The Hardboiled Mystery Megapack

by John Roeburt

  Toller’s eyes were full once more, and grief lay on his face. “I dodge around, you say. I’ve dodged around in Hell for five years, mister. I couldn’t face up to the loss of a guy who’d wrapped himself around my heart. That’s over now. I’ve cut my heart out…” A fist coiled to stand rigidly in the space between them. “Stay away from me, mister. Find another book to read. I want to get lost, I want to forget.”

  Devereaux watched Toller walk to the door of the small restaurant. If Toller was a book, he was a blind reader. Toller was a paradox outside his grasp; a seller of facts, and vapor. With vapor in the greater measure of the two.

  The detective saw Toller open the door and fling into the inky void of night.

  Devereaux rose wearily, to pay the check and depart. It had been a long day and a longer night. His automobile was parked around the corner.

  Part 3.

  Devereaux fumbled with his car keys, seeking the door lock. His fingers were stiff with cold and insensitive to the mean task. He heard the thud of the mechanism as the lock labored its turn, and then he stood rooted in an intense concentration of his every faculty as his ears picked up other sounds.

  Familiar sounds these, stored away in his sensory files. It was away from him, and coming toward him, as once before. A hum, unmuffled with a cough to it…an automobile exhaust. And a flap, flap, striking the asphalt smartly, like paper adhered to a spinning cylinder. An automobile with oversized tires.

  The same sounds that had once been heraldry to a bullet fired at him on a hospital street.

  The automobile roared by, on the south lane of the two-way avenue, the far side from Devereaux’s cover behind the standing Buick. Devereaux saw the driver, knew his face. A revelation, but the stir in the detective beggared the event. He stood still on the ground, leaden to his feet, with no rise to his pulse and no surge of elation. His face was curiously empty as he stared into the columns of smoke that floated in the wake of the car that had passed.

  Max Toller, the driver. Devereaux’s mind made irrevocable record of it. Max Toller it was who had stalked the streets with fist and club and gun. The assaults on Nina Troy, and Brett Carter, and himself, Devereaux. It was Toller who had stood fearsomely against the search for The Tiger Man.

  Devereaux got into his car and started the motor. His exhaustion was utter; every fibre of him said no to a frantic chase into the night after Toller. Tomorrow was good time enough to close once more with the supreme salesman of vapor.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Part 1.

  The heavy velour draperies hung stiffly from their valances to blot out the window light. The uptown flat that was a shrine was close and unventilated, with that mustiness to it peculiar to places long uninhabited.

  Devereaux pushed his prisoner into the room and twisted slightly to work the inside patent lock. He pressed a wall button and lighted the room. He then took off his coat, unbuttoned his shirt collar at the neck and loosened the knot of his tie. There were leather thongs showing on his back and front, and a gun stood formidably in its holster.

  The detective paced the room in a quick examination of it. The room was smart, with some showy touches. The broadloom rug was thick and cushiony; the over-stuffed chairs deep and roomy. There were torchères with an aluminum look to them that gave indirect lighting. There was a sleek mahogany bar with a polished brass foot-rest in the corner close to an alcove that divided the living room from a kitchen or bedroom. A broad shelf behind the bar was stocked with a great variety of bottles brimming to the top; the labels on them read Scotch, Bourbon, Rum, and Gin. Over the shelf, on a free space on the wall, hung a portrait painting. A superbly muscled man with gloved fists in a boxer’s stance. The invincible Tiger Man, done in oils; reds and vivid greens, the colors of flame and eternal Spring. Devereaux moved close to it, to read the signature, and then nod to himself. Byron Fellows, the artist; a contemporary great with a penchant for painting Matadors and Admirals.

  Devereaux shifted his position warily. Toller was close at his elbow, staring at the hanging portrait.

  Toller said huskily, “Get the build on him. A six-inch chest expansion. Fists of steel, and a stomach you could stand a ton on.”

  The detective said, “Jump me, I’ll shoot you in both hands and legs.”

  Toller said, “You won’t make out, mister. I ever leave here alive, I’ll tell a cop. I wasn’t arrested, I was kidnapped.”

