The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 25 Classic Mysteries

Originally published in Smashing Detective Stories, March 1952.

Chapter 1

The morgue-keeper was wizened and so bald his head looked like a glazed skull in the white, cold light of the morgue. He pulled the drawer out, wiped his colorless lips with the back of his hand, and said, “Well, there she is, boys. Pretty little trick in life — but she don’t look so hot now, eh?”

David Archer and I looked at the corpse. The keeper was right. She had been a pretty little trick in life — so pretty it tore your throat to look at her now. She’d been blonde with a heart-shaped face that was only beginning to harden; time must have been when, her blue eyes held trust, merriment, love of life. But the years had made her eyes hard, sardonic; now here in the morgue, her eyes held nothing. They were blue chips of cold glass staring unseeingly at the skylight overhead. Her name was Marilyn Foster; she had been killed with a crushing blow against her left temple.

Archer nodded, and the morgue-keeper shot the heavy drawer closed on its steel rollers. The keeper strolled with us toward the double, glazed-glass doors of the morgue. “That’s the way they all go,” He said with the tone of an old man who has seen too much death. “Marilyn Foster. I wonder what her pa and ma were like? She must have been a nice girl once, but she was poor, wasn’t she? Poor, and the war came along, and there was a lot of loose money — the excitement did something to a lot of girls like her. They thought they was having fun, hump! Next thing you know they’re regular little chits hustling drinks in any bar or club that’ll give ’em a percentage. Once on the go-round, they never learn to calm down.

“What’s you guys’ angle on this, eh, Archer? They got the guy that did it yet? They going to give him the old one-two into the chair? They...”

“Shut up!” David Archer said, in a tone so cold it froze the morgue-keeper in his tracks.

We left the bright, harsh gloom of the morgue, crossed the street to headquarters, and walked back to Lieutenant Tim Brogardus’ office. We could hear the babble of voices before we opened the door.

There were three men in the office. Tim Brogardus sat at his desk, a big, hound-faced man, who carried a mournful look in his eyes. According to the chief’s way of thinking, Brogardus had the voice of a lion and the brain of a gnat. But Tim’s roughshod, direct methods of police work often got results, and there was mutual respect between him and Archer: two men poles apart, each seeing in the other qualities alien to his own that he could respect.

At the end of Tim’s desk, visibly shaken, sat Buddy VanDyke, II. Slender, trim, Buddy had a childish face, black hair that came to a widow’s peak on his forehead, dark brown eyes, and a chin that was quivering. Women were crazy over him. I guess he appealed to the maternal in them with that chin; he had been crazy about Marilyn Foster.

In the leather chair against the windows sat Lon Montague. Lon had that compact build, without being beefy, that means real physical power. Under pale sandy hair that was thinning from a high forehead, he had dark, very-alive eyes that missed nothing. He also had a square, blunt chin that didn’t quiver. He owned the Starlight Club, and Marilyn Foster had been working for him at the time of her death.

Brogardus looked at the chief.

“Anything more you can add after seeing her, Archer?”

David Archer shook his head. “I’ve told you everything I know. The case is over for us; it’s your baby now, Tim. We’re strictly out of it. Old Ludwig VanDyke hired us to scare Marilyn Foster off his grandson,” the chief glanced at Buddy’s quivering chin, “or get something on her that would break up the affair. We didn’t like the case from the beginning. It was no newer, no less sordid than half a hundred others we’ve handled — the poor, dumb, but beautiful hat-check girl making a play for the weak, young rich boy, while in the background the old bear of the clan didn’t like it.”

Buddy VanDyke fastened his eyes on the chief, and came out of his chair in a slow, way that crimped silence on the room. “You keep your mouth shut about her!”

“Sit down, VanDyke,” the chief suggested.

Buddy didn’t sit down. He moved over close to Archer; he was trembling and sweat gave his face a pasty look. “You damned shamus!” he shouted. “Why couldn’t you have left her alone? She wasn’t greedy! She was good — you hear me? She was good!”

Archer looked suddenly weary. “You weak fool,” he said, spacing the words with intervals of silence between each one, “there might have been a time when she was good, years ago. But she made herself what she was; she was grasping, and life had taught her to be slick. She didn’t want anything but your money; sonny boy; if she actually loved anybody it was Lon Montague.”

Montague didn’t flicker a lash. Buddy VanDyke clenched his fists, looked from Archer to Montague, and sat down. After a moment, I realized sobs were knotting in his belly. “You’re all wrong about her! We were going to be married today. At high noon,” he whispered, “in City Hall — and then we were going away — only now she’s across the street in the morgue!” He buried his face in his hands, and the office got very uncomfortable with the sounds that wretched out of him.

We exchanged glances. Brogardus muttered, “Lay off him, Archer!”

The chief shrugged, sighed. Montague stood up. “If there’s nothing more you need me for...” he suggested quietly.

“I’ll call you,” Brogardus said.

Archer, Montague, and I went outside. The air on the sidewalk seemed clear and clean; I needed the rays of the dying, late afternoon sun to warm me.

Montague gave his hat-brim an extra tug. “Can I drop you someplace?”

“Thanks, no,” Archer said. “Jordan and I will have to tell the old bear that he needn’t worry about her any longer.”

As we turned away, Montague’s voice arrested us, “Archer!”

“Yeah?”

“While you were digging in her life, did you stumble across anything that might trip up whoever killed her?”

Archer didn’t reply.

Montague’s eyes shimmered faintly. “Okay, so anything you learned is not to be discussed in public. I was thinking...”

“Anything I learned, Montague, I have already told Brogardus — in private. Brogardus will handle Marilyn Foster’s killing in the proper, legal way.”

“Meaning if I found out who killed her I’d see he never lived to come to trial?”

“Meaning something like that — maybe,” Archer said. “Meaning I’ve never liked your strong-arm methods in the past to get what you want, Montague, and some of the people around you — they don’t inspire friendship in me, either.”

