The Detective Megapack

by Various Writers

  “Here, then, would be a splendid opportunity for Lennard’s deferred revenge. Jilted by the mother himself, if he could contrive to have the daughter jilted on her wedding eve how poetic would be his revenge! I don’t defend this course; I say it may very well have occurred to him. Suppose then that he contrives to meet Parris, to do him services, and at the same time to learn something about Parris that is not to Parris’s credit. We can learn nothing of Parris’s past. It may have been anything. But would it be enough to threaten Parris with exposure? Would Parris vanish at a threat? Not necessarily. Lennard’s hold would have to be pretty strong for that.

  “But suppose Lennard combines with his threat of exposure some manufactured tale, say about Dale Valentine’s mother, whose memory he both loves and loathes! If Parris were a gentleman he would resent it; if he were a coward in masquerade, probably he would not. But gentleman or coward, what would Parris do? I think he would try to stop Lennard’s mouth, either for his own sake, or for the sake of Miss Valentine. Did he do it?”

  “I’m afraid he did, Lavender,” I confessed. “You make it seem very probable. But what hold could Lennard have had over Parris?”

  “A queer one, you may be sure. It’s almost the kernel of the riddle.”

  “And what do you think Miss Valentine learned from her father?”

  “Merely, perhaps that he had once had an unsuccessful rival in love whose name was Lennard. It would be enough. Miss Valentine would couple it with the story in the newspapers about the discovery of Lennard’s body. Or perhaps she already knew, through her mother years ago, that Lennard had been her father’s rival. If so, the newspaper story about Lennard would revive that memory. But I think something her father said put her on the track of the truth, for he told us that it was last night that she began to be preoccupied and silent. All of which, of course, would be insufficient to convince her of what is possibly the truth, if she had not heard from Parris. She must have received a letter last night, and I’d give a good deal to know what it revealed.”

  I turned it all over in my head, and to me it seemed complicated enough to bother anybody. But one thing I was certain of.

  “The time has come, Lavender, to tell Taggart the whole story,” I said flatly.

  “Yes,” he agreed instantly, “we must be frank with Taggart; we can’t play two games now. He must print no word of the affair, of course; and I think he will not wish to, for it will reflect on Lennard to some extent—his own man.”

  He swung to the telephone and called up the Valentine home.

  “This is Gorman B. Taggart speaking,” he said deliberately into the mouthpiece, “the publisher of the Morning Beacon. I wish to speak to Miss Valentine.” There was a silence and then his tone changed. “Out?” he cried. “Out of town? Are you sure? When did she leave? A letter, eh? I am very sorry; I have important news for her. Can you say where she went? To what station, then? A ten o’clock train! Yes, Mr. Taggart speaking! Now listen, please. I want you to remember what Miss Valentine wore to the train. It is important, for I am going to send a man to see her, and he must be able to identify her.”

  After this there was a longer silence, at the end of which Lavender coolly said, “Thank you,” and hung up. He was tremendously excited.

  “Gone!” he cried. “Gone out of town on a ten o’clock train, this morning. There was a letter last night, as I suspected. They deceived you at the house, Gilly. They knew then that she had gone.”

  “Yes,” I said, “gone to meet Parris!”

  He swung back to the telephone and gave a strange number quickly. Then he asked an astonishing question.

  “A young woman, dark and very pretty, wearing a heavy veil, was there this morning and asked to see the body of Moss Lennard. Was she allowed to see it?”

  He listened to the reply, then with at word of thanks rang off.

  “Miss Valentine saw Lennard’s body this morning, after leaving these rooms. She examined Lennard’s garments. She went away in a taxicab. By George, Gilly, that girl has spunk! It took nerve to do that!”

  CHAPTER IV

  We found Taggart seated before a worn old desk in a private office on the glass door of which appeared the letters forming the name “Moss Lennard,” and the words “Circulation Manager.” The publisher swung about in his chair as we entered and seemed embarrassed at our coming. But he extended his big hand in welcome.

