by Jerry eBooks
“Oh, Don!” Marge’s voice was soft and shaky. “You even thrill me over the telephone!”
IT WAS lonely Saturday night with no date. I stopped at the bowling alley. There was no sign of Frenchy or Clint. Eddie Milton was there, playing pool with the kid who did the cleaning. He put the six-ball in the side pocket, ran off the other two and racked his cue.
“Busy, Don?”
“No. Where’s everybody? Where’s Frenchy?”
Eddie shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. Want to roll across town with me? I’ve got a man to see. It’ll only take a few minutes. Then we can have a drink, grab a flicker—or something.”
He didn’t have a car so I took him to Water Street. We stopped in front of a small florist’s. It was run by a Greek. The name on the window was Andropopolos. Inside there was a light and I saw a guy cutting flowers and putting them in a white ice box.
“Won’t take but a minute,” Eddie Milton said, climbing out of the car. “I’ve got to see this guy.”
He went in. I could hear their voices through the screen door.
Eddie spoke first. He said, “Well, what’s the answer, Andropopolos? Did you sign that membership blank?”
“Get out of my store!” the Greek ordered. “I told you I ain’t interested.”
“Listen, brother.” Eddie Milton’s voice was silky. “I’m not used to this kind of treatment. I—”
“Get out! Crooks, grafters! I know all about you kind of fellars! You bother me again and I’ll tell the police!”
I saw Eddie move closer. “Tell the cops? Tell ’em—what? That we’re giving you protection at a cheap rate? That we’re trying to keep prices regular in this town the same as we do in all the big cities? You punk! I’ll send the boss around to have a talk with you Monday!”
Andropopolos picked up the scissors. For a minute I thought he was going to use them on Eddie.
“Get out!”
Milton came back to the car. He was cursing under his breath. When he got in he said, “That dirty Greek! Wait’ll I tell Frenchy! He’ll make him squirm plenty!”
I went up to Marge’s on Monday night. I waited in the front parlor. She had finished the dishes and was taking a bath. There were a lot of flowers in vases. Roses, other stuff. So many they made the room smell like a funeral home.
I didn’t like the perfume so I went out on the porch. Marge came down about ten minutes later. She had a white dress on, sandals, but no stockings. Her hair was damp from the bath and it made little curls around her forehead.
I took her in my arms. She was soft, softer than she had ever been before. Usually, when I hadn’t seen her for a few days, her arms would wind tight about my neck and she’d be as anxious as I was for a kiss.
Tonight it was different. She kissed me, her arms went around my neck, but I noticed a change. It was funny, yet I couldn’t explain exactly what it was. Not the way she acted, or what she said. Just something was missing.
We sat on some wicker lawn furniture like so many other nights. But there was a tension between us. Marge didn’t say much. She kept her head resting on my shoulder, looking out through the honeysuckle at the street. Once or twice I heard her sigh.
“Where’d you get all the posies, hon?” I asked, after awhile. I could even smell them out on the porch.
“It’s ma’s birthday. Didn’t I tell you?”
“No. How’s your cousin?”
“Not so good. I might have to go out Wednesday and stay with her for a few days. Oh, Don. There’s always something, isn’t there?”
GENERALLY, it was after twelve before I’d leave. But that night I said goodbye at ten to eleven. On the way home I thought about the difference. I tried to figure it out. Even after I was in bed, and I couldn’t sleep, I kept trying to decide what had happened between Marge and me.
Wednesday she phoned to say she was going to her cousin’s, but that she’d be back Saturday—she hoped. The same afternoon, when I left the factory, I saw a brand new convertible Buick parked outside the wire gate.
“Hey, Don!”
Frenchy Bergdorf whistled to me. He was sitting at the wheel. He leaned and opened the door for me. I got in and sat down on blue leather upholstery.
“Your heap, Frenchy?”
“Yeah, I bought it yesterday.” He stepped on the starter. “Listen to that engine. Purrs like a cat with a saucer of cream, eh?’ Got a few minutes to spare? I’d like to gab with you.”
“Sure.”
“Then let’s take a ride.”
