by Hugh B. Cave
He was a big man, wearing an expensive blue dressing gown over white flannel trousers and a white sport shirt. The white sport shirt was now a Jap flag, with its red moon of blood.
Smith stared a moment, then bent over him. “Shot,” he said softly. Then he straightened and focused the light on the wall to his left.
The tiny beam came to rest on the wall safe. Smith strode forward, looked at the safe, looked down at McKenna again.
“Have you a finger-print outfit at your office, Plouffe?”
Plouffe nodded solemnly.
“Take the car and go get it,” Smith directed. “Come back as fast as you can and don’t say a word about this to anyone.”
“But the cops oughta know about it! We’ll get in trouble!”
“They’ll know in due time. You do as I say.” Smith glared at him and he went out wagging his head, mumbling protests. Smith and Angel heard him fumbling along the hall in the dark.
“Who did it, Philip?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you know something, or you wouldn’t have come here.”
“I think I know who’ll be blamed for doing it. That’s all.”
“Who?”
“Burdick.”
She stood there in the dark, scowling at him. “But why?”
“It wasn’t McKenna who visited the Lester Hotel tonight,” Smith declared softly. “It could have been, of course, but it probably wasn’t. That’s where you had me wrong when you tried to read my mind, Angel. This isn’t any ten-cent clandestine love affair. Can’t be. Too many angles.”
“You think someone borrowed McKenna’s car?”
“And deliberately got a ticket.”
“Why?”
“Look. Burdick is missing. His wife goes to Plouffe for assistance. Guided by Plouffe, she takes a room at the Lester. Meanwhile this other thing—what ever it is—is moving on relentlessly to some kind of climax. Part of that climax is the planned murder of McKenna here. And McKenna’s murderers are clever, clever enough to plan the alibi before the crime. They swipe McKenna’s car, take it to the Lester, leave it parked where it’s bound to catch a ticket. No one can deny now that McKenna’s car was parked in front of Mrs. Burdick’s hotel; the proof is down in black and white.You see? McKenna visits Mrs.
Burdick at hotel with bad reputation. McKenna is found dead.
Angry young husband is arrested for murder.”
“You’re guessing.”
“It’s the best I can do. We’ll know more when Plouffe gets back.”
She was silent a moment, and the silence of the big house crept in to take possession. Then she said, “Why the fingerprint outfit, Philip?”
“Why is McKenna dead?” he countered.
“You mean the safe?”
“It’s possible.”
“A man as brainy as McKenna wouldn’t keep any big amount of money in a house like this.”
“Maybe not, Angel. But money isn’t the only thing worth stealing. You’re forgetting that McKenna was vice president of a chemical company.”
Angel voiced a little snort. “You’ll be telling me next that you’re a G-man tracking down scurrilous agents of a mysterious foreign power!”
“I’m not, really. I’m waiting for a street car.”
Very shortly Plouffe returned, with a small black case wedged under his arm and a flash-light gripped in his left hand.
“You have any trouble?” Smith asked.
“Me? Oh, no.”
“Get to work then. What I want to know is this: Has anyone recently opened that safe, and if so, who?”
Plouffe opened his finger-print case and timidly stepped up to the safe. While he worked, Smith held the light for him, cupping it carefully to keep the glow from striking the room’s only window.
Plouffe was good at this sort of thing. In a few moments he said definitely: “It’s been opened all right. There’s fresh oil from the hinge” smeared down the side. Not long ago, either.”
“I thought so.” “You see, Plouffe,” Angel said sweetly. “Mr. Smith is really very smart. He sees all, knows all, tells nothing.” “This here,” Plouffe declared, ignoring her and handing Smith a thin sheet of celluloid, “is a pretty fair thumbprint.”
“Good. Can you get a print of McKenna’s thumb?”
“I guess so.”
“Be careful,” Smith warned, “where you leave your own prints around here.” “You’re damn right I’ll be careful!” Finished with the safe, Plouffe knelt beside the dead man.
