Black Mask (Vol. 23, No. 4 — August 1940)

The Frame That Didn’t Fit by Eaton K. Goldthwaite

Introducing Duke Brian and his sidekick, Franny Steinmetz, a pair of fast guys from Philly — and the amazing Mr. Fenwick Green, who always got sick before he took a plane-ride instead of waiting till he got in the air, then usually decided to go by train after all.

The door to Apartment D-20 opened as far as a length of chain would let it. I tipped my hat and told the woman that I was Duke Brian and the guy with me was Franny Steinmetz.

She said, “Wait,” so I sank my heels in the hall carpet and sniffed at the incense coming through the crack in the door. I heard her repeat our names. Then I heard a newspaper rattle and another pair of eyes, a man’s, showed at a spot lower down. The man said, “Oh, O.K!” Behind me I could feel my partner shift his gun from his shoulder to his coat pocket. The crack narrowed and the chain rattled and then the door swung open all the way.

I spend a lot of time around Philadelphia but I’d never seen him before. He wasn’t very big and the butler’s outfit made him look even smaller. He had a face the color and texture of one of my old golf balls. He had eyes that didn’t stay aimed in one direction long enough for me to decide whether they were black or brown. He had a tight mouth like he might be bleeding inside. He stunk of cigarettes more than the room stunk of incense. He said: “Come in, Duke. I was afraid you wouldn’t get here.”

I told him I’d been on my way to the fights at the Arena when I got his message. I said I supposed he was Johnny Devlin.

He bobbed his head. He said: “Yeah, I’m Devlin. Franny knows me. H’ar’ya, Franny.”

We crossed a foyer, and in one of those girandole mirrors I saw my partner scowl and heave his shoulders. He kept his hat on his head. He kept his hands in his pockets. He grunted, “H’ar’ya, Johnny.”

Like most of the apartments in Belvedere Towers this one had a dropped living-room. There were monk’s cloth drapes at the windows. There were a lot of prints including a Currier & Ives Skaters in Central Park. The furniture was Hepplewhite and the rug was Gulistan. There was a stack of luggage with the white-faced young woman standing beside it on the rug. At the end of a hall a door was open and I could see a dining-room.

The little guy ducked behind us and closed the door. He dropped the anchor of the chain in place and ducked around us again. He padded across the Gulistan rug and stood by the girl. He said: “This is my wife, fellas.”

I liked the firm thrust of her chin and the mold of her mouth and nose. She had clear, wide-set blue eyes that reminded me of my wife, Janet’s. She was much younger than Devlin, even younger than Janet. I know class and she had it. She would have had a harder job concealing her class than her fright. I liked her in the dinky white-apron-and-black maid’s outfit. Anyway you looked at her the reaction was pleasant. I bowed and said: “How do you do, Mrs. Devlin?”

She nodded very seriously and looked at her husband.

I’m forty, but Devlin was older than I am. His mouth twitched and his slim white hands busied themselves with a cigarette box. “Cigarette?” he said, and I helped myself. He was bursting to talk and I let him. “I called you up because I’m in a jam, Duke. A bad jam that’d be a bum rap even if I could afford to take it. And I can’t. So that’s why I called you up.”

I sat on one of the Hepplewhite chairs. Franny spread himself before the door but he didn’t take his hat off and he didn’t take his hands out of his pockets. I didn’t remind, him about the social conventions. He knew Devlin and I didn’t. The woman stood by the trunk, holding for dear life to one of the straps. Her husband paced up and down, talking through and around puffs on his cigarette.

“I been a two-time loser, Duke. Holmesburg and Eastern. That’s why I can’t afford to take a rap. That’s why I called you instead of the cops. You was on the inside once, too, so you know what it’s all about. And you’re sittin’ right in this man’s town, so you’re the one I called.”

It’s getting so it doesn’t bother me when they start that “you, too” stuff. I said: “What did they get you on?”

“Your trouble, Duke. I couldn’t leave the pretties alone. Maybe you remember the Vandeveer necklace job? That was my first mistake. It cost me a stretch at Eastern. I still hadn’t learned, and they got me cold turkey breezin’ out of the Bellevue with all of Anna Martin, the opera singer’s, pearls. Hell, I got no squawk. They was right raps. I had ’em comin’. But this one isn’t. And I can’t afford to take it.”

I grinned at him. “So you were a box man. I remember the Martin pearls. Who caught you?”

“Bill Kurtz. That was eleven years ago, and he was on his way up.”

Bill Kurtz is a good friend of mine. “You’ve been straight since you came out of Holmesburg?” I asked.

