by Otto Penzler
“Cut it!” screamed the gunman. “Cut it, I tell you!”
“There’s the phone, Tubby,” Duke suggested drily.
Arnison inched toward the instrument on his stomach. His tremulous fingers fumbled with the receiver as he sought to remove it.
“Easy, Tubby, easy,” cautioned Martindel. “I’ll hold you responsible if Egan doesn’t show up, so don’t let him smell a rat.”
Arnison sobbed aloud, shuddered convulsively, then took down the receiver. In broken sentences he jerked out the number of headquarters, but by the time he got the inspector on the wire, his voice was reasonably cool.
“Arnison, chief. I don’t want to talk over the phone, see, but can you come up here right away?” He shot a sidelong glance at Duke, then shut his eyes as though to blot out the vision of the gun muzzle. “We—Nagel got him, chief, but you better come. I found somethin’, see. I— yeah, we’re up in a cottage on Bear Mountain.” He choked out the directions for reaching the cabin, then slowly cradled the receiver.
Duke grinned cynically. “He’s coming?”
Arnison shuddered. “He’s comin’!” he sobbed and dropped his head in his arms.
When the noise of a car reached the cabin about a half hour later, the stage was set. Duke Martindel stood back of the entrance door, leaning on the top of a chair. Tubby Arnison, still trembling with terror, crouched on another straight-backed chair beside the center table, facing the front door. Brakes ground outside, then the motor died. A car door slammed.
Arnison mumbled something. Duke wagged the gun. “Easy, Tubby,” he whispered. “Easy.”
Steps pounded up across the veranda, paused a moment, then the door swung open. Egan strode into the room.
“Well, Arnison, where is he?” demanded the inspector. Duke reached out and slapped the door shut with his free hand. “Right here, Egan! No, don’t reach for that gun. You can’t make it!”
The uniformed man swiveled like a cornered hobo. For a brief instant he seemed undecided whether to go for his gun, then he slowly elevated his hands.
“What is this?” he snapped.
“This,” Duke told him drily, “is a showdown. Arnison here has been telling me some interesting things, Inspector, things that corroborate some old-time suspicions of mine.”
Egan flashed a venomous glance at the quaking stoolie, then turned back to Martindel. “You’re a damn fool, Duke!” he commented. “Put down that gun!”
“You’re right, Egan, I am a damn fool,” Duke admitted. “But I’m not going to put down this gun until we settle a few points of interest. First, I’d like to know what excuse you have for putting a couple of hoods on me!”
Egan shrugged. “You’re crazy. You can’t prove a thing.”
“Who said anything about proving it? I’m curious, that’s all, damn curious. For instance, I’m curious to know how it happened that Harry Washburn was murdered at the exact moment that Skuro and Nuene were cracking the County and Suburban Bank, how you appeared at the bank just as I was leaving.” His mocking smile vanished into a scowl. “And, lastly, Egan, I’d like to know why you deliberately shot at my head.”
“We don’t take bank robbers alive,” growled Egan, “not after they kill a watchman.”
Duke sniffed. “But you weren’t supposed to know that Foy was dead when you walked in there. That’s another point I’d like cleared up, Egan—the killing of Foy. Sam and Gus didn’t kill him, I didn’t, so who did?”
“You can’t talk your way out of this mess,” Egan threatened.
Duke grinned sardonically. “I’m not going to do the talking, Inspector. Tubby here, for instance, knows a lot of interesting things.”
Egan ponderously swung his head. Arnison winced before the cold glitter of those colorless eyes. “S’help me, chief, I ain’t—” he choked to a stop.
Duke hefted his gun. “Well, Tubby, make up your mind. Don’t be bashful—this is a nice, chummy get-together. Now what do you know about this business?”
Arnison pulled himself erect, his fingers tightened around the back of his chair. “My God, you wouldn’t murder a man in cold blood?”
“Don’t be a fool!” rasped Egan. “He’s bluffing you.”
Duke smiled, but said nothing. His thumb dragged back the hammer of his revolver and in the silence of the dusty room, two distinct clicks were audible. Arnison’s voice rose to a shriek.
