The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps: The Best Crime Stories from the Pulps During Their Golden Age--The '20s, '30s & '40s

by Otto Penzler

Dorr was licking his lips and quivering his chins and looking from one of us to the other with his small tight eyes. Miss Glenn said drearily: “Lou knew all about the play. He planned it with the croupier, Pina. Pina wanted some getaway money, wanted to move on to Havana. Of course Canales would have got wise, but not too soon, if I hadn’t got noisy and tough. I got Lou killed—but not the way you mean.”

  I dropped an inch of ash off a cigarette I had forgotten all about. “All right,” I said grimly. “Canales takes the rap … And I suppose you two chiselers think that’s all I care about… Where was Lou going to be when Canales was supposed to find out he’d been gypped?”

  “He was going to be gone,” Miss Glenn said tonelessly. “A damn long way off. And I was going to be gone with him.”

  I said: “Nerts! You seem to forget /know why Lou was killed.”

  Beasley sat up in his chair and moved his right hand rather delicately towards his left shoulder. “This wise guy bother you, chief?”

  Dorr said: “Not yet. Let him rant.”

  I moved so that I faced a little more towards Beasley. The sky had gone dark outside and the sprinkler had been turned off. A damp feeling came slowly into the room. Dorr opened a cedar-wood box and put a long brown cigar in his mouth, bit the end off with a dry snap of his false teeth. There was the harsh noise of a match striking, then the slow, rather labored puffing of his breath in the cigar.

  He said slowly, through a cloud of smoke: “Let’s forget all this and make a deal about that money … Manny Tinnen hung himself in his cell this afternoon.”

  Miss Glenn stood up suddenly, pushing her arms straight down at her sides. Then she sank slowly down into the chair again, sat motionless. I said: “Did he have any help?” Then I made a sudden, sharp movement—and stopped.

  Beasley jerked a swift glance at me, but I wasn’t looking at Beasley. There was a shadow outside one of the windows—a lighter shadow than the dark lawn and darker trees. There was a hollow, bitter, coughing plop; a thin spray of whitish smoke in the window.

  Beasley jerked, rose halfway to his feet, then fell on his face with one arm doubled under him.

  Canales stepped through the windows, past Beasley’s body, came three steps further, and stood silent, with a long, black, small-calibered gun in his hand, the larger tube of a silencer flaring from the end of it.

  “Be very still,” he said. “I am a fair shot— even with this elephant gun.”

  His face was so white that it was almost luminous. His dark eyes were all smoke-gray iris, without pupils.

  “Sound carries well at night, out of open windows,” he said tonelessly.

  Dorr put both his hands down on the desk and began to pat it. The black cat put its body very low, drifted down over the end of the desk and went under a chair. Miss Glenn turned her head towards Canales very slowly, as if some kind of mechanism moved it.

  Canales said: “Perhaps you have a buzzer on that desk. If the door of the room opens, I shoot. It will give me a lot of pleasure to see blood come out of your fat neck.”

  I moved the fingers of my right hand two inches on the arm of my chair. The silenced gun swayed towards me and I stopped moving my fingers. Canales smiled very briefly under his angular mustache.

  “You are a smart dick,” he said. “I thought I had you right. But there are things about you I like.”

  I didn’t say anything. Canales looked back at Dorr. He said very precisely: “I have been bled by your organization for a long time. But this is something else again. Last night I was cheated out of some money. But this is trivial too. I am wanted for the murder of this Harger. A man named Cadena has been made to confess that I hired him … That is just a little too much fix.”

  Dorr swayed gently over his desk, put his elbows down hard on it, held his face in his small hands and began to shake. His cigar was smoking on the floor.

  Canales said: “I would like to get my money back, and I would like to get clear of this rap— but most of all I would like you to say something—so I can shoot you with your mouth open and see blood come out of it.”

  Beasley’s body stirred on the carpet. His hands groped a little. Dorr’s eyes were agony trying not to look at him. Canales was rapt and blind in his act by this time. I moved my fingers a little more on the arm of my chair. But I had a long way to go.

