Murder Impossible

by Jack Adrian (ed)

  Half a flight behind him, the iron steps punged to Slipsky's more solid tread and Slipsky's blue clad form was a black bulk in the night. He was real, anyway. Slipsky at least was real. He was not a dream walking up the iron stairs.

  His wrist watch said 12:18 when he reached the fourth floor landing, outside old Dan's dark moon gleaming library window. Tuxedo Johnny pressed his face against the glass. He could see something white upon the floor inside, like a man's white face . . . No, it was a piece of paper or a cocktail napkin, probably. Dead men's faces are not as white as that.

  There was a silence beyond the window. He could hear only the thump-thump-thump of his own pulse. Yet for an instant he had a ghastly feeling of some living, creeping presence beyond the dark glass. Of something breathing mutely, with strangled breath, more terrible than the dead.

  Slipsky had mounted up beside him. 'See anything, Lieutenant?'

  'It looks like Danny lying on the floor over by the desk,' Tuxedo Johnny muttered with a dry croak.

  'Think someone's still in there?' Slipsky breathed.

  'Not a chance,' muttered Tuxedo Johnny putting on a show of steadiness he did not feel. 'For a moment I had a sort of notion—but there isn't anybody. Take your stick and smash the pane above the glass. We've got to get in.'

  'It mayn't be locked,' said Slipsky.

  He pushed the edge of the sash with his big pudgy fingers, trying it. But it was locked. Gripping his nightstick by the middle, he drove the end of it at the lower edge of the upper pane. The glass crashed, with a sharp, momentous sound, as a third of the pane fell away in shards. Slipsky reached in, turning the catch.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A Cutting Kill

  Old Dan McCue's body lay sprawled on his five thousand dollar Bokhara rug inside in the darkness, beside his eighteen hundred dollar inlaid satinwood Louis Quinze desk. Tuxedo Johnny Blythe knew that he was dead. He stopped three feet away in the darkness only for a moment, to be careful to skirt him, on his way across the room.

  'Beside the desk!' he said with a croak. 'There's glass on the rug. Come on in, Slippy. Watch your step. I'll find the light switch. There's a telephone on the desk. You can call up police headquarters. I'll see if the front door's still chained.'

  He had gone on across the room to the doorway out to the hall. He found the light switch beside the door and snapped it on. He glanced back over his shoulder in the flood of light which filled the room now. Old Dan lay on his face in his green silk dressing gown. His big freckled hands clutched at the rug. The blows had all struck the back of his head. Any one of them should have been enough to have dealt death, it would seem, but perhaps the first one or two hadn't stopped his tough old heart completely. So there had been a torrent of furious blows and now his grey hair mingled with bone and blood and with the marks of other ill aimed senseless blows which, missing his occiput, had ripped his jawbone from behind and almost torn off one ear.

  The neck of the heavy wine bottle was lying beside him, still with the pink ribbon on it, and the brass fireside poker at his feet. The thick glass had shattered into a score of segments, spilling champagne over the desk and blotter. The poker had done the most of it.

  The dark stain seemed to be still spreading into the rug, soaking wider. There he lay. It was worse than Tuxedo Johnny had imagined. Slipsky looked green about his carp like gills.

  'Call up homicide and make it official,' repeated Tuxedo Johnny, swallowing. 'We can't touch anything. Let Big Bat get the picture as it lies.'

  He went out into the hall, partially lit by the living room light, toward the front door, stepping swiftly on the waxed mirror like parquet floor scattered with small silky rugs. The doorways of the dark kitchen and dining room were to his left, of the bedroom to his right. They were all open and unbreathing as he passed, and there was darkness beyond them. There was a faint rustling from the blackness of kitchen or dining room, but that was all.

  There was a door chain, which he had not been certain of. It was hooked across the door.

  Tuxedo Johnny stood staring at it from three feet away. There must be other ways out of the apartment. He felt and heard the hot breathing of Slipsky on his neck. The overgrown patrolman hadn't paused to telephone, but had dogged him out, in sheer funk at being left alone in that room of rich, quiet death.

  'What's the matter, Lieutenant?' Slipsky breathed. 'Chain's still on, is it?'

