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

by Unknown

  Without difficulty he located the janitor, a squat, beetle-browed man with a thick Irish brogue, and learned that the renting agent had brought a tall, slender man to look at apartment 3-B the day before. With this information he went to the nearest drug-store and called police headquarters.

  When he had talked with Logan, he came back to the apartment court and opened the second door on the right. The stairs mounted in short, square turns, and there were two facing doors on each small landing. At the third, Casey stared at the brass 3-B tacked to the panel and listened.

  Here, right under the roof, it was hot and stuffy. Moisture glistened on his broad face as he took the little automatic out and palmed it. Below him, the stairwell was a welter of sound while three radios—a dance band, a political speech and a light opera—fought it out in a discordance that made it impossible for him to concentrate. After a moment he knocked.

  He knocked again before he got an answer, and then a voice said: “Who is it?”

  “ ’Tis the janitorr,” Casey said, trying to imitate the janitor’s brogue.

  A lock clicked. The door swung back and Casey stepped quickly into the opening. The automatic flipped up in his hand and he turned sidewise, jabbing the gun into the man’s stomach as he slid up even with him.

  For an instant as they stood there close together and immobile, Casey did not recognize this man. Then the handsome, dark face, the slender, immaculate figure clicked into place and he remembered. Norma Patten had introduced this fellow as her husband’s secretary.

  He said: “Hello, Gilbert. Back up!”

  Gilbert backed and Casey heeled the door shut. Gilbert wet his lips, made a grotesque effort to smile which was little more than a baring of the white, even teeth.

  “What’s the idea?” he blustered finally.

  “I don’t know,” Casey said flatly. “This is a big surprise to me; I was just looking for Les Boyden. Seen him?”

  “Boyden?” Gilbert arched neat black brows, but his eyes weren’t in the effort. “I don’t think I know him.”

  “I do,” Casey said. “Let’s look. Just keep your hands in sight and play nice. I don’t like trouble any more.”

  Les Boyden was in the adjoining bedroom. He was lying on the bed with his hands and feet tied, and when Casey shook him he saw that the fellow had been drugged and was in a comatose condition.

  Casey’s voice was hard and sultry when he pushed Gilbert back into the living-room.

  “Well, that gives me one answer,” he said. “You’re the guy that called at the Hut for him last night. Why?”

  Gilbert opened his mouth and shut it without speaking. His handsome face was very set and growing paler. His eyes were wary and uncertain and his hands moved nervously at his sides. Casey saw the bulge of a gun in one pocket, but he was content to keep this fellow covered until Logan arrived.

  “You’ll talk pretty soon,” he added. “And then maybe we’ll see if you’re the louse that gunned out Ambrose and lifted that ten grand.” Casey sucked in his lips and his eyes took on a dangerous glint that was partly anticipation. He knew he ought to wait for Logan, but he hated to do it.

  “Because if you are,” he added, “I’m gonna take a sock at you and even up for the grief and the raps you gave me. Suppose we go to Headquarters and talk it over.”

  “Suppose you drop the gun!”

  Casey’s nerves snapped taut at the curt authority in the new voice, and he stiffened rigidly, every muscle tense. Actually he was too startled to drop the gun. He didn’t drop it; he turned his head. In the half-opened door was the grim-faced figure of Sure-shot Patten; in his right hand was a .38 automatic.

  Even then Casey did not drop his gun. He knew better than to argue, and he dropped his arm, but he continued to stare while Patten sidled into the room and shut the door.

  “I said, drop it!”

  This time Casey let go of the gun and blew out his breath.

  Patten came forward very slowly, very cautiously, as though he expected some hidden menace. When he got close, Casey saw the cold fury in the man’s gray eyes. They seemed very small and bright and absolutely merciless; the lips and mustache had a flat, stretched look.

  “So that’s it, huh?” Casey said bitterly. He didn’t know exactly what he meant, but he wanted to talk; and he felt the luxury of relief that he had called Logan. All he had to do was play along; so he thought of other things to say, and said them as they occurred to him.

