The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

by Otto Penzler

  “O.K., sergeant,” the older of the two detectives said.

  “Get ready,” Sergeant Ackley warned. “Here she comes.”

  A station bell clanged a strident warning. The big yellow headlight of the thundering locomotive loomed up out of the darkness. Passengers for the limited swirled into little excited groups, exchanging last farewells as travelers picked up their baggage.

  The big limited train rumbled into the station. While Sergeant Ackley and Beaver hid in the waiting room, the two detectives spotted Lester Leith’s stateroom, flashed a go-ahead signal, and the officers dashed aboard. The brass-throated bells clanged their warning, and the long line of Pullmans creaked into motion.

  In Drawing Room A in Car D57, Lester Leith merely glanced at his wrist watch, then took a cigarette from the hammered silver case in his pocket, tapped it on his thumbnail, and snapped a match into flame.

  On the opposite seat, Evelyn Rae, her back bolstered up with pillows, her mind absorbed in the picture magazine, slid around to draw up her knees to furnish a prop for the magazine. Absent-mindedly, she slipped the gum from her mouth, pressed it against the under side of the table, and groped with her fingers until she found a fresh package. Without taking her eyes off the article she was reading, she tore off the wrappers and fed sticks of gum into her mouth.

  The train, having cleared the more congested district of the city, rumbled into constantly increasing speed.

  Belting Junction at eight ten and Robbinsdale at eight thirty were passed without incident. At five minutes past nine, Lester Leith said:

  “I think I’ll take a stroll on the platform when we get to Beacon City.”

  Evelyn Rae might not have heard him. She was reading an absorbing article on one of her favorite motion-picture stars. The article told of the gameness, courage, the moral stamina of the star, and Evelyn Rae occasionally blinked back tears of sympathy as she traced the star’s unfortunate search for love and understanding through the tangled skein of Hollywood’s romance.

  Lester Leith picked up his shoes, dropped one of them, and bent over to retrieve it.

  Looking up at the under side of the table, he saw wad after wad of moist gum pressed against the wood.

  Slipping two of the imitation emeralds from his pocket, he pushed them up into the soft gum. Wetting the tips of his fingers, he kneaded the sticky substance over the imitation gems.

  The train slowed for Beacon City, and Evelyn Rae was not even conscious that it was slowing. Busily absorbed in reading the adventures of an extra girl who came to Hollywood and attracted the romantic interest of one of the more popular stars, she barely looked up as Lester Leith slipped out of the door and into the corridor.

  As the junction point, Beacon City represented an important stop in the journey of the limited. Here two passenger coaches were transferred from one line and two Pullmans added from another. The station rated a fifteen-minute stop.

  Lester Leith picked up a porter and hurried to the baggage room.

  “I’m on the limited,” he told the man in charge of the baggage counter. “I have a suitcase I want to pick up. I haven’t the check for it, but I can describe the contents. It came down on the night of the thirteenth on the limited, and was put off here to wait for me. The whole thing was a mistake. I got in touch with the claim office, and they located—”

  “Yes, I know all about it,” the baggageman said. “You’ve got to put up a bond.”

  “A what?”

  “A cash bond.”

  “That’s an outrage,” Leith said. “I can describe the contents. There’s absolutely no possibility that you can get into any trouble by delivering that suitcase to me, and what’s more—”

  “No bond, no suitcase,” the man said. “I’m sorry, but that’s orders from headquarters. They came from the claim department.”

  “How much bond?” Lester Leith asked.

  “Fifty dollars.”

  The two detectives who had followed Leith into the baggage room were busy checking articles of hand baggage. Apparently, they paid no attention to the conversation which was going on.

  Leith opened his wallet, took out ten five-dollar bills, and said:

  “This is an outrage.”

  “O.K.,” the baggageman said. “You can get this money back later on. You’ll have to take it up with the claim department. This is just the nature of a bond to indemnify the railroad company. Now, what’s in the suitcase?”

  At this point the detectives seemed suddenly to become absent-minded. They lost interest in their baggage and moved surreptitiously closer.

