ALM06 Who Killed the Husband?

by Hulbert Footner

  "I was helped a good deal by a story told me by one who was in Mr. Gartrey's confidence. This person's name has never been mentioned in connection with the case, and I see no object to be gained by mentioning it now. The story gave me a picture of the situation that existed in the Gartrey household at the time of the murder. Mr. Gartrey was aware of his wife's infidelities. Indeed, she took little care to hide them, she was so sure that he would put up with anything rather than submit to the ordeal of a second ugly scandal in his domestic life. In this she was wrong, for Mr. Gartrey had made up his mind to divorce her. She had offered to go to Reno and divorce him without scandal in the customary manner, but had demanded so great a price that he refused to pay it. He had settled a very large sum on her at the time of their marriage. His suspicions settled on Al Yohe and, in order to conceal his hand, he befriended the young man. He even lent him a large sum of money on mortgage to decorate his night club. He had employed private detectives to watch his wife, but nothing came of that. He then paid one of his servants, this same Denman that I have spoken of, to call him up on the private phone at his office to inform him whenever Mrs. Gartrey received a gentleman visitor.

  "When I asked myself: Who profited by Mr. Gartrey's death? the answer immediately presented itself--George Coler. Upon the death of Mr. Gartrey, Coler succeeded to the immense financial power that the older man had wielded in Wall Street. Furthermore, I presently discovered that Coler was in love with the beautiful Mrs. Gartrey. I then scented a devilish plot by which Coler had sought to remove both men who stood between him and his desire. But I had no evidence, no evidence. It was easy to establish that Coler was not in his office when Mr. Gartrey was shot, but how could he have got into the apartment house, guarded as it was at all times by hall men and elevator operators? Coler was well known to all these employees. At this point, a highly significant fact developed. Nobody telephoned for Coler after the murder, yet he was one of the first to turn up at the apartment after it occurred.

  "Judging from what happened, Denman must have called up Mr. Gartrey shortly after three o'clock on November 3rd and told him that Al Yohe was in the apartment. Mr. Gartrey, greatly agitated, called for Coler, who was in his confidence. Coler's secretary reported that her employer had left shortly before. Note the word "left." If Coler had gone out she would naturally have said so. The word "left" signifies that she did not expect him back again. Mr. Gartrey must then have driven directly home. He arrived there at three-forty. He had no murder in his heart because he was not armed. All he was after was evidence.

  "Note that Mr. Gartrey, for the first time in his life, did not warn the household of his coming by ringing the bell. It seemed as if his murderer must have been lying in wait for him just within his own door. But, if so, how had he got into the apartment? By the logic of circumstances I was forced to the conclusion that the murderer was not lying in wait for his victim; they entered the apartment together. If I was right about this, the murderer was certainly a man who was in Mr. Gartrey's confidence and this could be no other than Coler. But still no evidence. The boys downstairs all testified that Mr. Gartrey had come in alone.

  "Well, if Coler had not come in with Mr. Gartrey, he must have been waiting for him somewhere inside the house. There was only one possible hiding place, the stairs. This stairway is contained within a fireproof shaft alongside the elevator. In a house of this type, the stairs are never used, and a man lurking there would be safe from discovery. On every floor at right angles to the elevator there is a fireproof door leading to the stairway. Since the stairway is supposed to serve as a fire escape, these doors are never locked. Each door has a little square pane of glass let in at eye level. It was therefore simple for Coler to wait behind the door watching for the coming of Mr. Gartrey. Coler would tell him that he had been watching on his behalf, or to prevent him from doing something reckless--or what you like. Mr. Gartrey trusted him. And after Coler had shot Gartrey, how easy to slip back into his hiding place on the stairs and watch there until the little elevator hall filled with excited people drawn by the report of the murder, all trying to get into the Gartrey apartment. Coler could mix with these people and none would be able to say later where he had come from.

