by Jerry eBooks
Johnny went on eating. Between mouthfuls, he said: “Now, I’ll tell one. Your radio was bothering Mr. Weiss, so he went into your room and asked you to turn it off. He would say it was bothering Mrs. Weiss, because that’s the kind of a guy he is. A buck-passer. His wife had indigestion, and when he was in your room he was reminded that Alka-Ves was good for indigestion—Shoot the catsup over here, will you, kitten?”
Mary watched him deluge the remaining portion of his steak with catsup. He cut himself another bite, put it in his mouth, and grinned.
“So,” he continued, the steak lumped in his cheek, “Weiss goes to the drugstore, buys a bottle of Alka-Ves. When he gets back to the house, he finds all the lights are out. He does what anybody else would do, knowing that the lights were going in his neighbors’ houses. He goes down the basement and to the switch and fuse box—this is where he gets the cobweb on his hat—and he replaces a blown-out fuse.”
“What did he do with the blown-out fuse?” Mary asked, sticking to her guns in the face of some pretty logical opposition.
“He throws it in the furnace, buries it in the ashes, puts it in his pocket, maybe he eats it. What do people do with no-good fuses? Heck, I used to collect them when I was a kid—old fuses, old light globes.”
“What about the label on the bottle?” Mary asked. “When did he have time to cut off the dosage directions?”
Johnny waved his hands. “Hell, but you’re a picky girl!” He grinned and then was suddenly serious. “I’m afraid we just don’t have a case, kitten. Even if we could prove he gave her the dry tablet, he could claim it was an accident. That other case you read about in the papers was an accident.”
“But you could get fingerprints off the electric switch,” she persisted. “You could ask him about the fuse. You could find out about the cut label. You could check with the drugstore and find out when he bought the Alka-Ves.”
Johnny shook his head. “Not me. I’m just a dumb flatfoot. A harness bull. I don’t know anything about fingerprints. I should go into Homicide and tell the captain all this junk you’ve been telling me. Suppose I make it good enough so they start an investigation. About the first guy they’ll tackle will be Dr. Crowell, who passed the whole thing off as natural death. When that got publicity think of what it would do to Crowell’s reputation. And Crowell has money. Suppose the investigation fell through, as it would be bound to do. Who do you think Crowell would break first?
Me, the dumb flatfoot who started it all.”
“But it’s not right, Johnny. She was murdered, Mrs. Weiss was. I’ve practically proved that she was. It’s not right to just let it go.”
He said, “Pull in your claws, kitten. No, it’s not right. But it’s one of those things like—Well, suppose somebody has a rich Aunt Emma who gets pneumonia. Suppose the somebody wants Aunt Emma bad enough to kill for it. He opens Aunt Emma’s window so that a draft blows on her the night of the crisis. Maybe we see him open the window. Aunt Emma dies. It’s murder, but what can the little you-and-me people do about it? You can’t prove it’s murder, because the killer will say he didn’t know he shouldn’t open the window.”
“You mean,” Mary said, “that Mr. Weiss would say he didn’t know the Alka-Ves was supposed to be taken in solution?”
“That’s about it.”
“What about his removing the label from the bottle to conceal the method of administration?”
“Have you got that bottle?” Johnny asked.
She didn’t have, and he must have known that she didn’t have it. Johnny raised his shoulders in a ponderous shrug.
“See? Now let’s forget it, huh?”
She was a little disappointed in Johnny, and their evening was ruined. She begged off early, claiming that she had a splitting headache, and on returning to the Weiss house she said goodnight and went to her room.
The door of the Weiss room was closed and no light showed under the door. Which meant that Mr. Weiss was out—possibly at the funeral director’s—or that he had gone to bed early. She considered momentarily trying to get in and search for some fresh clue which might possibly convince Johnny that she was right. She discarded the idea when she took a measure of her courage. Why, she trembled at the thought of being surprised by little Mr. Weiss!