In a moment he rose, handed over a slip of paper. As an afterthought he stooped again and with a handkerchief carefully wiped a smudge of ink from the dead man’s thumb.
“Looks the same to me,” he said,“though I ain’t no expert.”
“So it was McKenna who opened the safe. Probably forced to and then killed so he could never identify the thief. We can go now, Angel. We’ve a job to do. A most important job, and one that may take a long time. We’ve got to find Mrs. Burdick. And her husband.”
Angel twisted her lovely mouth into a scowl. “All we have to go on,” she said, “is that car. The one Plouffe trailed.” Smith shook his head. “No go. It’s probably right here in McKenna’s garage by now.” “It is,” Plouffe said. “I seen it when I come back. I was meaning to tell you.”
“Then,” said Angel, “we’re stymied. Unless,” she added, glancing suspiciously at Smith, “that brain of yours is working overtime again. Sometimes that brain amazes me.”
Edgerson did some serious thinking as he drove away from the elaborate home of the slain McKenna. It was high time, he realized, to do some thinking. Up til now this affair had been little more than a pleasant diversion, a relief from the monotony of being president of a greeting card concern. A hobby, like amateur theatrics or peephole photography. Now it was murder.
He scowled at the windshield and mentally fitted together the pieces of the puzzle as he saw them. The pattern was a bit startling.
“You know, Angel,” he said, “the safest thing we could do right now would be to go straight to the police, tell them all we know and then go for a nice long ride into the country.”
“Nonsense!” she said scornfully.
He sighed. “We’ll do the next best thing. Plouffe, we’ll leave it to you to phone the police and report McKenna’s death. You can do it from a booth somewhere without leaving a trail.”
“And what’ll you two be doing?” Plouffe demanded.
“Pushing our noses deeper into affairs that don’t concern us.”
“Well,” Plouffe said, “I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I.”
Smith stopped the car at a restaurant. “There should be a phone inside,” he said. “Use it, then go home. If we need you again, I’ll call you.”
“I still don’t like it,” Plouffe muttered, but he got out.
“And now,” said Angel, when the car was under way again, “just what do we do?”
“What time is it?”
She looked at her watch. “Four-ten. Fine time of night to keep your best girl out.”
“We drive to Warren Avenue now,” Smith declared calmly, “and get out of bed a young man named Timothy Kenson. I don’t believe you know Timmy.”
“Who is he?”
“He works at the office. But for the past several hours he’s been working at the Krashna Tobacco Store, downtown.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see,” Smith said, “in due time.”
She didn’t like that. She glared at him. “He knows all, sees all, tells nothing.” Smith ignored her and she adjusted her red cape about her angrily.
He drove in silence. The streets were deserted, and it was difficult to realize that on so calm and peaceful a night murder had been done. But Smith’s mind, agile now, was ahead of the murder and groping for the motive.
He knew, or thought he knew, the elaborate steps leading up to McKenna’s death, and the probable aftermath. But the motive still evaded him. Unless,
of course, the answer lay at the Glickman Company.
He turned the car into Warren Avenue and stopped. “You wait here,” he told Angel. Climbing the steps of a brown cottage, he put his thumb against the doorbell. In a moment a light winked on and the door opened. A young, red-haired man in wrinkled pajamas blinked at Smith and said, “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Edgerson.”
“Any luck, Timmy?”
“Sure thing. He came in late this afternoon. I been trying to get you ever since.”
“A tall, dark man, Jimmy? With a beard?”
“Nope. He was a little runt. Crummy looking.”
“Oh. You followed him?”
“Sure thing. He walked down the street a ways and got into a taxicab. So I did like you said. I jumped into another taxicab and told the driver to keep him in sight. He went into a house on Canal Street, down near the river. Wait a minute and I’ll get you the number. I wrote it down.”
He was back in a minute or two with a slip of paper which he thrust into Smith’s hand. “Here it is, Mr. Edgerson. Number 23 Canal. Just a couple of doors down from the McCullen Warehouse, if you know where that is.”
“Timmy,” John Smith said, “you’re a genius!”
