by Jerry eBooks
He reached back and took out his handcuffs, and suddenly he was looking at Sam Tulley, though he could not see the gun under Tulley’s coat. He was not expecting that. He wasn’t depending on it. This whole buildup was a surprise. The spring-it-on-them method that shook out their yellow hearts and loosened their fumbling tongues.
He said: “If you’ll put these on—these handcuffs, Mr. Tulley, I’ll go on. Because it’s you I’m arresting. You’re the killer, Tulley.”
He moved across the room.
Tulley was looking up, at Johnny. He jerked the gun out from under his coat. He held it level. Johnny stopped. Tulley was chewing his lips. He surprised. But he had the gun.
The gun was the barrier that saved him in that minute while his mind roamed in confusion. But his whole face showed that he didn’t know Johnny West was aware of his guilt. He licked his lips. Second wind was coming. He was the rat up against the wall, fighting every last inch.
“Stay where you are,” he said. “If you move one inch closer I’ll kill you.”
IX
DOROTHY was surprised when Johnny spoke. She was surprised because she had forgotten he was a cop. There was no fright in his voice.
He said: “This is a confession of your guilt then?”
“I didn’t say that!” Tulley roared. Tulley hadn’t expected that. He had expected a shrinking from the weapon of death.
“Innocent men don’t pull guns,” Johnny said.
Tulley was getting out of his chair now, still holding the gun on Johnny. A window was behind him. He could break it. He could escape.
“You’ve nothing on me,” said Tulley. “Only you’re not going to railroad me! I’m going to get out of this.”
“You’re already dead,” Johnny said. “You’re already in the prison morgue, dead and cold, ready for your grave.” Johnny West still held the handcuffs in front of him. “I’ll tell you why before I put these on you. You seem to think that after all your blunders we still have nothing on you, so I’ll tell you how you accomplished everything, and the reason for it, then I’m going to lock these around your wrists and take you away. That gun isn’t going to do you any good. The trigger is too hard for you. It’s made of steel.
“You came here Thursday,” Johnny went on. “You admitted that. You came out on the train. You brought the Journal with you. From that you got your idea. Because on Thursday you signed certain papers with Mrs. Davis which would put you in charge of a large trust fund for beginning actors. It would make you producer of the plays in a theater called the Rhea Davis Theater where each year you were to try out new talent for so long as the money lasted. That was to begin only after her death. Whatever profits the plays made were yours.
“The money she left was only for the actual productions. But you had complete charge of the money and could direct it into the channels you saw fit. It was a great charity. It made you a rich man if you desired to pull a few underhanded strings. It lifted you out of the gutter and put you in the backseat of a Rolls Royce.
“So you meant to see that she died before she changed her mind and switched the will to some other glib producer who could convince her he could do better with the Rhea Davis Theater fund than you. That’s why you ripped the heel from one of her shoes while she was at her nap. So the heel would break and she would send the shoes to the cobbler.
“Saturday you paid a small boy to go to the cobbler for Rhea Davis’ shoes. You gave the boy a dollar. When you had obtained the shoes you took them with you back to Stamford where you were spending the week-end. In Stamford you applied the poison chromium fluoride and had another cobbler sew the linings neatly back in the shoes.”
Sam Tulley was backing toward the window. “It’s all a lie. You can’t prove it!”
The gun was gripped hard in his right hand. Everyone was watching him attentively.
“You returned here Monday,” Johnny West went on. “You sneaked into the house. Knowing the place fairly well, it was easy to get in when the butler wasn’t around. You managed to keep out of sight until you got upstairs. But in your excitement you got to the wrong end of the second floor and you put the shoes—wrapped—in Grant Smyth’s closet. His room corresponds with Mrs. Davis’ in detail. You then rushed downstairs intending to get out of the house.
