Lee climbed out on the window sill. The street below was almost empty. A taxicab sped past, and across the road he had a fleeting sense of a couple staring at him, transfixed with astonishment. They couldn’t help him. Lee’s figure was not well adapted for climbing, but under the spur of desperation a man can perform wonders. Stretching his legs to their widest, he found he could get a foot on the sill of the end window in the next house. Still clinging to his own window frame, he got a grip on the next frame, and drew himself across. The window was closed. Smashing in the glass with his knee, he lowered himself into a dark room.
A door slammed back in the room and lights went on. Lee found himself faced by an indignant man in the doorway with a gun in his hand. “What the hell does this mean?” he demanded.
“Don’t shoot!” said Lee. “There’s a desperate criminal after me. For God’s sake, get out of this room and get the door shut!”
His voice carried conviction. The man backed out of the room and allowed Lee to follow him. “Is there a key in this door?” asked Lee.
“Yes.”
“Then for God’s sake lock it! … Is there any other way out of the room?”
“No.”
“Thank God!” Lee leaned against the door and closed his eyes.
“Are you crazy?” demanded the angry householder.
“No,” said Lee with a weary grin. “Only a little out of breath.”
“What’s the explanation of this?”
“I’ll tell you . . but please lead me to a telephone first.”
There was a telephone in the back room on the same floor. While Lee was using it, his involuntary host watched him suspiciously, gun in hand. Lee called up Headquarters and got Loasby on the wire. “This is Lee Mappin,” he said. Hearing that name, the householder relaxed somewhat, and lowered his gun. “The man was lying in wait for me in my own office,” said Lee.
“Good God!” ejaculated Loasby.
“He nearly got me, but I escaped into the house next door. Next door on the South. It’s the residence of Mr… .” He looked at his host. “Sanderson.” said he. “The residence of Mr. Sanderson,” Lee went on to Loasby. “For God’s sake, furnish me with a guard, Loasby. And put a guard in the foyer of my apartment house.”
“Surely,” said Loasby. “I’ll have four cars there in a jiffy. We’ll surround the building where your offices are.”
“Just as you like,” said Lee, “but he’ll be gone. Mr. Sanderson, I am sure, will allow some of your men to pass through his house so they can reach the rear of the building next door.”
Sanderson was all friendliness when Lee hung up. The gun was put away. “I know you by reputation, Mr. Mappin,” he said. “What a terrible thing to happen!”
“Yes, quite,” said Lee. “It would be an act of charity, Mr. Sanderson, if you were to offer me a drink.”
ALMOST instantaneously, it seemed, the radio cars one after another drew up silently in front of the house. Detectives came to Mr. Sanderson’s door, and Lee handed over the key of the adjoining house. Other men passed through Mr. Sanderson’s basement and climbed the back fence so that they could command the rear of the office building next door. A few minutes later Loasby came, and Lee told him in detail what had happened. “So he thinks he can play with us at his pleasure!” said the angry Inspector. “By God! I’ll catch this fellow if it’s my last act on earth!”
“Surely!” said Lee.
The search, as Lee had expected, was in vain. The disappointed detectives had presently to report that the man had gone, leaving no trace except the glass he had broken. Apparently he had come out by the front door and coolly walked away up the street before the radio cars arrived. Loasby went back to Headquarters, and Lee returned to his office, guarded now by two plain-clothes men, more conspicuous for brawn than for brains. One was red-faced; one saturnine. Lee was his usual calm self again. Except for the two broken panes no damage had been done. Judging from the condition of the drawers of his desk. Lee guessed that the man had been through his papers before he arrived; however, everything of importance was locked in the safe.
The two officers effected a temporary splice in the cut telephone wires, and Lee called up his operative, Smither, who signed his reports R. F. S. He found him at home. “Smither,” said Lee, ” my servant tells me that a man giving your initials called me up at my apartment this evening, and said that he had discovered an important piece of evidence that he wanted to put in my hands to-night. How about it?”
