The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

by Penzler, Otto

  At five in the afternoon of the third day, dead on my feet, I strolled into the City Hall press room. The reporters on the afternoon papers had gone home and Katie, looking fresh and spruce and more than a little like a million dollars, was all alone.

  “You looked dragged out, Pinky,” she smiled. “Where have you been all day?”

  “Hunting John Hamlin,” I said, slumping into a chair.

  “Why, don’t you read the papers? Hamlin was buried today. I covered the funeral.”

  I sighed. “You don’t really think that was Hamlin, do you? I know you’re silly, Duchess, and I know your judgment isn’t very good. But you’re not that silly, are you?”

  She looked at me hard for a long minute. Then:

  “See here, Pinky Kane. I don’t like that. I don’t like it even a little bit. You can call me almost anything else, but I draw the line at being called silly. I was going to spare you this, but on second thought I won’t. I’ll go out of my way, for once, just to show you how silly you are. Will you meet me at the Drake Hotel at eight tonight?”

  “What for?”

  “For the pay-off,” Katie said.

  The door had opened and Spike Kaylor stood on the threshold. “Where’s the pay-off?” he demanded.

  “At the Drake, tonight,” the Duchess told him. “You’re invited.

  “Thanks,” Spike grinned. “Will this affair be formal, or shall I—”

  “Wear tails, by all means,” Katie shot back, and left the room.

  “What’s the kid got on her mind?” Spike asked.

  “You can’t prove anything by me.”

  “Do you really think she has a hot lead?”

  “I wouldn’t put it beyond her.”

  “But what is it? She hasn’t found John Hamlin, has she?”

  “No. She insists Hamlin is dead and buried.”

  “But maybe that’s just to throw us off the track.” Spike eased into a chair. “Pay-off, huh? Pay-off,” he mused. “Pink, there’s something screwy about this picture. If she was ready to crack this story, would she invite us to the party? Not any! She’d tell us something was due to pop and let us stew in our own juices until two o’clock tomorrow morning when the final edition of the Sun comes out.”

  “That’s what you’d think, all right. So what?”

  “So we take her up. What the hell else can we do?”

  We found the Duchess, sitting off by herself, in the lobby of the Drake at eight o’clock.

  “Well, keed, when does the curtain go up?” Spike asked.

  “Almost any minute,” Katie returned shortly. “Just keep your shirts on and your mouths shut.”

  She lit a fresh cigarette off a glowing butt.

  Her hands were shaking and I saw that the palms were moist. Her eyes were bright, feverish, as she kept watching the door.

  “Our little pal seems a bit nervous,” Spike grinned.

  “We can do without your puerile mouthings for a while, Mr. Kaylor,” the Duchess told him.

  Then Kurt Bergstrom strode into the lobby and Katie rose. The chemist spotted her and came over. He looked keyed up and he didn’t smile as he bowed perfunctorily over her hand.

  “These are your friends?” he asked, looking at Spike and me with cold and fishy eyes.

  “Not my friends, but they’ll do as witnesses.” “Goot! Bring them up in ten minutes.” Bergstrom turned and walked briskly toward the elevators. Katie sat down and lit another cigarette. She was plenty nervous.

  I began to feel restive myself. Even Spike, who is almost irrepressible, didn’t have anything to say. We watched ten slow minutes tick off on the clock over the desk. Then Katie stood up.

  “When we go up to Bergstrom’s room,” she said, “you two will do as you’re told and ask no questions. Have you got that straight?”

  “Oke, kid,” Spike nodded. “Lead the way.” Bergstrom received us in the living room of his suite. He waved Katie to a chair and then stood for a minute eyeing Spike and me. You could see he didn’t like us. You could see he wished we were a long way from there. Finally he said:

  “I hope we can trust them, Miss Blayne.”

  “They’ll do as they’re told and like it,” the Duchess said.

  “That all depends,” Spike said, “on what you tell us to do.”

  Bergstrom threw open a door to a clothes closet. “You will go in there und stay there und keep quiet,” he said crisply. “You will leaf the door oben two or three inches, joost enough so you can see und hear what goes on. You will nod come oudt until you are told to come oudt. All right?”

