by Otto Penzler
As the pumper turned into the street with a breath-taking skid and roared away with bell clanging and siren wailing, Katie swayed toward me and shouted happily: “I’ve always wanted to do this.”
“It’s just the little girl in you,” I growled.
We saw the red glow in the sky while we were still blocks away from the fire. Huge clouds of yellow smoke were rolling upward.
“Kurt Bergstrom’s chemical plant is at Fourth and Chesnut,” I yelled.
“Fine!” Spike shouted. “And if Bergstrom is going up in smoke with his chemicals, I’ll buy the drinks.”
Which is the way most newspaper men feel about Kurt Bergstrom. The head of the Bergstrom Chemical Company is an inventor, a nationally known chemist, a man of wealth and substance. But! He’ll stool to any gag, short of murder, to get his name in the papers. And reporters do not like publicity hounds.
The pumper pulled up a block from the fire. Katie and Spike and I piled off and started down the street as one of the firemen yelled: “Hey, Duchess! Next time you want to go to a fire, hire a cab!”
“Thanks for the buggy ride,” Katie called sweetly, and blew him a kiss.
The fire, we discovered with some disappointment, was confined to the north wing of the two-story brick building. It was evidently already under control, despite the billowing clouds of acrid smoke which rolled out of the shattered windows.
“Not much to this,” I remarked.
Then we saw an elderly man talking excitedly to Battalion Chief Murphy. We pegged him for the night watchman and ran over.
“He was in the chem lab in the north wing when I come on at six,” the old man was saying. “He was alone, workin’ on some experiment. I goes over the plant and I’m down in my room makin’ some coffee, when I smell smoke. That’s about a half hour later. I runs upstairs and the whole chem lab is in flames. I never seen him go out. His car’s right there in front of the office where he parked it, but he ain’t nowheres around.”
“Who?” Spike bellowed. “Who?”
The watchman blinked at us. “Mr. Hamlin. Mr. John Hamlin. He’s Mr. Bergstrom’s assistant in the lab.”
Chief Murphy grunted. “Well, we’ll find out if he’s in there in a few minutes. I’ll send in a couple of men with gas masks.”
A little later they found the body, or what was left of it. They didn’t even try to carry it out. They left that grisly job to the coroner. In the confined space of the laboratory the heat had been intense.
We cleaned up as many angles of the story as we could and then Spike called a cab. The Duchess, as usual, was right on our heels. She climbed into the taxi with us and sat down calmly between Spike and me.
Spike stared straight ahead as the cab pulled away from the curb. “My nose tells me it’s still with us,” he commented acidly.
“My Christmas Night perfume,” Katie said blandly. “Don’t you adore it?”
“I’d adore to drop you down a manhole,” Spike groused.
She let that pass. “Are you by any chance going to the Hotel Drake?” she asked. “Because if you are, I’ll go with you and we’ll interview Kurt Bergstrom together.”
Spike groaned, but didn’t argue.
The clerk at the Drake directed us to the dining room and the head waiter told us Bergstrom was eating alone in the south alcove. Spike started off, then checked himself. A cagey look came into his eyes as he asked casually: “How long has Mr. Bergstrom been in the dining room?”
“Since a little after six, sir.”
As we paraded through the room, a bit damp and sooty and bedraggled, Katie asked:
“Now what was the occasion for that question?”
“Did you ever hear, my little cabbage, of the crime called arson?”
“Yes,” Katie said promptly, “and I’ve also heard of the crime called murder. But if you’re thinking of them in connection with Kurt Bergstrom, you’d best forget them. Mr. Bergstrom is a wealthy man. He had no reason to stoop to arson, much less to murder.”
“That mugg would stoop to anything to get his name in the papers.”
Bergstrom rose when he saw us coming. He was a heavy-set chap of fifty, with very pink cheeks, keen blue eyes and close-clipped blond hair.
“Goot evening, gentlemen. Goot evening, Miss Blayne.” He knew every reporter in the city. “There is something I can do for you?”
“There sure is,” Spike said. “Who is John Hamlin?”
“Hamlin is my assistant in the laboratory.”
