Boston Blackie

by Jack Boyle

  After an afternoon spent in helping Ann with her final preparations, Mary was back in her own apartment recounting the events of the exciting day to Blackie, for she had caught from Ann the spirit of the occasion.

  “The Glad-rags Kid is there now. He was to come at six,” Mary said, glancing at the clock. “Oh, I wish I could be there just for a second to see Ann’s face when he sees all she’s done.”

  A taxicab swung round the corner on two wheels and stopped before the door. There was a hurried ring at the bell.

  “Something has happened,” cried Mary as Blackie opened the door.

  “Here’s a package and a note,” said the taxi chauffeur. “It’s from Mrs. Coyne over on Lyons Street, and she promised me a five-dollar tip if I’d get here quick enough for you to answer her over the ’phone in five minutes. Four minutes is up already, lady, and I need that five-spot.”

  Mary tore open the note and read its scribbled contents; then she tore away the paper from the package. Within was a yellow pellet as thin and hard as a board.

  “Oh, look, look, Blackie,” she cried, midway between tears and laughter. “It’s supposed to be a biscuit.” She handed Blackie the note, and he read it aloud with occasional pauses for laughter.

  “‘Dear Mary: Tom is here and has asked for hot biscuit with dinner. I’ve made them twice exactly as the cook-book says, and they’re all like the thing in the package. Dinner is ready and waiting, but I’ve got to have biscuit. For the love of Mike, what’s wrong? ’Phone me quick, or I am disgraced—and everything else has been going so beautifully. Quick, Mary. Ann the Simp.”

  Blackie dropped the biscuit to the table. It struck with a resounding thud, bounced to the floor and rolled away like a silver dollar.

  “Oh, oh, oh, this is too good!” he cried, collapsing into a chair, helpless with laughter. “She’s making ammunition, not biscuits.”

  “Don’t laugh, Blackie,” said Mary reprovingly. “It’s serious to poor Ann.”

  She recovered the sample of her friend’s cookery and broke it open. It was as yellow as a grapefruit. Mary ran to the ’phone. Ann, evidently waiting, answered instantly.

  “It’s yellow Ann, and it didn’t rise at all,” Mary cried. “It looks as if you had used baking soda. What? No—no, the book doesn’t say baking soda; it says baking powder—the little red can you put on the second shelf in the pantry. A teaspoonful and a half, Ann, and mix the dough just as it tells you in the book. Yes, hurry. Call me after dinner.”

  Two hours later the ’phone rang.

  “Oh, Mary,” said Ann’s voice softly over the wire, “the biscuits were fine, and the dinner was just perfect, the Kid says. When he finished, he said: ‘No more restaurants for me, Annie—you’re some cook!’ He’s sitting before the fire in the big chair with his feet on a footstool, and oh, Mary dear, I’m so happy.”

  Mary repeated Ann’s words to Blackie as they sat together before their own fire. Her hand slipped itself into his.

  “All Ann’s eggs are in one basket,” she murmured. “I pray from the bottom of my heart that the bottom doesn’t fall out.”

  CHAPTER XX

  BLACKIE’S PROPHECY COMES TRUE

  During the months that followed, the Gladrags Kid became a conspicuous figure in petty police circles in San Francisco—so conspicuous that the newspapers discovered him and made the most of the discovery. He developed a perfect genius for publicity, the one indulgence a crook may not permit himself. After a trip with Ann to a Puget Sound city,—a trip from which they brought back a palmful of gems that made the eyes of old Crowder gleam avariciously,—the Kid bought a bright vermilion racing car which a salesman solemnly assured him was an exact duplicate of Barney Oldfield’s. His first taste of newspaper publicity followed the day on which he was arrested for speeding slightly over fifty miles an hour along a crowded driveway in Golden Gate Park. He appeared before the police judge next morning bedecked with diamonds and in apparel that made the room gasp, and gave reporters a chance to comment humorously on the descriptive justice of his nickname. The judge fined him fifty dollars. The Glad-rags Kid peeled a hundred-dollar bill from a thick roll and tossed it to the court clerk.

