The Detective O'Malley MEGAPACK

by Walter MacHarg

  Al reflected.

  “We might give it to the Police Fund. We won’t miss it when we get what Mrs. Walder is likely to send us.”

  CITY WISE

  Originally published in Collier’s, July 31, 1937.

  “This case,” O’Malley said, “is that lady that got murdered in her train compartment. Mrs. Enler her name was. She had been visiting in Chicago for a couple of months and she was coming back to New York and her husband was waiting in the station for her. She didn’t get off the train. Well, then they found she had been strangled. They tell me there ain’t much mystery about this case because the guy in the next compartment killed her, but we can’t find that guy.”

  “Why are they sure he killed her?” I inquired.

  “He took her traveling bag. This lady owned a lot of jewelry and was careless with it and she carried it in her bag. The idea is the guy in the next compartment saw it. She got murdered in the tunnel. When the train went in the tunnel the porter went to her compartment and got her bag. When they got in the station he took all the bags off of the car platform and put ’em on the station platform. Then the passengers picked out their bags. This guy pointed out his bag and Mrs. Enler’s bag to a redcap. Then he took the two bags off the redcap and walked away with them.”

  “You must have a good description of him,” I decided. “Nobody observes people closer than a train conductor.”

  “Sure, we got a swell description. The train conductor and the Pullman conductor give us how he looked and how he was dressed and the porter described the bags. He looked like this.”

  He had a photograph.

  “His picture?” I inquired.

  “Not his. Eight other guys. The two conductors went to headquarters and looked at about a thousand photos to try and find a picture of him. Well, they didn’t find none. So then they picked out a picture of a guy that had his kind of nose, and another one that had ears like his, and one that had his eyes, and others that had his other features. Then the photographer put all them features together and made this picture, A lot of cops been working on this case and the picture ain’t helped ’em none. I guess I got to go and talk with all them train people.”

  * * * *

  We saw the Pullman porter.

  “You see the guy in the next compartment talking with that lady?” O’Malley asked.

  “Yes, seh. She talk with plenty gentlemen. It seem like all the time some gentleman sitting talking with her with her compartment door open.”

  “You figure she knew them guys before she got on the train?”

  “It don’t look to me like she knew ’em. She look to me like a lady who don’t like to be lonesome when she travel.”

  We found the husband at his home. He was wealthy and about fifty-five years old. There was a painting of his wife in the room where we interviewed him. She had been extremely pretty.

  “Your wife in the habit of talking with strangers when she traveled?” O’Malley asked him.

  “I never knew her to. She seems to have done it this time. It was a terrible mistake.”

  “How old was this dead lady?”

  “She was twenty-six,” Mr. Enler said.

  “Maybe she knew that guy that had the next compartment.”

  “I don’t believe she did. Gentlemen, you are making a mistake if you look for any motive for my wife’s murder except robbery. Like other women who own a great deal of jewelry, Mrs. Enler forgot how valuable it was. I have no doubt that, in opening her traveling bag for some purpose, she carelessly displayed the jewels.”

  The police had found two of the passengers who had talked with Mrs. Enler. We saw them at their hotels. The first one was named Wilmant. He was a round-faced, red-haired youth with a look of perpetual astonishment. He had got into conversation with Mrs. Enler when they sat at the same table in the diner.

  “You go and talk with her in her compartment?” O’Malley asked him.

  “Yes—afterward.”

  “That lady act to you like she might be afraid of something?”

  “I didn’t notice anything like that.”

  The other passenger was named Cantwell. He was strikingly handsome and was in his thirties.

  “I guess you went and sat in Mrs. Enler’s compartment with her, too,” O’Malley remarked to him.

  “No; I didn’t. I got into conversation with her in the club car just after leaving Chicago. I didn’t talk with her afterward. I happened several times to pass through her car, and her compartment door was open, but there was always someone talking with her, so I didn’t intrude.”

  “You think she knew any of those guys before or did she just meet ’em on the train?”

  “I have no way of telling about that.”

  * * * *

  “Well, O’Malley,” I asked after we had left Cantwell, “what do you make of it?”

  “I don’t make nothing of it. What have we got? We got only a picture. I don’t guess we’ll ever find that guy. A cop can’t find a guy unless he has some characteristic. If a guy’s ears stick out, or he’s got a flat nose, a cop can find him because he don’t have to look only at guys whose ears stick out or have got flat noses. Well, the picture shows this guy has got no characteristic. He looks like a hundred thousand other guys. We got no other evidence. Nothing left in his compartment or in hers. No fingerprints in her compartment except the lady’s and the porter’s. No witnesses. That picture has been shown to all the attendants in the station, and to taxi drivers, and to clerks in hotels all around the station. They don’t none of ’em recall noticing a guy like that. He ain’t a guy that anyone would notice. A guy that looks like a hundred thousand other guys walks out of the station and loses himself among seven million people. We don’t know who he is, or where he come from, or where he went. We got no way to find a guy like that.”

  “Do you think the picture looks like him?”