“Not any more he isn’t your assistant.” Spike never beat around the bush. “The north wing of your plant was just gutted by fire. Hamlin was burned to death, or so the watchman believes. Anyway, the firemen found a body in the lab. Hamlin’s car is out in front but Hamlin is missing.”
Bergstrom took it calmly but that didn’t prove anything. He’s the type who never shows emotion.
“Now about this man Hamlin,” Spike hurried on. “Was he married?”
“Yes. He lived with his wife at 17 Bay Terrace.”
“Why was he down there after hours?”
“An experimental chemist,” Bergstrom proclaimed, “has no hours. He was working nights on an experiment of his own. Only during the day did he help me with one of my inventions.”
“Which is?”
Bergstrom brightened. “An inexpensive device for recording sound on motion picture film. An attachment for the home movie camera, selling for only a few dollars, which—”
“Give the details to the advertising department,” Spike broke in. “We’re not handing out any free publicity for your invention.” He paused, looked the big German straight in the eye. “Do you believe, Mr. Bergstrom, that the body found was John Hamlin’s?”
Bergstrom shrugged, said cautiously: “You say Hamlin iss missing und a body was found in the laboratory. Surely you, as a brilliant young newspaper man, should be able to draw the obvious conclusion.”
“But perhaps,” Spike said slowly, “the conclusion is too damned obvious!” He glared at the bristling Bergstrom. “Have you stopped to think of that?”
“I haff hardly had time,” Bergstrom retorted stiffly, “to think of anything. Und now if you excuse me please, I run oud to the plant.”
We followed him out of the dining room. In the lobby Katie asked: “Are you going out to see Mrs. Hamlin?”
“Yes, darling!” Spike shot back. “And I suppose you’d like to tag along.”
“Yes, dear! I’d love it. You know how I enjoy your company.”
We found Mrs. Hamlin dry-eyed and calm, though we knew immediately when we saw her that she had been informed of her husband’s death. She was a tall, big-boned woman with black hair that looked dyed and dark, close-set eyes.
She invited us into the living room and asked us to sit down. “I knew that those experiments would end in tragedy,” she told us calmly. “You see, my husband was developing a high explosive.”
“So far as anyone knows,” Spike pointed out, “there was no explosion.”
“The chemicals he used were highly inflammable.”
“I see.” Spike didn’t look as though he saw at all. “Did your husband come home for dinner tonight, Mrs. Hamlin?”
“He came home, yes. He ate an early dinner, as always, and rushed back to the laboratory. He must have got there a little before six. I did my dishes and sat down and tried to read. I had planned to go to a movie. But, somehow, I didn’t dare leave the house. I was sitting here on the Chesterfield when the coroner phoned. I was neither surprised nor shocked. You see, I have been expecting this.” She wiped her dry eyes with a folded handkerchief. “I suppose you will want pictures?”
She turned to a table, picked up three large snapshots and handed them to me. “They were taken a year ago today. Our wedding day.”
Well, it should have been pretty pathetic, but somehow it wasn’t. I looked at the pictures. Mr. and Mrs. John Hamlin on somebody’s lawn. A little guy with a head too big for his stooped shoulders, his thin
arm held in the possessive grip of a smirking, over-dressed Amazon.
Spike asked quietly: “Did Mr. Hamlin carry any insurance?”
“Yes. He took it out before we were married.”
“A large amount?”
“Eighty thousand dollars.”
Spike peered around the room.
“Quite a sizable policy for a man in his circumstances, wouldn’t you say?”
I could see her stiffen as she glared at Spike. “Considering the dangers of his work, no. He wished me to be provided for if anything happened.”
“Well, we’ll hope his wish is granted,” Spike said, rubbing a smile off his lips. “Although insurance companies sometimes get tough about things like this. Any further questions—children? If not,
that will be all, Mrs. Hamlin. Sorry to trouble you, and thanks for the pictures.”
We filed out, climbed into our cab and started back to the Hall.
“What a story, what a story!” Spike chortled. “If we can only crack it!”
“You mean this poor woman’s losing her husband on their wedding anniversary?” Katie asked.
