by J. T. Edson
“I think I saw her last night, but it’s impossible to tell from the face,” Redon went on. “You might be able to—.”
The words died away for Redon, while admiring Calamity, did not entirely approve of a girl doing such work and also thought the sight of that body nothing to show a woman. Calamity guessed at the sergeant’s thoughts and did not feel any annoyance, but she gave her agreement to St. Andre’s suggestion and went with the two lawmen downstairs to the basement morgue.
Although not given to being affected by atmosphere, Calamity could hardly hold down a shudder as she entered the lamp-lit morgue. Never a cheerful spot, the basement room appeared far worse when one thought of its purpose. Calamity fought down her thoughts and walked slowly towards the sheet-draped form on the centre table. Sucking in a breath, she drew back the sheet and looked down. Blonde hair, a hideously distorted mask that seemed vaguely familiar, showed in the light. Calamity bit down an exclamation and drew the sheet from the body. A blue dress increased her suspicions and she found confirmation when she saw the big blue ring on the right hand. Pulling back the sheet to cover the body, Calamity turned to face the waiting detectives.
“Name’s Nora. She only started on the street last night. Was working as a maid for a Colonel Yaxley’s family,” Calamity said. “Poor fool lil kid! I meant to try to talk her out of doing it.”
“Who did she leave with?” St. Andre asked, leading Calamity from the room.
“Alone, as far as I know. She went out back and didn’t come in again. The other gals laughed and made a few jokes about her losing her nerve. Lord! If that had been all she lost.”
St. Andre laid a hand on Calamity’s arm. “Nora?” he said. “At least we have a start. Did she say where she intended to take her customers?”
“A room in a house on Garou Street. Goldberg’s place,” Calamity answered.
“I know it,” Redon stated. “I’ll see Goldberg.”
“And I’ll take the Yaxleys,” St. Andre went on.
A string of curses left Calamity’s lips. “That poor—!” she finished.
“Easy, cherie,” St. Andre interrupted gently.
“Easy hell!” she spat back. “Why couldn’t the Strangler’ve picked on me last night? Maybe he will tonight.”
For once in his life St. Andre looked uneasy. He did not speak until they were standing on the ground floor. Then, shrugging his shoulders, he turned to the girl and said, “Cherie, we must call off the decoy for the next three nights.”
He did not expect Calamity to take the news calmly, and was not wrong. Anger glowed in her eyes as she swung towards him. “Why?” she asked coldly.
“General Butler is paying New Orleans a visit and I have to use every man to guard him.”
Which figured when one thought how the Union Army general treated Southern prisoners-of-war and people during or after the War Between the States. While Calamity had been born in the North and supported the Union, she did not regard Butler as a hero, or even desirable, and failed to see why his life should be more important than a street walker’s.
“The lieutenant’s hands are tied, Calam.” Redon put in. “He tried to fight against the order, but was out-ranked.”
“I know he would,” Calamity replied. “But we sail in three days. That means you won’t have a chance to use me again.”
“Some girls would be pleased of that,” St. Andre told her gently. “At least we now have the name of a victim. It might lead us to the killer.”
“Yeah,” answered Calamity. “It might at that.”
If St. Andre had not been so busy following up the lead in the Strangler case, than helping organise the protection of the visiting general, he might have thought about Calamity’s meek acceptance and decided that it was not in keeping with her character as he knew it.
On leaving Headquarters, Calamity took a cab to the river front and joined Killem’s men. She said nothing about the decoy work being cancelled and, although she and Killem went to watch the arrival of General Butler, they did not have a chance to speak with any of their detective friends. However, Calamity saw why the Chief of Police insisted on maximum security. A large crowd of hostile demonstrating sufferers at Butler’s hands during and just after the War swarmed on the river front, and it took a good force of club-swinging policemen to hold them back as the hated figure left the riverboat. (A noticeable side-issue was that the Intelligencer, usually so rabid in exposing police ‘brutalities,’ never said a word about the clubs cracking heads in defence of General Butler). The defence and protection of Butler had been left in the hands of the municipal authorities because various wise heads realised that the sight of Butler taken with Union Army uniforms might provoke serious trouble.
