by Jerry eBooks
Dual personality stuff is out of my sphere. I have enough trouble understanding just an ordinary sort of mug.
But this was not just one mug—there was two sides to him. And both—according to past performances—looked upon murder as inconsequential.
“What’s this about kidnaping?” I barked. “Who would want to kidnap a dummy?”
“You’d be surprised, Toots,” the blonde said, putting her toy back into the trunk women call a purse.
“You know I won’t let him be kidnaped,” I said. “I was hired to see that he was delivered safely.”
“Do you think he wants to be?”
I looked at the dummy on Jergin’s lap, and the dummy looked at me, and said: “No!”
Jergin said, “The slap-happy bum should be. He’s a killer!”
“I’m not, but you are,” the dummy said, facing Jergin. “It’s a vicious sort of death, too.”
Jergin’s hand again raised to throttle the dummy’s mouth too late.
Then he turned to me and said, “I will take care of the Count. We have a few things to talk over. How about seeing us tomorrow morning?” Well that was quite a kiss-off, but after all he was the boss. He had hired me to protect the dummy, but now he was taking over the dummy himself. I didn’t feel right about it—but wotinell, I only work on salary.
I had nothing to say, so I walked back to my compartment, thinking of a few little touches of murder, a kidnaping to come, a screwy boss—and the correct way to sue the pants off the boss.
WE WERE hammering across the flats of the Continental Divide next day, the mountains under and below us on both sides, when it happened.
I was back in Jergin’s compartment. The blonde was Jean; she had told me that much. Jergin, himself, seemed bent on staying stiff. He was having a time, although a lot of it seemed double-talk, especially when he had the Count, or Charles Clunley, on his lap. It impressed me particularly that he kept referring and addressing the dummy as the Count—and not Charlie.
Dumb as I am, I smelled something about this that was Sing Sing all over again. The two attempts on my life may have had something to do with such a thought.
I was watching the scenery and I decided to leave Jergin’s compartment to go to the rear for a quick drink.
When I opened the compartment door, I saw the trigger guy in the beaverskin coming toward me. He wasn’t alone. Preceding him was a short, fat and confident lug, swarthy and heavy-joweled with a wide mouth and dinky eyes that were overlapped by bags of fat and dissipation. The scar-faced man who had tried to knife me as I left my office trailed them.
I slammed the door quick and turned to Jergin.
“They’re here again. Only now they’re triple instead of one at a time.” I reached for the shoulder holster.
Jergin’s bleary eyes seemed to clear momentarily. I thought I detected something canny and smug in their sudden glint. But at a time like that you can never be sure of anything.
The knock on the door was loud and imperious—which seemed strange to me, seeing that the hoods must have known they were walking into a private dick’s gun. They don’t usually come for you with such effrontery and confidence.
I couldn’t get it. The gun was flat on the side of my palm, and I bounced it suggestively.
“Put it away! Put it away, quick,” Jergin ordered.
“Now listen—” I started to say.
“It’s part of your job,” he growled. “The rest of your fee will still be waiting in San Francisco.”
I put it away and cursed myself for ever getting mixed up in anything as screwball as this. I’d been in crime before, but this thing was so unusual that I doubted that it all wasn’t a dream up and over anything I had ever encountered before.
It was such a dream that it could only happen to dumb Mike Grady. It was to develop into the only murder (if you can call it that) that I ever heard of or expect to hear of where the killer went scot free. Or maybe he didn’t? Maybe the victim killed himself? You figure it out. It’s beyond the powers of a guy like me.
The knock sounded again on the door. Jergin picked up the Count, seated the little demon on his lap, and fondled it.
That did not make sense, either. Jergin was on the spot and knew it—and apparently did not care. He seemed inclined to play only with the dummy—the one thing that possessed the damnable part of his own most dangerous personality.
The knocking sounded again. Jergin grinned fatuously, and the dummy said: “Going to lose me?”
“I hope so,” Jergin said in a sad voice. “I hope so.”
The blonde said: “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. The Count’s out for murder.”
Well I was quite sure now that Jergin—or all of us—was off the beam. I felt safer facing hoods. They spoke my language—so when Jergin said, “Open the door,” I opened it almost thankfully.
The swarthy and confident man came in first. Trailing him was the dead-panned killer who had tried to knife me. And last of all was the mug who’d shot the Count in the Denver station.
This cluck grinned at me and said: “You were born lucky.”
I looked him over and knew it was true. “You weren’t!”
“Shuddup and shut the door,” the swarthy leader said, never looking at me. He was grinning toothily at Jergin and the dummy, like he had found his long-lost love.
JERGIN was looking at me and his eyes were silently saying to play it smart.
I shut the door and pressed my back against it.
The gun said, “You were born lucky,” and reached, beneath my coat and took my automatic.
I was boiling, but Jergin still was looking at me and nodding his head.
I don’t like to be pushed around, but if obeying orders calls for pushing around—I’ll push—up to a certain extent.