Frenchy pressed a button on a trick gadget. A cigarette popped up, lighted. He handed it to me and got one for himself. We rolled down Congress Boulevard toward the river and the suburbs. Bergdorf didn’t say much for awhile.
“Look, Don,” he began, all of a sudden. “We’re pals, aren’t we?”
“I hope so.”
“I like you a lot, kid. I’ve always liked you, from the time I met you at the lake. Someday soon, when I get my business running smooth here in Bridgetown, I’m going to fix you up with a nice job.”
“That’ll be swell.”
“Right now,” Frenchy continued, “I want you to do me a favor. It’s a big favor and I’m willing to pay for it. I’ll pay you a hundred bucks.”
I looked at him, puzzled. “What for?”
“Here’s the story. I’ve got a stupid Greek I want to throw a scare into. He won’t do business with me and he wants to make trouble. I’ve got to teach him a lesson. I don’t want to hurt him, but I want to show him that he can’t outsmart me. Get the idea?”
“What else?”
“You work in that fireworks factory. I’ve got a diagram. How to make a time-bomb. You can get the powder, fuses and stuff there. I’ll furnish the rest. What do you say, kid? A bomb for a century note.”
I could feel my heart beat faster. “What are you going to do with it?”
Frenchy laughed. “Plant it in the Greek’s backyard and scare hell out of him.” He turned his head. “I know what you’re worried about. That they might trace back and find you were mixed up in it. Forget it. Nobody’ll ever know a thing about it. This is guaranteed air-tight.”
“How do you mean?”
“A bomb goes off, and where’s your evidence?”
We stopped at a tavern and had a couple of drinks. I began to feel normal again. After all, if nobody was going to get hurt what difference did it make? And a hundred bucks! I needed the cash. I’d been saving up for the day Marge and I were to be married. It was slow work on my wages. A C note would help a lot.
“Well, what’s the answer?” Frenchy asked, when we were back in his new car again.
“I’ll do it,” I said. “As a favor to you—on your word that nobody will get hurt.”
“I’ll meet you tonight.” Frenchy pressed the button on the cigarette gadget. “I’ll want the thing ready Saturday at six o’clock. Tomorrow I’ve got to hop out on a business trip. You have it all ready to deliver and I’ll take care of the rest.”
I WORKED Thursday and Friday nights—in the cellar. There wasn’t much else to do with Marge at her cousin’s. I smuggled the powder and fuses out of the factory without trouble. The diagram Frenchy gave me was easy to follow.
I made the time-bomb up in a small, cheap suitcase. It had three compartments. The middle one was for the alarm clock. I wired the whole business and left it so all I had to do was wind the clock, set it for whatever time Frenchy wanted, hook it up to the wires and lock the suitcase.
On Saturdays I only worked a half-day. On the way out Jackson stopped me.
“Here’s a phone message, Wheeler.” He gave me a crooked grin along with the slip of paper. “I thought I told you to lay off having dames buzz you here. One more call and I’ll take it into the main office.”
I thought the message was from Marge. Instead, it was from Miss Drew. She said she wanted to see me at the Manning Building as soon as I quit work.
After I washed up and changed my clothes, I got the c
ar and went across town. There was no one in the Associated Florist Society’s offices except the girl who had telephoned me.
Paula Drew was sitting at her desk, staring out the window. She had smoked a lot of cigarettes. The ashtray beside her was piled with them. I shut the door and sat down in the chair near her.
“What’s on your mind?” I asked.
She looked at me. She didn’t seem as young as I thought she was. Her face was kind of drawn, kind of blank. But her eyes had a glitter. They looked strange.
“We’ve both been a couple of suckers,” she said. “It’s about time you found out.”
Something in her voice made my breath catch in my throat. I kept watching her. Her hornrimmed glasses were on the blotter. Her fingers, pushed them around nervously.
“I don’t get it,” I muttered.
“It’s easy.” I could hear the breath she drew. “Your girl has been two-timing you the same as Frenchy has me! That’s the whole thing in a nutshell!”
