by Jerry eBooks
“Sunday afternoon, you went to Wulfing’s place and swiped a gun. You deliberately took a duplicate of the Chylewski which I had. Wulfing brought me my gun on Friday and I put it in my cigar humidor. Later, on Friday, you visited me. I told you to help yourself to a cigar, inasmuch as I wouldn’t be smoking them any more. You saw my revolver then.
“The idea was to shoot Pomeroy with the gun you stole, then trade guns with me. You didn’t mind framing me, because you knew I was going to die anyway. And my hatred of Pomeroy has never been any secret.
“Sunday night, after she had learned from her father that Pomeroy was not legally divorced, Betty went to Pomeroy’s house. That was after you had killed Pomeroy and I had tried to kill him. Betty wanted to break off with Pomeroy, have it out with him about this divorce business. Marsha, who was stationed across the street in Sam’s Subway, saw Betty go into the Pomeroy house. Betty must have passed on Sam’s side of the street before crossing over. All of which gave Marsha an idea.
“You had planned to frame me for the killing. You and Marsha were watching my flat, waiting for me to turn up. Evidently you’d found some difficulty in forcing your way into my rooms. Marsha argued that she ought to be the one to switch the guns in order to frame me. You let her go to it. Marsha knocked me out. She looked for my gun in the cigar humidor, which you had told her was the place I usually kept it. Not finding it there, she searched until she found it in a drawer in my bedroom. She took my gun, but did not replace it with the murder weapon. She left my flat, concealed the murder gun in her purse, gave you my gun, and told you she had carried out instructions.”
“This is fantastic!” Hopson said.
“You didn’t think it was fantastic in the wee small hours of Monday morning when you came to my flat with Macallum, Wulfing, and me,” Barney said. “About the first thing you did was to check up on Marsha by taking a look into my humidor where Marsha said she had planted the murder weapon.”
“Marsha wanted to frame Betty because she thought you and Betty were cheating on her, so she planted the murder gun in Betty’s studio. And she also planted the latchkey to the rear door of the Pomeroy house. That was something you had overlooked. That latchkey belongs to Marsha. As Pomeroy’s wife, she still had the keys to Pomeroy’s house—a duplicate set which she had never given back. You had used that key to enter the house.”
Hopson smiled, but not quite so confidently. “You are ignoring the testimony of the Pomeroy housekeeper, Mrs. Taylor. She said she would have heard anyone entering the house.”
“Not if she happened to be telephoning at the time,” Barney said. “Mrs. Taylor, being deaf in one ear, holds the receiver to her good ear. She’d be deaf to anything except what was coming out of the receiver. That’s why she didn’t hear you come in, go up the back stairs.”
“Mrs. Taylor was on the phone when you killed Pomeroy because Marsha, planted across the street at Sam’s Subway, was on the job, talking to Mrs. Taylor and pretending she was some sort of survey artist. Marsha called when she saw you approach the Pomeroy house, and she kept Mrs. Taylor on the phone until you were in the clear.
“Later, when I left you and Doc and Macallum in my apartment you suspected I was on the scent and had a short, heavy guy—some tough egg you’d played mouthpiece for in the past—tail me and beat me up out here in front of your house. I guess you must have figured that a good beating was about all it would take to put me away for good.”
Mat Hopson was pretty casual about putting his hand into his suit-coat pocket, but not so casual about taking it out. He had a revolver in his hand, and Barney all but laughed as he recognized it as the Swiss Chylewski Fritz Wulfing had given him.
Mat said, “Marsha, go get the car out. When I’ve finished, I’ll join you.”
Barney clenched his fists, legged across the room toward Mat. Mat pulled the trigger and the short-barreled gun barked, blew black powder from the gun muzzle. A puzzled expression came over Mat’s face. He fired two more times in rapid succession as Barney closed in. The shots didn’t stop Barney. Mat ran toward the bedroom door.
“Hold it, Mat!” Fritz Wulfing warned. He’d pulled an ivory-handled .45 from somewhere inside his coat and covered both Mat and Marsha with it.
