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

by Unknown

  “By the way,” the sheriff remarked. “I’ve got Buck in the hoosegow. So far he won’t talk—”

  “He doesn’t need to. He talked a little to me—and that is enough. Well, our killer by now is as busy as a squirrel in a hickory tree. He fires the old building, hunts out some rattlesnakes—those rocky ledges must teem with the vipers—zips back to town. He lures Bradley into the cellar, bashes in his head and sets a firetrap. He leaves the snake heads in my room with a final threatening note, scampers over here to Jarrell’s and stashes the snake bodies in Malcom’s bread box. He’s really putting out steam—he’s fighting for his life.”

  Maldron cleared his throat heavily. “It all comes back to me now.… How well do I recall that summer in nineteen nine. Every insignificant detail stands out crystal clear. Gil Bennett flouncing around among the ladies, taking them hither and yon in his yellow-spoked trap and livery stable mare. Gil was shabby in those days—”

  Jarrell said: “Hal, the time comes when I must speak the truth. You’re my choice.”

  Bennett spoke quietly. “And you, Malcom, are mine.”

  he sheriff narrowed his eyes. McGavock looked cynical, happy.

  “The thing that gives it away,” Bennett explained, “is the rattlesnake theme. You’d know where to go to catch them and how to do it. You couldn’t get Hal Maldron within ten yards of one. But there’s much more to it than that. You were manager at the time of Wainwright’s disappearance. You were no doubt right there at the desk when Cal Bradley signed him in. He looked prosperous, talked with a northern accent, and acted suspicious. You waited a bit, called him to your room and murdered him. Mr. McGavock says that Hodges used a rat in his prowling. Everyone in this town knows that you kept that rat for Hodges. I charge that Hodges was employed by you, that you murdered him on your own lawn and called in this city detective.”

  “Such a rigmarole!” Jarrell’s massive head peered about the room. “I’ve no time to indulge in tomfoolery. Clear out, all of you, with your absurdities—”

  McGavock said plaintively: “What about me? Doesn’t anybody wish to hear my accusation?”

  They stared at him.

  “Maldron’s correct. Gil Bennett’s our man!”

  “That’s a serious charge,” Steve Robley said gravely. “Is it official?”

  “Of course I mean it to be official. He’s a gory killer if you ever saw one.”

  Gil said whimsically: “Old pal, you’ve turned on me. And I bet you’ve built up a good case, too.”

  “Listen to it,” McGavock whipped out. “And form your own opinion. It was you—old pal—and no one else, who planned and executed this entire massacre. You promoted your murder market at Fern Springs back in nineteen nine and buried your cadavers in the brookbed. You killed Wainwright, took his satchel to your room, looted it and hid it beneath the flooring. Cal Bradley suspected this. He employed the crackpot Hodges to ferret out the evidence. You killed Hodges—it would be simple for a man in the garage business to obtain a magnetized hammer—”

  “But you gave me your compass to protect myself against this slayer—”

  “You are a sly customer. I was fighting deceit with deceit. As I was saying, you killed Hodges and when I appeared on the scene attacked me. This morning when I visited you at the cotton gin, you saw me coming, grabbed a phone, called the Shamrock poolroom and asked for Buck. You disguised your voice to throw suspicion on your wife. Buck appeared, put across his little act and departed.”

  McGavock shook his head. “You made a mistake there, my friend. You may not pay a man for a thirty-mile trip on muleback but you at least thank him. It was a slip—I smelled a rat.”

  “I’d like to hear the rest of this tale.” Sheriff Robley was modest.

  “The rest of it you know. Buck stages his act and Gil, as soon as I leave, drives out and torches the place. While you and I are out there digging around, he’s back in town beating in Bradley’s skull. He’d planned to lay in wait for Buck when Buck showed up tonight at the Bennett mansion for his pay. With Buck gone, he figured he’d be safe.” The detective smiled harshly at the businessman. “You know, Bennett, you plan well but you talk too much. You gave yourself away a dozen times. When you attempted to arouse my suspicions against Jarrell you said that he had prospered unnaturally. If anyone in this village has prospered unnaturally it’s you, yourself—garage, drugstore, cotton gin. Last night in your car you invented a divorce that your wife was going to slap on you. This morning you realized that I could chase that down and expose it so you flew to Mrs. Bennett and got her excited about an imaginary dream girl you were supporting in Paducah.”

