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

by Unknown

  Throughout Julia’s explanation, Bartlett had maintained a rigid silence. Little darts of suspicion had leaped into his frosty eyes and his lips had curled ironically once or twice. Stoddard had observed these signals of the marshal’s disbelief and his rugged face grew haggard as he waited for the man to express himself.

  But whatever opinions he had formed, Bartlett, for the moment, kept to himself. He fired a stream of pertinent questions at Julia. She answered them coolly and quietly, sitting in the chair in front of the fireplace. The occasional twitching of her hands and the deathly pallor of her face were the only outward manifestations of the stress she was under.

  “Every window and door locked on the inside, hey?” Bartlett snapped.

  “Yes.”

  “And you searched every room in the house?”

  “Yes.”

  Bartlett grunted indistinguishably. Then he took a black bound notebook from his pocket and penciled rapidly on its pages. Stoddard hung on his movements fearfully and breathlessly. Finally, he could stand it no longer.

  “Look here, Bartlett!” he burst forth, huskily. “You don’t believe she did it, do you? It looks bad, I know! But, good Lord, man! She couldn’t have done it! Look at her!”

  In his desperate eagerness to impress the marshal Stoddard stepped forward and caught him fiercely by the arm.

  But the other shook him off, chuckling grimly.

  “If she didn’t do it, I’d like to know who did! Every window and door locked and bolted and the girl and Hammond alone in the house! Two and two still make four, Stoddard! You can’t get away from it!”

  Julia uttered a cry and covered her face with her hands. Stoddard’s arm dropped limply to his side. He had expected this, of course; nevertheless, Bartlett’s reasonable deductions left him weak and trembling, all his rugged strength sapped out of him. Julia had intrigued him as no other woman had ever done, and if he could have shifted her burden to his own broad and capable shoulders he would gladly have done so. He had known her scarcely more than an hour; but into that time had been packed the emotional experiences of a lifetime.

  Tyson, still in the doorway, took a shambling step forward. Then he stopped, a look of horror creeping into his faded eyes. His lips mumbled soundlessly and his old teeth clicked together like castanets. Bartlett returned to his notebook.

  “That Parsee trinket—what’s it worth?” the marshal demanded abruptly after a moment.

  “Twenty thousand dollars,” Julia whispered in dead tones.

  The Parsee Sunrise. Stoddard caught his breath sharply. A little train of thought had flared up in his mind. If the ancient symbol had been stolen, and he could establish that fact, the existence of a third party might be argued—surely a point in Julia’s favor. He stared at the antique desk thoughtfully. It seemed to leer back at him.

  The desk had been manufactured in a day of political intrigue—probably for someone of importance—when combination lock safes were unknown and a secret compartment in a private desk was a highly desirable feature. Stoddard had examined the grain of the top of the desk in the hope of discovering a concealed chamber of some kind, feeling sure that if there was one the Parsee symbol would be inside it. Now he began to run his fingers painstakingly over the right-hand front leg, as he had been about to do when Bartlett arrived.

  Several minutes elapsed. The marshal continued to make notes in his black bound book. Julia had not moved from her chair in front of the fireplace. Tyson was still standing within the door, mumbling soundlessly to himself. Stoddard began on the left front leg of the desk. Suddenly, Bartlett closed his book with a snap, pocketed it, and turned to Julia.

  “Get your things together,” he commanded, tersely. “I’m going to take a look around the house. Then we start for San Paulo. The sheriff and the D.A.—”

  “No!”

  The single word, uttered by Stoddard, had the effect of a pistol crack. A cry of exultation broke from his lips, and he pointed dramatically down at the top of the antique desk. Then Bartlett and Julia and Tyson rushed forward. Stoddard met them with an ecstatic look on his rugged face and his left hand closed fiercely, triumphantly, on Julia’s arm.

  A section of the top of the desk, some eight inches long and five inches wide, stood erect, revealing a compartment perhaps four inches deep. There was a hole in one corner of the compartment. Near it lay the Parsee Sunrise, glittering like a constellation of minute stars. A bundle of papers, their edges serrated as with the fretting of tiny teeth, lay on the bottom of the compartment partly supporting an automatic pistol that had been carelessly thrust into the compartment in such a way that its muzzle pointed directly at where Hammond’s body must have been before he fell forward, and his death agony shut down the cunningly concealed section he had just released.

