by Jerry eBooks
THE MIRACLE MAN
Eric Howard
Mangasarius knew the answers to all problems—except his own murder!
If it meant anything at all, it was over my head. But a thousand people, mostly women, were eating it up, nodding their heads, murmuring to themselves “How true!” This fellow up on the platform, in the auditorium, was as handsome as a matinee idol. Mangasarius, he called himself. No first name, no initials. Just Mangasarius; like Caesar or Napoleon. Mangasarious, the Great!
In his forties, perhaps, with a little gray at the temples and a full head of curling dark hair. Big, strong, with a suggestion of great vitality about him. Graceful gestures and a voice that was a velvet flow in the great hall. What he said didn’t have to make sense.
He had a good racket, if it was a racket. Free lectures, like this, several mornings a week. Just enough to lure them into special courses of lectures, for small groups, at a hundred bucks a course; and private lessons, at still higher fees. Besides that, he collected anything they wanted to give—money, stocks and bonds, property, jewels.
That’s why I was here. Mrs. Rufus G. Hyde was about to give Mangasarius something, and Rufus objected. He didn’t know what to do about it, so he hired me to watch her and Mangasarius. If she handed him a necklace, a bunch of securities, or a wad of dough, I was to try to get the goods on him, evidence that would show he had unduly influenced her.
A tough job, but Rufus was paying the bills. Rufus had plenty of the root of all evil; he could afford to let his wife shell out to a grifter, if Mangy—as I got to calling him—was a grifter. But Rufus hated to see the jack he had taken away from people dropped into Mangy’s hand. Rufus hated to be out-smarted.
Mangy spread his hands in a wide gesture. “Let us not pray, dear friends,” he said in that dulcet voice. “Rather, let us pause for a meditative moment. Let us look inward. Let us tap that reservoir of power, that well of spirit, that dwells within our hearts.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then he gestured finally and walked briskly off the platform. Immediately, a beautiful girl in a white dress came out. She was Mangy’s niece and co-worker, so he said. She went into a crisp, businesslike number. Mangy’s book was on sale in the lobby; they’d better buy it or they’d never know happiness. It was only four dollars. And for those who wanted to take Mangy’s special course of lectures, the line formed on the left. For private lessons in the Miracle Way, which was what Mangy modestly called his method, they’d have to see her, Dolores, the niece, and pony up. She announced other lectures. She was a bright, clever baggage, but she didn’t have Mangy’s velvet flow. But she sold them.
I was watching Mrs. Rufus G. Hyde. She was a little woman, and she must have been very pretty once. Now you could see that she was desperately trying to hang on to her youth. She had been through the mill—diet, facials, hair dyes, massage and all the rest. She looked worked over. She had a kind of silly look on her face, and there was probably only one idea in her head—to try to stay young and beautiful. She was getting on to fifty, and it was hard to take, because she had the idea that she should always be a beautiful twenty-year-old. She had nerves. She fidgeted. But Mangy was her hope. He could give her everlasting youth, as no one else could. He had even implied that his dope would conquer death.
I chewed my gum and looked at her. Also, at the girl beside her. Her social secretary, a sweet blonde package named Irene. The blonde wasn’t falling for Mangy’s line. She didn’t need it—yet. She had youth and beauty and allure. When Mangy’s dark, beautiful niece, Dolores, went into the sales song and dance, Irene smiled cynically. She knew the ropes.
The meeting was breaking up. People moving around. All the dames had a glow in their eyes. Mangy had given them something, whatever it was. Faith, hope, but no charity.
My job was to follow Mrs. Rufus. I did. But my eyes were on Irene. She could have had my vote in any beauty contest—bathing beauty, especially. The girl had everything.
Mrs. Rufus was heading for the hall, back-stage, that led to Mangy’s office here in the auditorium. That’s where he gave his small group lectures. Private lessons were dished out at his home, a big old place on a knoll overlooking a lake on the edge of town. Dolores, the niece, lived there, too. And a few servants.
