The Big Book of Female Detectives

by The Big Book of Female Detectives (retail) (epub)

  Shannon said, “Good idea,” in an absent voice. “That fella Schultz and Arnold are dead. Giles is dying. The Filipino and the gal go to jail. It’s a good job.”

  McCarthy said, “The hell of it is about Cantwell. I was supposed to be guarding him, and Arnold and Giles killed him when I wasn’t more than three feet from him.” He made a sour face, added, “What a lousy guard I am!”

  Shannon straightened and the grin came back. He said, “I meant to tell you about that. We would have taken Cantwell if they hadn’t killed him. Giles told us a lot of things before he got too sick to talk. Cantwell was really the one that shot the bank messenger in that hold-up. That’s the job that Plansky’s doing twenty to life on and that they hung Thomes for.”

  Marge made her eyes wide and horrified. She cried out, “Mr. Shannon! They hung the wrong man!”

  Shannon grinned at her. “Well, not quite. Giles did a lot of talking and he knew what he was talking about. It seems Thomes had the hanging coming for another killing he did.” His grin widened even more and he ended with, “That makes the whole thing six, two, and even.”

  McCarthy said to Marge, “That means win, place, and show.”

  “That’s right, Miss Chalmers,” Shannon said. “McCarthy and you win the reward, the girl and the Filipino place where they belong—in the big house. The rest of them show. They show in the morgue.”

  Marge said, “You and Pat think of the cheeriest things to talk about. I never heard of six, two, and even. I never heard of win, place, and show.”

  Shannon said, “It’s a horse-racing term. People that bet on horse races use it.”

  Marge swung toward McCarthy. She snapped, “That’s where the reward money will go. On horse races. We won’t have a dime of it in a month; you watch and see. Betting on horse racing has kept you broke all your life and you know it. I’m telling you, Pat McCarthy, that you’re a fool to do it. I’m telling you….”

  McCarthy grinned and said to Shannon, “You would have to bring race horses into this. She goes on like this for hours.” He looked patient as he turned back to Marge and said, “You were saying, honey…”

  Shannon scuttled toward the door and said he’d be seeing them. As he went through it he heard Marge say:

  “Now don’t make a joke of it, Pat, it’s no joke. Go ahead. Throw your money to those dirty bookies. But don’t come crying to me when you lose it. You’ll get no sympathy from me and I’ll…”

  Shannon went down the hall, mumbling, “I guess she don’t like horse races.”

  DETECTIVE: SALLY THE SLEUTH

  MURDER WITH MUSIC AND COKE FOR CO-EDS

  Adolphe Barreaux

  THE EARLIEST PULP MAGAZINES tried to appeal to mass readerships, but, as time went by, many tended to aim at a specific taste or demographic, such as readers who wanted mysteries, westerns, fantasy, science fiction, or romance. As the demand for ever more magazines increased, even smaller or more focused subjects were added to newsstand displays, appealing to those who wanted stories devoted to railroads, jungles, airplanes, automobiles, and so on.

  One magazine with a wide appeal but a narrow and very specific target audience was Spicy Detective Stories, one of the sleaziest of the pulps. Adolphe Barreaux (1899–1985), who had studied at the Yale School of Fine Arts and the Grand Central School of Art, created Sally the Sleuth for Spicy in November 1934 with a little two-page strip titled “A Narrow Escape.” The material published in this pulp was generally produced by the worst writers of the era, mainly when they failed to sell their work to the better-paying, higher-end magazines. All the stories included illustrations of scantily clad women, frequently in bondage—so racy that the magazines were kept under the counter at most newsstands and sold only to adults. These illustrations were provided by Majestic Studios, a tiny art shop owned by Barreaux from 1936 to 1953; he was also the owner of Trojan Publishing from 1949 to 1955.

  Although he worked for a few other pulps from the 1930s to the 1950s, most of Barreaux’s work went to Spicy, for which he drew the “Sally the Sleuth” strip until 1942, when other artists took it over. Barreaux went on to work for many of the major comic book publishers, including DC, Dell, Ace, and Fox.