“You’d better get the police, Barney,” the doctor said quietly. “I want Betty released as quickly as possible.”
“Yes,” Barney said. “We’ll do a little switching around ourselves, such as substituting the real murderer for the principal false suspect.”
He walked over to the phone, and with a life ahead of him to live, and half a chance with Betty—. Well, there wasn’t anything to keep him from trying, anyway.
THE END
DEATH GOES DANCING
John K. Butler
A boy and a girl. And a man who wanted the girl. And music and laughter—and murder.
I.
I sat there quite a while, watching them. This was a Sunday night, and less than a dozen couples remained in the marathon; their faces chalk under strong lights, stamped with hard lines of fatigue, and all of them about ready to drop in their tracks. The big crowded ballroom echoed from the rafters with the shouts and catcalls of spectators. It made you think of the gladiatorial contests of ancient Rome—hundreds of thrill-thirsty, decadent citizens cheering lustily for someone to die for them.
Of course, I only watched couple No. 13: Larry Gilroy and Loretta Ward. It didn’t matter that others took part in the contest. To me, there was just Larry and Loretta—Larry because he was a charge of mine, a duty, and Loretta because she was a memory.
They came around the small square dance floor wearily trying to conga with the enthusiastic beat of the music. You couldn’t tell who would give out first, Larry or Loretta. They were alternately holding each other up, leaning on each other; ankles swollen to puffy thickness, feet leaden.
Then, over Larry’s shoulder, Loretta saw me sitting there in the bleachers. Her lips smiled a little, but her eyes were deep and dazed; full of wonder, asking me the silent question: why am I doing this, Jack?
I lit a cigarette, and waved a hand to her, and wondered the same thing myself.
The first time I saw Larry Gilroy he was drunk outside a speak-easy over on Tenth Avenue. That was in Little Harlem. He’d slugged a patrolman, thrown a brick through a drugstore window, and I pinched him myself that time, and sent him away in the Black Maria.
Then another time officers caught him in a grocery store stick-up, and still another time in a bank heist at Tenth and Morningside. He gave us nothing but trouble, and finally, I nabbed him for trying to peddle a bunch of wrist watches stolen from a jewelry-store window. That time, I sent him to the State pen, and he got three years of it.
I could never figure out how Loretta came to like him. She was much too swell a kid for him; a swell kid even back when we all went to school and I used to carry her books home in the afternoons. Smartest kid in the class. I never felt good enough for her myself. In fact, I can remember that night of the high-school dance, way back, when I stood outside with the other timid boys, smoking cigs in a bull session and not having the nerve to go in and ask Loretta to dance. I used to feel clumsy, awkward. The psychologists put a fancier name on it—inferiority complex.
In the years following graduation from school, I worked into the cops, went up through the rookie stage, and up to lieutenant on the pawnshop detail. That’s when I arrested Larry Gilroy for the last time. Then, much later, I got a job with the State, as a parole officer.
I didn’t see much of Loretta, though I thought about her a lot. A few times I took her out to a movie, but after a while she always had some other date, and after another while I didn’t see her at all.
We lost complete track of each other.
Then one day I was sitting in the office, idly playing tiddlywinks with a pair of dimes on my desk blotter, when Larry Gilroy came in.
He’d just been paroled from prison and had come straight to my office to report. He wore a shi
ny serge suit, a dead man’s shirt, and twisted a ragged tweed cap in pale prison hands. The mark of stir was definitely upon him. But he had a glint of honesty in his eyes and a sincere tone to his voice.
“So you’re a parole officer now, huh, Mr. McGregor?”
“That’s right, Larry.”
“I’m just out on that last rap. They tell me I got to report to you once a week. Every week for a year.”
“That’s to keep you on the straight-and-narrow, Larry. One little slip, and you go right back to the pen.”
He glanced down at his shoes, the way they do when they’ve just come out. “You don’t need to worry about that. I’m on the up-and-up now. Got a girl that’s been waiting for me. We figure to get married.”
“That’s swell,” I said. “Who is she?”
“Maybe, you know her, at that. We all used to go to school when we were kids. Loretta Ward.”