  “Buy yourself a smoke with the change,” he said carelessly. “I haven’t time to wait.”

  In a second he was gone, and an amazed courtroom through open windows heard the staccato reports of his giant motor fading away in the distance at a speed that caused the judge to remark: “I hope to have the pleasure of fining that debonair young gentleman again.”

  A reporter with a real gift for fiction discovered that the Glad-rags Kid was a New York gunman (and the Kid, though he had never seen the eastern slopes of the Sierras, tacitly confirmed the charge) and wrote a page story for his paper’s Sunday magazine called “New York’s Mankillers Invade the Wild West.” It was profusely decorated with photographs of the Kid in his newest and most startling examples of the tailoring art, and contained a circumstantial account of “My Bloodiest Street-battle” over the Kid’s signature. The Glad-rags Kid clipped that page from the paper and carried it about in a wallet from which he offered it for inspection at the slightest provocation. Also he began to carry a gun, slung under his armpit, crook-fashion, where by carelessly throwing back his coat he could display it in cafes and saloons when opportunity offered.

  “He’s a thoroughbred notoriety hound,” said Blackie disgustedly to Mary. “His one joy is to be the spectacular figure in the center of the calcium. It will take all of Ann’s cleverness to keep them out of prison if he keeps on. Also he’s becoming a familiar figure at the downtown restaurants and the beach dancing pavilions. Sometimes Ann is with him, and more often she isn’t. I’m afraid her little bit of Heaven is going to be no more than that.”

  “I know,” answered Mary mournfully. “She never says anything, but I can see the truth in her face. She never comes over here any more and very seldom calls up. She don’t even go downtown or to the Palms. I’m afraid she spends many a lonely evening beside a big chair that’s vacant by the fireplace. I never see her with the cookbook any more.”

  The next evening Ann called up Mary to ask if she and Blackie would dine with them at an Italian restaurant noted less for food than for its dancing.

  “Let’s go and try to cheer her up a hit,” suggested Mary to her husband. “There was something in her voice over the ’phone that it hurt me to hear.”

  All through the dinner the Glad-rags Kid monopolized the conversation, dividing his time between discussing clothes and diamonds and berating the waiter for faulty service. The men were dawdling over cigarettes and a liqueur when the orchestra began an old waltz. The Glad-rags Kid turned to Alibi Ann.

  “Come, honey,” he said, “let’s dance.”

  Ann rose quickly, and they glided away.

  “Did you see the light that came into her eyes when he asked her to dance?” asked Blackie of Mary.

  “Yes,” said she, “I saw it. Poor Ann! She’s clinging desperately to the remnants of her happiness, and she asks so very little and gives so very much. What would he be without her?”

  “Just what he is anyway—nothing,” answered Blackie.

  As Ann, flushed and happy, returned to the table and sank into her chair with the last strains of the waltz, the Glad-rags Kid glanced across the dining room to a table where a young girl sat alone.

  “I see Dessie Devries, the dancer, across the room,” he said. “I’m going to invite her over to our table. She’s good company, and besides, she’s anxious to get on here as an entertainer, and I’m going to introduce her to Williams, the manager.”

  For just a second Alibi Ann’s body stiffened. Then with a forced lip-smile that revealed in an instant the utter soul-weariness of a woman consciously losing a vital struggle, she looked up at her husband.

  “Yes, do bring her over, Tom,” she said. “I would like to meet her.”

  The Glad-rags Kid threaded his way between the table
s to the one where the girl sat. She looked up at him with a confident, welcoming smile; they talked a moment, and started back to the now silent table from which Ann with half-shielded eyes was studying every detail of the newcomer’s appearance.

  Alibi Ann saw in Dessie Devries a slender girl, young, attractive and vivacious, with great coils of golden hair low on her head. If the dancer was conscious of the atmosphere of constraint, she ignored it, and in a moment was chatting across the table to Ann and Mary—but particularly to Ann—with the easy familiarity of assured acquaintanceship. Ann, if she felt hostility, masked it beneath a concealing but thin veneer of cordiality.

