by Jerry eBooks
Jordahl’s office door was closed, but unlocked. I wasn’t worried about getting things unlocked. Gertie had her keys and her knowledge of the whole outfit. No one was in the all-leather waiting room.
I dragged quietly to the door of the private office. It was closed too. I put my ear to the panel and listened. I couldn’t hear a thing inside. There should be voices, sounds of movement. How long was I getting up here? Jordahl might have killed her already!
I turned the doorknob. It made only a cobweb of sound. I swung the door wider.
Gertie was at the open wall-safe. She was stuffing handfuls of currency into her handbag. I looked around. Where was Jordahl? No one else was in the office. The window was wide open and the grey monk’s-cloth drapes were billowing inward on the wind and they were speckled dark with the driving rain.
She turned and saw me and smiled. “Did they hurt you very much, my poor dear?” Before I could answer she went on, “How’re we going to get out?”
“We won’t have any trouble getting out.” My breathing had a grating sound inside my chest. I guess I wasn’t kidding about the ribs. “Where’s Jordahl?”
“There wasn’t much we had to say to each other. I stunned him with this.” She picked her automatic up from a bleached oak desk. She continued to smile. “He went out the window. I squandered two of the rubies on him to make it look as if he’d jumped.” Her eyes blazed up. “He was going to do that to me! Have you ever seen a man who’s fallen twenty stories?”
I looked at her as if she were mad. As if both of us were mad. “You had the rubies!”
She snapped her handbag closed on the money. “I knew the safe’s combination. I cleaned it out so that we’d have enough to get to South America. After that, you can get rid of the stones, darling.”
“We’re not going,” I said. I leaned in the doorway. She’d have to go through me to get out.
There was nothing aimless in the way her automatic was pointing. “I’ve got to have you, Hod! I need you to sell the stones! Come on! They’ve found his body by now! They’ll be coming up!” Her look softened as she expressed concern. “Did one of those men kick you in the head?”
“I wanted to go with you, Gertie. That was when I thought you were clean.”
“Hod! Please! We’ve got to get out!”
“I can’t take murder,” I said.
She wasn’t a slow-thinking girl. She knew that finished it. “Get out of my way!” she said, glowering.
I lurched toward her. “You won’t shoot, Gertie. I took that gat away from you once before tonight.”
“You’re not going to take it away this time!” Her eyes were sea-blue. Like watery graves.
I started to reach out. She pulled the trigger. A sledge-hammer hit me in the right shoulder and I spun halfway around from the impact. I didn’t feel any pain. Just the punch. Whether she had aimed for a more vital spot and was so agitated that she spoiled it, or whether she had some perverse affection for me and was giving me a chance to live, I’ll never know.
I was back in the doorway again, trying to recover my balance. “You won’t do any more shooting,” I gasped. I went forward again, walking as straight as I could. As I closed the distance between us she pumped the trigger frantically at my midsection, her face twisted and ugly. No more bullets came out of the gun. I grabbed her hand, trying to snatch the weapon away. She clung to it with furious strength and back-heeled me to the floor. Locked together, we fought like a couple of animals.
I’ve seen some rotten rough-house fighting. She used every dirty trick I ever heard of to try to cripple me. I hit back as I would at another man. I wouldn’t let go of the automatic. By this time I could feel the bullet in my shoulder, burning as if the devil had red-hot tongs clamped in it.
Her tousled blonde hair was blinding me and in my mouth. Then she yanked back her head, listening. I heard it too. The rumble of the elevator door opening. She leaped up and kicked me in the face with one of her high-heeled shoes. I rolled numbly half under the desk. But I had the automatic still gripped in my hand. When I lifted my head again and focused my bleary eyes on the door, Cougar was coming in.
“What’s been going on here?” he snapped.
“The blonde,” I said weakly. “You missed her. She must be running down the stairs. Twenty flights. It’s Gertie Sale.”
“If she is, she won’t get through the lobby. O’Neil’s down there and a couple of cops.” He chuckled heartlessly at me. “What happened to you? You’re almost as bad a mess as the guy we found on the sidewalk.”