The girl let go of the trunk strap. Her mouth trembled. “He has. Oh, you must believe me! John has been as straight as can be! We went to New York for a fresh start. I don’t have to tell you how hard it was. We had no friends. We almost starved, but Johnny stayed straight. You’ve got to believe that, Mr. Brian!”

I could believe anything she told me, almost. I couldn’t believe that she had married him when she was twelve years old. I asked: “How long have you been working here?”

“Three months.”

“Who do you work for?”

“Fenwick Green. He’s a swell guy, Duke.”

There was a picture on the radio. I’d heard of Fenwick Green. He was a dippy philanthropist who picked bums off park benches and gave them jobs in some kind of school he ran. Sometimes the experiments didn’t turn out so hot, but I’d never had any of his cases. I went over and picked up his photograph. It was pretty good. He was an elderly man with a rather austere face but contrasting goodhumored eyes. But the picture didn’t interest me so much as the frame. The frame was a cheap imitation of gold and a bad fit.

I asked: “Where is he now?”

“In Florida. He left Camden airport at four o’clock P.M. That’s why all the keysters. He was gonna send ’em by express.”

The girl tossed me a worried look. “You mustn’t mind Johnny. His language, I mean. It’s only when he’s terribly excited that he forgets. Really, Mr. Brian, all the old Johnny Devlin is dead.”

I told her I was more interested in motives than language. I asked him: “Is this trouble of yours any trouble of Green’s?”

He said, “No.”

“All right, Johnny. What’s the rap?”

He began to sweat. His eyes stopped bouncing and sank into a steady, hunted gleam. He rasped: “You’re gonna help me?”

“That’s the general idea.”

Johnny Devlin moved. He pushed his wife away from the tall wardrobe trunk. He fumbled with the lock. The lock snapped open and he pried the trunk apart.

The body of a man tumbled out.

“Studs Gerber!”

I didn’t need Franny’s yell to tell me who he was. A cheap, small-time porch-climber that had lately been spending a lot of somebody’s dough. There was only one hole, right over his heart, and it went all the way through. He had bled plenty. His tweed suit was caked with it. I went through his pockets and at the same time noticed that the Gulistan rug was damp and smelled strongly of soap. Studsy was cold but he hadn’t started to get stiff yet. That would place the time at anywhere from a couple of hours before now, which was close to midnight, to maybe four in the afternoon. Johnny Devlin had called the office at eight o’clock and Junior Stevens, my office boy, had had me paged at the Arena.

Studs Gerber’s pockets had forty-five dollars, a .25 pearl-handled Spanish automatic, some trinkets, handkerchiefs and a handful of business cards. The cards were advertising The Hollywood Boulevard Motion Picture School, at an address on Market Street. I put the stuff back and looked at the luggage. There were two gladstones, two short wardrobes and a tall one, all pigskin and all labeled Fenwick Green, The Palms, Miami Beach, Florida. And there was the tall wardrobe from which Studs Gerber’s corpse had tumbled. It was black fiber-covered basswood and bore no labels.

I said: “Tell me the story.”

Johnny Devlin applied a fresh cigarette to a butt. His wife was sitting in a chair, with her head back and eyes closed. Franny was spread in front of the door again.

Johnny Devlin said: “Green decides yesterday to go to Florida. He calls Knight’s Tour Agency, that’s corner of Sixteenth an’ Chestnut, an’ they tell him all the planes are booked solid for a week. So he stews around all night tryin’ to make up his mind to take a train. He gets train sick, and plane sick too, but he likes the shortest way, see? Well, this morning he sends me to Broad Street Station. And when I get there the ticket agent asks me am I John Devlin and I say yes and he says to go back home, that Green has called and changed his mind.

“So I come back here to the apartment — this is about noon — and Green has all this stuff out. He’s just got a call that there’s a plane cancellation, so he wants to make it. So I pack a small bag and get his different pills together and promise to send the keysters tomorrow. I get a taxi and ride with him to the Camden airport.”

I asked him what time it was when he arrived at the airport.

He said: “Two o’clock. That may sound funny, but whenever the boss is taking a trip he gets to the station way ahead of time. He goes in the john and gets sick. Then he’s ready for the trip. So I stay with him until two thirty and he says he’s gonna be sick and for me to go home. So I leave him and get here at a little after three. Mary was layin’ out his stuff and I say let it go, that we’d do it tonight, and let’s go see a movie. She says swell, because Gone With The Wind is at the Boyd an’ matinee is popular prices. So we go there. Well, it’s a four-hour show an’ we have supper afterwards at Spider Kelly’s on Mole Street. It musta been half-past seven when we got back to the apartment.”

