Bunched Knuckles

Chapter I The Typewriter Clue

Big Jim Grood looked up in surprise, as a sunburned young man in the early thirties entered his office with quick, springy steps.

“Hell,” Grood said, with the bluntness of a man who had spent years on the metropolitan police force, “I thought you were down in Florida catching swordfish.”

Jax Bowman smiled. “I was, but I couldn’t get any kick out of it.”

Big Jim Grood swung around in the swivel chair. His right hand, a battered mass of bony knuckles, shot out to squeeze the right hand of the younger man. “What do you mean, ‘no kick in it’?” he asked.

The bronzed features of the young millionaire twisted into a grin. “A while back,” he said, “when you came to me with that idea of financing a central bureau of crime detection, I thought the idea was worth a trial, but that was about all. Now I’m getting all enthused over it. Nothing else gives me any kick.”

“That’s because you decided to smash the crooks after solving mysteries,” Grood answered. “It ain’t the detection you get the thrill out of, it’s the action. When you got the idea of putting on black masks, with white rings painted around the eyes, and busting up organized underworld, I thought you were crazy. I still don’t see why we have to have such goofy masks.”

Bowman laughed, and said, “It’s the psychology of the thing. The criminal mind is afraid of the unknown and it’s afraid of the bizarre. They know too much about the politicians who can control police organizations, about the shyster lawyers and jury bribing detectives, to feel any fear of ordinary justice. But this mask idea gets on their nerves. The fact they can’t find out anything about this new enemy is a powerful psychological factor in adding to their fear.”

Grood said, “Well, if you came back from fishing to get action, Miss Marchand was giving me a sketch of some funny stuff this morning.”

The smile faded from Jax Bowman’s face. His eyes became cold, hard, and scintillating. He pressed a button on the desk.

“Let’s have her in,” he said.

Rhoda Marchand was swift and efficient in her motions. She entered the door, smiled at Jax Bowman, said, “Did you have a pleasant trip, chief?” and was pulling newspaper clippings from a briefcase before Bowman had an opportunity to answer.

“I presume,” she said, “you’re interested in the two murders that I called to Mr. Grood’s attention this morning.”

“Were they murders?”

Rhoda Marchand spread out the newspaper clippings on the table.

Since the time Jax Bowman had taken over a suite of offices, on the doors of which appeared no name, installed a complicated system of filing equipment, subscribed to press clipping bureaus, and placed Rhoda Marchand in charge of the office personnel, she had developed encyclopedic knowledge of crime.

Every day hundreds of newspaper clippings were sent to her desk. These clippings dealt with isolated crimes. It was the duty of Rhoda Marchand to read them, index them according to a mode-of-operation formula, and constantly sift through the records for the purpose of picking out various crimes which had a similarity in the means of execution.

The police of Idaho, for instance, might encounter what to them seemed an isolated crime, but Rhoda Marchand’s photographic memory would send her to her files, where she would soon ascertain that an exactly similar crime had been perpetrated, perhaps several weeks ago, in San Francisco, while another in Denver might well have been the work of the same criminal. These clippings would then be pinned together and sent to the eccentric millionaire who had, at the instigation of Big Jim Grood, organized the most unique philanthropy which any man of money had ever been called upon to support.

Jax Bowman gave extensively to organized charity; but he gave only of money. Aside from the details of his business, the only philanthropy which claimed any of his time was that strange activity instituted at the suggestion of the big ex-police captain, the tracking down of those criminals whose widespread scope of operation made them virtually immune from local police.

“Anything peculiar about the murders, Jim?” Bowman asked.

Jim Grood was of the old school. He believed that there was more respect for law in a night-stick, or in a pair of smashing knuckles, than in the courts of justice. His creed was action. Reading was not one of the things at which he was good, so he merely pushed the clipping across to Bowman. Bowman glanced at Rhoda.

Speaking clearly, in clean-cut forceful sentences, she gave the details: “A peculiar method of murder,” she said. “The first body was dropped from an airplane, in the Imperial Valley of California, close to the Mexican border. It was dropped near a highway, where it was certain to be discovered. An envelope had been pinned to an inside pocket. In the envelope was a paper, on which appeared a typewritten message, telling police that they would find upon investigation the body to be that of Esther Milbank, who had last resided at 6298 Center Avenue, Denver, Colorado; that some two years ago she had disappeared from Denver; that her mother, who was now dead, had requested Denver police to locate her, but the girl had taken an assumed name and had never been found by the police; that she had recently been working in the Black Cat Dance Hall at Mexicali, under the name of Trixie.”

Jax Bowman’s eyes showed his keen interest.

“Any known motive for the murder?”

“No.”

“There was, perhaps, some jealousy?”

“Perhaps,” Rhoda Marc hand agreed. “If so, the police haven’t discovered it.”

“You say the body was dropped from a plane?”

“Yes.”

“Killed by the fall?”

“Either that, or the young woman had been struck on the head before being thrown out. The plane was probably not over one hundred feet above the desert. A motorist told the police at El Centro he had been driving over the road the night before and had heard a plane flying very low. He said it passed over him like a big bird blotting out the stars. He thought at first it was going to scrape the top of his automobile. Then, as it roared away, he realized it must have been more than a hundred feet above the ground; but that’s close enough when an airplane goes over.”

“Any description of the plane?”

“No. You see, the man saw it through the windshield of his automobile as a shadowy object against the sky. He can’t tell whether it was a monoplane or a biplane.”