I watched Lon Montague’s jaw muscles ripple under his smooth-shaven flesh. “I’m glad to know how we stand. Only one thing more you might like to know — I think she really did love me, in her way, and I know I thought a hell of a lot of her!”

Montague turned on his heels and was gone. Archer and I got in my ramshackle sedan, and I threw the old car in gear. I was still remembering the way death had wiped the hardness from her eyes, and turned them to blue glass there in the morgue...

The VanDyke mansion was a huge pile of stone, steel, and wrought-iron over a hundred years old. You didn’t see it from the street, because it was surrounded by a high, ivy-covered, stone wall; you didn’t see it the first few moments you cruised in the driveway, because the gently-rolling grounds were grottoes of shrubs and majestic shade trees. Then you rounded a bend in the drive, and there the house was — a monstrous, solid thing of stone with tall glowering windows.

Leaving the sedan like an eyesore in the drive, Archer and I mounted the veranda steps. The chief rang the bell. I looked over the old spook-joint and thought of the housing shortage. Only old Ludwig and young Buddy survived, of all the VanDykes; they had a hell of a lot of house here to themselves. The left, or east, wing was completely closed off, hadn’t been used in years. The rest of the place had been more or less falling in ruins, until a year ago, the original VanDyke fortune having been practically exhausted. There were still signs here and there of reconstruction, done by Buddy’s first wife — a childhood sweetheart whose wealth still hadn’t been great enough to save her after an auto accident.

The tall oaken door creaked open. The servant standing there was named Josiah; he was very old, with skin like wrinkled, light-tan leather. Archer told him we wanted to see the elder Mr. VanDyke, and Josiah bade us enter. “Mr. Ludwig is in his study, sir.”

And quite a study it was. A big oval room, filled with massive furniture, French doors giving to the side lawn. Old Ludwig was standing beside his desk when Josiah announced us.

“Sit down, gentlemen, sit down,” he bellowed. He was a tall, spare figure with a mane of white hair and a narrow, hard, deeply lined face. He roared, “Confound it, Josiah, where is my medicine? What the devil’s the matter with you, man?”

“Yes, sir. Right away, Mr. Ludwig.”

Old Ludwig burped softly behind his hand, rounded the desk, seated himself. “This indigestion!” he shoved some of the medicine bottles aside on his desk, without knocking any on the floor. That’s a harder task than it sounds, because the whole top of the desk was littered with these bottles. Every time the chief and I saw him, the old man was suffering a new malady. Indigestion today; high blood pressure yesterday; a heart tremor tomorrow.

Buddy VanDyke had said privately, on one of our visits here, “Well, the strongest man must have his Achilles’ heel. With grandpa, it’s sheer hypochondria; he sterilizes his drinking glasses himself, and orders distilled water for his own drinking purposes. A fly or mosquito in his bedroom causes him to call out the exterminating company. The old boy is whit-leather tough, not a thing wrong with him — except in his mind. Time was when he could bring a board of directors to his way of thinking by sheer lung power — but mention a germ to him, and he quakes in his boots!”

“Gentlemen,” old Ludwig thundered, “I trust you have brought that little tart’s scalp to me today! Perhaps it would revive my feelings and—”

“Sorry,” Archer said, “but her scalp is in the morgue.”

“She is a no-good, shameless... What? Did you say morgue, sir?”

“I did. Marilyn Foster is dead — murdered.”

“Wh... wh... wh...” Old Ludwig stared at us a moment, gaping like a fish out of water. Then his jaw snapped closed, his eyes going calculating. “You didn’t, sir, by any chance take too literally my suggestion that you get Marilyn Foster out of my grandson’s life?”

Archer smiled bleakly. “If you’re suggesting we killed her, you’re way off base.”

“Yes, well, humph!” Ludwig fiddled with a bottle on his desk for a moment. “At least the affair is over; she’ll never be able to marry my grandson, rule him and his money utterly, now. Tell me, how and when did it happen?”

“Last night, apparently,” Archer said, “in her apartment. Person or persons unknown went there in the early hours of morning, about the time she got home from work. Person or persons evidently argued with her, picked up the poker from the fireplace set, and struck her in the left temple. Death was almost instantaneous; she was found this morning by the maid who came in to clean up.”

“And the police?”

“At the moment are questioning your grandson,” Archer said.

Old Ludwig reared up in his chair. “My grandson,” he roared. “The nerve of them! The absolute stupidity! Why, that young pup is afraid of his own shadow — much less having the nerve to kill anybody! The gall of them!” Old Ludwig sputtered to silence, grabbed for a bottle on his desk, and swallowed a pill.

“I wouldn’t worry,” Archer said placidly. “It’s just routine on the part of the police; they’ll probably get around to you and grill you about your grandson’s relations with Marilyn Foster.”

“Me, sir?” Ludwig’s voice rattled the window panes. “The unmitigated nerve of them coming here! That... that hussy has brought nothing but trouble to this family. But I shall not hesitate to give the police my opinion of her — nor of their bungling ways!”

The old boy was working himself into quite a state when the chief and I left; I personally would have hated to be the cop who questioned him. He was tough, and hard, and could be cold as a fish’s belly when he wanted to. There was rumor that a grand jury had once looked into his business practices.

Archer and I drove back downtown. We bought a paper in the foyer of our building, glanced at it on the way up to the office. Marilyn Foster’s death had a minor spot on the front page. Reporters had mentioned the scion of a very old family being questioned by police. They’d also mentioned Archer and me. Well, it was publicity.

We walked down the corridor toward the office. I gave only an idle glance at the elderly woman hovering in the corridor. But as Archer rattled the key in the door, the old lady came prancing up to us. “Are you Mr. Archer?”

“No,” I said, “he’s Archer; I’m Luke Jordan, the lower name on the door.”

