I started toward it, heard at that instant the splash of liquid on the pile of tinder in the stair well.
“Gasoline!” Jeff Gervin screamed. “Get back! Get back!”
In an instant the stairway was a crackling, roaring mass of flame. I ran to the steel door at one end of the corridor.
I pounded it, kicked it, hurled my weight against it. It was as solid as Gibraltar.
Catching Katie’s hand, I raced her down the hall, past the appalling heat of the stairway and into the watchman’s little room. Spike and Jeff came after us.
“Slam that door!” I ordered. “The air in here is O.K. We’ve got to keep it that way!”
“Yes,” Spike said heavily, “and when those big vats of acid out in the main plant let go. What then? I ask you, what then?”
Katie had picked up a newspaper on the table and walked over to the door.
“Help me, Pinky,” she said quietly. “You know how the miners do when they’re trapped. We’ll plug up all the cracks around the door. If we can keep out the monoxide and the acid fumes, the air in here will keep us alive for hours.”
“Hours, hell!” Jeff growled bitterly. “The alarm probably isn’t even in yet. Another five minutes and the whole inside of this joint will be gutted. I’ve seen chemical plants go up before.”
“Skip it, Jeff!” I snapped, and knelt beside the Duchess and started to plug the cracks around the door.
Katie said in an undertone: “I’m sorry I got you into this, Pinky.”
I put my arm around her and drew her close. She put her head against me and I felt a tear drop on my hand.
“Forget it, kid,” I said. “You didn’t get me into this. We came into it together, just like I wanted to do a lot of things.”
She looked up at me. Her face was deathly pale; her eyes were shining.
“Such as?” she asked.
“Such as get married. And go places, and see people, and do things. Together. You and me.”
She nodded slowly. “If we’d been married, months ago when you first asked me, I probably wouldn’t have been working now. And I wouldn’t have blundered into this mess. And you—”
Spike Kaylor abruptly shoved me aside, put his ear to the door. I could hear, very faintly, shouts and a familiar hissing sound as tons of water poured on flames.
“Can you tie it?” Spike yelled jubilantly. “The brave fire laddies are with us. Now how in Sam Hill did they get on the job without us hearing a single siren?”
“Cinch!” Jeff Gervin growled. “The apparatus was coming by here on its way back from the wicker works fire. They just pulled up, hooked on their hoses and—”
Katie had risen to her feet. “And we’ll be out of here in a few minutes.” She looked at me, smiled a bit sheepishly. “Pinky, do you suppose everybody gets sentimental when they’re in a tight spot?”
I groaned. What we’d said hadn’t seemed sentimental to me at all.
In ten minutes we were out of it, standing around a body the fireman had carried to the sidewalk.
“Who is he, Kane? What do you make of it?” Battalion Chief Murphy asked me. “We found him in the hallway at the head of the stairs.”
“He’s the bird who touched it off. He spilled too much gasoline around, I guess, and when it blew it knocked him over. Now I’ve got to hit for a telephone.”
The four of us, Katie and Jeff and Spike and I, climbed into my car. We found telephones in an all-night drug store eight or ten blocks away, and phoned our stories.
* * *
—
Katie and I came out of our booths at the same time. “You had it doped exactly right, Katie,” I said. “Perkins had been home and killed his other aunt. How did you do it?”
Katie shrugged. “It wasn’t hard. The police didn’t find a sign of a fingerprint on the push button beside Miss Perkins’s bed. Proving—”
“That the old woman didn’t ring for help,” I said quickly. “But someone who knew about that button did. Someone who was wearing gloves. John Perkins, of course.”
“And Captain Wallis,” Katie said bitterly, “laughed at me.”
“Don’t feel badly, Katie. There was no evidence against Perkins. They couldn’t watch him forever, and sooner or later he’d have slipped away and killed Malvina. Let’s forget it. Let’s forget everything. Everything except what we said while we were down there waiting to go up in smoke. Look! Don’t you think it would be a good idea to marry me and get out of this rotten newspaper racket?”
She smiled at me, shook her head, said: “No. No, Pinky.”
