Murder for Two

by George Harmon Coxe

Logan said, “The big lug, there.”

  Loeb held his hand up and Casey took it.

  “I guess I owe you something for that,” Loeb said.

  “The cleaning-woman found you,” Casey said.

  “But you’re the one who knew what to do. If you hadn’t got a doctor right away they tell me it would have been a different story.”

  Casey opened his plate-case. He did not dare look at Logan and as he picked out a flashbulb he moved up to the bed.

  “You know you’re news now, counselor. Is it all right?”

  The request was like a tonic. The man in the bed actually beamed and Casey thought, Hell, the guy likes it. “Swell,” he said, “just hold that smile.”

  “For you,” Loeb said, “anything.”

  Casey got the picture and stepped back. Logan gave him a disgusted stare and Casey grinned at him.

  “You see?” he said. “With my personality, anything is possible.”

  “Then order up a miracle, will you?” Logan pulled up a chair and sat down. “We’ve only got five minutes, because you need rest,” he said to Loeb, “So I’ll put the questions and all you have to do is answer. Now, do you know the man who shot you?”

  “No.”

  “He called your house and made an appointment?”

  “Twice, he called. The first time I wasn’t in. I was out of town and—”

  “Yes. I talked to your secretary. She said you were in Providence and didn’t get back by five, so she closed the office. Just before that a man came in asking for you. She’d never seen him but she says he was slender and dark, with brows that nearly met over the bridge of his nose.”

  Right then Casey got interested. If the girl was right, this was Harry with those heavy, almost continuous brows.

  “She said you probably wouldn’t be in and gave him your home phone number,” Logan said. “Now what time did you get back?”

  “I got back at six,” Loeb said.

  “Go to the office?”

  “I stopped by. There was something I had to take care of. It only took a minute or two and then I went home. My wife said a Mister Nagle had phoned and would phone again. He did, about seven-thirty. I didn’t want to go out but he said it was important. Something about—”

  “We can skip that. It was a phony excuse, whatever it was. So you went back to the office?”

  “The man was waiting and we went in.”

  “You got a good look at him?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Logan said, “Ahh—” and brought out his picture. “Can you find him there?”

  Loeb held the picture, twisting his head so the light fell on it. Then Casey saw his lips tighten and realized that Logan had finally got his break.

  “Yes,” the lawyer said. “The one on the right.”

  Logan took the picture and nodded to Casey. “Your pal, Harry. You’re sure of that?” he said to Loeb.

  “Positive.”

  “All right. You went into your office.”

  “And he closed the door. I took off my coat and sat down at my desk and when I looked up he had a gun in his hand. I asked him what the idea was and he told me to open the safe and keep quiet and everything would be all right.”

  Loeb hesitated then. He seemed to be tiring a little and Logan didn’t press him. That gave Casey a chance to think back and see how right Logan’s hunch had been that Harry hadn’t come with murder on his mind.

  “At first I was sore,” Loeb continued. “I couldn’t figure it out but I didn’t like this chap’s looks at all. There wasn’t any money in the safe anyway so I opened it. I went back to the desk while he searched it and then I began to get mad again. I had a gun in the center drawer and I began to get it open an inch at a time.”

  He hesitated again and grinned feebly. “I did all right, too. I got it out. I got a chance and turned it on him. The only thing—” He paused again and now his face was perplexed. “The thing I don’t understand is how it happened. I had him cold. I could have killed him and yet—he was the one who shot me.”

  “Yeah,” Logan said grimly. “That’s how it goes. A man who is not used to killing hates to take that last step. He hates to pull the trigger and he always figures that the other fellow will see he’s licked and give in. Only it doesn’t work that way with a killer. When his hand tightens on a gun his mind is already made up and the other guy is generally as good as dead because the killer is squeezing the trigger as he moves.”

  “It must have been something like that.”

  “It was that. It’s one of the toughest things for a cop to learn and some never learn it in time.” He hesitated, his brow corrugated and a narrowness in his gaze. “Did he get what he came for, Mr. Loeb?”