  Leith said, without hesitating. “It’s part of a masquerade costume joke that was played on some friends. There’s a costume in there by which a thin man can make it appear he’s enormously fat.”

  “You win,” the baggageman said. “I’d been wondering what the devil those pneumatic gadgets were for. Regular rubber clothes. I couldn’t figure it. I guess you pump them up with a bicycle pump, and that’s all there is to it, eh?”

  “Not a bicycle pump,” Leith said, smiling. “It’s quicker to stand at the nozzle of a pressure hose at a service station. All right, make me out a receipt for the fifty dollars, and I’ll be on my way. I have to catch this train.”

  He turned to the porter, handed him a dollar, and said:

  “All right, redcap, rush this aboard the train, put it in Drawing Room A in Car D57. There’s a young woman in there. So knock on the door and explain to her that I had the suitcase put aboard. She’s my secretary.”

  “Yassah, yassah,” the grinning boy said. “Right away, suh.”

  The detectives took no chances. One of them followed the suitcase aboard the train. The other waited for Leith to get his receipt.

  “All aboard. All aboard for the limited,” the brakeman cried.

  The station bell clanged into sharp summons.

  The baggageman looked up from the receipt he was writing. “You’ve got a minute and a half after that,” he said.

  “All aboard. All aboard,” cried the conductor.

  The baggageman scribbled a hasty receipt. The bell of the locomotive clanged into action. The baggageman thrust the receipt into Leith’s hand.

  “O.K.,” he said, “you’d better hustle.”

  Leith sprinted across the platform. Porters were banging vestibule doors. The long train creaked into motion.

  A porter saw Leith coming, opened the vestibule door, and hustled Leith aboard. The detective caught the next car down.

  The minute the detective had vanished into the vestibule, Leith suddenly exclaimed, “Oh, I forgot my wallet!”

  “You can’t get off now, boss,” the porter said.

  “The hell I can’t!” Leith told him, jerked open the vestibule door, and stepped down to the stairs. He swung out to the platform with the easy grace of a man who has reduced the hopping of trains to a fine art.

  The engineer, knowing he had a straight, uninterrupted run during which he must smoothly clip off the miles, slid the throttle open, and the powerful engine, snaking the long string of Pullmans behind it, roared into rocking speed as Lester Leith, left behind on the station, saw the red lights on the rear of the train draw closer together and then vanish into the darkness.

  In the stateroom of Car D56, Sergeant Ackley sat hunched over a table, his elbows spread far apart, his chin resting in his hands, chewing nervously at a soggy cigar. His eyes, glittering with excitement, stared across at Beaver, the undercover man. The two detectives made their report.

  “Hell, sergeant,” the man who had followed the suitcase aboard said, “the thing’s all cut and dried. Leith pulled that stickup himself. He’s got a bunch of rubber clothes he can put on and inflate with air, and they made him look like a big fat guy. He stuck on a cap and mask, and—”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Sergeant Ackley interrupted. “Leith didn’t pull that stickup himself. Leith is pulling a hijack.”

  “Well, that’s what’s in the suitcase, all
right,” the detective said, “and Leith knew all about it.”

  “That’s right,” the second officer chimed in. “He spoke right up and described the stuff in the suitcase—a masquerade costume to make a thin guy look fat.”

  Sergeant Ackley twisted the cigar between trembling lips. Suddenly he jumped to his feet.

  “O.K., boys,” he said. “We make the pinch!”

  He jerked open the door of his drawing room.

  “Do I stay here?” Beaver asked.

  “No,” Sergeant Ackley said, “you can come with us. You can throw off your disguise, and face him in your true colors. You can get even with him for some of these taunts and insults.”

  The burly undercover man’s fist clenched. “The big thing I want to get even with him for,” he said, “is his calling me Scuttle. He Scuttles me this, and Scuttles me that. He says that I look like a pirate, and keeps asking me if perhaps some of my ancestors weren’t pirates.”