  “It must look some like him. I guess if somebody knew the guy well, they’d know it wasn’t his picture, but if somebody maybe seen him only a few times they might think it was.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Do nothing—except I been thinking I might meet that same train tomorrow morning.”

  I thought it over but I couldn’t see the sense in it.

  “You’re getting childish,” I told him. “Why meet the train when the man got off of it two days ago?”

  I met the train next morning. I wanted to see what this was all about. A lot of plain-clothes cops were scattered around the station and I finally found O’Malley.

  “What’s going on here?” I asked him.

  The people were coming off the train and we stood and watched them. Then a redcap came, carrying a man’s bag and a woman’s bag. The bags were exactly like the ones the porter had described to us, and I started with astonishment when I saw the person following the redcap.

  “Why, there’s the very man you’re looking for!” I ejaculated. “He looks exactly like the picture.”

  The man took the bags from the redcap in the station and went to the taxi entrance, and we followed him, but he didn’t take a cab. He put the bags down and stood looking around, while a couple of cops talked with the taxi checker. Then he picked up the bags and went back into the waiting room and stood there, while the cops talked with the station attendants. Then he went to another station entrance but he still didn’t take a cab. After a while he went to the main entrance of the station and stood on the sidewalk, while the cops talked with news dealers and to traffic officers and to the drivers of taxis which were waiting there beside the curb. Then finally he took a cab and we took another one and followed him with a couple of plain-clothes cops that jumped in with us, and a lot more cops crowded into another cab and came along behind us. We went to a hotel. A bellhop carried the man’s bags in, and he had the boy put them down in the lobby and merely sto
od around, while the cops went around and questioned everybody. After a while one of the cops spoke to the man, and the man had another bellhop pick up his bags and they went to the other entrance of the hotel and he stood by the doorman.

  “I begin to see through this,” I told O’Malley.

  “You’re smart.”

  * * * *

  We waited a long time, while the cops talked with everybody, and then the man took another cab and went to another hotel. It was tiresome because he repeated the same performance. He went in at one entrance of the hotel and waited, and went out the other entrance and waited, and the cops went around and talked to people. After a while he took another cab and went to a West Side ferry. We all went into the ferry-house and waited. Then we followed the man onto the ferry, and the cops talked with the ferry crew, and we got off again, and waited for the next ferry and got on it and got off again until we had tried all the ferries.

  “No soap!” O’Malley stated.

  O’Malley looked unhappy and the cops seemed discouraged and we went back to headquarters. I wasn’t surprised that the man with his two bags went along with us, because I had guessed long before this that he was a cop.

  “That didn’t get you much, O’Malley,” I remarked.

  “Sure, it didn’t get nothing.”

  “I understand what you’ve been doing. You couldn’t find anyone who remembered the man when you showed them the picture, but you thought they might remember if they saw the man again; so you found a cop that looked a good deal like the picture and dressed him up the way the man was dressed and gave him two bags, and you had him stand around the station until you found someone who remembered seeing him before.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Enough people remembered him so that you traced him through two hotels and down to the ferry, but at the ferry you lost him.”

  “I didn’t think we’d find him.”

  I left O’Malley at headquarters but I met him the next morning. He had the woman’s traveling bag that the cop had carried.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “I don’t know nothing except to keep on going where that passenger went.”

  We went back to the railroad station and showed the bag to the attendants in the check rooms. It didn’t mean anything to them. It didn’t mean anything either, at the check room at the first hotel, but at the second hotel they brought out a bag almost exactly like it. It was Mrs. Enler’s bag. We opened it but there was no jewelry in it.

  “You’re moving, O’Malley.”

  “We ain’t getting nowhere.”

  * * * *

  We went to the ferry but we didn’t get aboard the boat; instead we went all around the neighborhood and rang doorbells and showed the man’s photograph to whoever came to the door. We didn’t have any luck. There was a little store that sold stationery and candy, and O’Malley went in to telephone headquarters that we hadn’t found out anything, and I waited on the sidewalk till he came out. The street was full of kids and a kid about nine years old was sitting on the curb.

  “You know that the lady in that store is giving away candy?” O’Malley asked.

  “Sure,” the kid said derisively.

  “She is. You go in and you’ll see.”

  The kid got up and went into the store. In about a minute he came out yelling, with a piece of candy in his mouth and another in his hand, and in about three minutes the store was full of kids and a hundred more were trying to get in. O’Malley stood at the door and when a kid came out he let another kid in, but first he showed the kid the photograph. The kids glanced at the photograph but they didn’t know the man, but O’Malley let them in anyway. Then one kid knew him.

  “Jim Murgin,” the kid said.

  “Yeah? Where does he live?”

  The kid gave an address. We went to the address the kid had given us, and the landlady said Murgin had a room on the third floor. We had her go ahead of us and knock on the door and a hard-faced young man opened it.

  “Okay, Jim,” O’Malley told him. “Where’s the dame’s jewelry?”

  “I don’t know about no jewelry.”

  I could see that the man looked a little like the photograph. He was the right man and we finally found Mrs. Enler’s jewelry in the stuffing of a chair.

  “It is a remarkable piece of police work the way you have traced down this murderer. O’Malley,” I exulted.

