The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original)

by Unknown

  I crossed the roof and looked down into the alley. There, beneath my very eyes, crouched in the shadow of a fence, was another man waiting, tense, expectant. Did she know he was there? Had she warned me of the obvious peril at the front door to send me to my death at the back? I had no means of knowing, but this much I did know: I had saved my life by coming to the roof.

  I stepped back to the front of the roof and watched the machine.

  The fog thickened until it became a white pall. Lights from the windows of the apartments below sent out golden paths of light into the swirling moisture. The sound of the running motor was queerly muffled.

  A curtain was raised. Out into the fog there shone a path of yellow light. The curtain was lowered and the light blotted out. Three times this was repeated. The light shone from the window of Maude Enders’ apartment. Probably a signal to let the watchers below know that I had left. If that was so she had delayed giving it, delayed nearly ten minutes. Was she on the square after all—this girl with the mole on her left hand?

  Another ten minutes passed. There came the sound of a slamming door as someone got out of the machine below, clicked across the cement sidewalk, pounded up the steps, and entered the apartment house. Five minutes later and he was back out and into the machine. There came the acceleration of the motor as the car moved away, swinging slowly down the street, around the corner, and in front of the alley.

  I tiptoed around the coping, following the course of the machine, watching it as it stopped at the alley.

  A man got out and walked up the alley, whistling a soft signal. The man who was crouched behind the fence answered it, and then the two moved together, joined in a whispered conference, and then both got into the machine. Once more there came the sound of the motor accelerating, and then the car whined down the block, turned into the main boulevard and was lost in the traffic.

  I got back to the trap door and went down the steep steps, back down the floors until I came once more to the apartment of Maude Enders.

  This time I knew the right key, and I turned the lock noiselessly.

  She was sitting in her chair, her chin cupped in her hands, her luminous eyes staring out into space.

  “Ed!” she exclaimed as the light fell on me.

  I bowed.

  “Just a final good-night, and a reminder that you mustn’t forget to tell old Icy-Eyes what I said.”

  “Ed,” she pleaded, her voice suddenly soft. “Ed, I swear I didn’t know there was a watcher in the alley, didn’t suspect it until after the man came up to see why you hadn’t come out; and I delayed the signal for ten minutes, Ed. Honest I did!”

  I grinned at her.

  “Don’t waste any time worrying about me, sister,” I told her. “No apologies necessary. I saw your delayed signal and I just dropped in on the road out to say thanks.”

  Her eyes were wide this time.

  “Ed, you are clever! … I can put you up here if you can stay, Ed. The streets are unsafe, and every hotel is watched.”

  I bowed my thanks.

  “I have work to do, Maude. Thanks all the same, but the streets are never unsafe for the Phantom Crook. Good night.”

  Perhaps I was showing off a little, but half the pleasure of doing something clever is to have an appreciative audience, and this girl with the mole on her left hand knew clever work when she saw it. Then again, I wanted to satisfy myself that she had been on the square with that tip to pass out by the rear door.

  There was a telephone in the lobby, and I phoned for a cab, and didn’t step out of the front door until the cab was at the curb. It took me three cabs and half an hour to get to the place I wanted to go, the house of Helen Chadwick. I hoped I’d find her up. It was the second time I’d been there, once just before our engagement had been announced.

  Helen Chadwick and her mother were of the upper, upper crust. They were in the middle of the social-elect. Helen’s father had been unfortunate before he died. It was worry that killed him. Crooks held evidences of his indiscretion, and they had threatened Helen once or twice with exposure of their knowledge. It wasn’t that Helen cared for herself, but there was the memory of her father, and the failing health of her mother to be considered.

  Once they had forced Helen to pass me off as her husband-to-be, and we had spent a week-end at the country home of Mr. and Mrs. Loring Kemper, the leaders of the socially elect. I had got her out of that scrape safely, and when I broke the engagement with a smile, there had been tears in the girl’s eyes. I had told her that I would come to her if danger threatened again.…

  I half expected the house would be dark, but it was lit up like a church. There was a late dance going on, and shiny cars were parked all around the block, cars that had chauffeurs hunched behind the wheels, dozing, nodding, shivering.

