by Unknown
“You had killed Tomlinson to hold on to your money, Osgood reasoned. If Emagine went to the chair, it would not only leave you clear, Allene, but would remove her as the last obstacle between you and the Buford fortune. It looked sweet from where Osgood sat. He dug you for five grand, but when you’d had time to think, you knew it was no good. It would never be any good as long as Osgood was alive. So you killed him too.
“When I found Osgood dead on the beach, I started trying to think of the whole thing as he would have thought. You were the only answer, Allene. You were the one who could have easily gotten Emagine’s hat and coat. You had motive. And I’m afraid they’ll pin it on you. There must be some of your fingerprints on the five grand I took off of Osgood. There’ll be so many more things when they start looking and digging, Allene.”
She looked from face to face, her hands knotted at her sides. Then she wheeled and lunged for the door. But the knife was quicker. The knife flashed in my hand, thudded in the door, close to her face. It paralyzed her. It paralyzed everyone in the room. She came to life first. She grasped the knife and pulled it from the wood. “You’d do this to me, Lloyd?”
That wad of cotton in my throat choked me.
“What else could I do?” she whispered. “I’d never had but one thing in a lousy life—that money. That damned filthy Buford money—and now I was going to get cheated out of that. I didn’t mean to kill Buddy Tomlinson. I only wanted to scare him. But he grabbed at the gun—and it went off. I thought that if I hired a detective to warn Buddy away from Emagine, Buddy’s body would be found and no one would ever think I had known he was dead. I thought that would take suspicion from me, and once Buddy’s body was found, the detective would have no more to do with the case.
“After that, it seemed easier. It was much easier to kill Osgood. Yes, killing gets easier all the time—”
She sliced the word off with the knife. A spasm crossed her face, telegraphing a wave of horror over the room. A little cough bubbled in her throat.
I had never thought she’d use the knife for that. I’d only wanted to scare her, to bring her up at the door before Ben and his men began pulling guns. I’d wanted her to stop, to think. To talk. To cop a plea. To live.
She had saved my life. It was the only possible way I could have saved hers.
But she’d used the knife on herself.
I caught her in my arms as she crumpled, laid her gently on the floor. The scene in the room was breaking apart, people moving, converging on her. Her eyes flicked open. “Why couldn’t it have been different, Lloyd? Why couldn’t you have showed me Florida—the—part—the tourist never sees?”
Tears welled in her eyes. A spasm shuddered over her.
I stood up, fighting the moisture in my eyes. Distantly, I heard Emagine Buford say, “In a way, I’m not surprised. She was always sort of—”
“Shut up!” I screamed.
Somehow I got out of the room. I walked down the corridor outside, not seeing its walls, not feeling its floor under my feet.
Only remembering. That longing that was almost pain. That terrible, pitiful hunger. Even death hadn’t erased it from her face, and I knew at last why Allene Buford had never been quite beautiful.…
One Shot
Charles G. Booth
CHARLES G(ORDON) BOOTH (1896–1949) was born in Manchester, England, then emigrated to Canada before settling in Los Angeles in 1922 to become a screenwriter for 20th Century Fox. While he was a popular and successful pulp writer and novelist in his time, even his best works, such as Gold Bullets (1929), Murder at High Tide (1930), The General Died at Dawn (1941), and Mr. Angel Comes Aboard (1944), are seldom read today.
The motion pictures that he wrote, however, as well as those based on his novels, are a different matter, still commonly found on late-night movie channels. The House on 92nd Street (1945) was released shortly after World War II as a thinly disguised film version of the FBI’s success in bringing down the largest Nazi espionage organization in the history of the United States, the Duquesne Spy Ring, in 1941. A black-and-white noir semidocumentary, it featured an introduction by J. Edgar Hoover and real-life FBI agents in several scenes. Booth won an Academy Award for Best Original Motion Picture Story and was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay (with cowriters Barré Lyndon and John Monks Jr.). It starred Lloyd Nolan and William Eythe. Films based on Booth’s novels are Johnny Angel (1945, with a screenplay by Steve Fisher and Frank Gruber, based on Mr. Angel Comes Aboard) and The General Died at Dawn (1936, with a screenplay by Clifford Odets).
