AHMM, May 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "It can be done—with a magnet,” said Hildegarde Withers. She pushed back her chair, very suddenly. “Oscar—arrest Feets Titus!"

  "I'll do that—if you'll tell me where he is."

  "I've got a good idea,” said Hildegarde Withers tartly. She was thoughtful for another moment. “You just told me of the cities in which Mr. Titus had gotten himself into trouble—every large city in the United States except Boston. Gangsters never try to hide out in small towns, and I'll bet you anything you like that Titus is somewhere aboard a train bound for Boston this very minute—it stands to reason!"

  The inspector looked at his watch, and saw that it was half-past nine. “You think Titus did the job? If he did, and decided to lam in the way you suggest, he could have got a slow train at six this morning, and a fast one at eight-thirty. But—"

  "Try it, anyway,” begged the schoolteacher. “Wire his description ahead—or better still, doesn't the Boston plane leave in time to beat both trains into the city?"

  "Wait a minute!” insisted the inspector. “I tell you, there's no reason to suppose that Titus did this job. He wouldn't use a poker if he did. I'm convinced—"

  "So am I,” agreed Miss Withers. “Oscar, you aren't always as dumb as you are sometimes.” She pushed at him eagerly. “Get to the phone and have them hold the plane—it leaves in half an hour, if I remember correctly, from Roosevelt Field."

  They slid up into thin air twenty minutes late, but they were set down again at Boston Airport on schedule. Most of the trip Miss Withers had spent in a close and scientific study of the jack of diamonds which she had abstracted from Lorna Davies's purse, but neither the foolish smiling face of the knave nor the conventional bicycle back of the card told her what she needed to know. Oddly enough, tiny holes had been punched in each corner of the card, as if it had been pinned to a drawing board. It had been pinned there face downward, anyway—the holes showed that much.

  "Anyway,” Piper said, as they walked into South Station shortly before the slow train was due, “even if this is a wild goose chase, it isn't going to be as bad as if we had got in touch with the Boston police over nothing. We can sneak back home without anybody knowing..."

  "Can't we!” Miss Withers agreed.

  Then the train pulled in. Not more than a dozen passengers had arisen before daylight to make this trip—they straggled toward the gates in an unprepossessing line. First came two boys, bearing paper suitcases—all too evidently arriving homeward after an unsuccessful attempt to find jobs in New York. Then there was a young couple with a baby, a young couple with two babies, a frightened-looking young man with unbrushed hair and big glasses who clutched a violin case against his narrow chest, a faded fat blonde of forty, and a travelling salesman with two sample cases.

  The inspector turned to Miss Withers. “You see? I have seen Feets Titus often enough in the lineup to know that none of these are him."

  "Is he,” corrected Miss Withers absently. Something bothered her, but she couldn't put her finger on it. She jerked her head. Finger—that was it.

  "We may as well wait for the other train—though it'll be the same story,” the inspector said wearily. “Didn't I tell you..."

  "Tell me later,” she interrupted impolitely, and set off across the vast marble hall at a rapid trot. “Come on, Oscar!"

  She raised her voice. “Wait a minute—Yoo hoo..."

  The little violinist—whose hands were unmusical—stopped in wonderment. Then he darted away like a rabbit, dropping his violin case in his haste. It fell directly in front of Miss Withers, flying open and disgorging wearing apparel in every direction. Her foot struck something hard, and she collapsed in an undignified heap.

  The inspector helped her to her feet. They both looked down and saw that she had tripped over a nasty-looking automatic pistol.

  "There he goes!” cried Miss Withers.

  A yellow taxi whirled away from the curb. In a moment the inspector and Miss Withers were in another, tearing like mad through the sedate streets of Boston.

  "By heaven, it must be Feets Titus!” Piper roared. “Driver—stick to that car or I'll murder you.” The driver clenched his teeth grimly and stuck.

  Miss Withers clung to a strap and prayed. There was nothing else to do. A brilliant star with many facets appeared in the windshield as a white face showed itself for a moment in the rear window of the cab ahead and fired. At the next corner an officer ran out into the street and stood with his arms outstretched, but leaped aside as the first taxi swooped down on him. Along the sidewalks people were running ... screaming...

  Piper spoke to his driver, and their cab slowed. When it picked up again, it was loaded with two hundred pounds of bone and brawn on the running board. A service pistol cracked, and cracked again, but the bouncing of the cab was too severe for anything but pure shooting luck.

  The cab ahead swerved. “Mother of God—the boy is driving him into a dead end street!” roared the new recruit. “He'll get killed for it..."

  But nobody got killed for anything. The taxi ahead screeched to a stop with its headlights pressed against the low railing of a pier-head, and from its window a gun sailed lazily outward to splash in the water. The driver leaped out, hands upraised—for he knew the bad position he was in.

  Then, as the inspector and the Boston officer got their feet on the ground and came gingerly forward, the door of the other cab opened and a dapper young man stepped down, his hands busy lighting a cigarette.

  "So you've got me,” he observed politely. “So what?"

  The inspector slapped out the cigarette—men had killed themselves that way—and snatched off the big, lightly tinted glasses. They were a little large for Feets Titus, but he recognized the petty racketeer well enough now that his hair was combed back.

  "Titus, you're under arrest for the murder of Jack Merlin,” he announced. Feets Titus shrugged.

  "Nice day for it,” he observed. “Honest, Inspector, this is news to me. Poor old Jack—haven't seen him in a week."

  "Then you might explain how you happen to be wearing his spectacles,” cut in a shrewd and acidulous voice. Feets Titus said no more—by advice of counsel, as he put it. The inspector turned to Miss Withers.

  "That's that,” he said. “We—you had the right hunch. Now, if you'll excuse me for a while, I'll go and arrange for this punk to waive extradition. Think we can argue him into it at the station. We ought to be able to catch the six o'clock train back."

  "You ought to be able,” said Miss Withers. “I'm not a deputy-sheriff. Besides, I happen to have five aunts in Boston, and this is a splendid time to pay a round of calls. See you tomorrow morning, Oscar."

  She marched off toward the street. “Hey,” cried the inspector. You've got those eye-glasses...” But she did not hear him.

  The cop who had joined them on the running board was just finishing a quick and thorough frisking of the arrested man. “Six hundred and forty bucks in his poke,” he announced. Piper remembered that there had been six hundred and fifty dollars entered on the bank deposit slip which was crammed into Merlin's ashstand, and he thought no more of the spectacles. By the time he put his prisoner aboard the six o'clock train for New York he had forgotten them entirely.

  Miss Hildegarde Withers had a belated but pleasant luncheon in a tea-room on Milk Street, during which time something must have made her change her plans considerably, for she left the place only to take a taxicab for the airport again. This time she, and not the plane, had to wait, but all the same she arrived back in the magic island of Manhattan before the train bearing Piper and his prisoner southward was well out of the environs of Boston. The five aunts would have to wait.

  "Thirty-five Park Avenue,” Miss Withers told her cab driver. She found herself ringing the bell outside the door marked “8A” before she had made up her mind as to what she intended to say.

  A tense and silent Lorna Davies let her in.

  "I've been busy—” Miss Withers began.

  "But Richie
is still in jail!” The young woman's voice was oddly high and nervous, for all her air of smoothness. “You haven't done anything about getting him out. You must! I'll do anything—pay anything."

  "Anything?” Miss Withers leaned forward. “Would you be willing to confess to the killing of John Merlin to save your husband?"

  There was a long and dreadful silence while Lorna tried to light a cigarette with a match held six inches from its tip. She stared at the wall. Finally she rose to her feet, gripping the back of her chair and twisting her tall curving body to face Miss Withers—or anything else.

  "Yes!” she whispered. “I—"

  "Never mind,” said the schoolteacher, clearing her throat. She took a crumpled slip of paper from her purse, and handed it to the girl. “I think this is your signature?"

  Lorna glanced at the check for $2,500, and nodded.

  "Your mysterious errands this morning had to do with stopping payment on it?"

  Lorna shook her head. “No—I was raising funds to cover it. You see, I—I—"

  Miss Withers understood. “It was more than you had in the bank? I didn't think of that. But my dear child, you ought to know better than to try to make money by playing cards."

  Lorna's eyes narrowed. “You know everything, don't you?"

  Miss Withers shrugged. “Almost everything. I know that you have been finding it more and more difficult to finance the lovable young artist you married—even the Gault bonds depreciate like everyone else's. Your friends were coming to Merlin's apartment to play, and you got in the habit of joining them. Perhaps you were lonely when your husband worked late—or perhaps you were lucky at first and made money."

  Lorna nodded dully.

  "Last night you went upstairs to play poker,” Miss Withers continued. “You lost—and plunging, lost still more, until when you returned to your own apartment you left behind you a check for more money than you had in the bank. You brought along with you—this!"

  Miss Withers produced the jack of diamonds. “You took it! I thought—"

  "Let me finish. At the time you very wisely wondered if the game was a fair one. With your husband's help you discovered somehow that the back of this card—and presumably of the other face cards in the deck—was marked. Shaded, I think they call it."

  Lorna nodded. “We pinned it on his drawing board, and studied it with a magnifying glass. The shading finally showed—when we tried a colored glass—"

  "It also showed through the spectacles that Jack Merlin wore when he played cards,” Miss Withers explained. She patted her handbag. “But never mind that now. Up until your return from the card game, your husband had been painting, for oil paints dry quite quickly, and his work was still wet this morning. When he realized the trick, he very rashly rushed upstairs—dressed just as he was—to face Merlin. The gambler tried to throw him out, and you heard them fighting up there and followed. You arrived to see your husband getting the worst of it—"

  "Merlin was choking him,” said Lorna Davies slowly. “Choking him and laughing. I used to be a six handicap golfer. I couldn't stand by—I snatched up the poker, and—I didn't mean to—"

  Suddenly she broke, and fell to her knees. But her voice was even. “I killed him!"

  "I know,” Miss Withers said softly. “I know all the rest. You hurried out, with the card your husband had taken up to confront Merlin. Richie stayed behind to wipe away fingerprints, and was seen when he finally left. That is why he didn't telephone the police."

  "I can't guess who did,” said Lorna, as if she didn't really care.

  "It was the other man who visited Merlin late at night,” Miss Withers told her. “Perhaps because he hoped they'd find clues leading away from himself. He was a racketeer named Feets Titus, who acted as Merlin's bodyguard and messenger. He wouldn't have mixed well with the type of guests that Merlin had, so he only came in late at night to get the evening's receipts. Some banks, you know, have night boxes where deposits can be made at any hour. Titus came in this morning shortly after your husband was seen leaving Merlin's apartment, and found his employer dead. With a bad police record, and indeed, wanted in various cities and de trop almost everywhere, Titus knew he would be blamed for this murder or sent back to Chicago or elsewhere to face another charge, so he took the deposit which was ready for the bank, disposed of the checks, and used the money for a getaway. He used a violin-case as part of his disguise, and at the last moment snatched the glasses from the dead man as an added precaution."

  Miss Withers paused for breath. “He—he got away?” Lorna asked.

  The schoolteacher nodded. “Miles away. And now—"

  She was interrupted by a thunderous knocking upon the apartment door. Lorna Davies tried hard to breathe. They've come—for me?"

  "Lorna! Darling, let me in!” came a man's voice.

  Lorna Davies gripped Miss Withers's arm, with icy fingers. “It's Rich! They've let him go!” She spoke swiftly in Miss Withers's ear. “May I have just an hour with him before—before—"

  The schoolteacher nodded, and Lorna ran to the door. In a moment she was in the arms of a slim, rather handsome young man. “For heaven's sake, stop crying!” cried Richie Davies. “It's all right, I tell you. The police have got a man whom they say did it. We're—” Then he saw Miss Withers, watching.

  "Oh—” He was introduced to Miss Withers.

  "I was just leaving,” said that lady. “My, it is getting late."

  Lorna followed her to the door. “Then—I suppose I'll hear from—from your friends later in the evening."

  "Before midnight,” Miss Withers said. Her voice was hollow, though she tried to make it casual. As she went down the hall she realized that never before in her life had a triumph been so tasteless, so empty. She had unravelled the yarn—she had run the quarry to earth. And there was no savour in it.

  "I'm a sentimental old fool,” said Miss Withers to herself. “This is why women make bad detectives. Because they haven't the courage to—” She shook her shoulders, and set off for Centre Street.

  At eleven fifteen that evening a sharp ring came at the door of the Davies’ apartment. Lorna was just signing her name at the bottom of a long sheet of paper covered with smooth, even lines written with heart's blood and ink. Beside it lay a long envelope marked “To the Police..."

  Her young husband, his face white and desperate, faced her. “Not yet!” he cried. “She said twelve—"

  Lorna Davies raised her lips to his. “Kiss me, Rich,” she said softly. “And—give me a drink, please."

  Two pale yellow cocktails stood on a little tray beside her. But Richie shook his head. “She said twelve,” he repeated stubbornly.

  Another ring at the doorbell, and he crossed the room softly. “Who's there?"

  "Western Union Messenger Service,” came a squeaky voice. It was not that of a boy.

  Lorna Davies took up her cocktail. “A stirrup-cup, Richie!"

  "Wait,” he whispered. He came closer to the door. “Push it underneath, there's a good chap."

  A white envelope slid through the crack. “I'll wait and see if there's any answer,” came the squeaky voice.

  Lorna, the glass almost at her lips, watched her young husband tear open the message addressed to her. He read it—as he thought—aloud, his lips making no sound.

  Then he tottered toward his wife, and she took it from his fingers. “Dear Lorna Davies,” it began, “I have spent the evening reading up the police record of a Mr. Feets Titus, who—the authorities are convinced—killed Jack Merlin in his apartment house last night. They believe that he killed Merlin in a dispute, and took the money as an afterthought. They are also of the opinion that Titus will plead guilty to second degree murder to escape worse charges elsewhere. It seems to me that a racketeer who has run down little children belongs behind bars much more than others I have in mind. Therefore I am not going to raise my voice against the wisdom of the Force ... signed, Hildegarde Withers.” There was also a postscript. “As my fee in this c
ase I am keeping the jack of diamonds. I suggest that you both take up the study of chess for these long spring evenings."

  "Hey! Is there any answer?” Western Union was growing tired. Lorna Davies tore open the door and handed a twenty-dollar bill to the septuagenarian who waited there, and he hobbled off in blank amazement.

  She found Richie pouring two pale yellow cocktails into the sink, with trembling hands. For a long time they did not speak.

  At that moment, Miss Hildegarde Withers was standing in her own little Westside apartment, critically eyeing a playing card which she had slipped into a tiny wall-frame, wrong end up. The essential wrongness did not appear until you stared at the card through a pair of large spectacles, slightly tinted with amber—and then two spokes on the left side of the bicycle wheel design stood out bold and black above the rest.

  Hands on her hips, Miss Withers surveyed the sole relic of her exciting day. She hummed softly the immortal line—"To make the punishment fit the crime...” With a sense of duty well done, she prepared for bed.

  Copyright © 1937 by Stuart Palmer. Copyright Renewed. Reprinted by permission.

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  COMING IN JUNE 2007

  TRUST ME by LOREN D. ESTLEMAN

  STEP ON A CRACK by DAVID EDGERLEY GATES

  MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE by MARIANNE WILSKI STRONG

  THE END OF THE TRAIN by MIKE WIECEK

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