Dolores met Mrs. Rufus and greeted her warmly, cordially. They were going to collect. For Irene, she had only an icy nod, a cool “How do you do?” No soap from Irene, and she probably knew the secretary was trying to keep the old dame from tossing baubles into Mangy’s kitty.
“Darling,” Mrs. Rufus gushed to Dolores, “tell the dear master that I have arranged it. I—”
“Don’t you wish to see him now, dear Mrs. Hyde?” asked Dolores sweetly. “He expects you.”
“Oh, dear. May I?” Mrs. Rufus fluttered.
Dolores led her to the door that opened into the suite of offices. I saw another girl at a typewriter as the door opened. She got up, at a word from Dolores, and led Mrs. Rufus on to the dear master’s private office. Well, I wasn’t going to see what she gave him, or hear what she had arranged.
I moved up next to Irene.
“Great stuff, isn’t it?” I said.
She froze me, but said, “What?”
“The Miracle Way,” I said. “The master, Mangasarious.”
“Excuse me,” she said, and hurried through the mob to a tall, quick-moving young fellow in gray tweeds who was going towards the master’s office. She joined him and they went on together. Just before they entered the office, she looked back over her shoulder. I had been staring at her, but I wasn’t then. I was telling the fussy old woman next to me that it was great stuff. She was agreeing.
They went into the office. The typist wasn’t at her desk. Then the door closed.
I missed Dolores in the crowd, for a few minutes. Then I heard her talking to a woman near me. She had been somewhere and had come back. She was telling the woman, who wore expensive clothes and some real jewelry, that Mangy would see her soon.
Then Dolores moved off toward the office. But she didn’t go in. She went to another door and entered that. Her own private office, I guessed.
Irene, Mrs. Rufus, and the young fellow in tweeds came out of the door, maybe ten minutes later. There was a loud scream and the girl I had seen at the typewriter ran after them, pointing her finger, crying “They killed him!”
I crashed through the mob and got to the door. Dolores ran out of her room and started asking excited questions. She called to somebody to clear the hall. Mrs. Rufus looked dazed and happy. Irene looked mad. The young fellow, holding both women by the arm, looked silly and surprised.
The typist was still yelling, “They killed him!” And the women of the audience didn’t want to be shoved out. If it was their dear master the girl was yelling about, they wanted to lynch the three who had just left him. Several of them—Amazons, too—made a rush for Irene and the other two. I spread my arms and shoved all three back to the door.
“Back up.” I said. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Irene snapped something angrily at me. The young fellow began, “I say, sir, you can’t . . .” Mrs. Rufus was still dizzy.
I saw that some of the ushers were herding the gang out, so I shoved these three back into the office.
“Police!” yelled the typist.
“The marines are here,” I told her and grabbed her shoulder. I tossed her into the office, too.
Then I joined them and shut the door, snapping the lock.
“Sit down!” I said.
“What authority have you to do this?” Irene asked.
I winked at her and reached for the telephone. Dolores was coming out of Mangy’s private office. And she left the door open.
“Dead!” she murmured, like a girl in a trance. “Dead! Stabbed! My uncle . . .”
I could see Mangy. He was at his big, shiny desk. He had been using the phone. At least, he had his hand on it and the phone was off the cradle. Now he was sprawled forward over th
e desk, and I saw the bright handle of a knife over his left shoulder.
I picked up the phone and called Headquarters.
“Joe Burke talking,” I told the desk sergeant. “Give me Kelly—homicide.”
“Another murder? Wherever you go, Joe—”
“Give me Kelly!”
Kelly came on the wire and said he would be right there, with his staff. I hung up and grinned at the suspects.
“We’ll wait for the cops,” I said pleasantly.
“You fool,” Irene snapped at me, “we didn’t kill him—we couldn’t have killed him.”
“Tell it to Kelly,” I said. “Don’t leave here. I want to take a look at him.”
I went to the other door and looked in. The knife must have gone right into his heart. I gave his office the onceover, standing in the door so I could watch the others. The typist was sobbing; maybe she liked Mangy, or maybe she wondered where she’d get another job. The look of goofy happiness on the face of Mrs. Rufus had changed; now she looked stricken, gray, pathetic. Irene was downright mad. The young fellow still looked silly.