I fumbled with the gun. “You can have Gertie Sale and the Czech’s rubies and be damned!”
Cougar had his own iron in his hand. “Drop that rod, Danto!”
I didn’t drop it. I snapped the magazine spring—and that took all the strength I had—and pulled out the cartridge clip. I turned the clip over and spilled it toward the carpet. She’d had only one cartridge in the barrel of that gun. The rubies poured out of the clip like red rain.
“My compliments,” I said.
There was a fine mist spreading before my eyes. It was as red as the rubies. As red as her lips. As red as my blood.
ICE FROM A CORPSE
Ed Barcelo
The killers had the doc in a tight spot, but the old medico still had a few tricks up his sleeve.
Old Doc Welch thought it was thunder the first time he heard it. He sat up in bed, stiff, tense, listening for it again. And then, suddenly, a cold chill swept over him as he heard again, this time unmistaken, the three knocks at the front door.
His wife, Myra, grabbed his arm.
“Don’t answer it, Jim. Maybe, they’ll go away.”
The room became suddenly blue-white as lightning fired the darkness. For an instant, he saw his wife’s face, pale and frightened and old.
“Got to answer it, Myra. Might be someone pretty sick. Can’t tell.” Again, the thunder rumbled and again—three knocks.
Wearily, Old Doc Welch stepped into a pair of slippers, threw a robe over his shoulders. His back ached and he wondered why he hadn’t become a lawyer or a plumber, instead of a country doctor. He stumbled past the waiting room to the front door, listened once more to the three knocks.
“All right, all right. I’m coming. Hold your dang-blasted horses!” He switched on a small wall-lamp, opened the door.
Shivering, cold rain lashing his face and body, Doc Welch stared at the two men in the doorway.
“Doc Welch?” It was the tall, shifty-eyed one who spoke.
“That’s right.” He opened the door a little wider.
“We got a little job for you, Doc. Little surgery.”
“Sorry, I’m no surgeon. Broken bones, belly aches and babies. You fellows ought to see Doc Benjamin in town. He’s a surgeon.” He ran his hands through greying hair, started to close the door.
“You’re a surgeon now, Doc.”
Doc Welch saw the gun, then. A .38 was clutched in the man’s hand, it’s shiny, blue barrel only a few inches from Doc Welch’s stomach. They forced the door open.
“Behave like a good, little doctor and nothing’ll happen to you. Get smart and we’ll blast you. Okay, Felix, go get the patient.” Felix, the short one, disappeared to a car outside.
Doc Welch backed up in the dim light of the hallway, studied the tall man, his eyes never for a second leaving the leveled .38. Sure, why hadn’t he become a plumber? Plumbers were never wakened up at three in the morning to have a gun poked in their belly. All they had to worry about was pipes.
Doc Welch turned then to see Felix and the “patient” in the doorway. Felix paused long enough to catch his breath, then he locked both arms around the “patient’s” chest. Grunting, his face red, he struggled and dragged the apparently unconscious patient into the hallway. Behind them, on the flowered carpet, lay a trail of rain and blood. The tall one slammed the door, never lowering the .38.
“Okay, Doc, take us to surgery. And no funny business.”
“
You fellows won’t get away with this.”
“No sermons, Doc. Move!”
He hesitated, then seeing no choice, moved toward the white-paneled door. He opened the door and they were swiftly blanketed in darkness and the heavy scent of ether. That was when he got the idea.
“C’mon, Doc, put on a light.”
“Wait’ll I find the switch, will you.”
He started toward the cabinets at the far end of the room. There was a jug of concentrated ammonia in one cabinet and if he could get his hands on it before the lights went on, throw it in their faces, it would blind them and choke them for a few seconds and a few seconds was all he wanted. He would soon find something else to throw, a chair, more jugs and bottles, and somehow he’d get a hold of that gun. He’d show them that being old and fat with kind, blue eyes didn’t make you necessarily harmless.
Slowly, almost on tip-toes, he reached the cabinet. He reached down in the darkness, gripped the jug, started to unscrew the cap. Suddenly, the stillness was broken by a muffled scream. He whirled, saw Myra silhouetted in the doorway.