“But Grant saw him then,” Dorothy interrupted. “Grant must have just been coming in and he caught Sam Tulley in the house. Because he mentioned in Mrs. Davis’ room about having had beer with Grant on Monday. When he said he was in Stamford Thursday through to Monday night Grant wasn’t in the room to contradict him and remind him that he had been here in the house Monday morning. That would have been a complete give-away.” Dorothy caught her breath. “As it was, he had Stamford for an alibi. I didn’t remember any of this conversation until Grant was slugged. Then I realized it must have been because Grant knew of some movement the killer had made and was going to tell.”
Sam Tulley said: “I thought I told you—”
WEST glowered at him.
Johnny clipped: “You’re through telling anybody. We’re telling you. After you had beer with Grant on Monday—Grant with his short memory and his slow mind—you returned to Stamford. You were there when Mrs. Davis called your New York office and they transferred the call. At that time you made the appointment to meet Mrs. Davis at the Blue Hour Glass on Fifth Avenue.
“So you drove in Monday night and met her there. She told you of the people she had invited, she perhaps even gave you a list of their names, since you were to be her head producer, and at that time told you that she was going to revise her plans. She would commence putting on plays with beginners in them at once, instead of waiting until after she died.
“What I say now I got from her lawyers. She told you she was going to change the will and the provisions of your contract the first thing Tuesday morning. That, of course, was the very thing you had been afraid of. The original agreement gave you a free hand. This would restrict you. You were to be told who you were to have and what you were to produce. You knew that she was dying even while she told you this. But you were deathly afraid that she would live long enough to change everything with the lawyers when they arrived Tuesday morning. Then, even though she was dead, you would have lost.
“So you telephoned the new people Mrs. Davis had invited to come out here for the summer. It was your desperate thought that if you could frighten them out of coming out here she would be so infuriated at them for not appearing that she would let the old agreement stand as it was. So you called Miss Noel and Mr. Dell and the five others who didn’t appear. But it didn’t work. Mrs. Davis did change things. And you—”
Sam Tulley was all the way back to the window. His face had gone white.
“You can’t prove any of this! Not in court you can’t!”
Johnny West began walking toward him. “Yes, I can. The little boy you paid to get Mrs. Davis’ shoes from the cobbler, is in the other room. He just arrived.”
Tulley kicked out behind him. The glass shattered from the French door.
Johnny moved on toward him.
“After you pushed Frances,” he went on, “you ran into one of the bedrooms, hung by your hands from the balcony, dropped to the soft dirt below, and came in through this French door that’s behind you now. That way it looked as though you had been down here, not upstairs.”
“Stay back!” Sam Tulley said.
He turned, lifted his hand over his face, and plunged toward the glass. West bolted forward, caught his legs in a tackle. Tulley fell halfway through the glass. Wiggam rushed over and gave Johnny a hand. They pulled Tulley back into the room. He had dropped the gun. Johnny put the handcuffs on him. Then he straightened up.
“There’s your second act curtain, Mr. Dell,” he said.
*****
It was a beautiful morning when Dorothy came into the living room. Grant was sitting in a chair by the window, a bandage around his head, a cigarette in his mouth. Betty was talking to Clifton and smiling
while she spoke. Clifton turned.
“Kid!” he said. “Guess what?”
“What?” said Dorothy.
“Betty—ah, Mrs. Smyth—says . . . Well, she’s going to go through with the Rhea Davis Theater movement. For her mother’s sake. Everything that was stipulated in the new plans!”
Dorothy said: “That—that’s—”
“Do you know what it means?” Clifton roared. “Do you know what it calls for? You heard West say. But let me tell you. It calls for the production of my play, ‘Saturday,’ next season. My play! On the boards. In a Broadway theater. First night. Critics. George Jean Nathan and Walter Winchell. My name in lights. Me making curtain speeches!”
DOROTHY glanced at Betty.
“It’s the least I can do,” Betty said quietly, “and it was Mother’s wish. Roy left this morning, Miss Noel. I’m sorry if I’ve seemed to you to be—”
“But you haven’t,” said Dorothy. “Really you haven’t.”
