The Mystery & Suspense Novella

by Fletcher Flora

  I wasn’t the only one being disturbed by that loud radio. Every time I started counting sheep, I was interrupted by someone yelling, “Turn that blank-blank thing down!”

  “Turn it down!” a new party took up the tirade now.

  But still the radio blared. That was very funny, I thought suddenly. I sat up in bed with a startling hunch. In all the stories I wrote whenever a radio was turned up like that, it was to cover the sound of murder!

  Footsteps grated just outside my window on the fire escape! I rolled out of bed. Through the open window, the head, then the body of a man appeared, hurrying up the flight!

  I had a fleeting memory of Vic Right grappling with someone in the City Hall shrubbery just before the explosion.

  “Hey!” The shout sprang uncontrollably from my throat.

  The man on the fire escape turned, ducked under my open window. A black silhouette against the bright square of the opening, he leapt, grabbing for my throat.

  The impact bore me backwards. I was aware of the man’s immense weight, and that he was masked.

  Crash! Down I went.

  Bong! My head hit the sideboard of the bed, bounded off into interstellar space.

  I shook my head. Loose, broken light bulbs rattled around in it. I blinked my eyes. Suddenly I realized my assailant was gone! I jumped up. That rap on the noggin must have put my lights out for a minute!

  “Hey, turn that radio off or I’ll call the cops!”

  The radio downstairs was still blasting. Someone had yelled that threat from across the court. The intruder must have come from the apartment the radio was in!

  I slipped into my robe. I got my Woodsman Colt out of a drawer. Now I was getting more muddled with mystery than ever. Did that intruder have anything to do with the other murders? If he did, what had he been doing in the apartment below?

  I never had used the gun before. I’d wanted it because having it had supplied me with an authentic feel for the weapon in my stories.

  I ducked out my bedroom window, moved down the escape. The window to my old apartment on the floor below was open. The room was dark except for the illumination thrown by radio tubes against the wall from the small set on a bedside table. The set certainly made a lot of holler for its size.

  I squeezed carefully through the open window into the room. I turned on a lamp, looked about. Bureau drawers were pulled open, contents scattered on the floor. That meant robbery was at least a partial motive. That didn’t tie in with Skinny and Vic Right’s deaths. Or did it?

  The bed had been slept in. The fellow who’d moved in down here was a kindly, old grey-haired codger, Mr. Button, who lived alone.

  I stepped through the doorway into the dark room adjoining. I stumbled over something on the floor. I gasped involuntarily. “Mr. Button!”

  It was the body of the old, grey-haired fellow!

  I reached for his wrist. It was warm, but limp. His head was twisted at an angle. I touched his throat. I didn’t need an autopsy to know his larynx had been crushed. The neck was broken!

  A bell whirred! I jumped. “Hey, in there!” Someone pounded on the door panel. “Open up! It’s the police!”

  Someone must have complained to the police about the loud radio.

  My hand touched something near Mr. Button’s body as I shoved up. It was a round-necked can with a cork in it. I didn’t know that it had anything to do with this murder, but now it had my fingerprints on it.

  “Hey! You openin’ up this door or do we got to beat it down?”

  I snapped off the bedroom light. In my stories, in a situation like this, the hero was always implicated. I turned back through the bedroom toward the window taking the can along. I grunted out the window, up the fire escape.

  The intruder—the killer who slugged me—was surely long gone. It would be useless trying to chase him now, I conveniently convinced myself. I ducked back into my apartment. I put aside the can, hid my gun. There wasn’t enough air for me to breathe in my apartment. This was a situation in which Lieutenant Sol O’Malley would just clap his hands to find me.

  Crash!

  That must be the cops breaking down the door to the apartment below. The radio snapped off. Yep. The cops had broken in. On top of two murders, there was now this third one. And the victim didn’t always die by bombs!

  A minute later sirens were weeping down on the street. The police had discovered Mr. Button’s body, had flashed word to headquarters.

