Fly Paper and Other Stories (12 page)

Ringgo smiled ruefully and said:

“They should call it that. You know what Sherry was trying on me, don't you?”

“I can guess. That's why he insisted on standing trial.”

“Exactly. The scheme was for him to dig out and keep going, with his alibi ready in case he was picked up, but staying uncaught as long as possible. The more time they wasted hunting him, the less likely they were to look elsewhere, and the colder the trail would be when they found he wasn't their man. He tricked me there. He had himself picked up, and his lawyer hired that Weeks fellow to egg the district attorney into not dropping the case. Sherry wanted to be tried and acquitted, so he'd be in the clear. Then he had me by the neck. He was legally cleared forever. I wasn't. He had me. He was supposed to get a hundred thousand dollars for his part. Kavalov had left Miriam something more than three million dollars. Sherry demanded one-half of it. Otherwise, he said, he'd go to the district attorney and make a complete confession. They couldn't do anything to him. He'd been acquitted. They'd hang me. That was sweet.”

“You'd have been wise at that to have given it to him,” I said.

“Maybe. Anyway I suppose I would have given it to him if Miriam hadn't upset things. There'd have been nothing else to do. But after she came back from hiring you she went to see Sherry, thinking she could talk him into going away. And he lets something drop that made her suspect I had a hand in her father's death, though she doesn't even now actually believe that I cut his throat.

“She said you were coming down the next day. There was nothing for me to do but go down to Sherry's for a showdown that night, and have the whole thing settled before you came poking around. Well, that's what I did, though I didn't tell Miriam I was going. The showdown wasn't going along very well, too much tension, and when Sherry heard you outside he thought I had brought friends, and—fireworks.”

“What ever got you into a game like that in the first place?” I asked. “You were sitting pretty enough as Kavalov's son-in-law, weren't you?”

“Yes, but it was tiresome being cooped up in that hole with him. He was young enough to live a long time. And he wasn't always easy to get along with. I'd no guarantee that he wouldn't get up on his ear and kick me out, or change his will, or anything of the sort.

“Then I ran across Sherry in San Francisco, and we got to talking it over, and this plan came out of it. Sherry had brains. On the deal back in Cairo that you know about, both he and I made plenty that Kavalov didn't know about. Well, I was a chump. But don't think I'm sorry that I killed Kavalov. I'm sorry I got caught. I'd done his dirty work since he picked me up as a kid of twenty, and all I'd got out of it was damned little except the hopes that since I'd married his daughter I'd probably get his money when he died—if he didn't do something else with it.”

They hanged him.

Death and Company

Black Mask
,
November 1930

The Continental Op turns in a Case.

The Old Man introduced me to the other man in his office—his name was Chappell—and said: “Sit down.”

I sat down.

Chappell was a man of forty-five or so, solidly built and dark-complexioned, but shaky and washed out by worry or grief or fear. His eyes were red-rimmed and their lower lids sagged, as did his lower lip. His hand, when I shook it, had been flabby and damp.

The Old Man picked up a piece of paper from his desk and held it out to me. I took it. It was a letter crudely printed in ink, all capital letters.

MARTIN CHAPPELL

DEAR SIR—

IF YOU EVER WANT TO SEE YOUR WIFE ALIVE AGAIN YOU WILL DO JUST WHAT YOU ARE TOLD AND THAT IS GO TO THE LOT ON THE CORNER OF TURK AND LARKIN ST. AT EXACTLY 12 TONIGHT AND PUT $5000 IN $100 BILLS UNDER THE PILE OF BRICKS BEHIND THE BILL BOARD. IF YOU DO NOT DO THIS OR IF YOU GO TO THE POLICE OR IF YOU TRY ANY TRICKS YOU WILL GET A LETTER TOMORROW TELLING YOU WHERE TO FIND HER CORPSE. WE MEAN BUSINESS.

DEATH & CO.

I put the letter back on the Old Man's desk.

He said: “Mrs. Chappell went to a matinée yesterday afternoon. She never returned home. Mr. Chappell received this in the mail this morning.”

“She go alone?” I asked.

“I don't know,” Chappell said. His voice was very tired. “She told me she was going when I left for the office in the morning, but she didn't say which show she was going to or if she was going with anybody.”

