The Wrong Murder Page 4

  She and Malone immediately became involved in a furious argument over possible ingredients, with George Brand offering suggestions. Jake announced that as he was neither a chemist, a bartender, nor a toxicologist, he had no interest in the matter, and went out to buy a newspaper. When he returned with it, his face was three shades paler, and his eyes were flickering with excitement.

  He tossed the paper on the table and pointed to the story that told of the fatal shooting of the little man in the rusty black overcoat on the corner of State and Madison Streets in the presence of hundreds of witnesses.

  “You never thought she’d do it,” he said to Malone. “You thought she was joking when she made that bet.” His voice was deadly calm. “Well—there it is!”

  Chapter Seven

  While Malone went for more newspapers, Jake told Helene and her father about the bet he had made with Mona McClane.

  George Brand scowled heavily. “It’s easy to believe almost anything fantastic of Mona. But murder—I don’t know. Especially murder on a bet.”

  Malone returned with the newspapers. All of them told essentially the same story. An unidentified man had been shot to death on the far-famed busiest corner in the world.

  “She said—” Jake paused, frowned, and went on, “she said—someone that no one will mourn for—shot down on the public streets in broad daylight. With plenty of witnesses.”

  “Nothing on earth but a coincidence,” Helene said.

  Jake growled, “Give me those damned papers.”

  There was a description of the victim, the hour of the slaying was fixed at fifteen minutes past two, the names of Policeman Gahagan and a few of the bystanders were mentioned. The News had a photograph of the big Boston Store clock with the caption THE SILENT WITNESS! and the Times had a picture of the little man lying on the sidewalk surrounded by a ring of interested spectators. The picture didn’t show much of him, only that he was dead.

  “Helene’s right,” Malone said at last. “It’s nothing on earth but a stupid coincidence.”

  “Of course it is,” George Brand agreed, much too heartily.

  Jake muttered, “Broad daylight on the public streets, with plenty of witnesses.”

  “Nuts,” Malone said disgustedly.

  “Mona could,” Helene said suddenly. “She could make that bet, knowing everyone took it as a joke, and down in her heart mean every word of it.”

  “Of all the damned idiotic things,” the little lawyer growled. “Jake makes a cockeyed bet with a crazy dame that she can murder someone and get away with it, and so the first murder that comes along—” he paused, gulped, and finally added inadequately, “You’re full of small potatoes.”

  Jake said dreamily, “Just the same, it would be swell to own the Casino.”

  “Do you mean,” Helene said firmly, addressing Jake, “that you’d try to pin a murder on someone just to win the Casino?”

  “In a minute,” Jake told her. “I’m a married man now, and I’m out of a job. Besides,” he said thoughtfully, “I’m curious to know how she did it.”

  “With a gun,” George Brand put in helpfully. “According to the papers.”

  “The corner of State and Madison Streets,” Jake mused, “the busiest corner in the world, during the busiest hour of the busiest day of the Christmas-shopping rush.”

  “Amazingly audacious,” George Brand murmured. He shook his head incredulously.

  “Not at all,” Malone said suddenly. He drew a long breath. “In fact, that was probably the safest place in the city of Chicago to commit a murder.” He stirred his rye and stared into it as though it were a crystal ball. “Not only the most crowded corner in the world, but the noisiest. Likewise, everyone on that corner would be entirely intent on his own affairs and on where he was trying to go. The chances of the sound of the shot being heard were slim.”

  He sighed heavily. “If you’ve ever tried to walk through one of those State Street mobs, you know how a movement of the crowd can shove you along for considerable distance, even if you’re trying to go in the opposite direction. Figure how that would work in the case of a body with no movement or volition of its own. The body may have been carried along by the crowd for quite a considerable distance before it fell. Then, of course, there were a few minutes of insane confusion.”

  He looked at his glass, stirred it, emptied it. “All the murderer had to do was walk up behind this guy, shoot him, and walk away. In thirty seconds the murderer would be hopelessly lost in the crowd.”

