by Jerry eBooks
“You mean I don’t know what he’s up to. But I’m going to find out damned fast.” He released Betty’s arm violently, almost threw it back to her. “I’m going to call the police.”
He strode toward the hallway. Betty sprang after him. “Ken Mitchell, you listen to me!”
He had the hallway phone in one hand. He used the other hand to seize her outstretched wrist, applying vicious, twisting pressure.
“Ken,” Betty choked. “Be sensible. Think of Mrs. Stafford. At least speak to her first!”
“I’m thinking of her,” Ken said. “She’s always despised me, and Crath too. She’d be happy if you and Ed framed one of us, but I’m not going to let you get away with it. Hello, Police Headquarters? Give me the Homicide Division—”
Betty broke loose from the bushy haired youth’s grasp. She had to get to Ed Harnock, but she wasn’t going to run through that room with all those hateful eyes.
She fled along the hallway, away from the jeering triumph of Ken Mitchell’s voice. The study. It must be somewhere along here.
She saw a door, twisted the knob, whirled inside. But it wasn’t the study, after all. Thick, old-fashioned books peered at her through glass-fronted cases. A sliding ladder angled up to the upper shelves. The room wasn’t large enough to be the library. It looked more like a den, possibly an adjunct to the study beyond.
Betty stumbled across it, pulled open another door. Her breath sucked in sharply. It was lucky she hadn’t whirled with blind haste in through this door. Steep, narrow steps dropped in front of her. The steps were lighted by a basement bulb.
Suddenly she saw the shadow of a head, shoulders, and another’s arm below. The hand gripped a small object, smashed it down on the shadow head. Betty heard a long, sustained gurgling sound, then a relieved sigh. The shadow arm moved in a circling gesture.
Crath Mitchell. What was he up to in the basement? His shadow moved away. She heard gritty footfalls receding.
The next moment her feet had slipped out of her high-heeled party pumps and were gliding down the steps. It wasn’t bravery on Betty’s part, nor recklessness. Fright made a thick weight at the pit of her stomach. Desperation drove her down the stairs, the desperate hope of stumbling onto some clue before the police arrived.
The basement widened before her. An expanse of concrete forested with the piers that held up the big house. The floor was damply cold, gritty, grimed with coal dust. Cobwebs flagged out from the pillars, spread down from the beams, draped the front of a row of wooden bins.
This much she saw in a glance—a glance that searched for Crath Mitchell and failed to find him.
It was at second scrutiny that she saw where the cobwebs were freshly torn away from the plank door of a bin midway down the row.
Betty hesitated, the pulse pounding hard in her throat.
Scuf-f-f-f.
Her throat.
Scuf-f-f-f.
CHAPTER V
Marge!
Her head jerked, her eyes strained. She saw Crath Mitchell. He was at almost the other end of the basement. A match flared in his big hand. That was the sound she had heard, a match head dragging across one of the massive pillars.
Betty caught up the skirt in her hand, sped across the floor. She was sure Crath wasn’t watching. He couldn’t be, not with his face cupped into the blaze of the match.
She yanked the bin door open. “Marge . . .!”
She said that aloud. She hadn’t meant to make a sound. But, Marge! What was Marge Dean doing here—the girl-friend she’d left at the hotel, had talked to on the phone only half an hour ago?
Marge wasn’t slouched in the corner of the bin from choice, that was sure. Not with a handkerchief wadded into her mouth, her lip dribbling a thin red trickle, her wrists and knees trussed up with knotted sash cord.
Betty forgot caution. She leaped into the blackened coal bin.
Warm, sticky blood smeared her fingers as she tore at the handkerchief gag.
“Marge, what in the world—”
Marge’s eyes, distended with terror, tried to flash a warning. It was too late. Crath Mitchell’s big shoulders filled the doorway. His shadow blotted out Marge’s face, and her warning. His arm had already darted, a thick hand squeezing over her mouth . . .
Upstairs, Ed Harnock jammed savage fingers deep into Ken Mitchell’s flinching shoulder.
“Where’d she go, you two-bit phony?” Ken’s eyes went jade with pain. “I’m not the floosie’s guardian.”
