by Jerry eBooks
Frisco Pete nodded. “Yeah.” Then he gulped: “Doc—for God’s sake can you do anything for me? Can you keep me from dying?”
“Maybe. I might peel away the burned tissue. But it’s a delicate operation. It’ll cost you plenty.”
“But—but I ain’t got any dough . . .” Frisco Pete whispered.
“Then I’m not interested. Sorry.”
Frisco Pete’s knees turned to jelly. “God—you can’t let me die, Doc! You gotta help me! You gotta!”
The masked, gowned surgeon shook his head coldly. “No money, no operation. That’s that.”
Then the red-haired Marie Sloane stepped forward. “Listen. You’ll accept jewelry, won’t you, doctor?”
Frisco Pete clutched at this straw He said: “Yeah! That’s an idea! How about it, doc? I got some sparklers.” Desperately he dragged out his pouch-belt, opened it. Into his palm he spilled the unset diamonds which he had stolen from the jeweler whose skull he had bashed.
The surgeon fingered the stones “Where did you get these!”
Frisco Pete shivered “What difference does it make? Take ’em—and start cuttin’ on me before it’s too late!”
“Not unless you tell me where you got these diamonds.”
“You—you won’t let me die if I spill the truth, doc?”
“I won’t let you die of radium burns.”
“Okay!” Frisco Pete sobbed in desperation. “I conked a jewelry runner last week. I swiped ’em off his corpse after he was dead!” Sweat poured into Pete’s staring eyes as he gibbered the confession. “Now start cuttin’ on me!”
The masked surgeon said: “No I’ll just handcuff you instead!” And he whipped out a pair of steel bracelets, snicked them on Frisco Pete’s wrists. Then he raised his voice and yelled: “Okey, boys. Did you take down his confession? Got it on the dictaphone?”
TWO uniformed coppers strode into the room “Yeah, lieutenant. We got it all.” They grabbed Frisco Pete, pinioned him. With widened eyes, Frisco Pete stared at the masked surgeon. The guy was removing his gauze mask. And when it was removed, Frisco Pete saw the features of—
“Del Nelson! The private dick who was bumped off in Marie Sloane’s room!” Frisco Pete whispered.
Nelson shook his head. “I’m no private dick. I’m a lieutenant in the homicide squad. And I wasn’t bumped off in Mane Sloane’s room. That wasn’t blood on my skull; it was red ink. Marie and I staged the whole scene for your benefit, Clancy. We had trailed you, we had a hunch you’d killed that jeweler’s messenger and robbed him. But even if we’d found the stones on you, it wouldn’t have been conclusive proof. A smart lip could have got you out of a murder rap. We had to have your own confession. So we rigged up a scheme.”
“A—a scheme?”
“Yes. You see, Miss Sloane is really a policewoman—a detective. We planted her in the room next to yours. Staged our little act for you to see. And you fell for it.”
“But—but that radium—and the burns on my belly—”
“There never was any stolen radium. There never was any Charlie the Finger. It was all faked. We knew you’d try to double-cross Marie Sloane and get away with the plunder you thought she had. And you walked right into our trap.”
“But there musta been radium! I got the burns . . .”
“No Last night while you were asleep, Miss Sloane put some raw mustard on you That’s what blistered you Mustard It scared you into confessing you were a murderer!”
Frisco Pete turned dull, defeated eyes on the wren who had brought him to justice “You—you let me . . . make love to you just so you could put me in the hot squat!” he mumbled. The red-haired girl flushed. Her chin came up defiantly “Yes,” she said “And I’ll tell you why I did it, you rat! The man you killed—the jeweler’s messenger—was my brother!”
Frisco Pete closed his eyes wearily It was all over The jig was up Numbly he wondered if the electric chair would burn him any worse than the mustard that now blistered him.
He found out, a month later . . .
TRIGGER MEN
Eustace Cockrell
Mudd didn’t want to go. We’d been having a nice time as we were: Mudd because I’d brought a bottle of very special Scotch over to him, I because I had finally got him to talking. Detective Sergeant Joe Mudd couldn’t talk without being interesting.
