by Jerry eBooks
He put the money in his wallet.
It was in big bills. They bulged a little, and he frowned as the bulk disturbed his perfect fit. He helped himself to a cigarette from the dead woman’s silver box, used her lighter with his gloved hands; left her.
He had told her the truth, he assured himself, as he slid out into the night. He would never see her again.
There was slight mist off the river, coming from the sea.
He set up his coat collar, flipped down the rim of his hat, making for the Avenue, meeting only people like phantoms, who did not look his way.
He purposely walked ten blocks before he picked up the cruising cab, ordered it to go to Grand Central. It was a busy place, even at that hour, with commuters, who had stayed in the city for amusement, hurrying for their last trains.
The man the dead woman had called “Mort” went down into the subway.
It was only then that he remembered he had left the radio on in Lucille’s apartment.
He turned down his coat collar, settled his silk muffler, felt the bulge in his pocket. He grinned slightly, and the girl opposite thought he was trying to flirt with her. She looked away. Somehow, though he was good looking and stylish, he gave her the creeps.
IT WAS the sputtering radio that made the third floor tenant finally call the janitor. It had been working when she first awakened, it was still going when she complained a little after noon.
“She never plays it in the morning,” she declared. “There must be something wrong.”
Lavinsky went so far as to knock on the door but he scoffed at the idea of trouble.
“Probably she goes out and forgets to turn it off,” he suggested and never knew how close to the truth he had come. “Anyway the maid she comes at two.”
The maid found milk and cream undisturbed, mail in the box. That meant nothing to her. She came in every day to clean up generally. Sometimes she got a luncheon for Lucille Langdon, whose breakfasts were sketchy. Lucille invariably dined out, save in very bad weather, when she might scratch up a meal for herself, leaving the dishes for the maid, next day. And quite often Lucille was in bed when the maid arrived. Sometimes she was not there at all. She was just as likely to leave the lights on as the radio burning up its tubes. Therefore the maid gathered the milk and cream and opened the door with one of the new keys Lucille had given her the day before.
Her scream brought everybody in the house together, for once.
The maid fainted. Lavinsky ran to find a policeman on post or traffic duty. Somebody else telephoned. Two detectives came from the precinct station, Flynn and Maloney. Flynn outranked Maloney and his face was grim, not so much from the fact of murder as its type.
Two other women had been found strangled under much the same conditions within the past ten weeks; both in that neighborhood. Flynn had tried to solve the cases and had failed. The second one had been played up by the tabloids to the limit of ghoulishness. He knew what would happen with a third.
There would be sob-sister tales, columnists’ caustic comments, editorial raps, while the columns would seethe with jibes at the police department.
Some of this would be directed at Flynn, more would be directed upon his head, if the case did not break. They might take it away from him, at that; but he could not dodge it altogether. Prospects of promotion were vague, prospects of demotion to a walking beat and a harness loomed unpleasantly close—unless he could find the murderer.
If it was going to be as tough a puzzle as the two others, Flynn felt failure foredoomed. The layouts were the same. A walkup apartment in a house, a maid coming in for a few hours only, nobody who knew the name of any man intimate with the victim. No prints, no pictures, no clues.
Flynn was a good routine man. Maloney not quite as good. Flynn had little imagination, Maloney less. Both promoted for bravery.
“These dames lay themselves open to it,” Flynn grumbled at Maloney. “Live in a dump where anyone can go in and out who gets a key; where half of ’em don’t even know the names on the mail boxes in the entry. They fall for a guy like this Strangler, who’s probably more or less nuts. This is three and I’ll bet it’s the same guy. He’s like the London Ripper, you’ll see. He’ll go on strangling until he’s copped.”
“That’s our job,” said Maloney scornfully. “They expect us to catch the guy.”
Flynn surveyed him with scorn.
“Oh yeah? That’s goin’ to be so easy. Here we are.”