  “As far as I’m concerned,” Sergeant Ackley said, “the sky’s the limit. My eyes aren’t very good, and if you say he was resisting arrest and took a swing at you, I’ll be inclined to help you defend yourself.”

  “I don’t want any help,” Beaver said. “All I want is three good punches.”

  Sergeant Ackley turned to the other two officers. “Remember,” he said, “if Beaver swears this guy made a swing at him, we’re all backing Beaver’s play.”

  Two heads nodded in unison.

  “Come on,” Sergeant Ackley said, putting his star on the outside of his coat, and led the procession which marched grimly down the swaying aisle of the Pullman car where the porter, struggling with mattresses and green curtains as he made up the berths, looked up to stare with wide eyes.

  “Do we knock?” Beaver asked, as they swayed down the aisle of Car D57.

  “Don’t be silly,” Ackley commented. He twisted the knob of the stateroom door, slammed it open. The car porter watched them with wide-eyed wonder. A moment later he was joined by the porter from the car ahead.

  Evelyn Rae was sprawled comfortably on the seat, her left elbow propped against the table, a pillow behind her head, her right instep fitted against the curved arm of the upholstering. She looked up with casual inquiry, then suddenly lowered her knees, pulled down her skirt, and said:

  “Say, what’s the idea?”

  “Where’s Leith?” Sergeant Ackley asked.

  “Why, I don’t know. Who are you? Why, hello, Beaver. What is this?”

  Sergeant Ackley said, “Come on! Where’s Leith?”

  “I haven’t seen him for a while. I was reading and—”

  “How did that suitcase get here?”

  “A redcap brought it in. He said Leith told him to put it aboard.”

  “Where was that?”

  “This last stop.”

  “What did Leith say after we pulled out of that last stop?”

  “Why, I haven’t seen him since the suitcase was delivered here.”

  Sergeant Ackley’s laugh was scornful and sarcastic. “Try and get me to fall for that one. You must think I’m crazy. Beaver, open the door to the lavatory. Jim, dust out and cover the train.”

  The undercover man jerked open the lavatory door.

  “No one here,” he said.

  The other detective dashed out into the car.

  The car porter pushed his head in the door. “What yo’-all want? The gen’man what—”

  Sergeant Ackley held up the lapel of his coat to emphasize the significance of his badge. “Get the hell out of here,” he said.

  The porter backed out, his jaw and lips moving, but no words coming.

  Sergeant Ackley slammed the door shut.

  “Let’s take a look in that suitcase,” he said.

  The officers unstrapped the suitcase, opened it. Sergeant Ackley pawed through the clothes.

  “O.K.,” he said to the girl, “where are those two gems?”

  “What two gems?”

  “Don’t stall. The two gems that were in there.”

  “You’re nuts!” she said.

  “I’ll show you whether I’m nuts or not,” Sergeant Ackley said. “You’re an accomplice in this thing right now. You give me any more of your lip, and I’ll arrest you as an accessory after the fact.”

  “After what fact?” she asked.

  Sergeant Ackley’s gesture was one of irritation.

  “Mr. Leith thought he’d left you in the city,” she said to Beaver.

  “What Lester Leith thinks doesn’t count right now,” Sergeant Ackley observed. “I want those two emeralds.”

  “Those two emeralds?”

  “Yes.”

  Before she could answer, the door of the drawing room burst open, and the detective who had been sent to find Leith said:

  “Say, sergeant, here’s a funny story from the porter of the second car back. That’s the one that Leith hopped when the train pulled out. I grabbed the one behind. I went back and asked the porter what happened to the man who got aboard and—”

  “Never mind all that palaver,” Sergeant Ackley interrupted irritably. “Go ahead and tell me the answer. What happened?”

  “He said that Lester Leith climbed aboard all right, and then jumped right back off again.”

  Sergeant Ackley’s face darkened. “So you let him give you the slip, did you?”

  The detective said indignantly: “Let him give me nothing! He got aboard the train all right, and I saw the vestibule door shut. The train damn near jerked my arms off when I got aboard the next car back. I hurried up to follow Leith to his stateroom here, but before I could get through the car, he’d had plenty of time to reach this stateroom. Remember, he was one car ahead of me. No one else could have done the thing any differently. How was I to know he was going to jump off?”

