He put out his hand to take hold of the edge of the kitchen door and show us what he meant; then he remembered about fingerprints and didn’t touch it.
“I want this place printed,” he declared.
He said something to the cop and then he and I went downstairs and telephoned the identification bureau. They said they’d send a fingerprint man immediately. When we got back upstairs the cop was standing in the fifth-floor hall and Elwood was looking out the window of the apartment. The fingerprint man got there in about twenty minutes and blew his powders on all the smooth surfaces in the place.
“No prints except the girl’s,” he said.
“You try that kitchen door.”
He tried it. “No prints at all here.”
“The guy was too smart for us,” O’Malley said in discouragement.
We went back to the street and parted with Elwood. When we got around the corner O’Malley started to run, until we found a cab.
“We got to move quick!”
He gave the cabman an address but I didn’t know where we were going until we got to the East Side place where Elwood lived.
“Mr. Elwood said he’d meet us here,” O’Malley told the landlady.
“His door must be unlocked, then. Third floor, the room in front.”
We went up. The door was locked but O’Malley found a way to open it. He searched the place as fast as he could. In the space under a dresser drawer he found a dozen letters and six of them were the same as the ones that Elwood had given us, but they were written with a different typewriter.
“What’s the meaning of this?” I demanded in bewilderment.
O’Malley didn’t answer me because there was an interruption. Elwood had come in the door.
“What’s the idea?” he shouted.
O’Malley got between him and the door. “No idea at all, except I’m going to put the cuffs on you for murder, Robert.”
Elwood was quick. He was halfway out the window when we caught him by the legs.
“What is all this, O’Malley?” I demanded, after we had taken Elwood to the station-house.
“This Elwood’s people live in Washington. We got a wire on him now at headquarters from the Washington police. There’s a girl there with plenty of dough his folks want him to marry, but he’d got mixed up with this Mary Neal they didn’t know about, and she wasn’t the kind he could break off with without her making trouble. So he schemed to get rid of her. I figure he picked that apartment without ever going in it, because he could see it had a vacant one underneath it, and he told her to take it so they could live in it when they was married. Then he went there and knocked her off. He knew he’d be the first one questioned when they found her, so he beat us to it by coming to the station-house and saying she had disappeared. There wasn’t no guy with a small mustache.”
“Of course,” I said, “he wrote that farewell letter to himself.”
“You’re getting good. When I asked him for her other letters he seen that if they weren’t on the same machine he’d be suspected. So he had to copy them. There ain’t any typewriter in his place, so I guess we’ll find he used one at the place he works. He’s a smart guy, but smart guys have dumb spots in ’em. It was a dumb spot when he kept the letters after copying ’em.”
“But,” I objected, “I’m sure when we went to that apartment this morning, you only suspected him, and when we came away you knew that he was guilty. How was that?”
“You forget the kitchen door.”
“There were no marks on the kitchen door,” I said indignantly.
“There’d ought to have been. I put mine on when you two wasn’t looking.”
I didn’t get it. Then suddenly I did.
“Good Lord!” I exclaimed. “You put your fingerprints on the edge of the door without his knowing it. Then you and I went to telephone and you’d told the cop to step out into the hall. Elwood had been careful not to leave fingerprints when he did the murder, but he couldn’t remember whether he’d touched the kitchen door or not, and he took the chance to wipe it off. When the fingerprint expert found no prints there, you knew Elwood was guilty. You’re one clever cop, O’Malley!”
“I wish you was police commissioner, then I might get promoted. So far, the only guy I can make think I’m smart is you.”
TOO MANY MILES
Originally published in Collier’s, April 1, 1933.
“This case,” said O’Malley, “a truck owner got knocked over. This fellow had a fleet of trucks and rented ’em, and sometimes I guess he rented some to rum-runners. Well, he was on Long Island for some reason. Then they found his car and looked up the license—Mawson his name was. Then they found him. He was in Jamaica Bay.”
“What had been done to him?” I asked.
“He had been shot. A guy’s got no chance to solve this kind of case, because he asks questions but nobody tells him the answers.”
We started asking questions. We were at police headquarters. They had a hard-eyed, well-dressed young man there, named Kizer, and O’Malley began with him.
“You a bootlegger?” he inquired. “Speak up; I’m no enforcement officer.”
“That’s what I am.”
“You rent some trucks from this dead guy the night that he got killed?”
“Not me. Some other fellows did. They delivered my part of the stuff to me all right. I don’t know their names.”
“In this case I guess nobody don’t know any names.”
Mrs. Mawson had been brought to headquarters, but had collapsed. A police surgeon had been taking care of her, and her own doctor had come there too. The doctors let us see her only a few minutes.
“What was your husband doing on Long Island that night?” O’Malley asked her.
“I have no idea. He never told me anything about his business.”
“Did he know he was on the spot?”
“If he did, he kept it from me. He knew I was always afraid something like this might happen. He was always driving around alone at night.”