For a while, she sat on the edge of the slip-covered chair with pencil and paper on the table in front of her. She tried consolidating her ideas as detectives in books did. Item one, in the case against Mr. Weiss, was that it was he who had insisted on her turning her radio down. And he had had some other motive besides nervousness for doing this. Mr. Weiss was the kind of a man who would let his neighbor’s chickens ruin his garden and not say anything about it.
Item two was: That failing to get Mary to silence her radio entirely, Mr. Weiss had gone down the basement and turned off the electricity. After this she wrote: “Police might check on location of blown-out fuse—if any—refuting Johnny’s theory.”
And of course the sum of items one and two was that Mr. Weiss had premeditated murder, planning to give his wife a dry Alka-Ves tablet. Add to that the tact that Mr. Weiss had removed the dosage instructions from the bottle label, and anybody could see that this was cold-blooded homicide.
“But clever,” she thought, and gnawed her pencil nervously. Was there someone prowling around in the hall outside?
She got up to see, found the hall empty. Returning to her notes, she considered the possible motives, and wrote:
“One. Mrs. Weiss’ money? Two. Life insurance? Three. Another woman?”
This last possibility she crossed out as she recalled Mr. Weiss in a gray and pink striped nightshirt. She returned to thoughtfully gnawing her pencil and was suddenly interrupted by Lottie Swain who called her downstairs to the phone.
It was a Mr. Winkler, managing editor of a hardware trade journal, and if Miss Russell had not yet found employment he would be happy if she would report for work the following morning.
She ran up the stairs again, her heart singing joyously, and it was not until she had reached the end of the hall that she remembered Mrs. Weiss, Mr. Weiss, and sudden death. There was a thin thread of light showing beneath Mr. Weiss’ door, and she could hear soft footfalls within the room as Mr. Weiss paced the floor.
Her notes! She had left that paper on which she had summed up her deductions right on her table and in plain sight. If Mr. Weiss had chanced to come in while she was phoning and so much as look through the open door of her room, he would have seen what she had written.
Heart still beating wildly, but for another reason, she entered her own room, shut and locked the door. She approached her table fearfully, only to find that her notes were undisturbed. Nevertheless, he might have seen them!
Fingers trembling, she found matches, ignited the piece of paper, opened the window. When the paper had burned to fragile black ash, she let it drift down into the darkness. She went to bed immediately, so as to be fresh and wide awake for her new job on the morrow.
She awoke in the morning with a cold—not just the sniffles, but one of those maddening, stuffy things that make you feel miserable and look worse. Instead of taking time for breakfast, she dug an electric vaporizer out of her trunk, put water in it for steam, dropped tincture of benzoin on cotton in the spout. After thirty minutes of inhaling the medicated vapor, she felt a little better and did what she could with makeup to conceal red-rimmed eyes and a swollen nose.
What kind of an impression she made on Mr. Winkler that day she didn’t know, but she managed to keep alert and appear useful and she was very much relieved when five o’clock came around. She dined wisely if not particularly well, went home, got into bed at seven.
At seven-thirty, Johnny Straus ducked in off his beat for a moment with a little bouquet of violets for her. He hadn’t known she had a cold and she put her nose in the blossoms and tried to smell their perfume. Johnny went out almost at once, commenting that her nose looked as though it had been borrowed from W.C. Fields. As though
she didn’t know it!
She was asleep at nine to awake she didn’t know how many hours later, her nasal passages so completely clogged she could scarcely breathe. She thought of the electric vaporizer which she had left on the table, got out of bed, shivering in the silent dark, and turned on the light. She put on her robe, went to the table, plugged in the vaporizer.
Two teaspoons of water went into the bottom half of the vaporizer and ten drops of the benzoin compound on the cotton in top. Medicated steam puffed from the spout a moment later, and she thrust her face into the moist warm cloud, inhaling as deep as she possibly could. How many times she inhaled before she felt the full effects, she didn’t know. All she knew was that her head suddenly began to feel like an inflated balloon and that a strange sickness came over her.