  “Glad to see you,” he said. “I’ve just been looking over poor old Lennard’s desk.”

  “Nothing wrong with his accounts, of course?” asked Lavender. “I assumed that you had looked into them before.”

  “Oh, that’s all right. He was straight as a string. But I didn’t know what the old desk would develop.”

  “What have you found?”

  “Nothing of interest, I guess; unless it’s this! I didn’t know Moss went in for light literature.”

  He smiled and handed over a volume bound in green cloth, on the back side of which appeared its flamboyant title, “The Montreville Mystery.”

  Lavender smiled. “I know that yarn,” he said. “It’s a French detective story, translated into English. A good one, too. I haven’t read it in years.” He laid it on his knee. A curious light danced in his eyes.

  “Well, Lennard must have found it to his taste,” said Taggart. “It appears to be well worn, although I haven’t had time to look into it.”

  “I’ll take it along with me, if I may,” smiled Lavender boyishly. “Do you mind? I’d like to read that yarn again. Also,” he added dryly. “I’d like to see why it was of such interest to Moss Lennard.”

  Taggart looked surprised, but readily acquiesced.

  “Sure,” he said. “I guess no one wants it now. Keep it if you care to.”

  “Now,” said my friend when he had pocketed the volume, “I have news for you, Mr. Taggart, and you are going to be surprised.” And he told our client the whole story of Rupert Parris.

  Taggart was immensely agitated. He leaped from his chair and executed a few steps of an improvised and unintentional dance.

  “We’ve got to get him!” he cried. “Lavender, we’ve got to get him!”

  “I suppose so,” said Lavender. “But wait; I’m not through.” And he revealed the recent activities of Miss Dale Valentine, including a statement of her visit to the morgue where the body of Lennard lay.

  Taggart paced the room in his excitement.

  “You see it, of courser he demanded. “Incriminating evidence! She removed something from the garments that would have hurt Parris!”

  “And now she’s gone to Parris,” I said, unintentionally humorous.

  “No,” corrected Lavender, “she’s gone to Washburn, Illinois, the early home of Moss Lennard and her mother. She must have relatives there yet. The poor child has discovered the truth.”

  “The truth!” cried Taggart suspiciously. “What are you withholding now, Lavender. Come, let’s have it! What is the truth then?”

  “It’s a long story,” my friend replied, “and I’ve just found the final link in this novel you have given me. But the first truth is this: Moss Lennard was not murdered; he committed suicide, and for the purpose of making it appear that Parris had murdered him. He wished to leave a stigma upon the name of Rupert Parris, the accepted lover of Miss Dale Valentine. It was part of his revenge upon the girl’s mother, long dead. You know that story. With the girl jilted and her lover’s name smirched, his revenge would be complete save in one particular.

  “He would want Miss Valentine to know what he had done; that would be the final twist of the knife, to tell her what he had done and why he had done it. I am now convinced that the letter Miss Valentine received was from Lennard, a letter nicely timed to be delivered some days after his death. It would be sent first to some other part of the country, then re-addressed by some friend there, who, of course, would not suspect Lennard’s motive. Miss Valentine received it last night, probably by special delivery. I can see Lennard working it all out.<
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  “What a dolt I have been, Gilly!” he exclaimed. “Because the truth was fantastic I refused to see it, or at any rate to credit it, until this book and the girl herself convinced me. She left the house veiled. Why? I deduced the morgue, and found that I was right. I had already deduced a letter, and I know now that I was right. Then Taggart hands me this book, and it is a book that I know! In it there is a leading character named Rupert; the scene of the story is Paris. Could anything be plainer? Look!”

  He drew it from his pocket and began to turn the leaves. A quick frown settled between his eyes. Then suddenly he examined the covers. In the end he leaned back and laughed quietly.

  “I’ve been an ass again,” he smiled. “An examination of the book would have solved the mystery days ago, had we known of the book’s existence. Look at it! A book on theatrical make-up, rebound in the covers of a popular novel!”

