by Jerry eBooks
“Zero McCann is my pal,” Larry said tightly. “I been workin’ to free him ever since you framed him to the pen on a robbery you did yourself. You heard things were cookin’ up, and you were always terrified that McCann might soon be free and pinning the rap on you. You wouldn’t feel really safe until he was dead. So you spread the word around that McCann had sworn to crack out of jail and ‘get’ you. But secretly you were in touch with McCann, acting like his pal. You made all the arrangements to crack him out—for your accounts were short at the bank, and you needed a fall guy again. Who better than McCann? Who had better reason than McCann to crack out of jail and take you for another fifty grand to pay for his five years in stir?”
Larry paused for breath. “You used Fingers. Faked it with your secretary—who probably didn’t know what it was all about—to fool me about his weird talent. She probably threw in that brick, too. Then you literally bumped him off when you were through with him. You may have wiped all his blood off your car’s front bumper, but your mistake, Rolle, was that you shoulda been more careful when you called in a dick to alibi and front for you. It was a mistake to call in the dick who was cookin’ up things to free and clear McCann!”
Rolle had backed to the wall, crouching, trembling. But suddenly the jell came back into his bones. He straightened. “Your goose is cooked, Quentin! Look behind you!”
Larry heard the soft pad of approaching footsteps behind him. He knew it was a trick on Rolle’s part. But he wanted to fall for that trick. If he ever wanted to trap Rolle he had to let Rolle get away from here.
Larry whirled. Rolle hurled forward as he did. His bulk bowled Larry over. Then he was on top of Larry and Larry’s gun was his. But Sniffa, whose soft padding footsteps it was that Larry heard, leaped for the banker’s throat.
The banker clipped down sharply with Larry’s gun and Sniffa collapsed into a broken heap, jerking convulsively.
“That pays that damn yap-dog for sneaking a ride out here!” Rolle pointed the gun menacingly at Larry’s head. “This means your finish too!”
Sharp-nosed Sniffa must have smelled the cat-gut Rolle had in the rear of his car, and he’d climbed in the car. “You polish me off and it’ll be just too bad,” Larry bluffed. “Don’t think you can do that and then go back to your bank and say McCann and Quentin kidnaped you, robbed you of fifty grand or whatever, and then made off. It won’t wash. Before I came out here I dropped a letter off to Police Headquarters, telling all.” Larry gulped over that lie. “Your only chance would be to kill us both and then skip. But you won’t do that, Rolle. You won’t want any more murders on your head. With draft numbers and ration books and things like that, you know you couldn’t be on the loose for long before—”
Rolle’s jowled face went lax, then grim. His eyes were dark slits. “Yeah? Well, I don’t think they’re gonna catch me. You marked me for this trail, so I’ll take it. I’ll take me and a quarter million out into the Jackson Hole country, out Wyoming way. I know a hideout there where I can sit tight till everybody forgets. Nobody will ever hear of yours truly again.”
Larry saw Rolle’s fingers tighten on the Colt’s trigger. He had figured Rolle would take this way out. He shut his eyes tight, tensed as if against the impact of bullets. Instead . . .
Cra-a-shh!
Down came the gun on Larry’s skull!
It seemed hours later to Larry Quentin when he felt something hot and wet slapping against his face. “Sniffa!” Larry breathed, and the old terrier desisted for a moment from licking his master’s face. Sniffa had apparently come around okay from the blow that had put him out.
Quickly, Larry freed Zero. Zero was unharmed. Rolle wouldn’t have wanted any marks of violence on him when he was fished from Croton Lake—where Rolle had obviously planned to throw him before Larry had caused a quick switch in his plans.
“We got to hurry!” Larry said to Zero. “Rolle is cleaning out what he can from his bank. I figured it. I wanted to force him into a spot like that where he’d have to show his hand. But I figured when he’d get a chance he would shoot me instead of conk me. I would have played dead and it would have saved us time. I had my gun rigged with blanks. This way, God knows if we aren’t too late already!”