Johnny Devlin took a long inhale and crushed the butt in an ash tray. Smoke filtered from his nostrils and his shuttley eyes rested a moment on the girl. She was still sitting with her head back, but her hands were clenched.

Johnny said: “We came in here. We was full of the picture and we didn’t notice the black keyster at first. Mary saw it first. She said, ‘Where’d that trunk come from?’ I said I didn’t know. So I opened it—” He paused and raked sweat from his forehead with his shirtsleeve.

I shook my head at him. I said: “Johnny, Johnny! No wonder you were tripped up on the Martin pearl job. What a story!”

The girl jumped from the chair and her eyes blazed at me. “It’s the truth! In God’s name—”

“You did a good job cleaning up the blood. Must’ve taken a lot of scrubbing.”

“The blood come out of the keyster! It leaked out the bottom! It was all over the floor, so help me, Duke!”

I grinned at him. “Listen, Johnny. Your story goes like clockwork up until you hit G.W.T.W. It goes haywire from there on. In the first place, you can’t get into that show without reservations. In the second place, you didn’t eat at Spider Kelly’s because I was there myself. In the third place, this whole rug has been taken up and turned around. The worn place that should be near the steps has been shifted so that it’s under the trunks. And you’ve burned incense in here to kill the smell of gunpowder.”

The two of them stared at me. It would be hard to decide which was more frightened. They both said: “You... you don’t believe us?”

“No.”

Mary Devlin got up then and walked to the radio. She clasped her hands. When she turned around her eyes were up and her chin was steady. She said: “Tell him the truth, Johnny.”

Johnny Devlin acted like he had been smacked with a blackjack. He sighed. “O.K., Mary,” he said. He walked to a console and poured himself a stiff drink. “Want one?” he asked me. I shook my head. “O.K.,” he said and tossed it in him. His hands didn’t shake quite so much. He grunted,

“This sounds screwier than the other, Duke, but God help me it’s the truth! When I came bade from the airport we started packin’ Mr. Green’s bags. When we were gettin’ the bags out Mary had noticed that our trunk was gettin’ mildewed. I keep my army uniform and a few trinkets in there, and the uniform was full of moth eggs. So she was gonna give ’em a airing. Well, I was packin’ and Mary was gettin’ supper. She was in the kitchen when somebody knocked on the door. I went to it. It’s this guy. I says, ‘Yes, sir?’ and he pulls back his coat like he’s flashing a badge. ‘Inspector,’ he says. ‘Got a complaint that your radio makes too much noise.’ And I tell him that’s impossible because the apartments are all soundproofed. So he pulls a gat and sticks it in my belly and says, ‘Good! Then nobody’ll hear me if you decide to get tough.’

“So I had to let him in. ‘Where does he keep ’em?’ he says. ‘What?’ I asks him, and then Mary comes in out of the kitchen. She is standin’ by that door, there. I’m over here, an’ he is right where Franny is, a little nearer maybe. ‘One yip and you get it,’ he says to Mary.

“Then I heard the door. Just a little rattle. I hadn’t had a chance to replace the chain. This guy heard it too. He whirled around and as he did, somebody fired through the door. He staggers back an’ down the steps without even pullin’ his own trigger. I stood for a minute an’ Mary yelled at me ‘Quick! For God’s sake see who that was!’ So I went. I didn’t figure maybe I would get shot too. I just went. There was nobody in the hall. I came back in.”

I looked at him and for the first time I noticed the little Purple Heart in his lapel.

I looked at her. Her face was pale and scared. I said: “So that’s the story.”

They said that was the story.

Franny and I stuck around a while. I hated to do it, but I made them go through all the motions again, all but putting the stiff in the trunk.

Johnny Devlin said to me: “What would you do if you was in my shoes? I figured on shippin’ the trunk to Walla Walla but Mary stopped me. She said it would be no use. She said they’d trace it and us, and then we’d be in a worse jam. So I called you.”

I told him that was probably the first smart thing he’d ever done outside of going straight. I asked him if he had any money. Mary answered by pulling out a savings-bank passbook showing a balance of a hundred and twenty-eight dollars. She said she’d get me all of it if I needed it. To change the subject I asked Johnny what the Purple Heart was for, and she spoke up in a proud voice: “That means he was wounded in the War, Mr. Brian.”

I knew it. I asked: “All right, where does Mr. Green keep them?”