  I scratched my chin-whiskers in thought. The sound of milling men grew more pronounced in the apartment below. I reached for my phone.

  “Flo,” I said when my sweetie answered. My voice reached a high pitch and cracked like the Liberty Bell. “You know the old apartment I used to live in on the floor below? For some reason there’s just been a murder there.”

  “No, Perry!”

  “I just wanted you to know what’s happened to me in case the authorities pull me in again.”

  “You say the man was killed in your old apartment?” Her gasp was audible. “Oh, Perry, don’t you see the connection? You used to live there! Whoever killed him must have meant to—to kill you!”

  “Hah?” I felt my eyes beginning to bulge. Hey, maybe there was something to that! “Now don’t let that bother your little blonde head—” I began. I broke off as I sensed I didn’t have her attention. “What’s the matter, Flo?”

  “Just a minute,” I heard her voice say. “Somebody at the door.”

  She put down the instrument and I heard the click of her retreating heels. I waited one minute, two minutes. She certainly was taking her time at the door.

  Then suddenly I realized Flo was never coming back!

  CHAPTER III

  Anxiously I whistled into my mouthpiece, thinking Flo might simply have forgotten about me on the wire. A whistle would be the easiest thing for her to hear. I knew I was connected for after a while I heard her typewriter clicking away. That meant she was all right. Or did it?

  Discarding my weariness, I got into my clothes. A cordon of police might already be surrounding my building. I might not be able to get to her.

  I went out in the hall. I heard the cops on the floor below. I went up the one flight to the roof. I crossed quickly to the adjoining roof and then the one beyond that. I went down to the street.

  A fourth police car was just joining the three already parked in front of my building. Lieutenant Sol O’Malley piled out of it. I beat a hasty retreat up Ninth Street.

  The crazy fog of recent events was thick soup in my mind. I had to stir it up a bit in order to know where I was. It had started, I had to remind myself, with our Murder Clinic quiz showing the cops a few details they had overlooked in certain unsolved crimes. That had offended both the police and the criminals involved. Then good old Skinny Simms, doing criminology investigations on his own about an escaped rocket bomb war prisoner, was blasted by a powerful explosive that literally turned him into thin dust on the walk.

  But if that “war prisoner” angle had anything to do with his death why had Victor Right, a handsome young fellow we had on the program for laughs more than anything else, gotten blown up, too? I didn’t know anything about any war prisoners, yet I had grappled with an intruder who’d killed the kindly old codger, Mr. Button, downstairs, apparently thinking it was me.

  And now this mysterious caller had knocked on Flo’s door, and she’d given me a stand-up on the telephone.

  Flo’s apartment was on Washington Place, just two blocks from where I lived. It was a neighborhood of north-light artists, vocalizing musicians, and alleged intellectuals. For my money, it was now strictly a district where, at any moment, a killer would step out from behind a lamppost and carve my sirloin.

  Number 77’s lobby door was open and I walked in, up the short flight of stairs to her door, and knocked. There was no answer. I tried the knob. Th
e door was open. I took out my Woodsman and shoved cautiously on the panel, thrusting that little Colt corpse-maker in ahead of me.

  I looked about the empty, lamp-lighted living room.

  “Flo!”

  The room turned back my echo like a lead nickel. I poked my sniffer into her red-ruffled chintz dressing room, then her bedroom. I muttered an inaudible prayer and goose-bumps began to prance around on my upper arms and back. There the phone was—on the windowsill, the receiver off, lying just as poor Flo must have left it when I’d called her.

  Two other people disappeared just like this without a trace. There had been a bomb mixed up in it in unwholesome proportions.

  I blundered into her bathroom. I even opened the bathroom’s broom closet.

  “Flo!”

  She was in there!

  Flo nodded a disheveled blonde head. Clothesline was wound about her ankles and her shoulders, binding her tightly to a cold steam-pipe riser.

  I pulled the gag out of her mouth. Her dark-lashed grey eyes batted. “That man! I answered the door, and he pulled a gun on me!”

