The Complete Cases of the Marquis of Broadway, Volume 1

by John Lawrence

  Sweat stood out on the gnome-like, big-nosed pawnbroker’s face as he crouched beside the wad of bills on the scarred oak desk.

  “Now, take that swivel-chair and bring it over under the cuckoo-clock. Set the hands at ten minutes after twelve.”

  “Marty”—the choked whisper was strained, frightened—“Marty, have you blown your cork? Are—are you sick, Marty?”

  “Sid, shut up. Do as I tell you, or else.”

  When the clock was set, he said: “Put the chair back. Now open the glass front of that hanging bookcase.

  The hunched old man stiffened. His big eyes, terrified, bewildered, searched the other’s shaded, small blue ones. He faltered once. He was like a man with a weight on each foot. He went to the bookcase, swung it open. What had appeared to be books were merely parts of bindings glued to the glass. The bookcase, itself, was filled with an immense camera, whose black snout pointed at the door to the pawnshop opposite.

  “Does it work just as well through the glass as it does open?”

  “Ye-es.”

  “Then close it.”

  The squat old man had to reach high up to refasten the catch.

  “Now take one step sideways, Sid.”

  Something in the tone whipped the old man’s head over his shoulder, even as he stepped aside. His eyes went frantic “Marty! No—”

  The black gun spurted flame and roar.

  The lead entered under his left ear, smacked his grotesque contorted face flat to the brown plaster. A huge gout of blood slapped the wall a foot away. He got a scream out—a macabre, retching squeal. He was bounced back as his knees collapsed, fell on his back, almost at the feet of the motionless killer, blood pouring from his blown-out face.

  THE killer moved like chain-lightning, in a series of obscure moves. He darted over and snapped the office into darkness, returned and groped open the connecting door to the looming pawnshop. Then he took up a position with his back to it, crouched over in the darkness, his gun covering the bookcase from the archway. He suddenly jumped a few inches backward, without changing his pose or savage look on his face. For the space of three heart-beats, he stayed there in the silence, then jumped again into the dingy, dark little office, closed the connecting door, hastily snapped on the dim light again.

  He dragged the swivel-chair back to the position under the cuckoo-clock, restored the hands of the clock to the correct time, swung the chair back to its place before the desk and slipped swiftly to the door. The still warm gun he jammed into a side pocket, the scooped-up wads of money down the front of his coat. His black-gloved fingers were none too steady as they snatched at the locks on the door.

  When it swung open, he sent one flaming glance around the room, switched out the light and stepped out into the cement court, pulling the door closed after him. The court was still silent, peaceful. He ran across it, down the areaway. He re-entered the little dim-lit slot that was the Atlas Building’s basement, retraced his steps up and through the lobby, made his parked, purring car again without being hailed.

  He sent it shooting downtown, drew a sleeve across his wet forehead, angled crosstown and back, doubling and redoubling on himself, a dozen times before he finally brought up on a black little Greenwich Village Street, twenty-five minutes later. He left the motor running, while he whipped off the hard hat and set it on the seat beside him, struggled out of the tight black silk scarf and black Chesterfield.

  Gun and money he dropped in the glove-compartment of the coupe, exchanging them for a squat bottle of colorless liquid and a soft rag.

  The man whose reflection did full justice to the Marquis of Broadway began to disappear. As the rag scoured the red stain from his cheeks, he became more and more a different man from the hagridden police officer. And when he stripped the tight, black rubbly wig from his head, he looked a good many years younger than the man whom one person in nine on Broadway knew by sight.

  Swiftly, he made a bundle of the props, uncorked the squat bottle.

  When he drove swiftly away, there was a brightly blazing thick mass in the gutter of the dark little street.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Man Who Followed Himself

  IT was the first time the Marquis had been framed. Rage had him speechless—rage and cold, instant perception of what he was up against. This was cool, devastating challenge to the one thing that kept the Broadway squad alive—prestige. Someone had dared thumb his nose at the Marquis of Broadway. He had to smash the killer mercilessly enough so that snickers would have no chance to start along the Stem.