The simpering little woman looked at Mr. Archer and frowned. It was a usual reaction. Upon first meeting, most folks just can’t absorb the fact that this dumpy, roly-poly little guy with the baby-blue eyes and pink cheeks carries a reputation for pulling killers out of thin air.

The chief glowered under her scrutiny. “Okay, what can we do for you?” He held the office door open for her.

As she wafted inside, the little old lady said, “You can do a great deal. I’m sure — a great deal. There are two things I want done. I want you to look into Pricilla’s disappearance — and into Marilyn Foster’s death. You see,” she added through sudden tears, “I’m Marilyn Foster’s Aunt Minna.”

Chapter 2

He had bumped into Aunt Minna’s name in our investigation of the Foster girl, but now that the aunt was here in person, I gave her a close look. I saw a small, thin body that looked just heavy enough to float away on a stronger-than-average breeze, a delicate face that was bewildered and hopelessly beaten by life. If she’d been sheltered by several million bucks, Aunt Minna would have been the type to have gentle teas, contribute to orphanages, and encourage sensitive young artists. But never having had the millions, Aunt Minna — faced by life as she’s lived — had developed into a mousy little creature flinching from the cruel world.

She was weeping delicately now, and Archer led her over to a chair. Her clean — but threadbare — old-fashioned black dress rustled as she sat down. I thought of the Foster girl in the morgue again. Marilyn Foster, tough as they come, ready to hog a rich boy’s money without batting an eye — but giving a home, and no doubt love, to this poverty-stricken little aunt.

Aunt Minna dabbed at her eyes, tried to smile. “Do forgive me for making a scene. I just returned from Philadelphia this afternoon — I’ve been there for a week, caring for my sick sister. I didn’t even know poor Marilyn was dead until I got to town. I... The police were at the apartment.”

She worried her wispy handkerchief in her fingers. “I heard one of the detectives mention that you were connected with the case, and I thought perhaps I...”

Archer cleared his throat. “Well, you see, Miss Minna, we were working on another case, for another client. Marilyn happened to... uh... enter it slightly. But our case is closed now.”

“But there’s something I want to tell you!”

“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to tell the police.”

“But the police are not the people for this! Here...” She undid the old-fashioned, crocheted bag in her lap. From it, she took a tiny snap purse. From the purse, she extracted a knotted handkerchief. And once the handkerchief was unknotted, a small wad of bills was revealed. “I know that your services on a murder case come high; but I came prepared. This money I... well, I have always wanted to be able to bury myself, pay my own funeral expenses, and I have saved the money for quite awhile Mr. Archer. But I believe that Marilyn would have done as much for me.”

She laid out the bills — six one hundred dollar bills. Probably the only thing between her and the county home. A long, still moment passed in the office. Archer touched the money with his fingertip. I looked at the hopeful agony in which she was watching, waiting for Archer’s decision. It lumped my throat.

The chief flicked with his finger. The top bill bounded over to the middle of his desk. He picked it up, folded it in a square, thrust it in his watch pocket. The other five bills, he shoved back over to Aunt Minna.

“We are retained,” he said, with that grumpy note in his voice that meant he was castigating himself for a sap. “Tell us your story.”

Aunt Minna refolded her five bills, knotted them in the handkerchief, placed the handkerchief in the snap purse, the purse in the crocheted bag, and told her story.

Late yesterday, the day of her death, Marilyn had phoned Aunt Minna in Philadelphia. She had wanted to inquire after the sick sister’s health and find out how long Aunt Minna possibly would be in the brotherly-love city. “She wanted to know when I’d be home,” Aunt Minna said, “because she said she might be married shortly, and leave the city on a honeymoon — so if I came back to find her gone from the apartment, I was not to worry.”

Aunt Minna shifted, took a breath. “I cautioned Marilyn to be careful in the apartment alone — and to eat hearty — she never ate much, the poor child! She said she’d be quite all right, that a friend was spending the night with her.”

Archer jarred to attention. “A friend? There in the apartment last night? Do you know who it was?”

“I’m coming to that. It was a girl named Rose Tiffin, who worked at the Starlight Club. I... I never like to pass judgment, Mr. Archer, but the time or two I met Rose Tiffin... well, she impressed me as not being a nice girl.”

“But there was no evidence that anybody but Marilyn, and the murderer, were in that apartment last night! Have you told the police about this?”

Aunt Minna’s hands were trembling with excitement. “No, you see, that’s what I meant about Rose Tiffin, why I came to you. I mean, no evidence. If I told the police, they’d go over there and she’d deny it. She’s just that kind, Mr. Archer! She’d say that I had misunderstood, or that she had changed her plans and hadn’t spent the night in the apartment.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Why,” Aunt Minna lifted her wide innocent eyes to Archer’s face, “it’s evident this Rose Tiffin doesn’t want anyone — most of all the police — to know she was in that apartment. If she wanted them to know, she’d have come forward, wouldn’t she? So I decided to come to you; I think you’d have a much better chance of getting something out of Rose Tiffin than the police would.”

Archer raised his brows. “Okay, you win. Lady, you ought to be in this business.”

Aunt Minna didn’t recognize the warped compliment as such. She pressed on, “And perhaps Rose can tell you what happened to Priscilla — and if you find out who got Priscilla, I’m sure you’ll have the murderer of my niece.” She started crying again, but very silently this time, just tears bubbling to the surface, bright and hot on her lids.

“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned Priscilla disappearing,” Archer said. “Did you tell the police about her?”

“Oh, yes, but they were inclined to laugh at me. They said she’d probably just wandered off. But I don’t think Priscilla would do such a thing.”

Archer and I swapped glances over the old lady’s head. “Just who is this Priscilla? What’s her last name?”

“She hasn’t one; you see, Priscilla is my Pekinese dog.”