  Tuxedo Johnny put out a hand and felt it, tugging at it. It was metal, and tight within its groove. 'Yes,' he said. 'It seems to be—'

  There rose a scream, shrill, terrified and appalling, from somewhere near. From one of those black doorways they had passed.

  'Oh, cripes!' said Tuxedo Johnny, with sagging knees.

  The stillness of the death apartment rang with that appalling shriek. It was enough to wake the dead, it would have seemed. There was a crash, as of glass shattering, after what seemed an incredible time, yet which must have been immediately.

  'Did you hear that, Lieutenant?' mouthed Slipsky. 'Lieutenant, did you hear that? He's still in here!'

  Did he hear that! The dead in hell could hear it. Tuxedo Johnny turned, stiffening his knees. 'Try the kitchen, Slipsky!' he managed. 'I'll try the bedroom.'

  He put a hand on Slipsky's jellied chest, half pushing him out of the way. He plunged back down the hall, skidding and staggering as one of the small rugs slipped out from underneath him. With his left hand fending out, he struck against the gilt rope framed mirror that hung on the wall, banging his cheek against the glass and knocking it askew. Half sprawling, recovering balance, he veered left into the blackness beyond the bedroom doorway.

  There was nothing moving in the room, it seemed. Yet there was something breathing in it with him. The scream had come from in here. There was a liquid gurgling sound. He went swiftly, feeling with his hands, as in a terrible game of blind man's bluff. Across the room, beyond the foot of the massive bed, near the threshold of the bathroom door he felt something intangibly soft crush beneath his feet, and smelled the terrible fragrance of roses. He heard a bubbling or a breathing from the floor. His foot touched, with a sense of uncontrollable horror, the soft yielding body of the woman who had screamed.

  The window shades were drawn, and the bedroom was all in blackness. But in the bathroom there was a small high frosted pane without a shade, open a little at the top. The dim obscurity which came in through it could not be called light. It was only the darkness of the midnight sky without, over the roof of the next building. Still over a brief area of the floor around the threshold it was a little lighter than nothing.

  She was lying across the bathroom threshold—her slender body in some kind of silk Chinese lounging gown—her ghostly bloodless face and black mop of hair upon the white tiles of the bathroom floor. There was the feel of broken glass, that gurgling sound, the terrible smell of white roses, as on a bier.

  Kitty Kane! thought Tuxedo Johnny Blythe, with a spasm of unparalleled horror. Beautiful, alluring Kitty Kane.

  For an instant he had dropped on one knee beside her, feeling the broken glass and a wetness through the fabric on his kneecap. Her pale face was in shadow, all the rest of her in darkness. But there was something remembered in her pose which would have told him who she was even without the faintest light at all, even in the blackest blackness. Some line of the outflung arm, of the curved flung hip, the straight graceful silken legs—even now.

  Her dark staring eyes were on him. His lips were half parted; her throat seemed to be pulsing and breathing, as if to cry out again at the horror she had seen. And was perhaps still seeing.

  His hands reached swiftly for her. How warm, how warm she was! Kitty Kane. Like a girl still in the darkness. Like the girl with warm remembered breath that she had been at eighteen. Moments of hot youth flashed swiftly back to him. But she would never know him now. Never again . . .

  'Found her, Lieutenant?' gasped Slipsky from the doorway of the room. 'Where is he? O God, I feel him creeping! Hello, Lieut
enant Blythe! Are you in there? Where are the lights?'

  'She's—dead,' said Tuxedo Johnny.

  He got himself under control. For the moment he had forgotten everything else but her. Had forgotten that there was anyone else in the apartment, even blue clad Slipsky. On his feet again, his mind working, he turned towards Slipsky, who stood warily crowding the doorway with his big bellied bulk.

  'Hall light switch by the front door, Slipsky!' he managed. 'I'll try to find a light in here. Could he—'

  He had started to ask, 'Could he have got out of the bedroom past you?' But he knew the answer to that, he thought. Slipsky had been right there.

  There must be a lamp somewhere in the room. Two or three, or maybe half a dozen. One of his swiftly groping hands struck the shade of a standing bridge lamp as he swept them out, back of a lounge chair within arm's length of him.

