“Yeah, he just hit town this week and hired me to be his handy man. So tonight he tells me he wants you brang to him—”
“Oh, so?” I cut in. “Well, that’s just dandy. He’ll certainly get his wish. When I get through with him, he’ll see stars that aren’t in the horoscope. What’s the address?”
Reginald mumbled a number over on Van Ness, near the Paramount lot, and I tickled my starter, fed my coupe gas. Nine minutes later I dropped anchor near a bungalow with overhanging eaves and a wide, deep front porch—a relic of the good old days before architects brought modernism to the architecture of Southern California. It had probably been standing there for twenty or thirty years, and barring earthquakes and termites it would stand for twenty or thirty more. It was a modest house, substantial but self-effacing, and it didn’t look at all like a joint where murder had just been committed.
Shoving Reginald P. Clancy ahead of me, I found the front portal unlocked and barged in without knocking. A moment later I was looking at a corpse.
CHAPTER II
POSTPONED DEATH
For a man who had just got established in Hollywood that week, Mahatma Guru had made plenty of progress—at least from the standpoint of interior decoration. My first impression was that I’d entered a sound stage by mistake and had stumbled onto a set dressed for a Boris Karloff production. The vestibule had been enlarged to make a waiting room, and its walls were draped in black cloth of a spongy texture, like graveyard moss.
Cabalistic signs of the zodiac were painted on the cloth and glowed against the black background like daubs of radium, a weird effect guaranteed to give you the horrors. A man with claustrophobia would have blown his wig the minute he walked in, and if he stayed very long you’d have had to tote him away in a straitjacket.
I’ve got steady nerves myself, but that black-draped outer chamber put goose pimples on me. Maybe it was the dead still air, the lack of ventilation. Or on the other hand, maybe my intuition was functioning overtime. Whatever it was, I had an abrupt hunch that trouble loomed in the offing. The hunch became a positive conviction when I stepped into Mahatma Guru’s parlor. Here the ceiling had been swathed in folds of purple velvet that sagged down like the underside of a tired barrage balloon. Large tinfoil stars were attached to the massive wrinkles, while the room’s walls and windows were masked by an array of Oriental silk screens, opulently decorated with embroidered dragons and werewolves. In one corner there was an open sarcophagus of early Egyptian vintage, occupied by a mummified tenant who had obviously become defunct around the time King Tut cashed in his royal chips.
It wasn’t the mummy that flabbergasted me, however. In the middle of the room there was a circular table of clear plastic, the kind that bends light-rays. A full zodiac had been etched into the table-top, and concealed somewhere under the circular rim a fluorescent tube glowed brightly. Its light followed the etched design in the lucite and then sprayed upward, dramatically revealing a human face. At least I hoped it was human. For a brief instant I wasn’t any too sure.
The head was engulfed in a turban of black satin, from which a red jewel glittered bloodily. Below this there were two dark eyes in hollow sockets, a nose like an eagle’s beak, a saffron-sallow complexion and a beard. I’ve lamped a lot of facial foliage in my time, but this set of spinach took the prize. It was black and curly and parted in the middle, sweeping to east and west like a bifurcated broom.
“What the dickens,” I said when I got my breath back. “A growth like that could send Gillette stock down six points.”
The whiskers stirred in what might have been a faint smile—I wasn’t positive. The one thing I could be certain of was that the hairy face was attached to a body. As my eyes grew accustomed to the subdued light I saw that the man was seated on a chair resembling a high-backed throne, upholstered in the kind of cloth they use for lining coffins.
He wore a single robe-like garment of purple to match the ceiling, and his hands were folded on top of the lucite table. They were long-fingered hands, and at first I thought they were dirty. Then I realized the black smudges weren’t dirt. They were tufts of hair. Each finger had as much as the average man uses for a mustache. In my disgust, I said something low but emphatic.
“Aw!” Reginald Percival Clancy protested. “You hadn’t ought to talk to the Mahatma like that, Mister Ransom. It ain’t respectful.”
I said: “So this is the Mahatma, hey?” I pulled out the rod I had glommed from the New York torpedo and brandished it menacingly. “Okay, fortune teller, let’s talk business.”