“It was easy,” Timmy said.
“It was masterful. Tomorrow you get a raise in pay.”
Smith hurried back to the car, stuffing the slip of paper into his pocket. He said nothing to Angel, but the triumphant smirk on his face gave him away.
“You look,” she said, “as if you just ate the goldfish. What’s up? Where are we going now?”
“To the hideout of the dark foreigner who smokes long black cigarettes.”
“What?”
“It was really quite simple. While you were holding down the fort I visited the only two tobacco stores in the city where a man can buy long black cigarettes. They’re Cuban, you know. I discreetly asked questions. The man in the place on Fernald Street told me he used to carry them because he had a customer who came regularly, twice a week, for a large supply. The customer was Professor Dubitsky, and the fellow had sold no Cuban cigarettes since Dubitsky’s death. But in the second store I had better luck, Angel. The man there informed me that he did carry them. He hadn’t used to, he said, but about three months ago a customer placed a standing order with him, and the customer called twice a week to pick up his supply.”
“The original Sherlock Holmes!” Angel gasped. “And all this time I thought you were just plain Philip Edgerson!”
“I got quite chummy with the man,” Smith informed her, “and enlisted his aid. He agreed to let Timmy work for him. Timmy did so, and when the buyer of the Cuban cigarettes came in, Timmy followed him. That’s all there was to it. Quite simple, you see.”
“You mean Timmy followed Professor Dubitsky?”
“No. Dubitsky himself wouldn’t come out in the open like that. But if we fail to find him at the address to which we’re going, I’ll be a most crestfallen sleuth.”
She gave him a sidelong glance from beneath the red hood and then looked out the car window, noting the sinister section of town into which he was taking her.
“Are you armed, Philip?”
“I don’t own a gun. You know that.”
“Philip,” she said in a manner of confession, “I have one. I borrowed it from my office.”
He frowned. “Keep it,” he said bluntly.
The car had entered the waterfront warehouse district, and at this time of night the streets were black, deserted, ominous. A short-lived downpour had beaten to life sour smells of fish and fruit, and the dampness held those unsavory odors in suspension. You smelled trouble. Danger.
Smith pulled the machine to the curb. “For you, Angel,” he said firmly, “this is as far as the car goes. I may be a willing slave to my hobby, but I drag no hapless woman with me.”
“It’s not your hobby. It’s ours.”
“Nevertheless, you wait here—you and your silly popgun.”
“That,” she said, “is what you think.”
“It’s what I know,” he said. Then, suddenly serious: “Look here, darling. We’ve not even the vaguest idea of what we’re getting into. It may be as mean and dirty as the district it’s in. I’d be scared stiff if you came along.”
“So I’m to sit here and be scared stiff until you get back?”
“Or else,” he threatened, “we go straight to the police. Although any self-respecting cop would arrest you in that devil’s cape.”
She was angry. He looked at her and saw that she was staring straight ahead, her lips tight-pressed, her chin rigid. He patted her knee and got out, walked away.
Just once, as he went past the warehouse a hundred yards or so distant, he turned his head to look back. The car’s headlights owlishly stared at him. Uneasy about leaving Angel alone too long on a street so dark and unsavory, he quickened his step.
Number 23 was one of a row of tenements, all of which looked alike in the dark. A battered ashcan filled with refuse stood on the concrete stoop beside the door.The door opened when Smith pressed it.
He stepped over the threshold into a black, smelly hall. Stopped there, scowling, and realized that the house had three floors and he had no idea on which level to concentrate.
His flash-light winked, threading a narrow beam through the gloom of the lower hall. A baby carriage stood there. He went past it, past the door of the first floor tenement, to the stairs. The building was a tomb, cold and damp and dark.
With the light cupped in his hand he climbed slowly, testing each ancient step before trusting it with his weight. The second floor landing came level with his eyes and he stopped again. The light showed him a small and black cigarette stub lying by a door. He smiled a tight, twisted little smile and knew that the door was his destination.