  “It was you and this louse, Gilbert, from the start, huh? Sorenson, Ambrose and Boyden ganged up for the touch and you slipped a cog and skidded into murder. Well”—his lids came down—“it’ll take more than a flock of friends to get you out of this.”

  Patten’s reaction to all this was peculiar. If he heard, he gave no sign. Not once did his expression change, and all the time those cold gray eyes kept moving, searching every corner of the room.

  “Where’s Norma?” he rapped suddenly.

  “Norma?” echoed Casey hollowly; then glanced at the stone-faced Gilbert to see that the man’s eyes were bright with new alarm.

  “She called me,” Patten pressed, “and I—”

  A muffled pounding checked the sentence. Casey’s jaw went slack and his eyes slid to a closed door in an inner hall, apparently a closet.

  “Open it!” Patten ordered.

  Casey stepped up and tried the knob. When he opened the door Norma Patten half fell into his arms. Her eyes were wide and startled, her auburn hair disheveled. A blue-checked scarf made a makeshift gag and she had apparently nearly freed her hands of the belt of her camel’s-hair sport coat, which was wound around her wrists.

  “Martin!” she gasped as soon as she could talk.

  “Well,” Patten said stonily.

  “I was afraid you’d come and—I had to call you.” Norma Patten stood with breast heaving and color high. She thrust her hands into her coat pockets and turned to face Fred Gilbert, the lines of her jaw hard and her eyes flashing. Then she turned back to her husband and began to talk.

  “There,” she said, pointing an accusing finger at Gilbert, “is your blackmailer. I didn’t know it until he called me here. He made me telephone you. And if it hadn’t been for Flash Casey he would have killed you and Les Boyden to make it look—”

  Gilbert’s voice cut like a whip.

  “So I’m the sucker, huh?” He backed close to a chair, his chin outthrust and his handsome face livid as he faced Patten. “Well, I don’t take this rap alone. I played the sap long enough; played the part and she made me like it. She’s right about framing you and Boyden, but she did the calling because—”

  Gilbert stopped with his mouth open, the next word ready but unuttered. In that instant the gun barked.

  There had been no warning. Casey heard the shot and saw Gilbert’s coat lift under the impact of the slug, but he didn’t know who held the gun until it crashed again. Then he saw it in Norma Patten’s hand. It was a little gun, a .25, like the one Mary Nason had; a woman’s gun.

  Between those two shots was not more than a fifth of a second, but it was long enough for Casey to do a lot of thinking.

  Norma Patten, the woman who always got what she wanted. The thing had been a frame from the start, and he was the fall guy when it backfired. He remembered the damp polo coat on the Queen Anne love seat when he went to the Carteret. Norma had already been out—and she had killed Sorenson. Why—

  He didn’t know why. He was listening to the little automatic. It was still going off in snapping, spiteful barks. He heard the door open, sensed that it was Logan without turning. He dropped to one knee, groped for the gun he had dropped, found it, then didn’t know just what to do with it.

  There was blood on Gilbert’s neck and shirtfront. He went back into the chair with a curious smile, a sagging jaw and a burning vacantness in his eyes. Then, suddenly, the rest of the drama happened all at once.

  Gilbert straightened in the chair with a gun in his hand. Patten, who had wasted the first two
seconds in openmouthed amazement, pulled his own gun towards his wife. Norma Patten screamed. Gilbert’s gun roared, jumped in his hand and he dropped it as he collapsed.

  Simultaneously another gun crashed and Casey thought it was Patten’s until he saw the man’s shoulder jerk and the automatic fly from his hand.

  Gilbert slumped back in the chair. Norma Patten staggered and a red spot stained the left side of her fawn-colored dress. She was dead before she fell, but even then she went down gracefully, silently and was lost to Casey’s sight behind the table.

  For a long time no one spoke. The only sound was the noisy, tortured breathing of the unconscious Gilbert. Then windows began to bang up in the courtyard and excited voices bounced back and forth, raucous and shrill.

  Logan stepped forward, gun in hand. Patten, holding tightly to his right arm, turned slowly and looked at the lieutenant while the fury died in his eyes. Blood began to show through his clenched fingers and he finally said:

  “Thanks, Lieutenant, for that shot of yours. If you hadn’t got me I guess I’d’ve plugged her!”

