The Complete Cases of the Marquis of Broadway, Volume 1

by John Lawrence

  “You have a what?”

  “A control—the spirit of a young French boy that comes to me.”

  It was a second before the Marquis could make sense of it. “You’re a spiritualist?”

  She breathed, “Yes.” Her manner was strange, half bewilderment, half fanatical reverence.

  “You understand what article this note is talking about?”

  She shook her head.

  “Who knows you have a spirit control named Charles?”

  “Everybody—everybody who knows me.”

  The old man blurted, “What—what is it?” and the trembling Tommy Manson was halfway down the stairs.

  The Marquis walked across the huge room to the window, without answering.

  The girl said huskily: “A—a letter threatening—to kill me.”

  Tommy Manson gasped, came hurriedly down the rest of the stairs as the Marquis slanted the notepaper to the window, seeking fingerprints. His forehead was flushed, his eyes feverish. Johnny Berthold, at the Marquis’ shoulder, looked aghast.

  “My God—have we just been shadow-boxing? Have we got to start running down this dame’s goofy friends, now?”

  The Marquis’ jaw was tight. There was sudden bitter resolve in his undertone, “No. Homicide can have this—all of it. My God, is there no end to the insanity?”

  “The guy must have mailed the note last night after he’d set up everything to have Tommy bumped off—and before he found out his scheme hadn’t worked.”

  “Phone Homicide and have them send some men here to guard that girl—fast. Tell them we won’t wait more than ten minutes for them to get here.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Out of here. I don’t know. I won’t listen to this—any part of it. It’s too much—it’s all wrong.”

  “It’ll be plenty all wrong for the squad, if this nut does kill—”

  “Nut?” the Marquis said through tight teeth. “The schemer behind this picnic is no part of a nut, my friend. Get phoning.”

  The girl swore, up to the time that they, left, that she knew nothing whatever, understood nothing whatever, of the note.

  When they were again in Johnny Berthold’s car, the big man looked obliquely at the Marquis’ hot eyes and said: “I don’t get this, Marty. That sounds like an important angle.”

  “It probably is,” the Marquis said savagely, “but Homicide can handle it. My God, I’ve got more than I can think out, trying to handle the other.”

  “What other?”

  “Finding who was behind the shooting last night. If there’s to be another one tonight, Homicide can have it. By catching the one I’m looking for, we’ll stop him doing anything more. Go up to the Alamo. We’ll take up our life’s work of finding Titanic Johnson.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  A Message From the Dead

  THE three men in shirt sleeves, sitting in the quiet, musty hotel room eyed the Marquis with dull eyes. The window-shades were lowered and the room was in green coolness. Stacks of cards and bills, a fine silt of ashes where ashtrays had overflowed, poker chips, littered the table. The Marquis sat sideways on a fourth chair, crossed his legs.

  Titanic Johnson looked down at the bare table, trouble mirrored in his eyes. “Marty, I was a damn fool last night. You happened to catch me when I was burning up about that little rat and I kind of jumped ahead of myself. I apologize.”

  “You feel better about him, now?”

  “No, I don’t. He’s a rat and he’s still unfinished business with me. But I realize that you weren’t telling me what I assumed at all and I went off half-cocked.”

  “Fair enough,” the Marquis said. “No hard feelings. You expect to see Max Sokolow today?”

  “Some time, yes—if I ever get these gorillas out of money. We’ve been playing steadily since about ten-thirty last night and it doesn’t look like the end yet.” Then he added quickly: “That is—with the exception of a few minutes that I had to do an errand.”

  “The hotel manager told you we were here, eh?”

  “Oh yes—yes, he did mention something about it.”

  “What were you doing on Horatio Street, Titanic?”

  The plump man scowled at the table, examined one fat hand. “Well, to tell you the truth—I was down there for a pay-off from that very guy.”

  “Did you get it?”

  “No.”

  The Marquis got up and told him: “If this is an act, it’s very good. If you folks don’t know what’s going on, you might buy a newspaper sometime.” He went out, looking serenely confident but, in reality, he was almost desperate.