  I paid off the taxi, and skipped up the steps.

  A butler answered my ring.

  “Miss Chadwick,” I told him crisply.

  He gave me a fishy eye.

  “Your card?”

  “Tell her Mr. Jenkins is here, and I’ll step in while you’re telling her.”

  He gave ground doubtfully, but give it he did, and I walked on into a reception room. From the other side of the house there came shrill bursts of laughter, gruff voices, the blare of an orchestra, the tinkle of dishes.

  Twenty seconds and the man was back.

  “Not at home, sir. Step this way, sir.”

  He bowed me to the door.

  As he held the front door open I took him by the collar and swung him around.

  “You didn’t deliver my message. Why?”

  His fishy eyes glinted a cold, hostile glare of scornful enmity.

  “Miss Chadwick is never at home to crooks. I recognized you from your published pictures.”

  I nodded.

  “I was afraid so. I recognized you from having seen you with Squint Dugan. Published pictures—hell! You know me because you’re a crook. On your way.”

  A push sent him out on the moist porch, a kick sent him the rest of the way down the stairs, the momentum skidded him across the wet sidewalk and into the gutter. Across the street a chauffeur voiced his approval by a short blast of the horn. In the darkness someone snickered. The butler got up and tried to scrape off the muddy water with the palm of his hand. His livery was a mess, and his face was smeared.

  “You needn’t come back,” I told him. “Your references will be forwarded to you care of the warden at the Wisconsin penitentiary at Waupin. I believe you’re wanted there, and I intend to see that you get there.”

  “What is all this?”

  The remark came in a cool, impersonal voice, the sort of a voice one uses to peddlers and office boys.

  I carefully closed the door and sprung the night latch. Then I turned to face the owner of that voice. She was gowned in the latest style, her bare arms and throat contrasting against the dark of her gown, her hair framing the soft curve of her oval cheek. There was a patch of rouge high on her cheeks; her lips were vivid crimson. She was a flapper, and yet there was a something else, a something of poise, of more mature responsibility about her than when I had last seen her.

  “Ed!” she breathed.… “Ed Jenkins!”

  I grinned at her. I didn’t want any dramatics.

  “H’lo, Helen. I just fired your butler. He was a crook, an ex-con, and he was spying on you.”

  There were tears in her eyes, and her face had gone white beneath the rouge, but she twisted her mouth into a smile.

  “Just when I had been hoping, praying that I could get in touch with you.”

  I nodded.

  “More trouble over those papers of your father’s?”

  There was no need for an answer.

  “Listen, Helen. I have got all of those papers except two. There’s no need of going into details. I wasn’t going to bother you by reporting, but was just going to trace those documents through the underworld, get ’em and destroy ’em. Two got away, and I had an idea you’d be
bothered, so I looked you up.”

  “Come on in here, Ed,” she said, and gave me her hand, leading the way into a small room which opened off the rear hall. “This is filled with wraps, but we can talk here for a minute.… Oh, how I hoped I’d see you again, Ed.”

  I patted her shoulder reassuringly, and she cuddled into the hollow of my arm with a little snuggly motion, as natural as though we’d been engaged for years.

  “Ed, there’s a man by the name of Schwartz who holds one of those papers. He showed it to me, and it’s genuine, all right. He insists that I must use my influence to see that a jewelry exhibit given by the Down Town Merchants’ Exhibit is a success. He wants me to have Mrs. Kemper act as hostess and sponsor for the exhibit. Otherwise he threatens to use the paper against me, and expose Father, blacken his memory, give the story to the newspapers and all the rest.”

  I did some rapid thinking.

  “When do you get this paper?”