“Them? Whaddaya mean?”

“What Studsy was looking for.”

Johnny Devlin and his wife looked at each other. “I don’t know about this,” he said slowly.

She settled it. She walked to the Currier & Ives and pulled it back. It covered a Mosler wall safe.

I nudged Johnny. “All right, open it up.”

She moved between us and the safe. She looked at me very steadily. She said: “Don’t ask him to do that, Mr. Brian. That’s something he hasn’t done in eleven years.”

I shrugged my shoulders. I have my fine points too, but there wasn’t any murder rap hanging over my head. I went to work on the safe. I had plenty of trouble with it — my hand isn’t what it used to be — but I got it open. It was empty, but I didn’t let Johnny Devlin see it. I whistled and slammed it shut in a hurry. I said: “O.K. Now we’ll call Bill Kurtz.”

Mary Devlin’s lips got trembly and her eyes started to fill up. “You... you mean the Kurtz of the Homicide Bureau?”

“None other.”

“Is it... is it necessary?”

“You bet your sweet life it’s necessary,” I told her, and Franny broke his record silence to chuckle.

My house is one of those old ones on Spruce Street, and every morning at seven there’s one particular truck that goes by and shakes the dishes in the corner closet so hard it wakes me. But it didn’t this morning. I had been up since five, and I got a good look at it. It was a D.S.C. Mack, Number 78, and I decided to call Bill Kurtz and see if he couldn’t get the mayor to have the truck run down Pine Street instead of Spruce. But Franny arrived, and since Janet was still asleep I took him down-cellar and gave him his instructions.

I said: “You’re to go to Camden Airport, Broad Street Station and Knight’s Agency — to check Johnny’s story.”

He screwed his ugly mug into a look of something like intelligence and said, “Check!”

“Then you’re to go to Belvedere Towers and find out if anybody heard a shot at six o’clock,” which was the time I’d finally pinned Johnny down to.

“Check!”

“And get the names and all information possible on apartments rented in the past few weeks, or months.”

Franny objected. “ ’At’s kinda silly, ain’t it? Bill Kurtz’ll have all ’at stuff.”

I told him he might have been a good bootlegger once but he was a lousy detective now. He grinned at me. He said: “How about ’at cute dame, Mary? Dontcha want me to ask her a few questions?”

“I do not. She’s probably a Mrs. just to discourage guys like you. And don’t get involved with any other dames, either. Now, scram!”

He went. Franny was really a good egg. I often wondered how he put up with me. We met in Trenton Pen. It was the only sentence I ever served despite the fact I had operated in Berlin, Paris, London and a lot of foreign cities where the police used to look down on American law-enforcement bodies as kindergartens. Franny swears he took a jail sentence to get out of the booze racket. I got mine in the Rittenberg diamond job in an Atlantic City Boardwalk hotel. And I was glad it was over. If it hadn’t been for Trenton I wouldn’t have met Janet. She was the “Society Girl Social Worker” who snapped me out of it. We made good newspaper copy for a while. I’m glad that’s over too.

I didn’t like some of the things Franny told me about Johnny Devlin. Franny remembered him as a kid in North Philly. Devlin was a wizard with a pool cue, and being about five years older, all the kids thought he was head man. Franny said he used to be handsome then. A school teacher fell for him and ran away with him. Franny thought they’d had a kid — he wasn’t sure. But Johnny Devlin was caught in the draft, so if he did have a kid it must have been while he was overseas. Johnny might be trying to go straight since Fenwick Green picked him up, but he didn’t have such good companions. Franny told me positively he had seen Johnny shooting pool with Studs Gerber at the Monarch. If it hadn’t been that I had instinctive faith in Mary Devlin I’d have let Bill Kurtz take charge in his own way.

Kurtz hadn’t been to bed yet when I arrived at the Hall.

I said: “Bill, do me a favor. Let the Devlins be bailed.”

Bill’s a big, rugged guy. He looks more like a farmer than a bloodhound. That’s why so many mugs find themselves out on a limb with him. We haven’t any secrets and he’s never used any varnish with me. His eyes explored my insides from cerebrum to intestines. He growled: “What’re you trying to do, kid me? Johnny shot Studsy in an argument over who was going to cut who in on the Knapp robbery at Chestnut Hill. The Knapp housemaid just left here. She showed up by herself this morning and picked Johnny out of the lineup.”

That was news to me but I didn’t show it. I said: “Johnny may be a bad boy, but his wife is O.K. And the housemaid might be wrong.”