“Why, Mr. Mappin, it’s all a fake!” said the surprised Smither. “I never called you up. As a matter of fact, I haven’t had any luck to-day. Our man never came for the shoes.”
“That is what I assumed,” said Lee. “You are my principal dependence in this case, Smither. Can you taxi right down to my office to talk things over with me?”
“Surely, Mr. Mappin.”
Smither was a small, meager man of fifty with a gloomy expression; no genius, but a dependable fellow. He opened his eyes when he saw the smashed doors. “Yes, our friend made a raid here to-night,” said Lee.
“The man in the yellow overcoat!”
“The very same. We’ve got the overcoat but we haven’t got him.”
“What a nerve!” murmured Smither. “Are the police on his trail?”
“They are,” said Lee. “But I feel that they will never catch up with him from behind. It’s up to you and me to come on him from an unexpected quarter. You haven’t located his hangout?”
Smither shook his head.
Lee gave him a cigar and took one himself. He paced the little room thoughtfully, talking as much to himself as to Smither. “Let’s see what we’ve got. You traced him to a store on Sixth Avenue near Forty-ninth Street. We have established the fact that his hangout is within two or three minutes walk of that store. It wouldn’t be on Sixth Avenue. With the elevated railway banging past his windows and the subway diggers drilling underneath, it would be impossible for a man to work there even if he was only doing copying. Forty-ninth Street is our best bet; Forty-ninth Street West of Sixth Avenue. East of Sixth the rents are too high. Well, you made inquiries up and down Forty-ninth Street and all you found was a pair of old shoes.”
“The shoes are out of my hands now,” remarked Smither. “Headquarters has men watching the store all the time it is open. They have arranged with the man who runs the store to signal them if anybody presents a ticket for those shoes.”
“Right,” said Lee. “But he will never call tor them now … Let me see … Forty-ninth Street is the regular route from Broadway over to Radio City and the sidewalk is full all day. Consequently the character of the street has changed very rapidly during the last year of two. Little modern store fronts have been put in all along the way. But above the stores most of the old buildings remain as they were. That block in Forty-ninth Street was always rather miscellaneous. There are some queer lodgings in those old buildings, Smither, and I am sure that is where our man had one of his hangouts.”
“One of his hangouts?” questioned Smither.
“His yellow overcoat hangout. The overcoat was part of a disguise, and he only used that room when he was wearing it. … Did you examine the shoes?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What did you get from them?”
“Nothing that I could use, sir.”
“Old shoes are full of character.”
“Sure, they are. But they don’t tell you where the wearer’s hangout is.”
“Ordinarily, no. Still I think it’s worth a trip up to Forty-ninth Street. Let’s go take another look at those shoes, Smither.”
“Okay, Mr. Mappin.”
One of the brawny detectives went with them, the red-faced one, the other being left on guard in Lee’s office. The three men descended from their taxi at the Sixth Avenue corner and started West through Forty-ninth Street. The shoe repair shop was not far. It was one of the usual sort, presided over by an Italian padrone. It had a lot of shoe-repairing machinery
in the show-window, and in the rear a bootblack stand on one side and on the other a row of boxes where customers waiting for their shoes might sit, modestly hiding the holes in their stockings.
Smither was known to the Italian in charge of the place, and he brought out the shoes on request. A unique pair of shoes, bright yellow in colour, and made on a toothpick-pointed last such as one doesn’t see outside of France nowadays. “He wore these on his earlier forays,” said Lee. “They went well with the rest of the outfit.”
“A foreign guy,” put in the Italian, ” no Americano like us.”
While Lee was examining the shoes, the detective on watch outside came in with a questioning air, showing how good a watch he was keeping. He and the other detective established contact, and the first man went back to resume his vigil. “Almost ready to go to pieces,” said Lee, inspecting the shoes. “He picked them up second-hand somewhere. Look as if they hadn’t been cleaned since. Resoled more than once, and are near ready for another.”