  “All right,” Spike agreed.

  “I will tell you when to go in. In the meantime, please to sit down und be comfortable.”

  We sat down diffidently. So help me, I couldn’t get the angle. I couldn’t make head or tail of the layout. Spike caught my eye, while Bergstrom paced briskly up and down the room, and signalled: “Watch yourself. I don’t trust this guy.” I didn’t trust him either.

  After a time the telephone rang. Bergstrom took it up, listened a moment, ordered: “Show him up at once.”

  Spike started to rise.

  “No, no. Nod yet,” Bergstrom said irritably. “It iss only Captain Wallis.”

  Spike sat down again, looking a bit deflated. Bodie Wallis came in after a few minutes. In his quiet blue serge business suit, he didn’t look much like a detective.

  He nodded to Katie and Bergstrom, grinned at Spike and me.

  “You two boys don’t miss anything, do you?” he chuckled.

  “Not if we can help it,” Spike admitted, a bit boastfully.

  “I might point out,” Katie remarked, “that they are here at my invitation. And anything they see or hear won’t be reported in the Telegram until it has appeared exclusively in the Sun. Right, Mr. Kaylor?”

  “Wrong, Miss Blayne!” Spike bristled. “That wasn’t part of the bargain.”

  “It’s part of the bargain now.”

  “Sister, it takes two to make a bargain. And as long as I have two legs and can run to the nearest telephone—”

  The phone buzzed at that instant and Bergstrom raised his hand authoritatively. “Silence, if you please!” He picked up the instrument, and after a moment: “Show her up at once.”

  He turned and waved us toward the closet. We got up and went in and closed the door to a two-inch crack. Spike jammed his foot against the door and I pulled on the knob, to hold it steady open. Spike, kneeling at the crack, whispered:

  “It’s a funny one, Pink. You got any ideas?”

  “No ideas, but I got a good hunch,” I whispered. “Bergstrom is on the spot. With Katie’s unwitting help, he’s trying to slide out from under.”

  “Yeah. That’s the way I dope it. He’s about to pull a fast one. And when it comes down the groove, we’ll pole it over the right-field fence for a home run. How’s about it?”

  “That’s okey by me.”

  We didn’t say any more, because Bergstrom had stepped to the hall door and was admitting—Mrs. John Hamlin! She wore black and she looked tense and watchful and cool. Bergstrom was saying:

  “Miss Blayne you haff met, I believe. Und this, Mrs. Hamlin, iss Mr. Wallis.”

  Mister Wallis! Well, why not? The whole situation was cockeyed anyway.

  “Please to sit down, Mrs. Hamlin,” Bergstrom said, helping her to a chair with great solicitude. “We haff wonderful news for you. Your husband, my dear, iss aliveV

  Mrs. Hamlin sat on the edge of her chair, stiffly, blinking up at him. She said carefully: “I buried my husband this afternoon.”

  Bergstrom smiled down at her gently, shook his head. “The man you buried vas nod your husband. John iss alive. He vas badly burned in the fire und he sustained a severe injury to the head. He hass been suffering from amnesia ever since. In fact, even now he iss delirious. But the doctor assures me that his chances for pulling through are excellent.”

  The woman never moved but I could see the last of the color in her
cheeks fade out.

  Spike whispered: “Amnesia! Did I tell you a fast one was coming down the groove? Amnesia!”

  Well, it was easy enough for a couple of smart reporters to dope the play. I saw it this way: When Bergstrom and Hamlin realized their hoax wasn’t going over, they got together and devised this amnesia gag. Burned Hamlin with a little acid, probably. Cooked up a good story. “I don’t remember anything that happened till I woke up in the hospital.” That sort of thing—it’s pulled every day.

  Yes, it was all pretty smart. Just about the type of stuff you’d expect a bright lad like Herr Bergstrom to pull. Having Captain Wallis there on the job was just the right touch. It showed the supreme confidence and egoism of the chemist.

  “I feel certain there has been some mistake,” Mrs. Hamlin said slowly, gripping the arms of her chair. “I did not see John’s body. I did not want to look at it. But I knew, as I sat there staring at the coffin this afternoon, that my husband was in it.”

