“You’re a thin-brain. If George really has blown his cork, he thinks he has a grievance against you, doesn’t he?”
He heard her catch her breath, and hung up before she could get any more out.
As he walked for the front door, the detective he had set to find the cab-driver ran in and said, “Marty—just a minute!” and whipped up a phone.
After a minute’s hasty phoning, he announced: “The hacker is Gus Tanbaum, a two-time loser. The cab company is on strike and he’s a strike-breaker—just temporary on the job. You want him arrested?”
“Yes,” the Marquis said. “No. But I want him. He probably picked this bird up somewhere and drove him here—then ran out when he found the shape his fare was in. But I want to know where he picked him up.”
“Right.”
CHAPTER TWO
The Bronze Key
THE night clerk at the Frontenac winced as the Marquis walked in. The hotel, a few doors off Broadway, had once been modern, trim, clean, but it had never been swank. Now they had a green-black-and-chromium modernistic lobby—even a semi-circular desk. The seedy-looking, bespectacled, droopy night clerk stood behind it, nervously smoothing his pepper-and-salt hair, gray eyes apprehensive.
“A bird named Rentz registered here yesterday. What’s his room?” the Marquis demanded.
The clerk turned and ran a finger down one flap of a Cardex file beside the switchboard.
“Yeah. Yeah,” he said nervously. “Mr. Purley Rentz, Fletcherville, Mass. Four-nineteen. What—”
“Where’s Fletcherville?”
The clerk hastily stepped over to consult a thick volume behind the switchboard. “It’s—it’s a village near Cambridge. Population nine hundred and—”
The Marquis reached for one of the phones on the desk. “Give me an outside wire on this.”
It took him five minutes of jockeying over the wire, before he was finally connected with the sheriff’s office in Fletcherville, Mass., and had identified himself.
“Do you know a Purley Rentz, living in that town?” he asked. “It’s very important.”
After a second, the sheriff said positively: “No. There ain’t any Purley Rentz or any other Rentz living in this town…. Yep, I’m sure. No—” when the Marquis had repeated the description of the little murdered countryman—“don’t sound like nobody I know. And I know about everybody here.”
The Marquis hung up, tight-jawed, looked at the worried gray eyes of the night clerk. “That description fit your Rentz, all right?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him. Mr. Witherspoon is on during the day. It just happens—”
“Give me Rentz’ key—or a passkey.”
“Oh, hey, Marty—wait—lemme call Mr. Witherspoon! What—what’s the matter, Marty?”
“He was knocked off. I’ll call Witherspoon myself in a minute. The key, fish-face, the key!”
The other gulped, reached a key reluctantly from the rack of pigeonholes behind him. “Hey—please wait, Marty. I’ve got to…” but the Marquis’ silent, quick tread had him halfway to the elevator.
A scared elevator boy set him down at the fourth floor and he was in a high-ceilinged, dingy corridor. He read numbers quickly, followed them to a cross-corridor and was in front of Room 419. He jabbed the key in the lock—and sharp question came into his eyes. The key would not go in. And simultaneously he felt the doorknob—warm—on his wrist between sleeve-cuff and black glove. He snatched off the glove, confirmed the warmness of the knob and, in pulling out the key, pulled out a cheap wire hairpin with it.
His eyes swung up and down the hall, suddenly thin. He turned and ran—first to one end, where he saw a maze of corridors ahead—then back to the other. The stairs were visible here, a few yards away. Peering down the stairwell, he could see no one. Two minutes of tense listening brought no whisper of sound. He looked along the transoms near him. None was lighted.
He replaced his glove, transferred the service gun from his hip to his right pocket as he finally stepped back to Room 419. With the hairpin removed from the lock, the key went in easily now. He flung open the door, reaching inside for the light switch. Light flooded an empty, shabby room, an empty bath beyond. Two strides took the Marquis to the telephone.
“Have you a gun?” he asked the husky night-clerk over the wire.
“Ye—yes, but—”
“If anyone tries to go out, cover him and call me,” he said and hung up.