He stepped beside it, scowled, and snapped out the light. There was no sound anywhere. The fact that he was unarmed did not greatly worry him. It never had before. The day he began to carry a gun, he told himself, Trouble Incorporated would cease to be a hobby. Besides, he had no permit.
He tipped his hat back on his head and loosened his tie. He opened his coat, rubbed a hand over the floor and transferred the dirt thus collected to the front of his shirt, blackening it. For good measure he pulled off two buttons, to make the shirt sag.
He dirtied his face and rumpled his hair, and put on a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, the lenses of which were clear glass.
Then he seized the doorknob and rattled it, and then he banged on the door and cursed it and began talking to himself.
Results were not long coming. A couch squeaked inside and a voice said sharply, “Who’s there? Who’s out there?”
“It’sh Percy,” Smith slobbered. “Lemme in.”
“Who? Who is it?”
“It’sh Percy! You lemme in or sho help me I’ll busht the door down!”
A key turned in the lock and the door opened. It didn’t open far. Just far enough to frame a short, thickset man whose swarthy face was all scowl.
“Listen, buddy,” the swarthy man said. “You’re in the wrong place. Beat it.”
“Who’re you?”
“Never mind who I am. It’s the middle of the night, see? And you’re in the wrong alley. Scram!”
“Thish ish where I live,” Smith snorted. “Don’ you tell me I don’ belong here. I know different.”
The dark fellow was in no mood to argue with a drunk. He came a step closer, put his right hand flat against Smith’s chest, and pushed. He slammed the door as Smith staggered away from it.
Smith smiled that tight little smile again and resumed his assault. If he made enough noise, the occupants of the tenement would do one of two things: Either slug him or try to reason with him. He didn’t think they would slug him. This was a hideout. They would want to avoid trouble.
And they most certainly would open the door if he hammered on it long enough.
It opened. The swarthy man said savagely, “Listen, buddy, will you for Gawd
’s sake go away and leave us get some sleep? Or do I have to get rough with you?”
Smith’s eyes glowered at him out of a slack, stupid face. “You lishen to me,” he said. “My name’sh Percy Smith an’ I live here. An’ nobody’sh gonna keep me out!”
Behind the swarthy man an impatient voice said, “Let him in, Max.”
“Oke, buddy,” Max sighed. “Come on in.”
“That’sh better,” Smith said. “That’sh much better.”
He walked in, weaving a little. Max closed the door.
“Now take a good look around, Percy,” Max said, “and you’ll see this ain’t the place you thought it was. You’re drunk and you’re in the wrong house.”
“Who saysh I am?”
“Look around. See for yourself.”
Smith looked around. The room in which he stood was a living-room, furnished with table, chairs and a couch. The swarthy man, Max, had evidently been sleeping on the couch, in his clothes. His clothes were wrinkled and he wore no shoes.
The other man was bigger. He wore gray pajamas which hung loosely from his lank frame, revealing a generous expanse of hairy chest. His hair was in his eyes and he stood with his hands hipped, feet spread wide, just back of the table. A door behind him led to what appeared to be a bedroom.
“I—I guessh I was mistaken,” Smith mumbled apologetically.
“Convinced, are you?”
“I musht’ve got mixed up somehow.”
“Well, if you’re convinced,” Max said, “just scram like a nice guy and don’t make any more noise’n you have to.”
Smith stood where he was. “I—I don’ feel sho good,” he said.
“O.K., O.K.,” the other man said tartly. “Beat it! Be sick outside!”
“I wanna shtay here. I wanna lie down somewheres …”
The two men exchanged glances. The man named Max took his right hand out of his pocket, where it had rested since Smith’s entrance. They stepped forward. “Sure,” Max said. “We’ll help you lay down, buddy. We wouldn’t think of put-tin’ a nice guy like you out in the street at this time o’ night. No-o-o. Would we, Vick?”
“Of course not,” Vick said.
They took hold of Smith’s arms. That was their mistake. He had been waiting for it.Waiting to get them both together, both in reach at the same time: Any other way would have been fatal, because undoubtedly both men were armed.