by Jerry eBooks
“Until he had accepted Mangasarius as a teacher, you mean?”
“Yes,” she nodded. “But Ronald was a stubborn materialist. Irene, too.”
“Why didn’t he get money from Rufus? He’s a materialist, too, or I never met one.”
Dolores smiled. “He had tried and failed. You see, Mr. Hyde wanted security, always, and Ronald naturally had none.”
“Why did he want money?”
“To buy an interest in a business, so that he could marry Irene. So Mrs. Hyde said.”
She looked up at me, out of her moist, large dark eyes. She smiled forgivingly.
“And you suggested that I,” she said, “might have—stabbed my uncle ?”
“Sorry, sister,” I said. “I just meant you had a chance. He was your uncle, huh?”
She gave me that sweet, forgiving smile again. “How terrible it must be to be a detective!” she said. “Do you distrust everyone, everything? Have you no faith?”
I got red and ran my finger around my collar. “A dick can’t take anything for granted,” I said.
I went away from there and down to the office of the Messenger, where I prowled through the paper’s morgue. There wasn’t much about Mangy. He had advertised his meetings, but they hadn’t run many news stories about him. In one or two brief notices, Dolores was mentioned. Then I dropped around to the printing company that had published his book. Mangy had paid for it, cash in advance, and they had run off five thousand copies. He had just placed an order for another five thousand. At four dollars a crack, he was doing pretty well for himself. The head of the company was moaning because he had read the extras; with Mangasarius dead, the order would probably be cancelled.
“Have you no faith?” I handed him Dolores’ line. “Leave it to his niece. She’ll carry on and sell his books. Maybe he’ll autograph ’em, if there’s ink in heaven.”
But I didn’t gather up any info about Mangy. He had hit town a year ago, returning from years of study in India, so he said. Dolores had joined him a little later. He had gone over big from the start. Once the dames heard him talk, they were sold—and told their neighbors over the back-fence or the bridge-table. The cops had nothing on him; they can’t tackle a great teacher like Mangy unless complaints pour in. A few husbands, like Rufus, may have kicked; but it was their fault if their wives tossed presents to Mangy.
Getting into the penthouse apartment of Mrs. Lindsey Barrett, where I went next, was no cinch. I finally got in, but I didn’t see the lady. One of her doctors talked to me. She was suffering from severe shock; she had tried to commit suicide by jumping over the parapet that surrounded her garden. The doctor was a dry, cool, spectacled fellow; he made no bones about his feeling for Mangy. Mrs. Barrett had refused medical care and had put her trust in Mangy’s Miracle Way.
“Like hundreds of other fool women,” the medico said savagely, “she was in love with the fellow.”
“How did he feel about her?”
“Mrs. Barrett is an extremely rich woman,” he said. “Excuse me, please. And do not come here again. Mrs. Barrett can see no one.”
“Okay, doc,” I said, and strolled out past the butler.
I had skipped lunch. I gathered up all the papers and found a steak and chop joint. I chewed a thick one, washed it down with a bottle of beer, and read the papers. Kelly had Ronald hanging. His prints were on the knife along with Mangy’s. He admitted he had touched it as it lay on the desk before him while he had argued with Mangy. No other prints. Both Ronald and Irene told the same story: they had accused Mangy of hypnotizing Mrs. Rufus and had threatened him. He had laughed at them, fingering the necklace the old lady had given him. But they hadn’t killed him. He was alive, and triumphant, when they walked out. If that was true, he had been killed during the few minutes that elapsed before the typist gathered up her letters and started in to him.
I thought of Dolores again. She might still be the candidate.
Then I saw a sob sister’s story. She had been to Mrs. Barrett’s penthouse, too, and she had it from the rich dame’s secretary that Mangy and Mrs. Barrett had planned a trip to Yuma—and marriage. They were talking about it when he was stabbed.
“Uh-huh,” I said. “And what does that add up to?”
