by Otto Penzler
A square door in the wall between the man at the stove and the window where Sarah Watson watched began to open, very slowly, very silently. Sarah edged closer to the curtain. The stubby fingers of her right hand began to slide into her handbag …
Suddenly the opening door flew wide, revealing the black hole of a dumbwaiter shaft. A man leaped noiselessly through the door and into the kitchen. He was dark and his profile showed a mouth drawn down by a puckered scar. Before his feet hit the oilcloth, he had placed a gun between the shoulder blades of the man bending over the stove.
The man at the stove stiffened but did not move. The kitten clawed at his shoulder and dropped to the floor, squealing.
“Take it now, snitcher—!” the man with the gun snarled.
A gun blasted. The man with the scar dropped his gun, clawed at his back, slid slowly to the floor. The man at the stove bent over the prostrate man, straightened and looked up at the billowing curtains at the back window. There was smoke still wreathing out of the rift in those curtains, but nothing else.
A few minutes later, a brilliant female in rusty black strode along Green Street and climbed into the ancient automobile parked at the corner. For a moment or so, she sat behind the wheel, her hard bosom rising and falling hurriedly, her stubby fingers wiping away the moisture that beaded the incipient mustache upon her upper lip.
Then the old car coughed and chugged down Green Street. Halfway down the block, it slowed. There was a car parked opposite the window in which Chariot’s sign appeared. It was a fine car, black, with red wheels.
Sarah Watson’s car snorted on a few more yards and stopped. Sarah got out.
The man sitting behind the wheel of the black car sat up suddenly, taking his eyes off the dingy entrance to Chariot’s flathouse and transferring them to the woman standing with her elbow resting on the edge of the open window at his left.
“No use waiting,” she said. “He’s not coming out.” She jabbed her elbow viciously into his neck just below the chin. Something in her right hand cracked down upon the back of his head. His slid, his lids fluttering down over amazed eyes.
Sarah Watson drew a hairpin from the knob of grey hair under her hat. She thrust the pin into the button in the center of the steering wheel. The horn began to blow.
Sarah leaned over the man slumped under the wheel and peered into the back of the car.
“It’s all right, Mrs. Tarrant,” she soothed the frightened woman. “The cop will come running when he hears the horn and the cop will take the ropes and bandages off you. I haven’t time.”
Sarah withdrew her head, gazed sternly for a moment at the unconscious man behind the wheel, then strode away.
As she mounted the steps of the tenement which housed Chariot, a horn was still blowing behind her, and a ruddy cop was tearing around the corner and down Green Street toward the black car with red wheels. Sarah stepped into the vestibule of the tenement, opened a door into the hall, pressed a firm finger on the bell under Chariot’s name and kept the finger there.
The horn of the black car ceased blowing suddenly. Sarah took her finger off Chariot’s bell. A smell of burned steak permeated the hall.
The door opened two inches. A man’s voice said: “Chariot is not receiving.”
Sarah leaned on the door and said, hoarsely:
“Chariot’s receiving me, if he knows what’s good for him,” and she wedged her common-sense shoe into the two-inch opening.
“Madam, if you wish a reading, you must return later. The crystal is clouded. Chariot cannot—”
“Listen,” Sarah interrupted fiercely, wedging her foot farther in, “the crystal may be clouded, but it ain’t too clouded for me to see that there’s a corpse in Chariot’s kitchen …”
The voice behind the door gasped. Sarah pushed through, stepped into the dimly lit room beyond, slammed the door shut behind her, locked it, and faced a white-robed man whose white turban was over one ear and whose dark, pointed beard was slightly askew.
“Chariot,” Sarah declared, “I got a premonition we ain’t got much time. Now talk. I want to know how you were able to tell that fool Tarrant woman just where and how the body of Alexan-
der Courtwell would be found, and I want to know quick.”
The man in the tipsy turban looked down at the gun in Sarah’s stubby fingers.
“Who … ? What … ?” he stuttered.
“And what have you done with the man shot down in your kitchen?” Sarah asked.
“My God! You know about that … You think I killed him?”
