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

by Unknown

  In her hands, almost reverently, she cupped a tawny yellow diamond that seemed to Keenan as large as a hazelnut. “It’s real,” she said, turning to him with shining eyes. “They’re all genuine, Joe. I can’t really believe it.”

  “Genuine?” Major Russell laughed shortly; the blue eyes twinkled. “You may be sure I made quite certain of that, my dear. They’re genuine, right enough.”

  He smiled again, reminiscently, spun the tawny diamond in the air, caught it with one hand and tossed it to the heap of others by the girl. “And if you care to buy them the lot will cost you just thirty-five thousand dollars. May I add that I think it is a very reasonable and fair price, Miss Bridges?”

  “Fair?” Ellen Bridges’ dark glance came up and studied him thoughtfully. “More than fair—much more, Major. It is that”—she smiled faintly in turn—“which makes one think. In open market your stones would bring close to eighty thousand dollars.”

  Joe Keenan’s gray eyes narrowed on the Englishman. He said, “That’s the queer part. You claim they’re straight and yet you won’t peddle them yourself. So by selling them to Miss Bridges here you’re taking a loss of forty-five thousand dollars. There are two answers to that—you’re crazy or you’re crooked. Me, I don’t think you’re crazy. Those stones are hot.”

  “Hot?” The bearded man frowned as if puzzled.

  “Stolen,” Ellen Bridges explained, with a faint smile. “You mustn’t mind Joe Keenan; he has a bad habit of saying just what he thinks.”

  Major Russell smiled slightly. “Perfectly all right. Naturally I did not expect you to buy until I satisfied you as to the legal ownership. It is unfortunate that, strictly speaking, there is none—none that could be proved before a court of law.”

  His voice was clipped, British, decisive; but his eyes kept friendly enough. “The information I am about to give you is, of course, confidential. Having Mr. Keenan present is something I had not anticipated—I had preferred you came alone.”

  “Mr. Keenan’s an old family friend,” Ellen Bridges said. “And he’s also an excellent private detective. My father employed him often when he was alive. I asked him to come with me tonight, Major, so if there is a fault it’s mine.”

  “All right,” the Englishman said heartily. “Perfectly all right, my dear. I must apologize for my nerves tonight. They’re a bit jumpy. But to begin—” He knocked ash from his cigarette, drew on it thoughtfully, was silent a moment. “You see, I’ve knocked about the world a good bit in my time—never was one for standing still. A new place always called me on somehow. India, Brazil, the Sahara—I’ve seen them all. No regrets. A year ago this June it was Africa.

  “I was knocking around the interior with no very definite object in view, just a small commission or two to keep me busy—trapping animals for zoos, that sort of thing. A living in it with luck but not much else. I was working my way over by easy stages to the coast, fed up with the existence, and anxious to see some white faces for a change.

  “There were four black boys with me—four filthy, thieving devils I could cheerfully have murdered. No other human soul within miles. It was depressing country, rocky, practically waterless, damnably hot and pretty well deserted. Then one afternoon, as we pushed through a narrow cut in the side of a hill, one of my black boys stumbled on the body of a man—a white man.”

  He paused to blow a long stream of smoke towards the ceiling. “He’d been there for years, I suppose, so there wasn’t much left of the poor chap then. A few bones, one or two rags of clothing, and a leather pouch that the sun had caked as dry as a rock.” Somberly he nodded towards the diamonds. “And they were in that pouch. I found nothing else around to give me the slightest clue to his identity.

  “Anyone not entirely new to Africa could read part of the story easily. We were about a hundred miles distant from the diamond fields, in a district rather sparsely traversed, due mostly to its lack of water; and in view of the fact that it was so little traveled it seemed evident to me that our man had been trying to reach one of the northern ports secretly. The laws on I.D.B.s—illicit diamond buyers—are very strict in British Africa. This poor devil had somehow gained possession of the stones—how we do not know—and gambled his life on getting away with them.” The Englishman nodded soberly. “He lost, and I’m afraid it wasn’t a pleasant death.”