THE square of white caught his eye the minute he turned round. It was lying on the floor, just inside the door of the room. He stood, eyes scanning the rest of the shabby chamber before he went toward it, then stepped over and picked it up.
It was a special-delivery letter, addressed in a spidery, scrawled hand, to Mr. Purley Rentz, Frontenac Hotel.
The Marquis weighed it. There was some small metal object within.
He debated only a split second before he ripped open the envelope—and held a tiny bronze key. There was a sheet of white paper around the key, but there was no mark of any kind on the paper. There was nothing to indicate what manner of lock the key might fit.
He pocketed envelope and key, set to work to search the room. A paper suitcase on a luggage rack held both dirty and clean body-linen—cheap, and from mail-order Chicago stores. There were no laundry marks. This was all the clothing there was in the room. The bureau drawers were empty, the closet empty. There was nowhere any scrap of paper, any illuminating information. The bathroom held a safety-razor, soap, brush, toothpaste, witch hazel.
He stood, looking the room over, inch by inch, with thinned eyes, vague puzzlement beginning in his somber stare. Then he picked up the phone again and once more got the clerk’s husky, “Hello.”
“Did Rentz have any callers or phone calls while you were on?”
“N-no. But a special-delivery letter came for him—just a few minutes before you arrived. I had it sent up and shoved under his door.”
“That’s funny,” the Marquis said quickly. “Wonder where it went. Well, you can call Witherspoon now and tell him I’m on my way up—or down. What’s his room number?”
“Seven-o-one.”
“Nobody’s come down since I called?”
“No.”
“Be damned sure nobody gets out without your calling me.”
Contrary to the Marquis’ expectations, 701 was farthest away from, rather than nearest to the elevator on the seventh floor. It took him a minute or two of hunting before he finally turned into the correct corridor.
In a half-conscious way, a phone’s ringing guided him, though he did not realize that it was the phone in 701 till he was virtually in front of the door. Even then, his attention was momentarily taken by a sparkle on the carpet a few feet from the door, against the baseboard. It was a bunch of keys.
He had stooped and picked them up—a ring of assorted keys—before he looked round and consciously located the pealing of the phone. He blinked, his eyes suddenly sharp, intent, for the light shone through the open transom of the room.
Lighted room—unanswered phone. He reached for the knob swiftly, checked himself just as swiftly as movement came from within the room.
There was a gasp, a groan—then a dragging sound. The phone stopped in mid-peal. Witherspoon’s voice, almost a croak, blurted: “Yeah. Hello.”
There was a second of silence, then Witherspoon said brokenly, “Thank God. I get one break anyhow. All right,” and hung up.
Liquid was splashing before the receiver clicked on the hook. The Marquis knocked, and stumbling footsteps fell across the rug. Witherspoon opened the door, swaying, in pajamas and a weird shepherd’s-plaid bathrobe, a half-tumbler of whiskey in his hand. He mumbled, “Thank God, it’s you, Marty,” and staggered away from the door.
HE WAS a baldish blond man of forty with hollow, black-gray eyes that were bloodshot now, and there was an angry purple welt on his round forehead. He gulped the whiskey, fell into a chair and nursed his head.
�
�What the hell?” the Marquis said.
“Wait just a second,” the other croaked. “I’m still goofy.”
“From what? What happened?”
“Wait—wait a minute, I’m not sure. It seems some girl—yeah, a little blond girl—that’s right. She had nothing on but a nightie—one of these black transparent things. She came knocking at the door.”
“And?” the Marquis urged. “What happened?”
“I—she said there was somebody in her room—Seven—Seven-thirty-two. She wanted me to come and see. I had to get up—I couldn’t have her blatting that all over the halls. I got up and she was outside there, shivering. She dragged me out the door—and somebody let me have it.”
“What?”
“A sap—across my forehead. God—my head’s bursting, Marty.”
The Marquis’ eyes raced round the room. “Did they take anything?”
The other staggered erect hastily, his hollow eyes wincing. He fell towards a bureau drawer, yanked it open. There was a watch, a small roll of bills within.
