The Detective Megapack

by Various Writers

  “Lights!”

  Maybe it was two seconds; it couldn’t have been a minute. The lights came on—the spot first, then the little lights that hung around the wall; then the faint lights overhead. And then—

  “Drop that guy! Get him!”

  They got him near the door. A waiter tackled him. It was Arnold Marshalt, and I remembered that the flame that had stabbed the darkness on the far side of the room had come from his table or from very near it.

  Carlotta stepped back slowly, chalk-colored, and the long white evening dress she wore had a red border on the bottom where it trailed in Ike Stein’s blood.

  Mudd strode across the floor, knelt a moment. Then he rose, and I saw his lips form the obvious words to Carlotta, still moving slowly back: “He’s dead.”

  Then there came a steady rustle of brittle chatter, punctuated by chairs scraping on the floor as they were pushed back from the tables.

  Mudd’s voice cut through everything loudly:

  “Sit down! Everybody stay right where he is for the moment.”

  A man who had got to his feet said patronizingly, bold with drink: “Who the hell are you, anyhow?”

  Mudd reached in his pocket for his shield. “I’m Detective Sergeant Mudd, buddy; and I love it when people get cute with me. Sit down.” The man sat down. “I’m sorry,” Mudd went on to the crowd. “Well get through here and let you go just as soon as we can. In the meantime just keep your seats and take it easy.” I sidled onto the floor, and Mudd turned and told me to call Headquarters.

  When I came back into the room a minute later, Mudd had moved from the dance-floor and was walking between the tables toward where the waiter had tackled Marshalt.

  Mudd turned to Carlotta, who had followed him. “I’ll need a room—”

  Carlotta nodded automatically. “You can use my office,” she said. Then there was the scream of sirens outside and in a moment men from headquarters started pouring in. Inspector Jaffre, men in uniform, plainclothesmen, photographers, men from the lab. There must have been fifteen or sixteen of them.

  Mudd walked over and talked hurriedly to Inspector Jaffre, and I saw the Inspector nod.

  He came back then to Marshalt. “Okay, son,” he said. “Let’s go.” He nodded to me, and the three of us started for Carlotta’s little office in the back. Jaffre stopped us.

  “I want him,” Mudd said, jerking a thumb toward me. “He came down with me. I want him.” Jaffre nodded again doubtfully, and we went on back through an aisle of white faces, Marshalt in front, I following Mudd. As we went into the little office I heard Bud Fenston, his voice desperate, yell: “Wait!”

  I turned and saw him half rise before a big cop standing behind his chair shoved him back down.

  We sat down in the office, Mudd behind the desk. “You killed him,” Mudd said. “What did you do it for?”

  “No,” Marshalt said, and his voice was little more than a whisper. “No.”

  Mudd said amiably: “You shot him, all right.” He turned to me and barked: “The shot came from his table?”

  “I—yes,” I stammered. “It looked like it.”

  “No,” Marshalt said again in that small voice. “No.”

  “Your sister speaks with a broad A, doesn’t she?” Mudd asked then, unexpectedly.

  “Why, yes, but she hadn’t anything—”

  “She called me up,” Mudd said. “You shot him. Where’s the gun?”

  “I didn’t,” Marshalt said. “I didn’t.” Then suddenly his expression changed. “Yes,” he said dully, “I killed him. He had some letters—my sister’s. He was blackmailing her, trying to. Yes, I killed him. Let’s go.”

  “Wait a minute,” Mudd said. He looked puzzled and the heavy creases in his face deepened. “Where’s the gun?”

  Marshalt stuck his hand into his inside jacket pocket. “Here it is,” he said, “What difference does it make? I lost my nerve and ran.”

  Mudd took the gun, and holding it by the barrel with his handkerchief, he sniffed it. He grunted.

  “I’m glad Stein’s dead,” Marshalt said slowly. “The letters were old letters. I don’t know how he got hold of them. They didn’t mean anything, but they looked as if they did. My sister wants to marry Bud Fenston,” he concluded disjointedly.

  “Son,” Mudd said, and his voice sounded as though he were trying to make it kindly, “go out there and sit down. Give me your word you won’t say anything to anyone, until I tell you or send you word. Give me your word.”

  “All right,” Marshalt said. “What difference does it make? I’ll give my word.”

