Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s

by Leslie S. Klinger

  “Just imagine what went through his mind at this moment. Here he saw what seemed at the moment a ruinous accident to his careful plans. Should Field’s hat be examined—and of course it would be—at the time of the discovery of the body, then the name Stephen Barry on the band would be overwhelming evidence. . . . Barry had no time to rip out the band. In the first place he had no knife—unfortunately for him; and in the second place the hat-band was closely and securely stitched to the tough fabric. Working on split-time, he saw at once that the only course open to him was to take the hat away after he killed Field. Since he and Field were of the same general physique, with Field wearing an average-sized hat, 7⅛, he immediately decided to leave the theatre wearing or carrying Field’s hat. He would deposit his own in the dressing-room, where its presence was not out of the way, take Field’s hat from the theatre with him and destroy it as soon as he reached his rooms. It also occurred to him that if the hat were by some chance examined as he was leaving the theatre, his name printed inside would certainly ward off suspicion. In all probability it was this fact that made Barry feel he was running into no particular danger, even though he had not foreseen the unexpected circumstance.”

  “Clever rogue,” murmured Sampson.

  “The quick brain, Henry, the quick brain,” said Queen gravely. “It has run many a man’s neck into the noose. . . . As he made the lightning decision to take the hat, he realized that he could not leave his own in its place. For one thing, his hat was a snap-down—an opera hat—but more important, it had the name of Le Brun, the theatrical costumer, stamped in it. You can see that this would immediately point to someone in the cast—just the thing he wished to avoid. He told me also that at the moment, and for quite some time thereafter, he felt that the most the police could deduce from the hat’s being missing was that it was taken because it contained something valuable. He could not see how this investigatory guess would point the finger of suspicion anywhere near him. When I explained to him the series of deductions Ellery made from the mere fact that the tophat was missing, he was utterly astounded. . . . You can see, now, that the only really fundamental weakness of his crime was due not to an oversight or a mistake on his part, but to an occurrence which he could not possibly have foreseen. It forced his hand and the entire chain was started. Had Barry’s name not been lettered in Field’s hat, there is no question in my mind but that he would be a free and unsuspected man to-day. The police records would carry another unsolved murder on its pages.

  “I need not state that this entire train of thought flashed through his brain in less time than it takes to describe. He saw what he had to do and his plans adjusted themselves instantly to the new development. . . . When Field extracted the papers from the hat, Barry examined them cursorily under the lawyer’s watchful eye. He did this by the same pencil flashlight—a tiny streak of illumination quite obscured by their shielding bodies. The papers seemed in good order and complete. But Barry did not spend much time over the papers at the moment. He looked up with a rueful smile and said: ‘Seem to be all here, damn you’—very naturally, as if they were enemies under a truce and he was being a good sport. Field interpreted the remark for what it was intended to convey. Barry dipped into his pocket—the light was out now—and, as if he was nervous, took a swig at a pocket-flask of good whisky. Then as if recollecting his manners, he asked Field pleasantly enough if he would not take a drink to bind the bargain. Field, having seen Barry drink from the flask, could have no suspicion of foul play. In fact, he probably never dreamed that Barry would try to do him in. Barry handed him a flask. . . .

  “But it wasn’t the same flask. Under cover of the darkness he had taken out two flasks—the one he himself used coming from his left hip-pocket, the flask he gave Field coming from his right hip-pocket. In handing it over to Field, he merely switched flasks. It was very simple—and made simpler because of the darkness and the fuddled condition of the lawyer. . . . The ruse of the flask worked. But Barry had taken no chances. He had in his pocket a hypodermic filled with the poison. If Field had refused to drink Barry was prepared to plunge the needle into the lawyer’s arm or leg. He possessed a hypodermic needle which a physician had procured for him many years before. Barry had suffered from nervous attacks and could not remain under a doctor’s care since he was traveling from place to place with a stock company. The hypodermic was untraceable, therefore, on a cold trail years old; and he was ready if Field refused to drink. So you see—his plan, even in this particular, was fool-proof. . . .