  Helene looked at the picture in the Times as though it might reveal something.

  “I wonder who he is,” she said thoughtfully. “Who he was, I mean.”

  Jake rose. “That’s the first thing to find out. Unidentified man. He might be anybody. Let’s go look at him.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll go cancel those plane reservations.”

  Helene stared at him. “But Jake—”

  “Listen, baby,” he said firmly, “if I win the Casino, I’ll give you the hat-check concession for a present on our first anniversary. And if I don’t,” he paused, and decided he wouldn’t go into the more sordid possibilities of the future. “Never mind. I’ll cancel those reservations, and then we’ll go over to the morgue.”

  The morgue attendant took their names and told them they were welcome to view the remains of the unidentified man who had been shot and killed at the corner of State and Madison Streets that afternoon.

  “He looked like a bum,” the attendant offered, “and still he didn’t look like a bum, if you know what I mean. You can look at his clothes, if you want to.”

  “What were they like?” Malone asked.

  “Old, and not very clean. Didn’t cost much when they were new. Iron hat. Long cotton underwear.”

  “Anything on him?”

  “Uh-uh. He had a change purse with something under a buck in it, a coupla old pencils, and a dirty handkerchief. Nothing else.”

  They followed the attendant down a shabby staircase, paused while he opened a heavy metal door, and went into a big, brilliantly lighted room smelling strongly of formaldehyde.

  “He’s number seventeen,” the attendant said chummily. He led the way to one of the metal cabinets in the wall and pulled it out like a bureau drawer.

  Number seventeen had been a small man, short, and exceedingly thin. There was a sharp, pinched look to his face, the corners of his mouth had been perpetually drawn up in a mocking, unpleasant grin. His lips were two bloodless lines, his nose was narrow and pointed. The wispy hair clinging to his bony skull was a yellowish gray.

  “The poor little guy!” Helene exclaimed.

  “Know him, lady?” the morgue attendant asked.

  She shook her head. “Never saw him before.”

  Jake Justus and George Brand shook their heads silently. Malone took one quick glance at the body of the little man.

  “No,” the lawyer said. “I made a mistake. He’s not the man I knew.”

  The morgue attendant shrugged his shoulders, shut the vault, and led the way out.

  “Sorry to have troubled you for nothing,” Malone said.

  “That’s O. K., Mr. Malone. There’ll be a lot of people down here to look at him until somebody does identify him, if anybody ever does.”

  No one spoke on the way to Helene’s car. As they reached it, Helene said suddenly, “But if we can’t find out who he is, how are we going to prove that Mona McClane shot him?”

  Malone didn’t answer. Indeed, he didn’t seem to have heard. At last he drew a long, quivering breath and said, “It’s about time somebody killed that guy. But why in the name of heaven and earth should it have been Mona McClane?”

  Chapter Eight

  “Damn you, Malone,” Helene said crossly, “stop being mysterious and exasperating. Who was he?”

  It was not Malone but George Brand who answered.

  “He was the go-between in the Ellen Ogletree kidnaping.”

  Helene started the big car and began guiding
it skillfully through the heavy early-evening traffic. “I know it’s rude to ask questions,” she said, “but how do you know?”

  “Because I gave him the money,” George Brand said simply.

  Helene missed the end of a truck by an inch or two, gasped, and said, “You’re insane.”

  “I am not insane,” her father said irritably. “Wells Ogletree asked me to deliver the ransom money, and I did. Fifty thousand dollars in small bills. Ogletree said he was afraid he’d be recognized, but I think the real reason was that he couldn’t bear to see that much money go out of his hands all at one time.” He paused to hunt for a cigarette.

  “Ogletree was scared into doing what the kidnapers demanded. So I took the money in a brief case down to the Public Library, sat down on one of the benches facing the elevators, laid the brief case on the bench beside me, and read a newspaper. A little later this man came down the elevator, sat down beside me, and began reading a book. About ten minutes later he got up and walked away, carrying the brief case. The next morning Ellen was home, safe.”

