“What do you think of it, O’Malley?” I inquired.
“I got no idea.”
“My idea,” said the cop, “is that his wife knocked him off.”
“Yeah?” said O’Malley. “Where’s this lady’s baggage? She didn’t go on a wedding trip without no baggage?”
I was surprised. I hadn’t noticed before that there was no evidence of a woman’s occupancy in the room.
“She had a small brown suitcase,” the manager informed us. “We don’t know what became of it. She didn’t take it with her and it wasn’t carried out by anyone else or we should have a record of it. There’s a floor-clerk on every floor who makes note of everything carried out of the rooms, or if it is taken down the service elevator or service stairs the porter has a record of it. It wasn’t here when the murdered man was found.”
“Did this dead guy ask for any particular room in the hotel?”
“Not that, exactly. He asked for a room on the east side of the house on the eleventh or twelfth floor.”
“You don’t think,” I remarked derisively, “that he asked for this particular room in order to be murdered in it?”
“He might.”
There was a sweet and pungent aroma in the room.
“This lady used strong perfume,” O’Malley observed. “I guess she spilled some of it.”
He went and smelled of a stained spot on the dresser cover. I smelled it too. The scent was distinctive and I didn’t remember meeting it before.
O’Malley cut the stained spot out of the dresser cover and put it in an envelope.
“Well, we ain’t found much here,” he decided.
Then we went back to the hotel office because O’Malley wanted to find out who had checked out of the hotel. There were quite a lot of them. O’Malley crossed off a number of the names. The manager knew some of the others as frequent guests of the hotel and O’Malley crossed those off too.
“You got a record which of these folks had trunks?” They had; and O’Malley marked them off too. There were three names left.
“I don’t suppose you keep what comes out of the wastebaskets in these rooms?” he questioned.
“We do until we are sure the guest has not thrown anything away which he will ask for afterward.”
A clerk brought some big envelopes. They were dated and marked with room numbers. There was no writing in them or anything that seemed to me to have importance. In the envelope marked 1231 there was the paper cover of a packet of matches with a telephone number written on it.
“What kind of a guy was in Room 1231?” O’Malley asked.
They remembered him as a big man with blond hair, well dressed. He had been in the hotel a couple of days and had checked out the afternoon before, more than twelve hours before the discovery of the murder. His baggage had been a big suitcase.
“There’s plenty guys in this town that could be described like that,” O’Malley commented.
He called up the telephone number to see what it was and it proved to be a church on Long Island.
“Nothing in that,” he said, disappointedly. “Well, we done a lot of work here and we have got nowhere. I’ll let you know if anything turns up.”
We left the hotel and the next day he called me up.
“You want to go out on Long Island?”
I met him at the station and we took a train out to Long Beach. A couple of plain-clothes men were on the same train with us but they didn’t speak to us or we to them. When we got to Long Beach we walked around and watched the bathers. A little before dinner-time we went to a café. The two plainclothes men who had come out on the train with us were there but they didn’t seem to notice us.
“This is the kind of perfume that lady used,” O’Malley remarked to me.
He produced a little bottle and uncorked it.
“Try some on your handkerchief.” Wave it around and see how nice it smells.”
He spilled nearly half the contents of the bottle on my handkerchief and the scent filled the place. Most of the men and women turned and looked at us. I wondered what kind of people they thought we were. One man didn’t look at us. He was a big man with blond hair and he seemed very nervous. He kept wiping the sweat off his temples with his napkin and finally he got up and went out. We stayed where we were but the two plain-clothes men went out after him. A little later we went out too. One of the plain-clothes men was standing down the street and we followed him and found the other one around a corner.
“In there,” the second man said to us, jerking his head toward a little bungalow.
The two plain-clothes men went around to the rear of the bungalow and we waited in front, but we didn’t go in. After a while a small woman with black hair came up from the beach in a bathing suit and went into the bungalow; so we went in. The woman was swiftly packing a small brown suitcase and the man was throwing things into another huge one.
“What is the meaning of this intrusion?” the man demanded when he saw us.
“We got an idea you two are going to be pinched for murder, fellow.”
The woman ran swiftly to the rear door, but the two plain-clothes men were coming in that way. They watched us uneasily while we searched the bungalow. We found a small packet of bills tacked to the under side of a dresser drawer. Then we found another in the back of a framed picture. Later we found some more. When we had all the packets they made fourteen thousand dollars.
“Fair enough, buddy,” O’Malley told the man. “Is this lady your wife?”
“She is.”
“How was all this, O’Malley?” I demanded, as we sat looking at the ocean and waiting for the police wagon.
“Why, it was a murder trap,” he answered. “When this Wester advertised to get married, this lady and her husband fixed it up that she would answer him. Their idea was to kill him for his dough. She met him in Atlantic City, where he wouldn’t know anything about her except the story she told him, and where she wouldn’t meet none of his friends that could recognize her after. She got him to sell his store.