Ed simply tightened his fingers. “Down the hall!” Ken shrieked. “Last I seen!”
Harnock fanned out his fingers as he thrust his arm forward. Ken spilled into a chair, fell out, and landed in an untidy sprawl.
Ralph Stafford smiled down at his nephew. “Two-bit phony. Dear, dear, what a crude young man. And what an accurate one.”
“I’d like to see him take on my brother!” Ken retorted. “Take on someone his own size!”
“I’ll mention it to him,” the older man said, trudging in pursuit of Ed Harnock.
Ed butted his head and shoulders into a room. It was a small, bookfilled den. He ran on farther down the hall, to another door. It opened into the study.
Albert Kisley was at the telephone. “—extremely urgent! I don’t care if it is against your rules. Call him!” He turned and motioned to Ed Harnock. “I’ve located Wintrop. He’s teaching a night class at the Academy of Art.”
“Where’s that door go?” Harnock barged past the lawyer. It led to the huge, paneled library. Ed turned back in puzzlement. Kisley was impatiently saying, “No, you blithering idiot! My name isn’t Mitchell. It’s about Danny Mitchell, tell Wintrop that.”
Harnock stepped out into the hall. Amy Stafford had now joined Ken and Ralph Stafford.
“Tell me the truth! Do either of you know anything about the Escortettes?”
They shook their heads. Amy Stafford looked to Ed.
“Then your theory is probably right. But I can’t understand Danny having to hire a girl to go out with him.”
“He did it as a lark, I suppose,” Harnock muttered. He stepped into the den again, this time saw the other door, ajar.
“Oh, her shoes!” He was already diving down the stairs.
Scuffling and straining, blind panic was gripping Betty. A meaty hand crushed down onto her mouth. She bit it—hard. And then held on.
Crath smashed his free fist into her ribs. The blow knocked the wind out of her, drove her into a corner of the bin. She tried to scream. She couldn’t. She didn’t have breath enough to utter a sound. But her fingers closed on something. A heavy object. She smashed at Crath blindly, not even knowing that her weapon was a short-handled coal scoop. Crath knew it though.
He sidestepped the metal, grasped the arm swinging it.
“You hellcat! I’ll teach you to bite!”
Big fingers crushed into her throat. He wasn’t in any hurry about it. He was still choking the girl by slow, sadistic degrees when he heard Ed Harnock’s voice.
“Slob,” Ed said.
Crath swirled. Harnock’s fist drove in. Then his other fist. Crath hit him in the face and Ed laughed.
“That all you got?” he gave Crath the old Dempsey shift. Guard dropped, inviting a lead. Head rolling under the expected swing, Ed’s right blocked Crath, then the left hooked over the blocked right. Crath jelly-fished.
“Betty, kid, how are you?” She was a sight. But she had the stuff. She was spunky. Beaten, gasping for breath, she was fishing that gag away from Marge Dean’s mouth.
Marge had something to say too. She didn’t stall around asking questions. She hurriedly bit out:
“I’m the one they want. I knew I had to come out of my shell the minute Betty phoned that it was about that Mitchell case . . .”
“You were the blonde in Danny’s apartment!” Ed Harnock said.
“Don’t get it wrong, mister. He told me he had a cousin who painted and who would pay money for a model. I went up there to meet the cousin.”
&
nbsp; “So that’s why Ken went there!” cried Betty.
“You smoked a cigarette on the terrace,” Harnock recited, “while Danny mixed the drinks. Only it took him a long time, and you finally went in to see why. And there he lay—dead.”
“You couldn’t be righter,” Marge said, “even if you were there. It was awful. He had a card with my phone number on it. I looked in his pockets, even pulled out his wallet, but my fingers were shaking so I dropped it. That’s when I gave up and beat it. Did you ever see anybody with his head smashed like that? I was afraid I was going to faint, and I got out of there before I did. I went down the stairs. I didn’t dare let the elevator fellow see me.”
Crath twitched against the wall, behind Harnock. His hand lifted and fell.
“Go on,” Ed said.