“I tella him a need new sole,” said the Italian. “Only want little patches, he say. Gotta no mon’.”
Lee turned the shoes over. “It would be interesting to analyse the black scum that forms on the soles of New York shoes,” he said. “I suppose the constituents are dust, soot and machine oil. No more horse manure … Look, here’s a bit of foreign matter glued to the sole.” He borrowed a knife and, scraping the particle off on a bit of white paper, studied it through a magnifying glass. “It’s so saturated with the black scum I can’t tell… . Here’s another bit, fresher, clinging to the inside of the heel. Sawdust, Smither; what do you make of that?”
Smither shook his head.
Lee pursued his examination with the glass. “There are other particles of sawdust caught between the welt and the sole; some fresh, some blackened with dirt. Smither, this man walked in sawdust on a number of occasions spread over a considerable period of time. Where would you find sawdust in New York?”
“In a planing and finishing mill.”
Lee shook his head. “Take a look through the glass. These are coarse flakes of sawdust, like that chewed out by a big saw when it goes through a log.”
“There are no logs sawed up around New York.”
“Quite so. But the sawdust like this is shipped to the city for a variety of purposes.” Lee studied for a while murmuring to himself: “Sawdust underfoot.. sawdust underfoot … Smither,” he said, raising his head, ” sometimes a storekeeper with a nice tile or mosaic floor spreads sawdust in wet weather to protect it from the muddy feet of his customers.”
“That’s right, sir.”
“There’s been a lot of rain this fall. Let’s see what we can find in Forty-ninth Street.”
“But it’s fine to-night, sir.”
“Never mind, we can ask questions.”
To make a long story short, they found three modern stores in the long block that had such floors. The first was a sandwich shop, the second a fancy fruiterer’s and the third a high-class delicatessen. The sandwich shop did not use sawdust in rainy weather, but the other two did. There was a sack of the same kind of sawdust in the back of the delicatessen store. But the proprietors of both these stores insisted that they had never seen nor served a person answering to the description of the man in the yellow overcoat. “No luck!” Smither said dejectedly, as they came out of the delicatessen.
“O, I wouldn’t say that,” returned Lee. He was standing on the sidewalk looking up at the windows over the store. Whoever had put in this modern store had not considered it worth while to recondition the rest of the house. It had a shabby air. “I didn’t expect to find that the man dealt with these stores. They’re too expensive.”
“Then what was your object in asking, sir?”
“Just to give me a chance to look around… . Notice that the man who designed this store,” he went on, ” in order to get as much frontage as possible for the show-window, put in the store door at the side. The little entry to the door has a nice tiled floor and of course the storekeeper would spread his sawdust on it, because that would be the spot to get most of the mud from the feet of the customers. But that little entry also leads to the door serving the upstairs part of the house. Look at that door, Smither.”
It was a modern door in conformity with the rest of the store front. Inside the glass was pasted the word: Vacancy. “Let’s go up,” said Lee.
He pressed the bell, and the door was opened by a push button from above. The landlady, a chronically suspicious woman like most of her profession, waited for them at the head of the stairs. She was surprised at the request of three prosperous-looking gentlemen to look at rooms at that hour, but proceeded to show them the best she had, a large, shabbily-furnished, second floor front. “Isn’t this a very noisy street?” said Lee.
“Nothing out of the ordinary, sir. Only automobile traffic. The El is too far away to trouble you.”
“I am a literary man. I must have quiet.”
“I already have a literary gentleman, sir. He works here especial for the quiet. Third floor hall. His home is in Jersey.”
Lee’s calm eye lighted up inwardly. Otherwise his face showed no change. “What does he write?” he asked idly.
“I couldn’t tell you that, sir. He’s a foreign gentleman, a Polack, I should say. Speaks broken. But always the gentleman.”
“What’s his name-not that it matters.”
“Jan Dubinski, sir.”
“Ah! Does he by chance wear a yellowish overcoat when he goes out?”
