The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

by Otto Penzler

  “What did you do with yourself?”

  Mrs. Hanan was lying in one of the low chairs. She laughed nervously. “The radio— tried to improve my Spanish and Tony’s English—chewed my fingernails—almost frightened myself to death with one of your damned demon books.” She lighted a cigarette. “And you?”

  He smiled in the darkness. “I earned thirty-five thousand dollars.”

  She sat up, said eagerly: “Did you get the rubies?”

  He nodded.

  “Did Crandall raise much hell?”

  “Enough.”

  She laughed exultantly. “Where are they?”

  Druse tapped his pocket, watched her face in the pale orange glow of her cigarette.

  She got up, held out her hand. “May I see them?”

  Druse said: “Certainly.” He took a long flat jewel-case of black velvet out of his inside coat-pocket and handed it to her.

  She opened the case and went to the door to the living room, looked at its contents by the light there, said: “They are awfully beautiful, aren’t they?”

  “They are.”

  She snapped the case closed, came back and sat down.

  Druse said: “I think I’d better take care of them a little while longer.”

  She leaned forward and put the case on his lap; he took it up and put it back in his pocket. They sat silently, watching the lights in buildings over towards the East River. After a while the Filipino boy came out and said that they were served.

  “Out guest is late.” Druse stood up. “I make a rule of never waiting breakfast—anything but breakfast.”

  They went together through the living room, into the simply furnished dining room. There were three places set at the glittering white and silver table. They sat down and the Filipino boy brought in tall and spindly cocktail glasses of iced fruit; they were just beginning when the doorbell rang. The Filipino boy glanced at Druse, Druse nodded, said: “Ask the gentleman to come in here.” The Filipino boy went out and there were voices in the entrance-hall, and then Hanan came into the doorway.

  Druse stood up. He said: “You must forgive us for beginning—you are a little late.” He raised one hand and gestured towards the empty chair.

  Hanan was standing in the doorway with his feet wide apart, his arms stiff at his sides, as if he had been suddenly frozen in that position. He stared at Mrs. Hanan and his eyes were wide, blank—his thin mouth was compressed to a hard, straight line. Very suddenly his right hand went towards his left armpit.

  Druse said sharply: “Please sit down.” Though he seemed scarcely to have moved, the blunt derringer glittered in his hand.

  Mrs. Hanan half rose. She was very pale; her hands were clenched convulsively on the white tablecloth.

  Hanan dropped his hand very slowly. He stared at the derringer and twisted his mouth into a terribly forced smile, came slowly forward to the empty chair and sat down.

  Druse raised his eyes to the Filipino boy who had followed Hanan into the doorway, said: “Take the gentleman’s gun, Tony—and serve his cocktail.” He sat down, held the derringer rigidly on the table in front of him.

  The Filipino boy went to Hanan, felt gingerly under his coat, drew out a small black automatic and took it to Druse. Then he went out through the swinging-door to the kitchen. Druse put the automatic in his pocket. He turned his eyes to Mrs. Hanan, said: “I’m going to tell you a story. After I’ve finished, you can both talk all you like—but please don’t interrupt.”

  He smiled with his mouth—the rest of his face remained stonily impassive. His eyes were fixed and expressionless, on Hanan. He said: “Your husband has wanted a divorce for some time. His principal reason is a lady—her name doesn’t matter—who wants to marry him—and whom he wants to marry. He hasn’t told you about her because he has felt, perhaps justifiably, that you knowing about her would retard, rather than hasten, an agreement….”

  The Filipino boy came in from the kitchen with a cocktail, set it before Hanan. Hanan did not move, or look up. He stared intently at the flowers in the center of the table. The Filipino boy smiled self-consciously at Druse and Mrs. Hanan, disappeared into the kitchen.

  Druse relaxed a little, leaned back; the derringer was still focused unwaveringly on Hanan.

  “In the hope of uncovering some adequate grounds for bringing suit,” Druse went on, “he has had you followed for a month or more— unsuccessfully, need I add? After you threatened Crandall, you discovered suddenly that you were being followed and, of course, ascribed it to Crandall.”