Having grown used to Calamity dressing and leaving on the decoy work, none of her freighter friends saw anything unusual in it that evening. Calamity debated whether she should take a gun or not, but decided against it. So she set forth into the night, walking through the Park and entering the Blue Cat to find only a handful of girls and a few riverboat men present.
“The Street’s quiet tonight,” she remarked, taking a seat with the other girls and ordering a beer from a bored waiter.
“There’s a big crowd gone up to the Opera House to show that bastard Butler what folks down here think of him,” one of the other girls answered.
After sipping at her beer, Calamity pretended to notice something. “Hey, has Nora got a taker already?”
None of the girl’s answered for a moment, then a buxom blonde called Hetty said, “She’s not been home all night, or today. I room next to her.”
“Maybe the Strangler got her,” another put in. “That Redon was around asking about her this morning. They came round just after Betty Muldoon disappeared.”
“And when Sarah Gotz stopped coming here,” a third girl remarked thoughtfully. “I knew Sarah hadn’t just run out like her man told the law.”
Once the subject had been opened, the girls started to discuss it thoroughly and in doing so told Calamity all she need to know. Sitting quietly, she made a mental note of the various names mentioned. Not all would be Strangler victims but she reckoned she had learned enough to start St. Andre on the trail.
“I’m getting scared to go with a feller,” Hetty stated. “Why in hell don’t the police stop him?”
Only just in time did Calamity prevent herself answering that the police might have brought the Strangler’s career to an end earlier if given assistance by various members of the public. She read the fear in each girl’s face and realised it came through the detectives asking about a Strangler victim by name. Before the girls did not know if a friend be dead or merely missing, now they knew for sure. Calamity decided to get word to St. Andre as soon as possible to strike while the iron of fear burned hot, as he would find the girls more co-operative now.
All eyes jerked around as the main doors opened and Calamity detected almost a gasp of relief as the lank figure of Browne Crossman entered. The young man looked even more than usually sullen and moody as he crossed the room, but managed to greet the girls in a friendly manner. Taking a seat with them, he accepted Hetty’s offer of a beer and joined in the discussion of the identity of the killer. Crossman expressed the view that the killer might be a religious bigot trying to improve the world by removing its undesirable fallen women. From the way Crossman spoke, Calamity decided that he did not approve of religion and was suspicious of anybody who followed Christian beliefs.
Then one of the girls, perhaps bored by Crossman’s bombastic domination of the conversation, dropped in a remark about Butler’s visit. With the exception of Calamity, every girl at the table had been born and raised in the South, so their views on Butler varied only by the speaker’s power of invective. Watching Crossman, Calamity saw the anger in his eyes and in the way he gripped his glass between his fingers.
“Why doesn’t your paper do something about Butler, Browne?” Hetty asked. “If it hadn’t been for him letting his men
loot my father’s store, I’d never’ve had to go on the streets.”
Normally such a story would have brought much sympathy from Crossman, but in other cases the girl’s persecutor had been someone whose political or social views did not coincide with the young man’s.
“I’ll ask the editor about it,” he answered.
At that moment the doors opened and a number of men entered. One of the men, sporting a bruised lump on his forehead gathered when trying to rush Butler through the police cordon, invited the girls to take a drink with him. At the bar, Calamity listened to the profane flow of ideas about Butler’s morals, parentage, destination after death and general habits. Suddenly she realised that Crossman had not come to the bar and was not in sight. This surprised her, for Crossman had not been slow to accept free drinks from the girls and she expected him to take his chance when the newcomer offered to pay.
Deciding she would see where the reporter went, Calamity remarked, “Reckon I’ll take a stroll and raise the rent.”