  “Who was he?”

  “He was wearing a mask. A Halloween mask.”

  I took out my pocket knife and cut her loose. The fellow who’d attacked me from the fire escape had worn a mask. That masked man must be the killer we were after all right.

  We stumbled together back into the living room. Everything here seemed in perfect order.

  “I heard typing after you left me at the phone,” I suddenly remembered.

  “Typing?” Flo gasped. “I heard that, too! That wasn’t me!”

  “Now wait a minute—” I gripped her arm. “Does a man have to hold a girl up and tie her in knots just because he wants to use her word-chopper?”

  Flo turned abruptly to her patent leather bag, lying open on a chair. Quickly she rummaged inside, then looked up more puzzled than ever.

  “I didn’t remember my bag being open, Perry. For a moment I thought I might have been robbed.”

  I took her bag and looked in it. There was nothing much of significance in it except my radio script for the show the next day.

  I went back in the bedroom and put the phone receiver back in its cradle. I thought of that masked killer who had surely accounted for three victims already.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said to Flo. “I’ll take you to that little hotel down the block. After what’s happened, I don’t like the climate here for you.”

  She did not think the climate in my apartment would be so healthy for me, either. I convinced her it would be dubiously reputable for us both to stay in the same hotel, but I swore by my ancestors that I would take a room at the nearby Hotel Woodborne.

  * * * *

  But after I left her I went straight home. If the killer who had done for old Mr. Button had really meant to sponge me off, I really should be on hand in case he returned. I guess writing about heroes all the time had infected my thinking. I was going to be a hero, too.

  I went up to my apartment. The one cop on duty in the hall on the floor below me did not stop me. I made no effort at sleeping. It was too hot. Rain wasn’t due to bring relief until late the next day. That my own murder might be brewing didn’t bother me. Oh, no. I was a big, bad hero!

  I picked up the strange can I had found downstairs just after Mr. Button’s violent demise. I pulled out the cork and took a whiff. It smelled pretty good, sort of sweet and cooling, the stuff in there. I took another whiff. It seemed to clear my head and rest my nerves. It must be liquid menthol, I decided.

  I suddenly wanted to lie down. I did, and took another wonderful breath of the stuff.

  Green liquid seemed to swirl above me, going round and round. I felt as if a hand was pushing me down, down, to the bottom of a bubbly swimming pool.…

  Someone hammering on my apartment door roused me. I struggled up dopily, blinked my eyes. Rain was pouring down outside my window. It wasn’t supposed to rain until tomorrow.

  But it was light, I suddenly realized. This must be tomorrow! I must have slept the whole night through in my clothes!

  The pounding continued on the door. I lurched up. Cobwebs were tangling my thinking apparatus. It was worse than that pea-soup fog.

  “Whozit?”

  The sharp clear gasp of relief carried through the door.

  “Perry?”

  I unlocked the door.

  “Oh, darling, where have you been?” Flo flew sobbing into my arms. “I went to the Hotel Woodborne. They said you’d never registered there! I’ve been frantic all day.”

  “All day?” I said.

  “Yes, it’s almost seven. You didn’t answer your phone here. Finally, I came over now.”

  Almost seven? I’d slept all night and all day! Whew! I must have been tired. And I still felt awful dopey-like. My tongue felt thick.

  “Say,” I blubbered. “If we don’t hurry I’ll be late for my broadcast. And I haven’t even had breakfast.”

  “You sure you don’t want to call it off?” Flo pleaded hopefully. “The broadcast, I mean.”

  She batted her lashes over those grey eyes and she almost had me. I kissed the tip of her nose.

  “With the killer still loose?” I shook my head. “He still is loose, isn’t he?”

  Flo nodded. “The police haven’t found out anything.”

  She had a cab waiting downstairs. I rushed into it without even taking time to comb my whiskers. I took the broadcast script she handed me from her bag.