Back in New York, Larry glimpsed the sign that said: Practice Blackout tonight! just as he and Zero and Sniffa were entering the Republican Bank & Trust Company building. Just then he saw Banker Rolle coming out of the building, a bulging gladstone bag sagging from his right hand.
Larry had the banker’s own gun, which he had recovered, in his own hand—and he knew there was nothing phony about its bullets. Rolle’s eyes apparently quickly took in the fact that his escape through the building’s front door was blocked. He hesitated, glancing at his watch, then turned, ran for the stairs. He knew he had to lead them on a chase until the blackout came on, and then escape would be relatively easy.
Larry and Zero were after him. They were right behind him when he entered the dark fourteenth floor office, and forced their way inside before he could stop them. Rolle was a fool, Larry thought. He couldn’t escape. Least of all through the window, in the dark office, he would be silhouetted against it—an easy target.
Then, just at that moment, whistles shrilled in the street. The rising whoop of the sirens signalled blackout!
The glow behind the windows vanished. Everything was pitch black. Larry could not see the hand or gun in front of his face. Rolle had stalled for just this.
Larry shouted: “Don’t try to go out that window, Rolle. You’ll kill yourself. I had an acetylene man cut away that rail out there this morning for scrap!”
Larry knew the futility of that warning even as he shouted it. He hoped it might slow Rolle up enough so that he could get at him. But as he groped blindly toward where he heard the banker moving, he knew the banker had already reached the window. In the dark, he could make good his escape across the ledge and then through the manifold connecting suites of the bank’s maze of adjoining offices.
A scream sheered up. Banker Rolle’s shriek of horror. Its last echo trailed up, as if from a bottomless well. After a moment there was a faint, distant plop. Then there was silence.
Larry couldn’t say anything. Zero went to the window. His groping hand was apparently feeling the vacancy outside it. “It’s—it’s not your fault,” he said hoarsely after a moment. “You warned him. You told him you’d had the rail on this ledge cut away for scrap.”
“That’s just it!” Larry said. “That’s what I can’t get over. I was bluffing. I didn’t have any rail cut away. This room has two windows. In the dark—he must have gone out the window that didn’t have a ledge!”
Summoned by Air Raid wardens, police were already thick on the scene when Larry and Zero reached the street. Rolle’s gladstone had come open on his fall down, and a soft layer of 50, of 100, and 1000 dollar bills covered the street. Mercifully, they even hid the crumpled form of the banker.
It was a little difficult for Larry getting the police to understand. But after a while they began to get the idea. Suddenly, the sirens whooped again in steady signal and the lights came on. Larry found himself looking into a familiar, pretty, blond face.
Janet Joyce said, “I was so worried about you. I didn’t know what had happened to you. I was at Air Raid headquarters when the flash came over the police radio that you were here. I came down in a squad car. I—I heard all you’ve said about—your friend.”
Larry felt a nice warm glow inside, like he hadn’t felt in years. Like he hadn’t felt since Zero McCann, who had been his roommate at college, and the boy he had picked most likely to succeed, had been sent to the pen for something he hadn’t done.
Larry said, “Then will you come along with us, Janet? Zero and I have to go down to Headquarters to iron out a few details about jail-breaking and stuff. After that I think we’ll all go out for a champagne celebration, at which I’ll tell you my latest plans about scrap collection.”
Janet took both Lar
ry and Zero’s arms. “It’s a date!” she said.
Sniffa trotted merrily along behind.
MORTGAGE ON MURDER
Benton Braden
When Detective-sergeant Joe Hopper set out to unravel an unusual mystery, he discovered a sinister secret behind a pair of laughing eyes!
THE little old lady who came marching into the office of Sergeant of Detectives Joe Hopper seemed to be angry and determined. She held a parasol in one hand and a bulky brown package in the other. Her lips set primly as Hopper came to his feet and smiled at her.
“They told me,” she announced as though she expected Joe to dispute it, “that I should come in and see you.”