  He paused. It was entirely silent for a moment, except for the faint, faraway buzz of the city and the sharp, measured sound of Hanan’s breathing.

  Druse turned his head towards Mrs. Hanan. “After you left Mister Hanan at Roslyn, last night, it suddenly occurred to him that this was his golden opportunity to dispose of you, without any danger to himself. You wouldn’t give him a divorce—and it didn’t look as if he’d be able to force it by discovering some dereliction on your part. And now, you had threatened Crandall—Crandall would be logically suspected if anything happened to you. Mister Hanan sent his men—the men who had been following you—after you when you left the place at Roslyn. They weren’t very lucky.”

  Druse was smiling slightly. Mrs. Hanan had put her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands; she regarded Hanan steadily.

  “He couldn’t go to the police,” Druse went on— ”they would arrest Crandall, or watch him, and that would ruin the whole plan. And the business about the rubies would come out. That was the last thing he wanted"—Druse widened his smile— ”because he switched the rubies himself—some time ago.”

  Mrs. Hanan turned to look at Druse; very slowly she matched his smile.

  “You never discovered that your rubies were fake,” he said, “because that possibility didn’t occur to you. It was only after they’d been given back by Crandall that you became suspicious and found out they weren’t genuine.” He glanced at Hanan and the smile went from his face, leaving it hard and expressionless again. “Mister Hanan is indeed ‘crazy about stones.’ “

  Hanan’s thin mouth twitched slightly; he stared steadily at the flowers.

  Druse sighed. “And so—we find Mister Hanan, last night, with several reasons for wishing your—shall we say, disappearance? We find him with the circumstance of being able to direct suspicion at Crandall, ready to his hand. His own serious problem lay in finding a third, responsible, party before whom to lay the whole thing—or enough of it to serve his purpose.”

  Mrs. Hanan had turned to face Hanan. Her eyes were half closed and her smile was very hard, very strange.

  Druse stood up slowly, went on: “He had the happy thought of calling me—or perhaps the suggestion. I was an ideal instrument, functioning as I do, midway between the law and the underworld. He made an appointment, and arranged for one of his men to call on you by way of the fire-escape, while we were discussing the matter. The logical implication was that I would come to you when I left him, find you murdered, and act immediately on the information he had given me about Crandall. My influence and testimony would have speedily convicted Crandall. Mister Hanan would have better than a divorce. He’d have the rubies, without any danger of his having switched them ever being discovered— and he’d have"—Druse grinned sourly— ”the check he had given me as an advance. Failing in the two things I had contracted to do, I would of course return it to him.”

  Hanan laughed suddenly; a terribly forced, high-pitched laugh.

  “It is very funny,” Druse said. “It would all have worked very beautifully if you"—he moved his eyes to Mrs. Hanan— ”hadn’t happened to see the man who came up the fire-escape to call on you, before he saw you. The man whose return Mister Hanan has been impatiently waiting. The man"—he dropped one eyelid in a swift wink— ”who confessed to the whole thing a little less than an hour ago.”

  Druse put his hand into his inside pocket and took out the black velvet jewel-case, snapped it open and
put it on the table. “I found them in the safe at your place at Roslyn,” he said. “Your servants there objected very strenuously—so strenuously that I was forced to tie them up and lock them in the wine cellar. They must be awfully uncomfortable by now—I shall have to attend to that.”

  He lowered his voice to a discreet drone. “And your lady was there, too. She, too, objected very strenuously, until I had had a long talk with her and convinced her of the error of her—shall we say, affection, for a gentleman of your instincts. She seemed very frightened at the idea of becoming involved in this case—I’m afraid she will be rather hard to find.”

  Druse sighed, lowered his eyes slowly to the rubies, touched the largest of them delicately with one finger. “And so,” he said, “to end this vicious and regrettable business—I give you your rubies"—he lifted his hand and made a sweeping gesture towards Mrs. Hanan— ”and your wife—and now I would like your check for twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  Hanan moved very swiftly. He tipped the edge of the table upward, lunged up and forward in the same movement; there was a sharp, shattering crash of chinaware and silver. The derringer roared, but the bullet thudded into the table. Hanan bent over suddenly—his eyes were dull, and his upper lip was drawn back over his teeth—then he straightened and whirled and ran out through the door to the living-room.