  “No.”

  Casey looked at Logan and to him it seemed that the lieutenant had taken a new lease on life. He pulled his chair closer and leaned over the bed.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I didn’t have it.” ‘

  “And just what was it he wanted?”

  Loeb let his glance touch the ceiling and remain there, and this time it seemed to Casey that he hesitated not because of fatigue but for some other reason.

  “Henry Byrkman was a client of yours,” Logan said. “He was murdered yesterday around noon, possibly by the man who came to see you. You had something belonging to Byrkman and the gunman came to get it. What was it?”

  “An envelope.”

  Logan leaned back. “You knew Byrkman was dead. How?”

  “I bought a paper in the South Station. In the subway I glanced through it. There was a little piece there that said Henry Byrnes had been shot to death; it also said the victim’s name might have been Henry Byrkman.”

  Loeb stopped again and the silence fell upon the room, moving in from the corners now and building up a curious tension as it came. Casey felt it. He watched Logan and Manahan. They were motionless, intent, aware only of the figure in the bed.

  “Do you know what was in that envelope?” Logan asked finally. Loeb shook his head. “You have no idea?”

  “Not the slightest. It was legal size, sealed, and sealed again with wax. He came in about a year ago and asked me to draw up his will. I don’t know how he picked me out; I don’t know a thing about it except that it was a simple matter, leaving everything he had to a brother in Canada. I gave him a copy and kept one in my safe. About a week later he came in with the envelope and gave me instructions as to what I was to do with it in the event of his death.

  “I thought no more about it. We lawyers have to deal with many peculiarities in clients and his was not unusual.—As I say, I forgot the matter until yesterday morning. I was about to leave for Providence when the telephone rang. It was Byrkman. He said he was in a little trouble and that he was temporarily registered at the Walters Hotel as Henry Byrnes. Then he asked me if I had the envelope he had left with me. I told him yes and he gave me a new address to write on it. I did so. And so last night when I read what had happened I got off the subway and came back here. I got the letter out of the safe and mailed it before I went home.”

  “All right,” Logan said, “who was it addressed to?”

  Without realizing it, Casey had moved up until he was standing right over Logan’s chair. He didn’t know he was holding his breath either, but he was. Because he thought he knew what Loeb was going to say, and yet was so afraid that he might be wrong. It could have been no more than two or three seconds that the lawyer hesitated, yet in that time Casey figured out the score. With Loeb’s testimony, Harry and Nossek were cooked; but with the envelope—if it only contained what he hoped it would—

  “Perry,” Loeb said. “John Perry.” And he mentioned the address.

  Logan got up, bumping into Casey. Manahan opened the door and Casey started after the lieutenant and then Logan stopped and Casey almost ran over him. Logan didn’t seem to notice. Something had happened to his face and his gaze was bright and intent as he asked his question.

  “The
man who shot you knew about that envelope. Does he know you mailed it?”

  “Yes,” Loeb nodded as best he could. “I told him that when he started to search the safe. He wouldn’t believe me and that’s why he—”

  Casey never heard the rest of it. He was out of the room by then and Logan was ten feet in front of him and practically loping down the hall.

  “Talk about your breaks,” he said as they came out in the morning sunlight.

  “They’ll be waiting for the mailman,” Manahan panted.

  “Hell, yes, they’ll be waiting. We finally get a flock of breaks and now, if we don’t get there before that mailman—Come on, get this coffee grinder going and forget about the tires.”

  Chapter Twenty

  WAITING FOR THE MAILMAN

  FOR FIVE MINUTES Manahan wasn’t very considerate of either the rubber situation or the gasoline-rationing program. He beat the traffic lights when he could, and when he couldn’t he used the siren and barged through.

  Casey hung on, scared, but still thinking. Logan didn’t say a word until they were within a mile of their destination.