WITHIN half an hour the place was a hum and bustle of legal and reportorial industry. An inspector arrived, two sharps of the Homicide Squad appeared. That did not relieve Flynn. He saw already that this was another, tough job. He would be the sacrificial goat, unless some genius solved the riddle offhand. If there were no leads the assignment would be left on his hands with a reminder card at Headquarters, and regular callings up of Thomas Aloysius Flynn to report progress, or get combed because there was none.
The Medical Examiner made short work of it. He would do a more thorough job in autopsy. But it was, he said, a clear case of strangulation, probably by a man, to judge by the bruises on the throat and the pressure that had been applied.
“Probably find broken cartilage, possible rupture; the hyoid bone may be smashed; but that’s not definite,” he announced to detectives and newspapermen, who were already shaping up sensational heads, scenting what a lallapalooza of a story they had got.
UNKNOWN STRANGLER SLAYS AGAIN
THIRD BEAUTIFUL VICTIM FOUND
MURDERER THOUGHT MADMAN
LONELY WOMEN TERRORIZED
And so on.
The apartment was dusted for fingerprints, pictures and measurements were made. The open wall safe disclosed jewelry the maid recognized as having seen Lucille Langdon wearing. She did not think any was missing. The dead fingers had rings upon them. The maid knew nothing of any sum of money. There were between twenty and thirty dollars in the dead woman’s pocket-book. She—the maid—was always paid regularly. Lucille had been a considerate and generous mistress. She had worked for her for five months.
“Yes, she knew that there was a gentleman. There might be more than one, but she thought not. At any rate never more than one at a time, to judge by glasses and ashtrays the next day. She did not know his name, his last name. She had heard her mistress call somebody ‘Mort’ over the telephone once or twice.”
She had never seen him, did not know what he looked like; and neither did anybody else in the house, from Lavinsky up, nor in the neighborhood.
The print men found only specimens of Lucille Langdon’s loops and whorls and islands. Not even the maid’s. Her statement explained that. She wiped the woodwork of the furniture with oil of cedar every afternoon before she left.
The legmen were gleefully telephoning to their desks, especially the afternoon editions. For once they would beat the tabs, although they would not serve up anything like so spicy a dish. They quarreled over two photographs of the dead woman, which were the only photographs in the place; compromised when they found one of the “galleries” could furnish prints.
The body was taken away in a basket. The inspector was curt and glum. The H. S. dicks from downtown faded.
“They’ll work on the case,” said the inspector to Flynn, sternly, “and so will you. It’s your district, and the third case of the kind. I’m hoping you’ll do better with this one.”
Flynn saluted. He and Maloney were left in the disarrayed apartment.
“What did I tell you?” asked Flynn. “He knows it’s a dry lemon. All we’d ever squeeze out of it ‘ud be sour. We’ll be the fall guys. I’ll not be buyin’ the old lady a new coat this winter, an’ you’ll not be marryin’ your Kathleen this fall.”
“Mind if I look around?”
BOTH officers whirled. The apartment door was still open. In it stood a man whose age might have been anywhere near thirty. He was well but not conspicuously dressed. His voice and manner were mild. He was well set up, though you did not notice it
at first, and most people could meet Ernest Eaton, talk with him, and go away with only a vague impression of the color of his hair and eyes. That included girls. Yet he was anything but a vague person.
“I don’t mind,” said Flynn, not cordially. “If I did, you’d get a special permit.”
Maloney did not know Eaton, but Flynn did. An ex-reporter who had come into some money, who had written a detective novel which had run into ten editions and made him more; to top it all, a cousin, or something, to the Commissioner of Police.
He had nosed into the two previous cases but he had not done anything to solve them, as far as Flynn knew, or anybody else. He was probably snooping about getting material for a new book.
There was some truth in this, more in the fact that Eaton was an ardent student of criminal investigation. The extent of his studies and the amount of knowledge he had assimilated would have surprised Flynn, but not impressed him. He would not have understood a lot of it, nor wanted to. This bird was an amateur sleuth, and Flynn despised amateur sleuths. He made no attempt to disguise it.
“Go ahead,” he said, “help yourself. Mebbe you can help me.”