He looked groggily around, bewildered. “I—I don’t think so.”
The Marquis suddenly recalled the ring of keys in his own black-gloved hand. “Are these yours?”
“Huh? Yeah! Yeah! Those are….” He rocked to the clothes closet, flung it open and fingered a pair of trousers. “Yeah! Where did you—”
“Is there a pass-key to the hotel rooms on it?”
“No.”
“They thought there was,” the Marquis informed him. “That was what they were after.” He stepped to the phone and called the clerk again. “Is there anyone registered in Seven-thirty-two?… Thanks. Will the key I have open it?… Then send the boy up with one that will…. Yeah, he’s all right.”
He hung up. “It’s a vacant room. I’ll take a look, but there won’t be anything there. Do you want to report this?”
The other winced. “Whatever you say, Marty. I’d like to get a poke at the —— that socked me, that’s all. I mean that.”
“So would I,” the Marquis assured him. “I’ll try to arrange it. Describe that girl, Joe.”
“She was blond and—well, cuddly. She had a honey of a figure, Marty. Her face—” He hesitated, groping anxiously. “Gosh I—gosh, now I think of it, she had a handkerchief up to her face. I—she had blue eyes, though—and corn-colored hair.”
“That’s a great description, that is,” the Marquis said. “Where’s this Room Seven-thirty-two?”
The plump manager told him, and he strode corridors again.
There was nothing in the room. It had been unoccupied for some time and had obviously no part in this tangle.
He stood, tight-eyed, holding the phone in his gloved hands for long, thoughtful minutes. Then he called Asa McGuire at the ticket agency—his squad’s unofficial headquarters.
McGuire said, “Mmmmm,” when the Marquis told him who he was.
“The Homicide Squad are there?”
“And how.”
“They want to see me, I suppose. They can go on wanting. I’m trying to keep ahead of them on this. Did you find that taxi-driver yet?”
“No.”
“I’ve got a job for you. Duck out and meet me—wait a minute—in the alley beside the Lubert Theatre.”
“Right.”
He considered quickly, carefully, the possibility that there still might be a chance for a solution in the hotel. He could not see his way clear to it. A room-by-room search might disclose something, but even that was doubtful. It was almost a sure bet that his birds would have been frightened away, at least by now.
CHAPTER THREE
The Man Who Was Kicked to Death
SURPRISINGLY, when he got to the street, it was raining. He was lucky enough to get a cab, however, in front of the hotel.
The little puzzle was suddenly growing, absorbing him. George Mahaffey—at the end of his tether—taking a shady job that had him running around after this Rentz. Rentz—speeding from one undertaker named Green to another, frightened, nervous—and finally killed by a frenzied shower of blows. Rentz—evidently a phony name at that—speaking to no one. His room an object of interest to a blond girl and an unknown companion. A special-delivery letter containing a key and nothing else….
Questions raised up. Who was Rentz? Why the mad chase from undertaker to undertaker? Above all, naturally, why was he murdered? And last but not least, could there be any truth in Toni O’Higgins’ hysterical fear that George Mahaffey had gone off the deep end? Could he have, for some reason—maybe trying to get the inside of the job he was on—tried to ‘shake down’ the rabbity little Rentz for information and, balked, gone berserk? Could he, in a brainstorm, have come down to the hotel, still on a monomaniacal hunt for information? And if so—who was the luscious blond girl?
Debate as he would, the Marquis could not convince himself that the big, black-eyed Irishman had enough of a mind to lose it. The answer could not be that—and yet the wild note he had written the girl, plus the condition of the dead Rentz was a dark, unanswerable argument…. Rentz had not been killed expertly. It was either the work of an amateur, or of a frenzied killer—or both.
None of which explained the key. Who had sent the key? What did it unlock?
As the cab set him down in the teeming little side street in front of the Lubert Theater Alley, he decided it was too early to speculate. There were not enough returns in. Certainly, something was going forward—something still in the process of happening. He could not guess what—or where. Most of his hopes were pinned on the expert and brilliant McGuire. If the chubby, boyish redhead could do something with the key….