“They got married and come to New York, with him bringing the money, and they went to that hotel where her husband had took a room a couple of days before and was waiting for ’em. She got Wester to ask for a room near where her husband’s room was. When they was in the room she got him to lay down for a nap while she went out to shop. After he was asleep she went to Room 1231 and give her husband the key and told him it was O. K. and Wester was asleep, and then she walked out of the hotel. Her husband went to the room and knocked Wester off and took the dough and left the key inside the room and went back to his own room. Then he checked out.”
“I understood most of that,” I said, “but what became of her baggage?”
O’Malley got up and put the small suitcase inside the big one. It still left room for some clothes.
“I see,” I said. Her husband, after the murder, took her suitcase to his room and it was carried out inside his bigger one. But how did you trace them down?”
“Why, she was a little woman and Wester was a big man and I figured she couldn’t take the chance to murder him; so someone was working with her. But there wasn’t any indication she was working with someone in the hotel, so probably it was a guest. But it wasn’t a guest in an even-numbered room because to get back and forth to that odd-numbered room he would have had to pass the floor-clerk. So I was looking for a guest that had checked out from an odd-numbered room near the twelfth floor who had a bag big enough for a small suitcase to go into it. I found a guy like that had had Room 1231.”
“Very neat,” I complimented him. “Then what?”
“These people figured to leave no trace who they were, but there is usually something if a cop can find it. She had spilled some of her perfume and the guy in 1231 had threw away a match folder with a telephone number on it. I called the number up and it
turned out a church—so that didn’t mean nothing. It wasn’t till after that I thought how crooks sometimes write a number backwards so it is plain to them but not to other people. So then I called the phone number backward and it was a Long Beach café.
“There ain’t no telephone in this bungalow, so I guess if him or his wife wanted to get the other one they had to telephone this café. That meant that they used this café sometimes. I figured if one of ’em happened to be in there and a cop spilled some of the perfume around that she used in the murder room they would get nervous and maybe pick themselves out for us. He knew I was a cop all right. There was only one guy that perfume meant anything to except just foolery, but to him it meant the cops had spotted him. It was just luck we got him the first time we tried it. I had got plenty of the stuff and I was prepared to keep spilling it around at different times until I was sure neither him nor her was there.”
“It certainly worked,” I said. “You picked two people out of about six million with very little to go on.”
“Yeah, I was lucky. Probably the next case I’m on the guy I’m after will come up and ask me the time of day and I won’t know it’s him.”
HELP FROM UNCLE SAM
Originally published in Collier’s, October 28, 1933.
“This case,” said O’Malley, “is a jeweler got pushed over. We won’t solve it. Paden & Company the firm is called. Well, this Mr. Paden opened up the store this morning and some holdups came in and knocked him off.”
“Just how was it done?” I asked.
“A guy come in as if he was a customer. Then two more guys come in. So Paden saw it was a holdup and he tried to shut the safe, and then they shot him. These were experienced holdups and worked by the clock, so we won’t catch them. The precinct cops pinched a guy named Enbrook.”
“What’s the evidence?”
“He had been hanging round the store. Experienced guys don’t work unless they know what they are going to get by it and they think he sized the place up for ’em.”
We stopped at the station-house to see the man who had been pinched. He was about twenty-four years old and wasn’t bad-looking. He wouldn’t tell anything about himself.
“You deny you was in with this bunch that knocked the jeweler off?” O’Malley demanded of him.
“Certainly I deny it.”
“Then what were you hanging round the store for?”
“I’ve got a right to go anywhere I want.”
“We won’t get nothing out of this guy,” O’Malley decided. “Probably we won’t learn anything at the store, but we got to look at it. We’ll see the shot guy first.”
We went and looked at Paden. He was a little man, round-shouldered and white-haired, about sixty years old. I was surprised that he had resisted the robbers. Afterward we went to the store. It was a small shop, in the north end of Manhattan. There were a lot of cops there and a clerk and one of the prettiest red-headed girls I ever saw, who proved to be Miss Paden. She had been crying.
“Got anything on this?” O’Malley asked the officers.
“We got a hat.”
They showed it to us. “It ain’t Paden’s hat because his is hanging in the closet, so maybe it belonged to one of the holdups.”
“What did they get?” O’Malley asked.
“About $40,000.” The cops had a list furnished by the insurance company.
“You know anything about this Enbrook, Miss Paden?” O’Malley asked the girl.
“Yes; I met him at the beach. Afterward he came to the store sometimes. I thought he came here to see me, but now the police think that he was finding out things for the robbers.”
“Your dad always open up the store?”
“No; Mr. Malling usually opened it.”
“Who’s he?”
“Father’s partner. Father wasn’t very active in the business. Mr. Malling was hit by a taxicab last night and is in the hospital. Father went over to see him last night but Mr. Malling was unconscious.”
“Well,” O’Malley decided, “I guess there are enough cops here to find out about that hat. We might go see Malling.”
We went to the hospital. They let us see him. Malling was a big man about thirty-five years old and very handsome.
