by Jerry eBooks
The moment my foot crossed the threshold there was a click and the lights went out. I hit the floor fast. At the same time my arm flicked up to my shoulder holster and came up with my gun. Off to my right there were two bright flashes and two loud staccato reports. I sent three rounds quickly in that direction, my .38 booming in the closeness of the room. At the same time I started to roll away.
Something came down in the inky blackness and exploded in a blaze of light. That was all . . .
FIRST it was the back of my neck hurting me, then the top of my head. I reached my arm back and opened my eyes. I was lying in a twisted position with my head against the side of a desk. I reached into my vest pocket and brought out my pocket flashlight. I snapped it on. My eyes followed the thin pencil of light. On the wall near the door there was a wall switch. I got up and flipped it on. My eyes blinked spasmodically in the brightness of the room.
Lying on the floor near the desk was my gun. I picked it up and slid it back into my holster. A short distance away was a heavy chrome-plated flashlight. It looked as if it had done the job on my head. I let it lie there. I started to browse around.
It was a fair-sized office, not large and not small. There was a row of steel green filing cabinets and a half-dozen flat typewriter desks. Off to a side were two old-fashioned roll-top desks. There were papers scattered all over the place. In a corner I saw a small Mosler safe. The doors were open. There were more papers scattered in front of it. I picked a few of them up.
They were mostly business letters and bills of lading, nothing of importance.
Then I saw the leg sticking out from behind one of the desks. I went over.
His body was up against the wall as though he was thrown there like a sack of potatoes. He was old, and he was wearing dungaree clothes and a train engineer’s cap. His neck was wrinkled and seamed. I leaned down and touched it with my fingers.
He was still warm, but his eyes were staring and vacant and I knew it was all over for him. There was a pool of blood under him and two bullet-holes in his middle.
I had found the night watchman.
As I leaned over the desk for the phone, I noticed a trail of brown spots on the swirled linoleum. I bent down and touched one. I looked at my finger tip. It was blood that hadn’t dried yet. I followed the spots to the door and down the three short steps to the cobblestones in the courtyard.
My flashlight lanced out in the darkness. There were no more spots. I went out to the gate. My car was still there. I opened the door and looked in the back—just in case. There was nothing there. Then I looked down the street.
The Chevrolet sedan was gone . . . Lieutenant Gillis put the phone down. “The picture and print men and the doc will be here in ten minutes,” he said. “Your call just reached me as I was leaving the office. You didn’t waste any time getting to work, did you?”
I was sitting at one of the roll-top desks going through the drawers. I puffed on my cigarette.
“You know me,” I said. “Old fire horse.”
“You could have taken me along. I’ve got a badge and everything.”
“You looked tired tonight. You’re getting old. Tell me, were those thirty-twos that you pried out of the wall near me?”
“They’re thirty-twos,” Gillis said. “I also found your three thirty-eights in the wall over there.”
“Thanks,” I said. “What do you think about the blood spots?”
“You nicked somebody, that’s sure. How bad, of course, we don’t know. I’ll run a check on doctors and hospitals.”
“What about the old man? It wasn’t my thirty-eights?”
“No. Small. Thirty-twos. He must have been gone when you got here. There wasn’t a chance that you saw that car registration?”
“Too far away.”
“It’s too bad the old gent had to finish up like that.” Gillis’ eyes were bleak. “A corpse on the floor, and what looks like a routine safe robbery.”
“You know well enough it isn’t.”
“Well, all we have to do is find the thirty-two, and we’ve cracked both homicides.”
“Yeah,” I said, as I got to my feet. “All we need is a big haystack and a needle. I’m going home. I’m tired and my head hurts. Let me know if you find any prints on the flashlight.”
“When will I see you?”
“I’ll be back here at nine o’clock. I’ll want to give the place a going over after everybody is through pussyfooting around. But what I need right now is a couple of hours of sleep.”
It was nine-twenty A.M. when I did get back.
Sergeant Meanix let me in through the gate.
“The boss stayed here all night,” he said.
A RED-EYED reporter from the Times-Standard detached himself from the small group at the gate.
“Dobson? What are you doing here? Say, is there another municipal scandal mixed up in this?”
“No, Sam,” I said. “Just helping Homicide, that’s all.”
“When’s Gillis going to be through in there? I’ve got to get some pictures of the death scene.”
“There’s no hurry, Sam. This is the Sabbath. The day of rest. You’ve got all day. There’s no edition until tonight.”
I went inside, up the three short steps, and into the office. Gillis was sitting in front of one of the roll-top desks with a small file case in his hands.
“You’re late,” he said.
“Twenty minutes. I’d sure hate to be working for you.”
“The watchman’s name was Snell,” he said. “Age sixty-eight. Married. Six children. Fourteen grandchildren. Wife living. Worked here four years.”
“Somebody’s going to raise hob with those statistics. The papers have it yet?”
“You saw the wolves outside. They have it. It’ll be out in the first editions tonight. I’d like to wind it up before then. Otherwise you know the roasting I’ll take.”
“Maybe we will wind it up,” I said. “I like to earn my dough fast. What else?”