“Okay, lady, stand where you are. C’mon, Doc, get that light on.”
There was no use to play it brave now. He didn’t want Myra stopping any bullets. Do what they said. At least he’d live—maybe. He cursed, angry that Myra had stumbled onto the scene, then switched on the light.
“All right, lady, get over there with the Doc.”
She saw the gun, flashed a fear-crazed look at her husband.
“C’mon, move!”
“Better do what he says, Myra.”
She moved toward him in short, quick steps. He put his arm around her. Felix and the other man dragged their still unconscious friend to a table in the center of the room, lifted him onto it.
“All right, Doc, operate.”
He shot a glance at his wife, saw the tears, the tremor of her lips, patted her gently, then moved reluctantly toward the table. He made a visual examination of the man on the table and in just a few seconds, he knew. “Looks like you’re a little late, boys. Your pal is dead.”
“Now ain’t that something,” the tall one said. His dark eyes blazed. “Operate, Doc.”
“Operate? For what? I told you this man is dead.”
“Do like I tell you, Doc. Open him up.”
The Doc looked up, puzzled, saw the strange, twisted grin on the tall man’s face. Were these men crazy?
“Maybe, you better explain to the Doc, Felix. Let him know what he has to do.”
The short man moved closer, waved his own gun at the dead man.
“Seems our friend had a little stomach trouble, Doc. He swallowed some diamonds he shouldn’t have.”
Doc Welch still didn’t get it.
“He was going to take a little trip below the border—and with all them gems in his belly, too. Only we got a slug in his back and talked him out of it. Now open him up, Doc. They’re coated with plastic. You can’t miss them.”
Suddenly, everything became clear to Doc Welch. He’d been in town that afternoon, stopped in the Waffle Shop for a cup of coffee, and there had run into the sheriff having a dish of his favorites. It had passed over his head at the time, but now he remembered. The sheriff had spoken of a big jewelry store stick-up. He’d said three men—$30,000 worth of diamonds. Then these were the same men the whole state was looking for.
He turned now, stared at the dead man. And this guy on the table had apparently tried to outwit the other two. He had coated the diamonds with some kind of plastic material, swallowed them one by one, hoping to escape by himself to Mexico. Unfortunately, for him, his pals had got wise and killed him.
“Okay, Doc, we ain’t got all night. Snap it up!”
“Suppose I refuse?”
“Suppose you don’t.” The tall one’s teeth were bared in a murderous smile, as he waved the gun in the direction of the Doc’s wife.
From a rack, he removed a white laboratory coat. At the table, he cut away the man’s shirt and undershirt, lowered his trousers, then covered him with a sheet. The two men backed over against the wall. The Doc could see they wouldn’t like this. He forced a pair of rubber gloves onto his hands, then went to the cabinet near the sink and removed what instruments he would need.
Paused over the corpse, the shiny, stainless-steel scalpel in hand, he took a last look at the two men standing in the shadows against the wall.
“Cut, Doc.”
Doc Welch began.
A clock hung next to the linen cabinet. It ticked away five, ten, fifteen minutes . . . and then, Doc Welch looked up. He couldn’t help feeling a sort of grim, professional satisfaction at a job well done. The incision had been made and he had found what he was looking for.
“Doc, I got itchy fingers. Start picking them pellets out . . . and hurry!”
With forceps and tweezers, the Doc began to remove the wet pellets. He laid them carefully in a large patch of gauze.
Ten minutes later he removed the last pellet, stared at between fifteen and twenty pellets lying in the gauze.
“That’s all of ’em.”
“All right, Doc, now you can take that plastic coating off the diamonds.”
For a long minute the Doc stood silent.
“You’ll need some kind of a corrosive agent to take that plastic stuff off. Lye’ll do.” Then he stopped. “Only I don’t have any.” Their eyes shifted. “Heck, you can buy it in any grocery store.”
“Then what?”
“Well, put the diamonds in a pan of lye and boil ’em for about five minutes. That should take it off and it won’t hurt the diamonds.”
