Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 118, No. 2, March 19, 1938
- Автор: Clark Dale, 12627 Convict
- Год: 1938
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 118, No. 2, March 19, 1938». Краткое содержание книги:
“Can’t... can’t you have him stopped downstairs?”
“Sure,” Ed said. “Sure I can but I’m not going to. Now don’t go off your nut. Just give me a lift with the punk’s chair.”
They lifted me, chair and all, and carried me over to what looked like a solid-paneled wall. I couldn’t see how Ed worked it but the wall opened up and there was a cute little room behind it. It was already occupied. Yep, that’s right. Senator Delgardo was lying on a leather couch with a very pretty Afghan pulled up to his chin and a look of utter peace on his face. Somebody had very thoughtfully closed his eyes for him. I wondered if I’d look that nice — afterward.
Ed had a roll of adhesive. He slapped a strip of it around my right arm, pinning it to the chair. I tried to bite him when he tackled my mouth but it was no go. That got taped too. He went back and got Fran and tossed her carelessly on the floor beside the senator’s couch.
Then, appraisingly, he looked at Mr. Hutchins. “You’d better stay in here too, baby. You’re too hysterical for McKenna. You’d make him nervous.”
“I want a gun,” the old man babbled. “I want a gun in case anything happens. I won’t be taken alive, I tell you.”
“If you don’t shut up,” Ed said, “I’ll take you myself.” He went back into the big room and got a gun though. He tossed this through the panel, like a bone to a whining pup. The panel closed.
The little room wasn’t soundproof. You could hear Ed moving around out there, straightening things. It seemed like an awfully long time before somebody opened the hall door and said, “Lieutenant McKenna, sir.”
Ed said, “Hello, Slats,” in a careless voice and there was a faint rustle of papers. I could imagine him sitting at his desk, very preoccupied with his work. “What’s new with you?”
“Same old sixes and sevens,” Slats said. “Nothing startling except I want that heel Cassidy. You knew he murdered his wife, didn’t you?”
Ed said yes, he’d heard about it over the radio. “Too bad about Jerry. I kept telling him to lay off the liquor, but you know how some of these guys are. Have a slug yourself, Slats?” There was a tinkle of glass.
Slats said, “No. No, thanks, I’ve got a bad liver and I have to watch it.” I could picture him walking around nervously while Ed drank. Slats never could stay still very long. Presently he went off at a tangent. “What time did Senator Delgardo go home?”
I thought Mr. Hutchins was going to faint. His eyes rolled up in his head and he leaned weakly against the panel, gasping. If it hadn’t been for that damned chair I’d have tackled him then. Even bound I could have made something happen.
Ed, taking his time, answered the question. “About eleven, I think. Why?”
“I just wondered. Did he take his chair with him? There’s one missing. I can see the leg marks in the rug and there don’t seem to be another chair in the room that would fit. Maybe you made him a present of it?”
There was a hell of a long pause this time. Finally Big Ed said with a trace of irritation: “What’s on your mind, McKenna? I paid for the chair. What I did with it is none of your business though I don’t mind telling you somebody burned a hole in the fabric and I had it taken out.”
“Well,” Slats said, “I hope there wasn’t somebody tied in it at the time. I mean the hole might have been burned in the party first, huh?”
It was very quiet for a minute; so quiet I thought Slats might have gone and I got jittery. Trying to get out of the chair I overturned it instead and fell on my face, skidding smack into Hutchins. Well, he’d heard everything I had and was pretty jittery to start with. He fell down on top of me and the gun went boom-boom-boom right in my ear. Like an echo another gun blasted out in the living room, only this one did it just once. That was like a signal touching off a whole string of cannon crackers down in Chinatown. Maybe it was because I had my ear to the floor that it sounded so plain; the shooting wasn’t going on in the living room. It was farther away than that. I tried to scrooge around to see what Mr. Hutchins was doing all this time, and then the wall panel opened and Slats came in.
He bent down and took the gun out of Mr. Hutchins’ fist. Mr. Hutchins didn’t seem to mind a bit. He didn’t look quite as peaceful as State Senator Delgardo but he was just as dead. The last of those three slugs he’d fired had gone in his mouth. Maybe he’d done it on purpose.
Slats still didn’t say anything. He righted my chair, went over and untied Frances. There was a lot of noise out in the living room now. Sounded like the marines had landed. A harness bull with a sergeant’s stripes came to the panel and said, “All clear, Lieutenant. Big Ed’s awake if you want to talk to him.”
Slats nodded gloomily. His lantern jaw needed a shave and his dark eyes had pouches under them. Fran got stiffly to her knees, clumped over to my side. “Oh, Jerry, what have they been doing to you?” She fumbled at the adhesive on my mouth. It hurt so bad coming off I forgot about my busted arm for a minute. Slats seemed to come to some kind of a decision and helped Fran get me out of the chair. When I tried to stand up I fell flat on my face again. A couple of cops came in at that and picked me up and carried me out to the divan by the fireplace.
Slats looked down at me threateningly. “You wanna drink?”
I did. But all I did was give him a grin that he mistook for a sneer and say, “Nuts, I’m off it.”
He sneered right back at me. “Oh, yeah?” He turned away to answer somebody’s question, turned back after a minute and said carelessly, “By the way, you didn’t kill your wife with that gun. We checked.”
Frances, kneeling beside me, gave him an indignant, “Of course he didn’t! I could have told you that!”
Slats said, “He did a pretty good job on Heinie Ziegler, though.”
I nearly passed out. Well, I’d been expecting it and here it was. I said weakly, “How... how did you know?”
“Your gun, sappo, your gun. When they brought Ziegler’s body in we checked that too. The slugs matched.”
“But they couldn’t have!” I yelled. “Hell, it wasn’t the same gun! And besides, Ziegler’s been dead for... for thirty-seven—”
“Not even that many hours, kid. You killed him when he was chasing you in that car. I didn’t know about it when I collared you in the Mercer; didn’t know the gal was Fran, but give a case enough cops and they’re bound to fit some of the pieces eventually. Even dumb cops.”
I don’t know. Maybe it was the news that I wasn’t a murderer. Maybe it was just looking at his face, and at Fran; maybe it was my broken arm that made my vision get kind of fuzzy all of a sudden. Somehow I got a handkerchief out and blew my nose and it sounded just like a foghorn at sea. Everybody in the room turned to stare at me resentfully. Even Big Ed Harmon who was cuffed to his chair and submitting to an interne’s cursed instructions. Apparently all that was wrong with Big Ed was a creased scalp.
Slats said, keeping his voice low, “If you hadn’t been such a punk you’d have smelled the frame, Jerry. It’s the old gag, pinning a trick kill on a new recruit so he won’t squawk when he’s really told to do something. Only sometimes it’s a real kill and that’s what I was afraid of. That’s why I wanted you to break out of the racket before it was too late.” He reached down, touched Fran’s head lightly. “I’ve got him a job, kid. Not much dough in it, but it’s the right kind.”
I couldn’t see why he was explaining this to her. They seemed to have something in common that I didn’t know about. I said, “Okay, okay, I’m a punk and I don’t know which end is up. So maybe you’ll tell me how you got wise to so much.”