I sat there, suddenly feeling sick at my stomach. My head buzzed. My throat felt dry, as if I’d been filling Roman candles all day without a nose-protecting sponge. I remembered the flowers in the front parlor the night I’d gone out on the Kelsey porch. I remembered a lot of other things.
“I don’t believe it,” I heard myself say.
“Where do you think your girl friend has been all this week?”
After a long silence I got up. I didn’t say anything more to Paula Drew. I went down to the street and got in the car. It was fourteen miles out to Blauvelt, the town where Marge’s cousin Ella lived.
I felt like I wanted to cry but I couldn’t. I went back to my place. What I needed and wanted was a lot of liquor, but I didn’t take a drink. I had to keep my head clear, to know what I was doing.
But the time until six o’clock was like a knife stabbing me in the heart!
AT SIX to the dot, Frenchy Bergdorf rolled up in the new Buick. It was pretty dusty, as if he’d done a lot of mileage. The white-walled tires were muddy.
“Everything okay, Don?”
When I nodded, he slipped two fifty-dollar bills in my hand. “Set it for nine o’clock,” he directed, when I told him the suitcase was ready.
I locked the suitcase and brought it up from the cellar. Frenchy was in the front seat. He told me to lay the suitcase on its side in the rear. I did that and he shook hands with me.
“Thanks, Don. You’re a real pal. Don’t forget, I’ll have a job for you around the middle of next month. That’s a promise.”
He laughed and drove off. I stood and watched the car until it disappeared.
I knew I’d never see it again—or Frenchy, either. Instead of nine o’clock, I’d set the time for fifteen minutes after six!
I couldn’t eat any dinner. I didn’t think about Frenchy Bergdorf; all that was in my mind was Marge. Now, I told myself, maybe she’d be mine again. Maybe we’d go out to Lake Waseka like we used to. I could see the island and the stars. I could feel Marge in my arms, soft and cuddly, her blond hair tickling my face. I could feel her arms around my neck, the kisses we had shared.
I was going upstairs when I saw a car stop outside. Then I caught a glimpse of Eddie Milton. I opened the screen door and went down the path to meet him.
One look at his face was enough to tell me what had happened. But I waited for him to speak.
“Haven’t you heard, Don? It’s been on the radio! The Sentinel has a special extra out.”
Away up the street I could hear the newsboys shouting. Eddie’s face was the color of skimmed milk. The hand he put on my arm was shaking. He kept swallowing and breathing with his mouth open.
“No, I didn’t hear anything,” I answered. “What happened?”
Eddie made sounds in his throat. “Frenchy—at a quarter after six! The whole car blew to pieces, little pieces! Quarter after six—not five minutes after he stopped at Marge Kelsey’s house and picked her up!”
THE MENTAL BLOODHOUND
Helmar Lewis
Everything we do is governed to a certain degree by our glands. Professor Wright knew glands, so he solved crimes from his bed
“GOOD morning, Professor Wright.”
Nurse Grace Chesley adjusted the Venetian blind so that the morning sun sifted through the shafts and streaked the room with golden sunbeams. Then she looked over to the immaculate white bed in which lay the figure of a man just awakening.
From the outlines suggested by the coverlet, it was obvious that his slender body had wasted away almost to skeletal proportions. A thin arm rested above the cover; the fingers were like whitened bones. It could easily have been the body of a dead man for not a muscle moved to reveal life. But when his eyes opened the man seemed vitally alive. Like a sponge they seemed to soak in the beneficient warmth of the sun and revel in its pervasive goodness.
“Morning, nurse.” He strained his eyes to one side to see her, but she stood just beyond his range of vision. He heard the tinkle of a spoon stirring liquid in a glass.
“There’s time for medicine later,” he said, “turn on the radio. Something must have happened by now.”
“Sorry, medicine first.”
“Did you bring the morning paper?” Grace took the glass to his bedside and slipped one arm professionally under his head to lift it.
“Now drink this.”
He gulped it quickly and then asked again, “Did you bring the morning paper?”
“Yes, but—nothing’s happened yet.”