  This was his unending headache. If he had had any nerves, he would have long ago gone crazy. Every case was tensely critical this way, till it was established that prestige was not involved. Not public prestige, nor newspaper, but a darker sort. He performed for ten thousand unseen pairs of eyes—the grifters of the Stem, thugs, cadets, blackmailers, thieves, murderers—the cleverest, most ruthless set of criminals in the world, drawn inevitably to the world’s lushest sucker-mine, Broadway.

  He had an almost impossible job, in the first place. With twenty-two men, he had to rule half the city’s thieves. He did the impossible because his squad was feared like no other force in the country. He held his section under his thumb with the autocracy of a czar. He did not even attempt to operate under regular police rules—he couldn’t. Actually, he hardly considered the squad as part of the force. His men were an isolated little group, virtually a law unto themselves.

  They were a strange company. He had to have, at all costs, shrewd, ruthless, discreet men. He had a good proportion of the renegades of the department under him. Big Johnny Berthold, with him ten of the eighteen years, had almost been convicted of bribe-taking while on the homicide squad. Asa McGuire, chubby, red-headed Irishman and possessor of a camera-eye, had been caught driving a stolen automobile which had been used in a bank hold-up. Zeke Immerman, long-lashed, almost girlish-looking, little and plump, had almost beaten a speakeasy proprietor into insanity while head of one of the raiding squads, in an alleged attempt at extortion. Yet they were the kind of men he had to have. They were the only kind of men who could understand the credo of the squad—that thieves operated only within the limits permitted by the Marquis, that disasters considerably worse than those laid down in statute books happened suddenly to anyone who dared ignore the strictures imposed by the head of the Broadway squad.

  He was no egoist. This was simply the only possible way to operate—by terror and driving the thought into crooked minds that he, and the squad, were almighty. In other words, by building and maintaining a prestige so extravagant that twenty-two men could crack the whip over ten thousand thieves.

  And now someone had thumbed his nose at that prestige.

  THE wet photograph lay on the scarred oak desk. Red flushed darkly in the Marquis’ temples as he stared down at it with himself—for so the dripping photograph seemed—himself on the point of murder. Even the cuckoo-clock over his head was clear, the looming pawnshop behind. Framing his shoulders, the steel bars over the pawnshop show-windows shone and sparkled. He said, so quietly that only two of the five men in the death-room could hear: “How does this happen?”

  “That camera is a black-light camera,” Unwin, of homicide said. “Black light covers the threshold of the door. Anybody coming in, even in the dark, gets took. When we got here, that picture was in the camera.”

  Sprackling, red-faced little dandy of the D.A.’s office, added: “Sid put it in only two weeks ago. The wiring didn’t run in the same cable as the other alarms that the killer bugged.”

  The cuckoo-clock suddenly chirped twice.

  The Marquis looked up at the cuckoo-clock, the open bookcase, the stiffened dead man, the rifled safes. His own men—swart, plump little Zeke Immerman and big Johnny Berthold—stood by the body, hollow-eyed. Black gloves flat in his Chesterfield pockets, he turned to walk round the scarred desk.

  Sprackling, blocking the back door, started, dropped his pince-nez. His sly, green eye
s jumped toward the big, raw-boned Unwin. “I—”

  The Marquis’ voice was like a knife. “This is a bad time to get in my way, mister.”

  Sprackling’s eyes thinned, then he set his lips primly and stood aside, looking daggers.

  The Marquis went out into the cement court, Unwin at his heels. Staring at the still noisy Atlas Building, he said: “That’s a natural bolt-hole if ever there was one. No luck in the lobby of the building?”

  “Not a soul saw him.”

  After a moment, as the Marquis stood motionless in the dark, Unwin turned on his flashlight. “You want to see the bug?”

  “Thanks.”

  They went to the corner of the building. The Marquis squatted down, took Unwin’s flashlight and held the beam on the brass disk in the little leaden cable mouth. After a minute, he turned the flash beam around him in a wide circle over the cement court. He snapped it off, got to his feet.

  “How much did he steal?”

  Unwin shrugged, “Sid was supposed to carry fifty Gs.”