“Well,” Hopper saw good-naturedly, “if you’ve been the victim of a confidence game or a fraud I guess this is the right place to—”
“I haven’t been the victim of anybody or anything,” she broke in a sharp denial. “But maybe someone else has been.” She hesitated a moment. “You look pretty young to me. Are you Sergeant Hopper?”
“Yes,” he assured her. “I thought I looked old. I’m thirty-eight.”
“H’mm.” She waved aside the chair he held out for her. “I’ll get right down to tacks. My name is Mrs. Emily Johnson. I’m a widow, and I am the owner in fee simple of an apartment house at the corner of Winslow and Heyburn in this city. I live in Los Angeles now and make a trip back each year to look after my property. I arrived last Tuesday. Now, guess what I’ve found out?”
“What?” Hopper asked, sober-faced.
“I’ve found out that someone has mortgaged my property. I had the abstract of title brought down to date. I don’t owe anybody a dime on that property, but somebody has put a mortgage on it just the same.”
“An unauthorized mortgage doesn’t constitute a valid lien, Mrs. Johnson,” Hopper told her. “Perhaps it was just a mistake, an accidental—”
“It was no mistake! It was no accident,” she interrupted firmly. “The name signed to the mortgage was Emily Johnson, my name. The mortgage was given to a man by the name of George C. Penn. It described my property correctly. Some deliberately cheating hussy signed my name to that mortgage. A fifty thousand dollar mortgage. I want her caught, exposed, and prosecuted!”
“Naturally,” Hopper said sympathetically. “We’ll look right into it. If this George C. Penn was defrauded of fifty thousand dollars, though, this fake Emily Johnson will be hard to find.”
“I know it,” she conceded. “I’ll tell you something else. This George C. Penn will be hard to find too. I’ve looked through the phone and city directories and his name does not appear.”
HOPPER smiled.
“If this George C. Penn was defrauded of fifty thousand dollars on a false mortgage it won’t be hard to find him,” he said confidently. “When he had the mortgage recorded he must have left his address with the Register of Deeds so the mortgage could be mailed back to him. How does the mortgage stipulate that the interest shall be paid?”
“The interest is to be paid quarterly,” she replied. “Payments on the principal are to be paid quarterly. It’s been just three months since the mortgage was made.”
“Then this George C. Penn will show up shortly, Mrs. Johnson. And when he shows, he’ll be yelling his head off. He’s the one that will really be demanding that we catch this fake Emily Johnson and get his money back for him.”
The expression on Emily Johnson’s face showed that she didn’t agree with Joe Hopper.
“I think you’re going to get some surprises when you dig into this case, young man,” she said severely. “My intuition tells me it isn’t going to be as simple as that.
“I think you’ll conclude that this woman who impersonated me is a pretty smart specimen of our sex. She had to be to get away with a deal like that. If this George C. Penn had fifty thousand dollars to lend he couldn’t have been too dumb, yet he was fooled completely. You won’t find this woman easily, I’ll guarantee you that.”
“We’ll get her,” Sergeant Hopper insisted. “She’s sure to leave a trail in a case like this. There will be plenty of leads.”
“I hope you’re right, young man,” she said. “I’ll leave this abstract of title with you. I’m going on back to Los Angeles. My lawyer says he’ll remove the cloud on the title when the case is cleared up. He’ll make an affidavit himself. So there’s no use in my staying here. Particularly when I have a feeling that it’ll take you some time to get this woman.”
She laid the abstract down on the desk and left Hopper’s office a minute later. Hopper examined the record of the false mortgage. Beside the description of the property there was little more than the simple fact that Emily Johnson, a widow, had mortgaged it to George C. Penn for fifty thousand dollars.
It was obvious that the spurious Emily wouldn’t be waiting around for the police to grab her when the fraud was finally discovered. It was George C. Penn that would have to be located first. Surely he could be found without a great deal of difficulty.
Hopper checked the directories just to make sure. Then he checked public utility installations. George C. Penn was listed in none of these. Hopper went to the office of the Register of Deeds. He found that George C. Penn, when he had submitted the mortgage for recording, had left an address—General Delivery, City.
