Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 19, No. 99, February 1952
- Автор: Грубер Фрэнк, Кемельман Гарри
- Год: 1952
- Язык: английский
- Год: American Mercury
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 19, No. 99, February 1952». Краткое содержание книги:
A quiet sort of voice answered. A man’s voice. “Open up, I want to talk to you.”
Benny wasn’t shivering now; he was shaking like a young sapling in a Kansas twister. For my own part I took a quick look out the window. I saw that it opened on a dead-air shaft. There was no retreat that way, and I cursed Benny for being such a fool as to rent a room without a hole by which we could escape.
Well, there was nothing to do but open the door. I slipped back the bolt and jerked open the door. I expected a cop. Maybe he was a cop. But he didn’t look like one.
He was tall, about six feet, well-built, but still looked kind of lean. He was in his early thirties and rather dark complexioned.
I hardly took in his features though, because of his eyes. They were large and dark and there was an expression in them that I can’t describe exactly — except that when I looked into them I was — well, scared.
He was smiling.
“May I come in?”
I moved back into the room and shot a quick look toward the bed. Benny had had sense enough to throw a blanket over the gold cup. But when I looked back at the stranger his eyes were on the bed. He’d closed the door behind him.
He said: “You’ll have to take it back.”
He couldn’t see the gold cup; for that matter he couldn’t have known that Benny and me were the ones who stole it.
I began edging around him, so that he was partly between Benny and myself. I said: “What’re you talking about? Take what back?”
He shook his head and smiled. “The object you got last night. You’ll have to take it back to Alfred Halleck.”
Benny chirped up, then. He said: “Sure,” and went to the bed. He stooped over, put his hand under a pillow, and came up with an automatic. I blinked. I hadn’t known that Benny had a rod.
He pointed it at the stranger and snapped: “Up with ’em, copper!”
I was looking at the stranger. He didn’t seem worried. He was still smiling, only... the smile was a kind of sad one.
“I’m sorry,” the stranger said, “you’ll have to take it back.”
Benny sneered. “There’s some rope in the top drawer, Jim. Tie his hands. My room rent’s up today, anyway. We’ll just leave him here.”
I got the rope, but I wasn’t feeling so good. The gun in Benny’s hand — I’ve done a lot of things in my time; I’ve been up the river, but I never carried a gun. I don’t believe in guns. Sure, I’m a safe-cracker — a burglar. But I take my chances. I try not to get caught, but if I am — that’s my hard luck. I take the rap. But I don’t ever want a murder rap. All the fellows I ever knew who carried guns wound up with murder raps.
The stranger put his hands behind his back. I wound the rope around his wrists, then he stretched out on the bed and I finished up by tying his feet. I did a good job of it. I wanted enough time to take the cup to Opdyke, get my split, and leave. I wanted no more of Benny.
Benny got the cup from under the blanket, wrapped it in a towel, then rolled the whole thing inside an old newspaper and tied a piece of string around it.
We were ready to leave the room when the stranger spoke again. He said: “Take it back. Take it back, Benny Potter and Jim Vedder.”
I didn’t think about that until we were outside of Benny’s rooming house. Then it struck me. Aside from Benny, no one knew my name. I’d only got out two days ago. I’d come straight to Benny’s room and had been out of it only once — the night before when we took the trip_up to Fox Meadow in Scarsdale and cracked the safe.
Benny lived on Christopher Street. We walked east to Sixth Avenue, then turned north. After a block or two Benny said, “Let’s stop in here and get a glass of beer.”
I was willing. My throat was kind of dry. The saloon didn’t look like much, but beer’s beer no matter where you get it. We went in. It was the middle of the morning and the place was deserted except for the bartender and one customer who stood in front of the bar, with his back toward us.
“Two beers,” Benny said.
Then the man at the bar turned around. It was the stranger. The man we’d left in Benny’s room.
He looked right at me and this time he wasn’t smiling. The temperature of the café seemed suddenly to get ten degrees colder.
He said: “You’ll have to take it back.”
I was pretty shocked by the sight of him, but Benny looked as if he was going to faint.
I backed to the door and that broke the spell on Benny. He gave a hoarse yell, whipped out the automatic and rushed backwards, like a prizefighter backing away. He was in such a hurry he missed the door and banged against the wall.
He made it the second time and I was only one jump behind him. Out on Sixth Avenue we rushed to the next corner, which was nth Street, turned right, and didn’t stop until we were almost up to Fifth. We stopped then just because we were out of breath. We both looked back, but the stranger wasn’t in sight.
“Cripes,” panted Benny, “how did he get loose from those ropes and beat us to that saloon?”
“He couldn’t have done it,” I told Benny. “We went there straight from your room, by the shortest way. And, anyway... how did he know we were going to turn into that saloon? We didn’t know it ourselves until we saw the sign.”
Benny’s eyes almost popped out of his head. “That’s right!” he gasped. “He couldn’t have known we’d go in there — unless he guessed!”
I didn’t say a word. I was still feeling cold, despite the long run I’d just had, and I don’t think the short hairs on my hackle had gone down. Up the street a little way was a delicatessen shop, with a newspaper stand in front of it. I plunked down a few pennies and picked up a paper.
It was on page three, a two-column story, with a picture of the cup in one column. The heading over the article was: Historical Relic Stolen. Boiled down, the story was to the effect that burglars had cracked the safe of Alfred D. Halleck, noted archeologist, and stolen a gold cup that Halleck had discovered on one of his excavations some three years ago. The piece also told of Halleck having exhibited the gold cup at the New York World’s Fair.
I handed the newspaper to Benny. He glanced at the article, but didn’t take the trouble to read through it. “That’s the good thing about gold,” he said. “You can melt it down.”
“We’re not melting it down,” I told Benny. “We’re taking it back.”
Benny stared at me. “Are you crazy? After the trouble we went to to get it? Hey, snap out of it. Opdyke lives over here on Fourth Avenue. He’ll haggle around a little, but he’ll to come across with three hundred.”
“The cup goes back to Fox Meadow,” I told Benny. “It’s — an antique. It’s worth a lot more than three hundred.”
“All the more reason then!” Benny cried. “We’ll show this newspaper story to Opdyke — kick the price up on him.”
All of a sudden I got mad. I grabbed Benny’s arm and twisted him around. “You fool, don’t you see? Halleck values this cup. It’s worth a lot to him — a lot more than three hundred. All right, we’ll sell it back to him!”
Benny’s eyes lit up. “Say, that’s an idea. Maybe he’ll go a grand for it. He’s got the dough. That place of his cost a lot. We’ll hold him up for a grand. Come on, we’ll grab a train out to Scarsdale and get it over with. We’ll break in on him and make him come across with the dough, before we turn over the cup. Otherwise he’ll call the cops...”
We took a bus on Fifth Avenue and rode up to Forty-second, then walked across to Grand Central. Inside we bought two one-way tickets to Scarsdale and looked up the train schedule. One was listed to leave in twelve minutes. I didn’t like the idea of waiting around in the waiting room, so I gave Benny the high-sign and headed for the washroom, on the lower level.