  “But,” Bergstrom pointed out calmly, “there iss no way you could know, Mrs. Hamlin. No way in the world, because—John iss in bed in the next room. Alive. Delirious, seriously burned, very ill—but alive!”

  He shouted that last word in a way that sent a chill down my spine—even though I’d suspected all along that Hamlin wasn’t dead.

  And then all at once I was conscious of a voice from the room on the far side. Someone in there had been talking for quite a while, talking very softly. And now, as Spike and I and the people in the living room listened, the voice grew louder. We could catch a word or two: “Valence of three … calcium chloride … neutralized …”

  What a shock to that woman who was sitting there so white and rigid. A voice, literally, from the dead!

  I felt my hair standing on end. I heard Spike’s fast and unsteady breathing. I could feel his body shaking with the tension of nerves about to snap. Let me tell you, it was electric!

  Bergstrom stepped to the other door. He threw it open. The room was dark but we heard that rasping voice going on monotonously: “… carbon union in the aliphatic hydrocarbons has apparently the same effect on the boiling point as two hydrogen atoms. But as I was telling you, Kurt, an acetylenic or triple linkage is associated with a rise in the boiling point. However …”

  Mrs. Hamlin was on her feet, staring into the darkened room. She screamed: “No! No!”

  Bergstrom said patiently, gently: “But yes, Mrs. Hamlin. Surely you recognize John’s voice.”

  The woman caught the arm of a chair, steadied herself. “I tell you,” she cried hysterically, “John is dead! “

  “No. John iss very much alive.”

  Bergstrom reached inside the door, flipped the switch. The bedroom was bright with light. Looking straight across the living room, I could see a figure in the bed. I caught a glimpse of a head swathed in bandages. I saw lips moving. I heard the deadly monotonous voice going on and on.

  “… true of the fatty acid series, Kurt, and the corresponding ketones and …”

  Then the bedroom door was blocked by the angular figure of Mrs. Hamlin. She swayed against the frame, caught herself, screamed: “No, no, I tell you! It can’t be true! He can’t be alive! I killed him myself with a hammer. I got into the plant with a key to the back door. I’ve had it for months: I crept up behind him. I knocked him down. I poured gasoline over him and struck a match. I saw him burn. I saw him burn!”

  All this in a wild screech that sent icy chills up and down my spine. John Hamlin’s voice went on:

  “… although, Kurt, the correlation of melting point with constitution has not …”

  The tall woman covered her face with her angular hands. She screamed through her bony fingers: “I tell you I killed him!”

  Then she dropped in a dead faint.

  “… symmetry of the resulting molecule may exert such a lowering effect that the final result …”

  “Westoby!” Bergstrom yelled, “Ged out uf bed und turn that damn’ thing off. If I haff to listen to John Hamlin’s voice one minute longer I shall haff hysterics!”

  Well, after Mrs. Hamlin had snapped out of her faint and Captain Wallis had taken her away, we were all pretty limp. Bergstrom brought out a bottle and some ice, and we all sat down and tried to come back to Earth. The chemist remarked finally:

  “Fortunately, Hamlin had been helping me with my sount devize. I suppose I haff a mile or two uf film on which his voice iss recorded.”

  Westoby, who is one of the chemist’s lab men, added: “Lucky, too, the film was stored in the physical laboratory in the south wing, which the fire didn’t touch.”

  The Duchess was smiling. “And speaking of luck, wasn’t it a break that I brushed against Mrs. Hamlin’s coat in her hallway the other night?”

  “Huh?” Spike grunted. “What’s Mrs. Hamlin’s coat got to do with it?”

  “It was wet, darling,” Katie said pleasantly. “There were beads of rain on the fur collar. And Mrs. Hamlin had told us she hadn’t left the house that evening.”

  “Look here!” Spike snorted. “Do you mean to tell me you had the play doped from the beginning?”

  “I had it doped, as you put it, within an hour or two after I brushed against that wet coat.”