“Yeah. So might you, Duke. I don’t go for this wife stuff. In the first place, no law can make ’em testify. And maybe you remember we’ve had a string of house robberies in the past year without a break until the watchman at the Stratford surprised Icebox Sam Furman and put a slug through him. And there were no more robberies until Furman’s gang, which included Studsy Gerber, picked up Johnny Devlin. So?”

“Listen, Bill. Let ’em get bailed. In the meantime, rig a camera opposite Fenwick Green’s wall safe. I let Johnny think it was crammed with valuables. If he wants to lam he’ll try to crack it and you’ll get a picture. If he’s straight, you won’t.”

Bill liked the idea. “Maybe you got something there, Duke. I need some evidence. So far we haven’t found the slug that killed Studsy, and we haven’t found a gun.”

Bill was in good humor when I left him. I promised to make him one of my Welsh rabbits and he promised to stop around and see Janet. I went to a drug store and called the house.

Janet sounded sleepy. She said, “Yes?”

“Darling, how would you like to go in the movies?”

“How would I— Say, who is this?”

I went red. “Who the devil do you think would be calling you ‘darling’?”

“Oh. That’s better. Now you sound natural. I thought you said something about going in the movies. Silly!”

I told her there was nothing silly about it. I gave her the address of the Hollywood Boulevard Movie School and told her to go there. She said she would after I’d agreed to finance it. She has money of her own, but she’s funny about some things.

Back at the Belvedere again I asked myself a question. If I wanted to buy a picture frame in a hurry, I asked, where would I go? I got the answer and went there. It was a little hole-in-the-wall near the University. A doddery old guy came out of the back. He asked: “What can I do for you?”

I told him, “You have some beautiful frames here. It’s hard to imagine anyone buying one of these things,” and I picked up a gold imitation just like the one Fenwick Green’s picture had been in “when they could have something like that sterling-silver one.”

His face lighted up like a Christmas tree. “It’s the price, mister. Only last night a young woman rushed in here. She was a lady. I know because I serve lots of ladies. She had a hammered gold frame that looked like somebody had tried to pound a pebble through one side of it. I told her it could be repaired but it would take time. She said she was in a hurry. She picked up one like you got in your hand and said, ‘How much?’ and I said, ‘A quarter!’ so she bought it. She’d said she was in a hurry but she waited for change from three dimes. And she wouldn’t leave the damaged frame—”

I said they weren’t so bad at that. I bought one for myself, laying down the exact amount. He was staring at me when I left.

There was a call from Franny when I arrived at the office. Junior Stevens had taken it. Some day I’m going to give that kid a haircut. He kept pushing his hair back and saying that Franny had called from Camden Airport. Franny had been very excited. He had been so excited it was hard to understand him, what with the airplanes roaring around and everything—

“What in hell did he say?”

Junior swallowed. “Franny said to tell you that somebody named Green didn’t take the plane for someplace. He said nobody saw Mr. Green after he went in the bathroom—”

I was plenty bothered when I hit Arch Street, but not too bothered to notice a cab pull out right after mine. “Turn down Sixth,” I told my driver. We turned and the cab behind us turned. “Go up Market,” I yelled. We swung right on red and headed for City Hall. At Reading Terminal, when a light stopped us, the other cab was two behind. “Swing up Thirteenth,” I told my driver. When we reached the bus station I shoved a dollar bill in his face and jumped out.

Inside the station the starter was yelling the names of a lot of small Jersey towns and that the Atlantic City bus was leaving on Track One. I charged through. The bus had started and the driver glared at me. I shook my head. I ran in front of him into Filbert Street. A lone cab was in the stand and I climbed aboard.

The bus had passed into Filbert just as my cab got under way. A guy burst from the doors of the bus terminal and hopped around in the middle of the street. I knew him. He was Dago Frank Nunally, one of the old Furman mob.

“Where to?” my driver asked, and when I told him Chestnut Hill he grinned. I guess five-dollar fares are getting to be scarce.

The Knapp Mansion was immense but it looked seedy. There was a sizable For Sale sign on the lawn, with the name of some bank as trustee. I get around in society, but that’s when I’m not working, so I went to the back door. I leaned on the button for quite a while until I tumbled that it was out of commission. After the third or fourth knock a little old lady came to the door.

She was no more than five feet high. She had white hair and nice quiet eyes and one of those black velvet chokers around her neck. She had a nice voice. She said: “Well, young man, what do you want?”

“I want to talk to your housemaid,” I told her.

“Housemaid?” She backed up a little and gave me a peculiar look.