Before any of the men at the bar could make her an offer,
Calamity crossed to the door and passed out on the Latour Street.
For a moment she stood at the door, undecided which way to go.
Seeing no sign of Crossman, she turned and made for another gathering place for street girls.
Just as she passed a side alley, she saw a dark shape and heard Crossman’s voice. “Hi there, Jane. Looking for trade?” he said.
“A gal has to pay for her room somehow,” Calamity replied.
“If you come to my room, I’ll see you don’t have that problem.”
“That’s me you hear knocking on the door,” Calamity said. “Let’s go.”
“Come this way,” Crossnian ordered. “I don’t mind, but there are folks in town who would use my going with you against me.”
“I reckon there are,” agreed Calamity and walked into the alley. Clearly Crossman knew his way around the back alleys behind Latour Street, for he did not falter as he led Calamity through the area. Although there was still a full moon, Crossman kept to the shadows and slowed his pace whenever he saw anybody ahead of him. In this manner he led Calamity down to the road which separated Latour Street from the City Park. Halting in the darkness of an alley, Crossman looked both directions along the street before turning to Calamity.
“My place’s across the Park,” he said. “Let’s walk through to it, shall we?”
Acting her part, Calamity hesitated. “Well—I—.”
“Scared of the Strangler?” asked Crossman mockingly. “Maybe I’m him.”
“Aw! Don’t say things like that, Browne,” gasped Calamity. “You couldn’t be the Strangler.”
“Then let’s go, or I’ll go alone.”
“Don’t get mad. I’m coming.”
More than three years of living with danger as a companion had given Calamity an instinct for trouble. She noticed the way Crossman hustled her across the street at a time when nobody either stood or walked nearby and it occurred to her that at no time had any person seen her with the young man. Uneasy stirrings gave Calamity a warning and she remembered that Crossman fitted the size which Tophet Tombes claimed for the Strangler. All too well Calamity knew Tombes’ skill as a reader of sign, he would not make a mistake about so basic and important a matter as estimating the height and weight of the man he tracked.
Yet could this slim man, who preached such stupid ideas as making life easier for owlhoots and not hanging murderers, be the fiend who slaughtered nine girls in the Park?
Down on Latour Street, just as Calamity and Crossman entered the Park, men began chanting, “We’ll hang that bastard Butler on a sour-apple tree.”
Calamity felt Crossman’s hand tighten on her arm and heard the sudden hiss of his breath.
“They sure don’t like old Butler, do they,” she said.
“The scum!” Crossman hissed back. “The lousy scum. Don’t they realise that General Butler is a great man?”
“Maybe they remember how he treated them while he was down here in the War,” Calamity answered. “He gave ‘em cause to hate him.”
After an unsuccessful career as a combat soldier, General Butler had been appointed Governor of New Orleans under the Union Army of Occupation. Amongst other acts, Butler siezed some eight hundred thousand dollars which had been deposited in the Dutch Consul’s office, the money going into his personal bank account. His final act, which brought his recall to Washington, was an order stating ‘If any woman give insult or offence to an officer or soldier of the Union Army, she shall be regarded and be held liable to be treated as a woman of the streets playing her avocation.’ Crossman knew all that, regarding the theft of the money, and later stories of corruption, as lies spawned by Butler’s enemies, and regarding Butler, currently a Radical Republican, as a great, noble and misunderstood man whose views almost coincided with Crossman’s own.
Believing anybody he regarded highly must be perfect, Crossman’s anger rose at the insults piled on General Butler since his arrival in New Orleans for a visit.
Taking his hand from Calamity’s arm, Crossman allowed the girl to move slightly ahead of him. He dipped his hand into his jacket and pulled out the length of stout, knotted whip cord which served him so well on other occasions when a member of the working class scum needed punishing. How he hated those stupid fools he came into contact with on Latour Street. Not one of them cared that he and his kind intended to make the world a better place for them. All they thought about was their pleasure. Take last night. Instead of listening to him and being prepared to follow his lead, those scum ran into the street to see two women fighting. Well, one of them paid the price for that insult. When Crossman and his party came into power, in addition to making the world a better place for the workers, he would see that those bunch from the Blue Cat paid for their indifference; just as this slut was going to pay right now.