  Canales said: “Pina has talked to me. I saw to that. You killed Harger. Because he was a secret witness against Manny Tinnen. The D.A. kept the secret, and the dick here kept it. But Harger could not keep it himself. He told his broad— and the broad told you … So the killing was arranged, in a way to throw suspicion with a motive on me. First on this dick, and if that wouldn’t hold, on me.”

  There was silence. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t get anything out. I didn’t think anybody but Canales would ever again say anything.

  Canales said: “You fixed Pina to let Harger and his girl win my money. It was not hard— because I don’t play my wheels crooked.”

  Dorr had stopped shaking. His face lifted, stone-white, and turned towards Canales, slowly, like the face of a man about to have an epileptic fit. Beasley was up on one elbow. His eyes were almost shut but a gun was labouring upwards in his hand.

  Canales leaned forward and began to smile. His trigger finger whitened at the exact moment Beasley’s gun began to pulse and roar.

  Canales arched his back until his body was a rigid curve. He fell stiffly forward, hit the edge of the desk and slid along it to the floor, without lifting his hands.

  Beasley dropped his gun and fell down on his face again. His body got soft and his fingers moved fitfully, then were still.

  I got motion into my legs, stood up and went to kick Canales’ gun under the desk—senselessly. Doing this I saw that Canales had fired at least once, because Frank Dorr had no right eye.

  He sat still and quiet with his chin on his chest and a nice touch of melancholy on the good side of his face.

  The door of the room came open and the secretary with the nose-glasses slid in pop-eyed. He staggered back against the door, closing it again. I could hear his rapid breathing across the room.

  He gasped: “Is—is anything wrong?”

  I thought that very funny, even then. Then I realized that he might be short-sighted and from where he stood Frank Dorr looked natural enough. The rest of it could have been just routine to Dorr’s help.

  I said: “Yes—but we’ll take care of it. Stay out of here.”

  He said: “Yes, sir,” and went out again. That surprised me so much that my mouth fell open. I went down the room and bent over the gray-haired Beasley. He was unconscious, but had a fair pulse. He was bleeding from the side, slowly.

  Miss Glenn was standing up and looked almost as dopy as Canales had looked. She was talking to me quickly, in a brittle, very distinct voice: “I didn’t know Lou was to be killed, but I couldn’t have done anything about it anyway. They burned me with a branding iron—just for a sample of what I’d get. Look!”

  I looked. She tore her dress down in front and there was a hideous burn on her chest almost between her two breasts.

  I said: “Okey, sister. That’s nasty medicine. But we’ve got to have some law here now and an ambulance for Beasley.”

  I pushed past her towards the telephone, shook her hand off my arm when she grabbed at me. She went on talking to my back in a thin, desperate voice.

  “I thought they’d just hold Lou out of the way until after the trial. But they dragged him out of the cab and shot him without a word. Then the little one drove the taxi into town and the big one brought me up into the hills to a shack. Dorr was there. He told me how you had to be framed. He promised me the money, if I went through with it, and torture till I died, if I let them down.”

  It occurred to me that I was turning my back too much to people. I swung around, got the telephone in my hands, still on the hook, and put my gun down on the desk.

  “Listen! Give me a break,” she said wildly. “Dorr fr
amed it all with Pina, the croupier. Pina was one of the gang that got Shannon where they could fix him. I didn’t—”

  I said: “Sure—that’s all right. Take it easy.”

  The room, the whole house seemed very still, as if a lot of people were hunched outside the door, listening.

  “It wasn’t a bad idea,” I said, as if I had all the time in the world. “Lou was just a white chip to Frank Dorr. The play he figured put us both out as witnesses. But it was too elaborate, took in too many people. That sort always blows up in your face.”

  “Lou was getting out of the state,” she said, clutching at her dress. “He was scared. He thought the roulette trick was some kind of a pay-off to him.”

  I said: “Yeah,” lifted the phone and asked for police headquarters.

  The room door came open again then and the secretary barged in with a gun. A uniformed chauffeur was behind him with another gun.

  I said very loudly into the phone: “This is Frank Dorr’s house. There’s been a killing …”

  The secretary and the chauffeur dodged out again. I heard running in the hall. I clicked the phone, called the Telegram office and got Von Ballin. When I got through giving him the flash Miss Glenn was gone out of the window into the dark garden.