  “I don’t have a scruple you can touch, Toller,” the detective said frostily. “Argue, or whine, you’re only wasting breath. Three assaults by fist and bludgeon. One assault by gun. The reckoning is now.”

  “Rocks in your head,” Toller said calmly. “My oversized tires. I’ll show you a hundred jalopies with the same.”

  The blow caught Toller full on the mouth. He sat down on the floor with an odd angle to his head, and now his eyes showed a first real awareness of his plight.

  Devereaux said, “A lady I represent wears high collars and long sleeves. You did quite a job on her.”

  Toller said nothing. He dabbed a handkerchief to his lips, then formed two fingers into a wide-pronged fork and reached into his mouth. The fork came away with an upper dental plate. He held it before him, methodically estimating the damage, and then threw it across the floor.

  The detective said, “You did an even better job on Brett Carter. You really discouraged him from looking for The Tiger Man.”

  Toller said, “I’m the goat. I’m without teeth, because you’re frustrated. But I won’t beg, mister. I’ll take the beating. I ever leave here alive, I’ll tell a cop.”

  The detective said, “Your first go at me, I bled all over the sidewalk. The miracle is, my mind didn’t go wandering.”

  Devereaux stooped to raise Toller and thrust him into a great chair. The taxi-driver looked squarely at the detective, in an efforted impassivity, as if in this presentation of himself lay his ultimate triumph.

  Devereaux said, “It was stupid of you to use your own car while out on a shoot. A cop is sharp about details—You were pushing your luck. But the car alone wasn’t your trap. We’d sooner or later be here in this exact situation anyhow.”

  Toller’s eyes narrowed slightly and the detective continued, “The car and its revelation merely sharpened my thinking. All the rest of last night, and into the dawn. Toller: how much does he fit into the general scheme? And how much of the general scheme can stand of itself, away from Toller?”

  The detective’s eyes glinted. “There was little I could subtract from Toller. You were the prime mover in the scheme, you dominated it. The disappearance of Rocky Star, the terror on the streets—Toller the agent, Toller the Shadow Man. The silencing of Hobie Grimes—I laid that to you too. You shared a secret with Hobie. You murdered Hobie to stop him from revealing that secret…

  “And more Toller, more of the prime mover. The corpse in the bog, purportedly the last remains of The Tiger Man. So purported by Toller.” Devereaux saw the quick objection in the taxi-driver’s face. “Yes, I know. Aldo Starziani identified a ring as Rocky’s along with you. I found a simple explanation for that in my thinking. The ring, say, was actually Rocky’s. Rocky’s own ring planted on the thing in the bog. Planted by you, Toller. Trinkets belonging to The Tiger Man were available to you.” The detective’s hand described the room. “You’ve had exclusive access to all of his personal possessions for five years!”

  A moment later, Devereaux spoke into the deep silence. “I used the phrase ‘purportedly the remains of The Tiger Man.’ The implication there is that I do not believe the thing in the bog was Rocky Star.” He sought Toller’s eyes unsuccessfully. “The fact is, I know it to be a hoax.”

  There was no reaction. There was a rigidity in Toller’s face as if a glaze lay over it. The detective said, “A shrewd piece of bedevilment, and you rate applause for consummate genius, Toller! The reconstruction of ordinary physical measurements beautifully approximated the structural Rocky Star. Quite a poser at that. And very convincin
g, even without particular dentistry or surgical scars, or other markers that could describe only The Tiger Man. And for the clincher, there was the time element. The thing in the bog had been dead for about as long as the time of Rocky Star’s disappearance. A pattern of proof so substantial, only an arrant quibbler would continue to refuse the remains as authentically Rocky Star…

  “But I refuse it, Toller. I say the remains in the marsh was nothing more than a plant. Like the ring was a plant. And I can prove it! I say that Rocky Star did have particular physical markers at the time of his disappearance. Injuries that you well knew about, but concealed from Captain Anders and Dr. Kingdon. Bone injuries that must prove or disprove the remains. Rocky’s hands, Toller—They were broken by Marco’s goons! More than broken, they were crushed. Marco saw to it that Rocky would never fight again.”