“This man, Count, was the one who tried to stab you and had you shot,” Jergin said to the dummy. “His name is—”
“His name is Casso,” the dummy mumbled. “Why you know I met him eight years ago. He’s a high-binder from the word go—”
Jergin’s hand raised, and—so help me—he slapped the dummy right across the puss, shutting it up.
The dummy rolled its glass eyes and looked despondently at Jergin.
“Listen,” said Casso. “Don’t ever hit that kid. Give him to me.” He reached out, crooking his right arm.
“I don’t want to go with Casso,” the dummy said in a childish voice. “With him I’m mute, without character, and a killer—”
“What’s he mean—killer?” Casso growled.
“I wouldn’t know,” Jergin said. “He says the damnedest things.” He passed over the Count to Casso. It was only later that, in analyzing the conversation, that I ever knew a man to tell another—before witnesses—that he would be killed. But—through the Count—Jergin did just that.
Jergin looked from the Count to Casso, and his eyes filled with tears again.
“G’bye, Count,” he said.
“Say! What the hell!” The Count did not sound like the Count at all. His modulated voice was gone. It was harsh, rasping and uncertain.
“Cute, aren’t they?” the gun said to me. He was pretty confident about the whole thing. His scar-faced pal had seated himself near the blonde and was devoting his time between ogling her and Casso and the dummy.
“Yeah, Very cute. Clever, too.”
The dummy in Casso’s arms looked up into his face and said: “What’s this, boss?”
“A snatch, kid,—a snatch.”
“Now lookit here,” the dummy said plaintively. “After all, I don’t amount to much.”
“You amount to one quarter of a million bucks!”
“My! My! You don’t say so. Why for?”
“Because without you the great Jergin and his movie and radio rights cannot click. You’re half of the act.”
“So I am. So I am. I never thought of that before. A quarter of a million. My, oh, my! And here I’ve been selling my services to Jergin for
a buck and a half a week. You have something there, pal.”
“This will probably be the first time in history that a kidnaping did not concern a human being,” Jergin said, looking out the window. “How did you figure that angle out, Casso?”
“Just figuring it safe, cluck. I don’t want to go back to Sing Sing. They can’t put you in the can for kidnaping a dummy.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“But what will you be without him. Contracts will be cancelled; it’ll wash you up unless you bail him out.”
Jergin took a long while to answer. “I suppose you’re right.”
“Yes, without the Count you’re just a bum—like you were before I met you. This quarter million is just an old debt you owe, chum.”
Casso started for the door, Scarface yawned, and the gun near me repeated, “You were born lucky.”
I took him at his word when the train gave a slight lurch arid the gun leaned toward the blonde.
I let fly with a left, clipping him alongside the head. My right hand grabbed his rod.
Casso cursed—and so did the boss. Scarface reached under his belt and came out with a gleaming stiletto. A lucky shot knocked it out of his hand and the hand out of action.
I swung around and had both the gun and Casso in line of fire. Everything was under control.
The mistake I made was turning my back on the blonde. The blow came so suddenly and unexpectedly the whole train seemed to buckle and jump upward as the floor came up and hit me.
Vaguely I saw Casso heave the Count past me and saw him reach for his gun.
TWICE I triggered rapidly. Casso stood upright, but Scarface went down folding both hands across his stomach.
The blonde behind me screamed. Jergin made a grab for the Count.
The gun got to him first—and pulled him up under his right arm.
Outside the compartment I could hear passengers screaming. Then Casso’s gun leveled down upon me and spat flame.
I felt nothing. The head just jerked. There was no feeling of pain. Oblivion swooped.
It was later in a Provo, Utah, hospital that I awoke. The bullet had only creased the skull—but now that crease hurt like the Devil incarnate.
There was a forlorn feeling, like you feel when you mess up an important job. There were cops and nurses and doctors there; but they weren’t too inquisitive about me.
They seemed to be interested mostly in Jergin, who was in the next bed. There didn’t seem to be much wrong with him save an eggsized lump on his head.
“I tell you,” he was telling the police, “it was a robbery—no more—no less—just a robbery.”
He did not mention the Count—and so I kept mum about that even without being asked. I, too, was curious.
The questioning of Jergin went on. Casso and the gun, it developed, had made their getaway. But I’d killed Scarface, and Casso had nearly killed the blonde.
It was hard to control myself until the cops finished their questioning. I wanted to ask Jergin a few myself.
Finally that opportunity came.
Jergin came out with it himself.
“Mike Grady,” he called softly from the next bed. “Are you awake, Mike Grady?”
“Yes.” Doubtfully.
“I’m sorry about you having to risk your life.”
“Yeah?”
“That’s right. I didn’t plan it that way. I just thought they would take the Count away from you.
“If you wanted him taken away by hoods, why didn’t you just hold onto him yourself?”
“I wanted to make it look important—that I was trying to protect him. That he was of great value to me.”
“Isn’t he?”
“As a dummy—no. As a killer for the next two months—yes.”
Well, if I hadn’t been flat on my back in the first place, that crack would have laid me there.
How could a dummy kill?
“Casso just got out of Sing Sing,” Jergin whispered. “I knew he was coming for me—and I knew how he would figure—that he wanted the Count.”
“Yes?”