  Bennett drawled: “It’s pleasant listening to you orate—but do you have any proof?”

  “Scads,” McGavock answered. “Scads. Your gambling at Chunky’s. A ruse to cover your withdrawals: you were paying blackmail to Cal Bradley!”

  Bennett was completely relaxed. “The wildest sort of slander, sir.”

  McGavock spoke to Laurel. “That baggy pearl-gray sweater you’ve been wearing all day, is it yours?”

  She tried to follow him, gave it up. “No. It’s Gil’s—but I like it. It’s so roomy.”

  “Gil Bennett!” McGavock’s voice was tight. “You were wearing that sweater when you dragged the body of Les Hodges into Jarrell’s yard. Wisps of brushed-wool came off on the old man’s corduroy. Jarrell saw the whole thing through his bedroom window but was doubtful as to your identity. He came out with a light and combed the gray hairs off before he covered the body with straw. He has that evidence beneath the tile there in the hearth—a little ball of wool. His testimony will hang you—”

  Gil Bennett arose and turned his back on them. He stepped into the little bay window and began kicking out the leaded panes.

  Hal Maldron seized him by the elbow, pulled him back. Bennett gave his torso a half twist, shot the lawyer through the shoulder and continued his glass smashing.

  Sheriff Robley said calmly: “Bennett, you’re not giving me any choice. I’m going to have to kill you.”

  Bennett dropped his pistol, advanced dazedly to the sheriff, who snapped on a pair of handcuffs.

  “The satchel?” the sheriff asked.

  “Bennett has it,” McGavock announced. “Beneath the floor of his office. When I was in Bennett’s office at the cotton gin I gave the floor special attention, dropped my hat, as a matter of fact, to give it a little closer inspection. The boards had been taken up and renailed. You’ll find your satchel there.”

  Laurel Bennett burst out: “I’ll never feel comfy in that old gray sweater again. And I loved it so!”

  McGavock said sardonically: “But think, babe. You’re married to a homicidal beast, a notorious public character. That means headlines, and reporters and three-column photos. I’ll bet none of your bridesmaids back in Louisiana have done as well as that!”

  The girl threw herself into his arms. “You can always see the bright side to everything!”

  Knights of the Open Palm

  Carroll John Daly

  CARROLL JOHN DALY (1889–1958) was born in Yonkers, New York, and attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. His love for the theater led him to jobs as an usher, a projectionist, and an actor before he opened the first movie theater on the Atlantic City boardwalk.

  Daly is remembered today as the writer who essentially invented the quintessential genre of American literature, the hard-boiled private-eye story. While there had been private detectives in literature before Daly, including Sherlock Holmes, and there had been dark, violent stories by such writers as Jack London and Joseph Conrad, it was not until Black Mask published “Three-Gun Terry,” about the tough, wisecracking private investigator Terry Mack, in the issue of May 15, 1923, that the style and form coalesced. Daly’s further contribution to the evolution of the genre came when he wrote his second story, this one featuring his best-known character, Race Williams, which he immediately followed with a another story about the same hard-boiled dick, thu
s creating the first series detective of his kind. While Williams tends to focus on his own massive ego and is preoccupied with guns and other forms of violence, he has a powerful sense of justice and fair play, undoubtedly serving as an inspiration for Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer and, later, “Dirty” Harry Callahan.

  “Knights of the Open Palm,” the first appearance of Race Williams, was published in the issue of June 1, 1923.

  Knights of the Open Palm

  Carroll John Daly

  Race Williams, who plays both ends against the middle, runs up against the hooded order and tackles a mystery which leads him into some fast and tragic action. His opinion of the Klan is not very high, but he tells about it in language which is rugged and dramatic, if not absolutely faultless.

