Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s

by Leslie S. Klinger

  The Inspector interrupted. “Just what was the reason for Field’s demand for money?”

  “I wish I knew, Inspector,” she returned savagely. “But both of ’em were mighty careful not to mention the reason. . . . Anyway, it was something about those papers that Monte wanted Morgan to buy. It wouldn’t take much brains to guess that Monte had something on Morgan and was pushing it to the limit.”

  At the mention of the word “papers” Ellery’s interest in Mrs. Russo’s story had revived. He had put the book down and begun to listen intently. The Inspector gave him a fleeting glance as he addressed the woman.

  “Just how much money was Field demanding, Mrs. Russo?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” she said, laughing disdainfully. “Monte was no piker. All he wanted was—fifty thousand dollars!”

  The Inspector seemed unmoved. “Go on.”

  “So there they were,” she continued, “jabbering back and forth, with Monte getting colder and Morgan getting madder. Finally Morgan picked up his hat and yelled, ‘I’ll be damned, you crook, if I’m going to be milked any more! You can do what you please—I’m through, do you understand? I’m through for good!’ He was blue in the face. Monte didn’t get up from his chair. He just said, ‘You can do as you please, Benjamin my friend, but I give you exactly three days to hand that money over. And no bargaining, remember! Fifty thousand, or—but surely I don’t have to remind you of the unpleasant consequences of refusal.’ Monte sure was slick,” she added admiringly. “Could sling the lingo like a professional.

  “Morgan kept fiddling with his hat,” she went on, “just as if he didn’t know what to do with his hand. Then he exploded with, ‘I told you where you get off, Field, and I mean every word of it. Publish those papers, and if it means ruin to me—I’ll see to it that it’s the last time you’ll ever blackmail anybody!’ He shook his fist under Monte’s nose, and looked for a minute as if he was going to do him in then and there. Then all of a sudden he quieted down and without saying another word walked himself out of the apartment.”

  “And that’s the story, Mrs. Russo?”

  “Isn’t it enough?” she flared. “What are you trying to do—protect that murdering coward? . . . But it isn’t all. After Morgan left, Monte said to me, ‘Did you hear what my friend said?’ I made believe I didn’t, but Monte was wise. He took me on his lap and said playfully, ‘He’ll regret it, Angel . . .’ He always called me Angel,” she added coyly.

  “I see. . . .” the Inspector mused. “And just what did Mr. Morgan say—that you took for a threat against Field’s life?”

  She stared at him incredulously. “Good gravy, are you dumb, or what?” she cried. “He said, ‘I’ll see to it it’s the last time you’ll ever blackmail anybody!’ And then when my darling Monte was killed the very next night . . .”

  “A very natural conclusion,” smiled Queen. “Do I understand that you are preferring charges against Benjamin Morgan?”

  “I’m not preferring anything except a little peace, Inspector,” she retorted. “I’ve told you the story—now do what you want with it.” She shrugged her shoulders and made as if to rise.

  “One moment, Mrs. Russo.” The Inspector held up a small and delicate finger. “You referred in your story to some ‘papers’ that Field was holding over Morgan’s head. Did Field at any time during the quarrel between them actually bring out these papers?”

  Mrs. Russo looked the old man coolly in the eye. “No, sir, he didn’t. And make believe I’m not sorry he didn’t, too!”

  “A charming attitude of yours, Mrs. Russo. One of these days . . . I hope you understand that your skirts are not entirely—ah—clean in this matter, in a manner of speaking,” said the Inspector. “So please consider very carefully before you answer my next question. Where did Monte Field keep his private documents?”

  “I don’t have to consider, Inspector,” she snapped. “I just don’t know. If there was any chance of my knowing I would, don’t worry.”

  “Perhaps you made a few personal forays of your own when Field was absent from his apartment?” pursued Queen, smiling.

  “Perhaps I did,” she answered with a dimpling cheek. “But it didn’t do any good. I’d swear they’re not in those rooms . . . Well, Inspector, anything else?”

  The clear voice of Ellery seemed to startle her. But she coquettishly patted her hair as she turned towards him.

