The Noir Mystery MEGAPACK ™: 25 Modern and Classic Mysteries

by Joseph J. Millard

  I was thinking about this—and the other half of my $1000 retainer flying out of the window on a fatalistic strike—when I pushed open the compartment door just as the train jerked and got underway.

  I saw the blonde first, watched her eyebrows skate upward and her full mouth flatten out and her eyes open in amazement. It penetrated my dull noggin that this amazement wasn’t all ersatz. There could be only one answer—and it wasn’t the fact that I lacked a bag of oranges.

  She hadn’t expected me to come back!

  That was it. So it hadn’t been my battered puss—said not to be too unhandsome—that had prompted her to pick me up. She had put me on the spot with that gag about the oranges. She’d expected a few squirts to come my way, and those squirts weren’t supposed to be orange juice.

  It didn’t make sense—even to a smart dick, and I wasn’t smart. I admit it. I just slog along in my bemused fashion, knowing that crime eventually stops like an inferior horse running on cocaine. And I’m usually right, given sufficient time and provided I’m lucky enough to be alive when the payoff numbers go up.

  I put the riddled valise down, kicked the door shut and started toward the blonde. I didn’t know just what I was going to do save get answers to questions.

  “So,” a voice said from the compartment seat partly obscured when the door was open, “they shot Count von Mike?” The words didn’t make sense right away, but they stabbed prodding fingers into my mind and started whispers playing hide-and-seek among practically dormant cells. Count von Mike was an important somebody, but just who he was or why he was important was not at all important right then.

  But the bald-headed, nattily-dressed guy sitting there was important—in a lousy sort of way—being no less than my employer.

  I cannot say my mind was in turmoil, for it isn’t capable of much more than a lazy spin, which is practically high gear for me.

  It shifted into high gear. Gradually it dawned upon me that he had known that possession of the valise called for murder—and had set me up as a stooge in a shooting gallery while he watched safely from the sidelines.

  In addition it was apparent that he knew the blonde; they were not just chance acquaintances.

  The whole setup was cockeyed. What point was there in hiring a shamus to deliver a valise, then having an accomplice see to it that the valise is not delivered safely?

  In my language there’s only one way to find out such riddles.

  I reached down, my left hand hooked onto his vest and shirt and he came upward. When he was up far enough my right backhanded him across his jowls four times before I permitted him to drop to the compartment seat.

  At the first blow the blonde screamed and jumped forward. I kicked her feet from under her and when the lug dropped I turned to see what else she needed.

  She was still on the floor, looking mad. A little automatic in her hand pointed at me, looking very mad—ominously and dangerously so.

  It brought me to an abrupt halt.

  She got up slowly, the gun holding steady. “Sit down, brains,” she said, “and listen to a fairy tale. Lugs like you have to learn the facts of life sometime.” I sat down abruptly. Nobody could have done anything else and stayed alive. Her eyes were rocks and she knew how to handle a gat.

  “Okay, sister,” I said. “I’ve been put on the spot twice—once by the jerk, and once by you; and I want to know why.”

  “There’s going to be a murder. You were just supposed to help it along.”

  “I—help—murder—”

  “A nice clean murder—a piperoo. You wouldn’t have been involved in any manner.”

  “Now listen, sister. Murder is murder; you don’t get messed up in those things without getting yourself messed. On top of it, the victim is me. Two tries have proven that.”

  “I’m really sorry.” She actually looked sad. “It wasn’t meant to be that way. Why didn’t you just let them have Count von Mike?”

  “My job was to see that he was delivered safely. And whoinell, sister, is Count von Mike?”

  “Remember any Sing Sing broadcasts?”

  I got it then, got it good. Several years back there had been a comedy trio—one a dummy—who dominated two stooges. It was clever stuff—especially clever coming from a pen.

  “You mean this guy?” I pointed to the guy out cold on the compartment seat. “And that?” My toe kicked the valise.

  “Cut it out, chum,” the valise growled. “This is no fun.”

  I took a quick look at the blonde—and, so help me, she laughed. “The Count’s a really rough guy. He’s very touchy, too.”

  “And spooky.”

  “Not so spooky—just tough,” the guy said, sitting erect on the compartment seat. The backhands seemed to be forgotten, and apparently hadn’t phased him too much.

  He was looking at the holes in the valise, and I looked too—and shuddered. I was convinced that there was a human inside the valise. The voice had been as clear as that.

  The shudders were not for the ten C’s I wouldn’t get now, but the idea of lugging some midget around in a valise—and having him punctured when practically in my arms was repugnant. Also the cops toss guys in the can—and can them in steel for the duration—until they can explain why a guy should be in a valise in the first place and shot in the second place. And I couldn’t explain.

  The boss jerked his thumb at the valise and said, “Give me Count van Mike.”

  I couldn’t help it, but my hands were clammy and shaking when I grabbed the handle of the valise. I wasn’t quite sure what I would find inside, but curiosity had me on a merry-go-round.

  I noticed the boss’ eyes as I bent over, turning the caboose to the blonde and the gat. His eyes were old and tired and sad. The hentracks around them looked like a barnyard after a rain. It came to me that such sadness was of many years’ duration.