Loretta Ward!
The touch of a feather would’ve knocked me backward off my chair, but I didn’t let on.
“Loretta?” My voice sounded a little inane.
“Sure, Loretta. We plan to get married right after the dance marathon at the Paradise Ballroom. It starts March first. The winning couple gets a cash prize—a grand. And while you’re in the contest, you get all your meals and clothes and stuff, and what money the audience throws on the floor. Loretta and me figure to win it. That gives us a good start in married life. Enough so I can wait to find a job.”
I was thinking—thinking of the way it used to be between Loretta and me. Thinking how things might have turned out, and didn’t. Loretta, the girl I’d never felt good enough for. The girl who’d picked Larry out of all the world, who was going to “get a good start in married life.” With Larry Gilroy.
“It sounds fine,” I said emptily.
“Sure. But I got to ask you a favor, McGregor. I can’t report to your office every week; not while I’m in the contest. Can’t you keep tabs on me some other way?”
I decided to give him a break. When a guy like Larry—who always coasted through life on the softest, easiest, down-grade road—suddenly changes his pattern of living and enters a dance marathon, he must be soundly serious about reform. A marathon like that is the hardest kind of physical torture—for small and doubtful reward. It takes guts to enter it, particularly for an ex-con. And for a swell kid like Loretta—
“O.K.,” I told him. “Forget about the parole reports. I’ll keep tabs on you personally over at the ballroom. Best of luck. To both you and Loretta. I hope you win.”
So that Sunday night, like many nights before it, I dropped in at the ballroom to watch them. The crowd was bigger than usual, because this was the forty-third day of the show and the fans anticipated action. Already the number of contestants had been cut down by hard physical exhaustion; one young woman, in fact, had died the week before of a strained heart. Less than a dozen couples still battled desperately to outstay each other for the grand prize.
I watched it for over an hour that night, and the real trouble started at about nine.
The floor judge had just blown his whistle, calling the contestants back to the floor after a ten-minute sleep. They came out wearily from the dark, narrow corridor behind the orchestra platform. Some of the girls were asleep on their feet, their male partners gently slapping their cheeks to wake them.
I kept looking for Larry and Loretta, and they were such a long time appearing I was afraid the judge would disqualify them—if they returned at all.
I was really pulling for them. For Larry Gilroy and Loretta Ward. They could get off to a good start in marriage if they won this contest.
Phil Thorndike, the master of ceremonies, stepped from behind the black drapes and vaulted to the orchestra platform. He was a natty dresser, wore a fresh carnation in his lapel, and used perfume. In the tawdry surroundings of the show he stood out with honkatonk flash, like a circus barker.
He snatched up a portable microphone, spoke into it with a happy, please-the-suckers smile, and his voice boomed down to us cordially from giant loud-speakers set in the rafters.
“All right, folks! Hold your hats, ’cause here we go again! Once again we have action in this great contest of skill and endurance! The kids are coming back on the floor for another round; this is the forty-third day of the Paradise Dance Marathon, and anything can happen! We got nine couples left, and one single, in this great contest. The single is that fine lad, Ben West, and he needs a partner. Maybe one of the other boys will drop out during the sprints and Ben can pick up a partner. Ben’s got till midnight to pick up a partner; otherwise, the floor judge will be forced to rule Ben West out of the contest.
“This is a great show, folks. Come often, and tell your friends. Only two bits a ticket on the day, only forty cents at night. Always your money’s worth at this gigantic, spectacular, thrill-a-minute contest—at the wonderful Paradise Ballroom!” He started to stamp the platform with his well-shod left foot. “All right, folks! Let’s give the kids a big hand.” Applause clattered through the ballroom, and the master of ceremonies turned to the orchestra. “Music, boys! Let there be music! Let’s go, now! On with the dance!”
Naturally, I had eyes on the dim corridor, waiting for couple No. 13. And they came out only a few seconds before the floor judge again blew his whistle, signifying that all contestants must be on the floor.
Larry Gilroy looked weaker than ever, leaning his full weight on his partner. Loretta had all she could do to hold him up; his head wabbled; his eyes were dazed, sick; his shoes leaden.
