The Big Midget Murders

by Craig Rice

  Helene frowned. “She isn’t the kind of girl who would rush a rich young man off to Crown Point when he was plastered and marry him before he knew what had hit him, if that’s what you want to know.”

  “That’s what I thought about her, too,” Jake said. “Of course, we could be mistaken.”

  “I doubt it. She’s a gentle, sort of wishy-washy little thing. It takes a certain amount of cool nerve to pull off that sort of business, and Annette certainly doesn’t have it.”

  “Still,” Jake said, “those kitteny, soft-looking little brown-eyed blondes can be crafty as hell. I remember once in Detroit—” He paused and added, “That was a long time before I met you.”

  Helene sniffed indignantly. “Stop trying to look as if you knew anything about women, outside of what you learned from me.”

  “The fact remains,” Jake said, scowling, “that it looks as though Annette Ginnis and Ned Royal at least started for Crown Point. And I don’t think she called up Malone at five o’clock in the morning because she admires his handsome face.”

  “It’s possible you’re right,” Helene said, starting to clear up the coffee cups. “At least, Ned Royal is the sort of young man you’d expect that sort of thing to happen to, sooner or later.”

  “I’ve seen ideas expressed more clearly,” Jake said, “but you’ve been without sleep all night, and anyway I know what you mean. What is the sort of young man Ned Royal is?”

  She made a face at him, carried the cups into the kitchenette, and returned. “He’s the kind of rich young man that makes everybody hate rich young men. Not bad, or vicious or anything like that. Just a kind of combination of limp and vague. Always getting drunk and noisy in night clubs and having to be tossed out.”

  “And marrying chorus girls who promptly send him on home and telephone for a lawyer,” Jake added.

  Helene yawned and stretched. “Well, it’s none of our business. And you said yourself Malone needed a few clients.”

  Jake looked at his watch. “It’s seven-thirty. Do you think it’s bedtime?”

  She looked at him. His lean, pleasant face was pale and drawn, his red hair was rumpled. “I don’t know whether you should be put to bed, or just buried the way you are. Wait right there, and I’ll get your slippers for you.”

  He lit one last cigarette, leaned back comfortably in his chair, and looked at the familiar room around him. He knew every inch of it, yet he still loved to gaze around him and pretend it was for the first time. The soft blue-grey of its walls, the immense windows on the south wall that looked over Chicago’s roofs toward the spires of the Loop, the big, comfortable chairs and sofas, the painting of Helene in a pale gold dress which hung over the mantelpiece. For a moment he almost purred.

  If the remodeled and reopened Casino didn’t succeed, and Max Hook took it over—no, he wouldn’t think about that now. Not this morning.

  Helene came back with the slippers. “Put them on, and then go tuck yourself in bed, and sleep for hours and hours and hours.”

  “I don’t want to go to sleep,” he said, in the tone of a fractious small boy. “I just want to stay right here forever and look at you. All I want in the world is just to be alone with you, here, like this.”

  The phone rang.

  Helene sprang to answer it, waving to Jake to stay where he was.

  “Yes, he’s in,” she said, “but I don’t like to disturb him right now. Are you sure it’s important? Oh. Oh yes, I’ll call him.”

  She handed the phone to Jake and said, “It’s the hotel manager. He says it’s very important.”

  Jake’s side of the phone conversation consisted almost entirely of “Yes” and “I see,” and ended with, “I’ll be right down.” Then he put down the phone, turned to Helene and said, “Put the slippers away.”

  “Jake, what is it?”

  “The manager is very worried. It seems that Mr. Jay Otto left a very important call for seven-thirty this morning. Now it develops that they aren’t able to rouse him. The manager is afraid Mr. Otto may have been taken ill or something, and wants me to come down and be present when they break in.”

  “When they break in,” Helene repeated, “and find that he isn’t there.” She started unfastening the clip at the neck of her housecoat. “Wait a minute, Jake.”

  “What for?”

  “I’m not going down there in a housecoat. And I’m not staying behind, either. And you aren’t going down there in a wrinkled tux.”

