The alley widened into a small unpaved parking area that served the rear of the tobacco shop and a restaurant that faced on the street beyond. A man in a cook’s white hat was emptying garbage into a pail outside the restaurant. He stared indifferently at the columnist, yawned, and went back to his pots and pans.
Tracy saw tire marks on the ground, deep-treaded marks where a car had recently stood behind the tobacco shop. There was a grated rear window beyond the closed door and he stepped closer and applied a wary eye to the edge of the dust-encrusted pane. His finger made a small clear patch near the edge and he peered inside.
It was just as he had thought. If the guy inside was a snatch artist, he was too wise to keep the captured kid on the premises. There was no sign of Eddie and no place where he could have been stuck out of sight. No living quarters in the back of the shop. The face of the swarthy dealer was vaguely visible as he leaned on the counter, staring straight out towards the sidewalk where Tracy had breezed with smiling apologies. The man looked sullen, suspicious. He walked to the front door and stood there looking out at the swift flow of traffic.
Tracy backed away from the window and bent over the tire marks. They confirmed his uneasy hunch that Eddie had gone through that shop like greased lightning. In—a hand over his mouth, maybe a sock over the skull—then out, into a sedan with a long wheelbase. The latter was an easy deduction for Jerry’s quick-witted intelligence. The car had had to back up to make the turn. Its length and weight were clearly evident in the broad tread marks. Tracy’s lips tightened as he thought of the loyal kid, baited with five bucks and snatched by a dark-skinned dame and a so-called swami. He walked through to the rear street and turned thoughtfully west. Eddie and Lightweight, two swell people he didn’t want hurt, vanished into thin air because they obviously knew something about a dead man propped in a hotel closet.
On the way to the corner of Broadway the face of another dead man flashed into the suddenly alert memory of the Daily Planet’s columnist. The name of the man was Sol Davis. Murdered very thoroughly by a killer who had left no trace except the method of murder, which was disturbingly Oriental. Sol’s body had been found in a West Side doorway of the Low Fifties barely three weeks before—strangled to death by a thin cord that had been twisted deep in the flesh of his throat.
The only connection between Davis and young Stuart Parker was show business. Davis, a bald, prosperous and rather secretive old bozo, was one of the town’s lesser theatrical impresarios. He owned a small chain of theaters. Stuart Parker would have owned considerably more than that, if he had lived to see the estate of his father finally settled. His father had been Sam Parker and his holdings in theatrical real estate were large. Was there a motive for murder in that? What possible connection could there be between two murdered theatrical men and a fake swami in a brownstone house?
Frowning, Tracy stepped into a phone booth and rang up Lightweight’s suite. He was answered by a voice he recognized—Masterson, a friendly enough dick from headquarters. Masterson reported that neither Fitz nor Sergeant Killan were there. They had buzzed off somewhere else. How come Jerry knew there was trouble in the dancer’s apartment?
“I guess ’em before they happen,” Tracy rejoined with a dry chuckle, and hung up.
The chuckle was phoney. It was tough when you were a little guy with a column to write—and murder kept clutching you by the back of the pants! The chance to slip information to the inspector was out for the present. He’d give Fitz a buzz later on, he decided.
The familiar prosaic noise of Broadway hit him with reassuring clamor when he emerged from the drug-store. Lights like fuzzy yellow balloons, honks of taxis, guys and their dames slogging north and south through the hot night like a packed outpouring of ants.
This was not Bagdad—this was Manhattan! The place where well-dressed pals slapped you on the back and tried to borrow money. Where showgirls and debs, anxious for a line or two in the Daily Planet column, put on the old honeyed smile and told their escorts: “You know Jerry, of course! The grandest little guy in town!”
But Tracy couldn’t shake off the worried feeling that he was marked for trouble like a hot-cross bun. Every move he had made tonight was wrong. The hell of it was, the mess had been wished on him through no fault of his own.
He decided to hop back to his penthouse and have a tall snort of bonded Bourbon. He’d snap out of his shivers by watching Butch, his oversize hoofs cocked up on a console table, spelling out the latest Broadway chatter from Variety with twitchings of his thick, good-natured lips. Butch, bless him, had never heard of Bagdad. If you asked him about it, he’d probably tell you it was a town near Bridgeport.