It occurred to him that he had one other nebulous, grim possibility. If George Mahaffey had gone haywire—if he were the murderous figure behind all this—he would almost certainly make an attempt on Toni O’Higgins. If he did—big Johnny should be able to handle him.
THE Marquis had to huddle against the theater in the Stygian black of the alley. Rain poured down monotonously. The alley was one of the few in New York which ran straight through the center of the block, having an opening on two streets. There was vague luminosity at both ends and he watched impatiently for the chunky McGuire to appear at one.
The drizzling wet, of course, made time seem much longer than it was. It seemed ten minutes, but was actually not more than three before he saw movement at the far end of the alley.
He bent forward a little, and down, striving to catch the approaching figure against the light.
Then he did, but it was not Asa McGuire. It was some girl, crouched against the rain, swaying down the alley hastily. He cursed impatiently, drew back. Over the rain sounds, he could not hear her progress in the blackness. Having nothing better to do, he watched her—or where she ought to be—dully.
The whole alley was not more than eighty yards from street to street. He was ten or fifteen yards inside one end. The girl was less than thirty yards from him when her flashlight jumped alight.
The Marquis watched idly. Rain was a flashing silver mesh in the torch’s beam. She was evidently playing it over the wall of the theater building, searching—judging by her location—for the stage door.
He suddenly wondered what a girl would be doing at the stage door at four o’clock in the morning. There were no frantic rehearsals going on in the theater at this time.
He peered out more interestedly, just as the flash beam centered the modest little door. It did not stay there but traveled upwards, till it was slanting at the stunted goose-neck fixture that held the single dark bulb overhead.
Then the little side-drama really became interesting as the light dropped down—down to the black velvet handbag in the girl’s gloved fingers. Somehow, she tucked the light under her arm, so that in the radiance, only her busy fingers and the bag were visible.
From the bag she drew a necklace that glittered and sparkled, even in the rain, flashing red, orange, blue facets. A necklace that either was of diamonds or of excellent s
ubstitutes. Without the slightest hesitation, she reached it up and slipped it over the bulb of the goose-necked fixture, sprayed the light on it for a second—and then the light went dark.
Blinking, the Marquis peered at the spot in the blackness for two minutes. Then curiosity got the better of him. There did not seem to be any sense in a girl hanging a diamond necklace—or even a near-diamond necklace….
He went forward hesitantly, bewilderedly, peering ahead. It appeared that the girl had gone.
He squirted light suddenly from his own powerful, thin flashlight, along the wall of the theater ahead of him—and that touched it off.
If he had thought a hair-line slower, he would have been murdered where he stood. Every break went against him.
He saw no girl ahead of him. Instead, fifty yards away, he saw the kneeling man with the hat pulled down over his face, the shining pistol in his hand.
He did his thinking in one hot instant and was diving aside wildly in the same moment that the kneeling man fired. The orange bloom and the thock! of the report in the smothering rain came before he could thumb off the button of his flashlight. A second thock! bloomed viciously—and his feet suddenly skidded from under him as a bullet clipped the side of his hand, splitting his black glove. Cobbles tripped him, his feet flew up and he crashed down on his neck, his half-drawn gun knocked skidding out of his hand, the flashlight smashed. Two more driving, vicious orange spurts hammered at him—and then silence.
HE WAS reaching wildly around him, trying to paw for his gun, his eyes straining in the darkness ahead toward the two. He was in a terrible spot. Illumination had belatedly burst on him. He knew he was facing—now—the same pair who had been in the Frontenac Hotel and blackjacked the manager for his keys. He knew they must have followed him from there and tried to kill him—put on a hasty little drama to induce him to spot himself. All that was suddenly, startlingly clear. But why they wanted his life he had not the faintest possible idea.
The moment’s silence from the dark ahead was broken by a snarled undertone: “Go on! Get him! He’s down…. For God’s sake, hurry!”
The Complete Cases of the Marquis of Broadway, Volume 1 Page 26