However, Hopper did find Dora Carston, the notary public who had acknowledged Emily Johnson’s signature on the mortgage. She worked for the City Abstract Company, but this was not the same company that had made the abstract for the real Emily Johnson.
Dora Carston looked over her records when Hopper questioned her.
“Yes, I remember her,” she said. “She was a very nice looking woman of about thirty—blonde, and well-dressed.”
“You had to know her personally to take her acknowledgment,” Hopper reminded her a little sternly.
“That’s true,” Dora Carston nodded. “I knew her. That is, she was not a stranger to me. She had been in this office before. She came in to order an abstract, and when the abstract was ready she called for it. So when she returned a few days later and asked me to take the acknowledgment on the mortgage I thought I knew her well enough to take it. Why? Is there anything wrong?”
“Apparently there is,” Hopper frowned. “You should have been more careful. When you take an acknowledgment you certify that the party is personally known to you.”
“Well, wasn’t she?” the notary challenged. “I had met her twice before. She had transacted business with the company, and I had every reason to believe she was all right.”
“But you really know nothing more about her? You wouldn’t have any idea where I could find her now?”
“No. I’ve never seen her since.”
Hopper pressed for a description, and Dora Carston did the best she could. The lady had blue eyes and probably weighed about a hundred and thirty, was of average height, had an attractive face. It was a description that could easily fit thousands of other women in the city.
AFTER two hard days of investigation, Joe Hopper began to have the feeling that he was trying to run down a pair of ghosts. There was no trace whatever of this George C. Penn. It didn’t seem reasonable that such a man could have lent fifty thousand dollars on a mortgage without being known anywhere in the city.
Hopper began to have a hunch that “Emily Johnson” was indeed a clever woman, and perhaps a sinister one. After the deal had been closed and she had Penn’s fifty thousand, what had she done with Penn? Had she fixed things so that Penn could never make an objection, or identify her with the fraud, no matter what happened?
Emily Johnson, the impostor, had executed that mortgage on the seventeenth day of March. With that date in mind Hopper began another investigation. He got results quickly! On the twenty-third day of March, the body of a man had been found in a ditch at the edge of the city.
That body had never been identified. It had been mutilated to such an extent that identification by features or fingerprints was impossible. There were no marks o
n the clothes, not a single article in the pockets.
Right there Joe Hopper figured that he and “Emily Johnson” were the only two persons in the world who knew that the body was what remained of George C. Penn.
This woman that Hopper was after was not only a swindler, she was a clever and ruthless killer as well. She had had to be clever to get by with such a fraud. She had had to be ruthless to dispose of her victim in such a manner that neither the fraud nor the murder could ever be proved against her if she were found.
At the moment it didn’t look as if she could ever be found. All Hopper had was a general description of her that could hardly be rated as a vague clue. It looked as if he were up against a stone wall.
Hopper went over and over the case in his mind. His thoughts came back to one angle. This original fraud hadn’t been any simple swindle. “Emily Johnson” would have had to have arranged a very convincing setup before she could have induced the victim, George C. Penn, to part with fifty thousand dollars. The abstract wouldn’t have been enough. She would have had to make him take it for granted that she actually owned that apartment house.
One afternoon, Hopper went out to that apartment house at the corner of Winslow and Heyburn. He found out, after a thorough examination of the records of the superintendent who lived in the basement, that he had guessed right. It was a six-story building with thirty apartments. A lady had rented one of those apartments on the first day of March. Her name was on the records as “Mrs. Johnson.” Such a common name that the super hadn’t even reflected that it was the same name as the owner.
The super hadn’t seen much of Mrs.
Johnson. The description he gave was generally the same as Dora Carston’s. Mrs. Johnson hadn’t stayed the whole month, and when she had left, she hadn’t even taken the trouble to notify the superintendent.
The apartment had been rented since, but Hopper got permission to look it over. He could find nothing that would help him. He knew that “Emily Johnson” had used that apartment to convince Penn that she was living in her own building. That, together with the abstract, had set Penn up for the swindle. Penn might even have been murdered in that fourth floor front apartment.