  But now Taggart and I were both on our feet, bursting with the amazing thought that had pierced our brains.

  “Then Parris—” I began and hesitated to finish it.

  “Was Lennard!” roared Taggart.

  “Yes,” smiled Lavender. “Lennard, all the time, except for one or two evenings a week, when he became Parris to revenge himself upon the daughter of the woman who had jilted him. Gilly, I’m afraid I am becoming dull!”

  CHAPTER V

  We did not pursue the distressed and humiliated girl to Washburn. Lavender’s explanation was too clear to require further proof. Complete and final proof was found by a thorough ransacking of Lennard’s rooms in the West Side rooming house, where the paraphernalia of make-up, and a really splendid toupee, was carefully hidden away. But the make-up boxes were scarcely touched; they had been unnecessary except at the beginning.

  Mrs. Barrett, half blind and splendidly loyal to her eccentric guest, had never suspected, and in the dark hallway—on the evenings of his Parris masquerades, as Lavender called them—Lennard had passed without question. Dressed in Lennard’s clothes and speaking in Lennard’s voice, he had gone forth as Parris to exchange for Parris’s clothes at his hotel. His “Parris” life had been spent in three places, almost alternatively; at his hotel, at his club, and at the Valentine home, and at no one of them had he ever stayed long. It was a masterpiece of deception.

  His motive for suicide was certainly obscure; but it is conceivable that he may, have sickened of the game he was playing. Lavender’s idea is that he was merely sick of life, and passed out gladly after accomplishing his self-appointed task. Certainly the whole scheme was elaborately worked out, even to the ingeniously phrased and romantic letter in which the manager bade farewell to his younger self, then left for an investigator to find. And an admirable touch was his habit of calling himself from the hotel—that is, calling for Lennard on the telephone, in the hearing of the operator who knew him as Parris. A clever rascal on the whole, and a man who might have been an asset to society with a little more charity.

  “The amazing thing to me, Lavender,” I said, “is how he was able to pass himself off in the Valentine home.”

  “It may have been difficult at first,” he replied, “but Lennard’s make-up was, of course, very skilful. It consisted in very little, for really little disguise was necessary. He probably used very little theatrical make-up, in spite of his study of the subject. Lennard was fifty and more, but a well preserved man. Further, he was thin, and therefore had no betraying weight to endanger his plan; he would pass as a slim, middle-aged man. With a good wig over his half bald head, and a sprinkling of rice powder over a good massage, he would look quite as young as he claimed to be. He admitted to forty-one years! His dress helped, too, for naturally he dressed in the height of fashion. His features were good, and his determination was great.

  “And the big thing in his favor was the fact—for certainly it must have been a fact—that neither Mr. Valentine nor his daughter ever had seen him as Lennard. The mother who would have recognized him was dead. Probably he met the girl’s father at the club and won him by his personality and his chess; after that the match was as good as made. Miss Valentine as much as hinted that it was a match made by her father.”

  “I am sorry for Dale Valentine,” I said sincerely.

  “So am I,” said Lavender, “sorry that she must suffer this humiliation, even though there may be no distressing publicity, for Taggart will take care of that. Parris will be called away suddenly, and will die in another city, and no one will know the difference. But I’m glad for Dale Valentine in another sense. What a good thing it is that the old rascal didn’t see the greater revenge he had in his power. Suppose he had actually married the girl!”

  TOMORROW’S DEAD, by David Dean

  The old man opened his eyes and groaned. A string of reddened spittle spun from his busted lip and stretched itself impossibly upwards, crawling across his narrow field of vision in its quest for the ceiling of his car. He wanted to wipe it away, but his arms felt heavy and useless. He looked down to find his hands but they were absent from his lap.

  He thought irritably of his wife—perhaps she could explain; quite probably she was responsible. Wincing from the pain in his neck, he managed to turn towards the passenger seat. His wife hung loosely within her seatbelt, tendrils of her grey hair floating above her head like that of a drowned woman.