  I didn’t go after her. I didn’t mind very much if she got away.

  I tried to get Ohls, but they said he was still down at Solano. And by that time the night was full of sirens.

  I had a little trouble but not too much. Fen-weather pulled too much weight. Not all of the story came out, but enough so that the City Hall boys in the two-hundred-dollar suits had their left elbows in front of their faces for some time.

  Pina was picked up in Salt Lake City. He broke and implicated four others of Manny Tin-nen’s gang. Two of them were killed resisting arrest, the other two got life without parole.

  Miss Glenn made a clean getaway and was never heard of again. I think that’s about all, except that I had to turn the twenty-two grand over to the Public Administrator. He allowed me two hundred dollars fee and nine dollars and twenty cents mileage. Sometimes I wonder what he did with the rest of it.

  The Monkey Murder

  Erie Stanley Gardner

  THERE IS A RICH tradition in mystery fiction of the Robin Hood thief, the sympathetic figure who steals from the rich to give to the deserving poor. Lester Leith, the hero of more than seventy novelettes, all written for the pulps, approached his thievery from a slightly different angle. He did steal from the rich, but only those who were themselves crooks, and he gave the money to charities—after taking a 20% “recovery” fee.

  Debonair, quick-witted, and wealthy, he enjoyed the perks of his fortune, checking the newspapers in the comfort of his penthouse apartment for new burglaries and robberies to solve, and from which he could reclaim the stolen treasures.

  He has a valet, Beaver, nicknamed “Scuttle” by Leith, who is a secret plant of Sergeant Arthur Ackley. Leith, of course, is aware that his manservant is an undercover operative, using that knowledge to plant misinformation to frustrate the policeman again and again.

  Leith is only one of a huge number of characters created by the indefatigable Erie Stanley Gardner (1889-1970), many of whom were criminals, including Ed Jenkins (the Phantom Crook), the sinister Patent Leather Kid, and Senor Arnaz de Lobo, a professional soldier of fortune and revolutionary.

  “The Monkey Murder” was first published in the January 1939 issue of Detective Story.

  The Monkey Murder

  Erie Stanley Gardner

  LESTER LEITH, his slender, well-knit form attired in a cool suit of Shantung pongee, sprawled indolently in the reclining wicker chair. The cool afternoon breezes filtered through the screened windows of the penthouse apartment. Leith’s valet, Beaver, nicknamed “Scuttle” by Lester Leith, ponderous in his obsequious servility, siphoned soda into a Tom Collins and deferentially placed the glass on the table beside his master’s chair.

  If Leith had any knowledge that this man who served him, ostensibly interested only in his creature comforts, was in reality a police undercover man, planted on the job by Sergeant Arthur Ackley, he gave no indication. His slate-gray eyes, the color of darkly tarnished silver, remained utterly inscrutable as he stared thoughtfully at the bubbles which formed on the glass only to detach themselves and race upward through the cool beverage.

  The valet coughed.

  Leith’s eyes remained fixed, staring into the distance.

  The police spy squirmed uneasily, then said: “Begging your pardon, sir, was there something you wanted?”

  Leith, without turning his head, said, “I think not, Scuttle.”

  The big undercover man shifted his weight from one foot to the other, fidgeted uneasily, then said: “Begging your pardon, sir, please don’t think I’m presumptuous, but I was about to venture to suggest— Well, sir—”

  “Come, come, Scuttle,” Lester Leith said. “Out with it. What is it?”

  “About the crime news, sir,” the undercover man blurted. “It’s been some time since you’ve taken an interest in the crime news, sir.”

  Leith sipped his Tom Collins. “Quite right, Scuttle,” he said. “And it will probably be a much longer time before I do so.”

  “May I ask why, sir?”

  “On account of Sergeant Ackley,” Leith said. “Damn the man, Scuttle. He’s like a woman convinced against her will, and of the same opinion still. Somewhere, somehow, he got it through that fat head of his that I was the mysterious hijacker who has been ferreting out the criminals who have made rich hauls, and relieving them of their ill-gotten spoils.”