There was a coat closet at one side, the door partly open. The office was on the ground floor, with large windows on a court. They were closed. The whole place was furnished like a movie set—a six-inch carpet, chairs upholstered in velvet, heavy drapes at the windows, swell pictures.
Opposite the coat closet was another door, closed. I took a chance and crossed to it. The door was unlocked.
It led into a simply furnished office with a desk, a typewriter, a dictaphone and a filing cabinet. This was where Dolores worked—the room she had entered from outside.
They were all sitting there when I went back. But the young fellow had been leaning over to whisper to Irene. Then Kelly started hammering on the the door and I let him in.
“Some day,” he growled, “you’ll be the corpse at one of these killings. Who’s dead and why?”
His gang got to work in Mangy’s office. Kelly started questioning the others. According to the typist, the three—Mrs. Rufus, Irene and the young fellow—had come out of his office. She had heard the young fellow say, “That’s that!” She had gone to Mangy’s door, to give him some letters to sign, and had seen him with the knife in his back. She had run out after the others, accusing them.
The young fellow was the nephew of Mrs. Rufus—Ronald Darrow. He and Irene admitted they had followed Mrs. Rufus into Mangy’s office, hoping to dissuade her from giving him a necklace worth ten grand, hoping to scare Mangy into refusing it. Mrs. Rufus would not be dissuaded and Mangy wouldn’t be scared. He had been smooth and hypocritical; he had said he could not reject the free-will offerings of his devoted followers, who wished to help him with his great work.
“Did you threaten him?” Kelly asked.
“I told him he could be stopped,” Ronald admitted.
“And I said we’d stop him,” Irene added. She was still angry.
Mrs. Rufus couldn’t talk much. She was dazed. But Kelly got out of her that she had left the office a moment or two before the others, who were still talking to Mangy. The door was open, but her back was turned.
“Then either one of you,” Kelly observed, looking at Irene and Ronald, “could have stabbed him without her seeing you. Which one did?”
Ronald put his hand over Irene’s. She smiled bitterly.
“You fool!” she said to Kelly.
Kelly grinned at her, said: “We’ve got a jail matron who likes to work over dames like you.”
He had told one of his men to find the necklace. There wasn’t any. Mrs. Rufus had given it to Mangy, he had dropped it into a desk drawer. But it wasn’t there now; or anywhere else.
I went out to a phone booth and called Rufus. He exploded, when I told him what had happened, and said he’d come right down. I met him outside when his big car slid up to the curb. Rufus was a handsome, gray-haired, Pink-faced old boy; gruff and surly on the surface, but with a hearty laugh. He put away plenty of good food and liquor, and he had an eye for a pretty girl. He grabbed my arm and started cussing; he cussed like a longshoreman. Then we went in.
He put his arm protectingly around his wife, nodded to Irene and Ronald, glared at Kelly.
He suggested to Kelly that they all be allowed to leave.
“Yeah?” said Kelly. “Where were you when this guy was stabbed? If you knew your wife was goin’ to toss him the necklace—if there was any necklace—you’d be just the one to bump him.”
Rufus got apoplectic. I put my hand on his arm and whispered, “Take it easy, boss. Don’t let him ride you.” The reporters were in, by this time, and the camera boys. With all of Mangy’s followers in town, it was a swell story. In spite of Rufus’ objections, they shot pictures all over the place.
Dolores, sitting by herself in a corner, was a perfect picture of a grief-stricken niece. I ambled over to her.
“Sister,” I said, “where were you when this happened?”
She looked at me, wiping her eyes. “I?” she asked. “Out there in the hall, talking to—”
“You ducked into your office,” I told her, “a minute or two before this other girl started yelling ‘Murder!’ You could have got through that door between the offices and up behind him—he wouldn’t expect you to knife him—and out again. Neat timing, but you could have done it.”
She stared at me. “You think that I . . .”
I shrugged. “You had a chance, too,” I said. “As much chance to do it as they had.”