  When I placed the valise on the boss’ lap, he sighed and his breath was enough to send all distillery stocks skyrocketing. He was corn-cockeyed, a boozed-bosky, a lush-lalapalooza. And he was crying, the tears squeezing from his eyes, shuttling down the furrows of his cheeks, and making regular transfers from his chin to his flowing Oxford tie.

  “Take a good, long look, brother,” the blonde said. “Don’t you know him?”

  I took another look—and didn’t know him.

  “Maybe if he was wearing a toupee?” the blonde suggested.

  Thus picturing him in my mind’s eye—I got him. And holy Moses! It was the famed movie and radio ventriloquist, Harry Jergin. It was stupid that I had not recognized him before.

  Now I knew what I had been carrying in the valise. He was known as Count von Mike in Sing Sing—but to the nation’s audiences he was Charles Clunley—a humorous, mild-mannered dummy who was perpetually in trouble.

  His trouble was real now; he was involved in attempted murder.

  Jergin unlocked the valise and seated the dummy upon his lap. He caressed it and bent his head to its plastic one. There were two holes—one small, one large—in the dummy’s head where the slug had passed through.

  He was wearing a morning coat, a high top hat and a monocle. Jergin’s hand fondly went down the back of the coat until it reached the aperture in the dummy’s spine.

  The dummy’s mouth opened and its head swiveled and he looked up at Jergin.

  “Jergin!” it said accusingly. “You’re a murderer!”

  “I’m not,” Jergin whispered. “It’s just your imagination.”

  “Imagination, hell! This hole through my head isn’t imagination. Damn it all, man, it’s a fact, an actuality! A bullet did it, a bullet you had shot at me. It’s your own fault. You engineered the whole thing.”

  “I did nothing of the sort. I wouldn’t have you knocked off for anything in the world. Who del
iberately would have holes punched in a meal ticket?”

  “You would!” the Count whispered. And, so help me, that tricky and inanimate face actually was sorrowful and accusing.

  Jergin looked down upon it in a shame-faced manner, and tears again started to roll down his cheeks.

  “If it wasn’t for this dumb dick,” the dummy said, nodding at me, “I would have been kidnapped.”

  Jergin’s hand raised too late to stop the last few words.

  This was too much, far too much for a dumb detective. It came to me that Jergin was a slave to the dummy, that Jergin was a repressive, as the docs call it. And the dummy actually was an honest Jergin speaking Jergin’s mind as he himself was afraid to do, yet apparently unable to control himself.

  Dual personality stuff is out of my sphere. I have enough trouble understanding just an ordinary sort of mug.

  But this was not just one mug—there was two sides to him. And both—according to past performances—looked upon murder as inconsequential.

  “What’s this about kidnaping?” I barked. “Who would want to kidnap a dummy?”

  “You’d be surprised, Toots,” the blonde said, putting her toy back into the trunk women call a purse.

  “You know I won’t let him be kidnaped,” I said. “I was hired to see that he was delivered safely.”

  “Do you think he wants to be?”

  I looked at the dummy on Jergin’s lap, and the dummy looked at me, and said: “No!”

  Jergin said, “The slap-happy bum should be. He’s a killer!”

  “I’m not, but you are,” the dummy said, facing Jergin. “It’s a vicious sort of death, too.”

  Jergin’s hand again raised to throttle the dummy’s mouth too late.

  Then he turned to me and said, “I will take care of the Count. We have a few things to talk over. How about seeing us tomorrow morning?”

  Well that was quite a kiss-off, but after all he was the boss. He had hired me to protect the dummy, but now he was taking over the dummy himself. I didn’t feel right about it—but wotinell, I only work on salary.

  I had nothing to say, so I walked back to my compartment, thinking of a few little touches of murder, a kidnaping to come, a screwy boss—and the correct way to sue the pants off the boss.

  * * * *

  We were hammering across the flats of the Continental Divide next day, the mountains under and below us on both sides, when it happened.

  I was back in Jergin’s compartment. The blonde was Jean; she had told me that much. Jergin, himself, seemed bent on staying stiff. He was having a time, although a lot of it seemed double-talk, especially when he had the Count, or Charles Clunley, on his lap. It impressed me particularly that he kept referring and addressing the dummy as the Count—and not Charlie.

  Dumb as I am, I smelled something about this that was Sing Sing all over again. The two attempts on my life may have had something to do with such a thought.

  I was watching the scenery and I decided to leave Jergin’s compartment to go to the rear for a quick drink.

  When I opened the compartment door, I saw the trigger guy in the beaverskin coming toward me. He wasn’t alone. Preceding him was a short, fat and confident lug, swarthy and heavy-joweled with a wide mouth and dinky eyes that were overlapped by bags of fat and dissipation. The scar-faced man who had tried to knife me as I left my office trailed them.

  I slammed the door quick and turned to Jergin.

  “They’re here again. Only now they’re triple instead of one at a time.” I reached for the shoulder holster.

  Jergin’s bleary eyes seemed to clear momentarily. I thought I detected something canny and smug in their sudden glint. But at a time like that you can never be sure of anything.