  Berthold’s big face was a study in anxiety as they hit the street again. “My God—we’re at a standstill. We’ve got no more leads, have we?”

  “One.” He took the gray letter from his inner pocket—the forged letterhead of Max Sokolow. “We’ll try and find who made this, maybe get a description of the person who ordered the job done. We’ll hit it hard, Johnny.”

  They did. Hour after hour slipped away. They kept in constant touch with the Homicide Squad, who were running down the spiritualist friends of the violinist, Dorothy Vernor. Nothing helpful developed, except in a negative way.

  By four o’clock in the afternoon, the Marquis had narrowed the search for the printer who had made the letterhead to a section of the city in the northwest quarter and he and Johnny Berthold were exhausted. They turned the job over to the Identification Bureau to carry on, went to the Marquis’ Central Park Apartment to freshen up, snatch a few hours sleep before making a last grim effort to crack the case inside the dead line set in the maddening, anonymous letter to the playboy’s sweetheart.

  THE chief inspector came at ten o’clock. A thin, silver man with a long thin face and shrewd, worried gray eyes, he paced the living-room.

  “If that girl dies,” he said bitterly, “there’ll be an explosion. The Broadway Squad carries the load. The newspapers are having a field day—thanks to you and the M.E.”

  “Why me?” the Marquis asked.

  “You’re the one that makes a mystery of it—refuses to swallow the obvious story.”

  “I was shot at. That alone blows the obvious story to pieces. Even if you call the ‘Charles’ note pure crank.”

  “My God, maybe it does, but the papers would have had to let it go at that—except for you and the M.E.”

  “What’s the M.E.’s squeal?”

  The Marquis’ chief waved at the manuscript on the table. “Read the autopsy report and see.”

  The Marquis spread it open, scanned the first page. His practised eye picked out the informative phrases—excessively stimulated emotional state—congested brain cells—digestive apparatus upset from apparent twenty-jour hour fast—certain nervous centers completely inhibited.

  “Not there,” the chief inspector said wearily, and flipped over the page.

  “There.”

  The statement he indicated read: “There is such an excess of marihuana smoke in the dead woman’s lungs and her clothing that I do not believe it can be attributed merely to her smoking the familiar cigarettes. It is my belief that she was confined in some room where the weed was burned in great quantities. Undoubtedly—in view of the results of this woman’s absorption of the smoke—a criminal action may be lodged against whoever supplied her with the narcotic.”

  Still running careful eyes over the report, the Marquis said: “Nevertheless I don’t see quite why the Broadway Squad has to take the blast if the Vernor girl is killed. Homicide is guarding her.”

  The inspector’s voice jumped hoarsely. “Then you do think she will be killed!”

  “Who said that? My God, they’ve six men on the job.”

  “You’re depending on them, then? You haven’t any other hope of stopping this criminal?”

  “I didn’t say that either. Don’t crowd me, chief. I’ll admit I’m stymied, but I’m not licked yet.”

  The inspector ran a harassed hand over his silver hair. “If this th
ing isn’t cleared up before tomorrow’s papers go to press, somebody’s got to be the goat, Marty. It’s not my choice but—the papers will have to be told the whole story.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That you had warning of this ghastly circus…. Oh, I know, the warning was vague, but it was enough to put you onto the thing when it did happen. Then you had the girl—had her prisoner and let her escape—to do what she did.”

  For just a second, the Marquis showed his forty-odd years. Then he said: “All right, chief. I get the picture.”

  The inspector picked up his hat, tucked the autopsy report in his pocket. His gray eyes were anxious, concerned. “Marty—for God’s sake—have you got anything?”

  “I don’t know,” the Marquis said. “I thought I had, but it seems pretty thin now. Nevertheless, I’ll play the hand out.”

  The inspector went out, shaking his head and the Marquis went absently to the bedroom door, opened it. Berthold and Derosier came out with worried faces. “What did he say?”