  “Well, Duchess, I got to hand it to you. You’re the top.” He drained his glass and stood up. “Bergstrom, you’ve put on a grand show and we’ll give your sound recorder a million dollars’ worth of publicity. Now I’ve got to hit a phone with the story. Okay to use yours?”

  “No,” Bergstrom said steadily. “It iss most decidedly nod okay to use mine.”

  “Huh?” Spike gasped. “Wha-zat?”

  Bergstrom, still smiling, bowed to Katie. And the Duchess rose.

  “Mrs. Bergstrom has ordered the operator to accept no out-going calls,” she informed us. “So if you want to give your office the story, Spike, you’ll have to find another telephone.”

  She moved toward the door, adding over her shoulder: “If you can, and that will be quite a job!”

  “If I can!” Spike bellowed, and started after her. “While I’ve got the use of my legs, I guess—”

  Katie threw open the door. Lounging in the hall outside I caught a glimpse of half a dozen of the toughest looking punks I ever saw outside of a penitentiary—or a morning paper’s circulation department. Spike stopped in his tracks.

  “Keep them here, boys, until midnight,” the Duchess ordered cheerfully. “And try not to hurt them too badly if they make a break.”

  “We won’t hurt ‘em, Miss Katie,” a big bruiser grinned. “Not much!”

  Well, they didn’t hurt us—because we didn’t make a break. We stayed there till midnight, drinking very good whiskey with Kurt Bergstrom and wondering where we ever got the idea that the Duchess was silly, and dumb, and slow on the pick-up.

  Mansion of Death &

  Concealed Weapon

  Roger Torrey

  IT WAS RUMORED that Roger Torrey’s real name was Torres, but he insisted he was of Irish descent and apparently tried to prove it by giving most of his cops and private detectives Irish names. And with so many other pulp writers, famous and not-so-famous, he was a heavy drinker of such mythical stature that he found the perfect woman for him—in a bar. Also a hard-drinking writer, she moved into his hotel room and they established a system of producing fiction that seems to have worked for them. He sat at one desk, she at another, with a bottle of booze nearby. The first person to finish the story on which they were working was permitted to drink while the other had to finish the story before being allowed to have a nip. Torrey, a veteran of the pulps, wrote faster, so generally finished first, then drank and mocked her while getting smashed. A prolific as well as gifted short story writer, Torrey produced fifty stories for Black Mask alone, writing for many other publications as well. He wrote only one novel, 42 Days for Murder, published by the unprestigious house of Hillman-Curl in 1938.

  In “Mansion of Death,” Torrey has produced the most atypica
l story one could imagine in the pages of a pulp: a little old lady takes a hard-boiled detective and leads him around by the nose. It was originally published in the Detective Fiction Weekly issue of May 25, 1940. “Concealed Weapon” is a more common story of a private eye with an invaluable female assistant, first published in the December 1938 issue of Black Mask.

  Mansion of Death

  Roger Torrey

  I fired then— into his shin bone

  Miss Conklin didn’t have anything

  against detectives; she simply liked

  to solve murders her own way

  I LIKED THE OLD LADY the first time I sa her … but then, I’ve always gotten along better with old ladies than with the young ones Though maybe that’s because I’ve never worriec about the old ones as much. Anyway, she cam(in the office and held out her hand as if sh(expected me to bow over it, and said:

  “I’m Miss Conklin! I talked with you over th(telephone, young man.”

  I bowed, though I hadn’t intended any such foolishness, and told her I was glad to meet her in person. And she twinkled her bright little blue eyes at me and shook her finger at me and said:

  “Now young man! You’re glad to see me because I’m a customer.”

  And then she perched on the edge of the chair I’d bounced around the desk and brought up for her.

  She was really cute. She looked like an old-fashioned grandmother dressed up in Fifth Avenue clothes. They fitted her beautifully and undoubtedly had cost her a lot of money. But she didn’t seem to belong in them. She should have been wearing a lot of ruffles with lace around her neck and a poke bonnet. And Congress gaiters instead of high-heeled shoes. I sat down on my own side of the desk and asked:

  “What was it, Miss Conklin?”

  “I’ve been robbed,” she said calmly. “And I don’t like it. I don’t like the feeling of not being able to trust my own household.”