by Jerry eBooks
He turned abruptly from Martindale Street, walked west into the cool wind that drove scant, spitting rain out of the dark sky. He pushed his hat up from his forehead and lifted his face to the wind and rain. He was feeling all right. There was no pain except the stiff soreness of the bullet wound itself. Dr. Fritz Wulfing had told him there would be no pain at the end, but then Fritz Wulfing was a friend as well as a physician.
“And how the hell does he know?” Barney whispered into the darkness. Then his lips curled bitterly and he tried to consider himself objectively, like a corpse in a crime story.
He was pretty good at that. He might have written his own obituary, except that that hinted of dramatics. Lord, how he hated dramatics! When a story broke, Gentleman Ghent got the facts, put them down tersely in good newspaper style. He was a damned good reporter. Never be an interpretive writer. Never drift into fiction, because he wouldn’t know a dramatic situation if he met one. And he’d met plenty. He was calloused to dramatic situations.
He guessed that was why be could think coldly about his own death, Maybe he was the nucleus of a dramatic situation and didn’t know it.
He came around the block and into Martindale again. The siren was silent, but the red eye of the squad car was beaming down the street from a point directly in front of the Pomeroy house. This time Barney crossed Martindale to the east side, instead of walking by Sam’s Subway again. And he went toward the narrow, red brick dwelling that belonged to Harry Pomeroy.
Behind the police car was a small, shiny new coupe with press plates bolted on about the licenses. That would belong to Benny Dean, who had ridden into the police-reporter job that had been Barney’s. Barney grinned at the coupe and walked up the approach to the front door. A cop named Fitzgerald stood on the steps talking to some neighbors or passers-by who wanted to know what this was all about. Barney shouldered up to the cop, said hello.
“I heard you were sick with lead poison, Barney,” Fitzgerald said, and stared incredulously.
“Just released today.” Barney jerked his thumb toward the door. “What goes on?”
“Harry Pomeroy got it,” the cop said.
“Bad?”
“As bad as they come. Go on in, Barney. That cub from your paper will have to grow a crop of corns to fill your shoes!”
Barney went into a narrow hall that was all Turkey-red carpet, somber walls, worn plush settee, and walnut stairway. Benny Dean hung on a wall phone that had cost Harry Pomeroy fifty cents a month less than the other kind. He was asking for Caster at the city desk with one side of his mouth and trying to bite through a candy bar with the other side. He didn’t see Barney.
Barney Ghent walked behind Benny and jerked the receiver away from Benny’s ear.
“Hey, who the—” When Benny saw who it was his chubby face fell almost far enough to bounce on the floor.
“Barney!” he gasped.
Barney pointed with his forefinger at the phone. “When you address that big cluck call him Mister Caster, son, and you’ll get to be famous and get shot at like me.” He leaned over the transmitter and hugged the receiver to his ear.
Caster was yelling, “Barney. Is that you, Barney?”
“Me,” Barney admitted. “I’m taking over for Dean.”
“But you can’t, damn it! You—you’re supposed to be—be sick!”
Barney chuckled without mirth. “Just one more murder, Chief. Then I promise to stay out of your hair for life. I’m really going to enjoy this one, Chief.”
He could hear Caster punishing his gum. In his mind’s eye he could see the lean jaws chopping up and down. He grinned at the phone. This was tough for Caster, because Caster knew that Barney was going to die and knew, further, that Barney didn’t want sympathy. It was almost pathetic the way Caster had dropped into Barney’s flat every now and then, all the while Barney was in bed, to tell lies about all the big plans Henishaw and the other big shots at the paper were making for Barney’s future. Caster had even worked himself up to such a pitch of enthusiasm over Barney’s non-existent future that he had promised to send him to Germany to cover the cold war.
“Okay, Barney,” Caster said finally. “It’s fine of you to sort of show Benny the ropes before the paper sends you to South America.”
Barney Ghent hung up and turned to Dean. “Benny, one of the things you want to learn is not to phone Caster until you’ve got something besides the fact a guy was shot. He likes you to have your story first, see?”
