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:
He was too frightened to run. His knees were jelly beneath him. But his keen eyes took in everything. Each of the dozen or more sights was immediately indexed and cross-indexed — he used the Dewey Decimal system for filing all mental pictures — and then painstakingly, but with incredible speed, tucked away for future reference.
Penny Pim had a system. It wasn’t mnemonics or anything like that, and he didn’t recognize it as an occupational disease, which it was. For Penny Pim could no more keep from seeing things, both large and small, and storing them away in his memory than an adding machine operator can help getting the correct total of a string of figures if the right keys are pressed. Penny saw everything and retained those items he wished to remember.
Sometimes merely seeing and remembering things bored him, so then he would add the numbers on the automobile licenses that passed, or some other simple task like that. He could easily keep a running total of them, no matter how swiftly they sped by. At times, the result ran up into hundreds of millions.
The machine gun sputtered once more.
Then, with the speed of a battery of candid cameras with lens set at 1/300, Penny Pim’s amazing brain began to file away pictures. He ran forward, bent down over the figure on the sidewalk.
ITEM — Dead man’s face unrecognizable because of bullets. Tall, gray hair, white linen suit spotted with blood, cream-colored summer felt hat off to one side. Something shiny dangling from right wrist. (Filed in mental drawer G-0013, given over to gruesome sights.)
ITEM — Man’s leg from thigh down disappearing in rear end of black sedan. Dark blue trousers, white shoe. The man in hurry. Shoe either freshly polished or new as it was gleaming white. (Miscellaneous file P-2169 devoted to unknown but interesting people.)
ITEM — Black Pierce-Arrow sedan, 1936 model, just gathering speed. Virginia license plate, RH-1,016,538. Tag bent at lower left corner. Rear curtain down. Scratch at edge of right rear fender. (File A-11 where other mental pictures of fine automobiles were placed which he desired for his own.)
ITEM — Tires: new Goodyears, chain style tread. Spare a bit dark with road wear. Patent lock open on spare. No tire cover showing. Tires apparently a bit under-inflated.
ITEM — Car turned south off Pennsylvania Avenue, Probably headed for Potomac River bridge and a Virginia hideout.
ITEM — Taxicab driver, Mike Duffy, Cab Drivers’ License No. 490, first on scene after himself. Time: 6:33:09 P. M.
“Jeeze!” gasped Mike Duffy, cab driver, in wide-eyed excitement.
“I... er... believe he... he’s dead,” Penny Pim choked. It was the first time he had seen horrible death from so close a vantage point. As excited as he was, his twenty years of training at occupations necessitating careful observation did not fail him. He had seen times of stress before, always mental of course, and each time he had come through with flying colors, even if weak-kneed with excitement.
Penny Pim turned in some anger as he was unceremoniously jostled aside. He saw a park policeman, Shield #3192, take over. Other people pushed into the horrified circle. Cars stopped on the A venue, their occupants rushing to join the morbid and white-faced throng around the dead man.
A squad car with two policemen squealed to a stop. The uniformed men shoved the crowd back, leaving the first policeman, Penny Pim and Mike Duffy closest to the dead man.
“What’d you see, you?” the park policeman snapped at Mike Duffy.
“I... I ain’t seen nothin’, Officer. I had to put on brakes to keep from havin’ a red sedan run me down. Musta been the... the murder car. I... I turned the corner, sor, an’ seen the poor dead man. This gintleman,” Mike Duffy pointed at Penny Pim, “was bendin’ over the dead gintleman when I stopped at the curb, sor.”
The park policeman wheeled on Penny, eyed him with an expression on his face that showed he wasn’t pleased. “Well,” he snapped, “what did you see?” He said it in a way that told he didn’t expect a great deal in the way of helpful information.
“I... I don’t know who killed him, sir, but I’ve a description of the car.” Penny was a trifle embarrassed at the attention.
“You have?” The park policeman was frankly astonished. “Well, you’re the first witness I ever had with sense enough to look around. Say-y-y!” The park policeman pointed to the shiny thing dangling from the dead man’s right wrist. “This guy must’ve escaped from the law! He broke his handcuff, and—”
“Ridiculous!” Penny snorted. “The man must have been carrying a brief case of some kind with something important in it. Anyway, that half a handcuff on his wrist doesn’t look strong enough for police work, does it?”
“Did you see a brief case?” insisted the amazed policeman.
Penny admitted he hadn’t. “But I can easily reconstruct the scene and see one,” he said quietly. Penny had control of himself now. “If you’ll look closely you can see where the chain has been freshly cut with heavy wire pliers. People don’t chain things to their wrists unless they’re valuable. Therefore, what the man had in the brief case must have been worth a lot of money.”
“Pretty good figuring, mister!”
Penny swerved as the new voice came from behind him. The policeman stiffened, snapped a quick salute.
“Captain Linn, sir,” he said, respect and relief in his tone.
Penny Pim blinked. He had heard of Captain Linn, ranking detective of the Metropolitan Police of Washington. Linn was tall, had a thin and cynical face, keen gray eyes.
An ambulance gong clanged harshly. Under cover of the confusion of picking up the dead man, Penny Pim mopped perspiration from his high forehead. The handkerchief slipped from his hand, still a bit shaky, and fell to the spot on the sidewalk just occupied by the dead man. He shivered a bit as he retrieved it, gingerly folding and replacing it in his coat pocket.
“I think,” Detective Captain Linn said, “it might be a good thing if you came along with me to headquarters and told what happened. You apparently kept your eyes open.” His smile was a trifle taut.
Penny nodded. He didn’t know what he’d tell Naomi, but this was a case of necessity. Detective Linn ushered him into a squad car and it sircned its way clear of the machines pack-jamming the avenue.
“Well,” Captain Linn said pleasantly, a long blank of paper before him on the desk, “we’ll start by asking your name.”
“Pennington Pim, sir,” Penny said.
“Now,” Captain Linn went on, “what were you doing at the scene of murder?”
“I was walking from work. That’s at the Government Printing Office near the river, lower Fourteenth Street. I always walk as the exercise is beneficial.”
“No doubt,” Linn said drily, looking over Penny’s pale face, his soft body. “What do you do there?”
“I’m chief inspector. I look for errors in the printed currency. I’ve been there ten years. Before that I was in Commerce as head of the file room. I was in charge of all filing,” Penny said proudly. “Millions of filing compartments. Well — almost.” He grinned. “Actually, 978,023. I was sent to the Treasury Department to get the files in shape. Liked the work there and stayed on as an inspector.”
“Ever see the dead man before?”
“No, sir. I know where he works, though.”
“You know where he works!” shrilled the amazed detective. “How do you know where he works if you never saw him before?”
Penny Pim blushed. “W-well, I made a slight misstatement there, Mr. Linn. I should have said I know the work he’s engaged in.”
“And that is?” Linn snapped.