  When Marshalt had left, Mudd called me to the desk. The gun was lying there. “What kind of gun is that?” he asked me. “Don’t touch it.”

  “It’s a thirty-eight,” I said, “seven-shot automatic—say, what in the blazes is this? You’re not blind. You know more about guns than I do.”

  Mudd picked it up and began polishing it with his handkerchief. “I may want you to take a message for me,” he said, “and I won’t have time to explain—if you take the message. If anything happens in here in the next fifteen minutes, I want you to pick up the gun on the desk and put it in your pocket, and throw it in the river going home. And then forget all about it.” He left then, but in a minute he was back, and Bud Fenston was with him.

  He didn’t question Fenston. Fenston didn’t give him time. When he saw the gun on the table, he said quickly, his voice tense: “That’s my gun. I killed Stein. Arnold grabbed the gun away from me. I killed him. It’s my gun.”

  “You shot him?” Mudd asked.

  “Yes, I shot him. I—I had to. Arnold grabbed the gun away from me.”

  Mudd grinned. “What did you shoot him for?”

  “That’s my affair,” Fenston said defiantly.”

  “All right. All right.” Mudd’s voice was soothing. “Will you go out there and sit down and not say anything, not say anything to anyone until I send you word? Will you give me your word? Your word of honor?”

  “It won’t involve Miss Marshalt or Arnold?” Fenston asked, and keen hope showed in his face.

  “No,” Mudd said. “My word on that.”

  “All right,” Fenston said. And Mudd let him go.

  He turned to me. “Open the window,” he said. “From the bottom. What sort of a drop is it to the ground?”

  I looked down out of the window. “No drop at all,” I said. “Six feet, maybe.” And then, because I couldn’t keep back any longer, though I knew it wouldn’t do me any good, I blurted out a question. “What’s the answer? Fenston killed him—Marshalt killed him. Which one did? And why all this stuff about the gun, the window? Tell me something?”

  “I’ll tell you this,” Mudd said. “I’m the greatest detective that ever hit the city of White Falls, and there’s no question about that. Let me handle this case. Let me try to solve a case without you buttin’ in with a lot of questions. And if I solve it, you keep your trap shut. You do what I tell you and keep your trap shut. I know what I’m doing. You watch.”

  “But,” I said, trying to keep exasperation out of my voice, “one of those boys is bound to have done it. There’s the gun, and there’s the motive. Why all this business about letting you solve the case? The case is solved.”

  Mudd looked at me. “Sit down there in the corner,” he said to me, “and let me be the detective.” And so I did.

  He went out then, but in a minute he came back, with Junky Rothfuss.

  Mudd sat down at the desk and beckoned Rothfuss to the chair by the window. “Well, Junky,” Mudd said, and though his voice was soft, it gave me a shivery feeling, “it’s nice to see you here. You’re heeled, I guess?”

  “I got a permit, copper, from the sheriff’s office,” Junky Rothfuss growled.

  “Okay, Junky. Just routine. Let me see the rod,” Mudd said.

  Junky Rothfuss looked at Mudd a minute. “Sure,” he said. He reached under his coat and handed Mudd a gun. Mudd took it, holding it by the barrel
with his handkerchief.

  “I don’t want my prints on any gun of yours, Junky,” he said good-humoredly.

  I noticed then, suddenly, that the gun on the desk was gone.

  “Yeah,” Mudd said, sitting down behind the desk. “Thirty-eight automatic. Nice gun.” He laid it in his lap. “Now let me see the permit, Junky.”

  Rothfuss dug in his billfold and handed Mudd a card. Mudd looked at it carelessly, picked up the gun with his handkerchief and handed it back with the card. “All shipshape, Junky!”

  Junky Rothfuss replaced the gun and card. “Talk fast, copper,” he said. “I got other things to do besides listenin’ to you gab. I gotta get home.”

  “All right, Junky,” Mudd said evenly. “You’ll get home—home through the green door! Home to the old easy-chair. You’ve been away too long.”

  Junky Rothfuss grinned, and his grin was mirthless too. “Make ’em up as you go along, flatfoot?” he asked.

  And Mudd grinned back. “Carlotta was your girl, wasn’t she, Junky? Carlotta was your girl, and you had shot off your kisser about rubbin’ out Ike Stein if he didn’t stay away. That was dangerous talk, Junky. I thought you were smarter than that. Lots of people heard you. It even got around so bad that the dumb coppers heard about it.”