“One Shot” was published in the June 1925 issue.
One Shot
Charles G. Booth
PETER STODDARD FOUND NAT Hammond’s letter waiting for him on his return to Los Angeles. Stoddard had never liked Hammond over much—few people did, for that matter; nevertheless, he opened the letter with a good deal of anticipation. He knew of only one reason why the celebrated engineer should write him.
Stoddard was something of an authority on antiques. Twelve months before, he had offered to purchase the famous Parsee Sunrise from Walter Hammond, Nat’s brother, on behalf of Philip Andrea, the South American collector. Andrea was a friend of his. But notwithstanding the tragic accident that had wrecked Walter Hammond’s brilliant brain and left him broken in body and spirit two years prior to that, he had continued to adore the antique and the beautiful, and Stoddard could not induce him to part with the ancient symbol of the Parsee faith at any price. Walter Hammond had died six months ago.
Stoddard, also, was an engineer. He had won his spurs early in life, for he was still under thirty-five. But his was not the spectacular renown of the Hammond Brothers, builders of the Tse Chen railroad; rather, it was that solid, unobtrusive eminence such as men achieve by dint of their dogged refusal to admit themselves inferior to any contingency life may have in store for them. He was a tall, strongly built man with a rugged, kindly face tanned to a leathery hue by wind and sun. One sensed in him qualities of permanency and dependability leavened by a queer boyishness that endeared him to those who knew him intimately.
Stoddard was keenly observant in his undemonstrative way; and as he opened the letter, it occurred to him, as it had often done in the past, that he had never met brothers so opposite in their natures and in their outlook upon life as the two Hammonds.
Walter had been the artist, the thinker, the brains of that extraordinary partnership. Stoddard recalled him as he had seen him before the accident: clear-eyed and clear-skinned, well-shaped head, figure tall and lithe and slender like an athlete’s; generous to a fault and contemptuous of the commercial aspect of his profession. And then, after the Tse Chen accident: broken and bent and vacant-eyed, handsome face all twisted and awry, inarticulate in his speech and cherishing the beautiful things he had always loved, with the pathetic passion of a slum child for a broken toy.
Nat, on the other hand, was a great chunk of a man, domineering and brutal, calculating and cynical, as hard as nails and as tough as leather. How Walter had endured him Stoddard never really understood. Flesh and blood, he supposed.
The letter, Stoddard saw, had been written at Hammond’s place in the foothills, an old Spanish house near San Paulo, a small interior town some fifty miles east of Los Angeles. As he had surmised, it was in reference to the Parsee Sunrise. The letter ran:
Dear Stoddard:
Probably you are aware that my brother, Walter, died here last spring. I am sole executor of his estate, and there are one or two things which I think it advisable to get rid of. Among them is that Parsee Sunrise over which Walter made such a fool of himself a year ago. If you still want the thing, the price is twenty thousand dollars. I shall not be in Los Angeles for several weeks. Drop in to see me if you are out this way.
Yours, etc.,
Nat Hammond
Twenty thousand dollars! Pretty high, even for the Parsee Sunrise. Nevertheless, Stoddard knew that old Andrea would gladly pay it. T
he Sunrise was a jeweled symbol of the Parsee fire worshipers, ritualistic in purpose, extraordinarily beautiful in design. It was fashioned to represent the rising sun: some three inches across, its center was set with magnificent pigeon’s blood rubies from which radiated sapphire tongues of flame. Walter Hammond had acquired it in India from a converted Parsee—one of that remnant of the descendants of the followers of the ancient Persian, Zoroaster.
Stoddard’s satisfaction at the prospect of securing the Sunrise was lessened somewhat by the contempt of Walter’s love of beauty expressed in Hammond’s letter. Well, Walter Hammond could no longer adore his beloved Parsee symbol—far better that Andrea should have it than that it should remain in Nat Hammond’s unappreciative hands.