  Jake looked down at his clothes. “I guess you’re right. I’d better change.”

  She picked a dress out of the closet, laid it on the bed, and unzipped the housecoat. Then suddenly she paused.

  “Jake, send for Malone.”

  He dropped one shoe on the floor and stared at her. “What for?”

  “They’re going to discover Jay Otto has disappeared. There will probably be a fuss about it.”

  “Nonsense,” Jake said, taking off the other shoe. “They’ll just think he stayed out all night.”

  “Allswell McJackson will tell them he never stayed out all night. Allswell will insist on sending for the police. You’d better have Malone there to do the talking.”

  Jake sighed. “All right. Do we have Annette Ginnis’s phone number?”

  “It’s in the little book right by the telephone. She lives on Oak street, and he ought to be able to hop a cab and get here in five minutes.” She slid an almond-green wool dress over her shoulders and began fastening it.

  Jake returned from his call and reported, “He’ll be right over. And you can imagine for yourself what he said on the subject of coming here at this hour.”

  “We haven’t had any sleep either,” Helene reminded him.

  “Stop rubbing it in,” Jake growled under his breath.

  They were dressed and ready to go downstairs when Malone pounded on the door.

  “A hell of a thing,” he said by way of greeting. “Eight o’clock in the morning. I hope the reason is worth it. What is it?”

  Jake told him.

  “Well,” Malone said, “it was bound to happen sometime today. Too bad it had to be so early. Why in blazes did he have to leave a seven-thirty call, anyway?”

  “To make life hard for us,” Jake said bitterly.

  “Malone,” Helene said suddenly. “What about Annette Ginnis?”

  “She’ll be all right,” the little lawyer said. “I got one of her girl friends to come in and stay with her, and she’ll probably be able to get some sleep.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jake said. “What is this? What’s happened to her?”

  “I forgot you didn’t know anything about it,” Malone snapped. “There’s no time to talk about it now, though. Wait till we get back up here.”

  “She hasn’t been hurt or anything, has she?” Helene asked anxiously.

  “No,” Malone said. “She’s just scared. I said I’d tell you about it when we get through breaking into the midget’s apartment.”

  Jake set his jaw hard. “I hope it’s nothing serious,” he said. “Because one more thing right now would be one more thing than I can stand.” He picked up the phone and informed the manager that he’d meet him by Jay Otto’s door.

  The manager, an apprehensive, jittery little man with highly polished hair, was waiting for them at the door when they arrived. He looked anxiously at Helene and Malone.

  “We were all having breakfast together,” Jake said, “and my wife and Mr. Malone thought they’d better come along, in case Mr. Otto was ill or anything.”

  The manager looked relieved. “I would have sent for Mr. McJackson,” he twittered, “but I didn’t know where to reach him. I do hope there’s nothing wrong. But Mr. Otto is so punctual in his habits, and he called after he got in last night so the clerk knew it must be very important, and when he didn’t answer his phone this morning I felt very disturbed, and that was why I called you.”

  “He called after he came in?” Jake said, lifting an eyebrow.

  The man
ager nodded. “It was quite late. Yes, it must have been after four, because Briggs took the call, and he took over the board at four. Mr. Otto couldn’t have expected to get much sleep, if he got in at that hour and wanted to be called at seven-thirty. Of course, he might not need as much sleep as”—he coughed—“ordinary people. It’s most unusual for Mr. Otto to get in as late as that. Almost invariably he’s back here right after his last performance—”

  “Something may have detained him,” Jake said. “Well, let’s go in and see what’s the matter with him.” He wondered if his voice sounded hoarse. “Do you have a passkey?”

  “Right here,” the manager said. “I wonder if you’d be so kind—seeing that—”

  “Yes, of course,” Jake said tersely. He put the key in the lock, turned it, stood there holding it for a split second, and flung open the door.

  The other three came into the room right behind him.

  “Well, he’s here all right,” the manager said. Then he gave a startled little squeak.