  RACE WILLIAMS, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR, that’s what the gilt letters spell across the door of my office. It don’t mean nothing, but the police have been looking me over so much lately that I really need a place to receive them. You see I don’t want them coming to my home; not that I’m over particular, but a fellow must draw the line somewheres.

  As for my business; I’m what you might call the middleman—just a halfway house between the dicks and the crooks. Oh, there ain’t no doubt that both the cops and the crooks take me for a gun, but I ain’t—not rightly speaking. I do a little honest shooting once in a while—just in the way of business. But my conscience is clear; I never bumped off a guy what didn’t need it. And I can put it over the crooks every time—why, I know more about crooks than what they know about themselves. Yep, Race Williams, Private Investigator, that’s me.

  Most of my business I hunt up and the office ain’t much good except as an air of respectability. But sometimes I get a call, one client speaking to another about me. And that’s the lay of it this time.

  I was in my office straightening out the mail, and enjoying some of the threatening letters what the boys who lack a sense of humor had sent me, when this Earnest Thompson blows in. And “blows” ain’t no fancy way of putting it neither; this guy actually blows and it’s near five minutes before he quits blowing and opens up.

  “Are you afraid of the Ku Klux Klan?”

  That’s his first crack out of the box.

  “I ain’t afraid of nothing.”

  I tell him the truth and then, wanting to be absolutely on the level, I ask:

  “Providing there’s enough jack in it.”

  He trots out a sigh like my words had lifted a weight from his chest.

  “You don’t happen to belong to that—that order?”

  I think he was going to call it something else—but from the twitching of his mouth I get the idea that he went in some fear of that same order.

  “No,” I says. “I don’t belong to any order.”

  Of course I’m like all Americans—a born joiner. It just comes to us like children playing; we want to be in on everything that’s secret and full of fancy names and trick grips. But it wouldn’t work with me; it would be mighty bad in my line. I’d have to take an oath never to harm a brother—not that I wouldn’t keep my oath, but think of the catch in it. I might just be drawing a bead on a lad when I’d spot his button; then I’d have to drop my gun. Of course that ain’t so bad, but that same lad mightn’t be wise that I was one of the crowd and—blooey—he’d blow my roof off. No, I like to play the game alone. And that’s why I ain’t never fallen for the lure of being a joiner.

  Well, this lad must of had the idea that half the country belonged to the Ku Klux and that the other half went about in fear of them, for when he finds out that I don’t belong he beams all over and pump-handles me a couple of hundred times. Then he comes out with the glad tidings that a gent I helped out of trouble had told him about me; with that he opens up with the bad news. His son had been took by the Ku Klux.

  His boy, Willie Thompson, who is only seventeen, goes hunting around in the woods a bit outside of the town they live in. Clinton is the name of the burg and it’s in the West, which is all I’m at liberty to tell about it except that it’s a county seat. Well, Willie stumbles across a bunch of the Klan and sees them tar and feather a woman—and what’s more, he recognizes some of the Klan—this boy having an eye for big feet and an ear for low voices.

  It appears that this woman had sold liquor to a member of the Klan who told her his poor old father was dying—you see, her husband run a drugstore. Now wasn’t that just too sweet of the boys? Of course they checked up a lot of other things against her, too, and give her warning to leave town in twenty-four hours. Yep, they give her all those little courtesies what a lady should expect. But the real secret of the story goes that one of the lads of the Night Shirt Brigade was in love with the woman and wanted to get hunk because she couldn’t see him a mile.

  Now, that’s Earnest Thompson’s side of the story and not mine, but at all events the town of Clinton was pretty well stirred up and some of the Klan were actually in jail for as much as ten minutes. But when the trial came off this Willie Thompson had been kidnapped. The father worried, of course, but he thought the boy would be back when the trial was over. That was two weeks ago; the trial had blown up and the boy never heard from again.

  Why, the whole thing seemed unbelievable. Think of it; here was this man with a good suspicion if not an actual knowledge of who had his son and he trots all the way to the city for me. Imagine if it had a been my boy—blooey—I’d a bumped that gang off one, two, three right down the line. But this lad was scared stiff; if he made a break to the authorities he got a threatening letter and—well, here he was.