“Listen,” Clifton said, “are you interested in this or not? It’s the biggest thing since the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor. Bigger. We’re going to get a cast together to rehearse this summer. We’re going to go over it and over it. Wiggam’s going to be publicity agent and he’ll help me. I’m going to polish the lines so hard they’ll explode in your mouth before you get them halfway out. I’m going to have the audience yelling for shock absorbers after the first intermission. It’s going to be like nothing that’s ever walked across the boards since—since—well, Shakespeare, if he was good. Since him. We’re going to ring down the third act and send the critics running into the streets screaming praise to the world!”
“That’s fine.”
“And you’re the lead. You’re the girl in ‘Saturday’. You’ve got to do it just like you did on Seventeenth Street. You’ve got to swagger through the role. You’ve got to laugh and cry and go crazy. You’ve got to sweat out your life blood in ‘Saturday’s’ heroine. Every night you’ve got to do that. Me, I’m going to retire as an actor. I only did it because of the shortage. I’m going to sit out front every night and watch you. Then I’m going to go home and write some more. I’m going to light a great big torch and run through Forty-fourth Street with it. You and I are going to do it! The Lunts! Ha! Who are the Lunts? What are they compared to an actress-playwright team!”
“But I—”
“You what, Dorothy?”
“I—”
“You’re thinking of that detective?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t forget him last night? You didn’t forget all about him the moment he walked out of here last night with that killer in his bag?”
“No,” she said.
“Then you’re crazy.”
“Am I?” she said.
You’re throwing away the world.”
“Is that all?”
“No,” he snapped. “The universe. Posterity. Immortality.”
“Only those things?”
“And me,” he said. “You’re taking those things away from me, too.”
She looked at him, and then she heard the front door open, and when she turned Johnny West was there. Clifton looked at him.
“It’s all right, Dorothy,” Johnny said. “What is?”
“About Henry Myers.”
She had forgotten almost.
“I had one sweet time,” Johnny went on “but your girl friend, Sherry Moore, had softened him for me a little. I scared the living daylights out of him. I took him down to the station and looked up past records of cases where girls had knocked men out and beat it. There’s more than you think. I showed him what happened when the men kicked about it afterward. A couple of the boys helped me out. Myers won’t be around any more. You won’t see him again.”
“I don’t know how to thank you, Johnny.”
“You don’t have to. Only it’d be kind of hard for us to get married if he was still around.”
Dorothy said vaguely: “What?”
“Get married.”
“Oh, yes,” she said.
“I thought maybe we could go to Harrison this noon and make arrangements. Because I got to go to Portchester tonight and see about that murder up there. They’re having trouble.”
“Johnny.”
CLIFTON turned toward the window. Johnny moved forward.
“Yes?”
“Johnny, next time you fall in love—” He stopped. “Next time I—”
She nodded, tears in her eyes suddenly. “Next time you fall in love, make sure the girl isn’t hysterical because of—of anything. Of a murder or anything else. Meet her when she’s sane and on her own ground. If she’s an actress, meet her in the theater. If she’s a librarian, in the library. If she’s a ten-cent-store girl, in Woolworth’s. Give her an even break. Because it’s instinctive in a woman to run to a man who can protect her. And in a murder case a detective—” She stopped and turned away. “There is no excuse outside of that. I know there is none.”
“It’s all right,” he said quietly.
“If I’ve hurt you—”
He slapped his felt hat back on his head. He put a cigarette in his mouth, but he didn’t light it.
“No,” he said. “It’s okay. Maybe a jolt. But you get to live life that way. You get harder as you go along.” Clifton had turned around. He was watching Johnny West and his eyes were shining wet. Johnny was backing toward the door. He seemed to be awkward and unsure of his footing.
“It’s probably better,” he went on. “It gets kind of dreary out here in the fall. The grass dies, and the leaves all turn brown, and it reminds you too much that time is passing.”
He lit the cigarette, dragged on it, then took it out of his mouth and looked at it. He glanced up.