  “As soon as Mrs. Kemper announces that she will act as hostess.”

  “And will she?”

  A voice from the doorway answered.

  “She’ll do anything for Helen Chadwick. Ed, how are you? It’s a pleasure to greet you once more.”

  I turned and looked into the smiling eyes of Edith Jewett Kemper, leader of the social world, head of the four hundred.

  There was a certain wistful sadness in her face as she gave me her hand.

  “Ed, you never took advantage of my invitation to come to my house for a visit. There are lots of people who would have given much for such an invitation. I like you, and my husband likes you—and Helen likes you.”

  I bowed again.

  “Thanks. I appreciate it, but to have a crook spending the week at your house might not appear to the best of advantage in the social columns of some of the papers.”

  She shrugged her bare shoulders.

  “The papers be damned. I have my standing sufficiently assured to do as I please.”

  The conversation was getting a little too personal for me. Those were my friends, and yet they didn’t understand how impossible it was to maintain a friendship with a crook. I knew their sincerity, appreciated their interest, but I was a crook, a crook who was known from coast to coast. Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook, could have nothing in common with people such as these. The memory of a pleasant week-end, the haunting recollection of those soft eyes of Helen Chadwick’s, and a sense of gratitude—those were the ties that bound me to a world that was another existence from my own life, an environment foreign to me, a something separate and apart.

  “How did you know I was here?”

  She grinned at that.

  “I happened to be standing near the front windows, and saw the butler as he went out—down and out. I fancied that would mean Ed Jenkins was calling, and I took the liberty of intruding long enough to say that I don’t like to be snubbed. You’re not using me right, Ed; and then there’s Helen.”

  I nodded.

  “Yes, there’s Helen,” I said. “It would be a fine endorsement for her future if the papers should learn that the Edward Gordon Jenkins who was with her for a visit at the house of the Kempers was none other than Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook. It would surely look well in print!”

  Her eyes were soft, dreamy.

  “There are things more important than reputation. One should not sacrifice all life for the sake of conventions, for social standing. Social position is merely a bauble, Ed, a pretty, glittering trinket that’s as cold as ice.”

  I could feel the clinging girl press her face against my shoulder. The party was due to get all weeps if I didn’t strut my stuff and make a getaway.

  “I’ve been thinking it over, and I want you to act as hostess for the jewel exhibit. See that Helen gets the paper, and then I’ll get in touch with you later. In the meantime, I’m on my way. There’s work to be done before sunrise.”

  I gently broke away and started for the door.

  Helen stood there, motionless. Mrs. Kemper made as though she would detain me, then thought better of it.

  “So long, Ed,” called Helen, in a gay voice.

  “Be good,” I told her.

  Mrs. Kemper said nothing, but her eyes were moist, and, as I rounded the corner into the hallway, I saw the two women go into a clinch.

  That was over.

  The cold fog of the night felt cool and welcome on my face. I was commencing to know the truth. That sense of fierce protection which had come over me as I held Helen to me, that swift pounding of the pulse when I had first heard her voice … I put those thoughts behind me, firmly, resolutely. I was a crook. The girl was a thoroughbred. I shook myself out of my daze. There was work to be done, a necessity that I keep my wits clear. Through the foggy night there were crooks peering at the streets, closed cars circling about, cars that were filled with armed men. All crookdom was looking for Ed Jenkins. I had warned the head of the new-formed crime trust. Too much was at stake to take chances. War had been declared and no quarter would be asked or given. Single-handed, my wits were pitted against those of an organized underworld, and the safety and happiness of a girl who had shown friendship for Ed Jenkins was at stake.

  The fog cleared my brain, and I began to think, to put together the pieces of the puzzle that had been placed in my hands. There would be a few thousand profit to be made from the jewelry exhibit, but the crook who had engineered that game would not be content with a paltry few thousand. It was intended to loot the exhibit, but how?