  “The flask from which Field drank contained good whisky, all right, but mixed with tetra ethyl lead in a copious dose. The poison’s slight ether smell was lost in the reek of the liquor; and Field, drinking, gulped down a huge mouthful before he realized that anything was wrong, if he did at all.

  “Mechanically he returned the flask to Barry, who pocketed it and said: ‘I guess I’ll look over these papers more carefully—there’s no reason why I should trust you, Field. . . .’ Field, who was feeling extremely disinterested by this time, nodded in a puzzled sort of way and slumped down in his seat. Barry really did examine the papers but he watched Field like a hawk out of the corner of his eye all the time. In about five minutes he saw that Field was out—out for good. He was not entirely unconscious but well under way; his face was contorted and he was gasping for breath. He seemed unable to make any violent muscular movement or outcry. Of course, he’d utterly forgotten Barry—in his agony—perhaps didn’t remain conscious very long. When he groaned those few words to Pusak it was the superhuman effort of a practically dead man. . . .

  “Barry now consulted his watch. It was 9:40. He had been with Field only ten minutes. He had to be back on the stage at 9:50. He decided to wait three minutes more—it had taken less time than he had figured—to make sure that Field would not raise a rumpus. At 9:43 exactly, with Field terribly inanimate in his internal agonies, Barry took Field’s hat, snapped down his own and slipped it under his cloak, and rose. The way was clear. Hugging the wall, walking down the aisle as carefully and unobstrusively as possible, he gained the rear of the leftside boxes without anyone noticing him. The play was at its highest point of tension. All eyes were riveted on the stage.

  “In the rear of the boxes he ripped off the false hair, rapidly adjusted his make-up and passed through the stage-door. The door leads into a narrow passageway which in turn leads into a corridor, branching out to various parts of the backstage area. His dressing-room is a few feet from the entrance to the corridor. He slipped inside, threw his stage hat among his regular effects, dashed the remaining contents of the death-flask into the wash-bowl and cleaned out the flask. He emptied the contents of the hypodermic into the toilet drain and put away the needle, cleaned. If it was found—what of it? He had a perfectly sound excuse for owning it and besides the murder had not been committed by such an instrument at all. . . . He was now ready for his cue, calm, debonair, a little bored. The call came at exactly 9:50, he went on the stage and was there until the hue-and-cry was raised at 9:55 in the orchestra. . . .

  “Talk about your complicated plots!” ejaculated Sampson.

  “It is not so complicated as it seems at first hearing,” returned the Inspector. “Remember that Barry is an exceptionally clever young man and above all an excellent actor. No one but an accomplished actor could have carried off such a plan the procedure was simple, after all; his hardest job was to keep to his time-schedule. If he was seen by anyone he was disguised. The only dangerous part of his scheme was the getaway—when he walked down the aisle and went backstage through the box stagedoor. The aisle he took care of by keeping an eye out for the usher while he sat next to Field. He had known beforehand, of course, that the ushers, due to the nature of the play, kept their stations more or less faithfully, but he counted on his disguise and hypodermic to help him through any emergency that might arise. However, Madge O’Connell was lax in her duty and so even this was in his favor. He told me last night, not without a certain pri
de, that he had prepared for every contingency. . . . As for the stagedoor, he knew from experience that at that period in the play’s progress practically every one was on the stage. The technical men were busy at their stations, too. . . . Remember that he planned the crime knowing in advance the exact conditions under which he would have to operate. And if there was an element of danger, of uncertainty—well, it was all a risky business, wasn’t it?—he asked me last night, smiling; and I had to admire him for his philosophy if for nothing else.”