“Sure. The one who witnessed the jewel robbery,” and I showed her my badge.

The old girl hesitated. “Oh, that one! Well, we— She was hired from an agency. You see, my grand-daughter gave a party to entertain some friends. The maid was in only for the night and the following morning.”

I wondered if Bill Kurtz knew about this. I said: “Is that so?”

She fidgeted with the door handle. She seemed to want to talk and I smiled. She opened right up. “You see, my granddaughter has had a chance to go on the stage. She wanted to impress Mr. Brown, the promoter, so we— Since the bank failed and my son died, things haven’t been so— We wanted to help her and we gave a party. A lot of stage people, actors and like that, attended. It was while the party was in progress that the maid came screaming downstairs about the robbery. It was really nothing, just a few trinkets, but Gwendolyn, my grand-daughter, thought we should call the police. And they made quite a fuss about it, too.”

So all they had against Johnny Devlin was the say-so of a floating domestic who had turned up by herself the morning after he was booked in the Gerber killing.

I said: “That’s because there have been a great many unsolved jewel robberies. The police are trying very hard to catch the criminals.”

“It was exciting, seeing our names in the paper again after so many years. But it made Gwendolyn quite angry. It seems that the men at the school thought the publicity might hurt her career.”

“The school? What school?”

“The Hollywood Boulevard School. It’s — let me see, now—”

I didn’t wait for her to remember.

Franny and I met in the lobby of the Belvedere Towers. I glared. “What’s all this rumble-bumble about Fenwick Green getting flushed down the plumbing at Central Airport?”

“No kiddin’, Duke. Honestagod, nobody seen him after he went one way to the can an’ Johnny went th’other to the Boulevard.”

“Who saw him last?”

“The Admiral. You know, the guy that sells tickets an’ answers questions.”

“Did Devlin’s story hold together at the other places?”

“Like the Union, Duke.”

Franny’s information showed that only four new tenants had taken apartments at the Belvedere during the past three months. Most promising of these was also the most recent, a Mr. Dalby who didn’t seem to receive many visitors or spend much time at home. He had rented E-24, which would make it the next floor above Fenwick Green’s.

I asked him if anybody’d heard any shots. He said nobody’d heard any shots. I told him that Green had an office downtown somewhere and for him to use his own judgment. He hit me for a ten-spot, got a five, and the way he grinned I’ll bet he’d have settled for a deuce.

I went up to E in the self-service elevator and didn’t make any more noise than necessary. Franny had somehow mesmerized the manager into producing a passkey and I used it. Inside was a little foyer, like at Fenwick Green’s. Beyond was another door which was also closed. I started thinking up some cock-and-bull story to tell Mr. Dalby if he should be home, and I opened the door — not far, but far enough.

Old Fenwick Green was in shirtsleeves and looking mighty sour, perched on a day bed. In front of him, playing cards at a table, were Dago Frank Nunally and Benny-The-Barber Murano. They both wore shoulder-harnesses and the harnesses had guns in them. Old Green saw the door open and he saw me and he jumped up and yelled “Hey!” like I might be the Seventh Regiment Cavalry.

I slammed the door quick and jumped sideways and at about the same time a half-dozen slugs smacked the door and let daylight through. I pulled out my rod and gave them back a couple and then I ducked through the foyer into the hall.

That’s an awful long hall to try to run down with somebody throwing slugs at you. Belvedere Towers might have been soundproofed but I wasn’t. I let out a yell and squeezed myself against the wall. The door to E-24 yanked open and Benny-the-Barber stuck his kisser and his gat around the corner at the same time. A slug whistled past my ear and I let him have it. His face went back in but his hand stayed on the door jamb and I liked the looks of the slow downward slide it started. The elevator door clanged and Mack Johnson and another harness bull charged out. Dago Frank put one slug through my hat and he’d have nailed me with the next one if Mack hadn’t beat him to it. Quick and cool, police style. The door to the foyer was blocked open with a lot of bloody mess and a thin, scared, “For Heaven’s sakes!” came out. I told Mack that it was Fenwick Green and for the harness bull to hold the tear-gas until we had a little talk.

Down at headquarters Fenwick Green told us his story. It seems he went into the can at Central Airport, just as Johnny Devlin said, and he got sick. He had a long technical word for it which Bill Kurtz copied down very carefully. Then, after he was sick he felt he needed some air. So he went outside, and after he’d wiped his glasses he felt better. He started walking over toward the hangars and a taxi came alongside of him. He claims somebody jumped out and said that Johnny had been badly hurt in a crash and was in West Jersey or Cooper Hospital — he couldn’t remember which they said. So he climbed into the cab and the next thing he knew a guy jams a rod in his ribs and another takes off his glasses and puts adhesive tape on his eyes. He showed, all right, that he’d been peeled somewhat roughly around the temples.