“Young feller, you’re in a mess and if you want to get out of it, you’d better talk. Sit down here by your glass ball. I’ll sit here on the other side, where your fool clients sit. I’ll look into the crystal myself, young feller, and see what I see. I see you, Chariot, without that brown stain on your skin and without that beard. You’re peaked and white … prison white …”
“Prison! How did you know … ?”
“I saw it in the crystal, young man. Yes, you’ve been in jail. Maybe you didn’t belong there …”
“I didn’t. I was …”
“Half of’em don’t belong there—so they say. You’ve been in jail, Chariot, and somehow, either there or after you got outside, you found out just how and why Alexander Courtwell was going to be killed, and you blabbed it to one of your gullible woman customers. Why?”
“I had to. I had to tell her something. She kept tormenting me, kept coming here every day, begging me to see something in the crystal. I kept seeing things, of course, things I thought she wanted me to see. But I kept thinking of that poor fellow, Courtwell. I kept thinking of how I’d heard those two planning in the next cell, planning to stick him in the heart with the bone-handled knife one of’em owned, and planning to throw his body in the swamp.
“I kept thinking how I’d heard them whispering about what Courtwell had done to ‘em, how he’d cheated ‘em out of some big gambling debt. I kept thinking about it, I tell you, and when the Tarrant woman kept nagging me to see something, I kept seeing Courtwell’s body in a swamp with a bone-handled knife sticking out of the heart, and one night, before I knew I’d done it, I blabbed. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t think she’d ever tell anybody, ‘til I saw that letter in the paper today, and then I knew something was going to happen—something like that dead man in the kitchen—something like you …”
“Young man,” said Sarah, “worse things could happen to you than me. Now, I’m looking in the crystal I see two men, planning and plotting in a cell. What do they look like?”
“I don’t know.”
“What?”
“I was released the morning after they came in. I never saw them. I only heard their voices.”
“Damn,” said Sarah and leaned over the crystal. “Wait! I’m beginning to see … One of them had a scar on his chin …”
“No,” Chariot shivered, twisted in his chair. “That one spoke to me before he fell down with a bullet in his back. I’d have known the voice, if he’d been one of them.”
“Drat it, man,” Sarah explained. “You can’t hang a murderer on a voice. Think, now! You must have heard those two say something definite, something that would identify them?”
“I heard their names.”
Sarah Watson stood up. She waved her gun under Chariot’s nose.
“At last we’re getting some place,” she said, hoarsely. “Their names, young feller! What were their names?”
A bell shrilled suddenly, went on ringing, filling the dim room with clamor. Chariot sat erect, staring into Sarah’s glinting eyes. Someone began to bang lustily upon the flimsy door to the hall.
“The cops!” Sarah cried. “You’ve got one chance, Chariot. Scuttle down the fire escape. Take my car outside—License 4738. In the side pocket, you’ll find the keys to my flat and the address. Get there quick—and stay there ‘til I come. It’s your one chance, Chariot. There’s a dead man in your kitchen and your fingerprints are all over the place a
nd you’ve been to jail…”
Chariot got up, still staring at Sarah.
“Leave that white nightgown in the kitchen,”
she said, “and take the kitten with you. It might starve before you get back here again.”
Chariot looked into her grim eyes a moment longer, then turned and fled. Sarah got up and opened the door. O’Reilly and Ben Todd stood outside.
“Too late, boys,” she lied. “The swami’s evaporated … climbed up a rope and disappeared … magicked himself into thin air or something. There’s a man in the kitchen and you might ask him, but I don’t think he’ll answer. He’s dead.”
The police car sped through the night, O’Reilly at the wheel, Sarah Watson bolt upright beside him, Ben Todd lounging in the rear.
“A little speed, please, Sergeant,” Sarah urged. “I’m used to speed.”
“You’ll have to get unused to it, then,” O’Reilly chuckled. “Your racing car is gone and Chariot, alias Eddie Danville, has gone with it.”
“You know, Sergeant,” said Sarah, dreamily, “Chariot—Eddie Danville, I mean—didn’t look like a boy that would steal a poor old woman’s car.”
