The Golden Age of Pulp Fiction Megapack 01, Page 2

  The September sunshine through his office window that overlooked the unending come-and-go of Albermarle Avenue, showed amused lines about the investigator’s shrewd, keen gray eyes. Evidently he found Scanlon’s agitation diverting.

  “It’s all quite a routine sort of thing,” he added.

  “Maybe ’tis,” admitted Scanlon. “But there’ll be somethin’ infernally out o’ the routine happen if that quick-touch artist ain’t rounded up, P.D.Q.!”

  “Indeed? Well, why did Hanrahan send you to me, then? I’m not what is known as a fast worker. I proceed with rather marked deliberation. Why didn’t the boss turn this matter over to the bureau of criminal investigation?”

  “And have every double-blanked paper in town full of it? Have every cop in the burg wise to it? Have the whole city laughin’ up its sleeve at the boss? What’s this here practical psychology I’m hearin’ about, these days?”

  “Of course,” said T. Ashley. “I see. Ridicule can certainly kill a man, where all the ‘uplift’ attacks in the world would rattle off like peas from a rhinoceros. Yes, yes, I understand.” Contemplatively he tapped the cover of an anthropological society’s report. “So I’m to ‘get’ this malefactor for you in a private and inconspicuous manner. I’m to round up this genius, who’s been clever enough to rob a—er—”

  “A robber,” Scanlon finished the phrase. “Say it, if you want to! That’s what most o’ the papers in town have been printin’ for years. You got the idea, an’ got it right. How much you want for the job?”

  “The investigation,” said T. Ashley, correcting him. “Well, Mr. Scanlon, my fee varies according to the interest I take in a case. Big interest, small fee. Enough interest, no fee at all. Slight interest, large fee. No interest at all—”

  “You’re frank, ain’t you?” interrupted the boss’s henchman. “That’s somethin’. I figger, judgin’ from the sympathy you feel for the boss, you’ll want about five hundred bucks for tacklin’ this case.”

  “A thousand,” said T. Ashley dryly.

  “Whew!” And Scanlon rubbed a shaven chin. “Well, if that’s the best you can say—”

  “It is. And not a contingent fee, either. I shall collect that thousand whether I succeed or not. Though in justice to myself I must say that I have still to record a failure. Agreed? Thank you. Now then, let us get back to the evidence. You say there was a window broken in Hanrahan’s house by the crook?”

  “Yep. A pane was busted out in the room where the safe is. The crook get in over the porch, there.”

  “Does anybody know about that broken pane?”

  “Only the boss’s boss.”

  “You refer to Mrs. Hanrahan?”

  “Sure. And the fact that there’s a playground nex’ door, where the kids play baseball, makes that busted window a cinch to explain. Nobody knows about the ‘touch’ but me and the boss. He’s havin’ the pane reset today.”

  “The robbery,” asked T. Ashley, “took place last night, while Mr. and Mrs. Hanrahan were at the theater?”

  “That’s what.”

  “You saved the broken pieces of glass, naturally?”

  “Surest little thing you know! I handled ’em with gloves, too, an’ brought ’em along with me.”

  “Good! And then—”

  “Well, the crook just opened the gopher, that’s all, an’ cleaned it like he’d had a vacuum cleaner.”

  “He didn’t use force, I believe you said? No ‘soup’ or thermite. No tools.”

  “Nope. He just juggled the knob, that’s all.”

  “I see. Well,” and T. Ashley pondered a moment, pencil, in hand, “I’ll take a run out and look the ground over this afternoon. But—let’s see the glass, first.”

  Scanlon drew a flat package from his pocket, undid a string, opened the package, and spread out various bits of broken glass on the desk. He took good care not to touch them with his fingers, but poked them with a penholder to separate them.

  “Very good, indeed,” said T. Ashley. He took pincers from a tray, with which he seized the pieces one by one and examined them. Putting a jeweler’s loupe into his eye, he gave them a more detailed inspection, turning them a little this way and that to vary the light across their surfaces.

  “H’m!” he said at last, while Scanlon watched him with keen attention, his full-lidded blue eyes squinting a little. “This is altogether too easy. Yes, yes, indeed. Why, there are prints enough here to convict a regiment!”

