We looked in the dresser drawer. There were several pairs of gloves there, but none like the one that had been found, and there was no odd glove.
“Well,” O’Malley said, “I guess that’s all we can do here.”
We went out and got into the car.
“What do you make of it, O’Malley?” I asked. “Is Norman guilty?”
“How do I know?” O’Malley answered.
“Well,” I said, “I’d like to stick around.”
“I ain’t going to do anything more right now. I’ll let you know.”
* * * *
The second day afterward he called me up.
“There’s something might be going to happen over at the station house,” he stated, “if you’d care to be there.”
I knew that they had Norman at the station house. I went. There were several people at the station but Norman was not among them, and O’Malley was not there but he was expected. He came in presently, carrying a package, and had a stranger with him.
“This here is Mr. Colling,” he introduced him. “Mr. Colling and his wife live in the building next to where Norman lived. So I asked him would he come over to the station house and tell us what he can about the Normans, and he said he would.”
We all went into the captain’s office.
“The first thing we want you to do, Mr. Colling,” O’Malley told him, “is to try on this glove.”
He brought out the glove. Colling looked at him quickly in surprise, but he took the glove and put it on. It fitted.
“I don’t know anything about this glove,” he remarked, “but it would fit a hundred thousand men besides me.”
“Sure,” O’Malley replied. “Probably it would fit several million. Now the next thing, will you make the fingerprints of your right hand on a piece of paper for this gentleman?”
Colling, frightened, was ready to refuse but saw that it was useless. The expert took his fingerprints. O’Malley unwrapped his parcel and I saw that it was the steering wheel of the Norman car, which had been so wrapped as to preserve its surface. He gave it to the expert, who powdered it with a white powder, and when the powder was blown off, the prints of a man’s fingers grasping the wheel remained. The expert compared the prints on the wheel with those of Colling’s fingers. Colling, anxious, grew steadily paler.
“They the same?” O’Malley asked the expert, finally.
“Yes.”
“Well, Mr. Colling,” O’Malley said, “I guess we got you. You’ll understand that if I tell you how I done it. This glove here had been cleaned so there was a number inside it like the cleaners always put there. It took me about a day going from one cleaner to another to find out whose mark that was, and then I was lucky because they had it on the books that the gloves had been delivered to your address.
“I asked around and found out that sometimes, when Norman was away, you and Mrs. Norman had been seen together. Norman was out of town a good deal. I asked him, did he have any money, and he said he had about fifteen hundred dollars that his wife kept for him in a savings account, but the bank told me that Mrs. Norman had drawn that money all out the day that she was killed. So then I remembered that she had taken the labels out of her clothes, and there I had it; you and her were going away together, but instead you killed her. You took off your glove before you shot her and afterward you couldn’t find it. Then you drove the car home and parked it by the Norman garage as the safest way of getting rid of it.”
Colling stared at him; then he broke.
“I had to do it,” he said, sobbing. “We had been going together for a year and she said that if I didn’t go away with her she’d tell my wife about us.”
“I don’t understand this, O’Malley,” I said, after we had left the station house. “They said there were no prints on the steering wheel and yet you found Colling’s prints there.”
“Did you fall for that the same as he did?” O’Malley asked. “You ought to try to be smarter. Those weren’t his fingerprints. They were mine. I put them on the steering wheel and fixed it with the expert to take a long while examining them while Colling watched him and say that they were his. If he was innocent he’d know it was a plant, but if he was guilty he’d know they might be his. I figured he’d been worrying about losing the glove, and the prints might break him. They did.”
“It was great police work,” I commented, “and you’ll get pleasure out of telling Norman that you’ve caught the man that did it.”
“Me tell him?” O’Malley questioned. “No; I like that guy Norman. He loved his wife. Some harder cop than me’ll have to tell him that she had been fooling him for over a year and had taken his money and was leaving him for someone else.”
THE FOURTH DEGREE
Originally published in Collier’s, May 23, 1932.
“What a great break they give a guy when he is a cop!” O’Malley said sarcastically. “Look what kind of a case they give me now! In this case a guy got murdered for the money he was carrying. He come from Philadelphia to New York to collect money that was owing him and afterward he went out to Coney Island and the next morning they found what was left of him in a marsh behind some bushes. They think they got an idea who bumped him but they been working on this case a month and they can’t prove nothing. So now they give the case to me to prove what they ain’t able to. Is that giving a cop a break?”
“Who is it they suspect?” I asked.
“A guy named Murphy. He was seen getting acquainted with this fellow. They had Murphy in and sweated him a couple of times but they couldn’t get nothing on him and so they had to let him go. So now the Chief says to me, ‘Go out and get this bird, O’Malley; these cops are dumb!’ ‘Would somebody that wasn’t dumb be a cop? I asked him. Well, here we are.”
We were, in fact, at Coney Island. We parked the car and got out and walked along a street of amusements.
“This here’s the place where he hangs out,” O’Malley stated. “I never seen this Murphy, so I got it fixed with an entertainer in the place to introduce me to him.”