  “That’s what I thought,” Logan said thickly. “I couldn’t see Gilbert’s gun. I took you when I saw you meant business.”

  Except in the flicker of his eyes Patten showed no emotion. His appearance was unruffled. He still looked like a man accustomed to success, a man who could not be shoved around. His voice betrayed no inner misgivings.

  “She had it coming,” he said grimly. “She and that heel”—he nodded to the crumpled Gilbert—“have been chiseling for months. I had a private dick on their trail in Chicago and I was about ready to get clear.

  “When she pulled this blackmail story I smelled a rat, and I gave her the money because I figured I could trap her and force the showdown. I thought I could persuade Sorenson to see it my way, but something went wrong and—”

  He shrugged distastefully. “I’ll give you what I know when we get this mess cleaned up.”

  Casey looked down at the little automatic in his hand. He put it away, wiped his sweaty face and blew out his breath with so much noise that Logan heard him and said dryly:

  “And what’s your story?”

  “Me?” Casey sighed wearily and spoke disgustedly. “Where would I get a story? This is a job for you cops to dig out; it’s too tough for an amateur like me.

  “I get tangled up in all the grief and—hell, I don’t even get a picture out of it. I’m just the fall guy.”

  IX

  ater, in Logan’s office, Casey stared moodily at his fingernails and said grouchily: “So I can’t even tell the story to a rewrite man to make up for the pictures I didn’t get?”

  “Nope,” Logan said cheerfully. “For once you’re out of luck.”

  “For once, huh?”

  “The D.A.’s clamping down,” Logan said. “The story we’re giving out is that Gilbert was the blackmailer. He shot Norma Patten and the police shot him.”

  “What police? You?”

  “Lots of different police,” Logan said, grinning. “Just the police.”

  “Well,” Casey grumbled, “that gag has been worked before, I guess it’ll work again.”

  “The truth,” Logan went on, “would just make a big stink, and it wouldn’t do any good. Patten was pretty clean from the start. Gilbert lived just long enough to clear him.

  “Sorenson actually did blackmail Norma Patten. He came around with the story of the films and release and touched her for a thousand. Right then she and Gilbert got the idea. They had a hunch Patten was getting wise to them, and they saw a chance to get some getaway money.

  “Norma figured Les Boyden was still sort of soft on her and she gave him the thousand and had him go to Sorenson and collect the negatives and release. We found ’em locked in her trunk. They thought that would be the end of Sorenson and Boyden. They intended to have Ambrose be a phony contact man and they planned to protect his identity from Patten.

  “Well, Patten gave her the cash. When he saw the S-mark on the pictures he called on Sorenson, and beat hell out of him. The break was that for some reason Norma had gone to see Sorenson and was in the hall outside the door when the trouble was going on. When she went in Sorenson was picking himself up; Patten had told him he’d been touched for twenty-five grand and Sorenson, knowing the truth, got nasty and wanted half from Norma. Well, she plugged him when he got too tough.”

  Logan lit a cigarette and cocked one eye at Casey.

  “That’s where you came in. She played innocent to you because she knew she could trust you and because she wanted to have some help if she got in trouble. Your act was just to cover up. If anybody accused her she’d have your testimony that you went down with ten G’s to buy the pictures, and that she didn’t know he was dead.

  “That was smart—until you ran into Haley and he traced you to her suite. Then the cat was out. Gilbert ran into you when he went to see Sol Ambrose and Patten got there too late, when you were in the closet. Gilbert had to silence Ambrose and he knew you carried the ten grand so he lifted it to get you in deeper and keep you in debt to Norma.”

  “I can guess the rest of it,” Casey growled. “Norma knew that Patten was on the warpath. She and Gilbert were out the twenty-five grand they expected to collect. So they figured the best thing to do was to get Boyden, get Patten and make a plant that they’d shot it out.