  “Yes, he’s here,” Malone said grimly.

  The tiny form of Jay Otto lay in the exact center of his enormous, specially made bed, clad in gaudy silk pajamas, his head resting on his elaborately embroidered pillow. The marks of the noose that had strangled him still showed, dark and ugly, on his throat.

  Chapter Eight

  “I certainly am not going to go back upstairs while we wait for the police,” Helene said firmly. “This is the first chance I’ve had to see this room. And besides, I’m sure it wouldn’t be legal for me to leave before they get here.”

  “Strong-minded woman, isn’t she?” Jake said to the manager.

  The manager tittered nervously, then remembered where he was, and said, “Oh dear!”

  “It’s all right,” Jake said. “You can stay, as long as you’re careful not to look at any of the pictures on the walls.”

  The manager glanced around, turned faintly pink, coughed, and finally said, “Mr. Otto was very broadminded, wasn’t he?”

  Malone said, “Broad-minded is one word for it.”

  It was an immense room, the largest in the building. The pictures on the walls, a rather remarkable collection of books on the shelves, and an enormous Chinese vase on the table by the window were the only additions the midget had made to the hotel furniture. But in the bedroom beyond—a room almost as large—he had installed his own bed, wider and longer than any bed Malone had seen before, and covered with a magnificent brocade spread. There was an equally outsize dressing table covered with elaborate perfume bottles, and the walls were adorned with a collection of Oriental prints which, if anything, outdid the bright-colored pictures in the living room.

  “You should see his car,” the manager said, trying to change the subject.

  “I have seen it,” Jake said. “Half a block long, and purple.” Suddenly he thought of something. “Where’s the car now? Did he come home in it last night?”

  The manager looked surprised. “I don’t know. Wait, I’ll phone the garage.” He called, asked a few questions, and said, “That man who worked for him, Mr. McJackson, brought the car in about two o’clock.”

  “That was just after he left the club,” Helene said. She caught a warning look from Jake and went on quickly, “Mr. McJackson stopped and spoke to us when he left.”

  “He wasn’t taking Mr. Otto with him, though,” Jake said. “Evidently he thought Mr. Otto had gone on home by himself.”

  “But he hadn’t,” the manager said, frowning. “Mr. Otto didn’t get home until after four.”

  Malone opened his mouth and closed it again, and Jake said fast, “I wonder where he could have been all that time.”

  A couple of cops came in. One of them said, “Don’t touch anything.” They glanced at the bed and the tiny corpse, and the other one said, “Don’t nobody leave until Captain von Flanagan gets here.”

  Helene turned a high-voltage smile on them and said, “We wouldn’t dream of trying to leave.”

  They smiled back at her instinctively, took a closer look at the remains of Jay Otto, the Biggest Little Midget in the world, agreed that he was dead all right, and started prowling around the suite, surreptitiously calling each other’s attention to its decorations.

  “It’s going to be so nice to see von Flanagan again,” Helene murmured reminiscently.

  That was the moment when he arrived. From his first appearance in the doorway, it was obvious that he was in a bad frame of mind.

  Captain Daniel von Flanagan of the homicide squad had never wanted to be a cop. When circumstances had landed him in the police department, he’d promptly gone to court and had the “von” added to his name, because Dan Flanagan sounded too much like the name of a cop. He hadn’t wanted to be promoted, either, particularly to the homicide division.

  Von Flanagan didn’t like murders, they always caused him too much trouble. Nor did he like murderers, looking on them as malicious persons who went around killing people just to make life hard for Captain von Flanagan of the homicide squad. Especially, he didn’t like murders and murderers that necessitated his dashing across town in a hurry (the sound of sirens always gave him a headache) at eight o’clock in the morning.

  Even more than that, he didn’t like murders in which Jake and Helene and Malone were even remotely involved, because he’d learned from experience that these affairs were invariably complicated and difficult. The fact that he was deeply fond of the trio, especially Helene, and that their association had always turned out well for him in the past didn’t temper his feeling in the least.