“Bluffin’ hell! I ain’t gonna die, I ain’t, I tell ya.”
Martindel had hoped to provoke an argument between his two captives and thus glean some of the truth back of the tangled mess. He well knew Egan’s vicious temper and he counted on Arnison’s fear of death to form a verbal explosion of some sort. But he was hardly prepared for what followed.
Arnison was trembling from head to foot. “You got me into this, Egan!” he shrilled. “He’ll shoot me down like a dog. I won’t die—s’help me, I won’t, I tell ya—”
Duke swung his eyes to Egan to see how the latter was taking it, when Arnison flung the chair!
With one leg injured and unable to bear his weight, Duke had propped himself against the chair in front of him. Arnison’s wild fling struck the chair, knocked it from under him and he fell headlong to the floor. As he went down, he tried to swing his gun, but Egan kicked it from his hand and it bounced across the room.
Duke cursed his own carelessness, rolled over and tried to drag himself erect. Then he paused. He saw Arnison swing and pounce toward the revolver. Just as the crook reached it, a gun roared. Arnison gave a startled yelp, pirouetted once and sprawled in a corner.
Duke jerked his eyes away, brought them back to Egan. The inspector was lowering his own service revolver and a faint dribble of smoke curled from the muzzle.
“There goes a perfectly good witness,” Duke drawled cynically.
Egan turned. “You won’t need any witnesses,” he growled. “Not where you’re going.”
Duke gave up trying to pull himself to his feet. He sat back on the floor and looked into the relentless features of the policeman. “So it’s like that, Egan?”
The inspector nodded. “Just like that.” He stepped sideways so that he could get a clear, unobstructed shot at the man on the floor.
Duke sighed. “Just one question. Why was I framed on that bank job?”
Egan drew back the hammer of his gun. “You can ask Arnison that when you meet him in hell.”
Abruptly a gun thundered into the silence. Duke’s first impression was that Egan had fired. The inspector stood with his arm still outstretched, but now his gun had vanished and his hand was dripping blood.
Duke called on his waning strength to drag himself erect. He jerked around to face the hoodlum, but Arnison still lay inert where he had fallen.
Then a door opened and Captain Dombey and Phyllis came into the room. Dombey covered Egan. Phyllis gave a little whimper and ran toward Duke, arms outstretched. He swayed forward to meet her. The floor rose suddenly. He went out.
Duke recovered consciousness in the hospital to find Phyllis sitting on the edge of the bed, holding his hand. “Take it easy, darling,” she whispered, and he saw that she smiled through her tears.
“How’d I get here?” Duke wanted to know.
A familiar voice answered from the foot of the bed. “They started to put you in the meat wagon,” Dombey growled, “but your wife wouldn’t stand for it. Was afraid they’d get their loads mixed, I guess, so you made the trip in an ambulance.”
Duke winced as he tried to move his leg. “Say, where’s Egan? Did you kill him?”
“Naw,” grumbled Dombey. “We’re savin’ him to hang. I’ll try to get passes for us all—we can make a day of it.”
Phyllis shuddered. “Not the Martindels,” she assured the grinning copper. “They are going to Europe.”
Duke groaned. “They can’t hang him without more evidence than we got. Gosh, what a lousy shame you didn’t show up before Arnison was killed.” He frowned at them both. “Say, how did you t
wo happen to show up?”
Dombey chuckled. “Well, it’s a long story, but I figured as long as you didn’t want the date with the swell-lookin’ jane in the drug store, I’d mosey over. I dated her up myself an’ we ambled up here. By a strange coincidence, you was here.”
Duke scowled at his wife. “So,” he sneered, “you don’t trust me? You follow me—”
“Oh, shut up!” Phyllis said.
“About Arnison,” Dombey butted in, “he ain’t dead. Egan’s slug creased his skull, but it didn’t do him no damage. However, me ‘n the doc made him think he was slated for the long trail. Did he talk? Ha! Plenty. First, he says—” Dombey stopped as a physician motioned him to silence.
“Our patient has had enough, I’m afraid, Captain,” the doctor said firmly. “The details can wait until—”
“The hell they can!” shouted Duke. “I want to know why Egan framed me!”