“Whadya know about how he looked?”
“I saw his prison picture, didn’t I? A nice looking feller. Didn’t look like he belonged in jail.”
“He don’t,” admitted O’Reilly. “He belongs in a nice comfortable chair, wired for electricity.”
“All men are alike,” said Sarah. “They jump to conclusions. Just because Eddie left a dead man in his kitchen and just because Eddie’s fingerprints showed he’d been in jail … Listen, O’Reilly. Anybody could have shot that man. I could have shot him.”
“You!” O’Reilly laughed. “You couldn’t hit a clay pigeon in a shooting gallery, woman.”
“No, but men make better targets than clay pigeons—bigger targets, I mean. Now, O’Reilly, you can let me off at this next corner. I’ve got to …”
“I’m taking you right to your door, Sarah Watson. You’re tired, woman, hanging around with a bunch of cops all afternoon. It must have been a shock to you, too, woman, when you came on that dead body in Chariot’s kitchen.”
“It would have been a greater shock if the body hadn’t been dead. You slow up, O’Reilly. Stop at the next corner. Stop, I say! Let me off here. I’ve got to …”
The car swept past the corner with Sarah grabbing the door handle beside her. It swung into Sarah’s street, slid halfway down the block. O’Reilly shouted:
“Glory be! Look what’s out in front of your door, Sarah Watson. Look! Your car!”
“Stop!” Sarah shouted. “Don’t run into it. My car! What a coincidence! O’Reilly, I told you that Eddie Danville wasn’t all bad. Maybe he stole my car to make a getaway in, but he found my name and address in it, and left it here for me, before he went wherever he was going …”
O’Reilly put on the brakes. He turned slowly in his seat and stared hard at Sarah.
“Woman, I’m beginning to understand why you were so anxious to stop at that corner …”
Ben Todd poked his head out of the open rear window and twisted his neck to look up.
“Sarah,” he yelled, “somebody’s in your flat. There’s a light …”
“Of course there’s a light,” Sarah agreed. “There’s always a light. You know that, Ben Todd, you crazy squirt. You know I always turn a light on in the morning, so I won’t have to come home to a dark place. You know … O’Reilly, turn this car around!”
O’Reilly did not stir. His black brows were gathered, his eyes glaring at Sarah’s craggy countenance.
“Woman,” he began, but choked suddenly, as Sarah reached across him, put one foot on the starter, and kicked his shins viciously in an effort to put her other foot on the clutch.
“Woman,” O’Reilly repeated, giving her a dig with his elbow which sent her bouncing back to her own side. “I’m taking you to that corner, but if you was a man, I’d …”
The car whirled into a U-turn and sped back toward the corner.
“Thank you, Sergeant. I have to stop at the corner to buy milk. I’ve got a new cat in my flat.”
Sarah Watson sat on the edge of her bed. The bed was in a cubbyhole between the front room and the rear room of her railroad flat. The window of the cubbyhole looked out on a dark, narrow air-shaft. Both doors of the cubbyhole were closed.
On a straight chair, facing the bed, sat Char-lot, whose real name was Eddie Danville. He was still in trousers and undershirt and his face was whiter, if possible, than it had been when Sarah first saw it.
“Now, Eddie, we’re safe here for a few minutes,” Sarah began. “I’ve got a premonition there will be a big mick cop stamping through the premises soon. Let’s have them now, Eddie, the names I’ve been waiting all afternoon to hear.”
Eddie Danville looked around the room. He wet his lips and whispered:
“One of’em was named Jake.”
“Jake what?”
“Jake. That’s all I know.”
“Jake! There are ten thousand Jakes. What was the other one’s name. Come now, Eddie. Hurry!”
“Tony. That’s all I know. Tony.”
“You’re a big help. Tony! Ten thousand Tonys! Wait a minute … that man with the scar who died in your kitchen … you ever see him before this time?”
“No.”