  “He said we had to break it.”

  “The twelve hours that letter set for deadline is just about up. Hadn’t we better go down there where the violinist is, and….”

  The phone rang. It was the Identification Bureau reporting success finally. The gray letterhead had been made at a shop on Broadway, up in University Heights.

  The Marquis dropped the receiver, flung off his dressing-gown and dived for his coat. “Come on Johnny. We’re going….”

  The mental thunderbolt struck him. He stopped in mid-sentence, choked. He stood stock-still, one arm in the coat, the other out, his blue eyes startled, incredulous.

  “Oh, my God,” he breathed.

  For one more minute, he was frozen, foggy-eyed, and then he was suddenly galvanized.

  “Marty, what in the name of hell is eating you?” Berthold said.

  The Marquis flung into his coat, said: “There’s going to be another murder—the murder to wind up this little game. I figured it too late, I’m afraid. There’s just one wild chance in a million that I can stop it. Johnny—move!”

  Derosier said hastily: “What will I do, Marty? Go down to the Vernor girl’s and—”

  “Vernor girl? It isn’t the Vernor girl that’s going to die!”

  “What?” Derosier blinked, then blurted: “Tommy Manson?”

  “Get on the phone in the other room, locate Tommy Manson and his father. Get them either here or under heavy guard downtown if they’re there. And they’re to be kept under guard till I say different. Got that?”

  “Sure.” Derosier ran into the other room.

  THE Marquis was buttoning his Chesterfield as he ran out the door, big Johnny Berthold right at his heels.

  “Where we going?” Berthold asked.

  “To the printing-shop that made these letterheads. Maybe we—”

  He stopped dead, swung back. His, eyes were alert, blazing now. “Wait a minute!” He said suddenly, as though to himself, “A message from the dead. That ought to do it,” and ran back into the apartment again. When Johnny lumbered in after him, the Marquis was sitting by the phone, the instrument gripped in his hands, his eyes hard with concentration.

  “What—what do you mean message from the dead? You going to do something with that spiritualism stuff or someth—”

  The Marquis whipped up the receiver, called headquarters, demanded the radio control-room.

  “Lieutenant Marquis,” he said. “I want a special broadcast every ten minutes for the next hour. Say this just as I say it: Cynth—no. Make it—Eve Scudder. We received part of your message. Can you manage to get another one through, telling us exactly where you are. The other was too faint for us to make out. We are in readiness and will follow your instructions. Repeat that every ten minutes…. No, I’m not crazy. Put my name to it.”

  As they swarmed again into Johnny Berthold’s car, the big man blurted: “What in the name of hell—”

  “To scare the wits out of the shrewdest killer we’ve run into in years.”

  “Huh? You mean the killer listens to police calls?”

  “I think so.”

  “You—hey, you feel all right, don’t you?”

  As they roared up Central Park West, a sudden cloud came in the Marquis’ blue eyes. “Now that I think of it, I’d feel a lot better if—”

  “If what?”

  “If I were sure I wasn’t banking too much on this damned printer.”

  “Why?”

  “I figure the killer must have some sort of establishment in the neighborhood of at that printer. If the printer can’t describe the one who ordered that letterhead, or tell us something, I—by God, I’ll just have precipitated something…. Come on, it up!”

  “Hey!” Berthold said. “I never saw you look like that. What’s the—”

  The Marquis said through tight teeth: “If that printer can’t help us—I’ll have caused another killing. So—move!”

  THE printer could not help them. The minute they walked into the little shop on the dark, deserted corner, the Marquis’ jaws went tight. The ancient German who was just locking up his type fonts was so nearsighted that his spectacles were like ice cubes, and even then he was fumbling the things he had to reach for.

  The best he could give them was: “Ja! A dark sort of man—with a big, bass voice, like he was trying to be a singer…. No—I didn’t ever know his address.”

  No amount of browbeating could get more than that out of him. He simply could not see things beyond his arms’ reach.