Dombey turned at the door. “O.K. You was in the way. Egan wanted a goat for the Washburn kill, so his stoolies tipped him off to the fact that Sam Skuro an’ Gus Nuene were set to crack the bank at midnight. Egan set a watch on the bank job and sent Arnison an’ Nagel out to bump Washburn. According to Arnison, Nagel did the actual kill. Egan had Skuro and Nuene followed so that they couldn’t establish an alibi, but some-
body tipped Sam off by telephone and he an’ Gus beat it over to your place.”
“Humph!” grunted Duke thoughtfully. “I’m beginning to see through it. Who killed Foy?”
“Egan. They followed you to Henderson’s home, guessed what you was goin’ to do, so Egan figgured it a good chance to frame you proper an’ so have a sucker for the bank job. He gave Foy the works. Arnison saw him do it. Egan began to get restless when he knew you was working against him, so he decided to let the boys polish you off. Well, so long.” He closed the door.
The doctor took Phyllis by the arm and gently propelled her to the door. “No more questions for this young man,” he announced firmly.
“Just one,” shouted Duke. “Just one, Doc.”
“And that is—”
“How soon can a guy travel to Europe with a leg like this?”
A Pinch of Snuff
Eric Taylor
ERIC TAYLOR was a frequent, though not prolific, contributor to various pulps in the 1920s and 1930s, notably to Black Mask, Dime Detective, and the lower-paying Clues.
While the seal of approval that came with being published in the Golden Age of Black Mask—in the years in which it was publishing Hammett, Whitfield, Cain, Nebel, and its other major stars—would normally have given an author greater opportunity for success, this seems to have eluded Taylor. He never published a novel and never even had a single short story collected in an anthology.
Some of this may be due to the fact that he eschewed the traditional path of most pulp fiction writers, which was to produce a series detective. In the seven stories published in Black Mask, for example, three were about different detectives and three were about thieves, including the story collected here.
Another reason that Taylor may not have enjoyed the financial and critical success of many of his fellow pulpsters is his melodramatic style. The impossibly pitiful early years of the heroine of “A Pinch of Snuff” would have been an embarrassment to producers of stage plays at the turn of the last century, at which audiences were encouraged to hiss at the villain as he twirled his mustache while throwing a waif out of her home to freeze in the winter snow.
“A Pinch of Snuff “ was originally published in the June 1929 issue of Black Mask.
A Pinch of Snuff
Eric Taylor
A small thing, but it leads to a murderer,
vengeance, and a strange discovery
N MONTREAL they like to show you the view from the top of Mont Royal. To the south, church spires like gracile mile posts guide the eye to the green St. Lawrence, panting here from its fierce flight over the Lachine Rapids, widening for its majestic march to the sea. Beyond the river lies a great plain that meets the sky near the hills along the American border. To the north, the Laurentian Mountains hide uncountable lakes that lie like verde antiques, cool and inscrutable as they await a sportsman’s rod. To the west, gay red roofs peer through the verdant screen of maples, while to the east… But Montreal might prefer that you didn’t look to the east.
A family of five brooded in a single room apartment in an East End flat. The room was hot, steaming, fetid with the snow that melted on Armand’s coat and the baby wash that hung on a length of twine.
Armand sat sullen, his right hand stroking a nearly-empty bottle. He glanced across the room toward his youngest brat and thought it droll that the gin and milk should end simultaneously. His eyes wandered over to Gabrielle. He saw the ugly lines that poverty had etched across the fragile beauty of youth. She had cheated him, he thought. Bony, hollow-chested, with bent shoulders, reproachful eyes, and mute lips—a hag at thirty! Could this be the dancing-eyed, cream-skinned beauty he had wed thirteen years ago?
Irene moved across the room toward the table. Armand scowled. A doctor down at the clinic had informed Armand that Irene was undernourished. A thin arm crossed Armand’s vision and raised the cover of a thin metal box. A savage blasphemy burst from Armand’s lips. His hand struck out. One of Irene’s pale cheeks flushed crimson as she jumped back. Gabrielle turned with a furious protest on her lips. But something she saw in her husband’s eyes choked back the words.
