Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 105, No. 5, October 10, 1936
- Автор: Вулрич Корнелл, Tinsley Theodore
- Год: 1936
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 105, No. 5, October 10, 1936». Краткое содержание книги:
Egan’s attorney went so far in defying Judge Dunne’s rulings that the court did what it has so often threatened to do and so seldom has actually done — sent him to jail for contempt.
He actually stayed there for twenty-four hours.
The trial concerned itself largely with the personality of Frank Egan. If ever a human being was equipped by natural aptitude plus training to plan and execute the perfect crime it was San Francisco’s Public Defender. He had been a policeman in constant contact with the underworld’s petty thugs and thieves, next an ace detective, familiar with the innermost workings of the criminal mind, and lastly an attorney, agile in adapting the twists and turns of a complex legal system to his own uses.
Yet when it came to organizing a crime, he failed just as thousands have failed before him and failed, as the most muddle-headed brigand has failed — through some idiotic oversight. The police call them “banana peels.”
The murder-plot, however, was not without elements of cleverness. Determined to fulfill the prime function of the perfect crime, Egan had planned that the death of Mrs. Hughes should not appear to be a crime at all, but an accident. He had counted more on this than on the concealment of clues. And it was his undoing.
Egan knew the frequency of hit-run deaths and how rarely they were solved. He had little to fear from the police’s ordinarily haphazard check-up. He was, then, utterly caught off guard when Dullea immediately characterized the tragedy as murder. Fifty per cent of the success of his plan had depended on concealing this fact.
After that the numerous errors he had made stood out like sore thumbs. He should never have employed as accomplices two men who were known to be convicts and also known to have been associated with him. He should have known that one or both of them would talk. His failure to warn them to plant a key on Mrs. Hughes’ body, his anxiety to account for himself on the night of the crime, his obviously spurious attempt to convince Dullea that he had been kidnaped and his subsequent escape from the sanitarium, above all, his failure to conceal the state of his finances and his quarrel with Mrs. Hughes — these spelled but one thing to the mind of a trained detective like Charles Dullea: guilt!
Despite the unbreakable net of evidence against the murderous trio the jury deliberated for seventy-two hours before reaching a verdict. In fact, such was the power of the legend which Egan had spun around his own falsely-haloed head for twelve years, that jurors Bradley Webb and Mrs. Annie J. Riley, held out for unconditional acquittal. Under the strain of the long hours Mrs. Riley had become quite hysterical.
But in the end the seven men and five women filed back into the court and delivered their verdict. All three defendants were found guilty of murder without any extenuating circumstances. They were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Egan, a shattered, half-crazed man, is still in San Quentin.
Long after the murder of Jessie Hughes was a closed issue the general public was still ignorant of the most fantastic feature of this completely fantastic case. And this was how Captain Charles Dullea had known almost at once that Mrs. Hughes had been murdered. It was not intuition. Detectives disclaim this quality in serious work. It was not one of those lightning-flashes of deduction such as adorn the pages of mystery novels. It was something far more conclusive than either. Dullea had heard Egan plan the crime months before its actual accomplishment!
It happened in this way: Dullea had planted a dictaphone in the office of a physician who was under suspicion in connection with another case. Egan and his henchmen were acquainted with this doctor and it was in his office that they discussed in all its details the projected murder of Mrs. Hughes, while the police listened in! Every detail was overheard: the method, the car that would be used, the place — everything.
But the police did nothing about it because they thought the thing was too fantastic to be anything more than an elaborate joke. Furthermore there was nothing they could do about it until the potential killers in some way showed their hand. They did take the elementary precaution of providing Mrs. Hughes with unseen bodyguards. After awhile, convinced they were misled, they withdrew them. Soon after Mrs. Hughes was murdered.
Little wonder Dullea had blanched when reports of the supposed hit-run case reached him and little wonder, too, that he kept silent about this until he had solved the case on the external facts alone.
Of all the perfect crimes ever planned this one, discussed within full hearing of the police, was the strangest. It made master-mind Frank Egan appear a trifle foolish.
Kato Cries Kill
by Earl W. Scott
Chapter I
Refuge from the Storm
Ellen Conway tugged grimly at the balky wheel of her little coupe, tired eyes glued to the weaving taillight of the big car ahead.
It was making bad business of the deeply rutted detour and every moment threatened to spin sloshing directly across the single-track lane, completely blocking progress. The night was kettle-black. About in the watery darkness, tree clumps huddled together disconsolately, drooping with the weight of the steady downpour.
Slim-shoulders hunched stiffly in her damp little jacket, soft lips settled in stubborn defiance, Ellen wrestled with the treacherous traction.
The windshield wipers raced, sobbing, as she slowed for the unmarked turn — then with a gasp she ducked for the emergency brake, knobby oxford kicking frantically at the clutch pedal. Fifty yards below, in a steep dip, the green sedan had come to a halt, fronting a narrow bridge. Its rear wheels were in the ditch, brilliant lights tilting skyward.
But it wasn’t the crazy slewing of her own machine that tore the choked cry from Ellen’s lips, sending her forward to press her face against the cold glass.
Men were struggling there in the ditch, fighting desperately! Siding the open door of the sedan, their tall figures were bobbing and churning grotesquely. Momentarily their white faces showed but they were too far away to recognize.
Both wore raincoats that flopped and cloyed about their legs as they threshed doggedly up the ditch bank.
Ellen swabbed futilely at the glass with a moist palm but the distorting silvery screen of water was all on the outside.
Suddenly the men seemed to fall apart and the next instant the darting violet flame of two swift shots split the murk. They closed again, blending in silent struggle.
Then one of the indistinct figures tossed up its arms and sank to the muddy roadway. The other swooped down, began tugging the inert form toward the open door of the car, bundling him like a soggy bag of meal.
With a sob, Ellen closed her eyes against that vision of limp sprawling arms, a pasty white blur of a bloodstained face. Then she doused her lights.
Fumbling at the catch, she pushed open her near door and shoved out across the running board. Thought of turning, even the light coupe, for flight from that squashy quagmire was hopeless.
One thought was urging her tired muscles to action. Granting murder had been done, the killer might investigate those prying beams from behind.
Lifting her skirt high, she plunged across the water-filled ditch and scrambed up the slippery bank to bring up abruptly before a tall iron fence.
With startling suddenness, lightning tore at the horizon line and Ellen glimpsed, through the steel-picketed barrier, landscaped grounds, sentineled by tall trees and the occasional huddle of crouching shrubbery.
She gasped with relief at the twinkle of lights glowing through the partly curtained windows of a house resting on a knoll some quarter of a mile distant.