  Mrs. Hanan was standing against the big buffet; her hands were at her mouth, and her eyes were very wide. She made no sound.

  Druse went after Hanan, stopped suddenly at the door. Hanan was crouched in the middle of the living room. The Filipino boy stood beyond him, framed against the darkness of the entrance-hall; a curved knife glittering in his hand and his thin yellow face was hard, menacing. Hanan ran out on the terrace, and Druse went swiftly after him. By the dim light from the living room he saw Hanan dart to the left, encounter the wall there, zigzag crazily towards the darkness of the outer terrace, the edge.

  Druse yelled: “Look out!” ran forward. Hanan was silhouetted a moment against the mauve glow of the sky; then with a hoarse, cracked scream he fell outward, down.

  Druse stood a moment, staring blindly down. He took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead, then turned and went into the living room and tossed the derringer down on the big center table. The Filipino boy was still standing in the doorway. Druse nodded at him and he turned and went through the dark entrance-hall into the kitchen. Druse went to the door to the dining-room; Mrs. Hanan was still standing with her back to the buffet, her hands still at her mouth, her eyes wide, unseeing. He turned and went swiftly up the broad steps to the office, took up the telephone and dialed a number. When the connection had been made, he asked for MacCrae.

  In a minute or so MacCrae answered; Druse said: “You’ll find a stiff in Mrs. Dale Hanan’s apartment on the corner of Sixty-third and Park, Mac. She killed him—self-defense. You might find his partner downstairs at my place—waiting for his boss to come out…. Yeah, his boss was Hanan—he just went down—the other way…. I’ll file charges of attempted murder against Hanan, and straight it all out when you get over here…. Yeah—hurry.”

  He hung up and went down to the dining room. He tipped the table back on its legs and picked up the rubies, put them back into the case. He said: “I called up a friend of mine who works for Mahlon and Stiles. As you probably know, Mister Hanan has never made a will.” He smiled. “He so hated the thought of death that the idea of a will was extremely repugnant to him.”

  He picked up her chair and she came slowly across and sank into it.

  “As soon as the estate is settled,” he went on, “I shall expect your check for a hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars, made out to the insurance company.”

  She nodded abstractedly.

  “I think these"—he indicated the jewel-case— ”will be safer with me, until then.”

  She nodded again.

  He smiled, “I shall also look forward with a great deal of pleasure to receiving your check for twenty-five thousand—the balance on the figure I quoted for my services.”

  She turned her head slowly, looked up at him. “A moralist,” she said— ”morbid—and mercenary.”

  “Mercenary as hell!” he bobbed his big head up and down violently.

  She looked at the tiny watch at her wrist, said: “It isn’t morning yet, strictly speaking—but I’d rather have a drink than anything I can think of.”

  Druse laughed. He went to the buffet and took out a squat bottle, glasses, poured two big drinks. He took one to her, raised the other and squinted through it at the light. “Here’s to crime.”

  They drank.

  The Perfect Crime

  C. S. Montanye

  CARLTON STEVENS MONTANYE (1892-1948), an active writer in the early years of pulpwood magazines, appears to have had an exceptional fondness for criminals as protagonists.

  Although he wrote for many different periodicals, he achieved the peak of any pulp writer’s career by selling numerous stories to Black Mask, beginning with the May 1920 issue and continuing through the issue of October 1939. Most were about various crooks, including the Countess d’Yls, who steals a pearl necklace in “A Shock for the Countess,” Monahan, a yegg, and Rider Lott, inventor of the perfect crime.