He had been telling me about the time two or three years before when a couple of guns had tried to free Jake Zeppechi when they were putting him on the train, taking him to the Federal prison. The guns were dead; they had killed Zeppechi and killed three of his guards; two of them had been F.B.I. men, and the Department of Justice had squared up with them. The other one had been Red Armstrong, a White Falls detective.
“Yes,” Mudd had said. “They took care of the trigger men. A couple of coked-up lads doin’ a job of work for their price. The papers said they were tryin’ to lift Zeppechi. They weren’t. They were hired to kill Zeppechi, because Zeppechi was gonna talk. The guards just happened to be in the way when they turned loose with their typewriter.”
Just then the phone had rung.
Mudd came back swearing dispassionately. “Yes,” he went on as if he hadn’t been interrupted, “they can’t ever prove that, but I know it’s so. And I know the guy that had it done, and I’ll take care of that some time. Red Armstrong got his that day, and Red was a friend of mine . . . I got to go downtown now. You want to come?”
“Where to?” I asked.
“Carlotta’s,” Mudd said, pulling on his coat. I got up and put on my coat too. Carlotta’s was exciting, even if nothing happened.
We went down in the elevator and out in through the lobby and got in Mudd’s car. I didn’t ask him why we were going, or what the phone-call had been, because I knew he wouldn’t tell me until he wanted to, and then I wouldn’t have to ask.
Carlotta’s is down on the river-front; you have to drive over three blocks of rough cobblestones, between high walls of unlighted dinginess, to reach it.
Inside, the ceiling is low and the lights are never bright. Usually the air is stale. But the rough tables are solid walnut, the checked cloths are linen, the glass is crystal. And there is a swell band there—the swellest that has ever been in White Falls.
Mudd pulled his car up across the street from the little sign, and my heart started beating a bit faster in spite of myself as I watched him check over his service revolver, which he was wearing in a shoulder-holster under his coat.
“Just routine,” he said. “Some dame called me up and told me to come down here. Said somebody was scheduled to get bumped off, and if I was sittin’ in the place it probably wouldn’t come off. The chances are a hundred to one it was some crank, or some of my so-called friends with that kind of a sense of humor.” He put the gun back in its holster. “But anyway,” he added, “there’s no use takin’ chances.”
There was a good crowd when we got there at ten-thirty. All sorts of people. It was always like that. Thugs and punks and gangsters, play-boys and men-about-town and aristocrats.
“Margot,” as the orchestra leader had announced her, was dancing. Margot was a small blonde, and to my mind no dancer. I was looking around.
Joe Mudd and I were seated at a table for two over against one wall, and from it I could see the entire room; but I saw it only as a composite picture with little attention to any person or detail that went to make up the whole.
Later I was sorry there was no complete clarity to my mental image—a clarity about which I could be definite and certain. But as I looked back on it, I got only the same picture I got that night when I tried to reconstruct the scene of those first few minutes.
Margot had finished her dance and was leaving the floor. I remember that. The place was now full of people. A lot of them I knew myself, and some of them Mudd had identified for me.
But I didn’t see them as people so much, this important moment. I saw them more as impressionistic flashes of different things that went to make up the n
ight-club that was Carlotta’s.
Carlotta herself had come onto the floor and begun her song. And when you saw and heard Carlotta, you knew why the place was as popular as it was. She was singing “Midnight Babies,” and the light on her had begun to dim. All the other lights in the house were out then, as always when she sang.
In the hazy reflection from the spot, as my eyes swept the room and then fastened on Carlotta, I got only these momentary glimpses of people.
I saw Ike Stein, a small-time racketeer, sitting at a table by himself at the edge of the dance floor and eying the sultry beauty of the singer with a not too subdued covetousness in his eyes . . . I saw Arnold Marshalt sitting at a table behind Ike Stein’s. He was with his sister and Bud Fenston, his sister’s fiance. Marshalt was young and good-looking and rich. His eyes were not readable but they had something somber in them and they were not on Carlotta. They were on Bud Fenston—Bud Fenston, sitting pale and drawn, looking determinedly at Evelyn Marshalt, whose face held a hopelessness strangely out of place on those finely chiseled features you felt were designed to reflect gayety . . . I saw Junky Rothfuss sitting at a table beside Marshalt’s. He was with some other people, but he might have been alone. He was cold and quiet, and there was no more in his eyes than in those things that hang in front of optometrists’ shops. He was a known power in the White Falls underworld. How high his power reached no one knew; Carlotta was said to be his girl.