“Did you know where you were?” was the first question Bill Kurtz asked him.

“Well, I, ah— No, not exactly. I thought the room was similar to my own, but I couldn’t be sure.”

“Did you see anybody besides Nunally and Murano?”

“No. Not a soul. It was awful—”

“Did they ask you to do anything? To write anything or get in touch with anyone?”

Fenwick Green showed some resentment. “They told me to keep my mouth shut. They seemed to want the combination to my office safe, but I told them they were foolish. There’s nothing of value in it.”

Bill Kurtz looked puzzled, and I didn’t blame him. He growled: “Sure that’s all they wanted?”

“Ah — yes. They seemed to be waiting for instructions of some kind. They were quite apprehensive. I’m sure, Lieutenant, that the men are mentally ill. I have no desire that they be punished. If I could just talk to them—”

“Nobody’s gonna talk to them now.”

“But I do not understand. Perhaps you don’t know who I am—”

“I know you right enough. But they’re dead.”

The police surgeon had to go to work on the old boy with smelling salts then. Everything was in an uproar. Bill got me aside. He said: “This is the dizziest snatch I ever saw. They take the guy right back to his own apartment house. What do you make of it?”

“They might be awful dumb or they might be awful smart, but they’re dead and we’ll never know. Studs Gerber might have been trying to make contact when he was knocked off.”

“Yeah. He might. But do you know, Duke, I got a hunch that Mary Devlin is telling a straight story.”

I grinned at him. “Oh, so you’re beginning to fall too, are you? Did you get any pictures?”

Bill stared at me. “Pictures? I’d forgotten I installed that damned thing! Let’s take a run up there.”

We rode in his car back to the Belvedere Towers. A harness bull was on the steps and a mob was milling around. We created a mild sensation. Somebody yelled: “Look! There’s Duke Brian!” A reporter stuck a flashgun in my face. I can remember when I got a kick out of that sort of thing.

Bill told me the Devlins had been bailed and he’d left orders for the boys to stay away from the apartment. He said Mack Johnson just happened to be in the building checking leads, which was lucky for me. Another five minutes and it would have been Mack’s party, or my funeral.

As we entered the apartment, Bill said: “This outfit is supposed to be foolproof. A selenium cell trips the shutter when the light-ray is broken. In other words, you could be living in the room and walking around, but you’d have to go to that safe to get your picture taken. It’s pretty clever... I hope it works.”

The place looked about the same except that the trunks and bags had been removed. While Bill was walking through the rooms I had another chance to inspect Fenwick Green’s picture. Where it was, on top of the radio, was just about the height from the floor that Studsy’s bullet hole had been. That gave me an idea and I looked at the plaster behind the radio. There was a little dent, like the corner of the picture might have hit it. I began to ask myself what kind of a bullet would have gone clean through Studsy, dented a gold frame and knocked it against the plaster.

From down the hall Bill’s voice hollered: “This is some apartment! Mrs. Devlin even had her own room!”

Mrs. Devlin, my eye, I told myself. “What about the picture?” I called.

Bill was excited when he came back. “We got one,” he yelled. “It worked! As soon as I get to a darkroom, we’ll start to untangle this thing.”

I said: “Wouldn’t I laugh if you had one of your flat-foot understudies on super-pan’?”

I’d told Janet to meet me for lunch at Spider Kelly’s, and Franny showed up too. I stared at Janet. She didn’t look natural to me, the way she walked and held her head. And there was cosmetic, a lot of it, around her eyes.

“I’m to have a screen test,” she said importantly.

“A what?”

“A screen test. Ya-as, they seem to think that I’m the new type they need. Mr. Brown said—”

“When’s this test gonna be, Garbo?”

“Don’t be rude, darling. And don’t get any cute ideas. It’s all perfectly proper. The man is to come to Papa’s tomorrow afternoon. He’s to make one picture of me coming down the staircase, another in the library—”

“You mean some guy is going to make movies of you in your father’s house?”

“Of course, dear. Don’t shout. I can hear perfectly. They wanted a background I’m familiar with, so as to give me confidence. They—”

“What’s the matter with my house?” I yelled but she went on talking.