  “As far as you know, Mrs. Russo,” said Ellery icily, “from long and no doubt intimate association with your gallant Leander80—how many different silk tophats did he possess?”

  “You’re the original cross-word puzzle, aren’t you?” she gurgled. “As far as I know, Mr. Man, he had only one. How many does a guy need?”

  “You’re certain of that, I suppose,” said Ellery.

  “Sure’s you’re born, Mr. Queen.” She contrived to slip a caress into her voice. Ellery stared at her as one stares at a strange zoölogical specimen. She made a little moue and turned about gaily.

  “I’m not so popular around here so I’ll beat it. . . . You’re not going to put me in a nasty cell, are you, Inspector? I can go now, can’t I?”

  The Inspector bowed. “Oh yes—you may go, Mrs. Russo, under a certain amount of surveillance. . . . But please understand that we may still require your delightful company at some not distant date. Will you remain in town?”

  “Charmed, I’m sure!” she laughed and swept out of the room.

  Velie snapped to his feet like a soldier and said, “Well, Inspector, I guess that settles it!”

  The Inspector sank wearily into his chair. “Are you insinuating, Thomas, like some of Ellery’s stupid fiction-sergeants—which you are not—that Mr. Morgan be arrested for the murder of Monte Field?”

  “Why—what else?” Velie seemed at a loss.

  “We’ll wait a while, Thomas,” returned the old man heavily.

  80.The tale of Hero (a woman) and Leander is one of the more touching love stories of the Greek myths. Hero, a priestess of Aphrodite, lived in a tower, and Leander, having fallen for her, swam across the Hellespont every night to be with her. On a stormy winter night, Leander drowned in the river, and on seeing his body, Hero threw herself off the tower to be with him in death.

  CHAPTER XVI

  In Which the Queens Go to the Theatre

  Ellery and his father regarded each other across the length of the little office. Velie had resumed his seat with a puzzled frown. He sat quietly for a time in the growing silence, seemed suddenly to make a decision and asking permission left the room.

  The Inspector grinned as he fumbled with the lid of his snuff-box.

  “Did you get a scare, too, Ellery?”

  Ellery, however, was serious. “That woman gives me a case of Wodehouse ‘willies,’”81 he said, shuddering. “Scare is much too mild a word.”

  “I couldn’t for the moment grasp the significance of her attitude,” said Inspector Queen. “To think that she knew, while we have been fumbling around. . . . It scattered my wits.”

  “I should say the interview was highly successful,” commented Ellery. “Principally because I’ve been gathering a few interesting facts from this ponderous tome on chirography.82 But Mrs. Angela Russo does not measure up to my conception of perfect womanhood. . . .”

  “If you ask me,” chuckled the Inspector, “our beauteous friend has a crush on you. Consider the opportunities, my son—!”

  Ellery made a grimace of profound distaste.

  “Well!” Queen reached for one of the telephones on the desk. “Do you think we ought to give Benjamin Morgan another chance, Ellery?”

  “Hanged if he deserves it,” grumbled Ellery. “But I suppose it’s the routine thing to do.”

  “‘You forget the papers, son—the papers,” retorted the Inspector, a twinkle in his eye.

  He spoke to the police operator in pleasant accents and a few moments later the buzzer sounded.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Morgan!�
� Queen said cheerfully. “And how are you to-day?”

  “Inspector Queen?” asked Morgan after a slight hesitation. “Good afternoon to you, sir. How is the case progressing?”‘

  “That’s a fair question, Mr. Morgan,” laughed the Inspector. “One, however, which I daren’t answer for fear of being accused of incompetency. . . . Mr. Morgan, are you free this evening by any chance?”

  Pause. “Why—not free exactly.” The lawyer’s voice was barely audible. “I am due at home, of course, for dinner, and I believe my wife has arranged a little bridge. Why, Inspector?”

  “I was thinking of asking you to dine with my son and me this evening,” said the Inspector regretfully. “Could you possibly get away for the dinner-hour?”

  A longer pause. “If it’s absolutely necessary, Inspector—?”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way exactly, Mr. Morgan. . . . But I would appreciate your accepting the invitation.”

  “Oh.” Morgan’s voice came more resolutely now. “In that case I’m at your command, Inspector. Where shall I meet you?”