And then, as Stoddard turned the typewritten letter over, these considerations were suddenly and dramatically swept from his mind. He found himself staring down at a pen-written postscript appended to the back of the note. The character of the handwriting—small, neatly printed script, totally unlike Hammond’s sprawling signature—was scarcely less intriguing than the text. To his amazement he read:
Mr. Stoddard! Don’t buy the Parsee Sunrise—please!
That was all.
Peter Stoddard was ever a man of brisk action, and nine o’clock that evening found him driving into San Paulo. It must be admitted that his quest for the Parsee Sunrise was overshadowed by the extraordinary postscript that had been added to Hammond’s letter. The engineer had not penned it, of course. Who had, then? This diverting question, and his inability to answer it, had alternatively puzzled and delighted him ever since he had read the postscript. That queer boyish streak in his otherwise staid and responsible nature had dressed it in the iridescent garb of romance.
At one of the hotels Stoddard was informed that Hammond’s place was some ten miles northeast of the town. He was instructed to proceed over the county highway, then turn east along the second dirt road. Two giant eucalyptus trees marked the entrance to the estate.
A strong wind had risen in the past half hour; before it drove scudding banks of cloud that spread a pitch-black pall across the sky. As Stoddard’s roadster swept along the purple highway, so dense had the night become that impenetrable walls of blackness seemed to enclose him on three sides. The fan-shaped glare from the headlights of his car alone gave him any sense of dimension. The wind, rising steadily, clawed at his face, whipped the red into his cheeks; he was compelled to narrow his eyes to slits, thus increasing his visual difficulties.
After some twenty minutes of this difficult going, Stoddard perceived an opening in the continuity of wire fencing on his right. Swinging his car, he found himself bounding over a rutted, weed-grown road which apparently extended into the invisible mountain range bulking hugely before him. The grade rose steeply. The scent of deciduous orchards assailed his nostrils. He slowed down and began to peer ahead, seeking the two eucalyptus trees. Presently he saw them: vague and indistinct in the all-pervasive gloom, and creaking and groaning and whispering in the howling wind.
Stoddard swung into the drive and slowed down to a crawl. He found himself in an avenue of smaller eucalyptus trees that whipped his nostrils with their pungent scent. As the machine glided up the cindered drive, headlights cutting a white swath before it, the Hammond house emerged from the pall of darkness that enveloped the estate. It was a white, sprawling, flat-topped structure with cool porches and shadowy terraces, ivy-covered and embowered in a profusion of subtropical plants and shrubbery. A light burned dimly in a single window.
Stoddard stopped his roadster in front of the house, alighted, and hammered on the stout oak front door with a bronze knocker which he found fastened thereto. A dull booming noise like muffled thunder seemed to emerge from the interior of the house. He waited, but there came no response. He repeated the summons.… Still no response. For the third time he wielded the bronze knocker. Then he glanced at his watch. Nine forty-five! The wind swished and howled in the trees now, and ran shrieking around the corners of the building.… No response!
Stoddard stepped back and regarded the house contemplatively. It had a somber, menacing appearance in the brooding darkness; an atmosphere of evil seemed to enfold it and press down upon it. Once again he evoked muffled thunder from the bronze knocker, and waiting, listened attentively. A full minute elapsed. Still the house retained its tomb-like silence.
A cinder path skirted the front of the house. Stoddard ran softly along it toward the lighted window. A queer, apprehensive feeling was taking possession of him. Stopping in front of the window—it consisted of two long French doors—he saw that it was approached by a small porch. To this he quickly ascended. Curtains were drawn across the glass doors, but there remained an inch or so of space between them, affording a limited view of the room.
At what he saw, Stoddard caught and held his breath; his face whitened to the lips; his heart seemed to stop beating.