  "Still, I had no evidence that I could take into court. I had made the interesting discovery that though Mr. Gartrey was dead, Denman, the spy, was still reporting everything that happened in the house to somebody outside, by telephone. He did me the honor to take notice of all my comings. So, it appeared, he had been serving two masters. Had he telephoned to two men on the afternoon of the murder? Coler had a private phone on his desk. It was not until the day before yesterday that I discovered Denman was calling George Coler by his private number. The rest was easy. I found that shortly after three o'clock on November 3rd, Denman had seduced the two boys who were on duty at the service entrance away from their post, thus enabling Coler to gain the service stairway unseen. Coler had climbed the stairs to the roof and, crossing the roof, had descended the front stairs. Mrs. Bradford saw him on the roof and my case was complete, gentlemen."

  "A very clever piece of deduction, Mr. Mappin," said the young District Attorney patronizingly. Lee rubbed his upper lip.

  Inspector Loasby, who knew Lee much better, said nothing, but only grasped Lee's hand and shook it solemnly.

  "How did Coler get possession of Al Yohe's gun?" asked the District Attorney.

  "For some weeks previous to the event, Coler had been assiduously cultivating Al Yohe's friendship. He was a frequent visitor to the young man's flat. The careless Al was often shut up in his dark room when people came, and Coler had ample opportunity to look for the gun."

  "What about the Philadelphia murder?"

  "A clumsy crime. The astute Coler had no part in that. It was a private venture of Mrs. Gartrey's, undertaken to save, as she thought, the man she loved. Coler was terribly upset when he learned of it. He was clever enough to see that it was likely to lead to disaster for both of them. It was undoubtedly Coler's idea to hang that murder on Al and to bring Harry Brummel into the case. Brummel will be able to wriggle out of it on the pretense of ignorance, but I'll get him some day!"

  "What about the man who tried to shoot Al Yohe at Mount Pisgah?"

  "Nobody got a good look at that man, but it was undoubtedly George Coler. I suppose he had followed me up there on Sunday and so discovered Al's hiding place. By that time he realized that the whole structure was coming down on his and Agnes' heads, and that Al's death was the only thing that would save them."

  "And then the double suicide."

  "I doubt if that was a double suicide," said Lee gravely. "The woman had not nerve enough to face death. Coler got her to enter his car on the pretext perhaps of escaping, and he drove over the cliff."

  "Jocker Stacey's charge that Al Yohe hired him to kill Robert Hawkins is still in evidence," said the District Attorney.

  "We needn't worry about that," said Lee. "Coler and Mrs. Gartrey are dead, and the enormous price offered Jocker for the lie will never be paid. There is no reason now why Jocker should not tell the truth."

  "But without Harry Brummel to save him, Jocker must know that he will have to burn; a cold-blooded murder undertaken for pay. Suppose out of sheer cussedness he refuses to change his story?"

  "Al Yohe is provided with an alibi," said Lee.

  Postscript

  Alastair Yohe was not required to stand trial on either charge. Jocker Stacey recanted his first confession to the police and threw himself on the mercy of the court. He was, nevertheless, condemned to die. In his final confession, he named Alan Barry Deane as the man who had sought him out and had introduced him to Mrs. Gartrey. Deane had not been present during Jocker's interviews with the lady and was not liable to prosecution, since it could not be proved that he knew a murder was involved. However, it dealt a fatal blow to the elegant Mr. Deane's reputation and he disappeared from New York.

  Al Yohe sold out of La Sourabaya and that scintillating establishm
ent went the way of most of its kind and was presently extinguished. After a period of retirement from the public view, the Yohes turned up in Washington, where Al purchased a little hotel on Seventeenth Street in the thick of things and christened it the Charlotte. It gradually became known to the international gourmets that this was not just another hotel, but a place where superlative food was to be had--at a price. People then asked themselves why such a restaurant had not been opened in the nation's capital long ago.

  Mr. Amos Lee Mappin had no inconsiderable part in making the Charlotte a success. He got into the habit of flying down to Washington about once a fortnight during the season to give a dinner. In New York Mr. Mappin's little dinners had long been famous, but they brought a new note into the oppressively formal atmosphere of social Washington. Actually, the guests were not chosen for their names but for their personalities; Senators, Cabinet ministers, and Ambassadors had to take their chance with the unknown man. In attending one of Mr. Mappin's dinners you ground no social ax, you assumed no obligations; you went solely to enjoy yourself. It was quite an innovation.

