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

by Unknown

  “Oh, you mean Dan Walker, the bookkeeper? Yeah, his books were checked this morning. You were pretty clever to find the way he was rigging the books. And then, to make him play ball with you, you told him you’d squeal on him unless he swore he put you on the Empire City.”

  Darrold looked from one face to the other. Suddenly it felt good to be leaning against the wall. “Unwritten law,” he said. “Deserved to die. Sure, I killed her. I borrowed Walker’s car, drove over here, parked on the high road, came down through the brush to the new house next door. The window was always open. I killed her. When he started toward the window, I had to give him one. I drove back to Barnston and took a later train, made a few of my appointments in Richfield, stayed overnight and drove back here the next morning.”

  “Unwritten law? What unwritten law, Darrold?” Krobey asked.

  “She drove me crazy,” Darrold said, his mind racing for escape.

  “And so you killed her?”

  “Yes. I bought the gun nine months ago.”

  Love snapped the handcuff onto Darrold’s wrist, yanking heartily.

  As Love walked out with Darrold trudging along behind him, Krobey looked at January and the redhead.

  Krobey said, “That Walker guy cut his throat and died last night without opening his mouth to confess.”

  Krobey watched them for a moment, sighed heavily and walked over to the open window, put his elbows on the sill and looked out.

  Three Apes from the East

  H. H. Stinson

  H(ERBERT) H. STINSON (1896–1969) lived in California, where he worked as a journalist and police reporter. While working as a newspaperman, he also wrote fiction for the pulps, selling a Western to Top Notch in 1928. He also wrote plays, including Ace Is Trumped, a one-act published in Hollywood Plays (1930). His career as a pulp writer lasted about two decades, with contributions to most of the major magazines of the era, including Argosy, Dime Detective, Dime Mystery, Detective Fiction Weekly, and Black Mask. His best-known series character, Ken O’Hara, appeared in fourteen Black Mask stories, beginning with “Give the Man Rope” in the April 1933 issue. Joseph T. Shaw, when he compiled The Hard-Boiled Omnibus (1946), his important anthology of Black Mask stories, selected this story for inclusion, but his editor at Simon & Schuster thought it weaker than the other stories and dropped it, along with several others. The tales about O’Hara, a gritty, two-fisted reporter for the Los Angeles Tribune, featured an authentic newspaper background based on Stinson’s own career. He also wrote a series about another tough detective, Pete Rousseau, for Dime Detective in the post–World War II years. In all, Stinson wrote more than sixty mysteries for the pulps, as well as other genre stories for both the pulps and such slicks as Liberty. Only one Stinson novel made it into book form: Fingerprints (1925), which was published under the pseudonym Hunter (his mother’s maiden name) Stinson.

  “Three Apes from the East” was published in the March 1938 issue.

  Three Apes from the East

  H. H. Stinson

  “Speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil”—but a killer forgets to do no evil.

  IM HARPER, LOS Angeles manager for International, likes to keep his office as unadorned as a gun turret, his desk as bare as the Mojave desert. He doesn’t believe in doodads, mementoes, bric-a-brac. So I was surprised to see what he had in front of him when he called me in late in the afternoon.

  A third of the desk top was occupied by three apes in brass. Everyone knows the three monkeys I mean—one has his paws over his mouth, the second has them over his eyes and the third is holding his ears. I guess every family in the country has acquired one of the things some time or other and the gag that goes with the knick-knack is: “Speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil.”

  “That,” I said, “is a swell mascot for a detective agency.”

  The boss said without a smile, “The way our office has been producing lately, you and two other ops must have sat for it.”

  Somebody in a chair off to the side of the boss’ office giggled. I looked over and it was Sue Jordan, small and blond and as dumb-looking in her very lovely way as ever. Behind that ga-ga beauty-winner’s map, though, is a combination of plenty gray matter, no nerves and a heart that could double, most of the time, for the business section of an electric icebox. Sue is the ace-in-skirts op of International and they shoot her around the map wherever necessary. She admits she’s good and usually proves it.

  I said, “Hi, mug. I thought you were annoying the boys in the Chicago office.”