  During a lull in the conversation the orchestra began the jazziest of fox trots.

  “Bully time! Let’s dance,” cried the Glad-rags Kid, rising.

  Ann, her pale face warmed by a flush of becoming color, half rose eagerly and then, as she looked up, saw Dessie Devries also rising. There was an awkward moment as their eyes met. They both looked toward the Kid.

  “Dessie and I will dance this,” he said, flushing slightly as he made the choice. Then with a clumsy attempt at playfulness and utterly unconscious of the dagger in his words, he added to Ann:

  “The time’s too fast for you, Grandma.”

  “Of course it is—sonny,” said Ann with a laugh.

  The Glad-rags Kid whirled away with Dessie Devries in his arms. Alibi Ann poured a glass of champagne—her first of the evening—and drank thirstily.

  “Youth turns to youth,” she said, looking across the table to Blackie and Mary. “It’s always been so, but until now, I never realized how inevitable it is.”

  She snapped her fingers with a reckless gesture, vividly expressive, and began to talk of inconsequential things with a careless gayety that might have deceived less keen observers than the two opposite her.

  The ferryboat Piedmont was making her final trip across the bay from Oakland to the San Francisco, shore. The few passengers she carried had found shelter from the chilling night-wind within the brilliantly lighted cabin—all but two. One of these was a woman who from the moment the boat had left the Oakland slip had been standing alone, motionless and silent, against the after-deck rail. The other was Boston Blackie, who from concealment in the shadow of the deck-house was watching her curiously.

  Not until the Piedmont had passed Goat Island did the woman raise her eyes from the inky blackness of the water. Slowly she straightened herself and turned for a moment toward the distant San Francisco shore, a bright flare of light against the black background of the night sky. The cloak that had been drawn high about her neck slipped to the deck, and Blackie, leaning forward, caught the glint of something in her hand that she had drawn from beneath the discarded garment. Without making a sound, he stepped quickly to her side and laid a hand on her arm.

  The woman trembled under the pressure of the unexpected fingers, and turned a white and haggard face toward him.

  “Ann!” cried Blackie, and reaching down, he took a bottle from between ice-cold fingers that surrendered it without resistance. A thin beam of light from his pocket flash lamp revealed the label.

  “‘Cyanide of potassium,’” he read. “So, Ann, it has come to this with you—you, Alibi Ann, the gamest of them all!”

  The woman turned away her face.

  “Why not?” she said at last in a faint, far-away voice. “Other tired ones have. Why not I?”

  She felt the pressure of the firm fingers on her arm tighten.

  “Because, Ann, you never were and never can be a quitter,” he said quietly.

  “A quitter,” she cried wonderingly. “I don’t understand.”

  “You wouldn’t leave a pal in prison,” said Blackie. “You wouldn’t abandon a pal lying sick. No! But without knowing it, you were thinking of doing just that.”

  She shook her head.

  “He doesn’t need me. He doesn’t want me. Youth turns to youth.” For the first time her voice trembled.

  “Yes, and turns into old age, too, before it finishes paying for its folly,” Blackie answered. “The Gladrags Kid hasn’t brains enough to know it, I admit, but he needs you as no one else ever did or will.”

  Alibi Ann turned to him instantly, with something like faintly kindling hope in her eyes.

  “You know him better than anybody,” Blackie went on. “Alone he couldn’t steal milk bottles from doorsteps without landing himself behind bars. He has trained himself to spend money—lots of it. He has a faked reputation as a gunman to uphold—or thinks he has. Well, easy money and that reputation, what’s the answer? You’ve played the game long enough to know, Ann. It’s prison.”

  “If you quit the Glad-rags Kid in this or any other way, I’ll tell you just what will happen. He will spend all the money you’ve left him. Then when he has to have more money to live as he wants to, he’ll try one brainless caper and land himself in prison for the rest of his days. You’ve undertaken something, Ann, that you can’t pass up You say the Kid doesn’t need you. I say you know better.”

  Boston Blackie laid the vial of cyanide in her hand.

  “There’s your bottle, Annie,” he said gently. “It’s up to you.”