It was an open-faced café. We went in. It was afternoon but people were dancing and a hard-faced young man sat at a table with a girl in entertainer’s costume. I knew by the look in the girl’s eyes when she caught sight of us that this was the right man. He was a tough customer. O’Malley surprised me; the moment we entered the place he stopped looking like a cop and looked as hard as Murphy did. I could not tell how he did it. He spoke to the girl and introduced me to her and she introduced us to Murphy.
“These boys are all right,” she told him. “The big guy is from my home town.”
We sat down and had some beer which they said was near, but it wasn’t, and O’Malley and the girl talked about people and a town I’d never heard of. I decided that the place and people were fictitious and that they were getting enjoyment out of their performance. When O’Malley paid for the beer he took out a roll of money and I saw Murphy eying it.
“What have youse guys got in mind?” Murphy asked us.
“When I come to this place,” O’Malley stated, “I take in everything.”
We got up to go and Murphy got up with us.
“Anything youse want to see,” he said, “I can show you. I know the places.”
I could see that Murphy followed money when he saw it. He might not intend to steal it, but there was always a chance that some of it might come his way. We went around, three together, and bet on our skill manipulating mechanical race horses and ringing canes and shooting at targets, and Murphy won a couple of dollars.
“This is kind of dull,” O’Malley said finally. “Let’s find something better. What I want most is to get my fortune told.”
We looked at the outside of several fortune-telling places but O’Malley didn’t like the looks of them; finally we all three went into one. There was a quite pretty woman inside who
told fortunes by looking into a crystal. O’Malley paid her and she looked into the crystal and told him the usual sort of things; he would see some hard times, she said, but in the end he was going to be rich, but he had to watch out for a dark man who was threatening him.
“That’s fine,” O’Malley told her, “but anybody could tell me those things. How do I know they’re true? You tell me something about myself that I know is true and I’ll believe you.”
The girl looked into the crystal for a while. “You wouldn’t want to hear it.”
“Sure, I want to,” O’Malley said. “Go ahead and tell it, sister.”
“No,” she refused.
“Go on; I ain’t got anything in my life to conceal.”
“No; you won’t like it,” she repeated; but he urged her to tell us what she saw. “I see jewels,” the girl said. “Diamonds. There’s blood on ’em. You and another man—” She stopped and looked at me. “You and this man with you”—she pointed at me—“killed a woman in a hotel room for her jewelry.”
“That’s a lie!” O’Malley yelled at her. He was very angry. “You got no business telling a customer anything like that. It ain’t true and I got a mind to go and complain about you to the police.”
“You made me tell it,” she answered. “I didn’t want to—and I ain’t afraid of you going to any cops.”
When we got outside, O’Malley stopped and looked back at the place in indecision.
“What do you know about that?” he said to me. “That’s a hot one! How did she know about us killing that dame? Did she see it in the crystal or how was it? What we’d ought to do is go back and knock that girl off before she tells anyone. What do you think?”
Till now I hadn’t said anything because I couldn’t make out what was going on, but now I saw I had to. “I don’t think she’ll tell anyone,” I said. “It’s part of her business not to.”
“Well, maybe,” O’Malley answered doubtfully. “Anyway, she’s the only one that knows it.” Then he stopped as if he’d recollected and looked at Murphy.
“Youse don’t think I’d say anything, do you?” said Murphy. “I’m a right guy. I wouldn’t tell no one.”
He looked as if he regarded us as dangerous company and would like to get away. We walked on a ways together until we came to a street corner.
“Well,” Murphy said, “I guess I got to leave you. I got a date with a friend of mine.”
“We’ll go with you,” O’Malley replied suspiciously. “Is the friend you’re going to see a cop?”
Murphy was uneasy. “You got me wrong,” he said. “I wouldn’t rat on anybody.”
“I’d feel better about you,” O’Malley told him, “if she hadn’t said a dark man was threatening me. You’re dark, and I don’t know nothing about you except that a girl I’d met introduced you.”
We went on and Murphy didn’t turn in anywhere. When we came to the end of the street we went down and sat on the beach. There were a good many people on the beach but nobody near us.
“You know what I heard?” O’Malley said to me.
I did not, as usual, know what to say and merely waited
“I heard,” O’Malley said, “that there’s a current here. You put a body into this water here and it goes out to sea and no one ever finds it.”
Murphy was more uneasy still. We sat a while looking at the ocean. Then O’Malley took out his gun, unloaded it, snapped it to be sure it was working right, reloaded it and put it away. Murphy watched him.
“It’ll be dark now pretty quick,” O’Malley told me.
“Say!” Murphy exploded. “I know what youse two guys are thinking. You’re thinking you’ll knock me off for fear I’ll tell the cops. But you got me wrong, I tell you. Youse two fellows ain’t the only ones that ever shoved anybody off. I done it myself about a month ago.”
“Anybody could say that,” O’Malley told him unbelievingly.
“It’s right, though. Didn’t you see it in the papers? A guy from Philadelphia.”