  'Something's the matter with it, Slipsky! Bulb's been unscrewed, it looks like—'

  That terrible smell of roses, that terrible gurgling.

  Slipsky flashed on the hall light outside. He had found the switch by the front door with palsied hands. The blackness in the bedroom of death seemed to split apart in shadows that leaped and rushed in headlong frantic race, like a flock of shadowy greyhounds, like wild horses rushing darkly. Over huge bed, bureau, dark silver gleam of mirrors, an open closet door with dark suits hanging, those shadows rushed. A glimpse, Tuxedo Johnny had from the edges of his eyes, of that motionless, bloodless form lying on the floor just back of him. ... He had got the lamp bulb screwed in then at eternal last, though it had been only seconds. He snapped the switch. A flash and again the blackness.

  The fuse had blown. The hall, too, was in blackness. The library lights still seemed to be on, though, on a different circuit, down at the end of the hall.

  He heard the wail of sirens out in the night. From blocks away, and nearer. They were coming wailing up from all directions. The scream of brakes, the slam of opening car doors. Men's voices, and the thud of feet down the black alley below, towards the back.

  Boaz, the pan faced elevator man, calling Big Bat O'Brien at headquarters, had not merely alerted homicide, but summoned it. The police were here.

  Slipsky hadn't remained by the front door. At that sudden blackness he had bolted. As Tuxedo Johnny Blythe came out of the bedroom, he heard the panic stricken tread of the big bellied man thudding down the fire escape in back.

  He ran back through the lighted library to the fire escape window. He saw Slipsky's vague dark bulk descending like a galumphing elephant a flight and half below, with a flash of white socks beneath his flapping pants legs, with a spreading white slice down his back where his tunic had split apart.

  The death still lurking in old Dan McCue's apartment, or else those howling sirens, must have drained the last drop from Slipsky's heart. Tuxedo Johnny didn't blame him. He would have liked to flee, too. But he had fled once already, from the front door, even more brainlessly. He picked up the telephone from the desk edge, above old Dan's sprawled head, and dialled the operator with a swift finger flick.

  A thought flashed to him. Perhaps she had heard something over the phone placed so quietly on the edge of old Dan's desk, just above his head.

  'This is the police,' he said. 'There's been a murder here. Do you remember noticing any calls over this phone in the past fifteen minutes?'

  'There was an uncompleted call at twelve-o-thurree,' she said alertly. 'I don't know what number they were calling, though. A man just said "Hello," and then there was a sort of moan and bump. The phone was hung up again two or three seconds later, so I thought it was all right. I just happened to notice the time—twelve-o-three. It seemed sort of coincidence, the number being one-two-o-thurree. If that helps—'

  'Thanks,' he said, and set the instrument down again.

  The precise time to the minute could hardly make any difference. Big Bat might like to have it, anyway. His wrist watch said twenty-two minutes past midnight now, but the actual time was probably not much more than a quarter after. Two murders within a dozen minutes.

  There was a ringing of the doorbell. He ran down the semilit hall to unhook the door chain, which he had failed to slip off. As he passed the doorway of the dark bedroom he felt his feet slip again on one of the misplaced little rugs, and more violently than before.

  He sprawled sideways, thrusting out his right hand. Against his palm he felt something like a rope. Something heavy and flashing silver bright came down and struck the side of his head a blinding blow, and he fell headlong to the floor, with the crash of shattering glass about him.

  Within seconds, it seemed, the police had come all around the Royal Arms.

  Running back down the alley from their cars, some of them were out in the rear areaway before Slipsky, breathless and sweating, had delivered his carcass down the fire escape. They swarmed up from the fence at the corner of the building to the moored ladder, and along it to the first floor landing of the escape, pushing aside the lame gnome janitor who stood on it, baffled, smoking his pipe, and catching Slipsky by the splitting seat of his pants just as he was heaving his fat bulk into the janitor's daughter's window. Others, plainclothesmen who had come from the precinct house around the corner on Second Avenue, had actually been in the lobby down below, looking for the elevator man who had phoned in the alarm to headquarters, when that mortal scream had sounded. Piling into the elevator or running up the stairs, they were at the door or near it when Tuxedo Johnny fell in the hall inside, with that crash of glass.