“When did you see him last?”
“At dinner. The car was parked outside. After dinner he said he was going out and might be late, but I didn’t think anything of that because it happened so often.”
* * * *
Mrs. Mawson’s doctor came out of the room with us. He was young and pleasant-spoken and his name was Landol.
“Mrs. Mawson is in no condition to remember details right now,” he told us. “If she recalls anything that will be of help to you I’ll make a note of it.”
We thanked him.
“We’ll go see where they found the guy,” O’Malley decided.
We drove out to Jamaica Bay. There were marshes and innumerable inlets of the sea, and scores of small boats, some of which I did not doubt were rum-runners; and there were tire tracks in the marsh near where Mawson had been found, and O’Malley made careful note of them. We went then to look at Mawson. He didn’t look as I expected a truck owner would look. He was a dapper little man about thirty-five years old, partly bald, and he had worn hornrimmed spectacles. His spectacles were broken. He had been tightly tied with several pieces of new rope, and the police had cut the rope.
“Are those seaman’s knots, O’Malley,” I inquired, “or were they tied by bootleggers?”
He looked at them. “Them knots don’t mean a thing to me. We’ll see his car.”
We went to the garage where they had taken it. A Queensborough officer was in charge of it. It was a handsome car, and its tires were like the tire tracks in the marsh. There was no blood on it.
We examined it carefully and even took the cushions out of it to see if we could find pieces of the broken eyeglasses, but we couldn’t find any.
“He wasn’t killed in the car,” O’Malley decided.
There was a piece of cardboard on
the dash which said: “April 10. Mileage at last greasing of 9651.”
O’Malley looked at the speedometer. “This guy had drove forty-seven miles since his car was greased,” he commented.
“What of it?”
“Not anything, I guess.”
“You Manhattan lads are a little late,” the Queensborough cop informed us. “We already found out where this fellow got pushed over and we got the guy that done it.”
That was news to us. He told us where to go and we went over there. It was a hot-dog and oyster lunchroom, with some rooms behind it, and the police had found blood on the floor of one of the rooms and some new rope like the pieces of rope Mawson had been tied with. The place was full of officers. They had arrested the proprietor. He was a heavy-set, plump-faced man named D’Angelino, and he had a young and darkly pretty wife.
“How about this, wop?” O’Malley asked him.
D’Angelino became excited; he gesticulated. “Two guys fight in da back room and make-a da nose bleed. Dees rope clothes-a-line da same like everybody have.”
“You know a guy named Kizer?”
“Never meet-a da guy.”
We went back to Manhattan.
“That was a short murder case,” I commented.
“You think D’Angelino done it?”
“No; but I think he knows who did.”
“You might be right, at that. How far we come from where Mawson’s car was ditched till now?”
I hadn’t noticed.
“We come sixteen miles,” O’Malley informed me. “This Mawson had his car greased the day that he got killed, and he had went forty-seven miles afterward, and thirty-one of them miles we don’t know where he went. But we don’t know what time of day the greasing was done.”
“Would it do any good to know that?”
“I guess not. I’d just like to know it.”
We went to several garages near where Mawson had lived, and at the fourth one we found the mechanic who had greased the car.
“What time was that, buddy?” O’Malley asked him.
“Just before dinner, brother.”
“Did he say anything else about it?”
“Sure. He said grease the car and take it to his house and leave it. I done that.”
“Say anything more?”
“Sure. Said check the car all over and see that it was right because he was taking a long drive.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“Sure. Said he was going to Boston.”
“It’s a strange thing,” I observed, “if he was going to Boston, that he didn’t tell his wife.”
“She was upset and it might be she forgot about it. Well, there’s no use working on this case, because them smart Queensborough officers have beat us to it. So I guess I’ll take in a picture show.”
We separated.
“This Mawson,” he said, the next time I met him, “drove plenty places looking after his trucks. He drove to New Jersey and to Philadelphia and sometimes to Boston. This time he drove out on Long Island and he never come back. But he drove too many miles.”
“You don’t know where he went before he got killed.”
“You’re getting smarter than you used to be, but I’d like to know where he done all that mileage.”
We drove out on Long Island to where Mawson’s car was found.
“Notice how far we go,” O’Malley directed as we started on again.
We went north across the island. At College Point we took the ferry to The Bronx. From there we drove into Westchester and made a circuit and came back to Manhattan, but we didn’t stop anywhere till we got where Mawson lived.
“How far?” O’Malley asked.
“It happens,” I replied sarcastically, “that we have traveled just about forty-seven miles, but if that has anything to do with this case I’m a Dutchman.”
“Yeah? We’ll ask Mrs. Mawson.”
But we didn’t ask Mrs. Mawson. There was a nurse there who said the doctor had left orders that no one was to see Mrs. Mawson without his permission. The doctor would be there that evening.
We called up Doctor Landol’s office, but he wasn’t in; and then O’Malley called headquarters, but I didn’t hear what he said to them.