“I didn’t see it,” O’Malley said.
“Didn’t you either?” Murphy asked me anxiously. I shook my head.
“I done it, though,” he asserted. “I met this guy in a café and saw he had a roll on him and so I stuck around with him. When he got ready to go I told him I had a car and would drive him in. I swiped a car belonging to a friend of mine and when we got part way I bumped him on the head and took his pocketbook that had his roll in it and hid him in some bushes.”
“What do you think of it?” O’Malley asked me.
I wondered what he might want me to say. “It might be true,” I ventured; but O’Malley shook his head incredulously.
“Sure, it’s true,” Murphy insisted. “You got a car here? If you don’t believe me, I’ll show you where I done it.”
We went and got the car and Murphy directed us as we drove back toward New York. Part way in, he stopped us.
“Right here,” he said, “is where I bumped him and over there is where I put him in the bushes.”
We got out and looked at the place. There were footmarks in the soft ground, but there was nothing else, and after studying it O’Malley turned to Murphy unbelievingly.
“That’s what you say,” he observed.
“Sure I do. Now listen. After I hid the guy I drove on a ways, then I looked at the pocketbook. I seen it had his initials on it, so I took the money out and stuck the book in some weeds beside a culvert right over there.”
* * * *
We got back in the car and drove a little farther. Murphy got out. He fumbled in some weeds and came back bringing the pocketbook.
“There!” he said triumphantly. “Am I a right guy or am I yellow? Youse don’t think now, do you, that I’d talk to cops?”
“Sure, I do,” O’Malley answered. “You’re talking to one now.”
He put the handcuffs on him.
“This is great work, O’Malley!” I said admiringly. “You certainly gave him the fourth degree—outguessed him! I see through it now. Of course you had the fortune-teller fixed to say what she did.”
“You’re getting clever.”
“You say cops are dumb, hut they’re not all dumb—not while you’re one of them.”
“Sure, we’re dumb,” he answered. “The only advantage we got is that birds like our pal Murphy here are still dumber than we are.”
IN A MIRROR
Originally published in Collier’s, July 9, 1932.
“This is a Long Island murder,” said O’Malley, “so whoever gets credit out of it, it won’t be me; but they got me working on the Manhattan end of it. Am I a messenger-boy or what am I? These were two New York girls that lived together, and for a joke they put an ad in a paper like it was some girl that wanted to get married. Well, a lot of guys answered it and they liked one letter pretty well, so they wrote back to him and met the guy.
“These girls were secretaries, but one of ’em, named Miss Wells, had some dough she had inherited from her father. Then she fell in love with the guy that answered the ad and agreed to marry him; so she took four thousand dollars out of the bank and went out on Long Island with him to buy a house he’d showed her there. They found her murdered.”
“I suppose,” I said, “as long as girls consent to marry men whom they know nothing about, such murders will happen.”
“Does a girl ever know anything about a guy, even if she’s married to him?” O’Malley answered. “This guy gave the girl a false name but now we got his right one. This is him.”
He took a police flier from his pocket, with the usual portrait and the heading, “Wanted for Murder,” and I studied it.
“He looks capable of any crime,” I decided.
“Yeah? You think that because he’s wanted for murder. If he’d just gave some money to a hospital you’d think he had a fine face
. This guy was raised in Manhattan and they think he’s hiding here, so I got to trace him down, But first I got to find out where to look for him.”
We drove out onto Long Island to where they had the girl. She was an unusually pretty girl and was about twenty-two years old. They had her clothes there and the things she had been carrying; and there was a faded bunch of sweet peas which had been fresh when she was wearing them and her handbag, which the money had been in, was still open as it had been found.
“He probably bought those flowers for her,” I hazarded, “and she thanked him and pinned them on and maybe kissed him for them, and all the time he knew what he was going to do to her.”
“Say, you’re a great guy to go around with, ain’t you?” O’Malley remarked sarcastically. “When you get thoughts like that why don’t you keep ’em to yourself?”
He examined all the articles very carefully.
“They got this guy’s ma and pa here,” he told me. “He lived with ’em. That’s why I had to come out here to talk with ’em. But do I like the job? I’ll say not. Auston their name is.”
But I had already seen the name James Auston on the police flier. We went to the station house. They had the girl she had lived with there and had been questioning her, and in another room they had the young man’s parents. They were a neat, respectable couple, a small middle-aged man and a little gray-haired woman, who looked as though events had stunned them.
“I guess you seen enough cops already,” O’Malley told them, “but there’s still some questions that I got to ask you. I want to know who your son’s friends was and what places he most often went to.”
We sat down and the little man gave us a list of people and places which O’Malley noted down. The woman listened. Her eyes were red with weeping. When we got up to go, she rose and faced us.
“He didn’t do it!” she said, trying to keep steady. “I want you to understand that. I realize, of course, that you don’t know anything about him; but I’m his mother and have known him all his life and I tell you he didn’t do it!”
The Detective O'Malley MEGAPACK Page 3