“Impossible! I don’t believe you. Two weeks without one crime being committed. Are we suddenly living in a paradise? There’d better be a crime soon, nurse, or I’ll die of sheer boredom. Got the paper?”
“Yes.” She held it slantwise so that he could read the items. He glanced quickly over the first page.
“It doesn’t seem possible that the underworld has been serene and innocent for two solid weeks,” he said.
“I guess the only way to keep you happy is for me to go out and rob a bank.”
“You’re not the type at all. You’d murder but you wouldn’t steal.” Professor Wright’s eyes brightened. “Here’s something interesting. There was a convention last night of the American Association of Criminologists.”
“What did you mean when you said I’d murder?” Grace asked.
“Wonder if Hennessey was there.”
“Why did you say I’d murder, Professor Wright?”
“Your eye-brows are too thick for stealing. You’re the Borgia type.”
“My eye-brows are not thick!”
“You pluck ’em, that’s why.”
THE DOOR opened and Mrs. Gummins, the housekeeper peered in. She was scowling and her upper lip was hidden by the protruding pout of her lower one.
“Morning, Mrs. Gummins,” Professor Wright said. Then he looked up at the nurse. “Mrs. Gummins has a good share of postpituitary, only she’s obviously subthyroid.”
Mrs. Gummins dropped her jaw slightly. “Is ‘e out uv ‘is ‘ead?” she asked.
“No, Mrs. Gummins, I’m quite sane. Just bored, that’s all. No crimes. No criminals to catch. Nothing to do. So you may as well bring my breakfast up.”
“That there feller’s ‘ere. That American bobby wi’ the red ‘air and the green suit.”
“Hennessey! Thank God! Tell him to come right up. Never mind the breakfast. Hurry, Mrs. Gummins.”
“Shouldn’t ‘e ought to ‘ave ‘is breakfast, nurse?”
“I guess he can wait a little while.”
The woman turned to go. She left the door open and they could hear her mumbling in her Cockney whine as she went to get the visitor, “I can’t for the life o’ me see why that there ‘Ennessey don’t stop botherin’ a poor invalid what’s paralyzed from the neck down. Why can’t ‘e do ‘is own detecative work, the big lummox.”
When Hennessey walked in, happiness welled over the wasted hollows of Professor Wright’s face so that he actually beamed.
“Sit down, Henn
essey. Is it murder or just a report on the Convention last night?” the invalid asked eagerly.
“Well, Professor, it’s a little bit of both.” He lifted a chair by the side of the door and carried it to the bedside. As he passed the nurse, he grinned, “ ‘Morning, Miss Chesley.”
“Forget the formalities. The devil with the morning,” the professor snapped peevishly. “Sit down and tell me what’s happened.”
Hennessey pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his pocket.
“I don’t know If I shoulda bothered you with this one. It’s kinda tough, even for you.”
“Hennessey, give me the details,” the sick man pleaded. “I’ve been lying here in this damned bed for almost two weeks waiting for you to come with another case. What’s happened to the damned criminals. Have you tracked them all down to their lairs?”
“I oughta pretty soon with your help. I don’t know what I’d a done without it the past three years. The truth. Why, they’d think I was off my chump if I said that I hadn’t solved the murders—that it was a guy what hadn’t been outa bed for three years—that it was Professor Ogden Wright who used to be professor of Endocrin . . .”
“Hennessey, if I weren’t paralyzed I’d take you . . .”
“O.K. IT’S like this. There was a convention last night at the Palmer House. The American Association of . . .”
“Criminologists,” Wright interrupted. “Yes, I know that. Lester Gould was the main speaker. Very smart man, Gould. You could learn a few things from him. One of the sharpest brains in the country. Well, go on. I want to hear about the murder.”
“It happened at the convention.”
“Good Lord! What a magnificent place for a crime.”
“That’s right.” Hennessey squashed his cigarette butt in an ash tray.
“Who was the victim?”
“Lester Gould.”
Wright looked shocked.
“I’m sorry to hear that. How did it happen? Who did it?”
“Wait a minute, I’m the guy what tells you what happened, but you’re the guy what tells me who done it. Remember?” Hennessey replied.