  The squad car men who swarmed up the fire escape let in the precinct men at the front door. They weren't homicide men. They were men with guns, however. They made an immediate search of the apartment, using flashes in the bedroom and turning on all lights in dining room and kitchen.

  Room by room, and closet by closet—the two bedroom closets, the rather large and deep hall coat closet, the linen closet, the broom closet in the kitchen. Behind the couches in the living room, behind all chairs. But there was nothing larger than a mouse in the wastepaper basket in the kitchen. It leaped out, with the cunning and terror of its rodent kind, when the hunt drew near the basket, but one of the squad car men snapped his foot down on it as it hit the floor, and it died with a thin shriek.

  There was the front door, and there was the fire escape window. But there had been no one on the escape when they had hurried back except the lame janitor on the first floor landing smoking his pipe and looking up, and Slipsky, frantically descending. As for the front door, its chain had been on.

  There were the various windows, of library, dining room, and kitchen, as well as of the black murder bedroom itself. There were fifteen of them altogether, facing the side alley and the rear of the building and an air shaft in the kitchen, but all had bars. They tried even those that were closed, slamming them up and shaking the solid bars, but all were immovable. There was the little frosted bathroom window without bars, but it was only about sixteen inches wide, and high up, and open only about six inches from the top. Even at the widest, either pane would give a clearance of only about twelve inches.

  They played their flashes on it from the bedroom, and all around inside the bathroom, at the shower curtain, and through the crack of the door, not crossing that black eyed woman's body lying on the threshold. But there was no one in the bathroom, and no way out of it, just at sight.

  No way out, it seemed, at all.

  'No dumbwaiter? No fire door into the next building or apartment?' said Tuxedo Johnny Blythe with dazed eyes. 'No bars loose at all?'

  'It doesn't look that way, Johnny.'

  'But you'd think there would be something. The chain was still on the front door?'

  'In the groove.'

  'Maybe he got to the rear of the building while Slipsky and I were fumbling for the lights.' He tried to think. 'When Slipsky flashed the hall light on, there was a rush of shadows. He might have been among them, if he was quick. Got out and down the fire escape ahead of Slipsky, before
you and the boys got out back.'

  'This guy Rasmussen was down on the first floor landing, watching up, Johnny. Nobody came out the window here from the time you and Slipsky climbed up and broke in till Slipsky came busting out and down, he says. It's black as sin down there, and you can't see much of anything, looking down. If it hadn't been for Slipsky's split tunic and white socks, you mightn't have seen him yourself. But this Rasmussen could see a figure against the lighter sky, looking up. He's one of these kind of guys that if he had one less brain cell he'd be an idiot. But if he had one more, you might figure he had maybe been looking away just a minute, thinking about something else. When he says nothing came out the window, you know nothing did.'

  'I guess that's right,' said Tuxedo Johnny dazedly.

  They had helped him to his feet after they came in. Sitting sprawled on the slippery floor, slammed against the wall. The skidded rug, the shattered mirror.

  'He's not here, anyway. You don't think it was him that banged you, Johnny—or did you just slip?'

  'I didn't see him. Maybe I slipped, Jim. He must have been gone by then. He must have got away right after he killed her. There must have been some way.'

  The heavy mirror had grazed his head and the side of his face with a thudding blow. He wiped his palm over his temple and cheek again. Sore and contused, but with no feel of blood. His watch crystal had smashed, and its minute hand had snapped off. But the hour and minute made no difference. It was the seconds, the bare seconds that had passed, from the time when she had screamed and he had found her, to the wailing of the sirens and those rushing feet.

  There had to be some way.

  'I wouldn't worry about it, anyway, Johnny,' said the man named Jim. 'He just got away, that's all. Most guys do get away, when you get down to it. It's not one in a hundred that's caught cold—a guy has to be pretty dumb to wait around till the cops come. And this guy looks as if he might have been damned cool headed and smart. Still he must have left his tracks somewhere—even the smartest do. Big Bat's homicide boys will find them.'