  “Yes, sir,” the spy said. “He certainly has been most annoying, sir.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Leith went on, “whoever that mysterious hijacker is—and I understand the police are firmly convinced there is such an individual—he has my sincere respect and admiration. After all, Scuttle, crime should be punished. Crime which isn’t detected isn’t punished. As I understand it, the criminals who have been victimized by this hijacker are men who have flaunted their crimes in the faces of the police and got away with it. The police have been unable to spot them, let alone get enough evidence to convict them. Then along comes this mysterious hijacker, solves the crime where the police have failed, locates the criminal, and levies a hundred-per-cent fine by relieving him of his ill-gotten gains. That, Scuttle, I claim is a distinct service to society.”

  “Yes, sir,” the spy said. “Of course, you will admit that your charities for the widows and orphans of police and firemen killed in the line of duty, your donations to the associated charities and the home for the aged have been steadily mounting.”

  “Well, what of it, Scuttle? What the devil has that to do with the subject under discussion?”

  “Begging your pardon, sir, I think the sergeant wonders where you’re getting the money, sir.”

  Lester Leith placed the half-empty glass back on the table, and reached for his cigarette case. “Confound the man’s impudence, Scuttle. What business is it of his where I get my money?”

  “Yes, sir, I understand, sir. Oh, quite, sir. But even so, sir, if you’ll pardon my making the suggestion, sir, it seems that you shouldn’t let such a trivial matter interfere with your enjoyment of life.”

  “My enjoyment of life, Scuttle?”

  “Well, sir, I know that you always derived a great deal of pleasure from looking over the crime clippings. As you’ve so frequently remarked, you used to feel that a man could study the newspaper accounts of crime and in many cases spot the guilty party, just from the facts given in the newspapers.”

  “I still maintain that can be done, Scuttle.”

  “Yes, sir,” the spy said, lowering his voice. “And has it ever occurred to you, sir, that what Sergeant Ackley doesn’t know won’t hurt him?”

  “Won’t hurt him,” Lester Leith exclaimed. “It’s what Sergeant Ackley doesn’t know that’s ruining him! If knowledge is power, Sergeant Ackley has
leaky valves, loose pistons, scored cylinders, and burnt-out bearings. He’s narrow-minded, egotistical, suspicious, mercenary, selfish, and pig-headed. In addition to all of which, Scuttle, I find that I don’t like the man.”

  “Yes, sir,” the spy said, “but if you’d only interest yourself in the crime clippings just once more, sir, I have several very interesting items saved up for you. And Sergeant Ackley would never know, sir.”

  Leith said reprovingly, “Scuttle, you’re trying to tempt me.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to … that is, really, sir. Well, of course, you may depend upon my discretion, sir.”

  Leith half turned in his chair. “I can trust you, Scuttle?” he asked, looking at the spy with his inscrutable silver-gray eyes.

  “Absolutely, sir, with your very life, sir.”

  Lester Leith sighed, settled back, and tapped a cigarette on a polished thumbnail. “Scuttle,” he said, “perhaps it’s my mood, perhaps it’s the weather, perhaps it’s the drink; but I’ve decided to indulge in my hobby just once more, only mind you, Scuttle, this time it will be merely an academic pursuit. We’ll merely speculate on who the criminal might be and keep that speculation entirely to ourselves, a sacred confidence within the four walls of this room.”

  “Yes, sir,” the spy said, quivering with eagerness as he pulled a sheaf of newspaper clippings from his pocket.

  “Sit down, Scuttle,” Leith invited. “Sit down and make yourself comfortable.”

  “Very good, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  Lester Leith snapped a match into flame, held it to the tip of the cigarette, and inhaled deeply, extinguishing the match with a single smoky exhalation. “Proceed, Scuttle,” he said.

  “Yes, sir. The affair of the Brentwood diamond seems to have been made to order for you, sir.”

  “Made to order for me, Scuttle?”

  “Yes, sir,” the undercover man said, forgetting himself for the moment as he perused the newspaper clipping. “The police have never found the culprit. There’s a chance for you to make a good haul and—”