  Entangled with the trigger guard and hair trigger of the pistol was a common mousetrap, baited with cheese. And caught by the leg in the trap Nat Hammond had set for it was one of Walter Hammond’s white mice! In futile terror it had dragged the trap across the trigger as Hammond had opened the compartment. The roar of the shot that had killed Hammond had stilled its tiny heart.

  The Dancing Rats

  Richard Sale

  RICHARD (BERNARD) SALE (1911–1993) was born in New York City and educated at Washington and Lee University (1930–1933), where he had already begun to write professionally, selling early stories to the pulps, including “The White Cobra” to The Shadow magazine in 1932. He went on to write more than 350 stories, mostly mystery fiction, for all the major pulp magazines, including Black Mask, Thrilling Mystery, Argosy, and Detective Fiction Weekly, for which he created his most successful series character, the newspaper reporter–cum-detective Joe “Daffy” Dill, whose adventures also featured Bill Hanley and Candid Jones. He also wrote stories for all the major slick magazines.

  His first novel, Not Too Narrow … Not Too Deep (1936), is an adventure tale of ten convicts who escape from a French penal colony (a renamed Devil’s Island) and a mysterious stranger who accompanies them. It was filmed by MGM in 1940 as Strange Cargo, starring Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, and Peter Lorre. His finest novels are Lazarus #7 (1942) and Passing Strange (1942). He had an active career in the film industry as a writer, with such credits as Mr. Belvedere Goes to College (1949), A Ticket to Tomahawk (1950), Suddenly (1954), a suspense film with Frank Sinatra, and Torpedo Run (1958), which he also directed. With his wife, Mary Anita Loos, he wrote Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1955) and other films.

  “The Dancing Rats” was published in the June 1942 issue.

  The Dancing Rats

  Richard Sale

  A NOVELETTE

  What was the mysterious and terrible disaster that threatened to wreak havoc in Oahu, reduce the Pacific fortress to impotency and throw the shadow of death across every mother’s son on the island? Dr. Nicholas Adams, summoned from his work at the leper colony of Molokai, had just forty-eight hours to find out!

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE EPISODE OF MR. SZE

  HE WIRELESS HAD been burning a hole in Nick Adams’ pocket ever since it had been delivered to him at the Cardwell Institute’s labs over on the island of Molokai. Nick had been checking the progress of the Institute’s fight against leprosy there when the war broke. And although the perfidy at Pearl Harbor had been a memory for some time now, he had remained on Molokai’s north coast, checking experimentations with Brooke Carteret, a fine leprosy medico.

  The wireless, however, took his interest away from Molokai abruptly, and returned it to Oahu. Even in the baby clipper plane of the Inter-Island Steam Navigation Company, he could not restrain himself from pulling the thing out once more and rereading it. He knew every word by heart then, as the soiled and frayed message indicated, but it was so damned provocative, he couldn’t resist staring at it.

  It said:

  REQUIRE YOUR IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE IN MATTER OF VITAL IMPORTANCE STOP SECRECY ESSENTIAL STOP DISASTER IMMINENT IN OAHU IN FORTY EIGHT HOURS UNLESS YOU AND I STO
P IT COME AT ONCE EXPLAIN WHEN SEE YOU WIRE INSTRUCTIONS SIGNED COLONEL JOHN VENNER US MEDCORPS SCHOFIELD BARRACKS

  Nick blinked again and frowned. The plane was empty except for himself. The IISNC operated steamships among the islands, and due to the fact that Molokai held the leper colony, it was not included among the normal stops for tourists. But the company also operated several twin-motored clippers of the old Pan-American type, and one of these had flown him out, and a second—which he now rode—had been wirelessed for, to fly him back.

  From northern Molokai to southern Oahu where Honolulu sat upon the sea was no great shakes of a trip, a matter of hours, and they were due to come in at any time. He folded the message and put it away and then watched out the plane window for the sight of Diamond Head rising precipitantly from the sea.

