by Jerry eBooks
Lake was busy on the phone as Detective Sergeant Kenny left the city morgue and climbed into the car he had left standing outside. The fresh night air felt good as Kenny started the motor and drove away.
Only twenty blocks separated the morgue from the Chapman Building. The sergeant made it in a few minutes without using his siren. He parked in front of the office building. The lobby door was locked but a night elevator operator appeared and opened it after Kenny had knocked several times.
“Police,” snapped Kenny, flashing his badge. “We just received a suicide report from the tenth floor here.”
“Gosh!” exclaimed the operator as he led the way to the night car. “Who was it?”
“He gave his name as Harvey Wilson and told us he was going to kill himself,” said Kenny as the car ascended. “Then I heard a shot over the wire.” He looked intently at the operator. “Have you taken any one up to the tenth in the last half hour?”
“Yeah.” The operator nodded. “Mr. Jeff Bart. He’s Mr. Wilson’s partner. He signed in about three-fifteen. He put the time down in the book in the lobby like all the guys do when they come here to work at night.”
“Good,” muttered Kenny.
The car stopped at the tenth floor and the door slid open. Kenny stepped out into the corridor with the elevator operator close behind him. Half-way down the hall a lean, sandy-haired young man about the same build as the sergeant was struggling desperately to get an office door open from the outside.
“That’s Mr. Bart,” said the operator. “Somethin’ has happened all right.”
Jefferson Bart turned as the two men came toward him. There was a wild expression in his eyes and he was still wearing his hat.
“My partner,” he exclaimed. “He’s locked himself in—and I can’t get the door open. I left my keys at home. I heard a shot, and tried to find someone on this floor who might have a pass key. Then I came back here. I think he’s killed himself.”
“Yeah.” Kenny shoved Bart to one side and looked at the door. It seemed rather flimsy. He moved back and flung himself against it, giving the door a hard blow with his shoulder. It flew open, revealing a yawning maw of darkness beyond it. “You didn’t try hard enough, Bart.”
The sergeant produced an automatic and a flashlight. He stepped into the office with Jeff Bart behind him. The buzzer in the elevator was sounding stridently. Kenny glanced back at the operator.
“That’s probably the homicide squad,” said Kenny. “Bring them up.”
“Yes, sir.” The operator ran to the car, and the floor door banged shut as the elevator descended.
Kenny went on into the office with Bart following. The ray of the flashlight gleamed on a still figure that was sprawled back in a chair. Behind the sergeant there was a click as Bart found a light switch and turned on the lights.
“He’s dead all right,” Kenny said as he thrust his gun and flashlight back into his pockets. “Shot in the right temple.”
“This is awful,” Bart muttered. “Why did he do it?”
Kenny did not answer. He was staring thoughtfully at the corpse. Harvey Wilson had been a middle-aged man. He was slumped back in a comfortable leather desk chair, his arms dangling over the sides. There was a .32 automatic lying on the floor just below the fingers of his right hand.
The telephone transceiver was off hook and lying on the desk a little to one side of him. Kenny went close and sniffed. There seemed to be a faint hint of perfume in the air.
“I didn’t believe he would do anything foolish even though he sounded excited when he phoned me,” said Bart suddenly. “I told him not to worry, to wait until I got here and we would work things out some way.”
“What do you mean?” asked Kenny. He saw that the windows were closed and the door leading into the next office, apparently that of Bart, was locked from this side. There was the sound of the elevator door opening and voices in the hall. The homicide squad had arrived.
“Why, Wilson phoned to tell me—” began Bart and then stopped as the sergeant shook his head.
“Hold it,” Kenny said. “No use in you having to tell your story twice. Waste of time.”
The men from the homicide squad crowded into the office. Most of them were detectives, fingerprint men and photographers, none of them in uniform, save a few patrol car officers who had been sent to the scene. Kenny saw that Captain Tilford was in charge. The detective sergeant saluted the captain. Tilford returned the salute.