  Lee's chief sources of pleasure in his dinners at the Hotel Charlotte were that he was served by his friend, old François, and that the delicious Charlotte herself was placed opposite him at the table where he could look at her. Charlotte was an exception among the ladies present; she was not clever at all; but according to Lee the aura of sweetness surrounding her provided a sauce for his food rarer than any the chef could evolve.

  How Amos Lee Mappin Was Snared into an Interview

  by an Engaging Young Reporter

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  A LETTER

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  Darling Mary:

  I have the most wonderful news for you! I have a job as reporter on the Blade. On my first day at work I secured an interview with Amos Lee Mappin (through dumb luck) and my salary was doubled! Excuse it if you find me a little breathless. I enclose a clipping of the interview as it appeared this morning. Of course the rewrite man has bitched it some, but not too much. This is the official interview. Now I'm going to tell you what really happened.

  To begin at the beginning; after my first interview with the city editor of the Blade, I returned yesterday at noon to hear the verdict and was hired on probation at twenty-five a week, starvation wages in New York. For my first assignment I was told to interview Amos Lee Mappin and get a line on his personal habits, methods of work, etc. It seems this is a kind of joke they play on each greenhorn that comes into the office. It's supposed to take down his conceit. But I didn't know that of course, and I set out to do or die.

  Mr. Mappin has an office in an old building on lower Madison Avenue and I went there in the middle of the afternoon. He has two lovely secretaries, one blonde, one brunette. The little blonde one did the talking. She was perfectly businesslike of course, but there was a provoking twinkle in her eye too. The other girl addressed her as Fanny.

  She said Mr. Mappin was out, but I knew by instinct that she was lying. There was an inner office with the door closed. She asked me what I wanted of him and I gave her my song and dance. Mr. Mappin never gave any interviews she said, except when he was engaged on a case that the public was entitled to know about. Since the Gartrey case has been settled there was nothing more to give out. Mr. Mappin was engaged in writing a book and could not be interrupted. This was positive and final. I spun it out as long as I could, hoping the inner door might open, but these girls were old hands at dealing with crashers and when the little one said as sweet as peaches: "You'll have to excuse us now," I had to beat it.

  For a good two hours I walked up and down on the other side of the street watching the door. I knew what Mr. Mappin looked like from newspaper pictures, but he never came out. Shortly after five the two girls appeared and went home. I was pretty sure he was still there so I crossed the street and went up to his office. The door was locked now. There was a light in the back room so I just lighted my pipe and waited in the hall. In about half an hour he came out. Gosh! I had to work fast!

  "Mr. Mappin," I said, "I'm a reporter on the Blade."

  "Charmed!" he said sarcastically, "but you'll have to excuse me."

  "I was hired today on probation," I said, "and instructed to interview you. If I don't get anything I'll be fired to-morrow."

  "That will be just too bad," he said, starting down the stairs. But he had a sort of smiling look and I had a hunch to tell him about you and how we were going to be married as soon as I made good. All this while we were trotting downstairs side by side.

  "Well!" he said when we got out in the street, "this is a desperate case!" He looked me over and said:

  "You appear to be a good young egg though I'm probably mistaken. I don't know whether I'll give you an interview or not, but you may ride uptown with me."

  So we got in a taxi. He told the man to drive up Fifth Avenue. I started asking him what I thought were intelligent questions, but he paid no attention. Instead he produced a snuffbox and springing the lid, offered me a pinch. That shut me up. Seems it's a trick of his to offer snuff to strangers just to see them look surprised. Nobody ever takes any. Then he started to talk without any prompting from me.