  Dr. Nicholas Adams, chief of the field staffs of the Cardwell Institute through the western Pacific—if you wanted to get formal about it—was no malihini to the Hawaiian Island. No stranger. He knew that his identity was well known in Honolulu, as it was in various other places such as Singapore, Shanghai, Manila and Batavia, indeed in any portion of the western Pacific where there was disease. But he could not help wondering who the devil Colonel John Venner was, and how the devil Venner had known that he was on Molokai.

  As for the message itself, it was intriguing, but at the same time, it was extremely dubious. The only disaster which could be imminent in Oahu was of the same ilk as had struck it once before—those Japanese planes winging death out of the sky in the dawn. And if Venner had come by such inside information, of what use was a non-military medico like Nick Adams going to be in averting it? It was more the Army and Navy’s job.

  So, obviously, it was not a Japanese attack which Venner meant. It was something else. Nick made no attempt to fathom what, because he could only conjecture, and rather wildly at that.

  Probably Venner had got in touch with the Cardwell Institute labs on Bishop Street in Honolulu and learned from Paul Cameron—the local head of the organization in Oahu—that Nick Adams was at Molokai. Then Venner had wirelessed.

  In any case, he had got Nick’s goat, and Nick had replied by wireless when and how and where he would be arriving. He assumed that Colonel Venner would meet him and break this strain of curious impatience which held him.

  From the window of the plane, Nick finally made out Koko Head, and then beyond that, the majesty of Diamond Head. An Army patrol plane, looking sleek and deadly, had picked them up some time before, established their identity and sent them on. Thus forewarned, no other planes interrupted their flight, but Nick hoped that each of the ground crews who undoubtedly had an A.A. gun trained on them would also recognize the inter-island plane, a good Hawaiian fixture, and not be too precipitous.

  They glided lower, and the Aloha Tower by the Matson pier flashed by. Honolulu sat in the sun peacefully, and the blue sea broke white along the shore from Waikiki to Fort Kamehameha. Then they were down, gliding to a perfect landing on the sea and taxiing up to the ramp of the Inter-Island airport.

  When Nick reached the waiting-room, there was no sign of any Army man waiting for him. There was only one man there, an Oriental of one sort or another—it was difficult to tell Japanese from Chinese—and Nick ignored him and stepped out to see if Colonel Venner might be waiting in a car at the parking space.

  “Dr. Adams, sah?”

  Nick turned, blank-faced. From Hawaii west, you always blank-faced when you were surprised. It was a trick of the Asiatics, friend and foe alike. He said, “Yes?”

  “This humble person begs your forgiveness,” said the man who had spoken, the same Oriental, “but I have been sent to meet you. Colonel Venner is occupied. He asked me to pick you up. Will you honor me, sah?”

  Nick found himself bordering on a reaction of wariness. The stranger was a Chinese, a long lean-cheeked Cassius sort of Chinese, with teeth that were almost as yellow as his skin. It was not only that the man’s dark eyes were dishonest, they were sinister. They were like onyx jewels, touched with a cold glitter, nor were they shifty—they met his own directly, hard and uncompromising. But the fellow’s hands intrigued Nick even more. They were fine hands for a strangler. From wrist to finger base, the measured distance must have been six full inches, and the tapering fingers, delicately manicured, were weirdly long and graceful, the left pinkie wearing an opal set in gold.

  “I’m Nicholas Adams,” Nick said. “Who are you?”

  “This worthless one is known as H. H. Sze,” replied the Chinese. He pronounced his surname T’see. “I am an officer with the Commission of Health in Honolulu, Doctor.”

  “And you came for me?” Nick said.

  “Forgive me, yes.” Mr. Sze did not have a semblance of expression on his face. “Colonel Venner asked me to get you. This is my car. I shall take you to him at once.”

  “What’s it all about?” Nick said. “Go ahead. Get in.”

  “Forgive me—after you, sah,” Mr. Sze replied. His striped seersucker suit looked as if it had been slept in. It needed a starching badly. He waited for Nick to sit in the car, then got in himself, on the edge of the seat, his face always blank, his hands on the wheel, lightly, as if he held them ready to move.