The room was evidently a library. Books lined two walls; there were several comfortable chairs; a fire crackled in a cobblestone grate. Against one of the walls stood an antique desk, richly carved. Stoddard could see only the front of the desk. Before it, in an arm chair, sat a man with his body slumped forward, head and shoulders sprawled over the left-hand front corner of the desk. The left side of his face lay on the edge of the desk. Stoddard glimpsed a smear of red against the light grey of his coat. His body was limp and strangely still.
Nat Hammond was dead. Of course, Stoddard knew this intuitively. But so devastating to his mental poise was the shock of thus finding the man he had come all these miles to see, that for a moment or two he could merely stare at him, incapable of thought or movement or speech. Then a gust of fury shook him. Hammond had been shot down like a dog—perhaps within the last few minutes. Casting caution to the winds, he shook the French doors vigorously. They were locked. He took off his cap, pulled it over his hand, and drove his fist through one of the center panes of the doors. In a moment he had drawn the bolt, pushed the door open, and stepped into the room.
Hammond had been shot through the heart. His body was still warm. Stoddard gently raised his head and shoulders, and leaned them back in the chair. The man’s heavy, domineering face was set and rigid; it expressed a profound amazement, as if death had revealed its mystery to him while he was yet alive.
Stoddard glanced swiftly around the room. There were no indications of a struggle, nor did he see a weapon of any sort. The door was shut. He closed and bolted the French doors.
Stoddard stood in the middle of the room debating with himself what he should do. The police must be notified, of course. But it was within the bounds of possibility that Hammond’s murderer was still in the house, in which event he must be apprehended at once. Stoddard’s mind was quickly and coolly made up. First, he would search every room in the place; then he would telephone to the police. He was unarmed, but Stoddard was one of those rare men who seem to have been born absolutely fearless. The risk he would run simply did not occur to him.
Stoddard remained where he was, however. His big body tensed suddenly and his rugged face grew as hard as flint. He leaned forward, listening intently, grey eyes fixed on the door. He had just discovered that he was not alone in the house. A small sound had come from the hall or room beyond the door: an inarticulate sound like the suppressed sob or a gasp of pain or terror. Stoddard measured the distance between himself and the door. Then his body flexed and he sprang forward, covering the intervening several yards at a single bound, caught the door handle, and jerked the door open.
A gasp of amazement broke from his lips; he fell back in consternation. A girl had tumbled headlong into the room. She recovered herself, and shrank back against the wall. Stoddard stared at her speechlessly, the color ebbing and flowing in his bronzed cheeks.
She was undeniably pretty; he realized this in spite of the consternation that transfixed him. Her eyes were large and dark and luminous, and her oval face, notwithstanding its deathly pallor, had an intriguing piq
uancy about it. Her dark bobbed hair fell around her well-shaped head in charming disarray. He saw that terror and horror dominated every fiber of her being; she seemed to shrink visibly as he stared down at her. Stoddard was the first to speak.
“Hammond is dead,” he said, huskily. “Do you know when it happened?—who did it?”
She must have found some reassuring quality in his voice, for the terror in her eyes receded a little. A moment or two elapsed before she replied.
“Ten minutes ago.” the girl whispered, jerkily. “I was in my room—I heard the shot—I found him—tumbled over his desk—” She stopped shuddering and covered her face with her hands. “I don’t know who!—why!—anything!”
Stoddard nodded understandingly.
“Did you hear anyone trying to get away—afterward?”
“No! There was no one in the house but Uncle Nat and I. Whoever did it—must have got out through those doors!”
She indicated the French doors by which Stoddard had entered the library.
The engineer shook his head emphatically.
“Those doors were bolted! He didn’t get out that way! He couldn’t have! I had to break one of them to unfasten the bolt.”
The girl stared at him incredulously.
“You are Hammond’s niece?” Stoddard went on.
She nodded, still keeping her dark eyes fixed upon him.
“I am Julia Hammond. Walter Hammond was my father. You are Mr. Stoddard, I suppose. Uncle Nat said you were coming about—the Parsee Sunrise.”