“Why, yes, sir! A foreign-made overcoat. So you know him!”
“Slightly. Can we trouble you to show us his room?”
“I can’t do that, sir. He locks it when he goes out.”
“But you must have a key in order to clean it.”
“No, sir. He don’t sleep here. He sweeps it himself when necessary.”
“Then we must force the door. We are from the police department. We are interested in Mr. Dubinski. I will pay for any damage we do.”
The Headquarters detective flashed his badge.
The woman’s hand went to her mouth. “O, dear, I don’t want no trouble!” she murmured. “Such a quiet man!”
“Calm yourself,” said Lee. “If this is the man we want, it doesn’t reflect on you at all. Please show us the room.”
She led the way up two more flights and pointed to a door in front. The detective rattled it. The old door was loose. “I want a strong screw-driver,” he said; “or a chisel, or any thin tool. A poker will do if you’ve got nothing better.”
She fetched him a poker and he forced the door expertly. “What was your profession before you joined the force?” asked Lee mildly.
Gum-shoes didn’t get it. “Truck-driver,” he said without a smile.
This was a tiny room, the cheapest in the house. It contained a narrow bed, a scarred bureau, a kitchen table and chair by the window. The floor was covered with a dusty carpet having most of the nap worn off. On the table stood a typewriter, and Lee went to it straight. There were sheets of paper alongside; he put one in the machine and struck a few keys. The worn letters and the new exclamation point were instantly recognisable. “This is the typewriter,” said Lee, ” and your lodger is the man we’re looking for.”
“O dear,” she said. “What’s he done?”
Lee didn’t want to give the woman a fit by mentioning murder. “I can’t tell you. Read the papers.” He pulled out the drawers in the bureau. They were perfectly empty. There was a shallow drawer in the table. Nothing there but more blank sheets of paper and carbon paper. “Look under the mattress,” he said to Smither. “Feel under the carpet all over the room.”
Smither, having done so, shook his head. “I have reason to believe he has something hidden here,” insisted Lee.
“Where else is there to look, sir, in such a dump?”
“Examine the mattress,” said Lee. “Make certain that it has not been ripped open and sewed up again.” Meanwhile, w
ith his magnifying glass, Lee was examining the woodwork of the room; door frame, baseboard, window frame and sill. The top floor window in this old house was close to the floor. He discovered that the old paint in the cracks of the window-sill was broken. “This board has been taken out at some time,” he said. “See if you can pry it up with your poker, officer.”
The sill came up with unexpected ease. Beneath it, in the narrow space between lathes and brick, a thin package wrapped in newspaper was standing on edge. Upon being opened, it was found to contain a carbon copy of the play Sin, in the same worn type. Lee, who expected this, scarcely glanced at it. But in the hole there was also a long manilla envelope and he pounced on that. It contained a sheaf of letter-size sheets covered with miscellaneous typewritten notes. The first entries told Lee what a find he had made, and he smiled at last. “This is worth all our trouble,” he said softly to Smither. “With this we will send him to the chair!”
“We got to catch him first,” said Smither gloomily, “What is it, sir?”
“The contents of Gavin Dordress’ note-book. That note-book was missing after the murder. The murderer dared not keep the book itself, but he copied it out before destroying it. Notes for plots, for characters, for scenes. He needed that in the future.”
“If the book is destroyed can you prove in court that these notes came out of it?”
“I reckon so,” said Lee, folding the papers. “I’ll study the entries at my leisure…. Hello! here’s something else.” He drew out a small ruled sheet perforated along one edge. “A page from the note-book itself! So much the better!”
“What funny-looking writing,” said Smither, looking over Lee’s shoulder. “It’s a kind of puzzle, isn’t it? I can’t make nothing of it.”
“He couldn’t either,” said Lee. “And he saved it until he could. He thought, because this one entry was written in cipher, that it must be specially important to him. Maybe it is. I’ll have a try at deciphering it when I get home.”
ALM02 The Death of a Celebrity Page 19