In the moment of silence that followed Aunt Minna looked from the chief to me. Maybe she misinterpreted the look in our eyes. “I know,” she said, “how some people feel about an old lady who is perhaps overly-fond of a dog. But Priscilla was all I had; she was no trouble. And she was a very good little watchdog — you know that Pekes can be vicious when aroused. Priscilla, especially, had been very easy to get in a temper since her accident. Marilyn was walking her one day, and Priscilla darted away to chase a car. A car hit her, shaking her and mangling one foot. The veterinarian had to amputate that paw, and I think it pains Priscilla at times.

“When Marilyn phoned me yesterday, I asked about Priscilla. Marilyn said the dog had seemed to be acting queer when she got home; she told me she’d look after Priscilla, though, and if she went away, she’d leave the dog with Mrs. Grogan on the floor above us.”

“But the dog isn’t with Mrs. Grogan?”

“No. I asked her just before I left the apartment to come here.” Aunt Minna was worrying that handkerchief again. “Strangely, Priscilla has completely vanished.”

Archer got that pouter-pigeon look that meant he was burning gray matter and about to pull a revelation right out of thin air. But whatever he pulled out of the ozone, he chose not to express it aloud. He took Aunt Minna’s arm, guided her to the door, “We’ll call you as soon as anything develops.”

He crossed the office to his desk, picked up the phone, and called Shorty McGinnis. Shorty was a theatrical agent, and knew everybody; we’d done him a favor or two in the past, and now the chief said, “Shorty, I want the home address of a Rose Tiffin. That’s right, the featured singer at Lon Montague’s Starlight Club. Can you get it this late in the afternoon? All right, I’ll wait for your call.”

He replaced the phone, and I sat down to have a cigarette.

It turned out that Rose Tiffin lived at 543 Columbia Street. Darkness was mantling the earth in a heavy shroud when we finally located the place. It was in a suburban development west of town — a cluster of new houses set on lots in various stages of landscaping — and Columbia being only a couple or three blocks long, we overshot it once in the lowering darkness.

I parked the sedan at the curb, and the chief and I went up the walk. The bungalow loomed white and spectral before us, so new you could smell the paint. Archer thumbed the bell; nothing happened; I knocked on the door.

It swung open slightly with a creak of new brass hinges. We could see the dim cavern of the living room, the heavy shadows that were furniture.

Archer craned his neck inside to call Rose Tiffin’s name. But no words came out of him. Beside me, I sensed his body going rigid; I heard him sniff twice. Then he slammed the door open, and barged in the house.

It was very faint here in the living room, but as we crossed the dining room, the odor of gas began to envelop us. And by the time we reached the kitchen door, we were holding our breaths.

In that instant before Archer kicked the kitchen door open, I could hear faintly the hiss of gas jets. I knew every jet in the kitchen stove must be open, and I knew then and there what we were going to find.

We found it all right, a woman’s body on the tile of the kitchen floor, her head and shoulders in the oven of the stove, as if the stove were some horrible monster trying to swallow her...

Archer crossed the kitchen, slammed open windows. I dove for the stove, leaned across the indistinct huddled form, and began turning off the gas. We backed out of the room, propped the swinging kitchen door back with a dining room chair, and gave the breeze that came surging through the open windows a chance to clear the gas out.

Archer re-entered the kitchen, turned on a light. He set his teeth, eased the girl’s body out on the floor. We’d seen Rose Tiffin several times in our poking around the Starlight Club on the case for old Ludwig VanDyke: but we’d never seen her again. This was our last, long look at Rose, and it wasn’t a pleasant one. She was like a limp, wet rag there on the floor, her bleached hair splashed out around her face.

“We’d better call headquarters and get Brogardus,” I suggested.

Archer nodded. “At least we know now that Rose did spend the night in Marilyn Foster’s apartment. The killer didn’t know she was there, thinking Marilyn was completely alone. Maybe the argument between Marilyn and the killer woke Rose. She got up to creep out and take a look — and got an eyeful. She puts the bite on the killer, and he comes here, knocks her unconscious, and turns on the gas.

“All of which,” Archer finished grumpily, “leaves us with only one break in the case — a vanishing, three-pawed, Pekinese dog!”

Chapter 3

Slightly over an hour later, David Archer and I came out of police headquarters. Lieutenant Tim Brogardus hadn’t liked our dropping another corpse in his lap at all, but he’d told us to be on our way, with the admonition that we’d better play ball with the department without throwing any curves.

We crossed the sidewalk to the sedan, and as I pulled the car away into traffic, I thought of the official findings, thus far, in the Rose Tiffin killing.

Rose had a police record of sorts. She’d been arrested three years ago in a raid on a club where she was working, her act in the club requiring such few clothes that decency statutes were considered violated. She’d been pulled in once after that on suspicion of blackmail.

For the past eight months, she had been featured as vocalist at the Starlight Club; the police had cracked down on the club two or three times, not because of Rose, but because of the heavy gambling for high stakes that went on in the rooms back of the club. None of the raids had been really successful; the legal talent that Lon Montague would haul in was too fast and slick, and pinning a rap for gambling on some of the oldest and most powerful families in the city was a lot different from pinning it on a couple young lads caught shooting craps in a back alley. And the oldest and best family names were the only ones Montague allowed in his back rooms. It hadn’t been that way very long. A year ago, Montague and his club were obscure, but he’d begun an overnight expansion, bringing in the best bands, redecorating the joint. Rumor had it that about a year ago, Montague had got heavy sugar behind him from somewhere.

Now we were headed for the Starlight and Montague’s den. I wondered what the chief had on his mind.

The exterior of the Starlight, that face it showed to the sidewalk, was dark blue crystal. Inside, it was quiet, sedate, the band dripping sugar; the drapes heavy and dark; waiters walking on cat feet; half the tables filled and a few couples dancing. Archer and I idled over to the bar. I ordered a rye which I needed: Archer rarely drank anything stronger than milk.