  He understood now; began to remember. There had been a truck…a very large truck with one of those great push-bumpers welded onto the front of it. It was the last thing he had seen as it t-boned them with such force that his car had been overturned and his wife killed. He had been given no time to be afraid or react. As he hung there studying the alien geography of his shattered windshield and the asphalt sky beyond, he began to grow angry. Not so much over the loss of his wife, as he had never had much use for her, but at being so roughly handled. He understood something of brutality, but only in the giving, not in the receiving.

  With a great effort, fueled largely by his growing righteous fury, he willed his arms to return to his sides, to obey his commands, but like lumps of molded clay they dangled uselessly from his shoulders. Yet, a slight and painful tingling alerted him that they still lived; might still serve to release him from his entrapment given enough time. Once free of the seatbelt, he could crawl from the car and seek help; get proper medical attention; sue the towing company whose truck and drivers had done such damage. Because it had been a tow truck, there was no doubt in his mind on this matter as his thoughts gelled; he remembered the crane-like appendage that jutted up from behind the cab. It had had a distinctive paint job, as well—blue and yellow; the cab occupied by two men so heavily tattooed that, in the brief moment before impact, they had appeared almost blue. ‘By God,’ he thought, ‘they left me here to die! I’ll wring them dry for this.’

  As if summoned by his angry thoughts, the rumble of a large diesel engine entered his blood-filled ears. The old man painfully swiveled his head to peer out what was left of his driver’s-side window in time to see the distinctive blue and yellow color-pattern roll slowly into his field of vision and stop. ‘This won’t do them any good,’ he thought bitterly. ‘I had the right of way at the intersection and they were speeding on top of it; there’s no way trying to be Good Samaritans now is gonna save ’em—they’ve broken my arms…and killed my wife, too,’ he added with a growing sense of indignation.

  The truck appeared to sit there for a long time and from his vantage, the old man could see nothing but the huge knobby tires and the lower half of the door. ‘Where are the police?’ he wondered anxiously. ‘Damn police should be here.’

  He heard the squeal of rusted hinges and a pair of busted-up work boots dropped upside down into sight. A door slammed; then another. Both of the men were coming over, he observed. ‘Sons-of-bitches are not in any hurry,’ he thought, as the second pair of boots came into sight from round the truck—these were cowboy boots, shiny and new, the toes pointy and hard. Both sets of boots appeared aimed at him, immobile now; waiting.

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bsp; ‘What are they doing?’ the old man wondered, suddenly uneasy. The amount of blood pooling onto the car ceiling alarmed him, though he was reasonably certain it was from his wife. ‘Even so, they should help,’ he reasoned. ‘They should get me out of here…it’s their fault, after all.’ In the distance, a siren intruded into his increasingly panicky thoughts. ‘Thank God,’ he thought, ‘someone has called the police. The boots began to move.

  The cowboy boots clipped across the tarmac of the street, taking two steps for every one of the work boots. They reached his window and halted once more, the old man’s world suddenly reduced to a close study of men’s footwear. He could see that the Western boots were covered in snakeskin while the work boots were scuffed and dusty, nondescript. “Help me,” he croaked through a mouthful of blood and loose teeth. It sounded more like gargling, the words turned to mush.

  Two faces suddenly appeared, disconcertingly close and upside-down. The tattoos flowed from beneath their collars and sleeves in a riot of swirling, maze-like patterns, occasionally interrupted by a recognizable image. The straining face of Christ, bloodied by his crown of thorns, peeked out from the partially open shirt of ‘Work Boots’, while a serpent swallowing a naked woman crawled down the arm of the Cowboy.

  Before he could wrench his attention from their illustrations and actually look into their faces, ‘Work Boots’ produced a blade from somewhere, it’s cutting edge short, but as cruelly curved as a parrot’s beak. ‘He’s going to cut me loose,’ the old man thought, even as alarms began to clang inside his churning brain.