“She knows there is no bread in the box,” Armand said after a minute.
At nine o’clock Armand went out. At a corner grocery, where his credit had been stopped, Armand halted to beg an empty sack. With this beneath an arm he struck south to a district of small wholesale produce merchants.
Before a window, Armand stood in deep thought for a long time. The flakes of snow that were falling grew larger. A few drops of rain fell, and Armand’s decision was made. This mild winter was starving the poor. Mid-January and the river was still unfrozen despite the supplications of a thousand women who prayed for cold that their men might work at the ice-cutting.
Armand broke the window and crawled into a small warehouse. A few minutes later Armand thrust the filled sack through the window he had broken. He dropped to the street and raised the sack to his shoulder.
But recently there had been other raids on the wholesale provision houses. A keen-eyed detective with a reputation to make was watching the district.
At the detective’s first cry to halt, Armand threw down the sack and ran. Armand was lean and fleet, and the detective had less at stake. At the detective’s third cry, Armand’s heart lifted. He was escaping the law. Then the detective fired. Something reached up from behind and gripped Armand’s leg. He staggered forward painfully, dragging this leg that seemed to be caught in a trap. He turned down an alley. His leg felt free now, but very heavy. He climbed a fence, fell to the ground and lurched forward. Twenty minutes later he reached his room weak and panting.
Gabrielle cried out her fear when she saw him. She ran to lock the door. Irene raised a small head from a heap of blankets that lay on the floor. Panic stifled her crying as a heavy pounding shook the door.
Armand glanced down and saw the blood that dripped from his soaked trousers. The hammering on the door increased. Gabrielle was holding him close. She was sobbing her anguish and kissing him. He must not leave her. For God’s sake, no! She and the little ones—they would starve!
The soft wood door seemed to bellow inward. Armand kissed her once. He bent for an instant to drop a tear on the face of Irene. Then he seized an empty gin bottle and slid to the door.
The door crashed and Armand struck. The bottle shattered. The detective fell forward into Armand’s arms. Armand’s fingers closed on the man’s throat. The detective tried to speak, but Armand choked back his words. And then a great blast shook the room. The low jet of gas was blown out.
The room was heavy with rancid smoke and escaping gas. Someone came in who shut off the ga
s and later lighted it. There were two men on the floor. One of them, the detective, rose slowly.
Gabrielle crossed the floor to her man. She stood above him—ominously calm, immobile. Then a long-drawn scream echoed the anguish of the woman in despair. She clutched at her breast and pitched forward across the body of Armand.
Neighbors and strangers swarmed into the room. Irene’s frail little body shook with the chill of terror. The detective, with a gun in his hand, shouted fierce orders.
Irene crept from her blankets. The detective angrily waved back the intruders pressing in the doorway. The child slipped into the throng and was pushed with the rest from the room.
She stood in the doorway watching when the ambulance attendants brought stretchers into the room. She saw the doctor bend over her mother and heard him pronounce her dead. She saw him turn from her father and shake his head hopelessly. She was jostled roughly out of the way when the stretchers were carried from the room.
Irene shrank back further as a giant policeman carried her two baby sisters, one in each arm, from the room.
The dark hall was a swirling vortex of the morbidly curious. Men and women swarmed the place and fought for a glimpse into the room of tragedy. Police threw them back roughly. Children clung to their mothers’ skirts crying out their fear. Irene shrank from sight in a corner.
In time the police herded the neighbors into their own quarters, and quiet reclaimed the building.
Irene crept fearfully down the hall. A policeman guarded the door to Armand’s room. Irene stood there for a minute gazing dully, dry-eyed, at the door. The policeman waved an enormous nightstick and ordered her to be gone.
Irene walked slowly to the street door. She flung a last startled glance over her shoulder and fled down the street. Her spindling legs revealed amazing fortitude and carried her miles from that East End flat.
That night she fell in with a crippled beggar. Outcast, nearly helpless, the discovery of a bit of humanity more wretched than himself was flattering. The beggar took Irene to a basement. She made peasoup for him, and he rewarded her with two blankets.