quincy laughed unpleasantly. “Much good it’ll do ’em if that thing means to get ’em. An’ besides, this old house is full o’ hidden doors. It’s ninety years old. There ain’t a room you cain’t git into from two-three ways!”

  Crandall had been silent. Now he asked Quincy, “Have you any idea what killed Richard Griggs?”

  Quincy shook his head. For the first time he glanced at the body. “It ain’t human, me lad, I’ll tell you that. It ain’t human!”

  Crandall grunted derisively. “Don’t start to tell me there’s a ghost in the house!”

  Quincy flushed. He said earnestly, “There’s more in this wo
rld than you c’n feel an’ smell, me lad. You’re a youngster. If you’d been around the world in ships more times’n you could count, like me—if you’d seen the things I’d seen—” He turned suddenly to Avery. “Did ye tell him about the ha’nt we saw?”

  “Ha’nt?” Crandall repeated it incredulously.

  “Ghost, if ye like that better. Mr. Avery an’ Miss Mary saw it too.”

  Crandall looked at Avery for confirmation.

  Avery nodded. “We saw it, John. Right after we found Richard’s body here. Mary and I came out of this room and there was a shadowy figure that seemed to be dragging one foot—lame-like, you know. Mary cried out, and the figure turned around. It was in the act of slipping into the last room at the end of the hall. We got a glimpse of its face.” Avery shuddered. “God, I never want to see it again! It was gaunt, hollow-cheeked, and the lips seemed to snarl. Then, even as we watched, petrified, it disappeared into the room.”

  Avery went on, indicating the tall sailor, “Quincy came out of the room right behind us. He caught a glimpse of the figure and dashed after it. Anselm came up, and we searched every room—found absolutely nothing. Anselm laughed at us and said we were overwrought, that it was a figment of our imagination. Perhaps he’s right.” The lawyer looked sheepish. “I’m getting old, and Mary is a high-strung girl, after all. We might have imagined it.”

  “But I didn’t!” Quincy boomed. “I only saw a shadow slippin’ in thet there room, but it was suthin’, all right!”

  “Any idea,” Crandall asked, “what it was?”

  Quincy’s eyes were reminiscent. They seemed to be gazing back over the years. “Aye, young feller, that I have.” He lowered his voice as if fearful that the paralytic downstairs’ might hear him. “It was thirty—no thirty-one years ago when I sailed as mate with Cap’n Griggs. We had a seaman by the name of Fries—Ed Fries. He talked back to the cap’n, an’ Griggs hit him with a belayin’ pin—hit him in the head. He didn’t die. Fries didn’t, but we had no such things as a ship’s doctor in those days, an’ he lay in his bunk, ravin’ delirious for weeks. When he got up and around again, he dragged his right foot—never had the use of it no more.”