  Sergeant Ackley whirled to Evelyn Rae. “I’m going to get those two stones,” he said, “if I have to search every stitch you have on. So you’d better come through with them.”

  “I tell you I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

  Beaver said significantly: “Remember that piece of glass in the chewing gum, sergeant. I’ll bet they were just trying to find out whether a wad of chewing gum would hold—”

  “Now,” Sergeant Ackley said, “you’re talking sense.” He grabbed the table, swung it up on its hinges, looked at the assortment of gum gobs which studded the under side of the table. Suddenly a flash of green light caught his eye. With a whoop of triumph, he grabbed at the blob of gum. It stuck to his fingers, but pulled away enough to show the surface of a huge green object which was embedded in the sticky depths. “Hooray,” Sergeant Ackley cried. “Caught at last. Snap the handcuffs on that woman.”

  CHAPTER VI

  THE TWO TRICK CANES

  There were lights in the building occupied by the Explorers’ Club. From time to time could be heard bursts of laughter or spatterings of applause. The curb around the building was crowded with parked automobiles. Here and there chauffeur-driven cars showed a driver huddled over the steering wheel dozing or, perhaps, listening to the radio.

  Lester Leith, swinging along the sidewalk, spotted the license number of Peter B. Mainwaring’s automobile without difficulty. The chauffeur of the car was slumped over the wheel.

  Leith walked around the car, and tapped him on the shoulder.

  The man snapped to quick attention as he felt the touch of Lester Leith’s finger. His right hand started toward his left coat lapel.

  Lester Leith said easily, “You’re Mainwaring’s chauffeur?”

  The man’s thin, hatchet face was without expression as he said, from one side of his mouth, “What’s it to you?” His right hand was held hovering over the left coat lapel.

  “I have the cane that Mainwaring ordered,” Lester Leith said. “He told me to deliver it to you, and to show you the secret compartment.”

  “Secret compartment?” Deekin said. “Say, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
/>   Leith said: “Well, I don’t give a damn whether you do or not. You don’t need to be so short about it. I’m a working man, same as you are, and a damn good cane maker. I’m carrying out instructions, that’s all. Now, here’s the cane for Mainwaring. You tell him when he wants to get at the hidden receptacle, all he has to do is unscrew the top.”

  “What does he want a receptacle in a cane for?” Deekin asked, his voice more friendly.

  Lester Leith smirked and said: “Probably to carry liver pills in. How the hell do I know? I have about a dozen clients who give me orders like this, and I’m paid enough to keep my mouth shut. Do you understand?”

  Slow comprehension began to dawn on Deekin’s face. The right hand which had been hovering near his chest moved away to rest on the steering wheel.

  “What’s this about unscrewing the head of the cane?” he asked.

  Leith said, “Let me show you.”

  With deft fingers, he unscrewed the head of the cane, showed a cotton-lined receptacle on the interior. He pushed two fingers down into the cavity to show its depth. “There you are,” he said. “Four and a half inches deep as ordered, and I defy anyone to look at this cane and tell that there’s anything phony about it. Here it is.”

  “What’s that other cane you’ve got?” Deekin asked.

  “One I’m delivering to another customer,” Leith told him.

  “Say, what do you want me to do with this?”

  “Just give it to Mr. Mainwaring, that’s all,” Leith said. “It’s all paid for. Mainwaring will understand. He told me to be at the Explorers’ Club, but not to ask for him, that his car would be waiting outside, and I was to leave the cane with his chauffeur. Don’t be so damn dumb.”

  “I’m not so damn dumb,” Deekin said, inspecting the cane with approval. “Say, buddy,” with increasing friendliness, “that’s a neat job.”

  “You’re damn right it’s a neat job,” Leith said. “You ain’t telling me anything…. Say, I wonder if Mainwaring is interested in knowing that they’ve caught the guy that robbed him.”