The whiskers moved again, and a voice came out of them: deep, resonant, profoundly soothing, almost hypnotic.
“Business. Ah yes. That is why I had you brought to me.”
“Now just a minute,” I snapped. “You didn’t have me brought to you. I came under my own steam. To prove it, let me call your attention to this heater I’m holding. It formerly belonged to your stooge, here—Reginald. I took it away from him. If I had wanted to, I could have made him eat it. And unless you offer a plausible explanation of this whole screwy caper, I may make you eat it.” When the whiskers stirred this time it was a definite smile—benign, gentle and somehow patronizing. White, even teeth glistened in startling contrast to the black foliage, while the tip of a red tongue moistened equally red lips.
“Spoken bravely,” Mahatma Guru intoned in that basso profundo voice. “And you are indeed entitled to a full explanation. This screwy caper, as you term it, was based upon my desire to hire you.”
I blinked at him. “I don’t get it.”
“I shall try to make it plain. This morning I discovered that my life was in danger. There was murder in my horoscope—”
“Now cut that out!” I snarled. “Save your horoscope hogwash for the suckers. I’m not having any.” All the same, his tone made the short hairs prickle at the nape of my neck.
He moved his hands on the lucite table top. “Please do not interrupt. As I say, I foresaw my own murder. But the stars merely incline; they do not compel. Warned in advance, there was a slim chance that I might avert this danger—if I could hire someone of dauntless courage to protect me.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” I said.
“I do not seek to flatter you. I had heard of your reputation for toughness, and frankly I doubted it. So I decided to test you. I sent Clancy with orders to bring you here at gun’s point. If he had succeeded, it would have indicated that you were not as brave as you were supposed to be. In that case I planned to pay you for your inconvenience and dismiss you. But if you disarmed Clancy, I would know you were the kind of a man I needed.”
Wacky as this sounded, it still added up to make sense. When I analyzed it I could begin to understand why Reginald Clancy had turned so meek after I bested him. I’d measured up to qualifications, so naturally he had been only too eager to steer me to his boss. What Mahatma Guru wanted, apparently, was a detective who went around kicking people in the stomach.
That part was okay, but what I didn’t swallow was the fortune telling routine—the horoscope warning of murder. I said so, very bluntly.
“You’ll have to do better than that stars-foretell-death stuff, chum.” I leered at him. “If you’re figuring on hiring me, be more specific. Who is it wants to kill you, and for what reason?”
“The planets do not name names,” he said slowly. “When I sent Clancy out for you, I did not know who desired to murder me. I only knew that I was in great peril from an unrevealed source.”
I said: “Now wait. Are you trying to say you want me to begin fine-combing Hollywood on a blind hunt for some character who may be gunning for you? Do you expect me to go through the directory, starting with the A’s and working down the alphabet? That’s ridiculous.”
He nodded his black turban. “I agree. Such a search would be both foolish and fruitless. I would no
t even suggest it. Moreover, it would be unnecessary—because, you see, within the past hour I have learned my enemy’s identity.”
“Yeah? Who?”
“She is a very lovely woman, and her name is Lola Dulac. She is my wife.”
I gazed at him, flabbergasted. Lola Dulac was one of Paratone Studio’s brightest stars, a dainty and diminutive brunette who had skyrocketed to the top of the Hollywood heap within a period of three brief years. Starting out with bit parts in B pix, she had swiftly graduated to big-budget epics and leading roles. Now she was Paratone’s biggest box office attraction and her annual income tax would have kept me in Cadillacs for the next decade. Calling her a potential murderess seemed as absurd as dunking your doughnuts in prussic acid.
And besides, the Dulac doll couldn’t possibly be Mahatma Guru’s wife. She was already married to Pete Hollister, a character hambo on the Paratone payroll. They’d got hitched in Nevada less than six months ago and they were reputed to be the happiest couple on the Coast.
I took a step toward the illuminated lucite table and favored the Mahatma with one of my best sneers—the kind I reserve for people I dislike.