  "It may take half an hour to get to Fifty-sixth Street this way but I wouldn't miss it. I have a passion for this city and this street. I recommend such an impersonal passion, young man, but of course at your age you can't see anything in it. One expects no return consequently there's no heart-break involved neither any possibility of satiety. It will last out one's life. Observe Altman's window-dressing. There is a creative spirit behind it. The most vital art of our day is to be found in window-dressing, but nobody takes it seriously because it's only to sell goods."

  And so on all the way up the Avenue; a little lecture on the old library and the gigantic office building towering above it; the landmarks that have disappeared; Maillard's, Sherry's, Delmonico's and those that have survived; the St. Regis and the Gotham. He got off a little prose poem about the R.C.A. tower; "a gigantic sarcophagus raised to the sky." St. Patrick's cathedral he said, was built five hundred years too late. Not a word about my interview until we drew up before the door of his apartment house on the East River. There, while sitting in the cab, he said with his eyes twinkling behind his glasses--you can't be sure whether he's pulling your leg or not:

  "I have to protect myself because I am by nature indiscreet. I love to talk off the reservation and I have learned that it does not pay; there are too many ill-natured people in the world. But you look like a generous fellow, not yet corrupted by the town; if I give you your interview will you show me what you write before turning it in and promise not to add anything afterwards."

  Of course I agreed to that.

  "If you're so keen about the city," I said, "why must it corrupt me?"

  "I'm crazy about it," he said, "but I am not kidded by it; it's a bad place for the young because of the furious, bitter struggle to get on in the world. The only thing that saved me was that I inherited a modest fortune."

  I said: "I have no fortune, but if you would be my friend perhaps that will save me."

  He was tickled. He clapped me on the shoulder saying:

  "By God! I never received a prettier compliment! And from one of my own sex, too! Come on in and have a drink!"

  I have described his apartment in my newspaper interview so I need not enlarge on it here. He has a cadaverous man-servant called Jermyn who idolizes him. When Mr. Mappin likes anybody he is always poking fun at him, that's how you know when you're making good with him. We sat in front of the fire with the best Scotch and soda I ever tasted and he said:

  "Well, start the interview." Whereupon every idea flew out of my head. My first question was banal enough.

  "Why have you never married, Mr. Mappin?" His eyes twinkled but he never cracked a smile.

  "This is off the record, my boy. My inches are too few and my pounds too many. I recognized in the beginning that I would never make a figure of rom
ance and I put it behind me. Men of my figure are usually attracted to Amazons of six feet or over and they do not respond to our devotion. I have my compensations, though. Men who are forever chasing after some woman or other can have no idea what interesting creatures they are when examined dispassionately."

  My next approach was not much more sensible and he was frank to tell me so. I asked him to describe his methods of work and he said:

  "How can I do that when each case presents a new set of problems? However, I will lend you a couple of my books and if you read the cases in which I have myself participated, you can see exactly how I proceeded. There is no magic in it. I will give you one piece of information that must be carefully guarded from the public."

  "What's that?" I asked eagerly. He said with his grave face and shining glasses:

  "I follow my hunches!" I suppose I showed in my face that I felt sold, because he laughed in his silent way, and poured me another drink.

  When I asked him about his museum of crime that everybody talks about, he said:

  "There's nothing to it. I have of course a file of notes, clippings, photographs and all printed or written matter pertaining to crime. Every one who does research must keep such a file. But material objects have no interest for me after I have finished with them. I am, to misquote Hokusai, the old man mad about psychology. What I am always after is, what makes people behave the way they do? However, I have a few objects that have been saved for one reason or another and I'll show you those."

  He opened a cabinet in his living room.

  "This odd little wooden barrel contains what is left of the cyanide that killed His Highness the Sultan of Shihkar when he was on his way to pay his respects to the President in Washington. You had better not unscrew the top. It was tossed out of a window of the Sultan's private car and picked up beside the Pennsylvania tracks next day. That was one of the strangest cases I ever confronted. It proved to me that after all the Eastern mind works in much the same fashion as the Western. I have kept the odd little barrel because I have never been able to establish how it came into the hands of the murderer. Every case leaves one or two such loose threads to tantalize the investigator.