I saw—but of course, I didn’t see these things: I only got impressions of them. All I saw was Carlotta, for she was singing, and when she sang, that’s all you knew about.
The spot of light was getting dimmer, as it always did when she sang. Then on the last note of her song the light would go out entirely, and there would be darkness complete for one moment while utter silence held the place. Then the light would come on, and the band would play, and everyone would be talking at once in a sort of uneasy way. That’s what Carlotta did.
That’s why you watched her. Tonight it was like other nights. She was standing there singing. Then it happened.
There was no warning unless you count the tenseness that always hung over things down there. But it went very quickly. Too much so, for when it was over, I could remember it only in fleeting glimpses, like a movie in which everything has been falsely speeded up.
The detonation of the shot rumbled in that low room, and I saw a figure dive awkwardly toward Carlotta’s feet and lie there, blood spurting from what had been a head.
The spotlight on Carlotta, the only light, went out. But as it went out, there was quick movement across the room, scuffling noise, a grunt; I saw Bud Fenston moving, and I saw Marshalt move, jostling Rothfuss as he rose.
And then across the table from me a chair scraped harshly on the floor, and there was a rattle as it fell.
Joe Mudd was standing up, and in the darkness there was the hoarse and reassuring bellow of his voice:
“Lights!”
Maybe it was two seconds; it couldn’t have been a minute. The lights came on—the spot first, then the little lights that hung around the wall; then the faint lights overhead. And then—
“Drop that guy! Get him!”
They got him near the door. A waiter tackled him. It was Arnold Marshalt, and I remembered that the flame that had stabbed the darkness on the far side of the room had come from his table or from very near it.
Carlotta stepped back slowly, chalk-colored, and the long white evening dress she wore had a red border on the bottom where it trailed in Ike Stein’s blood.
Mudd strode across the floor, knelt a moment. Then he rose, and I saw his lips form the obvious words to Carlotta, still moving slowly back: “He’s dead.”
Then there came a steady rustle of brittle chatter, punctuated by chairs scraping on the floor as they were pushed back from the tables.
Mudd’s voice cut through everything loudly:
“Sit down! Everybody stay right where he is for the moment.”
A man who had got to his feet said patronizingly, bold with drink: “Who the hell are you, anyhow?”
Mudd reached in his pocket for his shield. “I’m Detective Sergeant Mudd, buddy; and I love it when people get cute with me. Sit down.” The man sat down. “I’m sorry,” Mudd went on to the crowd. “Well get through here and let you go just as soon as we can. In the meantime just keep your seats and take it easy.” I sidled onto the floor, and Mudd turned and told me to call Headquarters.
When I came back into the room a minute later, Mudd had moved from the dance-floor and was walking between the tables toward where the waiter had tackled Marshalt.
Mudd turned to Carlotta, who had followed him. “I’ll need a room—”
Carlotta nodded automatically. “You can use my office,” she said. Then there was the scream of sirens outside and in a moment men from headquarters started pouring in. Inspector Jaffre, men in uniform, plainclothesmen, photographers, men from the lab. There must have been fifteen or sixteen of them.
Mudd walked over and talked hurriedly to Inspector Jaffre, and I saw the Inspector nod.
He came back then to Marshalt. “Okay, son,” he said. “Let’s go.” He nodded to me, and the three of us started for Carlotta’s little office in the back. Jaffre stopped us.
“I want him,” Mudd said, jerking a thumb toward me. “He came down with me. I want him.” Jaffre nodded again doubtfully, and we went on back through an aisle of white faces, Marshalt in front, I following Mudd. As we went into the little office I heard Bud Fenston, his voice desperate, yell: “Wait!”
I turned and saw him half rise before a big cop standing behind his chair shoved him back down.