  For a second the bottle lay in the hand that rested on the deck-rail. Then the fingers slowly opened and let it slip overboard, to splash faintly as it struck the water and vanished. Alibi Ann seized Blackie’s arm.

  “You’re right, dear old pal,” she whispered between sobs. “I’d have been a quitter if I’d gone where that bottle is now. I’m going back to the flat, and I’ll wait with a smiling face for him to come. I’ll play the game out, Blackie.”

  Just before daylight Boston Blackie was awakened by the telephone. Ann’s voice, very low and frightened, replied to his “Hello!”

  “It’s happened already, Blackie,” she said. “All that you predicted came true to-night. Tom has killed a man at the Trocadero Pavilion. The coppers have him, and it looks like a hard case. Thank God—and you—I’m still here to save him. Will you and Mary come over now, oh, quickly!”

  The morning newspapers carried the news in flaring headlines. At last the Glad-rags Kid, much-advertised gunman, had justified his newspaper reputation by committing deliberate murder. It had been an unusually dramatic crime, done on the crowded dancing floor of the Trocadero, under the eyes of scores of diners. The papers agreed on all the essential details. The Glad-rags Kid had come in from his racing car alone and at once appeared to resent the fact that Miss Dessie Devries, cabaret entertainer, was dancing with the manager of a downtown dining place. As the music had ended and the dancer and her escort started toward the table from which they had ordered supper, the Glad-rags Kid intercepted them.

  There had been a quick, angry exchange of words between the men, and the older had roughly shouldered the “gunman” aside. Instantly the Kid had drawn his automatic and covered his adversary. But he did not shoot. His experience in gun-play ended when he had drawn his revolver—the cue for his opponent to fade out conveniently through the nearest door and leave the “gunman” a spectacular figure in the spotlight.

  This particular antagonist, however, knew what the San. Francisco crook-world had always known—that the Glad-rags Kid was a gunman on paper only. Instead of retreating precipitately as the Kid expected, the girl’s escort had faced him.

  “Put up that gun, you four-flusher, before I stuff it down your throat,” he had commanded. “A kid’s popgun is all a cheap bluffer like you ought to be allowed to carry.”

  Then, for the first time since he had owned it, the Glad-rags Kid’s pistol had spat forth a jet of flame, and the man who had said “four-flusher” crumpled to the floor with a bullet through his heart—the price of forgetting that even a four-flusher may become the real thing when his vanity is sufficiently stung.

  The diners and dancers had fled the room, hysterical with fright—foremost among them Miss Dessie Devries—and left the Glad-rags Kid, very white and very frighten
ed, standing above the man he had killed and wondering dully how and why it had happened.

  He had been still staring down at his victim when a policeman tapped him on the shoulder.

  Long before the police auto reached the City Prison, the Glad-rags Kid was begging like a frightened child for someone among his blue-coated captors to telephone for Alibi Ann to come to him at once. He needed her now.

  It was late afternoon before Ann reached the City Prison where her husband was confined. All day she had stifled a frantic desire to rush to him with the comfort of her love and loyalty, for she knew instinctively his state of utter despair and fright. But there were other matters vastly more important that must first be arranged if the Kid was to have a fighting chance for life. Already the prosecuting attorney had announced publicly that he intended “to stamp out ‘gunmanism’ in San Francisco by insisting that the so-called Glad-rags Kid, a notorious criminal, be given the extreme penalty of the law—death on the scaffold.”

  Drennan, shrewdest of criminal lawyers, for whom Ann was waiting when he appeared at his office, listened to the story and read the papers with steadily growing gravity.

  “It’s a tough case, Ann,” he said solemnly when he had gathered all the facts, “and it’s been made a hundred times worse by this cursed reputation as a gunman he has allowed the papers to build up against him in the past. It is established that his victim was unarmed. That knocks out self-defense. Insanity doesn’t go with juries any more-—it’s been badly overdone. There were a dozen, maybe twenty witnesses. We can’t get them all out of town. I tell you frankly we’re going to be mighty lucky if we can save this kid’s neck.”

  Ann shuddered.