“There were thirty-twos in the watchman, all right. No prints on the flashlight, just smudges. A million other prints all over the place. A lot of people work here. Waiting for a lab test on the other stuff. By the way, how well do you know this Fred Wescott?”
“Not very well. Same outfit in the Army. I hadn’t seen him again until last night. Never knew him well at all. Why?”
“He owns a Forty-nine Chevrolet sedan.” He waved his hand about. “He inherits all this now, doesn’t he?”
“He don’t need it. He’s got enough. It may be a coincidence about the car.”
“I don’t like coincidences.”
“It’s not enough to go on yet. What we’ve got to do is to tie up both these killings. Was there any evidence that the other killing took place here?”
“None that I can see.”
“It doesn’t figure that way, anyway,” I said. “Supposing that old man Wescott was working here last night. He was alone except for the night watchman. Somebody came to knock off the safe. Wescott and the night watchman were both killed. Then they took Wescott’s body out and left the night watchman. Why? What about the Chevrolet sedan? What about me walking into something here after it was all over? What about the watchman’s body still being warm? You see, it doesn’t figure.”
“I knew it wouldn’t. All right, here’s another coincidence.” He handed me one of the cards from the small card case.
A looked at it. It read:
Lawrence Corliss. 827 West Spring Street, Center City. Age 39. Married, no children.
Cashier.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“This is from a file of the employees. West Spring Street, in the eight hundred block, is one street away from the commissioner’s house.”
“And you’re thinking that because this guy is cashier he’d be handling the laundry money and he’d know the combination of the safe.”
“That couple of hours of sleep did you good. You’re actually bright this morning.”
“This seems to fit pretty good. Let’s go out there and ring door bells.”
There was a small, green, well-kept lawn in front. The house was small, an inexpensive modern bungalow painted white. It had a single car garage at the end of a gravel driveway. There were a few evergreen shrubs near the front door. The numbers on the door were brass and they read “827”. Gillis jockeyed the police car over to the curb. The street had that Sunday morning emptiness.
“Stay here, Pete,” I said. “Let me try this alone first. There’s been too much lead flying around lately.”
I paid no attention to his grumbling. I walked up the macadam walk and put my finger in the white button beside the door. I heard some chimes somewhere inside, then some high-heeled footsteps. The door opened.
SHE was a big flashy blonde in her early thirties. She was well-stacked if you liked them built when meat was cheap. She had long eyelashes which could never have been the real thing. She had a lot of lipstick on, but no rouge. She was wearing a dark blue, skin-tight dress, and nothing much underneath.
“Yes?” she asked. Then she saw the white police car at the curb. “Oh, the police.” If she was surprised she didn’t show it. She wasn’t the type.
I nodded. She opened the door wider and let me in. The furniture was cheap installment stuff and more than a little dusty. There was a man sitting in a living room chair with a Sunday paper in his lap. He didn’t get up. He looked tall, and he was well-built, but he had a peculiarly sallow face and a small, hard mouth.
“My husband,” she said to me. To him she said, “This man’s from the police.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked. There was an edge in his voice.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said. I sat down opposite him and pulled the chair up close. “Your employer, Mr. Wescott, has been found dead.”
“No!” said Corliss. “I mean . . . It’s so sudden! When did it happen?”
“Last night.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Well, sometimes those things happen.”
“But why? Why would anyone want to kill him?”
I sat there for a moment without answering. The room was quiet. In the kitchen I could hear a faulty faucet dripping. A car went by outside.
“Nobody said anything about him being murdered,” I said. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t know.”
“You asked why was he killed.”
“I was just guessing.”
“As long as we’re guessing,” I said, “let’s all play the game. Let me guess. Let me guess that you’ve been playing upsy daisy with the cash box, that Wescott was working on his ledgers last night at his office, and that he found out.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“As long as it’s only a little game we’re playing,” I went on, “let’s stretch it a bit further. Let’s guess that Wescott came here last night and had it out with you. He was going to turn you in. You shot him. You took his body out of the house. You were a little panicky. You were looking for a place to dump it. You saw a car parked on Commonwealth Road. The door was unlocked. You dumped the body in the back. You went home.”
“You’re crazy,” Mrs. Corliss said.
“It’s only a game we’re playing,” I said. “After you got home you both began to think. There were a few loose ends. The evidence, the ledgers, were still in the office. There was a discussion about what to do. After a while you drove down to the laundry to get them. To make it clean you had to kill the night watchman and make it look like a safe robbery. You got hold of the books. You took what dough there was, too. That’s where I stumbled onto it. You remember me. I’m the guy Mrs. Corliss sapped with the flashlight.”
“Don’t believe him, Larry!” she screamed.
“You can’t cover it,” I said to her. “There’s a bandage on his arm under his shirt sleeve. The arm where I nicked him. There should be a new Chevrolet sedan in your garage. We called Registry before we came down here. It’s in your name, too. Then there’s the State Division of Corporations with a duplicate set of figures, filed for tax purposes. There you are, two murderers and a motive. Enough to hang both of you.”
“No,” Corliss said, “I’ve still got this.” He moved the paper in his lap a little and I saw the snout of a nickel-plated .32 peeping out at me.