  “That’s how I jiggered it’d be.”

  “Too bad you couldn’t have turned this case over to the bureau. The whole thing is simplicity itself. You could have saved the boss a clean thousand, and he needs the money. That’s his motto, isn’t it—‘I need the money!’”

  “We all need the money these days,” returned Scanlon. “But other things has got to be reckoned, too. We don’t want no public officials a-tall to get hep to this. Some way it’d leak if I was to give any of ’em a crack at these prints. All the boss wants now is to nab this bird, see, an’ do it without makin’ no roar. The boss is a bearcat for gettin’ back at any guy that passes him the dinkum oil. Oh, he’s a wise old kick, all right, the boss is!”

  “So I understand,” said T. Ashley. “But he can’t get back at this bird, as you call the malefactor, without exposing the break and bringing down ridicule on himself. The minute that the bird is arrested—”

  “Arrested? Who said anythin’ about arrestin’ him?” And Scanlon laughed twistedly. “He ain’t goin’ to be arrested! There’s better ways to get a bird than by arrestin’ him, an’ you can pin that in your lid!”

  “I suppose so. Well, that’s none of my affair. My undertaking is just to earn my fee by locating the bird. After that, what happens to him is none of my affair.”

  “I see you’ve got me cold. You can locate him, can’t you, with fingerprints like those?”

  T. Ashley laughed a little scornfully. “By the way,” he added, “now that I’ve looked these over, I don’t think it will be necessary for me to visit Mr. Hanrahan’s house. That would be ‘gilding the lily,’ you understand.”

  “Doing what to the which?”

  “Pardon me. I mean, taking too much pains. I must say this so-called bird has been unusually liberal about leaving us his calling cards. I repeat that this affair is most ordinary. It’s so easy as to possess hardly the interest of an ordinary, common or garden variety of murder. Still, as I’ve agreed to take it on, I’ll go through with it.”

  “And you’ll call me up?”

  “As soon,” promised T. Ashley, “as I have this predatory person’s name, age, description, record, and present address. After that—”

  “We’ll look out for the ‘after that’ part of it!” exclaimed Scanlon grimly.

  “Quite so. But I tell you now, you’re gunning for small game. A modern ‘house prowler’ who doesn’t know enough to wear gloves must be deficient, indeed. Poor game!”

  “All the more reason why the boss can’t afford to let such a guy run round loose an’ get away with it,” said Scanlon. “Supposin’ it should leak that a third-rater had—”

  “Of course. Well, I’ll let you know. I’ll phone you at your office. Let’s see, now—Scanlon Paving and Contracting Co., isn’t it?”

  “That’s me. Well, thanks!” Scanlon stood up and extended his hand. But T. Ashley, already once more bending over the fragments of glass, apparently did not see it. “Well—good day.”

  “Oh, good-day!”

  When Scanlon was gone, and the door closed, T. Ashley leaned back and smiled.

  “Vanity,” said he, “thy name is man!”

  II.

  The message Scanlon received over the wire several days later vastly astonished him.

  “Hello there! Scanlon? . . . Yes, T. Ashley speaking. I say, Scanlon, what the deuce do you mean by trying to amuse yourself at my expense? . . . Don’t understand, eh? The devil you don’t! Practical jokes are all very well, but—what’s that you say? . . . O
h, yes, I’ll tell you, all right enough. . . . Yes, any time you like; the sooner the better. Have I what? . . . Found out? Good-by!”

  The slam of the receiver onto the hook left Scanlon vastly amazed.

  “Well, what d’you know about that?” he asked himself. “What’s he vaporin’ about now, I’d like to know? Can you beat it? Has that bird gone cuckoo all of a sudden, or what?”

  He took his Panama and departed from the office of the Scanlon Paving and Contracting Co. in more of a hurry than he had been for weeks.

  “I tell you, I don’t get you a-tall,” he insisted, when he and T. Ashley were alone together in the little laboratory office overlooking Albermarle Avenue. “Anybody’d think, from what you just now shot over the wire at me, that I’d been tryin’ to feed you some phony stuff!”

  “And anybody would be quite correct in that assumption,” returned T. Ashley. His jaw looked tight, his eye hostile. “I suppose, from your point of view, it’s an excellent witticism, trying to make sport of a private investigator.”