Butch’s big feet were, as usual, propped up on the console table. But he wasn’t poring over Variety. He was reading—of all things imaginable—a book!
Butch grinned at his pint-sized employer. “Hi-yuh, boss. Hey, why didn’t yuh tell a guy yuh had books like this? Boy, I’m tellin’ yuh this one’s a knockout. All about a smart little kid that had a magic wop to wait on him.”
“What the devil are you talking about?”
“The kid had a trick lamp. Every time he rubbed it—out jumped a Guinney slave to wait on him. Boy, he was a hard-working wop!”
Tracy said slowly: “Not Guinney, Butch—Genie.”
A look of awed disbelief jerked into Tracy’s wide eyes. He shook his head suddenly, like a man who’s just seen a ghost eating a hot dog and swilling orangeade in broad daylight.
“Hey!” Butch yelled in sudden alarm. “Cut it out, Boss! You’ll tear de pictures!”
“Where did this come from?” Tracy asked. He was eying with grim wonder the book he had just snatched. It was a single volume edition of the Arabian Nights.
Butch, who realized by now that something was wrong, said defensively: “Keep your shoit on, Jerry. I got it from the Chink.”
“From McNulty?”
“Yeah.”
“Where did McNulty get it?”
“Search me.”
Tracy’s sharp summons brought his bland-eyed Chinese cook padding cheerfully from the distant confines of the kitchen.
“Where did you get this thing?” Track asked.
“Leetle while ago. Bell ring at door. Lady bling book.”
“What lady?”
McNulty sighed. His almond eyes were calm, filled with a gentle rebuke. “Allatime you squeal like toy balloon, Mister Tlacy. How can McNulty think? Confucius say—”
“The hell with Confucius! Tell me about this book.”
It had arrived as McNulty had said. A youngish, dark eyed woman had left it and promptly departed before McNulty could question her. The Chinaman had thought nothing of it; people were always sending gifts to Tracy.
Tracy leafed through the volume with puzzled eyes. He had come home to mind his own business—and now this! His first surmise was that the book contained a message of some sort. Otherwise, why the mysterious gift; and why, of all fantastic coincidences, the Arabian Nights? He was so jittery that he leafed through the volume twice before he saw that on two successive pages a sentence had been underlined.
The first sentence read as follows: He was in the habit of going out early in the morning, and would stay out all day, playing in the streets with idle children of his own age.
Tracy frowned, turned over the page and read the other underlined sentence: In this situation, as he was one day playing with his vagabond associates, a stranger passing by stood to observe him.
The message was obviously a reference to the vanished Eddie. Tracy glanced at the top of the page and uttered instantly a low cry of comprehension. The chapter was headed in bold type. The Story of Aladdin.
Alladin—nerts! Ala Dhinn—and Eddie! That’s what it meant. But why the warning? Was this so-called “loony dame” trying to help Tracy—or frame him with a new come-on?
mcNulty brought him a tall Bourbon, but it didn’t help a bit. The puzzle seemed almost mathematical. Jerry drew with the nervous p
oint of his pencil a triangle and two parallel lines. The triangle was Lightweight, a street gamin named Eddie—and a thoroughly scared Broadway columnist named Jerry Tracy. The parallel lines were two dead men; Sol Davis, strangled to death with a garrot cord three weeks earlier and Stuart Parker, shot dead tonight and crammed into a cabaret dancer’s closet. The death lines were parallel because both Davis and young Parker had something to do with show business; they both owned strings of theaters.
A sudden practical idea came to Tracy. He thought of his friend, Ned Wortman. He’d give Ned a ring and kill two birds with one stone. He had to make sure that the obliging Ned had phoned into the Daily Planet office the opening night chitchat he had so obligingly promised. Besides, Ned was himself a producer. He might have some slant on Davis or Parker, that Jerry could relay to Inspector Fitzgerald.
Tracy was reaching for the phone to call Wortman when the bell suddenly rang.
“Hello?” he said.