  Sally works in law enforcement but does not do much actual sleuthing beyond following a suspect, getting caught by him (always the only suspect, by the way), having her clothes torn off, enduring some bondage and torture, and either overpowering the villain herself or being rescued by her boss, the Chief. She is fearless and feisty but not especially intellectual. Sally’s exploits were the most popular feature in the magazine and were pioneering as she was the first female central figure in a series of comic strips.

  “Murder With Music” was originally published in the September 1937 issue of Spicy Detective Stories; “Coke for Co-eds” was originally published in the January 1938 issue of Spicy Detective Stories; they were first collected in The Best of Sally the Sleuth (Eureka, California, Pulpville Press, 2013).

  Murder With Music and Coke for Co-eds

  ADOLPHE BARREAUX

  DETECTIVES: JOE “DAFFY” DILL AND DINAH MASON

  CHILLER-DILLER

  Richard Sale

  KNOWN TO HIS CONTEMPORARIES as “the Dumas of the pulps” for his prolific output, Richard Bernard Sale (1911–1993) sold his first story while still in college. After a brief stint as a journalist, he wrote stories that started to appear at a prodigious rate in most of the top pulps of the era. During a ten-year period, mainly in the 1930s, he published approximately five hundred stories—about one a week. When he had greater demands, he could write a story in a day.

  Sale also started to write novels at this time, beginning with Not Too Narrow, Not Too Deep (1936), an allegorical adventure about ten convicts and their escape from a penal colony much like Devil’s Island. It was filmed as Strange Cargo (1940), starring Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Peter Lorre, Ian Hunter, and Paul Lukas. Among his outstanding crime novels are Lazarus No. 7 (1942) and Passing Strange (1942).

  Hollywood beckoned to Sale as a way to make more money. Among the many films he wrote were Mr. Belvedere Goes to College (1949), When Willie Comes Marching Home (1950), Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1955), Abandon Ship (1957), and the excellent thriller Suddenly! (1954), with Frank Sinatra as a would-be presidential assassin. His novel about Hollywood’s sleazy side, The Oscar (1963), was a huge bestseller and was released in 1966 with a screenplay primarily by Harlan Ellison; it had a large cast of famous actors and other performers, including Stephen Boyd, singer Tony Bennett, comedian Milton Berle, Elke Sommer, Ernest Borgnine, Jill St. John, Eleanor Parker, Joseph Cotten, Edie Adams, Peter Lawford, and Broderick Crawford.

  Sale’s most popular pulp stories feature “Daffy” Dill, an easygoing, wisecracking reporter who constantly finds himself in hot water, generally due to the machinations of his rival Harry Lyons, only to be saved due to the paper’s wise receptionist, Dinah Mason; its editor, known as “the Old Man”; and his Weegee-like pal, the photographer Candid Jones.

  “Chiller-Diller” was originally published in the June 24, 1939, issue of Detective Fiction Weekly.

  Chiller-Diller

  RICHARD SALE

  CHAPTER I

  The Big Story

  IT WAS A BIG STORY. The murder was the least important part of it. It was a big story and it wasn’t in my department, and I was just as glad. But I got sucked into it anyhow. Yea verily, me, the crime reporter, became I, the cocktail reporter. And all because editors and publishers see eye to eye and a reporter does the bidding.

  The beginning of April—it should have been April Fool’s Day but it wasn’t—I was sitting in the city room of the Chronicle with McGuire of the sports department, Sammy Lyons of the waterfront, and Jimmy Verne, who was the best fotog we had on the sheet. It was a Saturday and things were slow and we were chewing the rag and killing time when the door of the Old Man’s offi
ce burst open and the Old Man stepped out, turbulent, apoplectic, and generally in a stew. I’d never seen the geezer so excited. He was shouting and waving his hands, and he looked like Grumpy out of the seven dwarfs. Not a hair on his pate, the green eyeshade up on his forehead, a white shirt, open vest, and havoc in his face. “Daffy!” he roared. “Verne! Sammy! Kendrick! Where’s Kendrick? Get him in here on rewrite! We’ve got a story and what a story! Hurry up, everyone in here on their toes!”

  He took us by surprise so much we all jumped out of our reveries and tore into the doghouse. Kendrick of rewrite brought up the rear. The Old Man plumped into his chair and I yelled, “What is it, chief? What is it? Has the president been assassinated?”