  “What d’you mean? Come across!”

  “Of course, the department is out to knife a man who’s proved them lunkheads half a dozen times. That’s quite comprehensible. But I hardly thought the Big Boss himself—and you—would be quite so childish. Another thing: you forget that in trying to bring me into ridicule,” and T. Ashley struck the desk a blow with his fist, “you two may get involved worse than I am! That would be a horse of another color!”

  “What d’you mean, horse? All the horse I see, round here, is on me!”

  And Scanlon shook a puzzled head. He let both hands fall, palms outward.

  “Who instigated this, anyhow?” demanded T. Ashley.

  “Here’s where I quit!” said Scanlon. “I’d better beat it while my shoes are good. Maybe you know what you’re talkin’ about, but darned if I do!”

  “You—you mean to say you really don’t understand?”

  “Well, you heard me the first time!”

  “You don’t know what kind of a wild-goose chase you’ve been putting me up against?”

  “How many more times d’you want me to say it? Bring a stack o’ Bibles, or something and—”

  “But, what the deuce?” exclaimed T. Ashley. “Whoever in the world gave you those fingerprints?”

  “Nobody! Get that straight, now. I rounded up them prints myself. The boss called me out to his house and told me about the break, and I—”

  “Do you mean to tell me,” and T. Ashley’s eyes narrowed, “that those prints, to the best of your knowledge and belief, were really made by the man who robbed Mr. Hanrahan’s safe?”

  “That’s the way it rides, s’help me! Why?”

  “Why? Oh, by the Lord Harry, now, that’s flogging it! Look at that, will you?”

  And T. Ashley with a flirt of the wrist tossed over a letter on his desk for Scanlon to read. He added, in a tone vastly far from his usual suavity:

  “See what McDonald, of the Federal identification bureau at Leavenworth has to say about it. Somebody has been having a devil of a joke with somebody. Now then, who is it—and why?”

  Scanlon caught up the letter.

  Dear Mr. Ashley:

  Reporting on the microphotographs of the prints, let me say they have been identified as those of Peter W. Blau, alias Dutch Pete, alias The Grayback. His number on our records is 143,297. Will send Bertillon if desired.

  Very truly yours,

  M. S. McDonald.

  Scanlon reread the letter before looking up. Then he asked, puzzled. “Well, that’s all right, ain’t it? That’s straight dope. What’s all the roar you’re sendin’ across?”

  “What’s it about? Oh, I say, now!”

  “I don’t see nothin’ phony about this! All it looks like, from where I stand, is the first move toward landin’ this here Dutch Pete guy in the big house, and—”

  “Is that all it looks like, to you?” demanded T. Ashley, with mordant scorn. “Well, now, where do you suppose I’d have to look to find that man?”

  “How the devil should I know? That’s your job!”

  “My job, eh? A job for sextons, you mean! And I’m not in the pick-and-shovel brigade—not just yet.”

  Scanlon regarded him with eyes of astonishment.

  “Come on, come on!” he exclaimed. “Shoot it across, clean, and get it off your chest! What d’you mean, pick-and-shovel brigade?”

  “I mean,” answered T. Ashley with emphasis on every word, “that this Peter W. Blau, alias Dutch Pete, alias The Grayback, was electrocuted nearly six months ago!”

  III.

  NOW IT WAS Scanlon’s turn to flush with anger.

  “You must be bats!” he exclaimed. “What kind of a gag are you tryin’ to slip over on me, anyhow?”

  “No gag at all, to quote your own choice language! And as for being ‘bats,’ I’m not so crazy as to assert that a dead man can get up out of his grave and go gallivanting round the country robbing safes!”

  “I never said nothin’ like that!”

  “The deuce you didn’t! You brought me a dead man’s fingerprints, with the preposterous assertion that—”

  “I brought you the prints that was on that there pane out to the boss’s house. The man that made them prints cleaned that gopher!”

  “Of course. Well, you’d better tell that to the spirits.”

  “Don’t know any. Where are they?”

  “Never mind.”

  “McDonald—he’s made a slip-up, that’s all. He got them prints doped wrong.”