  “That’s fine, that’s fine!” said Queen. “How about Carlos,’83 at six?”

  “Very well, Inspector,” returned the lawyer quietly and hung up the receiver.

  “I can’t help feeling sorry for the poor chap,” murmured the old man.

  Ellery grunted. He was not feeling inclined to sympathize. The taste of Mrs. Angela Russo was still strong in his mouth, and it was not a pleasant taste at all.

  Promptly at six o’clock Inspector Queen and Ellery joined Benjamin Morgan in the convivial atmosphere of Carlos’ restaurant-foyer. He was sitting dejectedly in a red-leather chair, staring at the backs of his hands. His lips drooped sadly, his knees were widely separated in an instinctive attitude of depression.

  He made a laudable attempt to smile as the two Queens approached. He rose with a firmness that indicated to his keen hosts a mind determined upon a fixed course of action. The Inspector was at his bubbling best, partly because he felt a genuine liking for the corpulent attorney and partly because it was his business. Ellery, as usual, was noncommittal.

  The three men shook hands like old friends.

  “Glad to see you’re on time, Morgan,” said the Inspector, as a stiff headwaiter conducted them to a corner-table. “I really must apologize for taking you away from your dinner at home. There was a time once—” He sighed and they sat down.

  “No apology necessary,” said Morgan with a wan smile. “I suppose you know that every married man relishes a bachelor dinner at times. . . . Just what is it, Inspector, you wanted to talk to me about?”

  The old man raised a warning finger. “No business now, Morgan,” he said. “I have an idea Louis has something up his sleeve in the way of solid refreshment—right, Louis?”

  The dinner was a culinary delight. The Inspector, who was quite indifferent to the nuances of the art, had left the details of the menu to his son. Ellery was fanatically interested in the delicate subject of foods and their preparation. Consequently the three men dined well. Morgan was at first inclined to taste his food abstractedly, but he became more and more alive to the delightful concoctions placed before him, until finally he forgot his troubles altogether and chatted and laughed with his hosts.

  With cafè au lait and excellent cigars, which Ellery smoked cautiously, the Inspector diffidently, and Morgan with enjoyment, Queen came to the point.

  “Morgan, I’m not going to beat around the bush. I have an idea you know why I asked you here to-night. I’m going to be perfectly honest. I want the true explanation for your silence regarding the events of Sunday night, September the twenty-third—four nights ago.”

  Morgan had become grave immediately after the Inspector began to speak. He put the cigar on the ash-tray and regarded the old man with an expression of ineffable weariness.

  “It was bound to come,” he said. “I might have known that you would find out sooner or later. I suppose Mrs. Russo told you out of spite.”

  “She did,” confessed Queen frankly. “As a gentleman I refuse to listen to tales; as a policeman it is my duty. Why have you kept this from me, Morgan?”

  Morgan traced a meaningless figure on the cloth with a spoon. “Because—well, because a man is always a fool until he is made to realize the extent of his folly,” he said quietly, looking up. “I hoped and prayed—it is a human failing, I suppose—that the incident would remain a secret between a dead man and myself. And to find that that prostitute was hiding in the bedroom—listening to every word I said—it rather took the wind out of my sails.”

  He gulped down a glass of water, rushing ahead. “The God’s honest truth, Inspector, is that I thought I was being drawn into a trap and I couldn’t bring myself to furnish contributory evidence. There I found myself in the theatre, not so far away from my worst enemy found murdered. I could not explain my presence except by an apparently silly and unsubstantiated story; and I remembered in a bitter flash that I had actually quarreled with the dead man the night before. It was a tight position, Inspector—take my word for it.”

  Inspector Queen said nothing. Ellery was leaning far back in his chair, watching Morgan with gloomy eyes. Morgan swallowed hard and went on.

  “That’s why I didn’t say anything. Can you blame a man for keeping quiet when his legal training warns him so decisively of the net of circumstantial evidence he is helping to manufacture?”

  Queen was silent for a moment. Then—”We’ll let that pass for the moment, Morgan. Why did you go to see Field Sunday night?”