  When they went back inside, the Marquis walked over and squatted down by the dead man, studied him with special reference to head, hands and wound. His small eyes were smoldering when he finally straightened slowly, black-gloved hands flat in his pockets.

  The cuckoo-clock ticked restlessly, impatiently.

  Sprackling’s grating voice said with an air of exhausted patience, “Now have you covered everything, Mr. Marquis?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Good God! Am I to assume that you cannot explain that photograph?”

  The Marquis’ blue eyes were flint. “Sure. It’s a clown standing in that doorway.”

  “Possibly you noticed the clock above the doorway?”

  “Right off.”

  “You couldn’t say what clown, Mr. Marquis—or, putting it another way, where were you at twelve-ten, Mr. Marquis?”

  The Marquis’ eyes got narrow slowly. He opened his mouth, closed it. “I’ll have to figure that out sometime. Who did you say you were?”

  The prosecutor got fiery-colored. “Sprackling’s the name. I represent the State of New York. I am conducting a murder inquiry—or hadn’t you noticed?”

  “Sprackling,” the Marquis said thoughtfully. “There was a brainless louse named Sprackling put his nose in my district two years ago. He was a political climber trying to get somebody to notice him and maybe put him in the money. He tried to raise a smell about a thug I killed resisting arrest. I dropped a word downtown and had that Sprackling’s ears yanked back in line. I told him if I ever caught him on my beat again, I’d kick his teeth in. Maybe you’ve got a twin brother with the same name?”

  Sprackling was purple. He spoke through clenched teeth. “If that is all you have to say—”

  A patrolman opened the door, stuck his head in. “This gent wants to know—”

  A MAN of about the Marquis’ build, wearing a pork-pie hat with a red feather in it, belted camel’s-hair overcoat, fawn spats and gloves, pushed the door fully open. His fifty-year-old face was red and irritated, his eyes worried behind beribboned pince-nez. The Marquis recognized him as a Doctor Welt who had abandoned medical practice five years before. He was now assistant director for the Lubins, producers of girl-shows.

  “Marty, make this numskull let me go home, will you?”

  Sprackling stepped forward. “You can save your breath, Doctor, Mr. Marquis has no authority here. He is present as a suspect—not as an officer!”

  The doctor blinked.

  The Marquis’ soft voice said: “How do you get in this, Doc?”

  “Why, I was the one who—that is, I had some business with Sid. I phoned him earlier in the evening and warned him I would drop in at around one. You may know that most of his business was—well, loaning money to regular clients, during the night?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, when I did come here, at one, nobody answered the door. I finally called the precinct, and they eventually broke in and—well, found his body.”

  “Have you an alibi for twelve-ten?”

  “Yes, yes! I’ve given it to him a dozen times. I was playing cards at the Astor since ten-thirty.”

  “Fine. Then you can go home.”

  “You cannot!” Sprackling roared. “I wish to question—”

  The Marquis made a head-sign to Johnny Berthold. The big blond giant lunged at Sprackling. The prosecutor choked, stumbled back, white-faced sputtering.

  “Another grunt and he goes in the alley,” the Marquis said. “Immie, put the doctor in a cab. You’re a sergeant and you outrank any of those gumshoes out there except Unwin. You don’t want the doc, do you, Unwin?”

  “Eh? Well—no.”

  “All right, Immie—out. I could use a couple tickets to that Scanties’ opening next week, Doc.”

  “You—you shall have them, Marty.”

  The plump little long-lashed Immerman steered him out.

  Sprackling’s face was livid, his eyes wild. He yelled: “Very well! Then you are under arr—”

  “Save it!” The Marquis’ voice was like a whip.

  Sprackling’s forehead looked ready to burst. He almost screamed: “Save it for what? No, I won’t save it. For once in your murderous, grafting career, you’ve slipped, Marquis. You’re trapped. That picture will burn you, and all your blustering and grandstanding won’t save you. I didn’t think of it as anything but a fake, till I saw how it knocked you off your feet—startled you so that you couldn’t even think of a lie to cover it.”

  “Listen, blockhead, I have an alibi.”