  “And you never told me any of this before!” Helene said.

  She drove on in outraged silence for a moment, suddenly slammed on the brakes and swung into a parking lot. “I can’t stand any more until I’ve had food,” she declared. “And I need a drink to help me think clearly.”

  She led the way to Maurice’s and a quiet corner table, and refused to talk of murder until a drink had arrived and dinner been ordered.

  “Now, Malone,” she said firmly as the waiter moved out of earshot, “Who was he?”

  “His name,” Malone said, “was Joshua Gumbril. As far as anyone knows, that was his right name. He lived at—” he consulted a little notebook, “room 514 in the Fairfax Hotel on South State Street. He had an office, God knows why, in a building at Wells and Washington.”

  “What do you mean—God knows why?” Jake asked.

  “Because his business wasn’t the sort that’s usually transacted in an office,” the lawyer told him. He paused to mop his face with a dingy handkerchief. “He was a sort of crooks’ agent, if you can imagine such a thing. If you wanted anything done from a small job of safe-cracking to a large-scale murder, Gumbril could arrange it for you.”

  “Were you one of his customers?” Jake asked very politely.

  Malone ignored him. “I knew him because he sent me a client now and then. He must have been stinking rich, but I doubt if he spent fifteen dollars a week on himself.” He paused while the waiter brought their order. “The Ogletree kidnaping may have been something he arranged as a go-between, or it may have been his own idea.”

  Helene observed, “If I’d been Ellen Ogletree, I’d have offered the kidnapers damned near anything not to send me home. Not that Ellen ever had anything to offer in the monetary line. Her old man keeps her so short of spending money she has to borrow nickels to make telephone calls.”

  “If I’d been her old man,” Jake said crossly, “I’d have told the kidnapers they could keep her. She looks like a spoiled, bad-tempered brat to me.”

  “That’s her mother’s doing,” Helene told him. “Mamma Ogletree is always sympathizing with Ellen for having such a mean old so-and-so for a father. Personally I’d say having Mamma Ogletree for a mother was enough to wreck any girl’s young life.”

  “The home life of the Ogletrees is doubtless very interesting,” Malone growled, “but I don’t see what it has to do with the late Joshua Gumbril, nor do I see why you’re so excited about his murder.”

  Jake said patiently, “The Casino, Malone. Mavelous location. Famous name. Wonderful clientele.”

  The lawyer stared at him. “You’d go ahead and pin a murder on someone just to win the deed to a night club?”

  “If Mona McClane took that bet seriously enough to go out and murder this guy,” Jake said stubbornly, “I can take it seriously enough to try to win it.”

  Malone snorted. “You’re just assuming that the first murder that comes along—”

  “Damn it,” Jake said, “we saw her on her way to the scene of the crime. Mr. Brand, does Mona McClane keep a car?”

  “Two of them,” George Brand said promptly, “and a chauffeur.”

  “Then why would she have been taking a taxi at the corner of State and Division Streets at half-past one—just forty-five minutes before the murder—and heading down State Street in the direction of Madison?”

  Dessert and coffee arrived before anyone could answer that. Malone stirred his coffee vigorously, lit a cigar, and stared thoughtfully through the smoke.

  “How could Mona McClane have possibly known a guy like that well enough to murder him?”

  “Maybe she didn’t know him,” Helene said promptly.

  Jake shook his head. “That’s no good. She said—someone she’d have a motive for murdering. I’ve got to find out what that motive was, if I’m going to prove that she did murder Joshua Gumbril.”

  Malone scowled. “Motives for murder fall into three big groups. Money, love, and fear. Take your pick.”

  “Mona McClane has about half the money in Chicago right now,” Helene observed, “I can’t imagine any love in her life being important enough to bring on a murder, and she certainly isn’t afraid of anything on earth.”

  “Well damn it, there’s something,” Jake said crossly. He looked at his watch. “Any minute now the police will find that their unidentified man is Joshua Gumbril. Before they do, I’d like to search his room and his office, if I can get in.” He looked at Malone hopefully.