Then he turned his back on Dean and went up the carpeted steps to the den on the second story where Harry Pomeroy’s body lay. Dean followed, his mouth slightly ajar and his camera bouncing on his belly.
CHAPTER TWO
Tap, Thump—Blotto
DOG-TIRED, Barney Ghent flopped on the plush settee in the hall of the Pomeroy house. He had Just phoned his story to Caster. It was hardly a story, but rather a series of closely linked facts. Harry Pomeroy, dominant power behind the local political machine, had been found shot to death in the study of his home on Martindale Street. The body had been discovered by Mrs. Taylor, Pomeroy’s housekeeper, at eight-thirty. Death had occurred somewhere between 7:45 and 8:15. There were two bullets in Pomeroy’s chest, both .32 caliber. One bullet had penetrated Pomeroy’s heart.
There was no chance of suicide, as the murder weapon had not been found. The housekeeper, Mrs. Taylor, was not a good witness, though she had been in the house at the time of the shooting. She could not remember hearing the shots, which might be explained by the fact that Pomeroy’s den was in a remote quarter of the second story of the house, or perhaps because Mrs. Taylor was totally deaf in one ear.
To Mrs. Taylor’s knowledge, no one had entered the house, though a man selling magazine subscriptions had knocked at the door at about eight o’clock. Mrs. Taylor had not admitted the magazine agent. Further, she could not describe him in any detail, because she was extremely nearsighted and had had the misfortune to break her glasses late Saturday afternoon.
Those were the facts as the police knew them. Barney Ghent sat with his heels together on the floor and his knees far apart, the lean muscles of his abdomen relaxed, his head lowered. Interns from the City Hospital brought the body down the carpeted front stairway and along the hall, but Barney did not raise his head.
He could still see Harry Pomeroy slumping in his chair in the den upstairs, his shirt-front dark with blood, the stingy yellow light from the ceiling fixture falling on the waxlike dome of his high, bald head. Recalling that Pomeroy’s position had been extremely similar to his own, Barney pulled himself upright.
Across the hall, behind the half-drawn portieres, Barney could hear Lieutenant Macallum of Homicide questioning Mrs. Taylor, the housekeeper. Barney got to his feet, crossed to the doorway of the portieres, and looked into the parlor.
Mrs. Taylor was a full-bosomed, thin-lipped woman. She sat stiffly in a chair, her plump fingers basket-clasped in her lap. Her hostile eyes followed Macallum’s thick-waisted figure as he paced back and forth in front of her. Benny Dean and a couple of cops were standing near the doorway.
Barney Ghent hooked one hand over Dean’s shoulder and clung to the portiere with his other.
“Who done it, pal?” he asked Dean, but his fat successor didn’t answer. Macallum had the floor, was pounding it with his brogans, firing questions at Mrs. Taylor.
“Your quarters are in the first floor rear,” Macallum was saying. “Now, Mrs. Taylor, you’re perfectly certain that, in spite of your handicap, you could have heard anybody enter the back door? You could have heard anybody going up the back steps to Mr. Pomeroy’s den?”
“Yes,” she snapped. “I ain’t as deaf as all that!”
“And you were in your quarters between a quarter to eight and eight-fifteen?”
“Except for when I came into the front hall to answer the telephone. That was some time just before eight o’clock.”
“How long did you talk on the phone?” Macallum persisted.
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p; “Maybe five, maybe ten minutes.”
“Who to?”
“I don’t know. It was some sort of household survey. Some woman was asking me a lot of questions about the kind of soap I used, where I bought groceries—that sort of thing.”
Macallum nodded vigorously. “And you previously stated that both the back and front doors were night-latched. Now, at about eight-thirty you came into the front hall again to adjust the furnace thermostat and you found the front door standing open. How do you account for that, if the front door was also night-latched?”
“I told you,” Mrs. Taylor said, “that I figured Mr. Pomeroy had stepped out. I called up the steps to him to see if he was in or out. He didn’t answer. I went up the steps to the den to make sure, turned on the light, discovered him sitting there in the chair, dead. I don’t attempt to account for the open door. That’s your business.”