She gasped—gasped at the cloud of steam. Mingled with the pungent odor of the benzoin was a sickening, cloying odor that wrapped its scented, velvet-gloved fingers about her throat. She reeled back from the table, fighting the moist gray cloud that rose monstrously before her. The floor took on dizzy motion and she wondered giddily just where her feet were. She knew that she had fallen, that one ordinarily strikes the floor when one falls. But she had the ghastly notion she had fallen up to the ceiling.
Somewhere a door opened. The lights snicked off—but off or on she wouldn’t have known. She was fighting an overpowering urge to sleep—to sleep long and dreamless. And then she was fighting something else. It was a tangible something, small and strong and hideously reminiscent of Mr. Weiss.
Mr. Weiss. She knew it now. Woolen cloth smothered her face, blinding her, gagging her. But she knew that it was Weiss who held her down on the floor. It had to be Weiss—Weiss who had killed his wife. Weiss who was killing Mary Russell because he had seen those notes she had written on the night before.
Her last thought was about Johnny Straus and something Mrs. Weiss had said about men never being around when you needed them most. Johnny . . . Johnny, where are you! And then her mind died.
Died to come alive again—or half alive. Then she was struggling weakly against the people who were trying to pull her out of the darkness into which she had plunged. Artificial respiration, her mind told her. She fought it, wishing that they would all go away and let her sleep on and on. They pestered her mouth with stimulants, burned her torturously with hot towels. She fought against all this, only to lose, to stop fighting, to wish to be alive again.
And then there was that interval when she called out for Johnny and he was there, looking down at her and grinning. Then somebody who looked like a doctor joined Johnny and told him he’d better go now.
She said faintly, “What hit me?”
“Chloroform,” Johnny said, only to be dragged away because the doctor told him that Miss Russell mustn’t think about that now.
But she did think all that day. Lying there half awake and half asleep, she thought and tried to figure how the murderer had put chloroform in her vaporizer. She felt certain that couldn’t be, because the chloroform would have evaporated. No, Johnny was wrong about the chloroform as he had been about little Mr. Weiss.
It wasn’t until the following morning that she was well enough to see Johnny. He came in grinning, carrying her mail which consisted of an envelope and a package.
“It couldn’t have been chloroform,” she told him first of all.
“Well,” Johnny said, “it wasn’t to start with. What he did was put chloral hydrate and baking soda—dry ingredients—underneath the grid in the vaporizer. You added water, and when the vaporizer got hot it gave off pure chloroform. I found out he had studied to be a druggist in early life and so knew about such things. You obligingly breathed in chloroform, and all the while he was watching you through the wall.”
“Through the wall?” she gasped. “Mr. Weiss was watching through the wall?”
Johnny nodded. “He’d drilled a tiny hole when he was fixing to murder you. And then he’d jammed your lock so the bolt wouldn’t go home.
As soon as the chloroform from the vaporizer began to get you, he rushed in with a wool cloth soaked in the liquid chloroform. He was pretty well along toward finishing you when I came in. That was four in the morning, and I heard the fuss you were making. You didn’t like the idea of dying at first, did you?”
Mary shuddered, shook her head. “And Weiss?”
“Don’t make me apologize, will you?” Johnny pleaded.
“I was right about him killing Mrs. Weiss?”
“A hundred percent. At headquarters they knocked it out of him, while I asked leading questions—questions based on what you had told me. You shouldn’t have put your deductions on paper, though, because Weiss saw them and got the idea he ought to kill you.”
“Why did he kill Mrs. Weiss?” Mary asked. “For twenty thousand dollars in insurance. And because there was another woman,” Johnny said. “Good heavens, no! What kind of a woman?” Johnny grinned. “What kind do you suppose?”
“Well, I suppose for twenty thousand dollars—” she began, and then decided to skip it.