  “No more siren,” he ordered then. “And when you see an empty hack, flag it down.—Look, Flash, here’s once you can be a detective with my blessing. The odds are Lawson’s got the place staked out. We want the envelope but if his two boys are around we want them too.”

  He paused while Manahan blew his horn and then cut in front of a taxi. The bug-eyed driver pulled over to the curb and Logan talked fast.

  “If we go up in this heap we’ll tip our mitt sure as hell. So you grab this cab and get up there as fast as you can. If the mailman’s been there we’re whipped anyway, but if not, park in the front hall. We’ll slide on by. There must be a back door.”

  Casey was already out of the police sedan. He didn’t even answer Logan, but gave the driver the address and told him to step on it.

  The driver was muttering to himself. “Them cops are all nuts. Just because they got a shield on the door—”

  “Certainly they’re nuts,” Casey said. “When you get to the corner of Colton Street slow down. The place I want is just beyond.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “And don’t forget it. I don’t want any brakes squealing or tires sliding. I don’t want it to look like I’m in a hurry.”

  “Maybe you ain’t heard about the rubber shortage,” the driver said. “I ain’t slid a tire since ’41.”

  Colton Street was just ahead now and the taxi slowed down as Casey had ordered. It passed the intersection at a normal speed and stopped in front of the old brownstone with the steep, high steps. Casey got out and found a bill. He made a point of not looking up or down the street. He shouldered his plate-case and sauntered up the steps without a backward glance.

  The right-hand outer door was open and he went through the vestibule, noting that there were no mailboxes and no table on which mail could be left. In the hall beyond there was an old mirror on one wall and a table in front of it with a marble top. There wasn’t any mail on it.

  He put his plate-case down and took off his hat. He wiped the perspiration from his face but it kept coming back and so he put his hat on again and took stock of his surroundings. There was a hallway leading to a door at the rear and skirting the staircase. There was a door on his right with a card tacked on it, and another on his left without a card.

  He wanted to knock on one of those doors and ask if the mailman had been there. He wanted to go upstairs and see if John Perry was there. What he actually did was stay right where he was until, a minute or two later, the door at the end of the hall opened and Logan and Manahan looked in. There was a woman with them, apparently the owner, a broad-beamed, formidable-looking person wearing an apron over her Mother Hubbard. Logan said something to her and she went out.

  “The mailman hasn’t come,” Logan said, and when he took off his hat, his face was as moist as Casey’s.

  Manahan’s was not only moist, it was beet red. He said, “There’s a place under the stairs here. We could watch from there.”

  “The landlady says the mailman’s due almost any time now,” Logan said. “I doubt if they’ll try to stop him. They’ll wait until he brings the mail and pick out what they want.”

  He took out his short-barreled .38 and inspected it before he transferred it to his coat pocket. Manahan did the same; then they both looked at Casey and groaned. The photographer had his camera out and open and there was a flashbulb in his hand.

  “Oh, my God,” Logan said.

  “I’ve got a living to make the same as you,” Casey said. “This could be a bonus shot.”

  “It could be a slug in the vest too,” Logan said. “These guys won’t be fooling.”

  “Neither will you,” Casey said. “You’re the artillery department, aren’t you?”

  He adjusted his focus and shutter and screwed in the flashbulb. “What do you figure’s in the envelope?”

  “The sort of things a man like Lawson would pay three hundred a month for—for life.”

  “It would have been easier to rub Byrkman out a long time ago,” Manahan said. “And that envelope is probably why he didn’t dare. The guy Byrkman couldn’t have been so dumb.”

  Somewhere on the floor above a telephone rang twice in quick succession, a shrill sound that startled Casey and made him glance upward. Logan looked up too. Then they heard a door being unlocked close by and all three of them ducked behind the stairs.

  The telephone rang again and the door without the name card on it opened. A young woman came out and looked up the stairs. She was blond and had her hair in curlers. She wore a faded blue wrapper, which hung open in front and disclosed a pink nightgown no longer fresh. She had quite a stomach, and her mules had been worn lopsided.