  “I was, Kerry,” she cooed, “but they decided you boys out here needed the help of an expert, and here I am.”

  “Cut the so-called comedy, you two,” Harper growled. His eyes jetted away from me toward the good-looking lad beside Sue.

  The lad was in his thirties, as sleek as an oiled seal. There was a dark sharpness to his eyes, a leanness about his olive-skinned face. He had on snappy clothes, just saved from being too snappy by their sober color.

  Tim Harper said, “Mr. Kirkwood, this is Mr. Thorne, one of our better operatives in his serious moments. Between Thorne and Miss Jordan, I believe we can wind up your case.”

  Kirkwood looked at me with an impersonal and very country-club stare but didn’t bother to say hello. I got the idea without much trouble that, so far as he was concerned, I ranked a lot below guys like caddies and locker-room attendants. He probably spoke to them. It was either that or else he was putting on the swank front to cover up a bad case of the jitters. Some lads are like that.

  Apparently they had talked the case pretty well out before I was called in. Kirkwood said curtly to the boss: “You understand that you’re to use only the threat of publicity but that the papers must not get a whisper of it. If you think you’re apt to bungle it …”

  The boss starched his voice a little, said, “International knows how to handle a case, Mr. Kirkwood. There isn’t a press agent in the organization.”

  “Very well,” Kirkwood said in his down-the-nose manner. “And Miss—er, Jordan is to report to me what has happened immediately afterward.”

  He spared the boss half a nod as a good-by, didn’t include Sue or me and beat it.

  I said, “He’ll have to take four hot showers to get himself clean after associating with us.”

  “I think he’s too handsome for words,” Sue purred.

  “Not for some words,” I said.

  Tim Harper rumbled, “You don’t have to fall in love with him. All you have to do is work for him. So get going—or are both of you waiting for wheelchairs?”

  “Am I supposed to guess what this is all about, boss?”

  “Sue can tell you. Beat it—and take this triple atrocity with you.”

  I gathered he meant the three apes so I picked them up. They weighed about six pounds. I said, “What’ll I do with ’em?”

  “Think something up.”

  In the outer office, I told Sue: “I know I don’t catch on very quick but to date this all seems very screwy to me.”

  “Never mind, darling,” she said. “Just leave the brain work to me.”

  When I put the three apes down on a desk, they tumbled over and the credit line underneath said, “Made in Japan.” I said, “That reminds me. I’ve got an aunt in Japan.”

  “The Japanese branch of the family?”

  “Have your fun. This is Aunt Frieda and she’s on one of those world tours. She sends me a carved elephant from every place she hits. The score now is sixteen and I never did like elephants. What’s this all about?”

  “I’m so hungry, Kerry. I could talk better if you’d take me to dinner.”

  “Sure,” I said. “And we’ll make it Dutch.”

  Over wienerschnitzel at the Bauerhoff, Sue told me. It seemed Kirkwood was married to the daughter of an old dame, named Helen K. Woodring. I knew about her vaguely: a widow with money, more or less social position, and a yen for chasing around with guys half her age. The daughter was blind, Sue told me.

 
“A break for her,” I said. “She doesn’t have to look at that smooth slug she’s married to.”

  “Perhaps some of us girls like ’em smooth, you old rough diamond, you,” said Sue, surrounding wienerschnitzel in her stride. “Anyway, she married this Paul Kirkwood about five years ago. He came out from the east and nobody knew much about him except that he could make a golf course sit up and beg. He’s a broker now but I gather he still golfs better than he brokes.”

  “Even if he was open champ, I still wouldn’t like him.”

  “He’s probably all right, I think. But the point is that the Woodring lady has the protégé complex, provided the protégés are young and good-looking. Two years ago she was backing a candidate for Clark Gable’s niche; next it was a young second Caruso and now it’s the founder of a cult, the cult of Man’s Triumph Over Evil.”

  “It’ll be a flop. The name’s too long for headlines.”