  “This humble one must apologize for any celerity,” Mr. Sze said. He drove off and took the Waiana Road. “Forgive me, we do not have much time. I will explain quickly.”

  “Do,” Nick said. He lighted his pipe unhurriedly and watched Mr. Sze.

  “It is an epidemic, and you are needed, sah,” Mr. Sze said smoothly. “I believe you and the commissioner are old friends?”

  “Yes,” Nick said. “How is he?”

  “Commissioner Hartly is in the most beautiful health, and had honored this humble one in conveying his personal profound wishes for your own health, and his gratification at your presence so close to us. He and Colonel Venner dispatched me this morning to take you from the plane. It is so very, very urgent, you see.”

  “Very interesting,” Nick said. He was positive Mr. Sze was lying through his teeth. “What seems to be the trouble?”

  “Beriberi,” said Mr. Sze. “It is sweeping through the pineapple estates north of Wright Field like a pestilence. It is very bad. The honorable commissioner said that the most sagacious Dr. Adams would know what to do—”

  “Contagious, eh?”

  “The Kanakas are sick and dying,” Mr. Sze said. “The Kahunas do nothing.” His voice was very dramatic, although his face remained as blank as stone. “Forgive me—like a sweeping pestilence—”

  “You certainly like to be forgiven, don’t you?”

  “Forgive me, a habit of speech—”

  ick pointed the stem of his pipe at Mr. Sze. “You are a very extraordinary health officer, Mr. Sze.”

  “Thank you, sah,” Mr. Sze said, bowing his head. “I am only a humble servant—”

  “And I didn’t mean it as a compliment,” Nick said coldly. “You can go back and tell the commissioner that beriberi is not contagious. It is a painful disease which comes from the eating of polished rice and a lack of vitamin B. Or were you confused in the press of things?”

  Mr. Sze said nothing at all. He did not look nonplussed. Resigned if anything. The trouble was you couldn’t tell how he looked. He had learned the poker face trick so exceptionally well, it was the only face he wore.

  The car was slowing down, and the outskirts of the low-lying town of Waiana began to show themselves ahead.

  Nick said: “The truth of the matter is you don’t know Commissioner Hartly at all and he never sent you after me.… What’s your game, Mr. Sze?”

  Mr. Sze did not reply. He met Nick’s eyes with his own cold stare and let it go at that.

  “When we reach Waiana—and it’s here now—I’m going to turn you over to the police, Mr. Sze, unless you tell me what your game is.”

  “This unwitting person—”

  “Oh, for Lord’s sake, skip the obsequious formalities, Sze. Let’s not kid each other.”
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  Mr. Sze did not object. He said: “Forgive me. Am I such a poor actor?”

  “No, but your research was poor. What’s the idea?”

  “Too bad, really too bad,” Mr. Sze said. “I’m so very sorry. I know so little of medicine and I was given such little time. It would have been more harmonious if we had reached an understanding through my little thespia. Now I regret, sah, that it will be more difficult.”

  “I don’t like you,” Nick Adams said bluntly. “And I don’t like your methods. I’m turning you over to the police.”

  The car jolted to a halt, brakes squealing. Nick started to open the door. Mr. Sze, still blank-faced, said quietly: “Forgive me, please do not touch it, sah, or I will be compelled to shoot you.”

  Nick paused. He glanced around, saw that Mr. Sze had a pistol in his right hand. The polished steel barrel caught up the reflection of the sun with dazzling flashes of fire. There was nothing to be said under the circumstances.

  “I am going to a little place in Waiana here,” Mr. Sze remarked. “Forgive me, but you will honor me with your presence.”

  “You go to the devil,” Nick said. “You can’t frighten me.”

  “That is to be regretted if true,” Mr. Sze said, his face serenely empty. “If so, I must shoot you and run. I was ordered to detain you peaceably, sah, and if that failed, I could use my own discretion, as long as the purpose was achieved. I have no choice in this instance but to shoot you if you do not cooperate. Forgive me, it makes no difference to me one way or the other. I leave the choice to you.”