“The job he did on Mrs. Weiss was perfect—as perfect a murder as he could possibly have pulled,” Johnny said. “If your notes hadn’t put the scare into him so that he tried to repeat on you, he’d have got away with it.”
Johnny waved the envelope that had come in the mail for her.
“The doctor said not to excite you, kitten, but I got to tell you that you won a prize in the Alka-Ves contest. Of course, it’s not exactly the first prize, but it’s something.”
“What did I win?” she asked, not feeling as elated as she might have expected to feel.
“The two hundredth prize,” Johnny said. “I opened the congratulatory letter. And here’s the prize itself.”
He handed her the package; he had thoughtfully broken the tape that sealed it. She lifted the box flap, looked inside. Two dozen large size bottles of Alka-Ves.
“Johnny,” she said, pushing the box away. “Yeah, kitten?”
“Would you kindly go into the bathroom and fill the tub to the brim.”
“What for?” He stared at her incredulously from the foot of the bed.
“And then empty all these bottles—that’s twenty-four times thirty tablets—into the water.
And when it’s all fizzed away, Johnny, just pull out the plug.”
THE ROAD TO CARMICHAEL’S
Richard Wormser
JIM HOWARD introduced himself to the Mexican officials at Ensenada, as a United States detective named Johnson. He had Johnson’s shield to back it up. He figured it would take Johnson a day or two to explain himself when he got to Ensenada. He’d probably have to wire Washington and get a reply before he persuaded these people that he was the real Johnson. Jim knew his only chance was to keep ahead of Johnson.
The Mexican officials were polite. They said they recognized the extradition treaty, of course. Plainly, this Howard, whom Señor Johnson sought, was a criminal. They would be glad to turn him over to the United States authorities, if they found him. But in a matter of so great importance, did not Señor Johnson wish to see the chief?
Jim said he would be delighted.
Colonel Ortega was dark, handsome and sad. Jim sat opposite him and reminded himself again how a tough cop named Johnson would talk.
“It’s like this, chief,” Jim said: “This guy Howard holds an important job in the department. We think he double-crossed us in a little matter of counterfeit ten-dollar bills. He picked them up—a hundred thousand dollars’ worth—as evidence. And then”—Jim paused for effect—“he lost them.” Colonel Ortega’s dark eyes regarded Jim with interest.
“Could happen,” Jim said. “But then he seems to have used one of those lost ten-dollar bills in a café.”
“Ah!” Colonel Ortega said. “I understand.”
“I was ordered to bring him in. He got away from me. He is the only man who ever did get away from me. So I must find him.”
Colonel Ortega nodded. “A m
atter of honor.”
“It’s my job to find him. Actually I can’t apply for extradition until there’s an indictment. So far, you see, we’ve kept it inside the department.”
“I quite understand,” Colonel Ortega said. “It is a matter of discretion. I am in sympathy. We officials should stick together.”
Jim sat back. The real issue was whether he could go south or not. Colonel Ortega knew it, but so far he had made no offer. He was sympathetic, but he was not helpful. Jim switched to Spanish.
“We know that Howard crossed the border and took the road this way. He must have come through here; there is no other way to go.”
“It is conceivable,” Colonel Ortega said. “We take much pains, but we are not infallible.”
“You understand why it is necessary for me to go south?”
“You speak good Spanish, Señor Johnson. To a Mexican ear there is a slight Castilian lisp. But it is excellent.”
“I took Spanish for three years in prep school,” Jim said. “Since then I have spent a lot of time in Latin America.”
“I also went to prep school in your country. To a place in Connecticut called Harkness. You perhaps have heard of it?”
“Heard of it? That’s where I went.”
Jim studied the chief a little anxiously. There had been a number of Latin Americans at school, though he wouldn’t remember any of them now. This Ortega was older than he—old enough to have graduated before Jim entered.
Colonel Ortega was smiling a friendly smile. “As one Harkness man to another, Señor Johnson, I will lend you two of my men. I will lend you a squad if you like. Next June—or maybe even in May.”