Spike moaned. “Brilliance. That’s it. Positive brilliance. Duchess, don’t you know a Schwartz when one jumps up and spits in your face?”
“A Schwartz?”
“Tell her, Pinky. She was still in kindergarten when the Schwartz case broke.”
“This Schwartz was a chemist and inventor too,” I said. “He had a laboratory out in Walnut Creek where he was working on a process of manufacturing artificial silk. One night there was an explosion and the joint burned down. They found a man’s body in the ashes. Everybody thought, of course, that Schwartz had cashed his checks. His wife put in for the hundred grand insurance he carried.
“Then it developed that the body wasn’t Schwartz’s at all. The dead guy was an itinerant preacher whom the chemist had lured into the laboratory and knocked over the head. Schwartz, in the meantime, had holed up in an apartment he’d rented weeks before he pulled the hoax. The dicks got on his trail and were closing in on him when Schwartz put a .45 slug between his eyes. Since then, Katie, an insurance hoax of that type has been known as a Schwartz.”
The Duchess took one of my cigarettes and lit it with hands that weren’t very steady. “And you think this is an insurance hoax?”
“Cinch,” Spike declared flatly.
“Why?”
“Because it’s too damned pat and because that guy Hamlin carried too much insurance.”
“And who was the man they found in the laboratory?”
“Some hobo who’ll never be missed. Hamlin got him in there on the pretext of giving him a job, slapped him over the conk and fired the joint. Simple, Duchess.”
“And you think Kurt Bergstrom was in on the hoax?” Katie pursued.
“Cinch.” Spike nodded gleefully. “The way I dope it, the time of the fire was prearranged to put Bergstrom in the clear. John Hamlin is a weak sister and the whole plot was cooked up by Bergstrom and Mrs. Hamlin. Hamlin is safely holed up somewhere, and when the heat is off he and the dame’11 scram to South America with forty grand.”
“And the other forty grand?”
“Into Kurt Bergstrom’s sock. Well, what do you think of it, Duchess?”
“I think the whole thing,” Katie promptly retorted, “is a silly machination of a disordered brain.”
When we got back to the press room I called the beat while Spike and the Duchess phoned their offices. Then, on a hunch, I rang the morgue and by sheer good luck got hold of the coroner himself.
“Pinky Kane,” I said. “Look, coroner. About that man who was burned to death in the Bergstrom fire. Have you got around to a p.m. yet?”
“We’ve made a cursory examination at the request of Captain Wallis.”
“What’d you find?”
“Perhaps you’d better ask Wallis. He ordered me not to give out any details.”
Katie and Spike were still in the phone booths as I impatiently jiggled the hook, got the operator and asked for the Captain of Detectives. Wallis came on almost immediately.
“This is Kane, skipper. Understand you ordered a post mortem on Hamlin’s body.”
“That’s right, Pinky.”
“What’d you find out?”
“Well, his height and build approximate that of John Hamlin. He carried a gold watch on which Hamlin’s initials are still discernible. He wore a full denture—not a tooth in his head. Same as Hamlin. And that, Kane, is about the works.”
“Come on, skipper. Kick in.”
“I said that was the works.”
“Now look here. You were on that Schwartz case and so was I. And I haven’t forgotten it. Now what else did your medical examiner discover when he went over that body? Tell me everything.”
“Well,” Captain Wallis sighed, “you’ll get it sooner or later, so I might as well give it to you now. The man’s skull had been fractured.”
“Uh-huh, I thought you were holding out something like that. Hamlin’s skull couldn’t have been cracked in the fire, could it?”
“Chief Murphy said nothing fell on him and if he had a fractured skull he must have got it before the fire broke out.”
“Well, what do you think?” I asked.
“I don’t know how you spotted it, Pinky, but I think you’re on the right track. Another Schwartz.”
“How about Bergstrom? Do you think he’s in on it?”
“If I answered that question I’d be guessing. So let’s pass it.”
“And Mrs. Hamlin?”