We sat down in the office, Mudd behind the desk. “You killed him,” Mudd said. “What did you do it for?”
“No,” Marshalt said, and his voice was little more than a whisper. “No.”
Mudd said amiably: “You shot him, all right.” He turned to me and barked: “The shot came from his table?”
“I—yes,” I stammered. “It looked like it.”
“No,” Marshalt said again in that small voice. “No.”
“Your sister speaks with a broad A, doesn’t she?” Mudd asked then, unexpectedly.
“Why, yes, but she hadn’t anything—”
“She called me up,” Mudd said. “You shot him. Where’s the gun?”
“I didn’t,” Marshalt said. “I didn’t.” Then suddenly his expression changed. “Yes,” he said dully, “I killed him. He had some letters—my sister’s. He was blackmailing her, trying to. Yes, I killed him. Let’s go.”
“Wait a minute,” Mudd said. He looked puzzled and the heavy creases in his face deepened. “Where’s the gun?”
Marshalt stuck his hand into his inside jacket pocket. “Here it is,” he said, “What difference does it make? I lost my nerve and ran.”
Mudd took the gun, and holding it by the barrel with his handkerchief, he sniffed it. He grunted.
“I’m glad Stein’s dead,” Marshalt said slowly. “The letters were old letters. I don’t know how he got hold of them. They didn’t mean anything, but they looked as if they did. My sister wants to marry Bud Fenston,” he concluded disjointedly.
“Son,” Mudd said, and his voice sounded as though he were trying to make it kindly, “go out there and sit down. Give me your word you won’t say anything to anyone, until I tell you or send you word. Give me your word.”
“All right,” Marshalt said. “What difference does it make? I’ll give my word.”
When Marshalt had left, Mudd called me to the desk. The gun was lying there. “What kind of gun is that?” he asked me. “Don’t touch it.”
“It’s a thirty-eight,” I said, “seven-shot automatic—say, what in the blazes is this? You’re not blind. You know more about guns than I do.”
Mudd picked it up and began polishing it with his handkerchief. “I may want you to take a message for me,” he said, “and I won’t have time to explain—if you take the message. If
anything happens in here in the next fifteen minutes, I want you to pick up the gun on the desk and put it in your pocket, and throw it in the river going home. And then forget all about it.” He left then, but in a minute he was back, and Bud Fenston was with him.
He didn’t question Fenston. Fenston didn’t give him time. When he saw the gun on the table, he said quickly, his voice tense: “That’s my gun. I killed Stein. Arnold grabbed the gun away from me. I killed him. It’s my gun.”
“You shot him?” Mudd asked.
“Yes, I shot him. I—I had to. Arnold grabbed the gun away from me.”
Mudd grinned. “What did you shoot him for?”
“That’s my affair,” Fenston said defiantly.”
“All right. All right.” Mudd’s voice was soothing. “Will you go out there and sit down and not say anything, not say anything to anyone until I send you word? Will you give me your word? Your word of honor?”
“It won’t involve Miss Marshalt or Arnold?” Fenston asked, and keen hope showed in his face.
“No,” Mudd said. “My word on that.”
“All right,” Fenston said. And Mudd let him go.
He turned to me. “Open the window,” he said. “From the bottom. What sort of a drop is it to the ground?”
I looked down out of the window. “No drop at all,” I said. “Six feet, maybe.” And then, because I couldn’t keep back any longer, though I knew it wouldn’t do me any good, I blurted out a question. “What’s the answer? Fenston killed him—Marshalt killed him. Which one did? And why all this stuff about the gun, the window? Tell me something?”
“I’ll tell you this,” Mudd said. “I’m the greatest detective that ever hit the city of White Falls, and there’s no question about that. Let me handle this case. Let me try to solve a case without you buttin’ in with a lot of questions. And if I solve it, you keep your trap shut. You do what I tell you and keep your trap shut. I know what I’m doing. You watch.”
“But,” I said, trying to keep exasperation out of my voice, “one of those boys is bound to have done it. There’s the gun, and there’s the motive. Why all this business about letting you solve the case? The case is solved.”