“Is that final?” I demanded.
“Well—practically final.”
“Any time,” Jeff Gervin growled. “Any time you two love-birds get through cooing, I’d like to get back to the Hall and kill this pint I just bought. Fires give me a thirst.”
Jeff Gervin gives me a pain in the neck.
DETECTIVE: SARAH WATSON
TOO MANY CLIENTS
D. B. McCandless
IT IS NOT A STRETCH to suggest that D. B. McCandless was not a major figure of the pulp writing world. Although he created the series about private investigator Sarah Watson for the highly regarded Detective Fiction Weekly, he also wrote for the decidedly down-market Gangster Stories.
There is little to keep his name alive other than his creation of Watson, who is a significant presence in the eleven stories in which she was the leading character. Unlike most female pulp detectives, she is not cute, nor does she require a man to help her out of a tough situation. She is, on the contrary, middle-aged, dramatically overweight, and dressed without any attempt to be fashionable or attractive. It is common for her to call her young assistant, Ben Todd, a “whippersnapper” and keep him in the dark as a case progressed.
More than for most pulp fiction, the stories by McCandless require a suspension of disbelief that could test even the least discriminating reader. Rather than focus on reasonable, or even possible, activities, it would be best to appreciate the fast-paced narrative and an original character who may well have inspired Erle Stanley Gardner to create another overbearing female detective and her younger, thinner, long-suffering male partner when he began the Bertha Cool and Donald Lam series he wrote as A. A. Fair.
“Too Many Clients” was originally published in the March 27, 1937, issue of Detective Fiction Weekly.
Too Many Clients
D. B. MCCANDLESS
THE WOMAN STRIDING DOWN the echoing corridor paused and laid stubby fingers, gloved in black cotton, upon the knob of the door which said: WATSON DETECTIVE AGENCY. In the twilight of the corridor, the woman’s craggy face seemed gray, the hard gray of granite, and the nondescript clothes which covered the corseted column of her body seemed gray, too, though strong sunlight would have revealed them as dusty black.
The woman laid one ear to the opaque glass of the door, listened a moment, with craggy chin jutting, to the faint click-clack of typewriter keys, then straightened the antique headgear on her gray hair and swung in the door, shutting it behind her by the simple expedient of kicking it shut with one square-toed shoe.
The long-legged young man pecking at the typewriter looked up. He said: “ ’Lo, Sarah Watson! How d’yuh spell philatelist?”
“I don’t spell it,” said Sarah Watson, hoarsely. “What is a philatelist, Ben Todd?”
“A philatelist,” said Ben Todd, “is a guy who monkeys with stamps.”
“Monkeys is right,” said Sarah, crossing the dusty floor with resounding tread. “Now, listen, young feller! I know the papers say a damn-fool stamp collector named Barnes has had one of his postage stamps stolen, but if you’re writing to Theodore Barnes you can stop writing. I’m boss of this outfit, and I’m not going to get gummed up with any postage stamps.”
“Listen,” shouted Ben To
dd. “The Barnes stamp ain’t just a stamp. It’s unique. It’s the only stamp of its kind in the world. It’s hoary with age. It has a history. Men have murdered and died to possess it….”
Ben Todd broke off, staring ahead.
“Murdered and died for it,” he murmured, and his wide mouth jerked up in the beginnings of a grin “Oh, well, old girl, you’re the boss, as you say. We don’t want to be gummed up, of course, with murder and death….”
“Bennie,” said Sarah, slamming her purse down on her roll top desk, “Bennie, you’re about as subtle as a bull. If you think you can egg me into going after a fool postage stamp by rolling your eyes and talking about danger and death! You throw that letter away, Bennie….”
Ben Todd yawned and ran long fingers through his red hair.
“Sarah,” he said, “you’re right. It’s better to keep our noses out of something we ain’t fitted to do. The Barnes stamp is insured, of course, and the insurance company will have their best bloodhounds baying with their noses to the scent….”
