The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

by Otto Penzler

  He thrust a cautious head out of the window.

  The fire escape stretched down the side of the building like a black ribbon. Three men were seated in the alley underneath that fire escape, shooting craps. Another man sprawled on the seat of a truck that was parked a few feet to one side.

  Leith abandoned the window.

  He tiptoed to the door of his room, pulled up a chair, climbed on the chair, stared out through a crack in the transom.

  He could see a section of the hallway.

  Two men, wearing the uniform of bell-hops, yet seeming strangely mature for bell boys, were walking up and down, their manner that of sentries on duty. A burly porter, who would have never been taken as a porter save for the cap he wore, was seated on a trunk. A well dressed man with alert eyes was standing well down at one end of the corridor.

  There was no possibility of escape from that room, undetected.

  And, as Leith stared, three purposeful men emerged from the elevator and moved toward his room. They were the clerk, the house detective, and the self-sufficiently belligerent man who occupied 403.

  Even as Leith stood there, they started to knock on the door, and, as they knocked, the two mature bell boys crowded forward, the porter jumped down from his seat on the trunk, and the gimlet eyed man at the end of the hall moved forward on rubber soled feet.

  Lester Leith stepped from the chair, moved into swiftly purposeful action.

  What had been a polite knock was repeated with more noise. Then it was repeated again with two fisted emphasis.

  “What is it?” called Lester Leith in the blurred tones of one who has been aroused from slumber.

  “Open this door,” said the hoarse voice of the house detective. “We want to talk with you. This is Sam Moses, the house man.”

  “Oh,” said Lester Leith. “Just a minute.”

  And he jumped on the bed to give a creaking noise to the springs, then let his feet thud to the floor.

  Yet it was several seconds later that he opened the door.

  His hair was tousled. His eyes were blinking. His collar was wrinkled and his coat was off. There was an air of dazed perplexity about him.

  “… lay down for a minute,” he explained sheepishly. “Must’ve dropped off.”

  He sucked in a prodigious yawn.

  Sam Moses lowered his broad shoulders and pushed past Lester Leith into the room. Directly behind the detective, walking with a certain catfooted belligerency of manner, his right hand hovering near the lapel of his coat, his eyes narrowed, anxiously alert, came the occupant of 403. The clerk was a tardy third in procession.

  One of the mature bell boys cleared his throat suggestively.

  The house detective turned, called over his shoulder:

  “Come in here, Joe.”

  The bell boy pushed eagerly forward, forcing the clerk into a quicker step.

  Lester Leith seemed more awake now.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked anxiously.

  The house detective switched on the light, looked the room over.

  “Where’s the broad?” he asked.

  “You mean my niece?” asked Lester Leith.

  The house detective sneered.

  “To hell with that line,” he said. “You know who I mean. I asked where the broad was. She went out. Did she come back?”

  It was the bell boy who answered.

  “Naw,” he said, “she didn’t come back.”

  “Certain?” asked the house detective.

  “Sure,” said the bell boy.

  Lester Leith let his eyes widen.

  “Why,” he exclaimed with a simulation of ingenuous innocence and surprise, “you’re a detective!”

  The man who was dressed as a bell boy snorted.

  “Go sit on a tack!” he invited. “Let’s take a look around.”

  They moved forward, a compact knot, save for the squat man who occupied room 403. He gravitated slightly to one side.

  “All the personal belongings from my room,” he said, “have been stolen.”

  Lester Leith let his jaw sag.

  “Good heavens!” he said.

  The detectives strode through the connecting bathroom, walked into 407.

  “This the stuff?” asked the man who had posed as a bell hop.

  The occupant of room 403 stared at the assortment.

  “Good Lord, yes!” he exclaimed. “How did it get here?”

  Lester Leith joined in the exclamation, his tone one of dismay.

  “Good heavens!” he groaned. “She’s had an attack!”

  “Yeah,” sneered the detective. “Ain’t that too bad!”

  Lester Leith turned to the occupant of room 403.