She started sobbing. “My poor dear uncle!” she said. “He was so good! He did so much for others! Now—”
Kelly cut in with an announcement. “I’m holding you, Darrow,” he said, “on suspicion. Mr. Hyde, you can take your wife and this girl home. But I warn you—”
Ronald Darrow was as tense as a race-horse. He stepped up to Kelly, said, “You damned fool!”, and swung at him. Kelly blocked the punch and socked the idiot. Two bulls grabbed him, then. Rufus protested, but it didn’t do any good. There was nothing he could do. Irene put her arms around Ronald, kissed him, whispered something to him. Then Rufus shook his hand and said he’d send his lawyer around, get him out quick. I went out to the car with Rufus.
“If you were any good on your job, Burke,” he snapped at me, “you’d have prevented this.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And if you hadn’t let the missus give Mangy trinkets, it wouldn’t have happened. You firing me ? Or do you want me to stay on the job and find out who did kill him?”
He was mad enough to bite. Mrs. Rufus and Irene were in the car.
“Ronald didn’t do it,” he said. “Nor Irene. So it’s no concern of mine.”
“Okay. Then I quit, huh? No concern of mine, either. But if you think Kelly can’t build a case against Ronald, you’re wrong. Somebody has to be tried and convicted. Looks like Ronald is the guy—unless Kelly switches to Irene. She’d be an accessory in any case. Or he would. But they’re your friends, not mine.” I shrugged and started away.
“Wait, Burke!” he protested. “Stay on the job.”
“Murder cases come higher, boss. From now on the ante is raised. Fifty a day and expenses.”
He growled, but agreed.
I went back to Kelly. He was questioning Dolores, pretty gently, for him. I grinned to myself. I was the only one who knew she had had a chance at Mangy. There’d probably be a lot of women willing to testify she’d been talking to them from the time the meeting ended until the typist yelled that he was dead.
The necklace was missing. Kelly’s men searched the place, but couldn’t find it. The knife belonged to Mangy—an Oriental thing he had picked up in India, Dolores said, where he had studied with the masters, whoever they are.
Kelly had traced the call Mangy had been making. He had been talking to a rich divorcee, Mrs. Lindsey Barrett, when the knife had silenced him. She was one of his followers. She had been trying, ever since he was silenced, to get him again. One of Kelly’s dicks told her he was dead and she
must have fainted. A cop went up to her penthouse to see how she was taking it and found her maid had called two doctors and a nurse.
Kelly’s mob was moving out, taking Ronald with them. Kelly stopped and said to me, “Joe, if you know anything, come clean! I’ll get your license, this time, if you hold out on us!”
“It’s open and shut, ain’t it?” I said. “Ronald or Irene had to do it, didn’t they?”
“I’ll know more when we get the fingerprint checkup,” he grunted. “I’m just telling you—”
“I’d better come clean. Yeah!” I grinned at him. “Or you’ll get my license. Seems like I heard that before, somewhere.”
When they had gone, Dolores and the typist, Agnes Smith, were left. They had been warned not to leave town, of course, and to keep in touch with Kelly. He had men tailing them, too.
Agnes was a dumb bunny. She didn’t count. But Dolores—there was a deep one.
“What will you do now?” I asked her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I can only try to carry on his work as he would have wished me to do. But I am ill-trained. I don’t know—”
“He really had something, huh?” I asked. “Not just a grifter?”
She looked puzzled. “Grifter?” she said. “What’s that? He was a great teacher, a man who taught people how to live richly and fully. He brought them an ancient wisdom with which to cure the maladies of our age.”
“Made money, didn’t he?”
“His grateful pupils made him many gifts, of course. But he taught the poor, too, for nothing.”
“You think this Ronald guy did for him?”
She spread her hands, gracefully. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. I know only that Ronald Darrow wanted his aunt to give him money and that he and her secretary, Irene Farr, had threatened my uncle before. I heard them. They were angry because they thought he had influenced Mrs. Hyde against them. He hadn’t, really. It was her own thought—that money would do Ronald no good until he had learned to live.”