“Suicide, eh?” said Tilford, looking at the corpse.
“I don’t think so, Captain.” Kenny shook his head. “More likely murder.”
“Murder!” gasped Jeff Bart. “But how could it be? The door was locked from the inside and Harvey told me on the phone what he was going to do.”
“There’s a snap lock on the door,” said Kenny. “The killer could have shot Wilson and then stepped out into the hail, automatically locking the door behind him. He might have slipped away then. Tell us why you think your partner might have killed himself, Bart.”
“He phoned me and told me that he had drawn out all of the funds of the firm and spent the money gambling,” explained Bart. “He said he had cheated me and ruined the firm of Wilson and Bart. I couldn’t believe it was that bad, and asked him to wait here until I reached the office and we would talk things over.”
“And what did Wilson say to that?” demanded Kenny.
“He—he just laughed at me,” said Bart. “Told me he had drawn our last ten thousand dollars out of the bank today to pay off same of his debts. That by the time I arrived here he would be gone.”
“So you came here, grew angry at what your partner had done and murdered him,” snapped Captain Tilford abruptly. “Then you tried to make it look like suicide.”
“The voice of the man who called the morgue and said he was Harvey Wilson, sounded muffled,” said Kenny. “Might not have been Wilson at all.”
Bart looked dazedly at the homicide man. He was pale and obviously frightened. Kenny frowned as he gazed at the young attorney. Jefferson Bart looked almost too guilty. Twenty years of police work had taught the sergeant it was usually an innocent person who looked that way when confronted in such a situation.
An assistant medical examiner appeared and looked over the body. He did it with the casualness of a butcher preparing a roast.
“Death by lethal penetration of the auricularis superior,” said the medical examiner. “The missile taking a downward course.”
“Yeah,” said Kenny. “In other words the guy was killed by a shot in the head, the gun fired from such an angle that suicide isn’t probable. Besides, the lights were out when Bart and I first entered the office and suicides don’t usually kill themselves in the dark. They like to have light when they do it.”
“But I didn’t kill him!” protested Bart suddenly, as though he just realized he had actually been accused of murder. “I liked Harvey Wilson. He was my partner, and besides, I’m in love with his niece. Grace Wilson will stand by me. She’ll never believe I killed her uncle.”
“Then she has more faith in you than I have,” said Captain Tilford. “You’re under arrest, Bart. We’re holding you on a charge of murder.” He motioned to some of his men. “Take him away, boys.”
Detective Sergeant Dan Kenny yawned. It was late and he was sleepy. He left the homicide squad busy in the office going through all of the usual routine, checking for fingerprints, taking pictures of the body, and stepped out into the corridor.
Kenny had the elevator operator take him down to the lobby and show him the office register. He found that Jefferson Bart had signed in at 3:25 A.M. The name above Bart’s interested Kenny. It was Nick Streeter, and he had signed in at 2:50 A.M. His office number was 1128.
“Who is Nick Streeter?” Kenny asked the operator.
“Oh, that guy.” The night man did not sound as if he thought much of Streeter. “He has an office up on the eleventh floor. Claims he is a broker of some sort, but I’ve heard that he r
eally runs a private gambling club somewhere over on the East Side.”
“Then his office in this building is just a front?”
“That’s the way I figure it.” The operator nodded as the elevator indicator buzzed. “Tenth floor again. You guys certainly keep me busy.”
“Take me up to the eleventh before you stop at ten,” said Kenny. “I want to have a little talk with Streeter.”
“Okay.”
The detective sergeant got off on the eleventh floor and walked to the closed door of 1128. There was a light burning inside. Kenny put his right hand on the gun in his pocket and he opened the door with his left.
He stepped into a small office. A heavy-set dark haired man was counting a roll of bills. He glanced up with a scowl as he saw Kenny. Then he snatched up the money and shoved it out of sight in a drawer of his desk.
“I wondered what became of Wilson’s ten thousand bucks,” Kenny said mildly. He sniffed. “That pomade you use on your hair sure has plenty of smell, Streeter.”