  Junky Rothfuss made his voice weary. “You got nothin’ on me. And I’m gettin’ sleepy. Speak your piece.”

  “Well,” Mudd said, “you’re the best suspect we got. We’ll have to run you in, Junky.”

  “You won’t make that hold, copper,” Junky Rothfuss said. “I’ll be out in an hour. I seen the guy that let Ike have it. It was the Fenston punk, and the kid with him grabbed the gun and run.”

  “Yes,” Mudd said. “We’ll make it stick. We’re gonna burn you, Junky. We’ll make it stick.” He paused a moment, and lit a cigarette. “Who’ll believe a member of one of the town’s finest families would kill a rat like Stein for no reason, when they know that you’d threatened to kill him yourself for a damned good one?”

  Rothfuss didn’t change expression except a hair’s breadth, but it converted his face into a sneer. “You got nothing on me,” he repeated.

  “Yes,” Mudd went on as if he hadn’t heard him. “They shave your head, and they hook the plates on tight to your legs, and then they pull the volts through you. The scientists say it doesn’t hurt, but they don’t know. It looks to me like it hurts when the smoke comes up, and you smell the old burning flesh, and you sort of jerk and twitch—”

  I sat tense, listening to Mudd’s droning voice, dripping conviction and grim assurance, and I wondered.

  “It looks like it hurts plenty—and nobody has ever come back to say it didn’t.”

  “You’ve jumped your trolley,” said Rothfuss. But his smile was mirthless.

  Mudd said evenly: “We’ve frisked everybody in the joint. The gun ain’t there. The gun in your holster has been fired once. The ballistics boys will check the slug with the one in Ike Stein’s head, and they’ll prove it came out of your gun. The one in your holster.”

  Junky Rothfuss jerked his gun, and he sniffed the barrel. He whipped the clip open and looked. He sat there tense, the gun in his hand.

  Mudd had his service revolver out, and he was leveling on Junky Rothfuss.

  Junky put the gun back under his coat. Mudd said slowly, putting his own gun up too: “I’ve been after you for two years, Junky. And now I’ve got you framed. Framed cold!”

  “Switched guns, eh?” Junky Rothfuss whispered.

  “You guessed it,” Mudd told him. “Here’s your gun.” He laid another thirty-eight automatic on the desk.

  And Junky Rothfuss moved, a fraction of an inch only, it seemed to me. And suddenly there was the gun in his hand again, and he fired once as Mudd slid down behind the desk.

  I half jumped up as Junky snaked over the window-sill. I couldn’t help it. I figured that it was suicide, but I liked Joe Mudd. I was on my feet and starting to move as Junky saw me and turned, one arm crooked over the window-ledge, his gun in the other.

  But I started to move forward even as Junky began bringing his gun into careful alignment. Then I heard Mudd’s voice as he crawled around the desk.

  “Here’s one for Red Armstrong, Junky!” the voice said. And there was a shot. I saw Rothfuss’ thin-lipped snarling mouth go suddenly, horribly, red and round. And his arm relaxed, and there was the empty window.

  I grabbed the gun off the desk and I stuffed it into my pocket as Jaffre broke into the door then, a sawed-off shotgun in his hands.

  “Junky Rothfuss,” Mudd said, standing up. “Killed while attempting to escape, He’s out the window there. His gun has been fired twice, and the ballistics men will find the slug in Ike’s head was the first one. You can tell the people to go home.” He walked over to me and hit me on the shoulder, and then started awkwardly peeling off his coat, and I noticed one hand dripping blood.

  “Damn,” he said to me. “You scared me when you jumped up. What were you gonna do—bite him?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted shakily, feeling foolish; but I looked up and saw Mudd looking at me with a funny light in his eyes, and I quit feeling foolish because his look was one of respect. And I was suddenly proud. Joe Mudd didn’t respect or admire many things.

  “Send the sawbones in here, Chief,” Mudd said, turning, and unbuttoning his shirt with one hand, clumsily. “I gave him too much head start. He got lucky and nicked me. I must be gettin’ slow.”

  He turned to me and added, bending so no one could hear: “Go out and tell the kids how it is—all three of ’em.” Straightening up, he concluded; in a normal voice: “And come up to the hotel pretty soon, and I’ll tell you the end of that story.”