When the sleek-mustached bartender set my drink in front of me, the chief said, “Will you tell Mr. Montague, that Archer and Jordan are out front and would like to see him?”

I’d barely had time to scorch my tonsils with the drink when the bartender came back. He made a subtle sign to a waiter, who drifted over. “Pierre,” the bartender said, “will you show these gentlemen to Mr. Montague’s office?”

The waiter bowed, and we fell in behind him.

Lon Montague was standing behind his desk in his plush office waiting for us. The soft lighting of the room glinted on his high forehead, his thinning, sandy hair, his dark, alive eyes. “Sit down, gentlemen. A drink?”

We took the deep, light tan leather chairs Montague motioned at with his extended palm. Archer said we would forego the drinks.

Montague sat down behind his desk, his chin blunt and hard. “I just had a call from Lieutenant Brogardus. Another killing. The headquarters boys warned me to stick around the office; they’d be over later.”

“Quite a coincidence,” the chief said, “two girls working in the same club getting killed on two consecutive nights.”

Montague’s eyes shimmered. “I wouldn’t know about that.”

“You wouldn’t know whom Rose Tiffin tried to blackmail, either, I suppose?”

“No; was she blackmailing somebody?”

“The person who killed Marilyn Foster,” the chief said. “The whole thing fits like a glove. The Foster killing was slick; the Tiffin job was pretty smooth, too. I jumped to the first conclusion that he’d knocked Rose unconscious and gassed her, but it was better than that. The boys at headquarters couldn’t find a bruise on her that would indicate a blow hard enough to knock her unconscious. Now the boys are figuring that the killer must have given her some money, lulled her into the belief that he was going to pay off without too much trouble. The killer and Rose must have had a drink on it, with him managing to slip knockout drops in her slug. She keels over, and he sticks her head in the gas stove oven.”

Montague wiped his face with his handkerchief. “I’m glad to know the way it happened.”

“You wouldn’t suggest suicide?”

For a moment Archer’s eyes and Montague’s locked. Then Montague said quietly, “No, I know of no reason why Rose Tiffin would have gassed herself.”

Archer went off on a new tack. I wondered what in blazes he was eventually driving at. He said. “Luke and I had a visitor. A very nice little old lady. Marilyn Foster’s Aunt Minna.”

Montague didn’t speak for a few moments. A far-away look grew in his eyes, as if he were thinking of the past and the memories it held. “The way Marilyn always took care of the old dame,” he said, “made me think a lot of her. Brittle and tough as she was, Marilyn had her qualities.”

“You thought so much of her, you hated to see her intent on marrying Buddy VanDyke? You tried to talk her out of it?”

Montague’s eyes came back to the present with a cold, jarred look in them. “What,” he said softly, “if I did try to talk her out of it?”

The feeling in the room began to bring me toward the edge of my chair, made me conscious of the weight of the gun in my shoulder rig.

Archer splayed his palms on Montague’s desk, as if he would crawl over the desk right down Lon’s throat. The chief said, “You maybe thought so much of Marilyn Foster you’d have killed her to keep another man — Buddy VanDyke — from having her?”

Montague’s face went livid. His eyes blazed; he pounced to his feet, ripping out an oath. “I wouldn’t have touched a hair on her head!” he shouted. “Listen, you two-bit private dick, if you think I’m going to stand here in my own office and let you talk to me...”

“Sit down, Montague,” Archer said placidly. “It’s either me or the police. It’d be a lot better to have me on your team — even at two-bits. Which is practically all I’m getting out of this case.”

Montague opened his mouth to curse some more, but the chief waggled a finger and said, “Your team, remember? You’re going to tell me what I want to know, or I’ll have Brogardus breathing so hard down your neck it’ll scorch your shoulder blades!”

Montague got that glittering look in his eyes again. He sensed this was a moment for caution. “If you told Tim Brogardus a pack of lies about me, Archer,” he warned, “dark alleys might get mighty unsafe for you.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Archer conceded, “but I’m a truthful man. And the fact remains that about a year ago you blossomed into the big time with this club. It takes backing — capital — to do that; you didn’t have it on your own.”

“Meaning?”

“Let’s dig up a little past history,” the chief suggested mildly. “Buddy VanDyke, for example. Marilyn Foster was not to have been Buddy’s first venture into marriage, as I remember. Over a year ago, Buddy married Sue-Carol Loefler, the heiress to the Loefler Distilleries fortune. At that time Buddy was practically flat, the old, respected VanDyke fortune having gone the way of so many old, respected fortunes. Buddy was living mostly on his name, good looks, and credit. Then he marries Sue-Carol — and just a short time after their marriage, she leaves here one night after an argument with Buddy. He was drunk, stayed here at the club, refusing to go with her. A few hours later, Sue-Carol was found in the wreckage of her car in a ravine on Highway Sixty Six.

“It was raining that night, and cold, with a film of ice on the roads. The police marked off Sue-Carol Loefler VanDyke’s death as an accident. Angered and hurt because of her argument with Buddy, she’d been driving too fast. She’d been unable to make the curve — possibly hadn’t seen it in the darkness and rain until too late — and had plunged to her death in the ravine.

“But the fact remains that Buddy inherited her millions; that Buddy was here at the club, and you alibied him; and that a short time after that you began expanding.”

“Meaning?” Montague said again, the word like the crackle of ice in the room.

“Meaning that there is the remote chance that Sue-Carol’s death could have been murder.”

“That’s a lie! You’d never get to first base trying to stump up a thing as insane as that!”

“But what if it isn’t a lie?” Archer persisted. “If Sue-Carol were murdered, you’d have been in a prime position to make Buddy VanDyke pay off, up to his eyeteeth!”

That controlled glitter in Montague’s eyes shattered. He mouthed a curse this time, threw a looping punch at the chief. Archer sidestepped. I moved in on Montague, and he jabbed at me. I jabbed back, and Montague staggered into the desk. He damned my ancestors, and before I could get close enough to stop him, yanked a desk drawer open. I knew he was going for a gun.