“His name was Chinny Downs. A killer, according to the cops. Now, Eddie. We know that Chinny Downs was mixed up with Jake and Tony somehow, because he came to your place to do their dirty work for them, and get you before the cops got you. If we could find out who else Chinny Downs was mixed up with … Drat it! There’s the bell! Remember what I told you, Eddie, about the fire escape …”
The bell in Sarah’s kitchen went on ringing. It rang furiously, first in frenzied spurts, then long, loud, and insistently. Presently, Sarah swished into the kitchen, silencing the bell by the simple method of jabbing a button in the kitchen wall. As she jabbed, her eyes roved over the kitchen. Suddenly, she ceased jabbing, dashed to the table, grabbed one of the two used coffee cups there, rinsed it and set it back in the cupboard. A moment later, she was at the door which opened from her parlor to the main hall.
“Sergeant,” she greeted the man puffing up the last flight, “why, I never expected to see you …”
Sergeant O’Reilly did not answer. He came on up the stairs, rounded the banister, pushed past Sarah, strode into the little parlor, strode into the cubbyhole bedroom, peered under the bed, jerked open a closet door, yanked at a yellow rubber raincoat and some dangling black garments, then strode back into the kitchen.
“What is this? A raid?” Sarah asked.
“You know what it is. Where is he?”
“Where’s who?”
“Chariot. Eddie Danville.”
“Heavens, O’Reilly! You don’t mean you think that jail bird … that … er … murderer … is here?”
“You know I think he’s here and you know why. Ten thousand dollars is why, Sarah Watson. You’d do anything for ten thousand.” His eyes shifted to the window. “What’s that outside that window? Glory be! She’s got him on the fire escape!”
O’Reilly dashed to the kitchen window, his gun ready. The shade flew up revealing a dark form on the fire escape.
“Don’t shoot, Sergeant,” the fellow pleaded. “It’s Ben Todd. I’m here for the same reason you are. I came back because I got a hunch the old gal was up to something …”
Ben Todd jumped down into the kitchen. Sarah Watson stepped between him and O’Reilly, her hands on her broad hips, her bristling brows tied in a knot.
“O’Reilly,” she said, hoarsely, “I might have expected this from you, but you, Ben Todd …” She whirled on the long-legged, red headed young man standing just inside the open window. “You, you young addlepate. Who do you think you’re working for, anyway? Me, or O’Reilly?”
“I’m working for you, Sarah.”
“Not any more, you ain’t.”
“I’m working for you, Sarah, and when I got a hunch that jail bird might be here with you … Well, I just had to come back to protect you, old girl.”
“Any time I need protection from any man, I’ll ask for it! Now, git! No, you stay, Ben Todd. You and me are going to have a talk. O’Reilly, you git! And next time you come here to go through my personal belongings and look under my bed, you bring a search warrant.”
The door banged on O’Reilly’s broad back. Before the echoes died away, Sarah was at her front window, peering down. A few moments later, she returned to the kitchen.
“Now,” she said to the young man sitting on the window sill, “we can talk, Ben Todd. We can talk about what’s going to become of you, poor soul, now that you’re out of a job.”
Ben Todd grinned. He twisted about on the window sill, reached out a long arm, and dragged into the kitchen a white-faced young man in undershirt and dark pants.
“Sarah,” Ben chuckled, “what do you think would have become of you, poor soul, if I hadn’t been out on that fire escape to create a little diversion for Sergeant O’Reilly?”
Sarah Watson looked at Eddie Danville, then grinned at Ben Todd.
“Bennie, I wouldn’t have given you credit for that much brains!” she said. “Bennie, meet Eddie—a nice feller, even if he has been in jail, and he’s kind to animals and knows how to cook. Drat it! I let the Sergeant get away without asking him …” Sarah wheeled and charged out of the kitchen door.
Sarah barked a number into the ‘phone on her parlor table.
“O’Reilly back yet?” she asked. “Good. O’Reilly? Listen. That dead feller in Chariot’s kitchen. You said you recognized him—that he was called Chinny Downs. Now listen, O’Reilly. Chinny Downs was a gangster. What gang was he mixed up in?”