  “For a very good reason,” answered the lawyer bitterly. “On Thursday, a week ago, Field called me up at my office and told me that he was making a last business venture that entailed his procuring fifty thousand dollars at once. Fifty thousand dollars!” Morgan laughed dryly. “After he had milked me until I was as flabby financially as an old cow. . . . And his ‘business venture’—can you imagine what it was? If you knew Field as well as I did, you would find the answer on the race-tracks and the stock-market. . . . Perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps he was hard pressed for money and was cleaning up his old ‘accounts.’ At any rate, he wanted the fifty thousand on a brand-new proposition—that he would actually return the original documents to me for that sum! It was the first time he had even suggested such a thing. Every time—before—he had insolently asked blackmail for silence. This time it was a buy-and-sell proposition.”

  “That’s an interesting point, Mr. Morgan,” put in Ellery, with a flicker of his eyes. “Did anything in his conversation definitely lead you to suspect that he was ‘clearing up old accounts,’ as you phrase it?”

  “Yes. That is why I said what I did. He gave me the impression that he was hard up, meant to take a little vacation—vacation to him would be a three-year jaunt on the continent, nothing less—and was soliciting all his ‘friends.’ I never knew that he was in the blackmailing business on a large scale; but this time—!”

  Ellery and the Inspector exchanged glances. Morgan forged ahead.

  “I told him the truth. That I was in a bad way financially, chiefly through him, and that it would be absolutely impossible for me to raise, the preposterous amount he demanded. He merely laughed—insisted on getting the money. I was most anxious to get the papers back, of course. . . .”

  “Had you verified from your cancelled vouchers the fact that some were missing?” asked the Inspector.

  “It wasn’t necessary, Inspector,” grated Morgan. “He actually exhibited the vouchers and letters for my benefit in the Webster Club two years ago—when we had the quarrel. Oh, there is no question about it. He was top man.”

  “Go on.”

  “He hung up on me with a thinly veiled threat last Thursday. I had tried desperately during the conversation to make him believe that I would in some way meet his demands, because I knew that he would have no scruples at all about publishing the papers once he realized he had sucked me dry . . .”

  “Did you ask him if you cou
ld see the documents?” asked Ellery.

  “I believe I did—but he laughed at me and said I would see the color of my checks and letters when he saw the color of my money. He was nobody’s fool, that crook—he was taking no chances on my doing him in while he brought out the damning evidence. . . . You see how frank I am. I will even admit that at times the thought of violence entered my head. What man could keep from thinking such thoughts under those circumstances? But I never entertained homicidal fancies seriously, gentlemen—for a very good reason.” He paused.

  “It wouldn’t have done you any good,” said Ellery softly. “‘You didn’t know where the documents were!”

  “Exactly,” returned Morgan with a tremulous smile. “I didn’t know. And with those papers liable to come to light at any time—to fall into anybody’s hands—what good would Field’s death have done me? I would probably have exchanged a bad taskmaster for a worse. . . . On Sunday night, after trying for three terrible days to get together the money he asked for—with no result—I decided to come to a final settlement with him. I went to his apartment and found him in a dressing-gown, much surprised and not at all apprehensive at seeing me. The living-room was upset—I did not know at the time that Mrs. Russo was hiding in the next room.”

  He re-lit the cigar with shaking fingers.

  “We quarreled—or rather I quarreled and he sneered. He would listen to no argument, to no plea. He wanted the fifty thousand or he would send the story around—and the proofs. It sort of got on my nerves after a while. . . . I left before I lost control of myself utterly. And that’s all, Inspector, on my word of honor as a gentleman and as an unfortunate victim of circumstances.”

  He turned his head away. Inspector Queen coughed and threw his cigar into the ash-tray. He fumbled in his pocket for the brown snuff-box, took a pinch, inhaled deeply and leaned back in his chair. Ellery suddenly poured a glass of water for Morgan, who took it and drained it.

  “Thank you, Morgan,” said Queen. “And since you have been so frank in your story, please be honest and tell me whether you threatened Field’s life Sunday night during your quarrel. It is only fair to let you know that Mrs. Russo flatly accused you of Field’s murder because of something you said in the heat of the moment.”