Marge swallowed. “I hadn’t any idea who did it, there wasn’t anything I could tell the police. It would mean my job. The agency is strict about that rule against partying in a man’s apartment. Why should I turn myself in when it wouldn’t do any good?”
“Aren’t you leaving out something?” Harnock asked.
She nodded. “I saw a man in the hallway below, but it didn’t mean anything at the time. He was at a door, fumbling with his keys. I thought he lived in the building.”
“And you saw him again tonight?”
“On the porch,” Marge said. “Just before he slugged me.”
Crath’s hand moved again, closed around the handle of the shovel. His lips were tight, pulled in at their corners.
“You saw the killer,” said Harnock. “His murder wasn’t very well thought out. He wanted to pin it on Ken eventually, and it was an afterthought that sent him back for the wallet so’s he could use it to frame Ken with, later on.”
Crath lifted the shovel. It made a very small, scraping sound as it came off the concrete floor. Ed Harnock didn’t even bother to look around. He said:
“If you want your teeth kicked in, big boy, just try that.”
A siren outside had come into earshot. “Cops,” Harnock sighed. “Now you’ll have to tell it all over again, Miss Dean.”
Crath Mitchell heaved himself erect. “And I suppose I’ll have to prove my alibi all over again?”
Quick footfalls thudded down the steps. “Harnock! What the devil—” A voice bleated.
Crath threw himself against the wall. He was suddenly, mortally afraid.
“Why, Uncle Ralph!” Betty gasped. Harnock heeled Betty with the palm of his hand back to the wall beside Crath Mitchell.
“No use, guy. No use in the world.” Uncle Ralph was in the doorway of the bin.
“That’s him! That’s the one!” Marge Dean shrilled.
Uncle Ralph’s stare dragged down toward her. Harnock would never have a better chance, He sidestepped, kicked. A gun in the fat man’s hand roared, tunneled flame, filled the coal bin with a reek of cordite fumes. He had tried to twist away from the kick, and his shot missed. The kick didn’t. Harnock’s toe smashed through the pudgy fingers, booted the gun away. He picked up the gun as a safety measure.
And then Uncle Ralph was really the blubbering individual he looked. Promises of all sorts of money were made if they wouldn’t turn him in.
“You had him sized up right,” Harnock said to Crath. “You could have blackmailed him for life, if you could have helped him get away with it.”
* * * *
There were cops, questions, curious faces upstairs, and Ed Harnock was in the middle of it all, saying:
“It was the pictures, the collection he had advised Amy Stafford to buy. The classic ones, which were really only copies of classic ones. Danny, who was taking active charge of Mrs. Stafford’s affairs, had asked Wintrop of the Van Briesen Galleries to inventory the lot. Ralph had been splitting with dishonest dealers. He had to stop the inventory. He did it by killing Danny.
“He was lucky. Marge Dean could place him at the scene. But she didn’t want to get mixed up in it. She changed her mind after Betty phoned and found Betty mixed up in it. She was loyal enough to come here.
“Meanwhile, Betty had made a remark that worried Ralph. He was suspicious, watching her. She followed Crath onto the porch. He sneaked out the front door to spy on them, just as Marge came up the steps. She screamed as he rushed her. He slugged her, carried her unconscious body inside.
“But he needed time—a chance to get her downstairs and safely tied up. He ran through the big room upstairs, bumped into the birthday cake, upset it, and planted in the cake the wallet he had intended to plant on Ken all along. That distracted everybody long enough for him to tie and gag Marge.
“But Crath had seen something—possibly the actual slugging. He certainly had a chance to get the goods on his uncle and blackmail him.”
Amy Stafford was beside them. She held a check book and looked at Betty Lorell.
“I told you I’d go as high as five thousand, if you were successful.”
“Five grand?” Marge Dean gasped. “In one night? And I tried to teach you how to be a professional!”
“I’m not, I couldn’t ever learn to be,” Betty answered.
“I’m glad of that,” Ed Harnock remarked, “because if she asked as much as the other Escortettes I couldn’t begin to pay her for all the time I’m going to take up.”
HOMICIDE WHOLESALE
Harold Q. Masur
A Disappearing Deb Stirs Up a Hornet’s Nest of Trouble for Private Sleuth Petrie!