  “Ah, finally! Well, you thought too slowly. Not that I wonder. Must have been the shock of a lifetime finding that, during your vacation, all your plans had been torpedoed by that thief-trap that Lajoie—”

  Johnny Berthold’s blond face had been getting redder. Now he reached big hands out and yanked the prosecutor’s tie so tight that the other strangled, gulped, clawed to untie it. Berthold said: “Shut up. The boss is talking.”

  THE Marquis’ voice was cold, crisp. “If time was any less vital, I’d play that out—make you arrest me. Then I’d have your political hide if it was the last thing I did. You’re just lucky that I can’t waste time going through the motions. Get this—and get it the first time. This frame has blown a fuse. It was jobbed up to catch my original schedule. I was driving down from the Adirondacks, and I should have arrived home at eleven-thirty, been alone in my place at twelve. I wasn’t. We burnt out some wiring and were delayed in Croton. We left Croton at twenty minutes past twelve. Shut up till I’m finished.

  “The person that drove me down was Hugo Durig, with whom I spent my month’s vacation. That’s my alibi—and don’t make yourself any more foolish by this grandstanding. Come on Johnny—Zeke.”

  Sprackling squealed in desperation: “Hugo Durig—a drunkard, a skirt-chaser, a playboy!”

  “Yeah. And his father the Hall’s third biggest campaign contributor. Try calling the boy a liar and see where you land.”

  For a minute Sprackling stood panting, fists clenched, eyes flaming, crazy. Then he bit shrilly: “Very well. I’ll check your alibi. You may wait here.”

  Dark crimson was staining the Marquis’ forehead again. “You’re asking for it, Sprackling—and you’re awfully liable to get it. I’m not waiting here, or any of that nonsense, and you know it. You have my alibi and I don’t care a damn if you never check it! Furthermore, understand this. The Broadway squad is handling this murder, not you—or anyone like you. If you get in my hair, in any way, shape or form, I’ll have you beaten up. You haven’t the brains to see what this means to us, so I’ll have to leave it that way.”

  “You—you—”

  THE Marquis walked out. Immerman and Berthold followed and also Unwin. At the street door, Unwin said worriedly, “Where can I get in touch with you, Marty?” His face was strained, baffled.

  “Call my apartment, Charlie. There
’ll be someone there to take a message, at any rate.”

  “A Jap, I hear.”

  “Sure. The best is none too good, Charlie.”

  At the bar in Dave’s Blue Room, Immerman’s long-lashed black eyes were bewildered. “So we’re putting the boots to the D.A.’s office. What is this?”

  “That gent is a climber. He doesn’t rate anywhere downtown. He bought his appointment, I guess, and he’s been trying to figure how to make his money back ever since. I had to scare him off—he could be trouble right now. With something on me, he could talk pretty big. He—” He broke off abruptly, eyes narrowing reflectively. “Say, I wonder if the little rat could have cooked this up himself, just to get his teeth in somewhere. He’s about my build.”

  Immerman and Berthold exchanged glances. “No soap, Marty. He has an alibi—a beaut. He was with us.”

  “What?”

  “He hunted me up around eleven, insisted I get hold of Johnny and we were all together till the alarm got to us. That was how he got in on it.”

  The Marquis’ forehead wrinkled faintly. “That’s a funny one. He deliberately looked you up?”

  Immerman nodded. “Sure. We were working a case—one that happened while you were away. He insisted we lay off and go for a couple of drinks with him at Lindy’s.”

  The Marquis drank half his drink thoughtfully.

  “Hey, you think the object of this whole killing was to job you?”

  “No. Sid carried fifty thousand in his small safe. That was the object. Jobbing me was secondary, but maybe the party looked enough like me to give him the idea, or something. Immie, is this other case you’re working very pressing?”

  “Johnny can handle it.”

  “Then go and find out where Sprackling was between nine o’clock and the time he braced you.”

  “You think— O.K. Where will I find you?”

  “Call my place and get or leave a message.”

  “You won’t be there?”

  “No.” The Marquis took from his pocket the item that he had filched in the dark from the lead alarm cable behind the pawnshop—the brass disk. He laid it on the bar.