“I didn’t see no picture yesterday,” he said, “because I thought of something else to do. We might see one now because we got plenty time.”
We saw a picture. Afterward we went to headquarters but we merely loafed around. Then a uniformed cop and a plain-clothes man from Westchester came in with some new rope and some small pieces of glass sealed in an envelope.
“The guy’s oculist,” the plain-clothes man said, “says this glass is the same prescription that he gave him.”
We went back to the Mawsons’ but Dr. Landol told us Mrs. Mawson was too nervous to see anybody. O’Malley didn’t seem to mind.
“You’re a smart guy, Doc,” he told the doctor, “but I guess we got to take you to the station-house for murder.”
Landol tried to close the door on us but O’Malley had his foot in it. The doctor didn’t say anything after we had forced our way in; he just went and got his hat and coat.
“Does Landol live in Westchester, O’Malley?” I asked a half hour later.
“You got it.”
“But what had the bootleggers to do with it?”
“Are you that dumb? Not anything, and that guy D’Angelino didn’t neither. This Dr. Landol and Mrs. Mawson was what they call ‘too friendly.’ She is young and kind of gay and the doc is a young guy too, and Mawson was out of town a lot. It seems Mawson found out about ’em. He had to go to Boston and he thought Landol would go to his wife, so he stopped to settle things with Landol and they had trouble to the point where Landol shot him.
“Mawson had plenty shady people renting his trucks that might have knocked him off, and Landol figured to make it look like it was one of them that done it, so as to keep himself and Mrs. Mawson out of it. He done Mawson up with rope like gangsters might have, and he put him in Mawson’s car and took him to Long Island, and he pushed him out in Jamaica Bay and then he ditched the car. Afterward he come to town and told Mrs. Mawson. I guess they thought it would be safer if she didn’t tell Mawson was going to Boston, because to get to Boston he would have to go through Westchester.”
“All right,” I said, “but how did you find this out?”
“Why, it looked to me Mawson’s car had went too many miles if he was just going to see someone on Long Island. Then the guy in the garage said Mawson started for Boston. I found out where Landol lived, and we drove from where the car was found, past Landol’s place, and back to Mawson’s, and it made just the right distance. So I called headquarters and they had some Westchester cops search Landol’s home and they found rope there like Mawson had been tied with. When Mawson got shot it broke his eyeglasses. I figure Landol picked up what pieces of glass he could find, but he was in a hurry and he missed some of ’em. The Westchester cops found those in Landol’s living-room, because I’d said they was to look for ’em, and some of ’em was big enough so that Mawson’s oculist could say it was the same prescription he had given Mawson.”
“All very neat!” I stated, “but your explanation doesn’t hold together because everything you did presupposes that you realized all along that it wasn’t a gangster killed Mawson and suspected Landol might have done it; and you had no way of knowing that.”
“Yeah? How about them knots Mawson was tied up with?”
“You said they didn’t mean anything to you,” I accused him indignantly.
“Sure they didn’t. That’s why I had to find out about ’em. I asked around, and it turned out they was surgeon’s knots, the kind that doctors make in hospitals when they are doing operations.”
“Nice work, O’Malley! You certainly had this c
ase right.”
“Yeah? Even a cop can’t guess wrong all the time,” he answered.
THREE BULLETS
Originally published in Collier’s, April 15, 1933.
“This is another of them society murders,” said O’Malley. “The dead guy was named Carlton, and he come in town from Long Island last night, for overnight, and he went to his folks’ apartment. There wasn’t nobody in the place except just him, because everybody, even the servants, are at the Long Island house, and they can’t find that anybody came there. Still, he got knocked off. I guess I won’t get much on it.”
“How much have they got now?” I asked.
“Nothing, except that it looks like it might be a triangle case. This Carlton and another guy, named Roger Bassin, went with a lady named Mrs. Lessing. These are all young sporting folks, with plenty dough, that live partly in New York but mostly on Long Island and they ride fox hunting and have shooting parties and have dogs and horses, and you can’t hardly tell who is married to who. Carlton and this guy Bassin was always good friends till they both got to going with Mrs. Lessing and wanted to marry her. Then they got less friendly. It was figured she would marry one of ’em, but nobody knew which. Well, she won’t marry Carlton.”
“Anything to connect Bassin with the murder?”
“Not yet. He was in Now York last night, and Mrs. Lessing was in town, too, but all these people come in separately. Here’s where it happened.”
We were at the Carlton apartment. It had more than a dozen rooms and it was full of cops. The biggest room was a sort of living-room-library.
“What they found out here?” O’Malley asked one of the officers.
“He was bumped off in that big room. Some shooting—three bullets not an inch apart! There wasn’t nobody broke in here; whoever shot him come in after him, or was in here when he came. At night the hallboy runs the elevator; he didn’t see nobody. Someone could walk up when he was in the elevator and walk down the same way.”
The Detective O'Malley MEGAPACK Page 9