  There was the smallest crack in the glaze now. A shadowing, under the eyes. The detective said, “Injuries that can be read easily, even long after a man has perished. I talked to Dr. Kingdon over the telephone this morning. He agreed the remains in his laboratory could not be The Tiger Man, on the basis of what I told him about Rocky’s crushed hands. His fellow had no bone injuries in the hands.”

  “Toller the prime mover,” Devereaux said, summing it up. “The thing in the bog was your maneuver. You were the anonymous tipster on the phone with Captain Anders. You hoped to foreclose on our search for Rocky Star by ringing in a proxy corpse. And last night in your talk with me, you patently supplied fuel to my suspicions that perhaps Marco had murdered The Tiger Man. You used every histrionic, every cunning. You told a superb story, with superior emotion—You tied a neat package. There was the corpus delicti, and now remained only Marco’s arrest and arraignment. The case was done; there’d be no further search for Rocky Star. No further molestation of you; your secret was safe forever. That was your hope.”

  There was no response. Toller sat stolidly in the void he had found for himself. The glaze was on his face and his eyes told nothing. It was as if Devereaux’s monodrama had been rendered to himself alone. His captive audience had escaped into sightlessness and deafness.

  Devereaux said, “I’ve made circles. I’ve been to the moon and back. I’m still asking the original question: Where is Rocky Star?”

  A moment later the detective said, “You’ve got the answer, Toller. You’re so far my shining result. I win through you, or I lose because of you.” Devereaux’s brow furled, and a giant vein stood on it. He had a premonition of failure. Toller was a rock; assaults could scar and mutilate the surface, but that was all.

  Devereaux said, “Force against a rock. In the end, futile maybe, but I’ve anyhow got to try. A mere arrest…you’d go free. The evidence against you is mainly assertive, and you’re an ingenious fellow. The District Attorney would nod along with my brief against you, and then regretfully order your release. You’d get away with murder; you’d laugh out loud.” The detective paused to wonder at the sense of his remarks. He was defending his assault and the rest to come; pleading expediency, and asking the victim to accept the plea.

  Devereaux said restlessly, “We’re in this room anyhow for the reckoning alone. Measure for measure, and it’s certainly due you…” He stopped, again surprised at himself. His talk, and the qualm it suggested was not his wont. But suddenly he was cold, and without that rage that was his spur.

  It was this feeling of final futility, Devereaux told himself…the depression of it. Toller would fall, but Toller would not break. Toller was such a man. The beating would be wanton without yield.

  His blood lay still so that he could not feel his fingers, when Devereaux began with Max Toller.

  The automaton stood cold in its metal and faceless, and the twin pistons before it moved precisely to sound against the abdomen and the kidneys. There were gasps, and then when breath was gone, there were only the sounds of the pistons striking against the flesh.

  Part 2.

  The underlip of the man who lay prone moved ceaselessly in an incantation that had no sound to it.

  The man who stood over him splashed water in his face, and then held a bottle just inside his mouth. The whiskey poured as if into a vat, and then the overflow spilled down Toller’s front.

  There was no stir; just the underlip and the incantation that made no words or even sound.

  The night had passed and now the dawn outside showed barely through the porous grain of the window draperies. Devereaux fell leadenly into a chair. The sweat was on him and inside his clothes like layers of grease. His head was heavy, and his hands; he saw these as huge molds of wood, balled and knobby with great warts on them like festering sores. His lids dropped and he fell into the dark. The night was Toller’s score, and Devereaux’s pain now was both for Toller’s victory and his own defeat. He closed his eyes tightly to obliterate inner sight, so the screen there would shut down because of mechanical failure.

  But the scene showed, as if the illumination and power it wanted now came from the man who lay prone. On the screen, the automaton stood cold in its metal and twin pistons before it moved precisely to strike against the flesh and the spirit.

  Now Devereaux stared intensely into his own dark. The man who lay prone was himself. The automaton that stood was Toller, Max Toller.

  The rustling movement when it happened was too swift for the detective’s reflexes. He understood it only perceptively, in his dark. Toller; Toller had returned to substance in an improbable resurrection.