“Jerry? Is that you, Jerry?”
The voice was a woman’s. Thin, high-pitched, yet barely audible. Tracy recognized it instantly.
“Lightweight?”
“Y-yes. … Jerry—quick—for God’s sake, hurry!”
“What’s wrong? Where are you?”
“He followed me! I’m—I’m sure of it. Jerry, he means to kill me!”
“Where are you?” Tracy cried, his thin face drawn with anxiety.
“In the Garfield Theatre,” Lightweight whispered.
“But the show’s finished. The joint’s closed up. How did you get in?”
Her frightened words spurted over the wire. “First alley exit on the left. I’m hiding in the manager’s offie in the rear of the orchestra. Jerry—quick—”
“Wait a minute! Who’s after you? Who are you talking about?”
A soft click sounded in Tracy’s ears. The line was dead.
He banged his own receiver down.
“McNulty! Where are you?”
The Chinaman came pattering in as calm as a summer breeze. He looked cool and unflurried in his dark trousers and smock of thin silk.
“I may need you to identify that woman who brought the book here. Come on!”
Butch was heaving out of his comfortable chair, his big face angry, his thick lips pouting like a child’s.
“Hey! Wait a minute! Ain’t I goin’? You passin’ me up for a dopey Chink?”
Tracy’s voice cut short Butch’s out-raged snort. “Stay here and keep an eye on things. There may be a tough guy dropping in here to take a crack at me. If he does—rough him up!”
Butch grinned shakily. “Dat’s different. Whyn’t yuh say so in the foist place? I thought yuh was givin’ the Chink the play over me.”
In a moment the columnist and McNulty were outside the apartment, dropping swiftly in the elevator to the distant street. A whistle of the doorman brought a parked taxi from the corner. At Tracy’s curt order the cab shot through the warm darkness towards Times Square. Speed! Grab the terrified Lightweight and hustle her back to the penthouse—then the cops, and a thankful bow-out for a peaceful columnist!
McNulty’s almond eyes were blandly inquisitive. “You want catchum someone, Boss?”
“Yeah,” Tracy snapped.
They alighted from the cab a block away from the Garfield Theatre. It was late, but Broadway was still sluggishly alive with the remnants of after-show parties. Around the doorways of restaurants mildly cockeyed parties waddled with alcoholic gravity towards sweating taxi-drivers parked at the curb. The sidewalks were still baking with heat absorbed during the sizzling afternoon.
Down the side street the Garfield Theatre was a squat pyramid of blackness. Tracy approached the place at a gait that was not too hurried. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself or the Chink. There was no swanky limousine parked outside the deserted theater, no sign of the suave Ala Dhinn. That made Tracy feel better. The two investigators ducked silently into the paved exit alley on the left side of the theater, and Tracy tried the handle of the first door. It was unlocked, as Lightweight had said.
He admired the kid’s smartness. Of all places in New York for a gal on the dodge to hide, an empty theater was a natural. Fitz and Killan were undoubtedly turning the town upsidedown at this very instant, and Lightweight was hidden right under their noses, a few blocks from the spot where Stuart Parker had tumbled stone-dead out of her hotel closet.
The theater was pitch dark inside. Tracy whispered into McNulty’s inclined ear and the Chink stood guard just within the exit door. Tracy padded noiselessly along the black aisle to the rear.
He knew where the manager’s office was. No light was visible through the ground-glass panel of the closed door. Gently he turned the knob and the door pushed open easily.
He whispered cautiously: “Lightweight! Are you okey? It’s Jerry!”
No answer. He struck a match, shielding the faint yellow glow with his cupped palm. The office was empty.
His faint whistle brought McNulty materializing like a yellow ghost in the darkness of the doorway. Tracy shut the door and lit another match. Suddenly he gave a low exclamation.
His finger was pointing towards a desk in the dim corner of the room. He advanced until the small object atop the desk became clearly outlined in the light of his match. Tracy recognized it; it was a plaster bust of Napoleon. Like so many showmen of his type, the pudgy little manager of the Garfield Theatre rather fancied his pot-bellied resemblance to Napoleon. He always kept the concession to his vanity on the desk.