“You’re commencing to irritate me, pal,” I said. “I happen to know Lola Dulac and her hubby. I knew them long before they got married. I’ve been to parties with Lola when she was single, and I’ve doubled for Pete Hollister in danger routines when I was a stunt man. They’re both nice kids. Lola especially. Anybody that says she’s the killer type is either insane or a liar. Furthermore—”
“Wait,” he interrupted me. “Before you permit your misguided chivalry to make an idiot of you, let me tell you that Lola visited me while Clancy was out looking for you. In fact, she had left this house only a few minutes before you and Clancy carne in. Having murdered me, she went away quickly.”
I did a double take. “Having murdered you?”
“With a small automatic. Either a twenty-two or a twenty-five I think. Not that the caliber matters. At such close range, any gun would have been quite effective. Clancy, the room lights, please.”
Clancy sidled to the wall, flipped a switch. Bulbs glowed in an old fashioned chandelier overhead, at the center of the droopy purple ceiling drapes. Then Mahatma Guru dramatically opened his robe, pushed the circular table away from him, stood up and intoned sepulchrally:
“I forced myself to live long enough to tell you what happened. Behold my death wounds.” He sounded almost smug as he said it.
I took a petrified gander at the crimson rawness near his heart. Then he slowly toppled, and I leaped forward to catch him. I didn’t quite make it.
He folded over, sank back in his throne and buried his whiskery map on the lucite table top, spang in the middle of the glowing zodiac. Clancy shoved me aside, rushed for his boss and then pulled back, shuddering.
“Jumpin’ jitters!” he said soberly. “The Mahatma kicked the bucket!”
CHAPTER III
LAPSE OF MEMORY
Frantically I hunted for a phone but there wasn’t one. If I hankered to do any dialing, Reginald Percival Clancy informed me, I would have to go elsewhere. “The Mahatma ain’t had time to get one put in,” he said. “And besides, if you’re thinking about calling a doctor it won’t do no good. What the poor guy needs now is a undertaker.”
“What he needs first is a flock of cops,” I snarled. “Hold the fort.” Then I went racing out to my coupe, swung it in a U-turn, and headed for Melrose Avenue. Melrose is a business thoroughfare and I was looking for a drug store or a beanery with a public phone booth.
I found a phone.
Two minutes and one nickel later I was talking to police headquarters, and another minute got me my friend Ole Brunvig of the homicide squad. “Nick Ransom talking,” I said, and gave him the Mahatma’s address on Van Ness. “Better get out here fast, and bring the help with you. I’ve just stumbled into a murder, senior grade.”
Brunvig sounded as though he might be having trouble with his ulcers. “Just my luck, Sherlock!” he complained fretfully. “Haven’t you got anything better to do than hunt up homicides to dump in my lap?” Then, wearily, in a tone of embittered resignation: “Who’s dead?”
“A star gazer, name of Mahatma Guru. He died of slugs in the chest. It seems he cast his own horoscope and discovered murder in it, so he tried to hire me for protection. Unfortunately I didn’t reach him in time to do any good; he had already been shot when I arrived. He told me he was killed by—”
“Now wait!” Brunvig’s infuriated bellow sliced across my monologue. “What kind of curves are you pitching at me? What’s this about horoscopes and a dead man naming his murderer?” Suspicion came into his voice. “Listen, if you’re drunk, I’m going to have your license withdrawn, friendship or no friendship. I mean that.”
I told him to go climb a string. “It so happens I’m sober,” I said. “This Guru guy had been shot a while before I arrived. His injury was fatal but lingering. He managed to stay alive until I showed up, so he could give me information. Then he joined his ancestors.”
“Oh, yeah? Why didn’t he phone some law? Why didn’t he phone a doctor? Why didn’t he—”
“His joint isn’t wired for sound,” I butted in. “Which is why I’m talking to you from a pay station. Now grab your car and get out here.” I hung up before he could ask me any more childish questions, barged back to my bucket and started back for the Mahatma’s place.
En route, it suddenly dawned on me that I’d neglected to tell Ole the essential ingredient of the story—the part about Guru naming Lola Dulac as the killer who’d shot him. That was the crux of the whole scenario. A dying man’s testimony regarding his murderer is admissible as evidence in court, provided the victim knows he’s dying and there are witnesses to his statement. Guru, by saying Lola Dulac was the person who shot him, had handed her a one-way ticket to the gas chamber, and if I had remembered to mention it to Brunvig, he would have sent out a bevy of bulls to nab her, pronto.