  The blow caught Devereaux as he was, trapped in his own dark and prone before the automaton. The blow was hard, more than a man’s force.

  The second blow struck where the first had, to pulp the side of his skull and damage the ear. On the floor, Devereaux sought the amount of his knees. He was vague, just before oblivion.

  The last blow was a missile hurtling through space. A candlestick, flung at him. It struck the back of the detective’s head low to the base where the neck began. It seemed to stay, as if it would adhere, become one with the structure of flesh. Then it dropped off, to the rug.

  The detective felt his way blindly, to the door, moving on knees as in a child’s obstacle race. At the door, his hand explored for the knob. Then he pulled himself up, using the knob as a grasp, to stand waveringly as a barrier to Toller. He found his gun, by instinct and feel, and then held it out while he tried to find his eyes.

  The crash of window glass seemed more distant than sound contained in the sheer cubic hollow of the flat.

  Devereaux made his way to the source, now with sight that distorted things before him and painted them red.

  At the bedroom window, he looked down into a courtyard. The asphalt flat below was splashed with the first sun of day. The sun made a jagged pattern of shadows and light, and Toller lay in its center, with the giant teeth of the design touching him on all sides.

  Devereaux was slow in calculating the depth to the courtyard from the window. Two stories, and a basement level.

  A cat’s leap. Foolhardy for a human.

  Part 3.

  The taxi-driver placed his palms flat and hard on the stone and then raised upwards in resolute movements that stopped at the line of his hips. His breathing was harsh and the veins swelled unbearably in his face and neck. He fell back to hold on his elbows and stare anxiously at his legs. As his stare held and realization came to him, Toller’s eyes showed fright.

  Devereaux said, “Both legs broken, Toller. Two-and-a-half stories, what did you expect.”

  Toller looked dumbly to the detective, and then up to the window of the flat.

  Devereaux said, “It’s a possible drop for a man in condition. But you had no legs to start with. You overrated your chances.”

  Toller said, “Get me up.”

  The detective shook his head. “You’re a stretcher case. There may be other less visible injuries. Internal injuries. I’ll call an ambulance.”

  Toller begged, “Help me stand up.”

  “You’ll only fall right down.
”

  The taxi-driver placed his palms flat and hard on the stone again, then tipped his weight to roll to a side. Now head down to the ground, he commenced his feverish toil to the yard wall of a building. He moved in heaves powered from his chest, setting his elbows down and lifting on them, to advance an inch or so and then fall spent, but soon resume again.

  And then at the building wall, he lay uselessly, his eyes looking frantically for some grasp low enough to his reach.

  Devereaux said, “Face up to it, Toller. Keep punishing yourself, you’ll compound your injuries. You’ll only be a longer time recovering.”

  “I’ve got to have my legs, mister.” There was a cry in the tone that soon grew into sobs that shook the taxi-driver.

  Devereaux said, “I’ll phone for that ambulance.”

  “No, mister. No ambulance. I don’t want any ambulance, mister. I just want out of here!” The tone was wild, and it compelled Devereaux. He stared wonderingly at the taxi-driver. Toller’s whole oddness was back; that first quality Devereaux had known…

  The detective spoke with his eyes probing the taxi-driver. “You’re helpless, Toller. You can’t even crawl around on your knees. You’ve got less locomotion than a new-born infant. And the pain’s going to get deadlier—any minute you’ll be screaming with it. You need a doctor at once, to dose you up.”

  Toller was shaking his head fiercely to the detective’s speech. Devereaux said, “You’ll be on your back with your legs in plaster casts for months. At least months. That’s the shape you’re in. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  Toller’s face emptied, and soon the underlip began moving uncontrollably in the rushing prayer that had no sound to it. Now the detective stood rooted to the scene, awed by it and bound to it as if it was one form, one figure, and he, Devereaux, was but one indivisive part of the whole. His eyes sought Toller’s, but now undemandingly, with even some pity, and his face was calm and free of its deep grooves of thought as if the confusion inside had gone in one great and sudden erasure.