  “McDonald never gets anything wrong!” And T. Ashley thumped the desk again. “The modern science of fingerprinting never makes a mistake. Out of all the millions of prints in the world, there are no—”

  “Oh, yes, I know all about that. I’m hep. You don’t have to flash no lecture on fingerprints on me! All I’m sayin’ is that if Mac ‘made’ them prints as a guy’s that croaked six months ago, either he’s made a misplay or you’re wrong.”

  “Wrong about what?”

  “About this here Dutch Pete bein’ dead.”

  T. Ashley jerked open a drawer of his desk, took out a letter, shoved it at Scanlon.

  “How about that?” demanded he.

  Scanlon glanced at the signature. “From Warden Hotchkiss, eh?” said he. “Prestonville pen?”

  “Yes. If you want proof—”

  “‘Murder, first degree—’” read Scanlon. “‘Electrocuted, February 17th, 1922.’ Well, that’s official, all O.K.”

  “Rather!”

  “So then there’s only one answer.”

  “You mean,” demanded T. Ashley, “two men had the same name?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Nothing of the kind happened in this case. When I got that word from Hotchkiss, I made another set of microphotographs and sent them to him. He wasn’t long in reporting. I just today got this letter from him.”

  “What’s he say?”

  “Read it for yourself!” And T. Ashley handed over another letter. Amazed, Scanlon read:

  The prints submitted have been carefully verified by comparison with our records. They are those of the man you refer to, viz.: Peter W. Blau.

  For a moment Scanlon paused, his brow knit. A dry smile curved the lips of T. Ashley.

  “Ye gods, I—I don’t get this at all!” admitted Scanlon, beginning to weaken.

  “Oh, I see you’re waking up to the situation, at last,” declared T. Ashley. “You understand, don’t you, that this report absolutely eliminates the double-identity hypothesis?”

  “Sure, sure. Well, then, the only flash I can take at it is that some fresh guy—but, no, that couldn’t be!”

  “You mean, somebody may have given you some prints of this Dutch Pete’s, made before his execution?”

  “Nobody could of,” insisted Scanlon, his mind a daze. “Why, I picked up them pieces of glass myself at the boss’s house!”

  “Well, then,” concluded T. Ashley, “those pi
eces were ‘planted’ there by somebody, for some purpose that, frankly, is beyond me.”

  “Not a-tall! Some o’ them prints was on pieces o’ glass that still stuck in the window sash. I put on a pair o’ gloves, careful, an’ worked ’em loose, myself. Wrapped ’em up, never touchin’ ’em with my own bare fingers, and brought ’em to you, without ever openin’ ’em.”

  “Then that package was changed somewhere on the way.”

  Scanlon laughed, with tense nerves. “You’re pretty good now an’ then, Ashley,” said he, “but once in a while you don’t even hit the outside ring. That there package never left my pocket from the time I shoved it in there till I laid it on this here desk!”

  “I tell you there must have been some substitution, somewhere along the line.”

  “And I tell you there wasn’t! Say, I even remember the shape of some o’ them pieces. I’ll go on any stand in this country an’ swear I give you the very identical pieces I started with.”

  “But in that case—”

  “Well, what?”

  “Hang it, Scanlon, we’re confronted by an insoluble mystery! A set of circumstances contrary to reason—a staring impossibility!”

  “Impossibilities has always been your specialty,” uttered Scanlon, not without malice. “At least, anybody’d think so, the way you count yourself in on the Get There Club. D’you mean to say you’re ready to quit?”

  “Quit?” demanded T. Ashley. “I haven’t begun yet!”

  IV.

  T. ASHLEY HAD NO success whatever with his investigation. No train of reasoning could lead him beyond what seemed a blank wall barring the path of deduction. Putting aside the supernatural as a factor in which he had no faith, he found himself confronted by a sphinx to whose question there was no Oedipus to bring an answer.

  A visit to Hanrahan’s house and an examination of the safe itself yielded nothing but more prints, all made by the man who six months before had paid the extreme penalty of the law in Prestonville penitentiary.

  “Well, I’m hanged!” exclaimed T. Ashley to himself, and when he, always loath to give up, had been forced to such a statement, matters had reached a desperate pitch.