  “But I’m responsible,” he said. “I’m financially responsible. Only I want to know for just what I am responsible. Here, in the presence of these officers, we will open this baggage and list the contents.”

  There was a sudden swirl of motion behind Lester Leith. Two hands clamped down on his arms. Glittering bracelets of steel clicked around his wrists.

  “Yeah,” sneered the man who had posed as bell hop, “and we’ll just keep you out of mischief while we’re making the examination.”

  CHAPTER VII

  Handcuffs for Leith

  Lester Leith stiffened. His face mirrored dismay.

  “Listen, officer,” he said. “I can’t explain, but you’ll ruin some very precious plans I have if you do not remove those handcuffs. I demand that you release me. I have important plans.”

  The detectives joined in a guffaw.

  “Ruining plans of crooks is one of the best things I do,” said the detective.

  “No, no. You don’t understand. Call Sergeant Ackley. Get him here at once. I demand that this baggage be opened. And I want Sergeant Ackeley here …”

  The squat occupant of room 403 moved easily toward the door.

  “I’ll open it fast enough,” he promised. “But I’ve got to go to my room to get my keys.”

  He took swift steps toward the door.

  “No, no!” yelled Lester Leith. “Stop him. Get Ackley! Get Ackley. I dare not make an accusation while that baggage is unopened, but I want Sergeant …”

  The detective swung his right fist.

  The blow contacted Lester Leith on the jaw. Leith slumped to the floor, inert.

  “Hell,” said the detective. “I didn’t hit him hard. He must be playing possum. I didn’t want any more of his damned bawling. Where’s the sarge?”

  “Coming,” said a voice from the corridor.

  A compact body of men moved into the room.

  “Better frisk him,” said some one.

  “He’ll keep,” chuckled one of the detectives. “Let’s look around.”

  “Maybe we went a little too fast, Joe,” cautioned one of the men. “Orders was to give him enough rope to spring his stuff, and then clamp down on him.”

  “Well,” countered the individual addressed as Joe, “he had enough rope, and he was pulling his stuff, or I miss my guess.”

  Hands went through Lester Leith’s clothing.

  “Nothing here,” said a voice.

  “Look the room over,” ordered some one else. “Close that damned door. We don’t want a crowd in on this. Where the hell’s the sarge? He was sticking around for a while. Then he said he had a sick friend he had to see, and left a telephone number where we could call him if anything broke.”

  “You call him?” asked the clerk.

  “Yeah. Soon as the guy from four-oh-three made the squawk. Say, where is that bird?”

  “Gone to get his keys.”

  “Well, we better go down there, and … here’s the sarge now.”

  There were purposeful steps, the banging of the door as it slammed open, then shivered on its hinges, then the voice of Sergeant Ackley.

  “Well,” he exclaimed, “what’s up! See you got the bracelets on him. Did you catch him with the goods?”

  “We caught ’m right enough,�
�� said the voice of the man called Joe. “I don’t know just what he was pulling, but …”

  Lester Leith stirred, moved his eyes, groaned.

  “Open the man’s trunk,” he said, and then slumped back into silence.

  “What happened to him?” asked Sergeant Ackley.

  “Oh, he was squawking, and I cracked him an easy one an’ he wilted. Don’t know what got into ’m.”

  Sergeant Ackley grunted.

  “Better be careful. He’s a smooth one. And he keeps a good lawyer. If we haven’t got the goods on him …”

  “We got the goods on ’m right enough,” said Joe.

  “Open the trunk anyway,” said Sergeant Ackley.

  “Guy’s gone for the keys,” said Joe.

  There was a period of shuffling silence. Some one scraped a match and lit a cigarette. Then some one coughed.

  “Say, where the hell is that guy?” asked some one.

  Lester Leith moaned, twisted.

  “Don’t let him get away,” he pleaded in a groaning whisper. “I tried to get you, sergeant …”

  Sergeant Ackley suddenly exploded into action.