I plunged into him, trying to pin him over the desk. He writhed out of my grip, and we tripped and fell with a jar that shook the floor. Sometime in his long, spotty past, Montague had learned a lot about dirty fighting. He gave me a knee in the groin, went for my eyes with his thumbs and the soft pressure point behind my ears, where the jaw hinges, with his index fingers. He’d called it. If that was the way he wanted to play, it was all right with me. I worked on his kidneys with my elbows, thrashing to get out from under him. I rolled on top, butted him in the chin. That stunned him, and I grabbed a handful of hair and slammed his head against the floor. The carpet was thick, but not that thick. Montague relaxed, groaning.

“I guess,” Archer remarked, as we went out the door, “that we insulted Lon! Let’s go someplace and get a bite of dinner.”

We did, and with the grub under our belts, Archer decided we’d drive out to the VanDyke house.

The huge old pile of stone and steel that was the VanDyke mansion looked grim and forbidding in the darkness. Lights were on here and there in the place, making the windows like eyes watching us as we rolled up the long, curving driveway.

I planted the sedan at just about the same spot I had when we’d been here earlier today. We’d just got out of the car and started up the veranda steps when headlights splashed in the driveway behind us. We turned, saw a car coming up the drive. It was moving fast for that narrow, twisting drive; it almost lost a bumper against a tree, and I stood frozen, thinking my old sedan was finally going to-be reduced to complete junk.

But the driver of the other car, a convertible with the top down, saw the sedan, slapped on the brakes. The convertible stopped with a little side skid in the drive, nudged against the sedan’s bumper.

The convertible’s horn let out a long, protracted blast. A male voice shouted thickly, “Wha’sh idea leaving that heap parked like that?”

“Sounds like Buddy VanDyke,” the chief said.

“Like Buddy VanDyke with a few too many under his belt,” I added, as we bolted down the veranda steps.

Buddy was lolling over the convertible steering wheel. He still had his palm on the horn, and it was setting up such a racket I couldn’t hear myself think. “Sho,” he mouthed looking at us, his face flushed in the light of the dash lamp, “it’sh the great detectiffs! Going to find out who killed little Marilyn, Mishter Archer?”

“Move the car, Luke,” the chief told me softly. “I’ll see if I can do anything with this guy besides pouring him back in the bottle.”

I moved up the drive, got in the sedan, started it, and pulled it over to the extreme edge of the driveway. While I was occupied with that, the big, oaken front door of the VanDyke house had opened and old Ludwig and the leathery servant, Josiah, had come out, attracted by the convertible’s horn.

“What’s the meaning of this?” old Ludwig roared.

“Don’t shout, grandpa,” Buddy held his finger up to his lips. “Lishen, she might be out there in the night shomeplace. Poor Marilyn. Dead in the night shomeplace.”

“You’re drunk!” old Ludwig thundered. “Well, Josiah, don’t stand there gawking! Get him up to his room!”

Josiah said a hurried “Yes, sir,” and bumbled around the car. He got the door open on Buddy’s side.

“Joshiah, you’re a good egg,” Buddy patted the servant’s shoulder, “but I can make it up under my own power, shee? Poor Marilyn. Dead in the night shomeplace!” He staggered across the veranda, into the house.

“That young pup should be thrashed within an inch of his life,” Ludwig decided glaring toward the house.

“I’m sorry he’s in that state, myself,” Archer agreed. “There was a question or two I wanted to ask him. About his investment in Lon Montague’s Starlight Club.”

“Eh? Oh, I can tell you anything you want to know about that, Mr. Archer.”

The chief looked a little stunned, his face drawn in the light spilling over the drive from the house. He’d expected, I guess, secret blanks in Buddy’s past, and for the first time in his career, I saw complete puzzlement rising in David Archer’s eyes.

Chapter 4

The chief drew old Ludwig out with questions, and from the way the grandfather spoke of Buddy’s relations with Lon Montague you had the feeling that it was truth.

Yes, Buddy’s first wife, Sue-Carol, had been killed in the auto accident. The police had looked into all that. And yes, Buddy came into quite a spot of cash. He’d always been an idle young man, but with Sue-Carol gone, he’d wanted something to put his mind and time to. Buddy had known Montague for several years; he’d hung around nightclubs such as Lon’s until he knew every habitué. Furthermore, night-life had always fascinated Buddy, and he had believed that the sort of club Lon Montague now ran could do well by itself. So Buddy had gone to Montague — and not Montague to Buddy — and suggested buying in a more or less silent partnership. Montague had agreed.

“I tried to talk him out of it, sir,” Ludwig assured us, “the idea of a VanDyke running a nightclub! But Mr. Montague came to me one day privately. He showed me facts and figures, how the club could show a handsome profit; he pointed out that Buddy might be better off, and far more content, if he got in business — even the nightclub business. He spoke with sense, as a good business man, this Montague.”

“And it was strictly business from beginning to end?”

“What do you mean by that, sir? Of course it was business. The finest firm of lawyers in this city drew up the papers. And now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go up and throw that young pup under a cold shower and give him a good tongue-lashing!”

Archer turned toward the sedan. “Okay, Luke, let’s go back to the office. It looks,” he grouched, “as if we’re going to have to find that Pekinese, Priscilla, and see if Priscilla can’t give us a line on this case!”

I could tell by his tone that he wasn’t ribbing. I could feel the frantic sense in him of time slipping away. Two girls had died. Once started, there’s no telling where a chain of death would stop, or who would be next. But how he planned to break that chain with a Pekinese dog was completely beyond me!