He said it with heavy sarcasm, and Eaton smiled at him.
“I’ll try,” he said. “I had a talk with one or two of the boys I used to work with. They seem to think it’s a wow of a story, but a tough case.”
Flynn merely grunted. He saw that Eaton had a camera case. Doubtless he had a microscope tucked into his pants. A can of moulage in another pocket. Sherlock Holmes the Second! Utsnay!
“They say she used to call up a man named Mort,” said Eaton gently.
“What of it? I know plenty of Morts.”
“The first woman who was strangled, not far away, had a boy friend she called Mort, didn’t she?”
Flynn nodded. He had thought of that and then let the idea go. His wife’s brother was called Mort. A plumber, who lived in Albany.
“What of it?” he asked.
“And the second woman had a friend she called Tod?”
“That might have been the name. It wasn’t Mort for that one, anyway.”
“The two names, Tod and Mort, do not suggest anything to you?” asked Eaton mildly, with his head a little to one side.
“Why should they? Plenty of Tods, too.”
“She didn’t have a telephone address book, with Mort in it, did she? Or Tod?”
“She did not. She didn’t keep a diary, or an address book, and if she got any letters, she tore ’em all up. I’m goin’ to make out my report. It’s a spring lock. Close the door, when you’re through, Sherlock. Come on, Maloney.”
Eaton grinned as they left. There was still plenty of light as he surveyed the room where the woman had been murdered.
EATON was disappointed about the address book, but not discouraged. He did not expect this case to be an easy one. But he had gathered a few things from the previous stranglings.
He did not know much about women, personally, but he had studied their ways through the records of famous psycho-criminologists; and he still thought that Lucille Langdon would have her lover’s number set down, somewhere. It was pretty certain the killer had been her lover.
There were the usual telephone directories, but he did not look at them. He, examined such likely places as the doorjamb, close to the telephone. And, at last, he found it, set down on a corner of a chifferobe drawer, on the lining paper, underneath some dainty handkerchiefs.
Just the letter “M” and the number. Uptown, in the prosperous business district.
“M” could stand for Mort, but Eaton did not believe the man’s name was Mortimer, any more than that Tod’s name had been Theodore. “Mort” was an alias. The man was cunning, his mind was depraved, his imagination bizarre. A sadist, who would go on strangling.
Eaton copied the number in his notebook, paid his attention to the prints shown up by the powdering of the Centre Street sleuths. As before, they had amounted to nothing, but Eaton was not satisfied. For one thing, he sniffed appreciatively at the oil-of-cedar. The cameramen had used flash bulbs instead of magnesium. Oil-of-cedar made for fine records. The reporter he had talked with had given him a good idea of what had been discovered. Eaton hoped to find something else.
“This,” he told himself, “is a case of look for the man, not cherchez la femme.”
The rugs had been scuffed all over the place. Eaton halted in front of the lounge chair. There were prints of some sort on the curved wooden arms. Not fingerprints, at all, but Eaton was curious. He looked at them from every angle. They stood out plainly enough but they had been an insoluble riddle to the professional dicks.
Eaton went down on hands and knees, lower. He got out his own device for powdering on a small scale, without a compressed-air blower. The police used white powder, Eaton preferred aluminum. He sprayed, and looked at the result with a flash-torch; chuckled.
“It might not be so hard,” he muttered, “after all.”
He set up his camera, used his own bulb, and got films of those curious markings, above, below, and on the sides of the two arms.
Then he went home to develop them; to study over them.
They were not like anything he had ever seen, or noticed, before; but he believed that there lay the prime clew he sought; if he could only identify it. He lay back in his own lounge-chair, thinking hard, forcing his brain to marshal possibilities.
It was dark, and he was hungry and thirsty, when he slapped his thigh and cried “Eureka!”
THE evening editions were all out, their legmen loose for the night. But Eaton knew where to find his friend. In a popular speakeasy, now dignified with a license, but still selling untaxed liquor; its clients almost entirely of the Fourth Estate.