  “Go grab that bird, Joe. Bill, get that trunk open. This looks like a job that’s been bungled. That guy in 403 … Get started!”

  There came a scurrying motion, swift voices, shouted comments. Then a report was called down the hallway. “Went down the stairs. Thought you sent him, Joe. He said you did!”

  Profanity spouted from Sergeant Ackley’s lips.

  “Get that guy! He’s the murderer and gem thief. Hurry up. Throw out the dragnet. Give the signal. Close the block!”

  And he ran to the window, flung it open, raised a police whistle to his lips, blew a shrill blast.

  Lester Leith sat up.

  For a man who had been knocked out, he seemed to be in serene possession of his senses.

  “I warned you, sergeant,” he said. “Will some one please give me a cigarette?”

  Sergeant Ackley flung back from the window, glowered at the handcuffed figure on the floor.

  “Hell!” he said.

  Lester Leith talked fluently.

  “We’ve had our differences, sergeant, but I thought I could patch them up by putting a feather in your cap. I figured the trunk the murdered man had held the gems, but that the trunk had proven obstinate. The murderer, however, would never have carried the whole trunk with him unless something had happened to make that the only course possible.

  “He’d killed the gem thief, and was opening the trunk when something happened to alarm him. That something must have been the arrival of the officers. That meant the murderer was trapped in the room when the officers were demanding an entrance.

  “He’d previously forced the window over the fire escape to make it seem like an outside job. But he couldn’t have escaped through that window because it’s obvious that he took the trunk with him.

  “Therefore there was only one escape he had, through the communicating room, and into his own room. If my theory was correct, the murderer had been at work on the trunk when the officers banged on the door. He didn’t want to leave his loot, so he shouldered the trunk, slipped into 405 and through it into his own room and locked the door.

  “Then he had to do something with the trunk. He realized there’d probably be a search for it. So he did the obvious. He simply put the stolen trunk, which was small, inside his own trunk, which was large.

  “That meant he had to wait for a later time to tackle the secret combination. It also meant that he had to be an old resident of the hotel, both for the purpose of avoiding suspicion, as well as to have been sufficiently familiar with the hotel to know that the rooms he wanted for his victim, which would adjoin his room, would have an opening on the fire escape.

  “He knew Cogley was coming here, and he planned to get Cogley in his power by setting a trap, reserving a room for him. Cogley walked into that trap …”

  Lester Leith was interrupted by a man bursting into the room.

  “There’s a secret hiding place in 403 back of a wall fixture. A guy jerked it out by the roots, and …”

  And that man, in turn, was interrupted by the rattle of gunfire from the street, revolver shots which stabbed the night with exploding pulsations.

  There were more than a dozen of them, exploding in rapid succession. Then the wail of a siren, the sound of shouts, a police whistle blowing frantically.

  A woman screamed, and the scream came up through the window.

  “They’ve got him!” exclaimed Joe.

  The men rushed toward the window.

  “Go see what happened, Joe!” rasped Sergeant Ackley.

  Men piled from the room.

  CHAPTER VIII

  The Bird in the Hand

  Left behind, Sergeant Ackley glowered at the handcuffed figure.

  “I think I’ve got you this time!” he said.

  Lester Leith sighed.

  “I did so want to give you an olive branch by letting you take the credit for capturing the murderer. And then you had to spoil it all. And one of your men struck me, when I was handcuffed! An unprovoked, brutal, police assault.”

  Sergeant Ackley grinned.

  “Tell it to the jury,” he said.

  Lester Leith shook his head.

  “No,” he said, “I shall tell it to the newspapers!”

  Sergeant Ackley looked worried.

  He surveyed the room with glittering, suspicious eyes, strode to the covered birdcage, ripped off the cover. A startled canary hopped about the cage, chirped indignantly. Ackley cursed the bird, kicked the cage.

  A man rushed into the room.

  “Bagged him!” he exclaimed. “He was shot half a dozen times. They closed in on him and he tried to smoke his way out. Dead now, but he had enough life left when they got to him to tell them that he did the job. And he had the loot with him.”