  “Cut it out!” snapped the Old Man. “This is no time to kid. Sammy—up to the Hotel St. Clair, Room 414, and see what you can do there. It’s loaded with cops and you’ll probably get thrown out on your ear but do your best. Scram!”

  Sammy left.

  “Kendrick. Take these notes I scribbled down and rewrite them into a number one yarn. I’m breaking down page one and reinserting. What a shame today is Saturday instead of Friday! This would be a swell morsel for the week-end. Half the readers will miss it at this point. Scandal, my blades! Scandal and murder, only in this case, the scandal is much more important than the murder!”

  “To everybody except the stiff,” I said. “I haven’t any doubts it was pretty important to the guy who was bumped. Why all the excitement?”

  “Ah, Daffy, that Dinah, what a gal, what a newspaperman she turned out to be! She’s in the jug.”

  “The jug?” I roared. “Dinah’s in the jug? What is this, Rasputin? What’s it all about?”

  “Yes, my brainless number one boy, Dinah Mason is my idea of a newspaperman. I’ve always said women made bum newspapermen but I’m wrong. She used her head. Not a chance to get the story out, it was all wrapped up in her little brain, the cops grabbed her, they stuck her in the can, and she remembered reading somewhere in a book that a guy is allowed one telephone call. So she asked and they let her make her call. She makes out that she’s calling momma to say she won’t be home. She spills only four or five sentences before they nab her and kill the connection, and then Halloran calls back and tells me I’ll cut my own throat if I run her flash, and I tell him—”

  “—you’ll cut your own throat. All right,” I said. “What’s Dinah in for?”

  “Nothing, nothing, she found a stiff and they grabbed her as a material witness. We’ll spring her, that’s your job. But get this. Ever hear of a plug named Al Myers? Flippo Myers?”

  I said, “He’s crooning up at the Eldomingo Club on Fifty-Third. He’s probably the all time con man, gambler, grafter, and whatnot, and I’ve heard via the grapevine that Al isn’t above being a gunman when he gets sore enough. He’s got a voice and he sings at the club to get his hand in with the idle rich and then he plays them for a sucker every time. Boy, when it comes to making money dishonestly and not getting nailed for it, Al Myers is the tops. Good-looking cuss too.”

  The Old Man said, “He and Elsie Whittaker eloped last night.”

  There was a dead silence. “Elsie Whittaker,” I said slowly. “The dizzy little blonde debutramp who’s had her pan over every picture magazine and roto section in the country? The only daughter of Fletcher Whittaker, who happens to be worth ten or more millions and traces his ancestry back to the guys who met the pilgrims when they landed? Wow!”

  “Boy,” Jimmy Verne said, “you got something, chief. Is it true?”

  “True?” The Old Man spat. Of course it’s true. True enough to get somebody killed! Al Myers and Elsie Whittaker were married last night in Harrison, New York, and they’re right in the big city at this moment and I’ve got to nail them. All you guys in the office are going to start calling hotels. I’m going to cover all outgoing trains and all planes—”

  “You’re in a jam unless this is verified,” I said. “I admit it’s a very nice thing, the daughter of the original American family marrying a gun-punk out of Hoboken, but you’d better check—”

  “You’re late,” said the Old Man. “I’ve already called Joe Morris of the Harrison Sun, a weekly, and asked him to look up the license and see the minister—no, it was a justice named Gillicuddy, who married them—”

  Speak of the devil—the telephone rang and it was Morris from Harrison. “Yeah?” said the Old Man. “Fine….Good….Then you see the guy Gillicuddy now and call back at once. There’s fifty bucks in this for you, Joe, and my thanks. Yeah, so long.” He hung up. “Well, they got the license all right. Now to check on the marriage.”

  I was getting tired of the noise and confusion. “But what has Dinah got to do with all this? Where does she come in? How did she get in the jug and how did she fall into this yarn anyhow? She hasn’t got enough on the ball to have gone out and dished this up by her lonesome. She was tipped off or she fell into it, and I don’t come from Missouri to know that either.”

  “All right, maybe you’re right. I don’t know the answer myself. Dinah was picked up at the Hotel St. Clair hovering over the corpse of a friend of yours and mine. You all know her. Jane Willis of the Dispatch, that gal who gets in the nicest places and does articles for the society magazines on the side. I guess you’d call her a cocktail reporter. She’s dead.”