Barney asked Dean in a whisper, “How’s she so sure of the exact time she made every move, Benny?”
“She had her radio going in her room,” Benny said. He was wide-eyed and excited. “She was laying for her favorite program, which was to come on at eight-thirty.”
Barney yawned. “Well, I’m going home now, Benny. Feel weak in my pins.”
“Sure,” Dean said. “I know—when I had the flu, I was like that.”
“Give me a ring if something turns up. The guy who killed Pomeroy ought to have a medal.” Barney patted Dean’s shoulder and then went out into the hall and through the front door. He said good night to Patrolman Fitzgerald and shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat as he went down the approach walk. The short-barreled revolver in his right coat pocket was cold now.
He took a taxi back to his flat, was thankful that he had only one flight of stairs to climb. At the top of the steps he stopped and pressed his hand over his heart. It was beating fast, hard, and steady. He took a deeper breath than he had heretofore allowed himself and walked down the hall to the door of his apartment. He felt as though all the blood in his body had drained down into his legs. He was light-headed and leaden-footed. He unlocked his door, pushed it open, went into his living-room, and sat down in a chair without stopping either to close the door or remove his coat.
He sat there, staring across the room at a decanter of whisky that rested on the table. He’d never known a time when he wanted a drink more than he did now. But because whisky was one of those pleasant things which would hasten the rupture of that nasty little sack in his chest, he resisted.
He got to his feet, walked into the short hall where there were doors to bathroom and closet. He opened the closet, tossed his hat on the shelf, and hung up his coat. He was still thinking about the whisky.
Barney went back into the living-room and over to the table. He picked up the decanter and a short glass, poured himself a drink. What did it matter now, anyway? He lifted the glass. Here’s to a short life and a merry one, he thought, and drank.
He put the glass down and gasped. The whisky hit his empty stomach hard and burned like lye. It stunned him a little, because there was something in the back of his mind which he had intended to do and couldn’t quite remember. Oh, yes. The gun.
He walked a little unsteadily back into the hall, opened the closet, removed the revolver from the pocket of his coat. Then he carried it into the bedroom and turned on the light. The gun was a short-barreled Swiss Chylewski .32. He took it over to the dresser, opened the top drawer, tossed the revolver in on top of a pile of socks. He closed the drawer, went over to his bed, sat down, and began to take off his shoes. He got as far as untying the laces when he remembered that the light was still burning in his living-room and that he had not closed his front door. He got up and walked through the short hall, stopped.
He felt pretty certain he had not turned out the living-room light. It was out now. He was conscious of a cloying odor that nagged at his memory. Frowning, he stepped into the darkness, moving toward the door. If the door was closed and locked, then his mind was beating his body to the grave.
There was a sound—something that tapped once against the floor, followed by a soft, padded thump. Barney’s pulse quickened. He turned half to the left before something beat down upon his head. All consciousness was eclipsed even before he hit the floor.
CHAPTER THREE
Old Stuff—With a New Angle
WHILE there had been no time at all for him to expect that this blow on the head would finish him, there was still some element of surprise in his return to consciousness. At first he thought that this was some sort of a dream that dipped into his immediate past; he had so often in the days before come awake to find Dr. Fritz Wulfing bending over him, Wulfing’s grave, gray face bracketed in the ear pieces of a stethoscope.
Wulfing murmured, “Thank God!” Barney rolled his head a little on the floor and closed his eyes.
“Barney,” Wulfing said. “Barney!”
Barney opened his eyes again, stared up at Fritz Wulfing’s face. The wrinkles in the doctor’s lean cheeks were deep and black. Something close to desperation showed in the gray eyes. Wulfing drew his upper lip down, set his lower teeth on the fringe of his gray mustache.
“Barney, Harry Pomeroy has been murdered!”
There was unexplained anxiety in Wulfing’s usually dull voice. Wulfing was no friend of Pomeroy’s. In fact, Harry Pomeroy had been the cause of a recent estrangement between Fritz Wulfing and his daughter, Betty. Wulfing knew Pomeroy for what he was, had refused to let Betty have anything to do with him. Betty had promptly packed her clothes, taken them to her art studio. She had been living in the studio for a couple of months now.