CHAPTER I
DANGEROUS BLONDE
LESS than ten minutes after I had checked into the Hotel Rouen, a furtive knock sounded on my door. I opened it and there stood the night porter with a grin on his wrinkled old face.
“Got it?” I asked.
With a triumphant flourish he produced a sixty-eight-cent bottle of Irish whiskey.
I gave him a five-dollar bill, told him to keep the change, and before he could recover from the shock I offered him the first drink.
He snapped out the cork, coupled the bottle direct to his main intake, and started drinking with a noise like water running down an open drain in a bathtub.
Quickly, deftly, I swiped the pass-key hanging from his belt.
I saw the bottle was almost half empty and I lunged for it. I had forty pounds on the old boy, and I was thirty years younger, but it took quite a struggle. He was coughing and nearly choked when I finally ejected him from the room. I finished the Irish, opened the door, craned my neck into the corridor and found it empty. That was fine.
I crossed diagonally to Suite 620, inserted the pass-key and let myself in. I gave the room a dose of electricity and let out a soft whistle. The kid was certainly spreading it, but then who had a better right? A three-room suite with large casement windows, nicely furnished, kitchenette and built-in shower.
I skipped into the bedroom and began rummaging—and that’s where I got a surprise. The drawers were pretty empty, except for some silken underthings—and the little toy. It was a pearl-handled, .22 caliber revolver of French manufacture, small, compact, neat.
Maybe you never heard of Miss Justine Squire, the screwball debutante, Public Glamor Girl Number One, the girl who tries to spend money as fast as her old man can make it. Which is an impossible job.
What was she carrying artillery for? That’s what I wanted to know. I replaced it neatly in the drawer.
I WALTZED over to the closets and examined them. For a gal with a millionaire papa, a famous wardrobe, and a reputation for wearing it, she was traveling awfully light. A matched sable jacket worth a rajah’s ransom, one topaz-colored evening gown weighing two ounces, a single pair of silver slippers, and that was all.
I was fingering the soft richness of the sable jacket when the bedroom door closed and somebody behind me gasped.
I stabbed for my shoulder-rigged holster where I keep the big Colt. It’s a .45 and they don’t make hand artillery that packs more wallop. I always say when you need a gun in my business you need a gun. And even as I swung around I was r
eleasing the safety catch.
This girl was something worth looking at, especially the legs. She was small, slender, and her blond hair was parted in the center and wound in a braid around the back of her head. Her mouth was a splash of orange—full, moist, sultry. Her eyes were sea-green, wide, and just a trifle scared. The photographers hadn’t done her justice, not at all.
She was holding the little French revolver. That’s right. She had sneaked in, spied me at the closet, tiptoed over to the bureau, and snaked out the gun. Imagine my embarrassment. There we were, the two of us—she with the pearl-handled toy pointed squarely at me, and I had the big Colt held directly on her. Her lips were pressed tightly together.
“You’d better get your hands pretty high,” she opened them enough to say.
That was funny enough to make me laugh.
I ran my gaze casually over her.
“Put that bean-shooter away,” I said, “and let’s talk this thing over.”
She didn’t budge. “If it’s money you want,” she said, “or jewels—I haven’t any with me.”
I shook my head. “You got me wrong, baby.”
A muscle jumped in her throat and she was silent a moment.
“Kidnaping?” she inquired, almost casually. “If it is, you’ll be disappointed. My father won’t pay a cent.”
“You really think that?” I asked.
She stared coldly. “Get out!”
“Later, maybe,” I said coolly.
And all this time we were standing there, holding our guns on each other. There was in her face a certain determination, purpose, strength of character—none of which assets I had been led to believe she possessed, not from the newspaper accounts of her crazy, harebrained exploits.
I stuck my Colt back under my arm.
“See,” I told her. “Now you put yours away.”
A light came into her sea-green eyes, and a tight smile twisted her lips.
She took a single step forward and her fingers tightened around the .22.
“I’m not kidding,” she said. “Either you get out or I’ll make your skin leak in a dozen places.”