  Then there was the girl with the mole. She had given her signal ten minutes after I had departed, and then, when the man had gone to her apartment, he had called off his gang without any delay. Without enough delay. Was it possible they suspected this girl with the mole of double-crossing them as far as I was concerned?

  I swung down the street until I came to an all-night drug store, summoned a taxi, and took another look at the apartment house where Maude Enders lived. One look was enough. There was a light in the girl’s apartment, and a closed car before the door.

  She had been summoned, this girl of mystery, this perfectly formed woman who was absolutely unconscious of any charm, who dwelt in a mental world, who thought swiftly and cleverly.

  I spoke to the taxi driver and had him drive me around the block, stop at an alley and turn out the lights. From the alley I could see the light in the girl’s apartment.

  Three minutes and the light snapped out.

  The girl with the mole came out of the front door, leaning on the arm of a man who was bundled up in a heavy overcoat, and entered the car. I didn’t have to be a prophet to know that the girl was being taken to account, that she was a prisoner right then—a prisoner of the man on whose arm she was leaning, that she was being summoned to the headquarters of the crime trust.

  I had almost overlooked that bet. A moment or two more and it would have been too late. I had intended to look up this Schwartz and have it out with him, but this was a better lead. It might result in almost anything.

  The closed car moved off and I followed, followed in a way that made it virtually impossible to detect the car in which I was traveling, and in which a twenty-dollar bill had placed me in the driver’s seat with the uniformed chauffeur as a passenger.

  I cut across in back of the car, swung around a block, headed behind it again, ran a block ahead and let it pass, followed for a ways, ducked through alleys, always watching the tail-light wherever possible, detouring where I was fairly sure of my ground—and then I lost it.

  The car had turned off, where? I swung around the four sides of the block, saw a tail-light down a side street, swept past and knew that I had located my quarry.

  It was a flat in the better residential district, and the front was black, gloomy, respectable as became a flat-building at that hour of the night. I left the car a block away and began to cross back-yards. Somewhere a dog barked, but he was chained. Exclusive residential districts do not cater to tenants with dogs. Rapidly I adjusted the white
whiskers, the steel-rimmed glasses, the wig, the touch of complexion paste which was a part of my disguise as an old man, a pasty-faced, white-haired old blusterer. It had been a good disguise, but the agents of the crime trust had penetrated it. I wore it so that they wouldn’t think I knew they had discovered the secret of that disguise. I would let them think Ed Jenkins was a bit of a fool … until it suited my purpose to let them think otherwise.

  A man guarded the back of the flat, a man who took his job none too seriously. I stooped and filled the little leather pouch—which I always carried as a pocketbook—with fine sand from the back of the yard, a sandy loam which packed hard and fast, and made a formidable weapon out of my purse.

  Ten minutes of careful stalking, fifteen, and then he saw me. His hand raced to his hip, there was a swish through the air, and then he went bye-bye, without a sound, the skin hardly bruised.

  I stepped over him and took one of the back windows. The kitchen was deserted. A long hallway showed a faint light. A man sat with his back to the wall, a gun in either hand, nodding, breathing heavily, regularly. I stepped past him and paused before a door from which came the sound of voices.

  Without knocking I opened the door and stepped into the room. It was furnished as an office, and a huge desk occupied the center of the floor. Upon this desk was a small, portable reading lamp, and the circle of its rays showed the white face of the woman with the mole, the thin, rat-like features of the man who had accompanied her, and whom I recognized as one of the most prominent of the criminal lawyers in the city, and showed, also, the huge bulk of the man who was sitting behind that desk.

  It was that man in whom I was interested.

  He was big, flabby, his skin dead white, his lips fat and spongy, and his face hung in folds about his chin, but there was a soft sheen to the skin, a smoothness of texture. His eyes caught the reflection of the reading lamp and seemed to shoot it forth in a glittering collection of icy rays. There was never so cold and remorseless an expression upon the face of any living mortal I had seen as was contained in the eyes of this heavy man behind the desk.