“How come,” O’Malley asked him, “you got hit?”
“I don’t know a thing about it. I was crossing the street and the next I knew I was in the hospital. It doesn’t matter about me. This is terrible, gentlemen, about Gerald Paden. He gave me my start in life.”
“What time this accident happen?”
“It must have been about one o’clock this morning. I had been to an after-theater supper with some friends.”
“What restaurant?”
“O’Connel’s.”
“You know anything about Enbrook, Mr. Malling?”
“Only that he came to the store several times.”
“We’ll see the bird that hit this guy,” O’Malley said after we had left the hospital.
The police had the taxi driver’s name and address and the number of his cab. We found him presently. He was a tough young fellow.
“How was that accident?” O’Malley asked him.
“I can’t tell you a thing. I never seen him till he stepped in front of the cab.”
“This seems to be getting pretty plain, O’Malley,” I volunteered.
“Yeah? How so?”
“It’s too much coincidence for one partner to be hit by a taxi and the other one murdered the next morning, unless there was some connection. Malling usually opened the store, but when he didn’t Paden opened it. Malling’s a big, courageous man and they preferred not to tackle him. The taxi driver got Malling out of the way for them. Enbrook may have been the tip-off man; I don’t know. The way to solve this is to find out who the taxi man associates with.”
“You always got ideas. I’m going to make out my report and go and see a picture.”
“What are you going to report?”
“Report I found out nothing.”
I saw him the next day.
“Get anything on that taxi man?” I asked.
“I ain’t got much on anybody. I might get something now.”
We went to a West Side apartment building and he rang a bell. The card beside the bell said “I. Walger.” It didn’t mean anything to me. He rang a dozen times but got no answer.
“Not home,” he said in disappointment.
There were some letters in the mail box over the name, and O’Malley peered it them through the little glass panel.
“I’d like to know what’s in them letters, but a guy that robs the U. S. mail gets himself in trouble. You better ****o round the corner.”
* * * *
I went around the corner and waited and in a few minutes he rejoined me, throwing away a piece of wire.
“What was in the letters?” I asked.
“What letters? If you don’t want the government to put me in the can, I wouldn’t talk about letters. I think****better telephone.”
We stopped at a drug store while he telephoned.
“Did you ever go to a hotel and register as John V. Huber?” he asked when he came out again.
“No, I never even heard of the name.”
“Well, it might be a good thing to try.”
“Not for me,” I said, “unless I know why I’m doing it.”
“You might not be useful to me if you knew.”
We went to the Times Square district and he pointed out to me a side-street hotel.
“Does John V. Huber come from anywhere in particular?” I asked.
“He might come from Newark.”
He left me and I went into the hotel and registered as John V. Huber, Newark.
“There’s a package here for you, Mr. Huber,” the clerk informed me.
He gave me a small, square package and a bell-hop showed me to my room. I didn’t know what this was all about, or what was expected of me, and I just sat and looked at the unopened package. Then a knock came at the door and I opened it and let in O’Malley.
“You done that fine,” he complimented me when he saw the package.
I was glad of that, but I didn’t know what I’d done. We opened the package and found a smaller one inside it, and opened that one and found a handful of unset diamonds.
“Maybe now,” I demanded, “you’ll tell me what this is all about.”
“Sure I’ll tell you. But first I got a piece of news for you. They got them holdups. Them smart cops traced down that hat.”
We went to the station-house and looked at them—three sullen, hard-faced young men. They wouldn’t talk.
“Malling will be glad they’re caught,” I stated.
“Yeah. We’ll go tell him.”
We went to the hospital. Malling was up and dressed.
“You look like they’re going to let you out of here,” O’Malley observed.
“Yes. I’m bruised, but fortunately suffered no greater injury.”
“We got the guys that done that murder. Do you feel able to go over to the station with us?”
“I’m not likely to recognize them, but I’ll be glad to give you any help I can.”
“We don’t need no help. We want you as accessory to the murder.”
Malling turned white. “Why, that’s ridiculous! I was unconscious when it happened.”
“Sure you were. If you hadn’t been unconscious there wouldn’t have been no murder.”
Malling fainted, but he was all right in a few minutes and we took him to the station-house. The police had a flashy blond girl there named Irene Walger. They locked her up too.
“I’m all at sea on this, O’Malley,” I told him.
“Yeah? Malling used to be Paden’s clerk. A couple of years ago, when Paden wanted partly to retire, he made him his partner. Malling couldn’t stand prosperity. He began stepping out, gambled and went around with women and got himself in debt. So he got the idea to have the store robbed to get him out of his trouble. He figured it was no harm to Paden because the stock was insured, and Malling was to get part of the proceeds. The idea was he’d get held up when he opened in the morning, and they’d tie him up and the clerk would find him. Malling took his part in jewels because, being in the business, he could do better with ’em than if they’d been sold to a fence. The package you got at the hotel was his share.”
The Detective O'Malley MEGAPACK Page 12