  “Okay,” I told him, but as I made my way to Marshalt’s table, it occurred to me that I knew the end of the story now.

  So I told it to Bud Fenston, and Marshalt, and Marshalt’s sister, while they drove me home; and they stopped on the bridge over the river, and I threw the gun a mile.

  BUTTERFLY OF DEATH, by Harold Gluck

  On that particular Friday evening, I was exceedingly tired. Working for Frank Parker, of Parker Publications, wasn’t exactly the type of work in which you could take it easy. My job was to edit three of his magazines, Detective Adventures, Science and Crime, and Private Eye. It meant spending hours reading all kinds of manuscripts, good, bad, and indifferent. Which all accounted for the fact that at about 7:30 I tried to relax in the easy chair that faced the street, in the living room of my apartment on East 53rd Street.

  I closed my eyes to get some kind of relief. The meal I had eaten at Luigi’s was light; there were thousands of little round red dots dancing around my two eyeballs. I opened both eyes as though to chase them away; it was futile.

  The phone rang twice. “Odd” was the only comment I made to myself. I had a private, unlisted, number—known only to my editor, the printer, and my personal physician. Not once had my phone rung during the past year. I arose, went over to my desk, and lifted the receiver from the hook.

  A muffled voice asked, “Joe Delaney?”

  Mechanically I replied, “Yes, who is this and what do you wish?”

  An odd kind of a chuckle hit my eardrum. “You’re Joe Delaney,” repeated the voice, and then it added, “So you think you can take my little Butterfly away from me and nothing will happen to you?”

  Remember, I was tired, and that accounted for the fact my brain cells failed to react quickly. Something had to be said, and I went searching for words. Then I found them. “What kind of a trick is this?” was what finally came from my lips.

  “This isn’t a gag,” was the reply. “I’m going to make your life a living hell, just like you made mine. And don’t think I’m kidding; you’re going to be tortured, and when you have suffered enough, then I’ll kill you.”

  Nice words to hear over a phone. I was getting back to myself and trying to think a mile a second. “There are lots of Joe Delaneys in the phone book,�
� I protested; “You got the wrong one.”

  “No,” was the reply, “I got the right one. The one who works as an editor at Parker Publications and thinks in his spare time he can play around with my wife. You damaged my butterfly; I’m going to damage you.”

  This was getting on what was left of my nerves. “I’m going to hang up now,” I shouted through the mouthpiece of the phone.

  “Still think I’m kidding,” the voice continued. “I’ll show you I’m not bluffing. Wait fifteen minutes, then walk down on the east side of 47th Street, between Ninth and Tenth Avenues, and see what happens. Then you’ll know whether this is a joke or the beginning of the end for you, Joe Delaney.”

  That was all. I heard a little laugh, and then I, too, hung up.

  Back I went to my easy chair to try a bit of thinking. This had to be a joke. Some fool who knew me was having fun at my expense. My inner brain snapped back, But if you don’t take that dare and walk out, you will never know whether it is a joke.

  I arose from my easy chair and looked at my wrist watch. If I walked quickly, I could just make it. When I got downstairs, my heart was beating so rapidly, I realized it would be silly to walk. I hailed a cab and got out at 47th Street and Ninth Avenue. I walked slowly towards Tenth Avenue. As I passed an alley, I turned instinctively, just pressing my head to one side. From somewhere out of the alley came a baseball, thrown with tremendous force, just missing my skull. It hit against the side of the wall and fell to the ground. I gasped for breath, then came a little unconscious hysterical laughter from my lips.

  “Some kids playing baseball,” I said to reassure myself.

  I picked the ball up and walked down the alley, looking for the kids so I could return their baseball. Yet I knew deep down in my heart that I wouldn’t find any youngsters.

  Then, slowly, I walked home, trying to make sense out of this situation. It wasn’t a joke; there actually existed a person who was determined to torture and eventually kill me. Why? He must be some kind of a nut, who had a mistaken idea that I had played around with his wife; somehow, I had to get hold of that fellow.

  When I reached my apartment, I sank into that easy chair, completely exhausted. Maybe I slept for an hour or two. But I had a nightmare; I saw an executioner trying to throw stones at me. He missed the first five. Then the sixth hit my head, bounced off and landed on a large bell. I could hear it ring. It rang, and rang, and rang.