Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 118, No. 6, April 16, 1938
- Автор: Трит Лоуренс, Вулрич Корнелл
- Год: 1938
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 118, No. 6, April 16, 1938». Краткое содержание книги:
Penny Pim awoke to a feeling of oppression. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t suck enough air into his straining lungs.
“Take it easy, fellow,” a soft voice told him.
Penny opened his eyes, looked up. Staring down at him, keen blue eyes understanding, was a man. The clean-cut face relaxed into a smile. “I’m Grant, Treasury Department,” he said. “It took us three hours to get the message, Mr. Pim, but we finally got it through our thick skulls. It was more than cleverness. You’re a genius, young man!”
“M-Message?” a voice croaked.
Penny turned his eyes with a mighty effort, saw Mawson staring at him, his close-set eyes venomous but puzzled.
The T-man grinned “Sure, a message. Mr. Pim recognized at once that all the money Hugon was giving you for the plates was hot. Hugon collected it from fifty or more different cases in the New York rackets.” He flashed an admiring look at Penny Pim. “Maybe you’re feeling well enough to tell it, Mr. Pim,” he suggested.
Penny nodded. “Sure, Mr. Grant. I... I knew it would get into circulation tonight as Scotty was going to pay for the plane tickets. I... I managed to have just the right amount ready for Mawson when he sent Scotty for them. While I was comparing the money with the plates I arranged the bills to spell out a message. A certain bank note’s number told me it was from the Apperson extortion case, in New York. Another number was one I remembered from the Halpern kidnaping case. Airline ticket offices watch out for hot money more than the banks even for crooks always try to make a getaway by air.
“All banks, ticket offices, and places where there is a big turnover in currency, have orders not to disturb the order in which the bills are placed, but to call the G- or T-men at once. The ticket seller apparently kept his head and did just that. I spelled out, using the numbers on the bank notes in a special case as the key, the word: HELP — 8418 ORT MILL ROAD — HELP T-MEN. The ‘H’s’ were bills from the Halpern case and whose numbers the T-men had on file, the ‘O’s’ came from the Offenburger case, in Newark, and so on. I picked an H, D, A and H for the address of the Gem Garage, as they are the 8th, 4th, 1st and 8th letters of the alphabet.” Penny closed his eyes, shook his aching head. “I... I guess that’s about all. Oh, I’m so tired, so—”
“You’re a real detective, Mr. Pim,” Grant said softly. “I wish I had some men like you in my division!”
“Just... just an accidental detective, Mr. Grant, and... and really rather interesting work,” Penny Pim said weakly. He smiled with strained effort, whispered: “But I showed up the great Detective Linn, my... my buckaroo!” His head lolled back. Before his dazed eyes materialized the features of Naomi. A twisted grin crossed his battered face. He wondered if he’d forgotten that proposal of marriage. He’d have to brush up on it. How did it go now?
“Naomi dear my, you love I,” Penny Pim whispered. “It on well live can we but — Naomi dearest — year each — amount — small — a — make — only... I—”
“Poor fellow.” T-man Grant said gravely, “he’s completely out of his head!”
---Proof of the Pudding
by Lawrence Treat
Even mother never baked a pie that held the secret to half a million dollars
Peppery little Flannagan looked like a cross between a cherub and a featherweight champ but he felt like a man trying to chop down a tree with a penknife. The case was two days old and stale, washed out.
He had come up to the north-woods village of Smyrna because Barton Seely sent for him. Seely, broad-shouldered, with round handsome features under his dark hair, looked out of place in the tiny cell behind the sheriff’s office. Too big for it. Too prosperous, too well fed, too healthy despite the worry in his deep brown eyes.
But he was dangerously close to hysteria as he shouted through the rusty bars of the jail. “You got a wire from me? Then you’re Flannagan. Listen — you know why they have me here — assault with intent to kill. They can give me ten years for it. Realize what that is? Know what it means to a man like me? Ten years. It’s crazy. But even Tannick — he’s my lawyer, came all the way up from New York — even Tannick says they can get away with it if I don’t run.”
Flannagan screwed up his sharp squirrel of a face. “You’re going off the deep end, Seely. I never saw you before in my life. You send for a first class investigator and when I get here you put on a scene like a chorus girl in a jam. Want me to sit down and have a good cry with you or what?”
Seely shook his head. “I’m all up in the air — anybody would be. But you’re right, I guess. I’m acting like... like a—”
“Like an idiot,” supplied Flannagan pleasantly. “And that’s charitable. Suppose you tell me what happened. You and Warren Lamport were on a hunting trip. Who’s Lamport?”
“Manages some of my properties, but promotion of high class real estate developments is his specialty. Best man at it in the country.”
Seely’s jaw snapped with the first decisive words he’d pronounced since he was jailed. Flannagan drawled, “So?” in a soothing tone.
“So we came up here. Just the pair of us and my man Glidden. I have a hunting shack that I use every year or two. I shouldn’t have taken Warren. We’d been disagreeing about things. It’s no secret, Flannagan, so I may as well tell you. He’s got a sharp temper in him and I guess I have too. We scrapped on the way up, scrapped in the woods and scrapped when we got back for the night. We even scrapped over the pudding.”
“This a nursery tale?”
“The pudding,” went on Seely, as if he hadn’t heard. “There’s no stove in the shack and Glidden did the cooking over an open fireplace. Makes it more like a camp. Glidden claimed you couldn’t cook desserts on it, and Lamport said he was an ass and he’d show him. So Lamport mixed stuff in a bowl and called it a pudding. I was cleaning my gun. I got sarcastic and we had unpleasant words. Glidden went to chop wood and I went outside to cool off. Lamport put his pudding on to cook and — what’s the use anyhow?”
Little Flannagan snapped like a dog herding a steer into the corral. “I come six hundred miles and now you’re scared I’ll get the goods on you instead of fixing up a phony case. Listen, Seely — you know who I am or you wouldn’t have sent for me. I go after the facts, and if you’re clean on this I’ll get you free. But so help me, if you shot Lamport I’ll nail it on you so tight you can’t squirm out with a crowbar. Or with a million dollars. Want to tell me what happened or want me to take the next train back?”
Seely shrugged wearily. “You may be able to help — you’re the only hope I have left — but my story’s so feeble I’d be better off if I shut up. But here it is anyhow. I was standing outside and I’ll swear nobody could have gone in or out without my seeing or hearing him. I heard the shot inside. Not loud, not as loud as it should have been, but I knew what it was. So I came in on the run, and there was Warren lying on the floor. No gun in sight, none we could ever find. Mine was in my pocket. No reason to shoot himself. The bullet glanced off his forearm and went into his side. You are not likely to shoot yourself in your own forearm, and you certainly can’t do it without a gun. But there he was anyhow, lying on the floor, and as soon as he came to he started groaning about my not meaning it. He really believes I shot him.”
“Right forearm? Maybe he was left-handed. You can hide guns.”
“He wasn’t left-handed and he wasn’t ambidextrous either. There was no gun and he’s not the suicide type, Flannagan. You’ll see for yourself.”