  “I gather it hasn’t cost her much in the shape of money yet,” Sue said, inspecting her beer stein carefully on the theory, maybe, that there was a trap-door in the bottom and she’d find more beer under that. “But I suppose Kirkwood is afraid the cult will operate too heavily on her purse and he’s beating trouble to the punch. Anyway, he hired us to find out about this grand lama of the three apes.”

  “That’s where the monkeys came from?”

  “They’re the symbol of the cult. I bought the monstrosity when I joined up, so I brought it to the office as evidence for my expense account. How about more Pilsener, Kerry?”

  “You can have all you can pay for, sweetheart.”

  We had more and Sue drew the rest of the picture. A lady op had been indicated so Harper had requisitioned Sue and she had dropped out to the cult headquarters in a big, old house on top of Mount Washington where you could see all over the city. The grand lama operated under the name of Doctor Sivaja but his real name was Eddie Levy and he was a disbarred lawyer from St. Louis who had done a rap in Atlanta for abusing the mails. Sue had got his prints by dropping her vanity case practically between his ankles so he had to pick it up and the F.B.I. had done the rest.

  That evening we were to see him, put the cards under his nose and tell him we’d wise the newspapers to his real identity if he didn’t fold his turban, steal away in the night and lay off gullible old gals like Mrs. Woodring. Only it had to be all bluff because we couldn’t wise the papers and maybe let Mrs. Woodring in for a lot of kidding publicity.

  “But I have a hunch,” Sue said. “I’ve a hunch it won’t be as easy as that.”

  “Nuts,” I said. “No guy on the make can stand up under the threat of publicity.”

  “You haven’t seen him, Kerry. He’s different than the usual faker. He acts as though he really had something.”

  “So the great Jordan is beaten before she starts.”

  Sue gave me her poor-chap-you’re-so-dumb smile. “No, little man. I merely said it wouldn’t be quite as easy as you, in your naïve fashion, expect. I know something about psychology.”

  Sue can get under my skin more easily than any other dame in the world. I said, “You and your psychology. Five bucks says he’ll be traveling inside of forty-eight hours.”

  “You’ve made a bet.” Sue grinned.

  The waiter brought two checks like I’d told him. I picked mine up and Sue took hers, began to fumble in her purse. Her face got apologetic.

  She said, “Kerry, you can’t guess what I’ve done.”

  “Yes, I can. You’ve left all your money in your other pants. O.K., give me the check.”

  Walking out beside me, she cooed: “Thank you, Kerry, for the lovely dinner.”

  “Thank you,” I said, “for the lovely buggy ride.”

  octor Sivaja—or Eddie Levy—was a dark-faced, young-looking bird, who wore a black turban and conventional tuxedo. He did a nice, quiet, convincing talk that was half religion, half modern psychology. He talked from a dais in what had been the living-room of the old house while a circle of about thirty women and five men, who looked sheepish, as though their wives had dragged them there, listened piously. The symbol of the three apes was everywhere—worked into the hangings, the decorations, the upholstery of the furniture.

  After the talk the doc did a little bow and disappeared through black curtains at one side of the room. The audience came out of its trance and began to straggle from the room.

  “He draws a nice house,” I told Sue. “The woman in gray is president of a woman’s club, the one behind her knocks out two grand a week writing movies and I think the dame with the long nose and jaw is a socialite from the polo set.”

  “Are you sure of her,” Sue wanted to know, “or are you just making that guess because she looks like a horse?”

  “Where was la Woodring tonight?”

  “Kirkwood promised to keep her home tonight.”

  We were the only ones left in the room when a girl who looked like Jane College from Bryn Vassar—flat-heeled shoes, horn-rimmed specs and black hair as straight as violin strings—put an eye on us.

  Sue said under her breath: “Miss Frake, the doctor’s secretary.” To the girl as she came over to us, Sue explained that we’d like to consult with the doctor.

  Jane College looked doubtful but finally said she’d see and went through the black curtains. She came back in a minute, said: “Doctor Sivaja will see you, but only for a few minutes. He is very tired tonight.”