  The little lawyer chewed savagely on his cigar for a moment, finally reach into his pocket for a handful of keys which he tossed on the table.

  “Some one of those will open any door in the Fairfax Hotel. But if you get in trouble, don’t expect me to get you out.”

  Jake stuffed the keys in his pocket. “How about Gumbril’s office?”

  “The janitor of the building would let me in. I know him,” Malone said. He sighed deeply. “All right, I’ll search Gumbril’s office. But it’s the last thing I’ll do for you. From this point on, you’re on your own.”

  Chapter Nine

  The Fairfax Hotel was a dingy, ramshackle building, a few blocks beyond the South State Street of pawnshops, cheap burlesque houses, taverns, and penny arcades. The front was a faded stucco, peeling here and there; above the entrance an electric sign with three or four missing bulbs proclaimed its name.

  Jake Justus took a cautious glance through the glass doors before opening them. The small, gloomy lobby was practically deserted; the desk clerk was engrossed in a magazine. Jake went in, crossed the lobby as though he had every right to be there, stepped into the self-service elevator, and went up to room 514.

  The third key he tried opened the door. He locked it behind him and shoved back the bolt as an added precaution against intrusion, and turned on the light.

  It was a little shabby room. A painted iron single bed took up most of the space; a cheap pine dresser stood in the opposite corner. One window looked down on an alley and the roof of a garage. A flimsy writing desk and a battered straight chair stood near the window. On the wall over the desk was a print of “The Lone Wolf.”

  The only personal belongings Jake could see were a comb and a nail file on the dresser top, and a mussed dark-blue necktie hanging over a doorknob.

  He started with the desk. Save for a few sheets of hotel stationery and a pen, it was empty. Two drawers in the dresser were empty. The third held four inexpensive shirts, one of them new, and a suit of patched and darned underwear.

  Jake lit a cigarette and looked thoughtfully at the bed. A man like Gumbril might very well hide personal papers in or under a mattress. With a kind of deliberate determination he tore the bed apart, looking between the blankets, feeling carefully of the pillows, and finally ripping up the mattress.

  There was nothing hidden in the bed.

  He took the print of “The Lone Wolf” off the wall and pried loose the back. With a disgusted sigh
he dropped the picture on the floor, shook the window curtains, pulled loose the window shade, and looked inside it, and at last lifted up the one threadbare rug.

  He gave the closet door a vicious kick as he opened it. If there was nothing in the closet, he had wasted his time.

  One suit was hanging there, a cheap black suit, badly worn. Jake turned the pockets inside out and found nothing save a pencil stub, an old streetcar transfer, and two rubber bands. He felt the lining carefully and found nothing.

  Jake picked up a pair of shabby carpet slippers, looked inside them, and tossed them on the floor. There was a laundry bag in the corner. He decided he might as well be thorough, and reached for it.

  Suddenly he paused, one hand half outstretched toward the laundry bag. Had the late Joshua Gumbril used expensive perfume? Jake doubted it. He doubted too that Gumbril would have had feminine visitors who used that particular scent. Yet there was a distinct odor of perfume in the closet, delicate and faint, but recognizable.

  In the days before his meeting with Helene, perfume had been just perfume to Jake. However he’d learned enough about it from her to know this particular odor was a rare, probably highly expensive, one. Certainly it was one he would recognize again if he ever met it. But how had such a perfume left its fragrance in a place like this? What did it have to do with Joshua Gumbril and, much more importantly, with Joshua Gumbril’s murder?

  The sight of the laundry bag on the floor at his feet recalled his mind to the task at hand. Still thinking of his curious discovery, he picked it up.

  It was surprisingly heavy for a laundry bag, though it was only partly full. As Jake carried it out into the room something hard in the bottom of the bag bumped against his ankles.

  He felt a sudden sense of excitement. Damn-fool place to hide anything, but still, you never could tell. He dumped the contents onto the floor. There were a small heap of soiled linen and an oblong japanned metal box.