Ed McBain’s Mystery Book, No. 1, 1960

Cops and Robbers by Vincent H. Gaddis

HIS MAN FRIDAY

Investigating vandalism on a farm near Evansville, Indiana, where a tractor had been wrecked, Deputy Sheriff James Angus quickly surveyed the scene, then settled down to looking for clues. He found a perfect heelprint and made a cast. The print was compared with the shoes of several suspects, but it didn’t match.

Several days later Angus sat down in the sheriff’s office and crossed his legs. Fellow deputies looked at Angus’s heel and did a double take. Angus had found his own footprint!

CASTE CLASSIFICATION

In Philadelphia a narcotics peddler was on trial before Judge Maurice W. Sporkin. The judge asked the arresting officer: “Were the sales of dope made only to the police?”

“No,” replied the policeman. “The accused sold dope to people, too.”

INTERNATIONAL TASTES

Los Angeles police report that a burglar broke into a home and confined his thefts to the kitchen. He ate a can of Mexican enchiladas, a jar of chili peppers, half-a-dozen Spanish tamales, a can of Irish stew, and part of a carton of chop suey. He washed the food down with a fifth of Holland gin and some California sherry. Officers checked city hospitals for patients requiring the use of stomach pumps but failed to turn up any suspects.

EMBARRASSED PRODIGAL

Dennis Anson, twenty-five, rang the bell at the gates of Leicester Prison in England and surrendered. He had escaped earlier while serving a sentence for larceny. Anson told the guards that he had returned voluntarily because he had split his trousers while climbing over a wall.

PILLAGE BY THE PINT

A polite gunman in Spokane, Washington, robbed a bank — the Community Blood Bank — of four pints of blood. Evelyn Miller, the attendant, said the stranger displayed a small pistol when he approached the counter where she was typing blood samples. He demanded four pints of O negative blood, plus four administration sets — hookups of plastic tubes, filters, and needles. Miss Miller added that the robber was “very calm and cultured,” and was careful never to point his weapon directly at her.

READY REMEDY

Thomas Glovemore, fifty-two, of Syracuse, New York, insisted on taking a sack containing almost a hundred bottles of medicine when he was sentenced to jail for panhandling. Asked why he had so much medicine, Glovemore replied: “That’s easy. Sometimes I don’t feel good — like right now.”

SCALPED

A Shriner at the organization’s convention in Memphis, Tennessee, reported to police that two men swiped his maroon fez from his head. “I don’t mind so much the loss of my fez,” he explained, “but they got my toupee with it.”

MYSTERY GIRL

Probably the most astonishing series of mistaken identifications ever made in the United States occurred in October, 1934, in Kansas City, Kansas. The body of a redhaired girl, aged about twenty-two, with blue eyes, a freckled face, and peculiar scars on each ankle, was found in a ditch along a rural road near the city. She had been shot to death.

She was “positively” identified as twenty-six different young women by nearly a hundred and fifty persons who viewed the body. In one alleged identification, eighteen persons agreed that the murder victim was a girl listed as missing.

After seven months all twenty-six girls were found to be alive. Finally “Miss X” was buried — still unidentified.

REMOTE CONTROL ROBBERY

Even if Los Angeles police apprehend the thief who robbed William Elrod, a service-station attendant, of $250, he won’t be able to identify him. In fact, the robber was never in sight.

It all began with a telephone call. “Listen carefully,” the voice told Elrod. “I have a rifle trained on your back. To prove I can see you, you have your foot on the bench. Take all the money from your cash register and put it in the trash can in the rest room of the drive-in next door, then return to the station. I’ll be watching you.”

Elrod followed instructions, then called police. The trash can was checked, but the money was gone.

PIECEWORK

In Rouyn, Quebec, police arrested Marc Gratton, a thirty-one-year-old welder, for larceny on the installment plan. He removed an entire underground pump from the Quemont Gold Mine — in his lunch pail, piece by piece, over a three-year period. Officers found the reassembled pump in the basement of Gratton’s home. Six policemen worked three hours loading the equipment on a truck for its trip back to the mine.