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:
“Yeah?” said Kelly. “Where were you when this guy was stabbed? If you knew your wife was goin’ to toss him the necklace — if there was any necklace — you’d be just the one to bump him.”
Rufus got apoplectic. I put my hand on his arm and whispered, “Take it easy, boss. Don’t let him ride you.”
The reporters were in, by this time, and the camera boys. With all of Mangy’s followers in town, it was a swell story. In spite of Rufus’ objections, they shot pictures all over the place.
Dolores, sitting by herself in a corner, was a perfect picture of a grief-stricken niece. I ambled over to her.
“Sister,” I said, “where were you when this happened?”
She looked at me, wiping her eyes. “I?” she asked. “Out there in the hall, talking to—”
“You ducked into your office,” I told her, “a minute or two before this other girl started yelling ‘Murder!’ You could have got through that door between the offices and up behind him — he wouldn’t expect you to knife him — and out again. Neat timing, but you could have done it.”
She stared at me. “You think that I...”
I shrugged. “You had a chance, too,” I said. “As much chance to do it as they had.”
She started sobbing. “My poor dear uncle!” she said. “He was so good! He did so much for others! Now—”
Kelly cut in with an announcement. “I’m holding you, Darrow,” he said, “on suspicion. Mr. Hyde, you can take your wife and this girl home. But I warn you—”
Ronald Darrow was as tense as a race-horse. He stepped up to Kelly, said, “You damned fool!”, and swung at him. Kelly blocked the punch and socked the idiot. Two bulls grabbed him, then. Rufus protested, but it didn’t do any good. There was nothing he could do. Irene put her arms around Ronald, kissed him, whispered something to him. Then Rufus shook his hand and said he’d send his lawyer around, get him out quick. I went out to the car with Rufus.
“If you were any good on your job, Burke,” he snapped at me, “you’d have prevented this.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And if you hadn’t let the missus give Mangy trinkets, it wouldn’t have happened. You firing me? Or do you want me to stay on the job and find out who did kill him?”
He was mad enough to bite. Mrs. Rufus and Irene were in the car.
“Ronald didn’t do it,” he said. “Nor Irene. So it’s no concern of mine.”
“Okay. Then I quit, huh? No concern of mine, either. But if you think Kelly can’t build a case against Ronald, you’re wrong. Somebody has to be tried and convicted. Looks like Ronald is the guy — unless Kelly switches to Irene. She’d be an accessory in any case. Or he would. But they’re your friends, not mine.” I shrugged and started away.
“Wait, Burke!” he protested. “Stay on the job.”
“Murder cases come higher, boss. From now on the ante is raised. Fifty a day and expenses.”
He growled, but agreed.
I went back to Kelly. He was questioning Dolores, pretty gently, for him. I grinned to myself. I was the only one who knew she had had a chance at Mangy. There’d probably be a lot of women willing to testify she’d been talking to them from the time the meeting ended until the typist yelled that he was dead.
The necklace was missing. Kelly’s men searched the place, but couldn’t find it. The knife belonged to Mangy — an Oriental thing he had picked up in India, Dolores said, where he had studied with the masters, whoever they are.
Kelly had traced the call Mangy had been making. He had been talking to a rich divorcee, Mrs. Lindsey Barrett, when the knife had silenced him. She was one of his followers. She had been trying, ever since he was silenced, to get him again. One of Kelly’s dicks told her he was dead and she must have fainted. A cop went up to her penthouse to see how she was taking it and found her maid had called two doctors and a nurse.
Kelly’s mob was moving out, taking Ronald with them. Kelly stopped and said to me, “Joe, if you know anything, come clean! I’ll get your license, this time, if you hold out on us!”
“It’s open and shut, ain’t it?” I said. “Ronald or Irene had to do it, didn’t they?”
“I’ll know more when we get the fingerprint checkup,” he grunted. “I’m just telling you—”
“I’d better come clean. Yeah!” I grinned at him. “Or you’ll get my license. Seems like I heard that before, somewhere.”
When they had gone, Dolores and the typist, Agnes Smith, were left. They had been warned not to leave town, of course, and to keep in touch with Kelly. He had men tailing them, too.
Agnes was a dumb bunny. She didn’t count. But Dolores — there was a deep one.
“What will you do now?” I asked her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I can only try to carry on his work as he would have wished me to do. But I am ill-trained. I don’t know—”
“He really had something, huh?” I asked. “Not just a grifter?”
She looked puzzled. “Grifter?” she said. “What’s that? He was a great teacher, a man who taught people how to live richly and fully. He brought them an ancient wisdom with which to cure the maladies of our age.”
“Made money, didn’t he?”
“His grateful pupils made him many gifts, of course. But he taught the poor, too, for nothing.”
“You think this Ronald guy did for him?”
She spread her hands, gracefully. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. I know only that Ronald Darrow wanted his aunt to give him money and that he and her secretary, Irene Farr, had threatened my uncle before. I heard them. They were angry because they thought he had influenced Mrs. Hyde against them. He hadn’t, really. It was her own thought — that money would do Ronald no good until he had learned to live.”
“Until he had accepted Mangasarius as a teacher, you mean?”
“Yes,” she nodded. “But Ronald was a stubborn materialist. Irene, too.”
“Why didn’t he get money from Rufus? He’s a materialist, too, or I never met one.”
Dolores smiled. “He had tried and failed. You see, Mr. Hyde wanted security, always, and Ronald naturally had none.”
“Why did he want money?”
“To buy an interest in a business, so that he could marry Irene. So Mrs. Hyde said.”
She looked up at me, out of her moist, large dark eyes. She smiled forgivingly.
“And you suggested that I,” she said, “might have — stabbed my uncle?”
“Sorry, sister,” I said. “I just meant you had a chance. He was your uncle, huh?”
She gave me. that sweet, forgiving smile again. “How terrible it must be to be a detective!” she said. “Do you distrust everyone, everything? Have you no faith?”
I got red and ran my finger around my collar. “A dick can’t take anything for granted,” I said.
I went away from there and down to the office of the Messenger, where I prowled through the paper’s morgue. There wasn’t much about Mangy. He had advertised his meetings, but they hadn’t run many news stories about him. In one or two brief notices, Dolores was mentioned. Then I dropped around to the printing company that had published his book. Mangy had paid for it, cash in advance, and they had run off five thousand copies. He had just placed an order for another five thousand. At four dollars a crack, he was doing pretty well for himself. The head of the company was moaning because he had read the extras; with Mangasarius dead, the order would probably be cancelled.
“Have you no faith?” I handed him Dolores’ line. “Leave it to his niece. She’ll carry on and sell his books. Maybe he’ll autograph ’em, if there’s ink in heaven.”
But I didn’t gather up any info about Mangy. He had hit town a year ago, returning from years of study in India, so he said. Dolores had joined him a little later. He had gone over big from the start. Once the dames heard him talk, they were sold — and told their neighbors over the back-fence or the bridge-table. The cops had nothing on him; they can’t tackle a great teacher like Mangy unless complaints pour in. A few husbands, like Rufus, may have kicked; but it was their fault if their wives tossed presents to Mangy.