This Is Murder
- Автор: Гарднер Эрл Стенли
- Год: 1935
- Язык: английский
- Год: A Morrow Mystery
- Жанр: Классические детективы
Электронная книга - «This Is Murder». Краткое содержание книги:
The next night: Sam found himself out on a pitching yacht paying ransom for a seasick girl named Ann Hartwell, only to be arrested the moment he set foot on land, because federal agents thought he knew too much about the kidnapping.
The following night: He found himself stumbling over a corpse in a strangely dark house, with his very frightened secretary, Natalie Rice, subbing desperately at his side.
The rest of the week: Night and day, Sam Moraine was involved in everything his advertising. He was in turn detective, politician and suspected murderer. The role of murderer seemed about to stick, when the unexpected happened.
A smashing Grand Jury scene climaxes this exciting murder mystery. It’s built around the experience of a mean-in-the-street caught unwittingly in the greasy cogs of a crooked political machine, and of how he extricates himself.
“Oh, that? Why, I don’t know where it is, Barney. In my apartment somewhere, I guess. I carried it the night I took that ransom money out and then I put it in my bureau or somewhere.”
“That’s what you say. A .38, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Know anything about Pete Dixon being shot twice with a .38?”
“I heard he was killed,” Moraine said. “Shocking case, wasn’t it?”
Barney Morden took Moraine’s arm, piloted him over to the car which he had been driving.
“Get in.”
“Have you got a warrant?” Moraine asked.
“I don’t need one. This is a pinch.”
“And I thought you were a friend of mine.”
“Never mind what you thought. Get in. You’re going places.”
“Where, for instance?”
“Where I can get some information out of you.”
A small crowd had collected and Barney Morden glared at them.
“Go on about your business,” he said. “Don’t stand here gawking.”
He pushed Sam Moraine into the automobile. Carl Thorne jumped in beside him and closed the door. Morden slipped behind the steering wheel and the car purred into motion.
“Taking me to jail?” Moraine asked, casually.
“You’re damn right I am,” Morden said. “I’m doing something now I wanted to do last night.”
“Under those circumstances,” Moraine told him, “you’ll get no cooperation from me.”
“I don’t want any cooperation from you.”
“All right, Barney, just remember that.”
Moraine sat back in silence.
Morden ran the car around the block, back through an alley, and swung sharply to his left, pressing his hand on the button of his horn. A door slid smoothly back and the car entered a big concrete room. A police officer in uniform, seated in a chair, controlled the mechanism which opened and closed the door. Another man in uniform stood by the side of a steel door.
Barney Morden stopped the car, nodded to the officer by the steel door, and said to Moraine, “Get out.”
Moraine left the automobile. The officer fitted a key and opened the steel door. Morden pushed Moraine into a long concrete corridor. A man looked up from a desk. Morden said, “I’m not booking him right now. He’s in for questioning.”
Carl Thorne was walking slightly behind Moraine. The man at the desk glanced at him curiously.
“Okay,” Morden said, jerking his head toward Thorne.
The three walked down a corridor. Morden stopped at a door marked “BUREAU OF DETECTIVES — HOMICIDE.”
He stood in the doorway, said something in a low voice to one of the men, nodded, stepped back out, and escorted Sam Moraine to a room fitted with a battered desk, half a dozen chairs, a barred window, a table and a cuspidor.
“Sit down, Sam,” he said.
Moraine sat down.
“Where did you go after you left your office last night?”
Sam looked around the room and said, “Nice place you have here, Barney.”
“Where were you last night after eleven o’clock?”
Moraine said, “I’d like to telephone to my lawyer.”
Morden’s face flushed.
Thorne leaned forward and whispered to Morden. Morden shook his head and said, “Not until were sure. We can’t afford to slip up on this thing.”
He glared steadily at Sam Moraine for several seconds, then said, “Okay, buddy, we’ll wait.”
“What are we waiting for?” Moraine asked.
“You’ll find out.”
Morden pulled a cigar from his waistcoat pocket, clamped his teeth on the end of the cigar, tore off the end by jerking the cigar with a savage wrenching motion. He spat out the bit of tobacco, wrapped his lips about the cigar, and held a match to the end. Moraine took a cigarette from his cigarette case and, after a moment, Thorne did the same. The three sat smoking in silence.
“Haven’t any cards here, have you?” Moraine asked.
Morden said nothing.
Moraine sighed and resumed his smoking. A clock on the wall tick-tocked off the seconds.
More than fifteen minutes elapsed. Moraine, having finished his cigarette, turned to Barney Morden and said, “You know, Barney, if you’re trying to get my goat with this waiting business, you’re not getting anywhere.”
Morden said nothing. Once more Thorne leaned forward and whispered.
Morden nodded his head. A door opened. A plainclothes man said, “Okay, Barney.”
Barney got up.
“This way,” he told Moraine.
Moraine followed him through a door, down a passage, through another door, and into a room. Across one end of the room was a lighted stage effect, a huge box closed on three sides, open on the side toward the room. The open side was covered with light, silken gauze, which caught the illumination of concealed electric lights. The room itself was dark. The interior of the box blazed with brilliant light. A man opened the door, stepped through, and Barney Morden said, “Line up,” and nodded his head toward Moraine. The man took Moraine’s arm.
“This way, buddy,” he remarked.
Moraine walked through the door, leaving Barney Morden and Carl Thorne in the room.
Moraine found himself in a long corridor, at the end of which was a transverse corridor with a man standing in the intersection. The man who held his arm shouted, “Send down eight or ten, Bill.”
The man at the transverse corridor waved his hand in token of assent, and vanished.
“Lovely weather were having, after the big wind storm,” Moraine remarked.
The man who held his arm nodded wearily. He kept his eyes on the transverse corridor.
After several minutes there were shuffling steps. A file of slack-shouldered men came into view. There were men of different ages and heights, men who were well-dressed, men who were shabbily dressed. Their faces were apathetic. They showed whatever resentment they might have felt by a slouching gait and a slow, shuffling walk.
The man with Moraine opened a door. White, brilliant light blazed out into their faces.
“All right, boys,” he said.
The men started filing into the shadow box. When four of them had gone in, the man pushed Moraine into the line.
Moraine held his ground, holding up the men behind him.
“Look here,” he said, “you can’t do this to me.”
“The hell we can’t,” he said, “we’re doing it. If you only knew it, were giving you all the breaks. Get in there. If you’re wise, you’ll stand up and take it on the chin. If you get rough, you’re going to get hurt.”
The man’s voice was elaborately impersonal. The very lack of feeling carried conviction. Moraine walked into the shadow box. The other men shuffled along behind him. A door closed. Someone yelled, “Okay, Barney.”
Moraine looked out toward the white gauze. Lights beat into his face. He could see only the white gauze and darkness, could not even discern the men in that other room as vague, shadowy figures.
A door opened and closed.
Barney Morden’s voice said, “Okay, begin at the front of the line. Say ‘Sixth Avenue and Maplehurst, and drive like hell.’ Turn around and face the lights when you say it.”
The man at the head of the line turned wearily, “Sixth Avenue and Maplehurst,” he said, after the manner of a bored waiter repeating a patron’s order, “and drive like hell.”
“Put more feeling into it,” Barney Morden said. “Snap it out. Say ‘Sixth Avenue and Maplehurst, and drive like hell.’ ”
The man sighed, hesitated for a moment.
“You heard me!” Barney Morden bellowed.
“Sixth Avenue and Maplehurst, and drive like hell.”
“That’s better,” Morden said. “Now you, next in line!”
Someone on the other side of the white gauze started to say something in an excited voice, but Barney Morden silenced him.