As it was, she might even now be taking a powder for parts unknown, and if she succeeded in evading arrest, it would probably be my fault. I wondered if that, subconsciously, was the way I wanted it. Your mind pulls funny tricks on you sometimes, and I had always had a warm spot in my heart for Lola Dulac. It was difficult for me to see her in a murder role—she wasn’t the killer type. Maybe that was why I’d failed to put the finger on her. Maybe, without realizing it, I wanted her to beat the rap.
On the other hand, perhaps Ole Brunvig’s crabbiness had caused me to skip mentioning Lola in connection with the kill. Maybe, away down deep, I’d hoped to make the case tougher for him. When I considered this, I knew I’d dumped myself in a jackpot. Anyway you looked at it, I had withheld important information, and just as soon as Brunvig found it out he would blow up like Vesuvius. I had a dismal mental picture of myself shorn of my license and forced to go back to studio stunting.
“God forbid!” I whispered piously as I parked. Then I drifted into Mahatma Guru’s implausible parlor, wondering if I might save face by leaving Reginald P. Clancy here to admit the cops while I sallied forth personally to pinch Lola. If I handed her to Brunvig on a silver platter, maybe he would overlook the boner I’d pulled.
I found Clancy walking around disconsolately, biting his fingernails. He greeted me with a plaintive: “Aw, gumshoe, what kept you so long? I don’t like this idea of having to stick around with a stiff. Gives me the willies.”
“I’m not too fond of it myself,” I said, and stole an unwilling glance at the Mahatma’s body. He was still slumped in the throne-like chair and doubled over with his whiskers crinkled under his face on the lucite table. His black turban was askew and his short hairy hands groped stiffly at nothingness as he slept the long sleep.
I moved toward him, thoughtfully. Clancy widened his peepers at me. “Hey, flatfoot, what you going to do?�
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“A favor for the morgue orderlies,” I said. “If we let this fellow stay in that position much longer, rigor mortis will harden him like a pretzel and they’ll have to press him between the pages of a dictionary to straighten him out for the stretcher.” I beckoned. “Here! Come help me put him on the floor before his joints get stubborn.”
“Oh, no.” Clancy’s expression got mulish. “Not me, Hawkshaw. Somebody else, maybe, but not me.”
“What’s the matter? Scared?”
“Dead guys is out of my line. Besides, you ain’t supposed to touch no corpse until the cops gets in their licks first. I seen that somewheres in a book.”
Tentatively I flexed the murdered Mahatma’s arm and it resisted me. “I guess you’re right, Reggie,” I said. “It’s too late anyhow.” It wasn’t too late for me to rectify a blunder, though, and I made for the door. “When Lieutenant Brunvig gets here with his homicide henchmen; sing him the story and then tell him I’ve gone witch hunting.”
“Huh?” he looked perplexed.
“It’s self-defense,” I explained. “I don’t want my license yanked for a mistake I made, so I’m doing something about it.”
“Mistake? What mistake?”
“I forgot to tell Brunvig about Lola Dulac.”
He stiffened visibly. “You mean the dame who croaked the Mahatma? You forgot to put the heat on her?” A scowl darkened Reginald’s face. “Say, listen here, you wouldn’t be fronting for her, would you? I wouldn’t like that. It wouldn’t be fair to the Mahatma.”
I said: “Your loyalty to him is very commendable indeed, considering that you’ve been working for him less than a week. Apparently you’re a citizen who likes to see justice prevail.”
“Yeah, is that bad?” he demanded righteously.
“Not at all, pal. I’m the same way myself. By the same token, if you think I’d front for a murderer you’re as haywire as eleven to the dozen. Remember I’m a private dick, which makes me a sworn arm of the law in a left-handed way. When they issued my tin they made me take an oath to uphold the statutes of California, including the ones applying to homicide.”
The Noir Mystery MEGAPACK ™: 25 Modern and Classic Mysteries Page 24