“Bennie,” said Sarah, firmly, “you’re about as wily as a cow. If the insurance company bloodhounds want to bay, let ’em bay. I ain’t going to get mixed up with any piddling postage stamp….”
“Piddling!” shouted Ben Todd. “Piddling!” she says. Listen! The Barnes stamp is worth thirty thousand—”
“Thirty thousand? You mean to say one postage stamp is worth—”
“Sarah, the insurance company is offering three thousand for the return of that stamp.”
“Bennie, sit down. Finish that letter. Three thousand! Tell Mr. Theodore Barnes we’re starting right now to look for his stamp and when we get our hands on it….”
“When we get our hands on it! Listen, old girl, when we get our hands on that stamp, we’ll use special stamp tongs. That stamp is fragile, it’s delicate, it’s precious.”
“I don’t give a damn what it is,” said Sarah hoarsely. “We’re going to find it. You finish that letter, and if you don’t know how to spell philatelist—. Take that grin off your face, squirt! I’ve changed my mind. We ain’t going to write that letter, Bennie. Get your hat.”
* * *
—
A battered black box on four wheels rattled and chugged and bumped to a stop on Fairview Drive. The woman under the wheel peered to survey the residence set back from the road.
“Bennie,” she muttered, “it looks to me like Mr. Barnes should have sold his postage stamp long since and had his lawn shaved.”
Ben Todd stared at the imposing pile of white stone and ivy set in the midst of rank grass. He said:
“The old guy has beggared himself for stamps, they say, mortgaged everything to the hilt. They say, too, that—”
“They say, too, that men never gossip,” rasped Sarah. “Stop scandal mongering about our future client. Climb out!”
Ben Todd climbed. Sarah joined him at the sagging gates of the Barnes estate.
Ben Todd said: “Right next door stands the house of Sylvester Barnes, old Theodore’s brother. They say Sylvester’s a philatelist, too—a rabid one. They say he’s been practically foaming at the mouth for years to get the Barnes stamp away from Theodore. They say—”
Sarah turned her back.
“Listen,” said Ben Todd, indignantly. “Listen, you old war horse. I got more information.”
“Your information’s stale,” barked Sarah, charging through the gates and up the driveway. “I know all you say they say and a lot more, too. Bennie, there’s something going on in that house. Bennie, I heard something….”
The front door of the house flew open. A woman ran out, screaming, stumbling down the wide, white steps.
Sarah put on speed. She seized the screaming woman with competent hands and shook. The woman stopped screaming. She was a middle-aged spinsterish type of woman, with the bright black eyes and jerky movements of a bird. She wore an old-fashioned, black, beaded dress and an old-fashioned, white kitchen apron tied about her waist.
“You Lily Devlin?” said Sarah briskly. “I thought so. Get your chin down on your chest, Lily, way down, and you won’t faint. So, you’re Theodore Barnes’s step-sister? Um! What’s going on here? Quick!”
Lily Devlin opened her thin lips. They twisted sidewise as she spoke: “Dead!” she squalled.
“Dead?” repeated Sarah, flatly. “Who’s dead?”
“He’s dead,” moaned Lily Devlin, and slid and fell flat.
Sarah stared down at the crumpled figure a moment, then rounded it and started up the steps.
“Somebody’s dead,” she said. “Bring her along, Bennie. I’m going to find the corpse.”
Sarah strode through the open door. Ben Todd came behind with the woman cradled in his arms.
“Hi!” shouted Sarah. “Hi!”
Sarah’s shout penetrated the very cracks of the elaborate ceiling and echoed back. Silence! Sarah wheeled, hands on hips, and stared down at Ben Todd’s burden. Lily Devlin opened her eyes. She said: “Theodore couldn’t have killed him because Theodore never came downstairs….”
“Good!” said Sarah. “The corpse ain’t Theodore, then. That’s a relief. Where’s Theodore now?”
“Upstairs. I—I went up and called him when the man—the dead man—came. Theodore was lying down. He’s sick since the Barnes stamp was stolen. He roused when I knocked and told him a man was here about the stamp—”
“About the stamp?” snapped Sarah. “Go on.”