“You look like an okay guy. If you think I should be turned in—go ahead. But after all—I’m not killing Casso.”
“Casso’s being killed?”
“Yes. Minute-by-minute. While he waits for me to ransom the Count, the dummy he kidnapped is slowly killing him.”
This was a different Jergin than the one on the train. There was something intense, urgent and sincere in his voice. I found myself liking him. There was something plaintive, appealing and honest about him as he discussed murder-in-the-making.
“Call it poetic justice, if you will,” he said softly. “It goes back fifteen years.”
I waited tensely, swearing to myself that Jergin was to land in the brig for what he had done to me. He sounded like a killer.
“I was an interne at a hospital,” he said. “I was in love with a nurse. We had a small tube of radium worth a quarter of a million dollars. And that’s what Casso meant when he set that value on the Count. He came in with his mob and raided the room in which my sweetheart was working. To get the tube he had to kill her.
“I heard the shot and came running, only to be taken as a hostage and shield as Casso made his getaway. The mob fled to Pennsylvania and there had to bury the radium tube.”
“Why bury it?”
“Ever hear of radium poisoning?”
“Sure.”
“It causes osteomyelitis, an infection of the bones. Radium makes them gradually disintegrate. It’s a very painful death.”
“But sure death?”
“Right. It’s impossible to counteract.”
“WHAT happened in the Pennsylvania hideout?”
Jergin shrugged. “I was held captive for weeks. The New York papers—and the police, of course—because of my disappearance—got the idea that I was a member of the gang. The gang finally was captured. I told the truth, but Casso swore I actually was a member of the gang to weaken my testimony against him. When the gang was convicted I, too, was sent away—and for the murder of my own sweetheart. It was heartbreak, Mike; nutty as all get out—but true.
His voice was husky and just looking into his sad eyes and the hentracks surrounding them, I knew he was speaking the truth.
“I had always been interested in ventriloquism,” he said, “so when in the big house I made Count von Mike. He started me on my career.”
“But where does Casso come into the picture?”
“He’s a fair ventriloquist of sorts—and he loves the Count.”
“You’re out of business when he has him.”
“No—nothing of the sort. I’m going to stay off the air and out of films for a couple of months, making Casso believe I cannot operate without the Count. In any business you take insurance. I wouldn’t take a chance on having just one Count von Mike. Some hoodlum dumber than Casso might have thought of kidnaping him.”
“That’s right, too. But who was the blonde?” Jergin looked away, then turned his head slowly again. “She was the sister of the girl I was to marry. I guess I’ll marry her now. All she’s been living for was the day when Casso would walk into his own trap—and die.”
“Casso die? How can anyone arrange that?”
“Well, that’s up to you to decide. I certainly am not knocking him off—and neither is the Count. Casso brought it all upon himself when he put on the snatch.”
“Now look,” I said, “that sounds nuts.”
“Okay—it’s nuts; but look at it this way: I’ve been out of the pen for eight years. Casso only got out last week. Only a few of us knew where that tube of radium was buried. I got to it first, and I knew Casso would come looking for me. Either the tube or one-quarter million. Both would have been the same. You were simply stage dressing.
“Well, he got the Count—and the tube that I put inside the Count a few days ago. There wasn’t very much radium in that tube, Mike—only a very little in fact; that was the important thing. You
see, the quantity wasn’t large enough to kill a man quickly, the way being in contact with a large amount can do. There isn’t enough to hurt a man who was just in contact for a little while. But Casso’s going to be in contact with it for a long time, Mike—and for long periods at a time. I know him, he loves the Count, loves to sit it on his lap and practice ventriloquism. Get it?”
I got it—and I also got my other $1000, for I never told Jergin’s story.
Casso happily bounced the Count on his knee for a little more than two months, until he was forced to go into a hospital. The Count was found—and the tube of radium returned to its original hospital. Casso died.
The Count is back in the movies and on the air again, but I never hear the act without repressing a shudder. Did either Jergin or the Count kill Casso, or did Casso kill himself? At any rate, as Jergin said—it’s what you’d call poetic justice.
THE END
DIBBLE DABBLES IN DEATH
David Wright O’Brien
Dibble swore he wouldn’t be found dead in such drawers. But the choice was no longer his.
STANDING there in the mid-July heat of his hotel room, clutching the telephone savagely and shouting into it, Delbert Dibble looked little short of ridiculous.
A middle-aged executive, with a middle-aged paunch, balding head, and round cherubic face, Delbert Dibble could, on occasion, present a rather forceful dynamic-businessman sort of appearance. Unfortunately, however, this was not such an occasion for it.
Indignant though his mien, thunderous though his voice, expensively tasteful though his attire, Mr. Dibble’s inability to create awe-at-a-glance was due to one incongruity in the picture.
He was completely without trousers—and quite denuded of drawers.
The trousers, pin-striped and in perfect taste with the rest of his attire, lay on his bed. But of drawers waiting to be donned, there was no visible evidence.
“Damned nonsense!” Dibble roared into the telephone. He owned a deep rasping voice that threw salesmen and secretaries into a panic.