But it wasn’t the bust itself at which the eager finger of the columnist pointed. It was a girl’s handkerchief, wrapped around Napoleon’s plastered brow and tied loosely with a hastily made knot. In one corner were embroidered initials—P. A. Peggy Arlen—Lightweight!
Neither the handkerchief nor the initials, however, were the tip-off. It was the way the handkerchief was fastened to the bust. It had been knotted in a crude semblance of a wrapped turban! Lightweight, trapped in the middle of her desperate telephone appeal to Jerry, had had a warning of the approach of Ala Dhinn—and the wit to leave this hasty clue.
Tracy’s reaction was swift. He scooped up the telephone on the desk and called Police Headquarters in an eager whisper. He was doomed to disappointment. Neither Inspector Fitzgerald nor Sergeant Killan were in the building.
“Out on a case,” a bored voice growled sleepily. “Who are you, and what do you want the inspector about?”
Tracy hung up without replying.
With a gesture he felt for the small calibered gun on his hip. He had grabbed it before he left the penthouse.
“Come on, keed,” he told McNulty.
It was sticky and hot outside. Big wet drops of rain were beginning to splash on the dark pavement of the deserted sidewalk. Tracy considered the idea of a cab and then dropped it. His own car was in a garage not two blocks away, over near Sixth Avenue. He heeled it along through the increasing rain, the noiseless feet of McNulty pattering swiftly beside him.
Ten minutes later Tracy’s car turned from Central Park West into one of the Eighties. There wasn’t a single pedestrian visible in the long block. The rain had become a sullen torrent and the sidewalks and gutter streamed with splashing water. A sudden flare of lightning and the long roll of thunder seemed to cool the air miraculously. Tracy kept his mind on Lightweight and it helped to brace him. He pulled in at the curb and braked.
The swami’s residence was a brownstone, high-stooped affair in a neighborhood that was still untouched by the ever-expanding inroads of furnished room joints. Either Ala Dhinn had dough or he was a front for somebody who had!
Tracy walked up the stoop and rang the bell. The moment the door opened, he and McNulty slipped inside. The turbaned servant made an angry gesture of protest.
“What’s the idea?” he snarled.
“If you’re an Oriental, I’m an airedale,” Tracy said huskily. “That Brooklyn accent doesn’t go with the walnut stain and the trick pajamas. Where�
��s the swami?”
“He’s busy,” the servant sneered. “If you are on the same business as that dick ahead of you, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“What dick ahead of me?” Jerry asked quickly. His eyes narrowed. From a closed door down the hallway he heard a surprisingly familiar voice. He nodded to McNulty. The Chinaman stuck a stiff forefinger against the servant’s back and shoved his captive ahead of him. Tracy flung open the door.
A curt voice from within said sharply: “Stick ’em up!”
Tracy grinned with shaky relief. “Hello, Fitz. What you doing here?”
Inspector Fitzgerald lowered his weapon. He looked grimly puzzled.
“I took your tip,” Fitz admitted slowly, “and dropped in for a chat with this swami bird. He’s phoney, all right. No more of a Hindoo than I am. He claims his act is none of my business and strictly on the level. Got any dope on him?”
“Maybe,” Tracy said quietly.
He was staring straight at the swami, reassured by the presence of Fitzgerald. In a close-up the swarthy face looked more like a smart Italian’s than anything else.
A light, rustling sound jerked Tracy’s gaze around. A man had risen from a chair in a corner and was disappearing quietly through an inner door. Tracy got a quick look at the fat averted face, and took a swift forward step. He changed his mind instantly and remained where he was. The door closed.
“Who was that guy?” Tracy asked Fitz.
“The swami’s secretary. I had him in here for questioning. I told him he could go. Want him back?”
“Nope,” Tracy said. “The secretary, eh?” He swung towards McNulty. “Walk this other bird out in the hall and keep your gun on him. Don’t let him move.”
“This is an outrage,” the swami protested nervously. “I’m a respectable, law-abiding person. I demand—”
Jerry Tracy, Celebrity Reporter Page 53