  The telephone started to ring again and this time it was cut short and a man’s voice answered it. The woman hesitated; then went back into her room. After that they could hear what the man said, and Casey knew at once that the voice belonged to John Perry.

  “Speaking,” Perry said. “Yes.” There was a long pause in which Casey heard nothing but Manahan’s wheezing. “Yes,” the voice said finally. “I understand.… Yes, I said.”

  They could hear, faintly, the bang of the receiver, followed by footsteps fading out in the hall. Casey didn’t know whether Logan recognized the voice or not. He did not say anything, but something about the conversation—the timing, the inflection, he wasn’t sure what—struck him as strange and a curious uneasiness began to stir inside him.

  Logan was glancing at his watch and peering past the angle of the stairs. Presently he stiffened and whispered over his shoulder.

  “Here comes the mail. Set, Manny?”

  “Set,” Manahan said. “Move a little, will you, Flash? That camera can wait a minute, can’t it?”

  Casey got out of the way, letting Manahan, who was much shorter, move in front of him. He could see pretty well between the edge of the stairs and Logan’s hat if he stood on tiptoe.

  He heard steps in the tiled entryway, the softer thud as the heels hit the carpet. The steps stopped. There was a rustle of paper and then a flapping sound as the mail was tossed onto the marble top.

  The steps moved through the entryway and faded out. Manahan was still wheezing. A door opened and the blonde in the faded blue wrapper came out. She sorted out the mail, said something under her breath, and went back to her room empty-handed.

  Manahan shifted his shoulders. Logan peered out a fraction of an inch and drew back. “Nothing yet,” he whispered. “You don’t think they could have spotted us at the corner, do you?”

  “They’re not getting the envelope anyway,” Manahan whispered back, and then he was quiet as a new sound came from above.

  Footsteps. Someone was coming down the stairs, hurrying, the sound of it echoing loudly in the hall. Casey stood on tiptoe again, leaning as far out as he dared, and that way he saw John Perry move up to the table and reach for a thick, legal-sized env
elope.

  Logan moved out as Perry turned away and Perry saw the three of them then and stiffened as though he had been struck.

  “Just a minute,” Logan said.

  “Oh,” Perry said hollowly. “You. Wh-what do you want?”

  “Let’s have a look at that envelope.”

  Perry glanced down at it and thrust it quickly inside his coat.

  “It’s mine. It’s addressed to me.”

  “We know,” Logan said. “That’s why I want to see it. Got any idea what’s in it?”

  “Why—no.”

  “I’ll tell you.” And Logan went on to explain about Morris Loeb and Byrkman. “If we’re right about this, what’s in that envelope has been keeping Byrkman alive. There may be enough to clear you and give the real dope on the swindle Lawson put over on you. There sure as hell will be enough to give us the motive we want for Byrkman’s murder. Come on, bring it out and let’s—”

  “No,” John Perry said.

  Logan stepped up and took his arm. “What do you mean, no?”

  “It’s mine.”

  John Perry’s thin face was tallow-white. He wet his lips and swallowed and could not find anything else to say. Casey just stared at him, at first incredulous at the reaction and now aware of a growing tension deep inside.

  What the hell was this? The guy was scared stiff. The envelope was the biggest break of his life, wasn’t it? Yet here he was, practically on the verge of collapse, arguing, looking as if he wanted to bolt like a petty thief.

  “So what?” Logan said. “We know it’s yours.” His brows drew down and irritation rode his words. “Or maybe you want to ride down to headquarters with us.”

  “You haven’t any right to—”

  “Who’s talking about that. If we can’t persuade you here we’ll have to take you somewhere—”

  “Wait a minute,” Casey said, and just then Perry jerked his arm free. Before Logan could grab again he had started up the stairs in full flight.

  Logan cursed softly and sprang after him and Casey caught his arm and pulled him back. Logan pulled away savagely. “Damn you,” he said. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”