  Ellen Bridges shivered. “Dreadful.”

  Major Russell looked at her gravely. “All this, you understand, is pure conjecture on my part. After we reached the coast I made inquiries—judicious ones—but learned nothing at all about who the man might have been, or where he could have found the diamonds. Perhaps my moral code is twisted, but I couldn’t see handing the stones over to the government as a gift. No one knew about them, I thought; certainly no one could prove ownership; and so, in the end, I held on to them myself.

  “The night before I left Jo’burg my room was ransacked—trunks turned inside out, clothes tumbled around, pictures taken from the walls. One of my black boys must have had a glimpse of what the pouch contained and sold his information to some rascal in Jo’burg, perhaps with a thought of sharing the proceeds. Fortunately, however, I happened to be carrying the stones with me that night, and on the boat I had no trouble.

  “Eventually I came to America to dispose of them. The morning after I landed a man came to my hotel. He’d got wind of what I was about, perhaps from the fellow who went through my room in Johannesburg. He told me coolly what I was carrying, and offered ten thousand for the lot. I refused; and on that he threatened to tell the British authorities the whole story. I threw him out and left the hotel immediately, taking this cottage as a quiet place where no one would find me. Well”—he crushed out his cigarette and looked up with a faint smile—“that’s the story. If it isn’t very convincing the fault is mine as narrator. The details, I assure you, are true.”

  Keenan’s gray eyes studied him a moment. “And you never found out who this man was that came to your hotel in New York?”

  “Later I did.” The major pursed his lips. “Not an estimable character. A disposer of stolen goods—I believe the term is fence over here. His name was Peale. Perhaps you know him.”

  “Jerome Peale?” Keenan nodded. “A little. Not anyone to fool with. Bad.”

  “I gathered that,” the major said, looking at his watch and then up at Ellen Bridges. “That is why I left the hotel. Even in Africa we have heard of your one-way rides.” White teeth flashed inside the beard. “But he doesn’t concern us now. Shall we consider the bargain settled?”

  The girl nodded. “You’ll want cash, of course. I can have it here by noon tomorrow. Will that do?”

  “Excellently,” the bearded man said, rising. “You see, I have neither the time nor the connections to dispose of the stones singly. It seemed best to get in touch with someone running a legitimate jewelry business—that is why I got in touch with you, Miss Bridges. Naturally you are very welcome to any profit you may make over the purchase price.” He smiled, bowed. “Until tomorrow at twelve then?”

  Joe Keenan rose after him, his hard gray eyes puzzled. The major’s story seemed plausible enough—it might be a shade too plausible. Was that the catch, the warning, that jerked uneasily at his mind?

  As he followed the girl towards the door he was frowning, unsatisfied—something in all this didn’t ring true. A man would not throw forty thousand dollars to a stranger because he had no time. A man—

  Somebody behind him said: “Hold it.”

  It was a quiet voice with a low snarling edge to it. Before Keenan the major stopped suddenly, with an instant’s stiffness, so that one of his hands, halfway to the knob, froze in the air, the fingers spread, the thumb straight up. Keenan did not move; the girl gave a soft cry.

  “You’ll turn,” the voice said. “All of you with your hands up. Over your head. And slow.”

  There was a closet set flush against the wall of the room they had just left. Its door was open now and a man stood there—a gaunt
man with a long dark face and a mouth that twitched unpleasantly.

  “Peale,” Major Russell said, in an incredulous voice.

  “Peale,” the gaunt man repeated nastily. “Everything fine, huh? Or it was until I dug up the van that moved your trunks.” His eyes widened, narrowed swiftly as Joe Keenan turned around. “Keenan—what are you doing here?” His glance swept over the girl without recognition, and the first touch of surprise in his features changed to an expression of bitter mirth. “Joe Keenan! Don’t tell me the boy friend here got—”

  Major Russell interrupted him in a cold voice. “You shouldn’t have tried to do anything like this, Peale. I don’t see what—”

  “Maybe you don’t,” Jerome Peale snarled, dark flame spouting up in his eyes. “Maybe pretty soon you won’t see anything at all. Dead men are funny that way.”