  The knock on the door was loud and imperious—which seemed strange to me, seeing that the hoods must have known they were walking into a private dick’s gun. They don’t usually come for you with such effrontery and confidence.

  I couldn’t get it. The gun was flat on the side of my palm, and I bounced it suggestively.

  “Put it away! Put it away, quick,” Jergin ordered.

  “Now listen—” I started to say.

  “It’s part of your job,” he growled. “The rest of your fee will still be waiting in San Francisco.”

  I put it away and cursed myself for ever getting mixed up in anything as screwball as this. I’d been in crime before, but this thing was so unusual that I doubted that it all wasn’t a dream up and over anything I had ever encountered before.

  It was such a dream that it could only happen to dumb Mike Grady. It was to develop into the only murder (if you can call it that) that I ever heard of or expect to hear of where the killer went scot free. Or maybe he didn’t? Maybe the victim killed himself? You figure it out. It’s beyond the powers of a guy like me.

  The knock sounded again on the door. Jergin picked up the Count, seated the little demon on his lap, and fondled it.

  That did not make sense, either. Jergin was on the spot and knew it—and apparently did not care. He seemed inclined to play only with the dummy—the one thing that possessed the damnable part of his own most dangerous personality.

  The knocking sounded again. Jergin grinned fatuously, and the dummy said: “Going to lose me?”

  “I hope so,” Jergin said in a sad voice. “I hope so.”

  The blonde said: “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. The Count’s out for murder.”

  Well I was quite sure now that Jergin—or all of us—was off the beam. I felt safer facing hoods. They spoke my language—so when Jergin said, “Open the door,” I opened it almost thankfully.

  The swarthy and confident man came in first. Trailing him was the dead-panned killer who had tried to knife me. And last of all was the mug who’d shot the Count in the Denver station.

  This cluck grinned at me and said: “You were born lucky.”

  I looked him over and knew it was true. “You weren’t!”

  “Shuddup and shut the door,” the swarthy leader said, never looking at me. He was grinning toothily at Jergin and the dummy, like he had found his long-lost love.

  Jergin was looking at me and his eyes were silently saying to play it smart.

  I shut the door and pressed my back against it.

  The gun said, “You were born lucky,” and reached beneath my coat and took my automatic.

  I was boiling, but Jergin still was looking at me and nodding his head.

  I don’t like to be pushed around, but if obeying orders calls for pushing around—I’ll push—up to a certain extent.

  “This man, Count, was the one who tried to stab you and had you shot,” Jergin said to the dummy. “His name is—”

  “His name is Casso,” the dummy mumbled. “Why you know I met him eight years ago. He’s a high-binder from the word go—”

  Jergin’s hand raised, and—so help me—he slapped the dummy right across the puss, shutting it up.

  The dummy rolled its glass eyes and looked despondently at Jergin.

  “Listen,” said Casso. “Don’t ever hit that kid. Give him to me.” He reached out, crooking his right arm.

  “I don’t want to go with Casso,” the dummy said in a childish voice. “With him I’m mute, without character, and a killer—”

  “What’s he mean—killer?” Casso growled.

  “I wouldn’t know,” Jergin said. “He says the damnedest things.” He passed over the Count to Casso. It was only later that, in analyzing the conversation, that I ever knew a man to tell another—before witnesses—that he would be killed. But—through the Count—Jergin did just that.

  Jergin looked from the Count to Casso, and his eyes filled with tears again.

  “G’bye, Count,” he said.

&n
bsp; “Say! What the hell!” The Count did not sound like the Count at all. His modulated voice was gone. It was harsh, rasping and uncertain.

  “Cute, aren’t they?” the gun said to me. He was pretty confident about the whole thing. His scar-faced pal had seated himself near the blonde and was devoting his time between ogling her and Casso and the dummy.

  “Yeah, Very cute. Clever, too.”

  The dummy in Casso’s arms looked up into his face and said: “What’s this, boss?”

  “A snatch, kid,—a snatch.”

  “Now lookit here,” the dummy said plaintively. “After all, I don’t amount to much.”

  “You amount to one quarter of a million bucks!”

  “My! My! You don’t say so. Why for?”

  “Because without you the great Jergin and his movie and radio rights cannot click. You’re half of the act.”

  “So I am. So I am. I never thought of that before. A quarter of a million. My, oh, my! And here I’ve been selling my services to Jergin for a buck and a half a week. You have something there, pal.”

  “This will probably be the first time in history that a kidnaping did not concern a human being,” Jergin said, looking out the window. “How did you figure that angle out, Casso?”

  “Just figuring it safe, cluck. I don’t want to go back to Sing Sing. They can’t put you in the can for kidnaping a dummy.”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “But what will you be without him. Contracts will be cancelled; it’ll wash you up unless you bail him out.”

  Jergin took a long while to answer. “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Yes, without the Count you’re just a bum—like you were before I met you. This quarter million is just an old debt you owe, chum.”

  Casso started for the door, Scarface yawned, and the gun near me repeated, “You were born lucky.”

  I took him at his word when the train gave a slight lurch and the gun leaned toward the blonde.

  I let fly with a left, clipping him alongside the head. My right hand grabbed his rod.