Our office was cold with the chill of night, the huge building about us so silent it felt haunted. Big buildings are made for people, for the rushing hum of busy days. There’s nothing more stifling to a sense of well-being than a deserted, dark, office building. Or maybe it was the thing in the chief’s eyes that made me feel that way. He tossed his hat on the desk, said, “The lad we’re up against this time, Luke, is plenty smooth. The closer we get to him, the more dangerous he gets. I would not like to get myself shot up for a hundred dollar fee — even if the old lady was sweet and made a sucker out of me.”

I didn’t hanker on getting shot either, and I knew what he meant. “So what do we do now?”

“Get on the phone,” he said. “Call the dog-pound first — and heaven help us if they’ve got a three-pawed Pekinese there.”

As usual, he was thinking way ahead of me. I was in a fog, and I knew he wouldn’t enlighten me until he felt like it. I called the dog-pound, got a voice finally. The voice said it would look for a long time; then the voice was back on the phone. I hung up.

I shook my head at Archer. “No Peke like that at the pound.”

“Good!” his eyes brightened faintly. “Take the red book and get the name of every veterinary and animal hospital out of it; phone them all. When you don’t get an answer, look up the animal doc’s name and home address in the alphabetical book and phone him at home. If any are not home, find out where they can be reached and phone there, even if you have to drag one or two of them from a nightclub table. Ask them if the dog has been brought to them. Being veterinarians, any of them would have noticed and remembered a Pekinese with an amputated paw.”

Archer hated tasks as routine and monotonous as this, but I think he would have been just as comfortable doing the phoning himself as he was watching me, practically ready to gnaw his knuckles.

I started down the line. The first two animal docs didn’t have the dog. The third I couldn’t locate anywhere. The fourth, his wife informed me, was very ill and had closed his pet shop. The fifth and sixth were blanks.

I was chain-smoking, and the office was getting heavy. Number seven was a Doctor E. R. Thoms, with an animal hospital and boarding kennel on Dixton Street. He was pay dirt.

I slammed down the phone. “He’s got the dog. This Doc E. R. Thoms!”

“But you didn’t find out who left it there!” Archer snarled. “Get him back on the phone, get...”

“He hung up on me, quick-like. Chief, I think we better get out there!”

The layout of Doctor Thoms was big, and nice. A long, white building faced the sidewalk, a sign over its door announcing, Small Animal Hospital. The kennels were ranged in back of the building, dimly seen; a dog in one of them began whimpering. Off to the left rear of the animal hospital was a wide lawn, at the base of which we could make out the outlines of a two-story frame house, Doctor Thoms’ home.

Everything was dark, silent, except for the whimpering dog. Archer and I entered the edge of the yard, keeping to the shadows of shade trees. The chill of night bit into us, turning the perspiration that had broke out on my forehead to a cold sheen, like ice. My stomach was throbbing with the quiet, with the waiting for something to happen, with the memory of the way Thoms had hung up on me...

We drew nearer to the dark, silent house. In the kennels behind us, a dog suddenly raised his muzzle and howled, like an animal dying, or sensing death. Gooseflesh rippled down my spine.

We hung back a moment, there under the shadows of the tree nearest the house. Nothing happened. Archer touched my arm; we broke and started for the house. We didn’t expect it to happen right here in the open; we expected it when we stepped inside. And that’s what the lads laying for us figured we’d expect — so they banked on surprise. We were within ten feet of the house, on open lawn when they opened up on us — a gun flaming from each corner of the house.

We’d have been cold meat if we’d lost our heads, paused, or tried to beat a retreat. But the chief and I had been in spots before; we knew that to turn and make for the shade trees would only waste time, cause us to be motionless for a split instant there in the open lawn. We dropped low, put on steam, and plowed straight ahead for the porch, and kept plowing, shoulder to shoulder, when we hit the front door. The average door was never built to take a shock like that. The latch burst with a twang of metal and tearing of wood; the door slammed open; the glass upper half of the door shattered. We were inside the house.

I was gulping for breath. Only a second had passed, but I’d lived a couple lifetimes and died a couple deaths. The burst of gunfire had aroused the kennel dogs, and the night was a savage, primitive night with their howling.

“Keep them shooting, Luke,” Archer said in my ear. Then he faded in the darkness of the house.

I eased my head out, threw a shot at either corner of the house. The boys out there answered back, and splinters jumped out of the door jamb in my face.

I fired again from a different level, crouching. Nervous shots answered me. They’d break for it any minute now. They’d know that somebody would hear the fireworks and call the cops.

Then I heard a crackle of gunfire on the left side of the house. Somebody screamed out there. That cut it for the lad on the right corner of the house. I saw his shadow head for the shade trees. I threw two quick shots at him; then he was gone. There were plenty of alleys he could cut through and lose himself in — but I wasn’t running out over that lawn to chase him, until I was sure who was alive on the left side of the house.

“Chief?” I said.

“Okay, Luke. At least we got one of them.”

When I vaulted the rail of the porch, I saw him. He was on the ground with a smear of blood on his chest, revealed by the pencil flash in Archer’s hand. But he was still breathing.

“Recognize him, Luke?”

“It’s Little Ikey Saran. That must mean the one that got away is Pete Harrison; they always ran as a pair and hired their guns out that way to anybody who had the price.”

“They won’t be hiring them out for a long time now, I think,” the chief said. “The killer knew we were on the Marilyn Foster and Rose Tiffin murders; he figured there was a chance we’d work our way to the dog. So he hires and plants Saran and Harrison to keep an eye on Doc Thoms’ place. The hoods were probably taking their orders too literally — but they might have got us if we hadn’t made the house and I hadn’t found that side door to sneak out of and come up behind Saran.”

“Saran looks like he’ll keep; let’s find Thoms.”

We went in the house, turned the lights on. Thoms turned out to be a short, beefy man, effectively sapped and stretched out on his kitchen floor. The chief kneeled over him. “He needs a doctor right away.”

Cops and an ambulance we needed. I heard sirens wailing in the distance. At least cops were on their way, and I found the phone in Thoms’ living room and got an ambulance started.