  Standing at the girl’s right, Major Russell’s blue eyes remained calm, steady, unafraid. “Killing me won’t help, you know. There’s—”

  “Shut up!” Peale raised the automatic; his eyes blackened with hate. After a moment the Englishman shrugged, subsided. Turning slightly to Keenan, Peale went on in the same low snarl: “I had you pegged for a square guy, Joe. You have that name and everyone knows it. If the skirt’s with you there’s a chance for you to blow now. I’ll figure you were like me; dumb enough to—”

  At Keenan’s left there was a flicker of motion, a blur of silver that crossed the corner of his eye too swiftly to be defined. Before him Peale swung around his automatic, with his mouth open above it twisted down and sidewise in the gaunt face. His eyes glittered, black and venomous with rage, but in the split second that it took him to bring the gun up terror spread swiftly in them, transfixing the irises, widening the lids.

  There was a sharp, distinct crack, like wood snapping. It was gone in an instant, without echo. Peale stared ahead stupidly, with the terror fixed in his eyes and an irregular brown smear high up in his forehead, just under the hair. Then he swung forward stiffly, with all his body rigid, and crashed face down to the floor.

  “A mad dog,” Russell said, breathing softly. “He would have killed me.” In his right hand there was a small pistol not as large as Keenan’s palm, with a wisp of smoke drifting up from the barrel. It looked like a top, a child’s cap pistol. But at five feet it could kill a man. It had, Joe Keenan thought grimly, as he gripped Peale’s shoulder and turned him on his back.

  The gaunt man must have died instantly. His eyes were still open, staring, his mouth open too, in surprise, in terror.

  “He’s dead?” Ellen Bridges whispered shakily.

  Keenan rose, nodding. Through the glass upper half of the front door he could see a deserted stretch of road, with trees nodding in the night wind, quietly, on the far side. Probably the shot had not been audible outside; even if it had, there was no one there to hear it. A cottage on a lonely road on Staten Island, two miles from the nearest village, was a safe place for killing. Keenan twisted his lips sourly as the thought struck his mind that that idea had come to him earlier in the evening. A swell place for murder!

  Major Russell put the small pistol in the pocket of his jacket. His voice, his actions, were calm and unexcited. “Self-defense,” he said quietly. “The man was going to kill me—you both heard him say that. If you want to call the police there’s a phone here.”

  Staring down at the dead man, Keenan shrugged his shoulders after a moment. “Peale asked for what he got. I’m not hopped up about hick cops nosing around and asking Miss Bridges a lot of questions. And they can’t do him any good now.”

  “I had hoped you’d see it that way,” Major Russell said. “I had no choice. After you leave I’ll get him in my car and drop him off in some lonely stretch of woodland. Then there won’t be any trouble, any questions. That way, I believe, will be wisest for ourselves and our business.”

  Ellen Bridges shuddered, keeping her glance away from the fixed black stare of the dead man. “Do anything,” she said, gripping Keenan’s arm. “But let’s get out of here immediately, Joe.”

  The bearded man nodded, gravely calm. He held the outer door open for them, said good night quietly, and closed it without sound after they had passed through. That guy, Joe Keenan decided, had plenty of guts; through his obscure sense of dislike for the man he felt something like admiration.

  In the front seat of the roadster Ellen trembled against him. She whispered: “Oh, it’s horrible, death like that! One minute he was alive talking to us; and then the next—”

  “Don’t let it get you,” Keenan told her. “Jerome Peale wasn’t a kid. He had it coming that way for a long while.”

  “I suppose so.” She was silent a few seconds while the needle of the speedometer flickered up to fifty-five and steadied there. Then she said in a small voice: “I’m afraid I got you in this jam, Joe. I know you didn’t want to come over here tonight; you only agreed to because you were afraid something might happen to me.”

  “Forget that,” Keenan grunted. “Your father was a mighty good friend of mine.”

  “Is it just because of my father?” she asked softly, looking up at him. “Don’t I count at all, Joe?”