  He paused just inside the door, put his hands in the pockets of his jacket, and glared at them, while his big round face turned slowly pink, then cerise, then crimson, and finally purple.

  “I might have known it!” he said. He drew a long breath and held it till Jake feared he might explode. “As if it isn’t bad enough to have to get up here at eight o’clock in the morning, after being at my brother-in-law’s birthday party last night. Now I have to find you mixed up in it.” He took another step forward and said, “Wherever you are, there’s trouble.”

  Malone said smoothly, “Oh, Jake attracts trouble”—he paused—“like a magnet attracts flies.”

  “You mean,” Helene said sternly, “like a honey attracts eyes.”

  “This really isn’t any of my affair,” Jake said to the big police officer. “The guy just happened to be appearing at my night club, that’s all. When they couldn’t rouse him this morning the manager called me, we broke in, and I called the police.”

  Captain von Flanagan snorted suspiciously. “You’re probably lying to me, but I’ll never find out the truth from you, so what’s the difference. What happened to the guy anyhow, or don’t you know?”

  “I didn’t look very close,” Jake said, “but I think he was strangled.”

  The red-faced police officer stepped to the bedroom door, looked, and said, “He sure was a little one, wasn’t he?” He shook his head and added, “Imagine anybody having to murder a guy that size! Swell layout he had here.” He glanced around at the walls, caught his breath, and said, “Great Jumping Joshua!”

  He was followed into the room by a tall, thin, apologetic-looking man whom Jake recognized as Dr. Wickett, an assistant medical examiner, and by the experts from von Flanagan’s department. “The scientists,” von Flanagan called them scornfully. The men from the morgue brought in their big wicker basket and rested it just inside the hall door.

  Malone glanced at it and said, “For the love of Mike, didn’t you have a smaller one?”

  “Standard size,” one of the men said. “We can’t help it if the guy was a midget.” He glanced toward the bedroom and said, “Jeepers, you could carry him out in a fiddle case.”

  Jake felt one of the muscles in his cheek twitch.

  Helene said delicately, “What a horrible idea!”

  The “scientists” and Dr. Wickett were getting to work. Von Flanagan prowled unhappily around the bedroom for a
few minutes, then came back to the living room and tactfully closed the door.

  “I suppose you knew more about him than anybody else around town,” he said to Jake. “Who killed him, and what was the idea?”

  “Hell, I didn’t know anything about him,” Jake said in an injured tone. “He just happened to be appearing at the Casino. Started last night”—he paused—“and finished last night. I know he was a midget, I know he was an entertainer, and I’ve read his life story from his press book, but you know what publicity stories are. And that’s all I know.” He paused, frowned, and said reflectively, “except one thing.”

  Von Flanagan said eagerly, “What?”

  Jake said, “He’s dead.”

  “Damn it,” von Flanagan moaned, “nobody ever has any consideration for me.” He wheeled furiously on the manager, who jumped slightly. “You said you broke in. I suppose that means the door was locked.”

  The manager nodded, scared speechless.

  “Who had keys to the door?”

  “T-two. Mr. Otto had one and his assistant Mr. McJackson had the other. There was a passkey of course.”

  Von Flanagan growled something about people who got themselves strangled in locked rooms just to make it tough for the police department of the city of Chicago. “Where’s this McJackson guy?”

  Nobody seemed to know.

  He turned to Jake. “When did you see the midget last?”

  “At the Casino,” Jake said promptly. “He did his last performance there about midnight.” He took out a cigarette and tapped it on his thumbnail. “We went back to see him about one o’clock, because I wanted Malone to iron out a clause in his contract, but when we got there”—he paused to light the cigarette—“he was gone.”

  “And he didn’t get here until four,” the manager said helpfully. Von Flanagan looked at him questioningly and he went on in a rush, “I know, because he called downstairs then and left a call for seven-thirty this morning.”

  Malone and von Flanagan both started to speak at at once. Finally von Flanagan got out, “That don’t mean he couldn’t have been here for a couple of hours before he left the call. How do you know he didn’t get here until four?”