  His most famous character is the international jewel thief, Captain Valentine, who made his Black Mask debut on September 1, 1923, with “The Suite on the Seventh Floor,” and appeared nine more times in two years, concluding with “The Dice of Destiny” in the July 1925 issue. The gentleman rogue also was the protagonist of the novel Moons in Gold, published in 1936, in which the debonair Valentine, accompanied by his amazingly ingenious Chinese servant Tim, is in Paris, where he has his eye on the world’s most magnificent collection of opals.

  Montanye also was one of the writers of the Phantom Detective series under the house name Robert Wallace.

  “The Perfect Crime” first appeared in the July 1920 issue of Black Mask.

  The Perfect Crime

  C. S. Montanye

  I

  Two men sat at a table in a waterfront saloon. One was tall, dark and thin. He had the crafty, malevolent face of a gangster or crook. His eyes were beady and set close to a hawk-beak nose. His mouth was loose and weak but his chin was square. The other man was also tall. He was blond and broad shouldered. He was healthy in appearance and youthful looking. He resembled a stevedore or a freight handler from the docks. The two men had never seen each other until ten minutes past.

  The dark man absently reached into a pocket and drew out a small, round pasteboard box. He opened it and dipped a thumb and forefinger into it and pinched out some white stuff. This he placed well into a nostril and sniffed it up his nose.

  He looked across at the blond, who regarded him curiously.

  “Walk in a snow storm, brother?”

  “It’s dope, isn’t it?” the other asked.

  The dark man’s eyes began to sparkle.

  “Happy dust. Have some? No. So much more for me, then. What’s your name, brother?”

  The blond youth set down his beaker of near-beer.

  “My name is Klug—Martin Klug.”

  The dark man nodded.

  “Martin Klug, you say? I knew a Klug once. He was a gay-cat, which means a blaster or a safe-blower, if you don’t happen to know. He was doing a stretch in a band-house in Joplin for a job in Chi. He was old and had big ears. Was he your father?”

  “No!” the other replied curtly. “He wasn’t my father. My father was an honest man.”

  “Which implies his son isn’t, eh? Now, let me see if I can guess what you are.”

  He cocked his head on one side and looked the youth over.

  “You’re too big and clumsy for a dip or a leather snatcher. You haven’t got enough imagination to be a flash-thief or a con. Your hands are too large for peterman’s work and you’re too slow to swing on a derrick. What are you? I see your shoes are full of rust and stained with salt water. I’ll put you down as a ri
ver rat, a rattler grab, which means you’re a freight car crook. Am I right?”

  The blond youth smiled a little.

  “More or less. And you—what are you? Who are you?”

  The dark man twisted his lips into a grin.

  “Me? Brother, I’m Lott—Rider Lott. I’m an inventor. I’m also an author. I’m the inventor of the Perfect Crime. That is to say I’ve discovered how a job can be turned without any danger of a prison sentence. I’m the author of a little book I hope to publish some day. It’s called a Primer of Progressive Crime. I hope you understand me.”

  “I don’t,” said Klug.

  Lott raised a hand.

  “Listen. Crime doctors and criminologists say it is impossible to commit a crime without leaving behind a clue. The law of Chance swings an even balance. No matter what is accomplished, so they declare, something tangible is always left behind. It might be a finger-print, a drop of blood, a lock of hair, a footprint, a bit of cloth—something. Do you get me now?”

  Klug nodded.

  “And you don’t agree with them?”

  Lott picked at his right cheek.

  “No, I don’t agree with them. The Perfect Criminal doesn’t have to leave a clue behind. I said the law of Chance swings an even balance. He’s not compelled to furnish the cops with clues, is he? All he has to do is—”

  At this minute a girl came out of the shadows and sat down at the table. She was coarse, voluptuous but possessed of a flashy beauty. She was dressed in tawdry finery and reeked of patchouli. Under a large, dusty picture hat, Klug observed quantities of red-bronze hair. She had cow-like brown eyes, a milk white skin, a vermil mouth. She carried a black satin handbag and a pair of dirty white kid gloves.

  “Well, well,” Lott said, as the girl sat down, “we now have with us Beatrice the Beautiful Brakeman’s Daughter. Where have you been keeping yourself, Beatrice? I haven’t seen you in six weeks.”