  The Inspector shifted restlessly. “This makes clear, I hope, just how Barry did the job. As for our investigation. . . . With the hat-deductions made and our knowledge of the murderer’s identity, we still had no inkling of the exact circumstances behind the crime. If you’ve been keeping in mind the material evidence which we had collected by Thursday night, you will see that we had nothing at all with which to work. The best thing we could hope for was that somewhere among the papers for which all of us were looking was a clue which would tie up to Barry. Even that would not be enough, but . . . So the next step,” said the Inspector, after a sigh, “was the discovery of the papers in Field’s neat hiding-place at the top of the bed-canopy in his apartment. This was Ellery’s work from start to finish. We had found out that Field had no safety-deposit box, no post-office box, no outside residence, no friendly neighbor or tradesman, and that the documents were not in his office. By a process of elimination Ellery insisted that they must be somewhere in Field’s rooms. You know how this search ended—an ingenious bit of pure reasoning on Ellery’s part. We found Morgan’s papers; we found Cronin’s stuff relating to the gang activities—and by the way, Tim, I’m going to be keenly alive to what happens when we start on the big clean-up—and we found finally a wad of miscellaneous papers. Among these were Michaels’ and Barry’s. . . . You’ll remember, Tim, that Ellery, from the handwriting analysis business, deduced that possibly we would find the originals of Barry’s papers—and so we did.

  “Michaels’ case was interesting. That time he went to Elmira on the ‘petty larceny’ charge, it was through Field’s clever manipulations with the law. But Field had the goods on Michaels and filed the documentary evidence of the man’s real guilt away in his favorite hiding-place, in the event that he might wish to use it at some future date. A very saving person, this Field. . . . When Michaels was released from prison Field used him unscrupulously for his dirty work, holding the threat of those papers over the man’s head

  “Now Michaels had been on the lookout for a long time. He wanted the papers badly, as you may imagine. At every opportunity he searched the apartment for them. And when he didn’t find them time after time, he became desperate. I don’t doubt that Field, in his devilishly sardonic way, enjoyed the knowledge that Michaels was ransacking the place day after day. . . . On Monday night Michaels did what he said he did—went home and to bed. But early Tuesday morning, when he read the papers and learned that Field had been killed, he realized that the jig was up. He had to make one last search for the papers—if he didn’t find them, the police might and he would be in hot water. So he risked running into the police net when he returned to Field’s rooms Tuesday morning. The story about the check was nonsense, of course.

  “But let’s get on to Barry. The original papers we found in the hat marked ‘Miscellaneous’ told a sordid story. Stephen Barry, to make it short and ugly, has a strain of negroid blood in his veins. He was born in the South of a poor family and there was definite documentary evidence—letters, birth-records and the like—to prove that his blood had the black taint. Now Field, as you know, made it his business to run things like this to earth. In some way he got hold of the papers, how long ago we can’t say, but certainly quite a while back. He looked up Barry’s status at the time and found him to be a struggling actor, on his uppers more often than he was in funds. He decided to let the fellow alone for the time. If ever Barry came into money or in the limelight, there would be time enough to blackmail him. . . . Field’s wildest dreams could not have foreseen Barry’s engagement to Frances Ives-Pope, daughter of a multi-millionaire and blue-blood society girl. I needn’t explain what it would have meant to Barry to have the story of his mixed blood become known to the Ives-Popes. Besides—and this is quite important—Barry was in a constant state of impoverishment due to his gambling. What money he earned went into the pockets of the bookmakers at the racetrack and in addition he had contracted enormous debts which he could never have wiped out unless his marriage to Frances went through. So pressing was his need, in fact, that it was he who subtly urged an early marriage. I have been wondering just how he regarded Frances sentimentally. I don’t think, in all fairness to him, that he was marrying wholly because of the money involved. He really loves her, I suppose—but then, who wouldn’t?”

  The old man smiled reminiscently and went on. “Field approached Barry some time ago with the papers—secretly, of course. Barry paid what he could, but it was woefully little and naturally did not satisfy the insatiable blackmailer. He kept putting Field off desperately. But Field himself was getting into hot water because of his own gambling and was ‘calling in’ his little business deals one by one.101 Barry, pushed to the wall, realized that unless Field were silenced everything would be lost. He planned the murder. He saw that even if he did manage to raise the $50,000 Field demanded—a palpable impossibility—and even if he did get the original papers, yet Field might still wreck his hopes by merely circulating the story. There was only one thing to do—kill Field. He did it.”