  Five minutes before on-the-air time, Flo led me into the studio. Detective Les Warren’s fish eyes lit up when he saw me.

  “Thank heaven!” he said. He was green around the gills and nervous as a counterfeit dollar. “We were already wondering if you hadn’t been blown into last Tuesday like Skinny and Vic.”

  I went right on by him to Ted Shuttleworth, the M.C. of our program.

  “I don’t like this,” I said, “being given the answers to the questions.”

  “From the looks of you, you’ll need them.” Shuttleworth growled harassedly. He was a tall guy with a short temper and a green suit. “Sit down at a mike. By next week maybe we’ll be able to round up some new experts. But meanwhile we got to maintain our high standards. On account of the murders, everybody who can get at a radio will be listening tonight.”

  Les Warren looked at the two who were filling in temporarily in the spots made vacant by Skinny Simms and Vic Right. “Bah,” he said. “What do kid actors know about crime?”

  But he took a seat, too. Flo found a vacant folding chair on the far side of the studio.

  There wasn’t even time enough for the engineer to take a test level on my voice. With a scream, a crash of glass, and the chatter of a Tommy-gun the Murder Clinic was on the air!

  Maybe I was fuzzy, but I couldn’t make sense out of my script. Then I got mad. At least if they were giving me the answers, they should give me the right ones.

  Strangely, Ted Shuttleworth acted annoyed, too.

  “Where was the piece of wood found,” he asked, “that resulted in the conviction of Hauptman in the Lindbergh case?”

  “At Hauptman’s home,” I answered, “corner Masefield and Old Dorp Road, Staten Island.”

  I was astounded even as the words dripped off my tongue. Any imbecile knew that Hauptman had lived in the Bronx, and that the piece of wood that tied the kidnap ladder to him was found in the attic there.

  Then, “Where did Jack the Ripper work, when, and what was his weapon?”

  Any chump knows he worked in the White Chapel section of London, circa 1882, and his weapon was a knife.

  “Jack the Ripper worked in the Northwest corner of London,” I read my answer. “The time, 8:40 on Wednesday night, and his weapon was a Tommy-gun!”

  Geronimo! What would all my story fans think of m
e when they heard me spout lamebrain answers like that?

  I jumped up the minute the program was over. I went at that Shuttleworth guy.

  “Say, what kind of goof answers were those I gave?” I demanded.

  “You should know.” He stared icily back at me. “You gave them. You shoulda stuck to the script instead of trying to act funny. You had all the right answers there.”

  “I—what? Look here, I’m not—”

  Flo was tugging at my sleeve. I stopped. I saw the light in her eyes.

  “My bag,” she whispered. “Remember?”

  I suddenly remembered her open bag on the chair the night before, my script in it. The typewriter clicking after the masked intruder had tied her up. I caught what she meant.

  “I’ve got it!” I blurted.

  “Huh?” Detective Les Warren rubbed an oblique ear.

  I got Warren aside.

  “This said Masefield and Old Dorp Road, when it should have said the Bronx,” I whispered urgently. I pointed at my wrong answer. “It said Northwest corner, 8:40 Wednesday night. A Tommy-gun. Which was all wrong, too. This script has been altered. It gives the tip-off, apparently, that something is to happen at the Northwest corner of Masefield and Old Dorp Road at 8:40 tonight. It must be connected with what got Skinny and Right killed.”

  Warren was too old a hand at his business to waste time arguing. But what I’d told him would have choked a giraffe.

  I had to spiel more fast chatter before I convinced him he ought to call the cops and that I’d better hustle off to the scene myself.

  He headed out of the studio. I started out, too, but Flo grabbed my arm.

  “You can’t go, Perry. I won’t let you.” Her eyes were bright with terror. “I heard what you said to Les Warren. But it’s all a trick of some kind to lure you to your death.”

  “Look, angel”—I couldn’t have her tagging along after me into danger—“the changes in this script prove the whole job is an inside caper. It couldn’t be any other way. And who is left to do an inside job but Les Warren?”