“Well, so long.”
He was gone. The front door slammed shut.
BADGE OF VALOR
Robert Leslie Bellem
Patrolman Devlin first turns hi his shield—and then goes forth to commit a murder!
THE knowledge that he was going to kill a man in cold blood made Steve Devlin’s stomach knot up, even though he told himself that the man he planned to shoot was a rat, a thieving and slimy blackmailer.
Entering Headquarters, Devlin consoled himself with the thought that at least he wouldn’t hide behind his uniform and his badge. Killing was bad enough, any way you looked at it, but for a cop to commit premeditated murder was infinitely worse. So he had to quit being a cop. He had to hand in his resignation before doing what he intended to do.
He went through the squadroom and into Sam Blaine’s private office. “Captain Blaine,” he said, and drew himself rigidly to attention; saluted the man at the desk.
Blaine was sixty years old, a leathery officer who had fought his way up from the ranks and showed it in his hard eyes and in the many scars that marked his tough, tanned face. There was nothing of the modern college-degree policeman about Sam Blaine. Blunt as a blackjack and just as direct, he belonged to the old school, believing there was more law enforcement in a locust nightstick than in all the scientific lie detectors ever invented. And, often enough, he proved it.
Now he peered from under thorny gray eyebrows at Steve Devlin. “What’s on your mind, patrolman?” Then he looked at a clock on the wall, its flyblown face reflecting a pale afternoon sun that filtered through an equally flyblown window in back of him. “Quarter of four. You’re supposed to be on your beat in the Wilten district at four o’clock, and you’re a long distance away from it. You’re also in civilian clothes instead of uniform. What’s the idea?”
“I won’t be walking my beat this evening, sir.”
“What?”
“Or any other evening, sir. I’m turning in my shield.” Devlin slid his badge across Blaine’s scarred desk.
The older man stood up. “Now just a minute. You can’t do this. You know the regulations. Even a college cop like you couldn’t be that dumb.”
There was heavy sarcasm in voice as well as words, reflectin
g Sam Blaine’s low opinion of any policeman with a university diploma.
HE AND Steve Devlin’s father had come up a long hard road, sidekicks through the years, and he had never quite forgiven Mike Devlin for sending Steve to State U. before getting him an appointment on the force. A waste of time and money, Blaine had called it. A good copper didn’t need a sheepskin, but only a gun, a club and a hard pair of fists.
Blaine had been nettled because the Devlins hadn’t agreed with him, and he rarely lost an opportunity to demonstrate his disapproval. He wasn’t malicious, but his sarcasm could cut like a razor, and he seemed to delight in riding young Devlin no matter how trivial the pretext. Maybe it was his hard-boiled but well-intentioned way of trying to knock some of the modern police-psychology notions out of Steve’s head.
Thinking about it, Steve was ruefully ready to admit that perhaps Blaine was right, after all. Direct action was the only way to deal with criminals. He himself was planning to kill one before an hour had passed, a killing that would be as cold and dispassionate as an executioner throwing the switch of an electric chair. He kept the thought to himself, though. His career as a cop was at an end, and he was in no mood to debate any issues with the man who was his superior officer and his father’s best friend.
“Yes,” he said steadily, in answer to Blaine’s gibe. “I know the regulations, sir. I realize I should give the Police Board a chance to act on my resignation, and that it ought to go through regular channels. And I also realize you’ll have to do a lot of paper shuffling to arrange for a substitute on my beat. Just the same, I’m quitting. Right now.”
“And your reasons?”
“I’m sorry but I can’t answer that question, Captain.” Naturally he couldn’t answer it. How could he tell Blaine that he was going out to commit murder?
Blaine’s lips compressed. “Have you talked to your dad?”
“No, sir.” Devlin shifted uneasily. “And I’d just as soon you wouldn’t discuss it with him—yet.”
“Oh. Ashamed, huh?”
Steve’s face got red. “I don’t understand.”