I didn’t know, but I checked on Mrs. Barrett’s ex. No, he wasn’t interested; married again, and on a world cruise. Who else wouldn’t want her to marry Mangasarius? Some of her family, maybe; others who might hope to inherit something from her or otherwise get it; perhaps a disappointed suitor Mangy had cut out. But how could any of those get in and stab Mangy at just that time? No dice.
I still gave Dolores a good deal of thought. She was smooth; Kelly didn’t suspect her. She put on a good act. Even if the cops had suspected her, they would have a time proving anything. Mangy’s followers would spring to her defense; her act would convince any jury. Dressed in white, with her forgiving smile and her dark eyes, she looked too angelic for murder.
I phoned Rufus from the steak and chop dump.
“Listen,” I said, “they’ve got a lot on your wife’s niece. How much is it worth to you if I dig up the real killer and get Ronald out?”
“I’m already paying you well, Burke,” he said. “Are you earning your wages? No!”
“All right, then. I’ll quit. Never let it be said Joe Burke hung on to a job when he wasn’t earning his pay. Good-by, Mr. Hyde.”
“Wait!” he snapped. “It’s worth—anything—to get Ronald out. Mrs. Hyde—”
“Ten grand?”
“You mean ten thousand dollars?” he gasped. “Don’t be absurd, Burke.”
“How much?”
“Well, maybe five thousand.”
“Take you!” I said. “Put it in writing, send it right down to my office. And don’t welsh!”
He agreed. “You know who killed that—that faker?” he asked.
“You’ll get my report in due time,” I said. I didn’t like that nickel nurser too well.
“Try to recover my wife’s necklace !” he begged.
“For another five grand,” I said, and hung up on his sob.
I felt better, then. If I got a break, it would mean money in the pocket.
When I stepped into my two by four office, my confidential secretary, Rose O’Brien, gave me a disgusted look.
“Where have you been, big boy? Playing marbles? I wish you’d stick around and take some of these fool calls.”
I leaned over and kissed her ear. “Mister Burke!” she said.
“Tell me, babe. Who’s bothering you ?”
“Captain Kelly and a dozen others.”
“Just tell ’em I’m not in.”
“I do, but they think I’m lying. I see you were on the spot at another killing. Tell me!”
I told her, to get it all straight for myself as well as for her. Rose is a bright kid; her father and uncle were cops. She knows the cop business. When I got through, she frowned and tapped her pencil on the desk.
“I wish I could see Dolores and Irene,” she said.
“You can. We shut up shop. You’re a sob sister, babe. Let’s go get your story.”
Rose can be anything at a moment’s notice—sob sister, actress, chorus girl, tough moll, debutante, or shopgirl. She does a few things to her hair and makeup, gives her mouth a different twist, switches her accent—and there she is, a new girl.
We grabbed a cab and started for the Mangasarius house.
“Go up and interview her,” I said. “I’ll wait.”
Up she went, swinging along the walk. And I thought, What a gal! She had everything Dolores or Irene had, and plenty of brains in her red head.
She was back pretty soon, too soon to have got an interview.
“The lady is not seeing the press,” she said. “So I was told by a couple of servants. They pushed me around, but I got in. I made a plea to her—told her I’d lose my job, my sick mother and three small brothers would suffer. She still wasn’t giving interviews. You said she ha
d a sweet, forgiving smile, big boy? She’s as hard as nails right now. And the mug with her is a stir-bird or I’m a Chinaman.”
“You’re no Chinaman,” I said. “Who is he?”
“I dunno, but ten to one his picture’s in the Rogues’ Gallery. She shouldn’t play around with his kind, unless—You better go up, big boy. But put on your overshoes, wear your red flannels, and take care of yourself.”
“Yeah. You stay here. Understand English? Right here in this cab!”
“Yes, sir,” she said, too meekly.
The driver hadn’t heard all this. I told him to wait. Rose hopped in. I went up toward the house.
I was saying to myself, “Somebody who didn’t want Mangy to wed the widow is the one. And that spells Dolores.”
They gave me a song and dance, too. Dolores wasn’t seeing anybody. But a maid took my name in, and she was seeing me.
She was alone in a big room when I walked in. Rose’s stirbird wasn’t there.