Out flickered the cord, its deadly noose circling then dropping around the brim of Calamity’s hat and down to her shoulders. Swiftly Crossman gathered the two ends of the cord, swinging so his back faced Calamity’s and carrying the cord up on to his shoulder as he had done nine times before. Soon he would feel the cord tighten and the girl’s frantic, but unavailing, struggles which would become weaker until she hung limp and dead.
“You’re like all the rest!” he snarled as the noose flickered out and dropped into place.
Although Calamity partially suspected Crossman, and had practised escaping from the Strangler’s attack until she felt it would be almost second nature to do so, the feel of the cord dropping around her gave her a nasty shock. It was like the first time she became involved in an Indian attack on the freight outfit. Sure she had known what to do in such conditions, but the actual happening handed her a hell of a jolt.
For all that Calamity did not freeze or panic. Instead she went into action fast, using the technique suggested in his message by Dusty Fog. Giving a fervent prayer that Dusty, as he mostly did, knew what he talked about when he sent off the instructions, Calamity made her move.
Thrusting herself back, instead of pulling away—as the other victims had instinctively done, thereby tightening the noose and speeding their end—Calamity rose on her toes and thrust her shoulders back against Crossman’s. At the same moment her hands shot up, back over her shoulders, closed on and gripped the cords between her neck and Crossman’s hands. Before he could lean forward and gain the extra leverage which made the use of the thuggi cord so deadly effective, Crossman received a shock. Swiftly Calamity tightened her hold on the cord, then jerked both feet from the ground, bending her knees, and letting her dead weight hang on Crossman’s back. Taken by surprise by Calamity’s weight and the unexpected move, Crossman could not prevent himself being dragged over backwards. He lost his grip on the cord as he and the girl both went rump-first to the ground.
Following the plan she made while walking through the Park on her way to the Blue Cat earlier that evening, Calamity rele
ased one end of the cord and jerked it from around her neck. Hat and blonde wig went flying as she removed the cord, but Calamity did not care how she looked at that moment, being more concerned in summoning assistance.
“Help!” she yelled, and Calamity had quite a voice when needed. “The Strangler’s here!”
Letting out a snarl, Crossman rolled on his side and rose. He swung to face the girl and stared at the sight before him. Gone were the hat and wig, and even through the paint and powder on Calamity’s face Crossman recognised her. Fury ripped into him as he faced the girl he had seen with St. Andre on the night some fancied insult led him to take his eighth victim. It appeared that the stupid, inefficient, bungling police had out-witted him, laid a trap into which he fell.
Then shock bit into Crossman as he realised just how close to the edge of the Park he made his murder attempt. On every previous occasion the distance would not have mattered, for his victim struggled but died in silence. Success on nine occasions had made him lax, anger caused him to be unthinking.
Footsteps thudded on the path and Crossman looked by Calamity to where half-a-dozen brawny men raced in his direction. For a moment Crossman hesitated, then panic hit him and he started to turn to run. Maybe if Crossman had stood his ground he would have been able to talk his way out, but he lacked the kind of nerve to take such a chance.
Even as Crossman turned to run, Calamity sprang forward and grabbed him by his jacket’s lapels. Desperation and terror flooded over Crossman as he heard the angry yells of the approaching men. Grabbing Calamity’s wrists, he tried to drag her hands from him, but failed. Mouthing terrified curses, he lashed out wildly with a foot and caught the girl full on the shin-bone. Calamity screamed as the agony bit into her. Pain caused her to lose her hold and Crossman thrust her aside, whirled and prepared to flee for his life. He left it too late, the six men swarmed by the staggering Calamity and at him.
“She’s ly—!” Crossman began.