“That won’t buy you a thing,” I said. “You’re not playing cops and robbers any more. You’re a big boy now. There’s a police lieutenant outside in a police car. He has a radio in there. You’ll never make it.”
“I’m jammed up plenty,” he said hoarsely. “A couple of more won’t make any difference. First you, then him.”
HE hadn’t quite finished when I let my right leg go. I slashed out and up. The gun went off in the air as my foot hit his arm. It skittered along the length of the room as he made a dive for it. I let him, but my arm was in and my .38 was halfway out of the holster. Then I saw it coming.
I’ll give her credit. She was fast, because I hadn’t even seen the heavy urn in her hands. I started to duck but I was a little too late. I felt it come down on the side of my head. I had a whole slew of Fourth of July fireworks all to myself, but I managed to keep on my feet. I was trying to swing around to Corliss when I heard the tinkle of glass and then a shot.
I looked at Corliss. He had the gun in his hand but he wasn’t interested any more. He was sitting on the floor staring stupidly at the reddening stain in his midsection. The gun dropped to the floor. I heard the front living room window go up and then Gillis threw a long leg over and came in. As he did, Mrs. Corliss squirmed by me and scrabbled for the gun.
I grabbed her by a well-turned, silk-shod ankle and slid her back.
“I never saw such people,” I said to Gillis. “They go plumb crazy when they see firearms.”
“You all right?” he said.
“I’m all right. It’s only my head. But you know my head. I’ve had things bounced off it for years.”
GILLIS went over to Corliss. He bent over him, straightened out, and put his Police Positive away on his hip.
“I’ll phone for an ambulance,” he said. “This fellow is in a bad way. He’s got one in the middle.”
He took out a handkerchief and picked up the nickel-plated revolver with it.
He put it in his pocket.
“If you want to,” he said, “you can go ahead and laugh. We found the needle in the haystack.”
“I’m not laughing,” I said. “Not the way my noggin feels. I’ll tell you what you can do. Take me out and buy me a nice cup of tea.”
He grinned. He went into the hallway and picked up the phone.
THE KILLER’S SHOES
Robert C. Blackmon
Detective Grady Tangles With a Slick Slayer!
GEORGE Batson heard Mark Rutledge, his employer, explaining to someone:
“Mrs. Rutledge and I were going to a dinner, drove past the office, saw the lights, and I stopped to see why the boys were here so late. The door was open, Batson was unconscious, Maxwell dead, the safe open, and about ten thousand dollars in currency gone. I got the patrolman whom I had seen in the next block, and he called you.”
Batson opened his eyes a little. Rutledge and a stubby, blue-eyed man in a wrinkled brown suit and brown felt hat were looking down at him. Rutledge’s broad face was red and he was mangling his usual frayed cigar.
Batson moaned a little and stirred.
“Take it easy.” The stubby man knelt. “Get some water, Mr. Rutledge. What happened, Batson?”
The stubby man helped Batson to sit up as Rutledge hurried into the little washroom opening off the office and water splashed into the lavatory beneath the metal medicine cabinet.
Before Batson could say anything Rutledge came back with the water and he sipped a little, then looked about the Rutledge Real Estate and Insurance office where he had worked five years as bookkeeper.
There were three other men in the office, looking a
t the open safe, Maxwell’s body on the floor near his desk, the red-flecked stapling machine which had killed him.
“Say!” Batson said that with great surprise. “Roy Maxwell isn’t—he—” He looked at Rutledge and the stubby man with wide, shocked eyes.
“Take it easy.” The stubby man helped him to a nearby chair. “I am Detective Dan Grady of Homicide, and the others are detectives too. Maxwell is dead, skull cracked with the stapling machine. What happened?”
Batson brushed at the slab of tow hair hanging over his narrow forehead. It matched his brows. His wrinkled gray trousers bagged about thin legs. His eyes matched his shirt, a pale and faded blue.
HALTINGLY, he explained that Maxwell had come into the office last, and had evidently left the door open. He had been working at the breast-high counter which separated the entrance from the employees’ section. His books needed some extra attention and Maxwell had said he’d stay late too, to get some extra work done.
“I worked about an hour,” Batson explained. “Then a man came in the door. I thought he was a policy-holder or a real estate customer. He stopped at the counter in front of me, and I asked him what I could do for him. Then he said it was a stick-up and held a nickled revolver in my face. I—it sounds fantastic—have a distinct recollection of grabbing the gun and trying to take it away from him. Then he hit me on the head and—” Batson shrugged a little and touched the bump on his forehead just above the hair line. Detective Grady grunted.
“That checks,” he said slowly. “We found the nickled gun, with your prints on it.” His brown felt rode the back of his head and his hair was brown with touches of gray. His eyes were a clear, hard blue. “You can describe the man?”
“Yes.” Batson spoke very carefully. “He was about thirty years old, broad shouldered, gray-eyed. His hat was gray felt and his suit was gray. His shirt was white, with blue stripes. His face was red and bumpy and I caught the shine of a gold tooth on the left side as he talked. His tie was blue with red figures. He wore gray fabric gloves. I believe I’d know him again if I saw him.” Batson leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes.