Crafty brown eyes, long nose, thick brownish eyebrows that needed a mite of scissor trimming. Brown mustache, ditto. Bum teeth. The whole summed up to something out of the ordinary, to Tracy’s supersensitive alertness to things that were not exactly on the up and up.
Tracy felt the sharp inner excitement that always came to him at the beginning of a bizarre adventure. He had a strong feeling that this shabby stranger was going to provide either the material for Jerry’s famous Daily Planet column or perhaps another of those brisk crime tangles that Tracy loved to jump into with both feet. Jerry grinned faintly as he thought of Inspector Fitzgerald: maybe he could hand Fitz a crime and solution all on the same platter. He knew he could count on plenty of cooperation from the police; they had profited from Jerry’s detective ability on many an occasion. The arrangement was very simple—Tracy enjoyed the thrills; Inspector Fitzgerald got the credit.
“I want an orchestra single for tonight,” the man muttered. “It’s gotta be D-101. I positively can’t use anything else.”
Tracy grinned. “If there was no trouble digging up tickets, who would ever bother paying an extra premium? Am I right, mister?”
“I’ll pay the freight,” the man grunted. “All I’m interested in is the ticket.”
Peterson came striding back at this precise instant. Tracy frowned meaningly at him, said coolly; “I’m busy with a customer, Fred. Stick around a minute, like a good fella.”
Peterson grinned and took the hint. “Sure thing. I got lots of time.”
He eyed the stranger and so did Tracy. About 160 pounds, the Daily Planet’s columnist thought swiftly. Wiry looking, well muscled; about Tracy’s own build. Bad breath, disguised poorly with spearmint flavor. A cheap watch ticking loudly somewhere in the guy’s vest. No visible lump from the gun tucked out of sight in a shoulder-holster, but the gun sag in the ready-made coat was unmistakable.
“What show did you want the ticket for, mister?” Tracy asked.
“Alabama Moon. At the Parkhurst Theater.”
“Mmmm. … Musical, eh? Smash hit. Right away you start making it hard. … For tonight, you said?”
“Yeah. You see, I’m a traveling man. Just in town for one day. The wife has D-103 for tonight—bought the damned thing weeks ago. I’ve gotta leave for Chi tomorrow and I’d like to take in Alabama Moon with her before I pull out. We could exchange her ticket for something else, but the wife happens to be as deaf as the dickens—and all I can find around town is stuff in the balcony, which is no good for us at all.”
He said the whole thing almost in one breath. His complete lack of hesitation underlined the falsehood in Jerry Tracy’s attentive mind. People with long-winded explanations and odd requests usually simpered, hesitated, looked faintly embarrassed. This brown-mustache guy with the gun was entirely too glib.
“Mmmm. … Try any of the other ticket agencies?”
The man grinned. “I tried ’em all.”
“That’s a large statement, mister,” Tracy murmured. “Maybe I know a few spots to dig a single at the last minute—that the public never heard of. If I do, it won’t cost you no four-forty. It’ll cost you about—” purposely, he made the price steep “—about twenty-two bucks for that single ork.”
“Okey,” the man said instantly. “The wife’s pleasure is worth a lot more to me than the dough, on account of I only see her every—”
“Sure. Naturally. … Where do you want the ticket delivered? To your wife’s address?”
“No, no. Send it to the Hotel Cantwell.”
Tracy didn’t comment but his puzzled eyebrows made the customer talk some more.
“It’s much simpler to stay at the Cantwell than to go over to my apartment for the one day,” the man explained. “You know how it is with salesmen—I have my sample case handy—dealers know where to find me. So being just the one day in town, I don’t usually bother to—”
“Sure, sure,” Tracy said soothingly. “What was the name, please?”
“Davidson. Harry Davidson. Room 729 at the Cantwell. Can you get it there by six?”
“Six it’ll be there,” Tracy nodded. He lurched awkwardly forward, said, “Excuse me,” and bowed the visitor away with a respectful smile.
Peterson said in a discreet undertone: “He had a gun, Jerry.”
“Yeah. So I noticed.”
“He sounded pretty phoney to me. That yarn of his about his deaf wife smells like last year’s herring.”
“Herrings fool you sometimes,” Tracy said.
“You think he’s a phoney?”
“I’m not telling you what I think, boy friend. Mmm. … Alabama Moon. Ticket must be D-101 and no substitute will do at all. Willing to blow twenty-two bucks for the thing without a squawk. And he loves his home but prefers the Hotel Cantwell. … Be a good guy and forget about all this, will you, Fred?”
Peterson shrugged and nodded.
“I’ll take a walk to the Parkhurst Theater,” Tracy said. “There’s a bookie on Forty-fifth owes me an even hundred on Flying Fiddler to show. Maybe I can scratch his ear for it.”
A half-dozen people were waiting in line at the Parkhurst box-office. Joe?” to the guy behind the window, went around to the side and let himself in. In a couple of minutes the treasurer swiveled around and grinned.
“You’re looking fine, Jerry. What’s new?”
“Oh, nothing much. How’s for a little favor, Joe?”
“Sure. Anything special?”
“Ork single. For tonight.” He got casual. “D-101.”
“Huh?” The box-office man grinned suddenly. “You in on that thing, too, Jerry? I’ll bet I know who your friend is.”
“Tell me, sweetheart.”
Joe described the man in the brown mustache and Tracy nodded.
“He was around here this morning,” Joe said. “He looked kinda crumby for one of those ‘must have it right away’ people. I got leery right off the bat. Besides, there’s something screwy going on behind that D-101 business. Do you know the guy?”
“Maybe,” Jerry said. “What’s the matter with D-101?”
Joe hesitated. “It’s been puzzling me like hell. Sounds sorta crazy; no sense to it.”
“Shoot!” Tracy said curtly.
“Well, this particular ticket—just the one single—has been reserved every Thursday night since the show opened. The week before the show opened I got a cash remittance, ordering that seat for the first two Thursdays. The following week more cash came, reordering in advance. And so on. Ever since.”
“What’s funny about that?” Tracy inquired.
“Listen,” Joe said. “The seat has never been used. Not once! I know because I checked on it, see? And then, last week, the money stops coming. And the minute that happens up walks this crumby guy in the brown mustache and must have the seat at any price—for the same old Thursday performance—which is tonight.”
He spread exasperated hands.
“Look, Jerry! When it’s paid for—nobody wants it. When it’s not paid for—somebody wants it. Queer, or not?”
“Who signed those advance orders you received?” Tracy asked.
“They were unsigned. Just a typewritten note, with the currency folded inside. Postmarked Grand Central. All alike.”
“And whom were you asked to mail the ticket to? A man named Davidson—Harry Davidson?”
“No. A woman. Mrs. Claudia Shale. 225 Clayborn Avenue.”
“Where’s that? Bronx?”
Joe grinned tolerantly. “You Broadway guys are the nuts! Nope, it’s in Manhattan, believe it or not. Between Riverside Drive and upper Broadway—over near Columbia. … I even remember the apartment number; it’s 1-C. Had half a mind to drop in on that dame some time and ask her how come.”
“Don’t,” Tracy advised him softly. “You might get that snub nose of yours bitten off. … Where’s the ticket now? For tonight’s show, I mean.”
“I gave it to Dave day before yesterday.”
“Dave,
eh?” Tracy chuckled wryly. “That makes it tough. What did you charge the fat robber?”
“I only tilted it two bucks. Six-sixty—with a return privilege if Dave can’t make the thing gallop at his own price.”
“Gimme that Mrs. Shale’s address again,” Tracy muttered. He wrote it down and squeezed out the tiny doorway.
“Hey,” Joe called. “Where you going now? Over to Dave’s?”
“Down to the zoo to see a fat elephant,” the columnist said with a slow smile. “Elephants are supposed to remember favors for years and years? S’long, Joe.”
It wasn’t much of a walk to Dave’s joint. Tracy trudged south for a couple of blocks and then went west through the dusty sunshine. Two doors from the corner of Seventh Avenue, wedged in between a chain drug-store and a restaurant notorious for its male clientele, was Dave Lipmann’s stationery-and-cigar store.
A thin-faced kid who looked like an old man was leaning on the battered counter with both elbows, poring sleepily over a racing form.
“Gimme a half-pack of Camels,” Tracy murmured lazily.
“Huh?” The kid looked up and grinned. “Oh—hello, Mr. Tracy!”
“Dave around?”
“He’s in the back. Grabbing a little shut-eye. Want me to wake him up?”
“Don’t bother. He’s an easy guy to wake.”
Jerry Tracy lifted a greasy red curtain and passed into the tiny cubicle back of the store. An exceedingly fat man was fast asleep on a shabby auction-room sofa. He lay there utterly relaxed; one plump hand trailing on the floor, the other flattened limply on his capacious stomach.
If Dave’s nose was just a little bit longer, Tracy thought, he would look like an elephant! He reached down and laid a fingertip softly against the fat jowl.
Dave’s eyes blinked open instantly. They were blue, intelligent, alert. “Hello, Jerry.” He sat up and let his inquiring eyes save wear and tear on his voice.
“I want to dig a ticket, Dave. Alabama Moon. Ork. D-101.”
“Why not?” Dave grinned. His fingernail made slow sandpaper noises on his enormous chin. “Twelve-twenty okey?”
“It’s okey for the public,” Tracy said slowly. “How much for me?
“Okey, no profit. Take it for eight-eighty.”
The Daily Planet’s columnist handed him very gravely a five-spot and a single. He fished in his pocket and added a half-dollar and a dime. Dave’s admiring guffaw made his huge chin waggle.
“What a guy! You been over to the Parkhurst and checked on the price with Joe, huh?”
“Wouldn’t you?” He waited while Dave dug around in an ancient card index box and found the pasteboard.
“Why all the interest in Alabama Moon?” Dave asked him curiously.
“I love its balmy air, ’cause my mammy comes from there,” Tracy told him with dead-pan gravity.
He stopped on the sidewalk and glanced at his watch. Twenty after three. He walked back to Seventh Avenue and hooked a cab to the curb with a gentle but persuasive forefinger.
A few minutes later Jerry Tracy rode vertically for nineteen floors in an elevator operated by a good-looking brunette in a short uniformed skirt. She smiled pertly as he gave her the double-O. Not bad at all; her legs rated a second look.
The glassed door on the nineteenth floor said in small, well-bred block: Dill C. Haig, Private Consultant.
Haig was sitting in his private office. His round, dimpled cheeks made him look like a chubby, not overbright little fellow. He nodded pleasantly, didn’t say anything.
Tracy grinned at him. “You won’t do at all. Is Pat around?”
“Outside somewhere. Want him in a hurry?”
“Yeah.”
His desk phone brought long, skinny legs and a thin inquisitive face into the room.
“Hello, Pat,” Tracy said. “Got a little job for you.”
“Am I in on this thing?” Haig asked plaintively.
Tracy said, “No,” and rose to his feet. Pat led the way to a smaller room, hardly big enough to contain its two chairs, a table and a water-cooler.
Tracy told him about Mr. Harry Davidson and added: “I want you to dig me up a fuzzy brown mustache. Understand me—I don’t want to disguise myself as Davidson; I just want to look different enough that anyone who bumps into me won’t recognize me as Jerry Tracy. Can do?”
Pat grunted briefly, “Sure, why not?”
He bustled out for a minute or two and returned with a theatrical make-up box and a weird assortment of brown mustaches.
Jerry picked one. Then Pat did a slow, careful job. Jerry eyed his altered appearance with a little grin of satisfaction. He borrowed the scissors from Pat and trimmed the ragged brown mustache a shade more on the left side.
“How about it,” he asked Pat, “will the mustache stay on?”
Pat grinned. “It’ll hurt plenty when it comes off. Say—what’s this all about, Jerry?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing to it at all. This is the easiest way to case a hotel room that I know of. You don’t have to bribe hungry desk clerks and house dicks—or swing down from cornices like you sleuths are supposed to do in the movies.”
He pushed a sudden forefinger into Pat’s vest.
“Stick around here tonight just in case. I’ll tell Haig on the way out that it’s a paid assignment.”
He walked over to the phone and called the Hotel Cantmell in a shrill, whining voice.
“Has Mr. Davidson come in yet? Mr. Harry Davidson? Room seven-two-nine?”
He could hear the switchboard operator buzzing patiently.
“Never mind. I’ll call him again tonight.”
He grabbed a taxi and rode uptown to a roaring Sixth Avenue corner. He walked the extra half-block to the Cantwell. It was one of those narrow-doorway places, with a long rectangular lobby. Warty-looking palm trees in glazed pots. Huge white urns, filled with a messy mixture of gray sand and cigarette butts.
The brown-mustached, fox-like Mr. Tracy slid inconspicuously through the lobby behind an evening paper.
He rode up to the seventh floor, walked along a moldy gray-plush carpet to Room 729, and tried the clever little skeleton keys Pat had given him. After a while the door swung open.
For a moment Tracy stood tense and watchful, breathing a little faster than usual. The room was empty; Shades neatly drawn, bed made up, waste basket and ash tray emptied and clean.
The bathroom door was partly open. He stuck his head in, took a cautious peek—and stiffened with frozen horror.
Staring down at the dead man, Jerry Tracy had a sickening feeling that he had not handled this thing just right.
The real Davidson was dead, all right. Not peacefully dead, either. Flat on his back, with a tiny bullet-hole in his waxen forehead. There was terror in the contorted mouth, stark amazement in the glazed eyeballs.
Jerry Tracy snapped out of his trance. He turned swiftly back into the bedroom. He stood on tiptoe near the bed, watching, listening, sniffing; trying with every acute sense he possessed to rip some intelligent meaning out of his surroundings. As far as Tracy could discover from his swift, lightning survey not a single thing in the room had been moved or tampered with. There was no gun in sight. He had a hunch, having seen the dead man’s wound, that if he found the gun, it might be a .32. Tracy walked softly across to the walnut dresser and picked up the room phone. He called the desk and spoke carefully.
“This is Mr. Davidson calling. Room Seven-two-nine. I’ve been expecting someone to get in touch with me all afternoon. Are you sure that no one has called or left a message?”
“Just a moment, Mr. Davidson. I’ll check.”
The voice returned in a few seconds. “There was a phone call for you a little while ago. Just before you came in. No message. Man said he’d call back later this evening.”
Tracy pretended mild surprise. “Are you sure no one asked at the desk for me this afternoon?”
“No, sir. Just that one phone call.”
“Okey. Than
ks.”
Damned funny, the columnist thought. A dead guy—and, according to the clerk, no one had called on him.
Frowning, Tracy went through the pockets of the dead man. He found something he hadn’t expected: a metal shield. The fellow wasn’t a crook, after all. Somehow, the discovery didn’t surprise Jerry so much. A private dick, eh? Mmmm. …
He looked at the shield. Whalen Detective Agency. Tracy had never heard of the outfit; probably some cheap, furtive, two-bit affair. He’d have to check on it with Dill Haig. He shoved the shield in his own pocket and concentrated on a more interesting find—a slip of paper with the pencilled name and address of Mrs. Claudia Shale. It was in a tiny ball, rolled up with shreds of tobacco in a corner of Davidson’s vest pocket.
Tracy thought things over for a swift instant. Was Mrs. Shale a client of the Whalen Agency? A frightened woman, trying to buy protection for herself from some threatened danger by hiring a private dick? Oh was the dick after the Shale dame for some reason?
A sudden clicking sound roused the Broadway columnist from his puzzled reverie. His eyes jerked towards the mirror of the dresser. He became very-still. He was staring at the reflected image of a man with a gun. The muzzle of the weapon was trained on the exact center of Jerry Tracy’s cold back.
“Stick ’em up, Davidson!” a low voice snapped.
Tracy lifted both hands obediently above his head. He turned stiffly. The connecting door between the dead man’s room and the room adjoining it was partly open. That was where the sly gunman had come from. Inwardly, Tracy cursed himself for his stupidity. His absorption in the dead detective’s shield and the crumpled shred of paper with the pencilled memorandum had made him a ridiculously easy victim.
The man with the gun was a young fellow. About twenty-two or so. His hand wavered slightly but there was no tremble in the set of his chin or the sound of his menacing voice.
“Thought I didn’t know about you—eh, Davidson? You’re not as wise as you thought you were.”
Evidently the gunman didn’t know Davidson by sight. This was Davidson’s room and that the man in it should be Davidson seemed obvious to him.
Jerry Tracy, Celebrity Reporter Page 35