He got his man on the wire. “How’s for, dinner?” he asked him, knowing the answer, naming the place. It was a good dinner, with other things to wash the viands down than water.
The reporter was heavy laden, well awash, when Eaton put his question.
“Sure I’ll find out for you, pal. It’s eashy. That the reason for the gush of hoshpitality? Fallen at last, have you? Don’t kid me, it’sh a girl.”
“It’s something to do with a girl,” said Eaton. “How soon can you get it?”
“In three minutes, pal.”
Eaton waited, while the privileged legman called somebody, a clerk at Headquarters.
“Friend of mine, stuck on a jane, Pete,” said the reporter. “Prob’ly some stenographer. He’sh a good guy, see? Give him a break with his cutey.”
He came back with the information. Eaton thanked him, ordered a liqueur. The legman glanced at the check.
“You mus’ be peffeckly squiffy over her,” he said. “Royal repast, an’ all that.”
They had talked about the strangling-case, necessarily. The place had buzzed with it. The reporter knew of Eaton’s bent for crime-detection, but he did not associate that with the telephone number. His Plimsoll-Line had been too deep when Eaton had asked him about that.
The address was off Fifth Avenue, above Madison Square, below the Public Library. Eaton had noted it. An old stable, with a paved court in front, open to the sidewalk, set about with bird-bowls, vases, statuary; all of artificial stone; replicas of good originals, designed for the wealthy trade of Westchester, Westport, Long Island.
The name was Petros. Neither real, given, nor surname, Eaton fancied. A trade-name. Petros, meaning “stone.” The owner was probably not a Greek, any more than he was “Mort,” or Mortimer; or Tod—save by his own usage.
Eaton strolled into the courtyard a little before ten the next morning. He was dressed in sober, but expensive and well-tailored tweeds. He wore a fedora hat and pigskin gloves, carried a cane.
He looked at the bird-bowls, the fountain cupids, boys with geese, spouting dolphins intertwined.
Then he entered the building. Part of the floor was a show, part of it a work-room. Italians were handling the artificial mixture in vats, on the floor, pouring it into m
oulds. A girl came out of a small office. She did not pay much attention to him, save that he looked like a good customer. Wealthy, and a bit sappy.
EATON wanted to see the proprietor—Mr. Petros. It appeared that he had living-rooms on the second floor; rooms once occupied by a lowly coachman and grooms; now tastefully redecorated for Mr. Petros. The Petros private-office was upstairs.
The girl went up to see her boss, Eaton poked about the place.
“Petros would see him,” she said. She had told Petros that the prospective client looked like a man who would order a lot of stone-seats, tables and bird-bowls. Personally, she thought a guy who bought stone seats and tables, goofy.
There was nothing truly Greek about Petros. He was a racial mixture, Eaton thought. Tall, lean, broad-shouldered, and powerful. Big, strong, shapely hands. A little black mustache, carefully trimmed. A mouth, whose upper lip was just a line. A long nose, and eyes that seemed to continually tremble, like a floating compass card. Ears pointed, like a faun’s. They should have had tufts of hair, Eaton thought, tufts like a lynx, or Pan.
“I am not a millionaire,” said Eaton, taking the seat indicated across the carved table that served Petros as a desk. He set down his hat and gloves, next to those of Petros, on a pseudo-medieval buffet. “I cannot afford originals. At the same time I don’t want things that are duplicated by a dozen of my neighbors. I have one or two pieces, in marble. I wonder if you could reproduce them by your process, not too expensively.”
“I should have to see them before I could give you an estimate,” said Petros.
He was no Greek, Eaton decided. A hodge-podge of breeds, that had not blended happily. A psychological freak, clever, crafty, cunning and cruel.
“I could show you photographs,” he said. “Stupid of me not to have brought them. I have them in the city. This is Saturday, and I suppose you close at noon. I should like to get the thing off my mind.”
“I live here,” Petros replied. “The force leaves at noon, but if you cared to bring the pictures, we could doubtless arrange a price. Nothing is impossible to Petros.”