  “I don’t know if the guy’s a murderer.”

  We took Murgin to the station house and he and O’Malley went into the captain’s room. Then a plain-clothes cop and Enler came in, and afterward a cop brought in the Pullman porter, and some more cops came bringing the two passengers Wilmant and Cantwell, and they all went into the captain’s room. Then they all came out of the captain’s room and they booked Cantwell for murder.

  “I don’t see this, O’Malley,” I declared. “If Cantwell killed Mrs. Enler why did Murgin have her jewelry?”

  “You don’t never see much. This case was this way: This Mrs. Enler liked sometimes to flirt. This Cantwell is one of them guys that hangs out with society people but has got nothing. Mrs. Enler was visiting in Chicago and she met Cantwell and flirted with him, and Cantwell took her seriously. Mrs. Enler seen Cantwell was serious about it and she got afraid of him. Cantwell had found out she was leaving and he took the same train without her knowing. After the train started, he found Mrs. Enler in the club car and begged her not to go back to Enler, but she wouldn’t have nothing to do with him. Cantwell didn’t have no chance to talk to her again until the train was in the tunnel coming into New York. Then he went to her compartment and she was alone there He had been getting more and more excited all through the trip and when she wouldn’t talk to him he grabbed her and choked her. Well, he killed her.”

  “How did Murgin get into it?”

  “He was in his compartment next to hers and he heard the fight going on in her compartment and he peeked out of his door and seen Cantwell come out. Then he went and looked in and he seen Mrs. Enler was dead. Well, Murgin wasn’t giving no alarm about a murder and get himself maybe suspected by the police. He’s a well-dressed, petty-larceny crook. He just went back in his own compartment and shut the door. Murgin had talked with Mrs. Enler in her compartment, and, like Enler said, she had opened her bag and he had seen she was carrying jewelry, but he says he didn’t have no idea of stealing her jewelry till he was getting off the train. Then he seen her bag beside his on the station platform and it was so easy, he says, he had to do it. He went through a couple of hotels in case he might be followed and he took the jewelry out of the bag in the cab before he got to the second hotel and he checked the bag there to get rid of it. Then he went to the ferry to give the idea that he might have crossed the river and he walked home from there.”

  “I don’t see how you figured all this out.”

  “I DIDN’T have to figure nothing out. All I had to do was find the guy that took the bag. It didn’t prove he was the guy that killed her because he took her bag, but it looked like he knew that it was safe to take it. Here was a lady that got acquainted with so many people on the train that everybody noticed it. It might be she done that because she was afraid of somebody. The cops had got hold of two of the guys she talked with because Wilmant stopped to telephone after he got off the train and the dining-car conductor pointed him out to an officer, and the club-car steward give a description of Cantwell to the cops and he is the kind of guy that people remember and a taxi driver remembered taking him to a hotel. They both said they didn’t know nothing about no murder. If this was murder for robbery, probably Murgin done it; if it was murder for something else, he maybe knew what. You can’t call it only luck we traced him to the ferry by fixing up a guy to look like him, because even in a town as big as this one, the same people are likely to be in the same places at the same time of day. The news dealers and traffic cops
and the hotel doormen and the bellhops all know what taxi drivers might be in them cab ranks at that time of the morning, and by pointing out the guy to everybody we was able to learn what cabs he took and where he went. I figured that picture we had made of him had to look a little like him even if it wasn’t very much. Everybody we showed the picture to went and studied it. Maybe they thought at first they knew the guy, but after they studied it they decided they didn’t and they wouldn’t say nothing. I figured if somebody that knew the guy just looked quick at the picture, while maybe they was thinking about something else, they might think it was him and tell us. Well, how was I to get people to look at the picture without doing no thinking? While I was telephoning in that store it come to me. Them streets are full of kids and kids know generally who lives in their neighborhood. I give that old lady in the store a couple of dollars and told her to give every kid that come in two cents’ worth of candy, and while they was all excited about the candy I showed ’em the picture, and one kid took a quick look at the picture and give us Murgin’s name and where he lived.”

  “You’re a psychologist.” I told him.

  “Not me! I was witness in a court case one time with some psychologists. They was nice guys but they didn’t know nothing about people. . . . Well, we found the jewelry, which proved Murgin had took the bag, and to avoid a murder rap he told how it was he took it and that he seen Cantwell come out of Mrs. Enler’s compartment, and when Cantwell found we had a witness against him he admitted that he killed her.”

  “An amazing piece of detection!” I decided.

  “Yeah? I ain’t never seen that word ‘amazing’ in a police report. You tell the inspector what you think of it, because now he’s saying we was dumb or we’d have caught that killer quicker.”

  DECEIVING CLOTHES

  Originally published in Collier’s, September 9, 1942.

  “We got a tough one,” O’Malley said. “A murdered girl was found in a barrel in the East River. My idea, it’s an Italian love-killing, but we might never prove it. In this kind of case nobody will tell a cop anything; then the cop gets a black mark. We got a name for this dead kid, but it might not be her right one, and cops pinched a suspect.”