The two men avoided the corpse on the table. The tall one grinned victoriously and scooped the gauze into a bundle, stuffed the bundle into his coat pocket. Then he turned to the old doctor.
“You did good, Doc, and just to show you how much we appreciate it—”
The butt of the gun came sudden like a whip, smashed against the Doc’s mouth, sent him sprawling to the floor. Myra screamed and ran to him.
“See you, Doc.” The tall one laughed, slapped at the gauze bundle in his pocket. “Wonderful surgeon, that Doc.” They were both laughing throatily as they left.
Doc Welch didn’t speak until he heard their car grinding up the country lane. Then he turned his head, looked up at Myra. A slow, trickle of blood oozed from his pain-throbbed lips. Yet he smiled, and the smile became a laugh.
“You know, Myra, I’d give a hundred dollars to see the look on them gunmen’s faces when they try to peddle a load of hot gallstones. Go call up the sheriff.”
“What do you mean?” She was blinking fast.
“Why that fella there on the table had enough gallstones in his bladder to anchor a river boat. I just substituted the gallstones for the real pellets. Well, quit staring at me that way. Call the sheriff. Tell him we got every last one of them diamonds, and then put on some waffles. The sheriff is crazy about waffles.”
MURDER COMES CALLING
Logan Legare
She was an angel—with the heart of Satan. When she died, she left tragedy sown for many others.
It’s not murder in itself that makes it so bad, it’s the after-effects. For when the victim dies, it’s usually just starting with the living. At least that’s the way I’ve come to feel about it, though I sure could be wrong, judging by the opinions of a few old cranks around Hoskinsville who say I’ve got too many funny ideas to be editor of the Hoskinsville Clarion. But the old cranks are very much in the minority in our town, and even if they weren’t, I started the paper eighteen years ago, come next spring, and I’m going to run it the way I been running it as long as I got ink and can find a linotype man.
Anyhow, I wasn’t thinking of all the hell and misery just one little murder can let loose in the world the night I stopped at Margot Graham’s cottage. I was too busy with my own thoughts, too afraid someone would see me come here.
Maybe you’re wondering why a waddling, wheezing, pink-fleshed fellow of fif
ty-five like me would be sneaking into Margot Graham’s cottage. Well, sometimes I wondered myself. My wife died five years ago, but I’ve got two fine kids who’d have been awful crushed to see their old man slinking along that walk toward the white cottage that gleamed faintly in the night. I felt like hell myself. I’d been to the cottage once before.
I’d known even while I was going there the first time that it was pure insanity. But, brother, you ain’t seen Margot Graham. Anyhow, tonight she’d commanded me to come there. That’s right—commanded. And I was going, remembering her phone call, her hard tinkling laugh.
In my pocket I carried a thousand dollars. It was a stiff price for a man of my meager means to pay for her silence about that other visit, but over the phone she’d given me to know that I had no choice . . .
My hand felt cold as I turned the knob, then I closed ITA the door behind me, feeling like a fish meshed in a heavy net.
A crack of light showed under a door to my left, and I knew she’d be in there in the living room, all the blinds drawn, the lighting soft. I knocked on the door, got no answer.
I tried the knob and the door swung open. She was there in the living room, waiting for me, all right. But she wouldn’t have waited all crumpled up on the floor like that.
I got inside the room and closed the door fast. I was in here with murder, I realized as I bent over her. And yet, even with that chilling thought going like lightning across my mind, my pulses raced, just looking at her.
I shook myself, swallowed some of the tightness out of my throat. The sultry light had left those violet eyes now and the midnight hair was streaked with crimson. She’d been hit once just over the temple. Once had been enough. Then I saw the cigar band lying on the floor and bent to pick it up. I looked at it, dropped it in my pocket. Then I gave the room the once-over. There was no cigar in any of the ashtrays, no sign of a murder weapon. Only me and Margot Graham, and the living room she’d furnished in square, pastel furniture and softly glowing lamps when she’d first come to Hoskinsville.
Enough of the paralysis left me for me to stagger back out of the room. In the hallway I waited awhile in the darkness, just shivering and trying not to think. Then I opened the front door.