“Yes, Mr. Burke, what did you wish to see me about?”
I walked over to her. She was all in white—an evening gown, this time, that looked swell on her.
“Lady,” I said, “Ronald didn’t kill Mangasarius. The cops are wrong. It had to be someone who didn’t want him to marry Mrs. Barrett. See? Now you had a swell chance to do the job. I’m betting you can’t prove you’re his niece. I’m betting he was shoving you aside for the rich dame and you wouldn’t stand for that.”
She laughed, in that gentle forgiving way, and then said, “You have a marvelous imagination. But your wild surmises do not concern me.”
I had expected to draw the thug out of hiding. Dolores yawned and put her hand up to her lips. That was a signal, I guess, because something bored into my back and I looked over my shoulder into the dark and ugly face of the guy Rose had seen. He was a stir bug all right.
“What’ll we do?” he asked hoarsely. Dolores shrugged. “Better put him away, Jack,” she said. “He’s the only one that knows I had a chance to go into the office. It would be just as well if he—disappeared.”
“Yeah. I’ll take him down cellar and put him away.”
I laughed. “Everybody knows I’m here,” I said. “I told Kelly I was coming. So you didn’t stab Mangy, Dolores? This mug did, eh? He was in the closet when the others were with the boy friend. He stepped out and knifed him while he was phoning Mrs. Barrett. He nabbed Mrs. Hyde’s necklace and you let him out through your office. Nice work, but—”
The mug kept his gat against my back, socked me behind the ear. It stung.
Dolores said, “How absurd!”
“Not half as absurd as the arrest of Ronald,” I told her. “Who is this thug back of me?”
The guy growled. “She’s my daughter,” he said. “And if you think I’d let Mangasarius doublecross her an’ marry—”
“Jack!” Dolores protested.
“What the hell, kid?” he growled. “He won’t be the first dick I’ve put away. You guess too good, feller. Yeah, Mangasarius was in college with me—Quentin. He read some books up there an’ doped out this racket. When he got out, I told him to look up the kid, give her a boost. He was goin’ to marry her until this rich dame—”
“Daddy Jack! Don’t talk!”
“Okay! Come on, cop. We go downstairs.”
There was satisfaction in knowing I was good at guessing games, but I was heading for the door and the cellar, with Jack’s gat pushing me along.
“Rufus is only paying me five grand for clearing Ronald,” I said. “Why don’t we make a deal?”
“No deals with cops,” Jack muttered.
But Dolores checked him. “If you took him for a trip, Jack, you know where, until this blows over, that might be the best. You have to duck anyway. I have proof. They won’t question that I was his niece. His will still stands. Whether they hang Ronald or let him off, we’ll be on top.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll take him up to the mine, then.”
“I worked in a mine once,” I cracked. “I don’t like ’em. I won’t go.” That made Jack mad. I hoped it would. He shifted his gat to his left hand and swung with his right. During the shift, I ducked and socked. He tried to swing with the gun, but I had him winded and half down. I butted him with my head and sent him to the floor. The gun popped and Dolores yelled for help.
I got him by the wrist as he was twisting the gun around. But he was strong, too strong. The gun barrel moved steadily toward my ribs, and in another minute I’d have been out.
I was half-dazed, but I heard a sweet voice. “As you were!” Rose said, and hit Jack over the head with the stubby barrel of an automatic.
He slumped under me like a dead man, I grabbed his gun and got up.
The taxi driver had come in with Rose—he was armed with a monkey wrench—and Dolores and the servants were lined up against the wall.
“I told you to wear your galoshes,” Rose told me.
“And I told you to stay put!” I growled.
Dolores went all to pieces and cried hysterically. I phoned Kelly and told him to come and get ’em. He was there within fifteen minutes, and he started cussing me for holding out on him. I laughed at him and we went away, Rose and I and the taxi driver. “Where to?” he asked.
“Just keep drivin’,” I said. “Anywhere.”
It was tough making Rufus pay up. He was one of those guys who wants to settle ten cents on the dollar. But when I got his check, I said to Rose, “Kid, you and I ought to be partners. Let’s start with this.”