The music blared, and all the couples tried to dance, but it was only Larry who seemed to be failing at it. Once he slipped, trying to rumba, and the crowd let out a shriek of excitement as he went down on one knee and the floor judge began to count over him, like the referee in a fight ring swinging one arm toward the fatal count of ten.
And I sat there and squirmed, like a spectator at a fight who wants to see his man win, but sees him on the floor, glassy-eyed, with the count being tolled over him. My heart was beating fast.
Phil Thorndike vaulted down from the orchestra platform. The portable microphone was still in his hands; it came away with him on a long cable, and his tough cordial voice, like a circus spieler’s, still boomed from those heavy speakers in the rafters.
“Action, folks! Hold your hats! Larry Gilroy, of couple No. 13, is down! He’s down, folks! The floor judge is counting! There goes the count! One . . . two . . . three . . . four—” Thorndike cleared his throat excitedly, and you could hear his adenoids in the amplifiers. “Larry’s partner is trying to help him back on his feet! Loretta Ward, that brave, courageous little blonde of Couple 13—look at her try to help Larry! Let’s give ’em a big hand, folks!”
The count had reached nine when Larry Gilroy, with superhuman bravado and the help of his partner, finally cleared his knee from the floor and was back in the dance. Applause became thunderous, even drowning out the announcer, but it only lasted a few seconds, and then there was a scream.
The scream shrilled through the entire ballroom, caused the orchestra to miss several beats, the audience to crane necks. It shrilled again and again; Loretta Ward’s mouth wide open, the muscles of her throat tense as she kept screaming and screaming.
At the same time she was trying to keep Larry on his feet, supporting him with one hand while she held the other hand aloft, staring at it.
We could all see the hand she held aloft—all of us, even up in the high bleachers of the ballroom. That hand of hers was wet with blood. The back of Larry’s shirt was wet with it, too.
She cried: “Larry! Larry!”
His head wagged, his lips moved, but he didn’t say a word. His eyes rolled up to hers, revealing the whites of them; and then his knees becajne rubber and he began to slip from her grasp to the floor.
The audience, every spectator from front-row box to last row in gallery, came to their feet, yelling, shouting. The whole place turned into a madhouse—with only
the master of ceremonies trying to keep order. He waved an arm frantically at the crowd. He signaled the orchestra to start playing “God Bless America.” He held the portable mike close to his mouth, talking, while his voice boomed down from those speakers overhead.
“Keep your seats, folks! Larry Gilroy, of couple No. 13, just gave out! Nothing to get excited about, folks! Just a little accident—” His voice was hoarse with shouting. “Keep your seats, folks! It’s all part of the show. Always a thrill a minute at the Paradise Dance Marathon! Let’s all sing ‘God Bless America!’ All together, now—”
He was good in his line. He had what it takes. And he gave all he had. He might have succeeded in quieting down the crowd, even a big crowd like that. But he didn’t.
He might as well be talking to a blizzard as it swept down rugged mountain passes. The people of the audience paid no attention to him. They surged down from the balcony; they climbed over boxes; they poured onto the dance floor, swarmed across it.
And, somewhere, a cop was blowing a whistle.
II.
We carried Larry Gilroy back to the men’s rest quarters. A uniformed cop had been on duty in the ballroom when the trouble came, and he cleared the way for us and held the crowd in order.
We placed Larry on a cot in one of the rooms, calling for Doc Miller. Doc was attached to the show. He wore a white uniform, a stethoscope draped professionally about his neck. But, as a doctor, he was only one step better than a veterinarian. His position with the dance marathon was to lend color and the feeling of danger—medically and surgically supervised.
“You’d better call a doctor,” said Doc Miller, worriedly. “This guy seems to be in a bad way.” He bent closer over Larry Gilroy. “In fact, I think he’s dead.”
Personally, I didn’t have to be told; anyway not by a phony in a white uniform, carrying a stethoscope he didn’t know how to use. I knew Larry was dead on the dance floor, when he slumped in Loretta’s arms, the back of his shirt wet with blood.