  But he made his offer a very alluring one: a good fat check, for this Thompson was a wealthy farmer. So I took the case and you should a seen his face light up.

  “I didn’t think that I could get anyone to defy the Klan.” He takes me by the hand again. “I hope that you—that you won’t give up when you find what you are up against.”

  Now that almost made me laugh.

  “Don’t you worry about me,” I says. “And don’t you worry about the boy. If he’s alive and the Klan have him—why—I’ll get him back to you in jig time; and no mistake about that.”

  Was I blowing a bit? Oh, I don’t know. I’d said the same thing before and—well—I made good.

  So the curtain goes up; he was to go back to Clinton that night and I was to follow in a day or two.

  That night I trot down the avenue looking for some dope on this same Ku Klux Klan. I’d read a lot about it in the papers, but I didn’t take much stock in it—mostly newspaper talk, it struck me.

  It was in Mike Clancy’s gin mill that I decided to get my information, for Mike belonged to every order under the sun.

  But Mike shook his head:

  “So you’ve fell for the lure, too?” he says sadly. “All the boys are crossing the river or going south to join the Klan—there’s money in it and no mistake.”

  “Are you a member?” I ask him again.

  “Not me.” He shakes his head. “When it first hit the city I spoke to Sergeant Kelly about it. B-r-r-r-r-r! It ain’t no order for an Irishman. Sure, it’s the A.P.A. and worse. But if you must know about it, why, ask Dumb Rogers over there.”

  And he jerked his thumb toward a little dip what was sitting alone at a table in the corner.

  And this same Rogers sure did give me an earful; that’s how he got his name Dumb—he talked so much.

  “The Klan?” he starts in. “I should say I did know about it. The boys is leaving the avenue by the carloads. You see they go south or west and join the Klan; then when there is a raid on and some lad is to be beat up, why the boys clean up a bit on the side. Suppose a jeweler is to leave town and don’t and the Klan get after him—see the game—a ring or two is nothing to grab. And he dassen’t say nothing—you write him a threatening letter or telephone him is better.”

  He paused a moment and looked at me.

  “Don’t tell me about the Klan—I know—I was a member and I was well on the road to making my fortune w
hen they got on to me. They expelled me; threw me out like I wasn’t no gentleman—that’s what they done. And for why—just for going through a guy. Now, what do you think of that?” he demanded indignantly.

  “That’s tough, Rogers—tell me—how do you join?”

  “Well, you got’a be white and an American and a Protestant—and you got’a have ten dollars—though if you’ve got the ten the rest of it can be straightened out. Yes, they got my ten, and what’s more they got six-fifty for the old white robe—sixteen-fifty all together and they chucked me out—not so much as—”

  But I interrupted him. I was after the passwords of the Klan and their greetings.

  After a few more drinks he sure did open up; what with The Exalted Cyclops, Klaliff, Klokard, Kludd, Kligrapp, Klabee, Kladd, Klexter, Klolkann, Kloran and a host of others I didn’t know where I stood and had to call a halt. But I got the grip out of him, which was a shake with the left hand. Then he give me the salute which I take careful note of. It was copped from the Confederate Army and is made by placing the right hand over the right eye and then turning the hand so that the palm is in front.

  “But remember the one important thing.” Dumb Rogers points a boney finger at me. “When you meet another Klansman you always say, ‘AYAK,’ meaning, ‘Are you a Klansman?’ If you ever hear a lad pull that on you—you answer, ‘AKIA’—‘A Klansman I am.’ The rest of it is a lot of junk and most of the boys can’t remember it—but them’s the two principal things.”

  Then he showed me a cheap little celluloid button which he wore wrong end out in the lapel of his coat. When he turned it about I seen the letters KOTOP, which he explained meant “Knights of the Open Palm.”

  Do you get it—why it looked like they were stealing the waiter’s stuff. That order certainly must have been started by a dish carrier. But I took a good look at the back of that button—you couldn’t tell nothing from it, but I sure would keep my eyes open when I seen a lad sporting a decoration that way.