  “You’d’ve believed it too,” he added. “You thought Patten was the guy you wanted, and you were looking for Boyden. If you had found them dead in that apartment with guns in their hands—”

  “I guess you’re right,” Logan admitted. “It was a good plan at the beginning. Patten tracing Sorenson busted it wide open for them; and—I hate to admit it—you messed up the second idea. If you hadn’t busted in on Gilbert while they were waiting for Patten, it would have been too bad for old Sure-shot. She was a tough baby, that Norma, but”—Logan grinned—“she sure had your number.”

  “Yeah,” Casey groused. “Me, I’m just a softie. A fall guy. She rubs out Sorenson and then sends me down to make her look innocent. For old time’s sake, she said, and I bit. That’s what burns me.”

  “And let it be a lesson to you,” Logan cracked. “After this, keep away from women—or get a chaperone.”

  “Yeah,” groused Casey. “And you, you louse! I do all the work and dump the job in your lap and what does it get me? Grief—and funny answers.”

  Logan’s black eyes mirrored a smile that was part admiration.

  “But think of the fun you have.”

  “Yeah—and the dough I make.”

  The telephone shrilled, checking Casey’s tirade, and when Logan answered it he said: “For you.”

  Casey groaned; “Oh, me.” Then, accepting the telephone: “Two to one it’s Blaine.”

  “I don’t like the odds,” Logan said, thereby proving his sagacity, because the city editor’s voice cracked in Casey’s ears the instant he answered.

  “What the hell’re you hiding out down there for?” Blaine demanded. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  “Why?” Casey said.

  “Because I’ve got a job for you, you lug. There’s a three-alarm fire at Sherry and Walton. Eddie’s on his way down there with your stuff. Get going—and show something. You’ve been chasing around doing nothing for two days now, and I pay off on pictures.”

  Casey hung up, cursing softly. Logan said: “Anything wrong?”

  “Naw,” Casey said, buttoning up his coat in weary resignation. “Just the same old grief. That was the boyfriend reminding me that it’s about time I took some pictures.”

  Doors in the Dark

  Frederick Nebel

  (LOUIS) FREDERICK NEBEL (1903–1967) was born on Staten Island, New York. He began his adult life as a blue-collar worker, working on the New York docks and on a tramp steamer. He lived in Canada for a while, selling his first pulp fiction to Northwest Stories before becoming a regular and prolific contributor to Dime Detective, for which he wrote
the long-running Cardigan series, and, most of all, Black Mask, for which he created the Donny Donahue series and his most important works, those featuring tough captain Steve MacBride and the wisecracking and drunken crime reporter Kennedy.

  Nebel sold the MacBride series to Warner Bros., which made nine films. However, Kennedy became a female journalist, Torchy Blane, and MacBride the object of her affections. The first film in the series, Smart Blonde (1937), was based on the Black Mask story “No Hard Feelings,” though the remaining films simply used the characters without basing them on Nebel’s stories. Other films were also based on his work, notably Sleepers West (1941), which became a Mike Shayne film, based on Nebel’s novel Sleepers East (1934); Fifty Roads to Town (1937), based on his crime novel of the same name; and he wrote the story for The Bribe (1949), which starred Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, Charles Laughton, and Vincent Price. The radio series Meet MacBride, based on the stories, made its debut on CBS on June 13, 1936.

  “Doors in the Dark” first appeared in the February 1933 issue.

  Doors in the Dark

  Frederick Nebel

  A STORY OF CAPT. STEVE MACBRIDE

  Everyone said it was suicide, but Capt. MacBride smelled murder, and went on the trail alone.

  HE SOUNDS OF MOTOR traffic on Marshall Drive rose in a muted, not unpleasant medley to the topmost floor of Tudor Towers. Eastward, the glow of midtown hung like a will-o’-the-wisp in the crisp winter sky. A breeze plucked fitfully at the northeast turret apartment.

  MacBride, admitted by the oldish maid, brought with him into the warm apartment a breath of the cold outdoors and a vital sense of his own personality. He shook his head when the maid reached for his hat. His windy blue glance flicked her frightened gargoyle’s face, darted away and leaped nimbly about the foyer as he trailed her short, rapid footsteps towards the living-room entry.

  He saw Halo Rand standing at the far side of the room. The room was dimly, discreetly lighted. A parchment-shaded floor lamp stood back of the woman and built an amber halo about her amber hair.