  There was a crash. Jimmy Verne had dropped his Speed Graphic and hit his own foot. The look of pallid amazement on his face changed to an “Ouch” as he grabbed his foot and danced. “What’s the matter with you?” the Old Man asked.

  “The matter with me?” Verne snapped. “Well, I’m only human even if I am a news photographer! I had lunch with that dame at the Press Club this very noon and she borrowed a buck out of my jeans to get uptown! Three hours ago, I was sitting at the Press Club talking to her, and now you come out and say she’s dead to this world. What do you expect me to say, ‘Here today, gone tomorrow’?”

  “The camera’s okay,” I grinned.

  “Holy smoke,” Verne said. “You can’t believe a thing like that. You eat lunch with someone and three hours later she’s cold. You have got a tale, chief. If you can nail Myers—”

  The Old Man sat up, smelling something he hadn’t known before. “What has Myers got to do with Willis? You think Al Myers and the marriage had anything to do with this girl—”

  “What happened to her?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. She was murdered. Dinah got that much to me. Dinah was looking the scene over and she started to call the paper when the police arrived. They took her right in. I don’t know if she’s been charged, but I doubt it. Halloran knows Dinah is a reporter for this paper and that she probably had nothing to do with it.”

  “Where do you get that ‘probably’ business?” I said. “You know darn well Dinah is too dumb to kill anybody. Is this paper going to stand bail for her? Where is she, the Tombs?”

  “Keep your shirt on,” the Old Man said. “Be with you in a second. I think Jimmy has an angle.”

  “Sure I’ve got an angle,” Verne replied. “Maybe I ought to be a reporter instead of a camera toter. Why, didn’t any of you guys ever date Jane Willis? She used to be Mrs. Al Myers before she got Renovated in 1936.”

  The Old Man blinked, then shrieked, “Kendrick! Gimme rewrite! Kendrick! Where the blazes is he?”

  You can see what life was like when he smelled a story. All was confusion, but I refused to be strung up again. “Kendrick can wait,” I snapped. “Give me the lowdown on how I’m to spring Dinah.”

  “You get in touch with the Chronicle’s lawyer—wait I’ll give you written authorization. His name is Watson. Daniel Watson. You’ll like him. You spring her even if it takes bail, but spring her. Take Jimmy with you and get some shots of Dinah in the jug and Dinah coming out. That’s a good angle. Chronicle reporter suffers for her art.” The telephone r
ang and he grabbed it. “Yeah, yeah, Joe. He did?…Thank you, Joe. I’ll mail the money to you. So long.” He hung up. “Well, Gillicuddy says he married the happy couple at two A.M. this morning and that they were both a mite high-ho. McGuire—did you send all those guys out to cover depots, ships, and flying fields?”

  “Covered,” McGuire said wearily.

  “Kenyon is going to realize he is publishing a paper when we break this,” said the Old Man. “And if one of you bozos leaks it out before we get through at least two editions, you’ll be fired. What a setup. Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher Steele Whittaker, bluebloods in America since the founding of the settlement at Jamestown, Vayginya, announce the marriage of their daughter, Elsie, who’s always been a snooty little dickens, to Al Myers, ex-con, gunman pug, and general bait for a cop’s bullet. Ah me—”

  “Come on, Jimmy,” I told Verne. “Let’s blow out of here. The place is getting to sound more and more like something out of a Hollywood movie, and I don’t want it to get around that I was here when it happened.”

  “Yah!” the Old Man snorted. “If you had the heart of a real Fourth Estater, you’d see what a swell yarn this is from a human news angle. But you, cluck, all you’re worried about is Dinah, a jug, and a corpse.”

  * * *

  —

  It was a fact. Not the corpse so much, although I did give Jane Willis more than a mental nod. You can’t be a crime reporter and go scooting in the wake of bullets and death without considering ways and means when you hear of a murder. But it was Dinah I was worried about. Murder is a hard rap, and I didn’t like Dinah mixed up. Not even if she was clear, because the papers would mention her name, at least, and it’s a bum stigma to have tacked onto your moniker.