  There was disappointment in Sergeant Ackley’s voice.

  “Had the loot with him!”

  “Yep, in a small chamois bag that he’d kept hidden in the space back of the wall light. He told ’em how he did the job. Knew Cogley was coming here to the Palace. Knew he was going to keep an appointment with a fence. So this bird reserved the room he wanted, trapped Cogley, and tipped off the fence the bulls were hep. That kept the fence away.

  “The guy sneaked into Cogley’s room when he was washing up, cracked him on the dome, tied and gagged him, intended to get the stuff and beat it. But Cogley came to, recognized him, so he croaked Cogley, then started after the trunk when he heard the officers coming.

  “He dragged the trunk into his own room, and …”

  “Never mind all that,” snapped Sergeant Ackley. “I had deduced that much myself. I would have arrested this man only I wanted to use him to bait a trap for this man Leith. But did the police recover all the gems?”

  “The whole sack!” gloated the detective.

  “Hell!” said Sergeant Ackley.

  Lester Leith smiled.

  “Now can I have a cigarette?” he asked.

  Sergeant Ackley walked to the door, slammed it shut.

  “Listen, this guy never had the chance to check all the jewels. There were a lot of diamonds in that haul. Maybe some of ’em got away. Let’s search this room and the two adjoining. And I mean search ’em. No maybe about it. Take ’em to pieces. Rip out the wall fixtures, X-ray the furniture. This bird is too smooth to have let anything like that slip through his fingers.”

  The detective stared at Sergeant Ackley.

  “Well,” he said dubiously, “we can do it. This guy couldn’t have hid nothing, though. The fire escape was watched, and the hall was watched, and there wasn’t a chance, not a single chance.”

  Sergeant Ackley grunted.

  “This guy don’t need a chance. He only needs a half a chance, and sometimes not even that. Get busy and search!”

  They got busy and searched, and the net result of that search was to uncover nothing at all. Neve
r had rooms been subjected to such a complete search, and Lester Leith, himself, was one to make the search more complete. Whenever the police seemed to be overlooking a single cranny or corner, Lester Leith would point it out.

  “The brass in the bed is hollow, sergeant,” he suggested. And: “There might have been a hole bored in the curtain pole in the closet.”

  Those suggestions were received in sullen silence, but acted upon with alacrity. The morning was sending its chill fingers through the air when the officers finished. A clock struck two somewhere, and Sergeant Ackley ran doubtful fingers through his matted hair and surveyed the wreckage.

  “Well,” he said, “they ain’t here.”

  Lester Leith grinned.

  Sergeant Ackley scowled at him.

  “But you still got some explaining to do. I’ve half a mind to throw you in on suspicion and let you explain how you happened to be trailing this crook around. You intended to hijack him, even if we did beat you to it!”

  Lester Leith looked hurt.

  “Tut, tut, sergeant! I was doing you a favor. My solution was only academic. I could even bring evidence to show that it was suggested by Scuttle, my valet. I really had finished with these academic crime solutions, but Scuttle egged me on. He’d have to admit that—if he were questioned.”

  And because Sergeant Ackley knew that this was true, knew also that any further investigation would result in the real capacity of the undercover operative being brought to light, he sighed, turned away.

  “All right, boys,” he said wearily. “Let ’m go.”

  One of the detectives had a bright idea.

  “The woman accomplice,” he said, “the one that posed as his niece. She was away …”

  Sergeant Ackley hastily interposed an interruption.

  “Let her out,” he growled. “She’s got an ironclad alibi, one that don’t need to enter into the case, but one that’s good. I checked it up myself. That’s what delayed me getting here.”

  The detective’s voice held a trace of admiration.

  “Gee, sergeant, you sure work fast!”

  Sergeant Ackley nodded.

  “That’s the way to work!” he said. Then his eye fell on the canary in the huge cage.

  “Say,” he demanded, “what the hell’s the idea of that bird?”