  “Black blood, eh?” murmured Cronin. “Poor devil.”

  “You would scarcely guess it from his appearance,” remarked Sampson. “He looks as white as you or I.”

  “Barry isn’t anywhere near a full-blooded Negro,” protested the Inspector. “He has just a drop in his veins—just a drop, but it would have been more than enough for the Ives-Popes. . . .102 “To get on. When the papers had been discovered and read—we knew everything. Who—how—why the crime was committed. So we took stock of our evidence to bring about a conviction. You can’t hale a man into court on a murder charge without evidence. . . . Well, what do you think we had? Nothing!

  “Let me discuss the clues which might have been useful as evidence. The lady’s purse—that was out. Valueless, as you know. . . . The source of the poison—a total failure. Incidentally, Barry did procure it exactly as Dr. Jones suggested—Jones, the toxicologist. Barry bought ordinary gasoline and distilled the tetra ethyl lead from it. There was no trace left. . . . Another possible clue—Monte Field’s hat. It was gone. . . . The extra tickets for the six vacant seats—we had never seen them and there seemed little chance that we ever would. . . . The only other material evidence—the papers—indicated motive but proved nothing. By this token Morgan might have committed the crime, or any member of Field’s criminal organization.103

  “Our only hope for bringing about a conviction depended upon our scheme to have Barry’s apartment burglarized in the hope that either the hat, or the tickets, or some other clue like the poison or the poison-apparatus, would be found. Velie got me a professional housebreaker, and Barry’s apartment was rifled Friday night while he was acting his rôle in the theatre. Not a trace of any of these clues came to light. The hat, the tickets, the poison—everything had been destroyed. Obviously, Barry would have done that; we could only make sure.104

  “In desperation, I called a meeting of a number of the Monday night audience, hoping that I would find someone who remembered seeing Barry that night. Sometimes, you know, people recall events later which they forgot completely in the excitement of a previous quizzing. But this too, as it happened, was a failure. The only thing of value that turned up was the orangeade-boy’s testimony about seeing Field pick up an evening bag in the alley. This got us nowhere as far as Barry was concerned, however. And remember that when we questioned the cast Thursday night we got no direct evidence from them.

  “So there we were with a beautifully hypothetical
statement of facts for a jury, but not a shred of genuine evidence. The case we had to present would have offered no difficulties to a shrewd defending attorney. It was all circumstantial evidence, based chiefly on reasoning. You know as well as I do what a chance such a case would have in court. . . . Then my troubles really began, for Ellery had to leave town.

  “I racked my brains—the few I have.” Queen scowled at his empty coffee-cup. “Things looked black enough. How could I convict a man without evidence? It was maddening. And then Ellery did me the final service of wiring me a suggestion.”

  “A suggestion?” asked Cronin.

  “A suggestion that I do a little blackmailing myself. . . .”

  “Blackmailing yourself?” Sampson stared. “I don’t see the point.”

  “Trust Ellery to make a point that on the surface is obscure,” retorted the Inspector. “I saw at once that the only course left open to me was to manufacture evidence!”

  Both men frowned in puzzlement.

  “It’s simple enough,” said Queen. “Field was killed by an unusual poison. And Field was killed because he was blackmailing Barry. Wasn’t it fair for me to assume that if Barry were suddenly blackmailed on the identical score, he would again use poison—and in all likelihood the same poison? I don’t have to tell you that ‘Once a poisoner always a poisoner.’ In the case of Barry, if I could only get him to try to use that tetra ethyl lead on somebody else, I’d have him! The poison is almost unknown—but I needn’t explain further. You can see that if I caught him with tetra ethyl lead, that would be all the evidence I needed.