“Theodore must have dozed off again,” continued Lily Devlin, “for he never came down and still, the man is dead in there, in the study, with the kitchen knife in his chest!”
Sarah turned toward the stairs with her hands on her broad hips. “Theodore!” she bellowed. “Come down! Theo—”
A figure appeared in the dimness above, a spindle-legged figure in an old-fashioned nightshirt. For a moment, the blob of face on top of the nightshirt bent down over the banister, then the tails of the nightshirt whisked and disappeared.
“Bennie,” said Sarah, “go find the corpse.”
As Ben Todd started down the hall, Theodore Barnes was coming down the stairs, now wrapped in a dressing gown which hid his lean shanks. His face was no longer a blob. It was visibly a face, a face patterned with the criss-cross lines of age, but topped with a thatch of jet-black hair.
“Madam!” he demanded, his little black eyes stabbing at Sarah. “Who are you? Your entrance here—your unwarranted familiarity—”
“Theodore,” announced Sarah firmly, “this is no time for dignity. I came here, in the first place, about that stolen stamp. The stamp will have to wait. There’s a dead man somewhere on your premises, Mr. Barnes, with a knife in him….”
“Sarah!” yelled Ben Todd from the rear of the hall “He’s here! He’s got a knife in him and an empty envelope beside him, the kind of envelope they use for valuable stamps….”
Theodore Barnes brushed by Sarah and sped toward the voice. Sarah sped after. Lily Devlin collapsed in a hall chair and stayed there, her face buried in thin fingers which curved like bird’s claws.
* * *
—
At the end of the hall, a door stood open. Outside the door stood Ben Todd, Theodore Barnes, and Sarah. Inside sat the dead.
The walls of the room were covered with books, except for the single oblong of the French window at the back. The dead man sat behind a desk, leaning far back in a mahogany swivel chair.
The dead man’s arms extended rigidly, his clenched fists resting on the desk. Between the fists, lights glinted on a small, transparent envelope, crumpled and empty. The dead eyes stared down blankly at the brown wooden knife handle which protruded from the chest.
Sarah stirred. She rapped Theodore Barnes smartly on his thin shoulder. “Who?” she demanded.
“I—I don’t know,” quavered Theodore Bar
nes.
“He came to see you.”
“I—I don’t know.”
“He came to see you about a stamp—the stamp…”
Theodore Barnes gave a little cry. He charged into the silent room. He said, gasping: “The stamp! Maybe—maybe it’s in one of his hands…”
Sarah strode forward. She laid strong fingers on Mr. Barnes. She said, firmly: “Mr. Barnes, you go use the phone I saw in the hall. Get the police. The stamp must wait. It would be unthinkable to desecrate the dead. Mr. Barnes, before the police arrive….”
Theodore Barnes’s small black eyes squinted into Sarah’s clear gray ones. He jerked away and ran out into the hall.
Sarah said, quietly: “Step in, Bennie, and close that door behind you. We’ve got to see what the corpse has in his fists….”
Two minutes later, Ben Todd softly reopened the door. He leaned his long length against one side. Sarah leaned against the other. Ben Todd whispered: “Theodore’s coming. Sarah, you can’t keep…”
“Hush!” commanded Sarah and opened her square hand. For a moment, she and Ben Todd stared down at the thing which lay on her extended palm, stared at the length of thin black thread, stared at the five black beads strung upon the thread.
“Evidence,” whispered Ben Todd. “Evidence found in a dead man’s grip! Sarah, it ain’t right to double-cross the cops, and it ain’t safe. Sarah, you’ve got to—”
“Careless,” muttered Sarah, staring at the black beads. “Very careless of Lily. I noticed the trimming on her shoulder was snagged.”
Running footsteps sounded. Sarah’s fist closed, hiding black beads. Theodore Barnes appeared, puffing, his parchment-white face mottled.
“The police—!” he gasped.
“Will be here any minute,” finished Sarah. “Good-day, Mr. Barnes….”
“Madam!” protested Theodore Barnes. “The police will want to question you!”
The Big Book of Female Detectives Page 46