“Interesting,” said Bowman, “and you’ve something else along the same line?”

“Yes. Esther Milbank’s body was found two weeks ago.”

Bowman nodded, “I remember reading something about it.”

“Yesterday,” Rhoda Marchand went on, “the body of a man was found in a cheap rooming house near the Black Belt in Chicago. The man apparently had committed suicide by stabbing himself in the heart with a knife. His right hand was clutched around the hilt of the knife.”

Bowman stared at her thoughtfully. “How does this tie up with the Esther Milbank murder?” he asked.

“The man left behind a statement,” she said. “The statement was in typewriting.” With swift efficiency her nimble fingers picked up one of the newspaper clippings. She read in a clear and distinct but very rapid voice: “My name is Arthur Brecton. I lived at 1747 South Melton Street, Los Angeles. I am an embezzler. I embezzled twenty-five thousand dollars from the Betterbilt Building & Loan Company when money was pouring in. I didn’t intend to steal it. I only borrowed it to invest, but when the depression caused a shrinkage in value, the investigation by the State auditors left me no alternative except to skip out. I have been going under the name of Charles James Montague, but that isn’t my real name. The twenty-five thousand is all gone. Most of it was gone before I ran away.”

“Any signature to that note?” Big Jim Grood asked.

“No, it was just a typewritten note the police found near the body.”

Jax Bowman stared at his efficient secretary in frowning concentration.

“What we are interested in,” he said, “are crimes that show a common motive, a modus operandi, which indicates them to be the work of one or more criminals following a common purpose. Just how do you figure there is any relationship between these two crimes?”

Miss Marchand’s * voice was as smoothly efficient as the voice of a nurse in an operating room. “You see,” she explained, “there were facsimiles of the typewritten statements published in the newspapers in both instances. I happened to check them over and noticed that both were written on the same typewriter. See where the ‘e’ is turned slightly to one side and the ‘r’ has a dent in the bottom? Then the ‘s’ has a peculiar tilt. The ‘a’ is out of alignment. Here are facsimiles of both notes.”

Jax Bowman gave a low whistle. “By George,” he exclaimed, “you’re right!”

Big Jim Grood said impatiently, “Aw, forget it. That handwriting expert stuff doesn’t get you anywhere.”

“It does in this instance,” Jax Bowman said. “Typewriting is even more distinctive than handwriting, and where a machine has been used for some time and the type is out of alignment, it’s readily possible to make a positive identification of different specimens of writing turned out by them. Those two notes were written on the same machine.”

“Well,” Grood said, “what if they were?”

Jax Bowman’s face was alive with interest. His eyes were like those of a cat watching a bird. It was at such moments that the latent talent of the man was brought out. The challenge of crime detection aroused his interest, speeded up his mental processes.

Rhoda Marchand, recognizing the symptoms, reached for her pen.

“Make a file for this case,” Bowman said, his words quick and incisive “Make general notes on crime motivation as follows: Statement prepared on identical typewriter found on bodies widely separated; therefore, statements must either have been prepared in advance, or typewriter must have been moved from place to place — probably the latter theory is correct. Therefore, typewriter is a portable — typewritten statement left on supposed suicide is not the general type of statement a suicide would leave. There is no explanation for his act — no apology to the world — no attempt to enlist sympathy — both statements have this in common: they take extraordinary precautions to ascertain that the body of the deceased will be identified. The object of this is not to secure a proper burial, because in the one instance it proves the deceased to have been a felon and in the other instance the girl, who left no relatives, is branded with the stigma of having been a dance hall girl.”

Bowman hesitated a moment, then said, “That’s all to put on that statement at present.”

He turned to Grood and asked, “Jim, do you know any crook who pilots an airplane?”

Grood said thoughtfully, “Yes — three or four of them who are out of stir and one or two who are in.”

“Make a list of them,” Bowman said, “and we’ll have private detective agencies check up on their present locations and where they’ve been for the past few weeks.”

He turned to Rhoda Marchand and said, “Rhoda, get a force of men at work tracing the family connections of these two people. Also collect newspaper advertisements asking for missing heirs of various estates. Cover all the principal cities.”

Jim Grood frowned and said, “What makes you think this is something in connection with an estate, chief?”

“Simply this,” Bowman replied. “There have been extraordinary pains taken to show the authorities the real identities of the dead persons. I can’t understand why that should have been done, unless there are some legal rights affected by it. You’ll notice that the murderer seemed greatly interested in enabling authorities to make an absolute identification of the bodies of his victims. I can’t help but think that the motive is tied up with that identification.”

Jim Grood nodded slow acquiescence. “There may be something to that,” he admitted.

“If it should turn out that these persons are remotely related to each other, there’ll be a lot to it,” Bowman answered grimly.

“In which event,” Grood said, grinning, “we’ll be beating the police to it.”

“Anything else?” Rhoda Marchand asked with crisp efficiency.

“Yes,” Bowman told her. “If it should turn out that these people were related, no matter how distantly, I want you to find the common ancestor and then trace every other relative. I don’t care how much money we have to spend. Put a hundred research workers on it, if necessary.”

She nodded and left the office.

Jax Bowman, grinning, walked across the room to a wall safe. He thumbed the combination, opened the steel door and, with a solemnity which made something of a ritual of it, took out a brace of .45 automatics, and two black masks with round holes cut for the eyes and white rings painted around the holes, giving to the masks a hideous appearance of unwinking vigilance.

“This,” he said, “beats jiggling a line in the water, waiting for swordfish to strike.”