Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 118, No. 6, April 16, 1938
- Автор: Трит Лоуренс, Вулрич Корнелл
- Год: 1938
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 118, No. 6, April 16, 1938». Краткое содержание книги:
“Oh, shut up,” he said wearily. “I knew that’s what you wanted, to be turned loose.” He glanced at his wrist watch. “Wish that ambulance would get here.”
Grant was putting his things back in his pockets and I kept my eyes glued on him. When he picked up the fountain pen his fingers were trembling, or else it was my imagination.
“Wait a minute,” I yelled.
Jordan’s eyes snapped toward me, “Now what?” he barked.
“How about opening up that fountain pen of Grant’s?” I said. “That would be a dandy hiding place.”
“Forget it,” Jordan growled. “You talk too much — about the wrong things.”
Grant laughed. “You’ve got to give the guy A for effort,” he said. “He’s trying every trick he can think of.”
“Listen, Jordan,” I said, speaking low, “if you think I’m talking too much now, just wait till I get on the witness stand. They may hang me, but I’ll go down fighting. I’ll have plenty to say about you. All you’ve done is try to pin this thing on me. You’ve taken everything for granted. You won’t make an honest effort to verify anything I say. I may go to the gallows, but you’re going to get a real roasting before I go.”
Jordan sighed and held out his hand to Grant. “Okay,” he said, “anything to shut him up. Let’s have the fountain pen.”
Grant didn’t move. “It’s all right to be good natured,” he grumbled, “but enough is enough. You’re treating me like I was suspected of something, just on account of that guy shooting off his mouth.”
I felt like a fellow who had caught hold of a life preserver just when he was about to go down for the third time. Jordan had got to his feet and was staring at Grant the way he had stared at me.
“I said give me that fountain pen,” he snapped, “and no back talk.”
Grant shrugged and handed him the pen. He shoved his chair bark a few inches.
Jordan unscrewed the cap, looked inside it and laid it on the table. Then he pulled the pen apart, exposing the rubber bladder that held the ink. A little sliver of green fell on the table. Jordan grabbed it, his fingers moved quickly, and there it was — a piece of green paper about two inches square, with two straight sides and two jagged edges and it had originally come out of one of Uncle Sam’s mints.
Jordan turned toward Grant and then dived for his automatic. Because Grant had jumped up and was lunging for the door.
The automatic exploded three times, close together. Grant crumpled to his knees with one hand on the doorknob, then swayed a moment before he toppled over on his back. Jordan, the doctor and Randall ran over to him. The other G-man had a gun trained on Mercer who was slouching back in his scat whimpering.
“So Ellison was right,” Jordan said, looking down at the fallen man. “You and Mercer did it. What a fool—”
“You said it, brother,” Grant sneered. The words came from his mouth in a windy gasp. Little bubbles of blood danced on his lips. “I had you fooled easy. If it wasn’t for him I’d got away with it. Came pretty close at that. Everything he said was true. Me and Mercer snatched the kid and hired Ellison to get the ransom. The girl — she didn’t have anything to do with it — with it, either. You can... you can hang Mercer, but,” his voice was fading away to less than a whisper, “but you’ll never — never — hang me. I’m—” We couldn’t hear any more.
The doctor stooped over him and then straightened. “He was right,” he said. “He’ll never hang. He’s dead.”
Jordan was looking at me. He came around in back and untied my wrists. My hands felt numb and I rubbed them.
“I owe you a lot of apologies,” Jordan said. “I was a jackass, but—”
“Forget it. Is it all right for Millie and I to go now?”
“Sure. You’re in the clear. Only—”
Randall’s hand was on my shoulder. “My boy,” he said in a choked voice, “I owe you more than I can ever express. When I think of how I treated you — but I’m hoping you understand how I felt.”
I shook his hand and smiled. “In your place, Mr. Randall, I’d have done the same — only more so. Think nothing of it.” I walked over to Millie. She had stayed on the davenport like she was petrified. I took the necktie off her wrists “Come on,” I said “Let’s be on our way.”
“Just a minute,” Jordan said “You’ve got to come to town with us. The newspaper boys will want to talk with you and take your pictures. Don’t you know it yet? You’re heroes, both of you.”
I looked at Millie. “I think we’d like to duck that stuff, if it’s all the same to you. You know the whole story. You can tell them. We want to go and get something to eat. And a little sleep wouldn’t hurt, either.”
“You’ve got something there,” Millie said.
“Have you any money?” Randall asked.
I shrugged. “No, but we didn’t have any before this thing started. So we’re holding our own.”
Randall smiled. “You’ve got five thousand dollars,” he said. “I offered a reward, you know, and you’ve got to take it.”
“I’m not arguing with you,” I said. I looked at Millie and held out my hand to her. “We could do things with that kind of dough, couldn’t we, kid?”
She took my hand and pressed it. “We could try,” she said.
Penny Pim — Accidental Detective
by Richard L. Hobart
Maybe one unique specimen like Penny Pim is born in a million. And maybe it’s a good thing, too!
Penny Pim was startled by the sound that blasted at his eardrums from around the corner on Pennsylvania Avenue. It was a new sound to him, yet curiously enough, it deeply stirred something in his subconsciousness. The sound came again and Penny Pim struggled desperately in an effort to classify and allocate it.
It annoyed Penny Pim. Not the sound itself, of course, but his inability to marshal his thoughts concerning it. It chagrined him to discover in his mind a bit of vague information which was filed away in a disorderly manner.
Brrrrrrrrrr!
Again the sound came and Penny Pim’s face crinkled as his brain jostled similar and related sounds into memory cells. A fast train crossing rail joints? No, too rapid for that. A ball-peen hammer striking repeatedly upon a sheet of steel? That was closer. A series of torpedoes being exploded? No, not loud enough and the sounds were too regularly spaced.
Brrrrrr!
A yearning to catalogue the strange sound decided him. Momentarily, he erased all thoughts of Naomi Goode, someday to be Mrs. Pennington Pim. She would be waiting for him in front of the Potomac Theater, up near the White House. But a minute or two delay to see what was happening here could do no harm. At that, he could almost hear her say: “Pennington, you must be ill. You are three minutes late!”
Brrrrrr!
A terrible thought came to Penny Pim’s brain as he hesitated at the corner of the Commerce Building before turning into Pennsylvania Avenue. He knew that sound now — a machine gun! He had read of machine guns. He never before had heard the growl of the weapon. But it had to be that.
Long training forced Penny Pim to snap a glance at his strap watch. It was 6:32 P. M. Then he looked west on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Penny froze. His serious, pale blue eyes widened and his lower jaw, just a bit on the receding type, hung. A Coldstream Guards mustache, as blonde as his sparse hair, dangled on his upper lip.