I went back to the kitchen, where Archer was laying a cold, wet cloth over the sap wound on Thoms’ head. From the look in the chief’s eyes, I had a hunch this was the payoff...

An hour later a tense group of people were gathered in Tim Brogardus’ office at headquarters. Tim was behind his desk, muttering about the chief dragging him out at a time of night when he should be home. Two uniformed cops occupied strategic spots against the wall. Aunt Minna was there, on the edge of her chair, worrying her wispy handkerchief in her fingers. Buddy VanDyke sat on the edge of Brogardus’ desk, considerably sobered. His grandfather paced back and forth across the room. Lon Montague sat stiffly in his chair, looking balefully at the chief.

And David Archer occupied the middle of the room, rubbing his palms together. He was just enough ham to feel his glory at times like these.

“First,” he said, “I’ll give credit where it’s due. Aunt Minna broke this case.”

“She...” Brogardus stared.

“When she put me on the trail of the dog,” Archer said. “The little Peke that was a very good watchdog, and that was acting queer when Marilyn phoned Aunt Minna in Philly. But before progressing, let’s clear up a few financial details. Lon, you say you thought a great deal of Marilyn Foster — would it be worth a grand to you for me to hand her killer to the cops?”

A stir of uneasiness swept the room. “Is that why Brogardus called us all down here?” Montague said lazily. “To pin a killer in the chair?”

“You’re not afraid, are you, Lon?”

“Me?” Montague laughed. “I tell you what I’ll do. I’m a gambler, essentially. I don’t like you, but I’m willing to leave my feelings out of it; you sew Marilyn’s killer up, I’ll give you a grand.”

Archer nodded, turned to Buddy VanDyke. “And you also loved Marilyn; you’d be willing to do something for the one person she had on earth, wouldn’t you?”

Buddy looked at Aunt Minna.

“That’s right,” the chief said. “With the friends and connections you have it would be duck-soup for you to find a job for a gracious little lady.”

“Of course, I’d do it!” Buddy said shortly.

“This is blackmail,” Brogardus muttered. “Let’s get on with this thing.”

Archer ignored the lieutenant, and turned to Ludwig VanDyke. “Just one question. Several years ago, before you retired from business, weren’t you before a grand jury because of some of your business practices?”

“Why, I...” old Ludwig sputtered. “What’s that got to do with this?”

“I knew you were cold enough, cruel enough; I just wanted to make sure you were crook enough to commit murder!”

“Sir!”

“Don’t give me that oratorical tone,” Archer said coldly. “I’m accusing you of killing Marilyn Foster and Rose Tiffin, and of hiring a pair of thugs to do whatever dirty work came up — which almost led to some more killing!

“I kept trying to figure Montague and Buddy’s first wife’s death in the motive — while all the time the motive was right under my nose; it was so damn simple I couldn’t see it. Buddy’s money. You are an old man; you’d been rich for a greater part of your life. You’d come on hard times once and they’d given you an almost pathological fear of poverty — it’s never easy for the rich to become poor!

“At any cost, you had to keep Marilyn Foster from marrying Buddy, from taking him and his money out of your control. You hired a detective agency to try to get something on her. She countered by taking Buddy into a quick marriage — marriage today at noon. You went to her apartment last night, knowing that if she lived, this weakling Buddy would slip from your grasp. You argued with her, perhaps even tried to buy her off, but she laughed at you. You had done everything you could to keep her away from those millions, and now she had the upper hand. So you seized that poker and killed; you killed again when you realized that you’d never be safe as long as Rose Tiffin was alive.

Buddy stared at the old man, shrinking away. Ludwig looked about the room, knotting his fists, licking his lips, he sputtered, “I’ll have you know, sir...!”

“Save it for the jury,” Archer suggested. “Save it to tell the executioner how a little dog tripped you up. A dog that had temper, a dog that was acting queer — that was sick — that came tearing in, nipping at you when it saw you — a stranger — striking down a person it loved.

“It must have struck terror in you — a hypochondriac — that a normal person could never understand, when you felt the fangs of that dog breaking the flesh of your ankles. That alone would have been enough; but when you noticed the dog was sick, you reached a point of complete horror, desperation. Once I had dug my way through to a motive and began to wonder about you, Ludwig, as a potential killer, I could visualize your reaction to the dog’s attack. I knew that if you were the killer, you’d have grabbed the dog in an agony of neurotic fear and put it somewhere for observation. You’d also have started anti-rabies shots, immediately. I haven’t gone far enough yet to check with the doctors in town, to see which of them you contacted for the shots. Tim will do that, and clear up any other details; that’s his job. But I knew when I located that dog at Doctor Thoms that you were our man.”

Ludwig wiped his hand across his face. “You’ll never prove any of this!”

“Don’t depend on it! You’ve turned out to be just another amateur at the murder game. We’ve got little Ikey Saran. We’ll pick up Harrison, his sidekick; they’ll talk. Doctor Thoms is still alive, to tell us who brought the dog to him. And that’ll only be the beginning.”

Old Ludwig looked desperately about the room. Then he slowly crumpled in a chair. “I want a lawyer,” he croaked; “and call Josiah and tell him to bring my heart medicine.”

He was still sitting there, worrying about his heart, when the chief and I left. As we neared the bottom of the stone steps that led down to the dark, deserted sidewalk, we heard someone coming behind us. We paused, looked back. It was Aunt Minna.

“I wanted to thank you, Mr. Archer.”

“All in a day’s work. I guess you’ll find Priscilla somewhere around Doctor Thoms’ place. Incidentally, I’ll remind Buddy about that promise of a position for you — in a few days. He’s got a shock to get over...”

“Yes, I understand,” Aunt Minna said softly, “for so have I. Why must there be killing in the world? One killing affects so many people...”

Her words were still ringing in my mind when David Archer and I drove off in the deep, silent night.