“You don’t have to be such a horrid grouch. There are oodles of girls I know that have been tested and failed. Peg Paterson, Anne—”

Something clicked in my mind. Gwendolyn Knapp— What a scheme to case layouts! They’d have pictures of the interiors of the best houses. Stairs, furniture, obstacles, entrances, exits—

I ignored Janet. I said to Franny: “What did you get at Green’s office?”

“They was nobody home. So I used the old sleight o’ hand. Just a office, that’s all. There was nothin’ in the safe. This guy Green must be a archyteck. His files was full o’ house plans—”

I went out of Spider Kelly’s like I had been given a hot-foot. I suppose I had been rude to Janet, and Franny probably would have been stuck with the check. She came after me yelling at the top of her lungs, with Franny behind her. I hopped a cab. It’s a funny thing how an otherwise intelligent woman can nurse in her heart the idea of out-Crawfording Crawford.

Bill Kurtz’ office was jammed. Mack Johnson, Johnny Devlin and his wife, some guy that looked like a lawyer, Fenwick Green, a guy that had on plus-fours and looked like a cartoonist’s idea of a movie director. When Janet and Franny burst in the place was a bedlam.

“Shut up!” Bill Kurtz yelled, and everybody shut up but me.

I said: “You’ve had twenty-three robberies of homes of socialites in the past six months. None of ’em solved. The closest you came to a solution was finding Icebox Sam Furman after the watchman shot him. Right?”

Bill yelled: “What’re you trying to do, embarrass me? Shut up!”

I didn’t. I said: “Furman was one of the slickest boxmen in the country, and when he got his, the gang had to have a new one. Right?”

Bill growled something. I didn’t look at him. I was looking at Johnny Devlin and he was looking at me. I said: “One thing about those jobs, they were all perfectly cased. There was a brain running the show. Now the brain needed a new boxmen so he tried to frame Johnny Devlin. He planted a perjured identification in a phony robbery at the Knapp’s Chestnut Hill place. He sent Studsy Gerber with it to make Johnny Devlin come to terms.”

Bill started to listen. Somebody had come in and handed him a photograph that was still wet. He didn’t look at it. He probably knew what it was.

I said: “In the meantime, Fenwick Green gets himself snatched. Now, there are two ways of looking at this thing. Either Dago Frank was running the show and he snatched Green to force Johnny back into crime, or Fenwick Green was running the show and he had himself snatched—”

Fenwick Green began to holler bloody murder. Mack Johnson, who is by no means dumb, slipped over to me and whispered: “What’s the combo to Green’s wall safe?” I told him and he slipped out of the room.

Green had quieted down a bit and I went on. “Or Green got himself snatched to get himself out of the way. If you look at it from that angle, Green had given Johnny a job figuring that he could use him sooner or later. But he hadn’t figured on Mary. Mary was keeping Johnny straight and she thought Fenwick Green was God because he had given them jobs. And because Green knew Mary would go to the cops, or to the chair if necessary, to keep Johnny straight, he had to keep himself out of the picture, because it’s one thing to frame a two-time loser, and it’s another thing to have to deal with his daughter.”

Fenwick Green started to holler that he was being framed, that he had been snatched.

Bill Kurtz stuck the photo in his face. He snapped: “If you were snatched, how come you had time out to get your picture taken, Mr. Green?”

Fenwick Green moaned and went into a faint again. Mack Johnson came back in. He had a hungry look in his eyes. He put his hand in the back pocket where he doesn’t keep his handkerchief and looked at Fenwick Green. He said to Bill Kurtz: “Davidowsky just opened this guy’s wall safe. He found some of the ice from the Sarah Newell job, and a few of the rubies from the Paterson job.”

Bill yelled at Green: “Why’d you kill Studsy Gerber?”

Fenwick Green said he was willing to admit he’d run the movie school to case robberies but he never killed anybody.

Bill Kurtz isn’t so dumb. I knew he knew that Fenwick Green hadn’t bumped Studsy. And I knew he knew he’d have a hell of a job pinning it on Mary without the gun or the bullet that did the job. And he knew no jury in America would convict a brave kid for killing a rat to keep her father straight. Maybe some day I’ll tell him about the picture I got while he was looking at his selenium camera. The picture of a scared girl dragging an old army rifle out of a trunk. A rifle like her dad had lugged around France while she was hanging onto her mother’s skirts. Bill Kurtz wouldn’t have known about the rifle. It was probably in the mud at the bottom of the Schuylkill River, not far from a bullet-riddled frame that really fit Fenwick Green. No. Bill wouldn’t have known about that. Or would he?