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:
“Darling,” Mrs. Rufus gushed to Dolores, “tell the dear master that I have arranged it. I—”
“Don’t you wish to see him now, dear Mrs. Hyde?” asked Dolores sweetly. “He expects you.”
“Oh, dear. May I?” Mrs. Rufus fluttered.
Dolores led her to the door that opened into the suite of offices. I saw another girl at a typewriter as the door opened. She got up, at a word from Dolores, and led Mrs. Rufus on to the dear master’s private office. Well, I wasn’t going to see what she gave him, or hear what she had arranged.
I moved up next to Irene.
“Great stuff, isn’t it?” I said.
She froze me, but said, “What?”
“The Miracle Way,” I said. “The master, Mangasarious.”
“Excuse me,” she said, and hurried through the mob to a tall, quick-moving young fellow in gray tweeds who was going towards the master’s office. She joined him and they went on together. Just before they entered the office, she looked back over her shoulder. I had been staring at her, but I wasn’t then. I was telling the fussy old woman next to me that it was great stuff. She was agreeing.
They went into the office. The typist wasn’t at her desk. Then the door closed.
I missed Dolores in the crowd, for a few minutes. Then I heard her talking to a woman near me. She had been somewhere and had come back. She was telling the woman, who wore expensive clothes and some real jewelry, that Mangy would see her soon.
Then Dolores moved off toward the office. But she didn’t go in. She went to another door and entered that. Her own private office, I guessed.
Irene, Mrs. Rufus, and the young fellow in tweeds came out of the door, maybe ten minutes later. There was a loud scream and the girl I had seen at the typewriter ran after them, pointing her finger, crying “They killed him!”
I crashed through the mob and got to the door. Dolores ran out of her room and started asking excited questions. She called to somebody to clear the hall. Mrs. Rufus looked dazed and happy. Irene looked mad. The young fellow, holding both women by the arm, looked silly and surprised.
The typist was still yelling, “They killed him!” And the women of the audience didn’t want to be shoved out. If it was their dear master the girl was yelling about, they wanted to lynch the three who had just left him. Several of them — Amazons, too — made a rush for Irene and the other two. I spread my arms and shoved all three back to the door.
“Back up.” I said. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Irene snapped something angrily at me. The young fellow began, “I say, sir, you can’t...” Mrs. Rufus was still dizzy.
I saw that some of the ushers were herding the gang out, so I shoved these three back into the office.
“Police!” yelled the typist.
“The marines are here,” I told her and grabbed her shoulder. I tossed her into the office, too.
Then I joined them and shut the door, snapping the lock.
“Sit down!” I said.
“What authority have you to do this?” Irene asked.
I winked at her and reached for the telephone. Dolores was coming out of Mangy’s private office. And she left the door open.
“Dead!” she murmured, like a girl in a trance. “Dead! Stabbed! My uncle...”
I could see Mangy. He was at his big, shiny desk. He had been using the phone. At least, he had his hand on it and the phone was off the cradle. Now he was sprawled forward over the desk, and I saw the bright handle of a knife over his left shoulder.
I picked up the phone and called Headquarters.
“Joe Burke talking,” I told the desk sergeant. “Give me Kelly — homicide.”
“Another murder? Wherever you go, Joe—”
“Give me Kelly!”
Kelly came on the wire and said he would be right there, with his staff. I hung up and grinned at the suspects.
“We’ll wait for the cops,” I said pleasantly.
“You fool,” Irene snapped at me, “we didn’t kill him — we couldn’t have killed him.”
“Tell it to Kelly,” I said. “Don’t leave here. I want to take a look at him.”
I went to the other door and looked in. The knife must have gone right into his heart. I gave his office the once-over, standing in the door so I could watch the others. The typist was sobbing; maybe she liked Mangy, or maybe she wondered where she’d get another job. The look of goofy happiness on the face of Mrs. Rufus had changed; now she looked stricken, gray, pathetic. Irene was downright mad. The young fellow still looked silly.
There was a coat closet at one side, the door partly open. The office was on the ground floor, with large windows on a court. They were closed. The whole place was furnished like a movie set — a six-inch carpet, chairs upholstered in velvet, heavy drapes at the windows, swell pictures.
Opposite the coat closet was another door, closed. I took a chance and crossed to it. The door was unlocked. It led into a simply furnished office with a desk, a typewriter, a dictaphone and a filing cabinet. This was where Dolores worked — the room she had entered from outside.
They were all sitting there when I went back. But the young fellow had been leaning over to whisper to Irene. Then Kelly started hammering on the door and I let him in.
“Some day,” he growled, “you’ll be the corpse at one of these killings. Who’s dead and why?”
His gang got to work in Mangy’s office. Kelly started questioning the others. According to the typist, the three — Mrs. Rufus, Irene and the young fellow — had come out of his office. She had heard the young fellow say, “That’s that!” She had gone to Mangy’s door, to give him some letters to sign, and had seen him with the knife in his back. She had run out after the others, accusing them.
The young fellow was the nephew of Mrs. Rufus — Ronald Darrow. He and Irene admitted they had followed Mrs. Rufus into Mangy’s office, hoping to dissuade her from giving him a necklace worth ten grand, hoping to scare Mangy into refusing it. Mrs. Rufus would not be dissuaded and Mangy wouldn’t be scared. He had been smooth and hypocritical; he had said he could not reject the free-will offerings of his devoted followers, who wished to help him with his great work.
“Did you threaten him?” Kelly asked.
“I told him he could be stopped,” Ronald admitted.
“And I said we’d stop him,” Irene added. She was still angry.
Mrs. Rufus couldn’t talk much. She was dazed. But Kelly got out of her that she had left the office a moment or two before the others, who were still talking to Mangy. The door was open, but her back was turned.
“Then either one of you,” Kelly observed, looking at Irene and Ronald, “could have stabbed him without her seeing you. Which one did?”
Ronald put his hand over Irene’s. She smiled bitterly.
“You fool!” she said to Kelly.
Kelly grinned at her, said: “We’ve got a jail matron who likes to work over dames like you.”
He had told one of his men to find the necklace. There wasn’t any. Mrs. Rufus had given it to Mangy, he had dropped it into a desk drawer. But it wasn’t there now; or anywhere else.
I went out to a phone booth and called Rufus. He exploded, when I told him what had happened, and said he’d come right down. I met him outside when his big car slid up to the curb. Rufus was a handsome, gray-haired, Pink-faced old boy; gruff and surly on the surface, but with a hearty laugh. He put away plenty of good food and liquor, and he had an eye for a pretty girl. He grabbed my arm and started cussing; he cussed like a longshoreman. Then we went in.
He put his arm protectingly around his wife, nodded to Irene and Ronald, glared at Kelly.
He suggested to Kelly that they all be allowed to leave.