  We followed her through the curtains and after a moment came into a long room, a book-lined room. Sivaja—or Eddie Levy—sat in a big chair at a big desk the length of the room away from us. The three apes were everywhere in this room, too, including a big figure on the desk. It was a nice room, a quiet room, and the only thing out of place was a big packing case, opened, at one side.

  The doc said, sort of gently, “Thank you, Miss Frake.”

  Jane College went out and the doc said, “Sit down, Miss Jordan. And you, too, Mister—ah—”

  “The name, Eddie,” I said, “is Thorne. Kerry Thorne.”

  I’d expected my approach to get a rise out of him. It didn’t—much. He looked sort of interested, not at all upset. He said, pleasantly enough: “I noticed you in the audience, and I had you spotted for a private dick. When I put that together with Miss Jordan’s vanity-case stunt to get my prints the other night, I was sure of it. Sit down and get your errand off your mind.”

  I had to admit he’d thrown the first punch and for a moment it had me backing up. We sat down and I looked at Sue. She was looking at me. The doc smiled.

  He said, “Maybe I can help you get started. You’re being paid by Paul Kirkwood. Is that correct, Miss Jordan?”

  Sue nodded.

  “And you’ve found out that my real name is Levy and that I’m an ex-convict. That’s correct, also?”

  I said, “You know the answers, Eddie.”

  He seemed not so indifferent as he was unworried. He said, “And what comes after that?”

  Sue pulled out the sympathetic stop in her voice. She said, “Perhaps we’re doing you an injustice, Doctor. Or should I say Mr. Levy? I have a feeling that you’re not up to any particular mischief, that possibly your meetings are doing these people some good. But by faking your identity, you’ve put yourself in a spot. Mr. Kirkwood means to expose you unless you agree to leave the city and not communicate with Mrs. Woodring any longer.”

  The guy didn’t say anything for a little while. He wasn’t looking at me at all and the eyes he kept on Sue weren’t panicky, weren’t even unfriendly. His right hand kept tossing a small replica of the three apes into the air, catching it as it came down again.

  Finally he said, dryly: “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Miss Jordan. Just tell Mr. Kirkwood for me that I’m not worried. In the first place, I have reasons to believe he won’t expose me. In the second place, if he does, it can’t really harm me.”

  For the first time some feeling showed on his dark face. He put down the figure of the three apes, spread his h
ands and said, “Has it occurred to the pair of you that I may be quite sincere in my philosophy of Man’s Triumph Over Evil? I’m quite frank in saying that in the past I’ve been an evil man. I’ll even admit that in the beginning I founded my school of thought with something evil—the lust for money—in my mind. But I discovered I had stumbled onto the truth, and in convincing others I have convinced myself. If I don’t relish having my pupils know that I am an ex-convict, it is only because it will handicap me in importing my philosophy to them, not because of any fear for myself. For I know that if I refuse to recognize the existence of evil, then no evil can really harm me. Do I make myself clear?” He really sounded as though he meant what he said.

  Sue said gravely, “Doctor, I believe you’re sincere. But Mr. Kirkwood is just as determined as you are sincere. Why can’t a compromise be worked out? I’m sure he’d be satisfied if you merely went on a nice vacation—six months or so. By the time you got back, his mother-in-law would have another enthusiasm and everyone would be happy.”

  The doc shook his head. “That’s quite ridiculous, Miss Jordan. After all, while Mrs. Woodring is a charming woman and one of the most prominent members of my little circle, she is only one of quite a number to whom I am bringing my message. I have no intention of giving up my work and Mr. Kirkwood had better think carefully before he exposes me. You can tell him for me that even a good man isn’t entirely helpless against an evil man and that he who speaks evil often brings evil upon himself.”

  I said, “Listen, Eddie, we’re using a lot of dollar words here. Can you put that in ordinary English?”

  He smiled. “Kirkwood will understand. And I’m like the first of my three little monkeys here: I’d rather speak no evil.”

  “I still think you’re shadow-boxing,” I said.

  He bowed as though he didn’t care what I thought. The conference seemed to be over and I tracked Sue through the curtains, feeling clumsy-footed compared to his quiet sureness. Jane College met us outside the study, flat-heeled ahead of us to the front door.