  Keenan shifted in his seat, looked down at her quizzically.

  “You’re a fresh kid that ought to be whaled. If you’re asking for advice, I’ll tell you not to touch those diamonds with a ten-foot pole. They smell bad even with the story we got.”

  “You’re suspicious of everybody,” the girl told him petulantly.

  “After all, they don’t really belong to anyone. So why shouldn’t I buy them as well as someone else? If there were a legal owner, it would be different. But as it is—”

  “As it is,” Joe Keenan said irritably, “you won’t take advice. This seems like adventure and fun, so you’re going through with it. You’re still young enough to think a British accent is wonderful.”

  “Major Russell’s a gentleman,” she flashed. “Of course I believe his story.”

  “I don’t,” Keenan said. “And you’re still sure you know it all. I wish you luck.”

  “You’re—you’re detestable,” the girl blazed. Sullenly she turned away and looked through the window, refusing to speak even on the thirty-minute ferry ride to Manhattan.

  Letting her out in front of her apartment, Keenan said, “Good night.” But he was not answered, and his lean face frowned after her. Women were queer people. And when the one you had to take care of was an obstinate, silly kid like that … He sighed. Well, it was a tough job. Joe Keenan wouldn’t have touched it for money; but his friendship for her dead father was something that could not be written off or canceled. And if she wasn’t so willful, she might even be a nice kid. Then Joe Keenan caught his thoughts there with an irritated grunt, and slammed in his gear.

  wenty minutes later he reached his own place. It was an old private house in the quiet upper seventies, remodeled into apartments, with a tall stoop in front and a light showing at the top behind glass vestibule doors. On the second landing he inserted a key in the lock on the left, turned it, and went in.

  When he snapped on the button of the light-switch, lamps sprang instantly to life in three corners of the inner room. The light was soft, subdued, but quite clear, and the man sitting in the easy chair that faced the door, faced Joe Keenan, blinked at it once.

  He was a short man, fat, wearing a derby hat steeply slanted over one ear and a blue overcoat below that. There was an automatic in his right hand that rested negligently on one arm of the chair. Keenan’s steady gray eyes went over him without nervousness, without haste.

  The fat man said: “Sit down. Just keep your hands away from your pockets and act sensible. We’re friends, Joe—I even been sampling your Scotch. It’s good.”

  “Next time take rye,” Keenan grunted. “The Scotch is for friends. I don’t lay out four bucks a fifth for punks.”

  The fat man said, “Okey,” good-naturedly. But when he rose and backed to the window his eyes were small and watchf
ul, and they did not shift while he felt behind him with his free hand, grabbed the shade cord and pulled it down to the bottom, then released it with a snap that sent it spinning to the top. Coming back, he held his gun close in to his side, where it could not be seen from outside.

  “Look,” he said. “Nobody’s slippin’ you the works unless you ask for it. Do what you’re told and everything will be fine. There ain’t anything to this unless you’re dumb enough to make a break now.”

  In the street a car motor roared briefly and then throttled down. The front door below opened and closed, and light fast steps pattered on the stairs. In a moment the door behind Keenan opened; a young man, hard faced, dapperly dressed, came in and shut it after him.

  “Frisking job,” the fat man said. “From behind and careful. Don’t miss anything.”

  In back of Keenan the second man opened his coat, ran swift fingers over him. He removed the automatic and then probed the empty shoulder-holster, patted trouser legs with a practiced deftness.

  “Okey,” he said, when he straightened. “Nothing on him, Feeney.”

  Feeney grunted. “Then get back to the car. When the street’s clear honk twice and we’ll go down.”

  Keenan took a cigarette from a box on the table, snapped a lighter against it. The fat man’s pudgy face grew ugly at the action.

  “Ask the next time,” he growled.

  “This isn’t a ride?” Keenan asked.

  “Uh-huh.” Feeney nodded. He chuckled suddenly. “But not the kind you’re thinkin’. We got nothin’ against you. Keep on actin’ nice and in a day or two you’re turned out all rested up. Nothin’ to get fretted about, Joe.”