“Who are you?” demanded Streeter. “And what is this stuff about Wilson’s ten grand?”
“The name is Kenny,” said the sergeant. “Detective Sergeant Kenny from Headquarters. Investigating the murder of Harvey Wilson.”
“Murder?” A flicker of surprise showed in Streeter’s dark eyes.
“That’s right.” Kenny nodded. “You thought you had arranged it so the police would believe it was suicide, didn’t you.”
Behind Kenny the outer door of the office closed and there was a faint clicking sound. The sergeant glanced over his shoulder. There was no one at the door. He looked back at the desk to find Nick Streeter covering him with an automatic.
“Automatic lock on the door,” Streeter said quietly. “It works from the desk. The door is steel and the office is soundproof. A shot fired in here couldn’t even be heard out in the hall. Are you the only one who suspects me?”
Dan Kenny knew what would happen if he gave the correct answer to that one. He had a vision of himself lying stiff and cold like one of those bodies he had been examining in the morgue. It was not a pretty picture and he did not like it.
“Just me and the whole homicide squad,” he said quickly. “Now that we are just a couple of pals together would you mind telling me why you bumped off Wilson?”
“He was trying to double-cross me,” said Streeter. “He was taken for fifty grand in my joint. He lost all of his firm’s money except ten grand trying to win back his dough. So tonight Wilson plans to skip town, after drawing the ten grand out of the bank.”
“So you kill him, get the ten thousand and decide to make it look like suicide,” said Kenny, moving closer to the deck as he noticed that the wire of the lamp ran along the floor not far from his feet. “You disguise your voice, phone Jefferson Bart, and make him think it is his partner confessing all.”
“Nice touch that,” said Streeter, who was not lacking in self-esteem. “So was my calling the morgue.”
“Except for muffling your voice,” said Kenny. “I happened to be at the morgue and listened to that call. There was no reason for the muffled voice. No one knew you or Wilson at the morgue.”
“You better put that gun of yours on the desk,” ordered Streeter. “I don’t like the way you keep holding onto it in your pocket.”
“Sure.” The sergeant drew the automatic out of his pocket and placed it on the edge of the desk. “There you are.”
The gun was a little too close to the edge and it slid out and hit the floor with a thud.
“Sorry,” Kenny said.
He reached down to pick up the gun. As he did so he gave the electric cord a quick hard tug. It jerked the lamp off the desk and it landed against Streeter, knocking the gun out of his hand.
Kenny stood up, his automatic in his hand. He reached across the desk and tapped Streeter over the head with the barrel of his weapon while the gambling club owner was trying to pick up his own gun. Streeter went limp, knocked out from the blow.
“This guy makes a much better murderer than Jeff Bart,” muttered Kenny as he drew out a pair of handcuffs and placed them on the wrists of the unconscious man. “And if Streeter has a gal who believes and trusts him, then dames are more simple-minded than I think they are.”
Detective Sergeant Kenny sighed and then yawned. He found the automatic button that unlocked the outer door of the office and opened the door. He had placed his gun on the desk. He frowned as he picked it up and smelled the barrel. The scent from the pomade on Nick Streeter’s hair was on the gun.
“This night life is getting me,” mused Kenny. “Much more of it and I’ll be dead,” He grinned. “In fact, I just came close to being a corpse a few minutes ago.”
FRAGILE EVIDENCE
Lee Fredericks
Pierre Barodin proves he’s a sleuth as well as a noted art authority when he gives his sword-cane a work-out that punctures a crime!
IT WAS long past midnight when Pierre Barodin leaped out of the taxi and bounded up the steps of the somber, massive unlighted building on upper Fifth Avenue.
There wasn’t a soul in Central Park except the homeless bums who slept there. The windows of the expensive apartments that faced the park from the other side of the street were also unlighted. Even the breeze, that usually is fresh in the fall months of the year, had died down and seemingly gone to bed for the night.
There was no bell on the outside of the stout doors, but Barodin had expected that. He lifted the handle of his French sword-cane and rapped on the door smartly. The raps echoed and reechoed through large vacant halls and seemed to grow in volume like the beat of a huge drum.
The door swung open silently, and a badged and uniformed figure looked him over suspiciously without a word.
“I am Pierre Barodin,” he announced to the officer. “I was telephoned for by Detective Mike Corey.”
The officer swung the door wider so Barodin could come in. It seemed that the atmosphere inside had even placed an awful silence on the arm of the law, for the officer pointed to where a single-glassed door gave a patch of light in the huge corridor.
“He’s in there,” was all he said.
There was no awe in Barodin as he walked smartly along the corridor toward the office. He had been here many times before, and the ghostliness of the night held no more terrors for him in the art museum than if he were home in his own apartment over his art store in the East Eighties. His leather heels resounded on the marble floor, while overhead the dark shapes of night-clothed canvases were each and every one an individual picture to him, known and imprinted on his memory from many examinations.
He opened the door without knocking and found Mike Corey and several guards in earnest conversation. Corey saw him without surprise and beckoned him over.
“Don’t know whether this is in your line or not,” he said without greeting, “but somebody’s stole some glass.”
Barodin’s eyes opened and his fingers went to his Menjou mustache to pat it in place.
“Glass?”
One of the guards, recognizing Barodin, spoke up.
“Pharaoh glass, of the Vaux Collection,” he said anxiously. “And that isn’t all they did.
They—”
“That part is up to the police,” Corey put in hastily. “Besides stealing the stuff, the guy or guys that done this bumped off the lug that was hired to guard the stuff while it was away from the Vaux private museum.”
“Did they speak English?” Pierre asked sarcastically, referring to the jargon used by Corey in describing the crime.
The sally went over Corey’s head.
“I don’t know what they spoke, for nobody heard ’em,” he said naively. “The stuff is in the basement,” he added, heading for the door leading out of the office. “Maybe you better come down there with me and look it over so you can know the kind of stuff it is, if you see it again.”
PIERRE smiled. He had been over the Vaux Collection so many times that he knew every piece by heart.
The glass pieces were works of art of the reign of Rameses II, every one of them the purest of Egyptian fine art of that period.
One piece in particular was priceless, a blue glass chariot complete with opaque glass driver and horse. It was a work so fine that, considering the tools they had to work with at that time, it must have taken a lifetime to construct. There were other pieces of importance, but nothing to compare with the workmanship of the chariot.
They filed down the steps that were lit at the present moment only by the small “watchman” bulbs. Shadows lay everywhere about the place and the walk through the Egyptian Room gave an eerie feeling, even to Barodin, as they passed the many art relics of a long dead race.
The division devoted to the Henry Vaux Collection was at the far end of the museum basement. Two uniformed policemen stood at the doorway guarding the room.
“The medical examiner ain’t come yet,” Corey explained as they passed through the portal, “so don’t touch anything.”
Inside, the exhibition was fully lit. As far as Pierre could see at first glance everything was in perfect order. Then, as he looked around, he saw several vacancies in the glass cases that held the collection. He stepped closer to see what was missing—and stopped abruptly, his pointed French shoes almost in the widening pool of thick red blood. Then, he saw—the body on the floor with the head horribly crushed in as though it had been suddenly struck with a blunt instrument, such as a sash weight.
Quickly he stooped to look at the body. Several feet under the case he saw a. small metal object. His fingers reached out and retrieved it, a small key, the kind that fitted the cases where the glass was placed on exhibition.
“You have examined for clues?” Pierre asked Corey casually, as he rose to his feet and put the key in his pocket.
“It’s an open and shut case on that,” Corey assured him, laughing. “The old guy here was a guard. He musts heard somebody making a noise of some kind down here and hot-footed it in to see what was happening. Before he had a chance to let out a yip the guy crowned him with some kind of a club or lead pipe and made his getaway with only a handful of the stuff on account of he ain’t got time to load up.”