“I’ve only talked to her on the phone. She may be a party to the hoax and she may not. Probably not. Schwartz’s wife wasn’t, you know. He planned to contact her after the pay-off and, as the saying goes, tell all. Anyway, I’ve just sent out an all-state teletype with Hamlin’s description. I’ve ordered him held.”
“On what charge, skipper?”
“Murder, my boy. Murder,” Captain Wallis said cheerfully.
I hung up, a bit breathless all of a sudden.
The Captain certainly had been working fast.
Katie came out of the Sun booth. “You’ve been talking to Bodie Wallis, haven’t you?” she said, smiling.
“Bodie did most of the talking. I listened. He’s sent out an all-state teletype to pick up John Hamlin.”
Katie’s laugh told me what she thought of Bodie Wallis. “John Hamlin has already been picked up. In a basket, by a couple of coroner’s deputies.”
“Captain Wallis doesn’t think so.”
“String with Captain Wallis, Pinky, and you’ll sleep in the street,” she said airily.
Spike tumbled out of the telephone booth bellowing:
“Hey, Pink! The office just got a flash from Duke Wayland on the lower beat. Captain Wallis—”
“I know. I was just talking to him.”
“That guy had a fractured skull!” Spike exclaimed excitedly.
“Yeah,” I said.
Katie’s jaw dropped as she looked from Spike to me. “What guy had a fractured skull?” she asked in a small voice.
“The guy they picked up in a basket. The guy you were dumb enough to think was John Hamlin.”
Katie sat down abruptly. Spike and I stood looking at her, gloating a little. It wasn’t often that the Duchess put her money on the wrong number.
“Well, muh frand?” Spike grinned at last.
She shrugged. “It looks bad but it isn’t hopeless. I’m banking on one thing: the integrity of Kurt Bergstrom. I’ve known him for several years and I can’t see him getting mixed up in an insurance hoax involving murder. And I can’t see that meek and mild person, John Hamlin, hitting a man over the head and burning his body.”
“That’s logic for you,” Spike jeered. “Kurt Bergstrom looks too honest to go in for murder. And John Hamlin looks too meek to kill anybody. Forget, for a minute, the looks of those two guys and where are you? Well, I’ll tell you. You’re stringing along with Pinky and me and Captain Wa
llis.”
“Three,” Katie said sarcastically, “of the most brilliant minds in the city. Well, if you three are brilliant, I’m a low moron. Good night.”
Katie breezed, slamming the door.
Spike chuckled. “Did we get the little lady’s goat, all right. But I’d much rather get John Hamlin.”
“And maybe you think we won’t. Now look.
It’s a ten to one shot the guy never left the city. His best bet was to establish a residence in some quiet apartment house. He’s probably had the apartment for weeks, just like Schwartz did. All right. So what?”
“I’ll bite.”
“We smoke him out.”
“You and me?”
“Don’t be a sap. We got a staff, haven’t we. We got three or four cubs sitting over there in the office wearing out the seats of their pants, haven’t we? Oke! Tomorrow morning early we turn ‘em loose, along with anybody else Andy can spare. We contact every hotel and apartment and rooming house in the city.”
“The dicks will be doing just that,” I pointed out.
“What of it? We can put as many men on the job as Bodie Wallis. We got just as good a chance as he has of turning up Hamlin. And if we get a break—well, will Katie’s face be red? Dunt esk!”
We went to work the next morning. It was house-to-house stuff and it was tiring. But we didn’t care. Spike and I felt, the whole Telegram staff felt, that we were on the right track.
As we read John Hamlin’s mind, he never expected any hue and cry. He thought the corpse would be accepted as his, and the pay-off would be a pushover. He’d made only one mistake. He’d hit the poor devil he’d hired to double for him too hard a blow. The body wasn’t wholly consumed, as he’d expected it to be, and the skull fracture showed up in the post mortem. John Hamlin, we reasoned, must have got quite a shock when he read the papers in the morning and learned that every law enforcement officer in the state was looking for him.
It was a long hard day and we found no trace of John Hamlin. Something, however, was in our blood. The thrill of the chase. We felt, Spike and I and the cubs, as though surely we’d locate him in the next apartment house, the next hotel. We kept doggedly at it all day, all the day following, all the day after that.