  They stood in cold silence on the dark side street, which slanted up from Broadway toward the Heights. The printer locked his darkened shop, hurried away. They were alone on the corner.

  The Marquis’ throat was dry. He said: “We’ll have to get the radio cops—dozens of them—to comb….”

  A big blue sedan suddenly swung around the corner from Broadway, passing within a few feet of the store front that sheltered them. The driver, going up the stiff hill, had to stop to shift gears and the blue light of the corner street lamp shone momentarily across the plump face of Titanic Johnson.

  The Marquis caught his breath as Berthold breathed the gambler’s name.

  The sedan climbed the hill for only one block, then swung left. The Marquis half turned toward Broadway where their own car was parked, then stopped, listening. The gambler’s car still in second gear, was going across the block above them. It stopped, seemingly about half the way across.

  “Come on,” the Marquis said, and ran on noiseless feet.

  They breasted the hill, were at the dark corner. Everything was quiet. The only car on the street seemed to be the big blue sedan. It bulked, silent, at the curb on the east side of the street.

  After a second, the Marquis told Berthold: “Go on up another block and come in on that house—cover me from the back.”

  “The one the car’s in front of?”

  “I think so. Wait a minute.”

  He slipped silently, quickly down the narrow block, till he was before the old gray apartment building. He went up two flat steps to a stone veranda, peered into a tiny hall from which curving, carpeted stairs ran upwards.

  He could just see a man’s feet, standing on the stairs, most of him above the second-floor level.

  The Marquis turned and waved Johnny on, then slipped back to the door, found it open and eased into the hall. He took his service pistol from his pocket as he saw that the feet were gone. Carefully, utterly silently, he went up the carpeted flight till his head came above the next floor.

  He almost swallowed his breath.

  He was within six feet of Titanic Johnson’s back. The plump gambler was standing before an apartment door. The door was open a crack and yellow light leaked out. Noiseless as the Marquis’ approach had been Titanic would surely have heard him had he not been so intent on peering through the crack. Metal glinted in his right hand.

  In one quick movement, the gambler hefted his pistol, palmed the doorknob and threw
the door open ahead of him, he stepped in and said: “Hold still!”

  There was a quick gasp inside, then a voice husky with fear. “Put—put that gun down!”

  “You put yours down, my friend! Hurry up, or—”

  The Marquis was up and around the newel post like a cat, shifting his pistol to his left hand, his right hand whipping to the upper breast pocket of the Chesterfield coat, out again.

  Inside the room, there was a groan and a soft thud.

  Titanic said, “That’s better,” and heaved the door closed behind him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Snakeskin Envelope

  THE Marquis, leaning one shoulder against the outside of the door jamb, quickly placed the white celluloid card in the crack, blocking the spring bolt from entering its housing. At the same time, he clamped the knob to prevent the door bouncing right open again.

  Inside, he heard the frightened, husky voice stammer: “What—what do you want?”

  “I want a pay-off,” the gambler said. “And by God, I’m going to have it. Where’s Max?”

  The other gasped. “M—Max! Don’t you—haven’t you—read the newspapers?”

  “Mister, I’ve been in a poker game for the last twenty-six hours. I haven’t seen any papers and I don’t want to. All I want to see is Max Sokolow—and seven thousand dollars he owes me.”

  “But—but why did you come here?”

  “He told me to. He told me to go to a joint on Horatio Street last night and if he wasn’t there to come here tonight. Now here I am, and I’m tired waiting.”

  The other said desperately: “But—but I haven’t got any—oh, my God—wait! I have! I have! I can pay you off! I had a little deal with Max. He was to collect last night. I left the money here. It’s in a long snakeskin leather envelope in that desk.”

  “Stand still,” Titanic Johnson growled. “I’ll look.”

  There was the sound of drawers banging open and closed.

  By that time, the Marquis had the door standing open two inches, his gun back in his right hand, eyes steady on the scene within.

  It was a small living-room, barely furnished. Tommy Manson, his face gray, his hands at the level of his shoulders was half crouched before a fireplace.