“Why, Mister Burke!” she said. “I am blushing in confusion.”
Jack went back to college—Folsom, this time—for life. He took it on the chin, covered up Dolores, and she got off. You couldn’t expect a male jury to send her up. The last I heard of her, she was in Frisco town, selling the Miracle Way.
And Mrs. Rufus still contributes to the cause!
COP’S WIFE
John Jay Chichester
Even hours after he had broken his date with the hangman, “Trigger” Haines was only twenty miles from Cole County Prison, where, in the jail yard, a scaffold had been especially built to receive him.
Trigger was lucky to have got even twenty miles. With pursuit so hard upon his heels, it would have been folly to keep to his original plan of trying for a get-away in the automobile that Tessie had left for him at the foot of West Street, the ignition key hidden under the floor mat.
All highways were blocked, all cars being stopped and searched within twenty minutes after Haines had shot his way out of the death cell. A dark night and the confusion of a violent rainstorm had enabled him to take flight across the open country and, so far, slip through the net.
Daylight was danger. As the first graying of dawn began to melt the night’s shielding blackness, Trigger Haines knew that his only chance now was to get under cover—and stay there until darkness came again.
The rain had stopped, but his denim trousers and jacket, which he had been forced to wear in jail, hung soddenly to his short, squat body; the chill of their clammy touch soaked through his skin until the very marrow of his bones was ice. Mud caked his shoes and weighted his feet. Almost completely exhausted, he emerged from a strip of woods into a small cleared field.
Just ahead was a small collection of buildings, dimly silhouetted against a background of dirty gray sky. Breath pumping through his throat in wheezing gasps, Trigger Haines paused, leaning against the sagging fence which inclosed the small meadow. Carefully he took stock of his surroundings.
His flight, made with a confused sense of direction, had evidently brought him into the outskirts of a small town. The buildings apparently belonged to a village farm where a family kept a cow and a few chickens, but the place had a run-down, deserted atmosphere which was noticeable, even in the darkness.
“Daylight soon,” muttered Trigger Haines. “Gotta get under cover somewhere. Can’t keep goin’ much longer, anyhow.”
Wearily he crawled through the fence
and made his way through the wet tangle of uncut meadow grass to investigate the buildings and determine how safe it would be for him to use one of them as a hide-away. He reached the barn and found a door that he could open. Cautiously he struck a match, shielding the flame within cupped hands.
The barn was empty. Evidently it had been in disuse for a long time. There was still hay in the loft; he could see that through the opening above the stalls, and the ladder leading up to the space under the eaves. The hay would be warm; he could burrow into the stuff and get some heat into his shivering body.
Trigger Haines climbed the ladder and dug himself in. Slowly, very slowly, a little warmth began to creep back into his blood. The promise of daylight became an actuality as the sun crept up over the horizon and shot beams of light through cracks in the barn wall.
Suddenly, just as the idea of sleep began to take hold of him, he heard a sound which startled him fully awake again. A door had banged; there was the rattle of an empty tin pail. Alarmed, Trigger Haines squirmed his head and shoulders out of the hay and put his eye near one of the cracks which gave him a view of the rear of the house.
A woman had come out of the kitchen. She was young and pretty, and the gracefulness of her body was a poetry of motion.
Trigger Haines wasn’t interested in her beauty. He saw only that she was headed toward the barn, and his heavy, vicious face twisted into an ugly snarl as his right hand—the one with the first joint of the thumb missing—moved toward his gun, jerking it clear of the crudely improvised holster which held it under his armpit.
The other hand darted toward the sagging pocket of his cotton prison jacket, heavy with the cylindrical weight of a silencer. Swiftly he fitted the silencer to the end of the gun muzzle, then he saw that these deadly preparations were, at least for the moment, unnecessary.
The comely young woman wasn’t coming to the barn after all. She was making her way to the well. A moment later the pump was creaking plaintively as she drew a pail of water. Trigger Haines gave a grunt as he relaxed, and he was preparing to crawl back under the hay when his hand again tightened its grip on the gun.