“Barney, can’t you hear me?” Whiting pleaded.
“Sure,” Barney said weakly. “Pomeroy’s been murdered. Old stuff. I covered the case for the paper, phoned the story hours ago.”
He squinted across the room at the electric clock on the table. It was two in the morning. Whoever had socked him had done a pretty thorough job it. Or maybe his weakened condition had something to do with it. It was funny he’d come out of it at all. He raised his hand to his chest, patted himself.
“Am I all here?”
“Then you knew about Betty?”
He wasn’t all there. Somebody slipped his wallet out of the inside pocket of his coat. He tried sitting up, couldn’t have made it without the doctor’s help. He turned, looking at Wulfing.
“What about Betty?”
“Then you don’t know,” Wulfing said. “Lieutenant Macallum has arrested Betty for the job.”
Barney stared dully at the lined, worried gray face. “Get me a drink,” he said. Wulfing shook his head, and Barney repeated: “Get me a drink!”
When Wulfing made no move toward the decanter, Barney gripped the doctor’s shoulder and hauled himself to his knees.
“Who the hell you trying to save, Fritz,” he asked bitterly, “me, with three or four days left, or your own daughter?”
Wulfing let go, and Barney crawled on hands and knees to the table, got hold of the edge, pulled himself to his feet. He leaned against the table, got hold of the decanter and glass, poured himself a drink.
“Macallum’s crazy,” he said, and tossed off the drink. He began to feel better at once.
“Barney, you ought to be in bed,” Wulfing said.
“I’m not,” Barney chuckled. “Why did you come here, if you didn’t expect me to get on my feet and help you?”
“I just wanted advice. You know the police better than I do. I wanted to know what would be best for Betty.” The doctor sat down in his chair and tried to bite the fringe of his mustache again.
Barney said, “Stop worrying. Betty didn’t do it, see?”
He just recalled the woman who had run from the Pomeroy house earlier that evening. Betty! If the poor kid had discovered the body, she wouldn’t have known what she was doing. Maybe she dropped some incriminating piece of evidence.
“As soon as I get my hat and coat we’ll go downtown and spring Betty,�
�� Barney said, and went into the hall where the closet was.
“But how?”
Barney reached for his tan balmacaan. “We’ll tell Macallum that I killed Pomeroy.” He stepped back into the living-room, smiling at Fritz Wulfing’s incredulous expression. His smile quirked a little as he shouldered into his coat because when he moved his arms the wound in his chest hurt.
Wulfing gripped the chair arms. His jaw drooped. He kept shaking his head back and forth without saying anything. Barney stepped back to the closet for his hat.
“Sure.” he said to Wulfing. “What’s the difference? I won’t even be tried. There won’t be time.”
All that was taut went out of Wulfing. He was suddenly as old as he looked. He rocked forward in the chair and buried his face in his hands, old, tired.
“I can’t let you do this, Barney,” he said slowly, his voice muffled by his fingers.
Barney grunted. He frowned slightly as he walked over to Wulfing’s chair and looked down at the silver-streaked head. Fritz Wulfing thought Barney was playing the hero; thought that Gentleman Ghent, who was doomed to die anyway, intended to confess a crime he hadn’t committed just to save Betty—
“Look, Fritz,” he said. Wulfing raised his head a little. His eyes were haggard.
“I never went in for dramatics, Fritz, and I’m not playing the hero now. Not that I wouldn’t in this case if things were a little different.”
“What do you mean?” Wulfing whispered.
Barney laughed. “Why in hell do you think I asked you to lend me a gun—just to protect the paltry five or six days of existence left to me? That’s what I told you, but I didn’t think you’d believe it. Fritz, I’d never kill a man just to save what’s left of my own life.”
Wulfing still didn’t understand. Barney rested a hand on the doctor’s shoulder.
“I killed Harry Pomeroy, Fritz. Somebody should have killed him a long time ago. I did it because I thought it was the greatest service I could render this town before I have to shove off. You got that?”