“Who'd she usually go with?”

He shook his head hopelessly. “I can give you the names and addresses of all her closest friends, but I'm afraid that won't help. When she hadn't come home late last night I telephoned all of them—everybody I could think of—and none of them had seen her.”

“Any idea who could have done this?” I asked.

Again he shook his head hopelessly.

“Any enemies? Anybody with a grudge against you, or against her? Think, even if it's an old grudge or seems pretty slight. There's something like that behind most kidnapings.”

“I know of none,” he said wearily. “I've tried to think of anybody I know or ever knew who might have done it, but I can't.”

“What business are you in?”

He looked puzzled, but replied: “I've an advertising agency.”

“How about discharged employees?”

“No, the only one I've ever discharged was John Hacker and he has a better job now with one of my competitors and we're on perfectly good terms.”

I looked at the Old Man. He was listening attentively, but in his usual aloof manner, as if he had no personal interest in the job. I cleared my throat and said to Chappell: “Look here. I want to ask some questions that you'll probably think—well—brutal, but they're necessary. Right?”

He winced as if he knew what was coming, but nodded and said: “Right.”

“Has Mrs. Chappell ever stayed away over night before?”

“No, not without my knowing where she was.” His lips jerked a little. “I think I know what you are going to ask. I'd like—I'd rather not hear. I mean I know it's necessary, but, if I can, I think I'd rather try to tell you without your asking.”

“I'd like that better too,” I agreed. “I hope you don't think I'm getting any fun out of this.”

“I know,” he said. He took a deep breath and spoke rapidly, hurrying to get it over: “I've never had any reason to believe that she went anywhere that she didn't tell me about or had any friends she didn't tell me about. Is that”—his voice was pleading—“what you wanted to know?”

“Yes, thanks.” I turned to the Old Man again. The only way to get anything out of him was to ask for it, so I said: “Well?”

He smiled courteously, like a well-satisfied blank wall, and murmured: “You have the essential facts now, I think. What do you advise?”

“Pay the money of course—first,” I replied, and then complained: “It's a damned shame that's the only way to handle a kidnaping. These Death and Co. birds are pretty dumb, picking that spot for the pay-off. It would be duck soup to nab them there.” I stopped complaining and asked Chappell: “You can manage the money all right?”

“Yes.”

I addressed the Old Man: “Now about the police?”

Chappell began: “No, not the police! Won't they—?”

I interrupted him: “We've got to tell them, in case something goes wrong and to have them all set for action as soon as Mrs. Chappell is safely home again. We can persuade them to keep their hands off till then.” I asked the Old Man: “Don't you think so?”

He nodded and reached for his telephone. “I think so. I'll have Lieutenant Fielding and perhaps someone from the District Attorney's office come up here and we'll lay the whole thing before them.”

Fielding and an Assistant District Attorney named McPhee came up. At first they were all for making the Turk-and-Larkin-Street-brick-pile a midnight target for half the San Francisco police force, but we finally persuaded them to listen to reason. We dug up the history of kidnaping from Ross to Parker and waved it in their faces and showed them that the statistics were on our side: more success and less grief had come from paying what was asked and going hunting afterwards than from trying to nail the kidnapers before the kidnaped were released.

At half past eleven o'clock that night Chappell left his house, alone, with five thousand dollars wrapped in a sheet of brown paper in his pocket. At twenty minutes past twelve he returned.

His face was yellowish and wet with perspiration and he was trembling.

“I put it there,” he said difficultly. “I didn't see anybody.”

I poured out a glass of his whiskey and gave it to him.

He walked the floor most of the night. I dozed in a sofa. Half a dozen times at least I heard him go to the street door to open it and look out. Detective-sergeants Muir and Callahan went to bed. They and I had planted ourselves there to get any information Mrs. Chappell could give us as soon as possible.

She did not come home.

At nine in the morning Callahan was called to the telephone. He came away from it scowling.

“Nobody's come for the dough yet,” he told us.

Chappell's drawn face became wide-eyed and open-mouthed with horror. “You had the place watched?” he cried.

“Sure,” Callahan said, “but in an all right way. We just had a couple of men stuck up in an apartment down the block with field-glasses. Nobody could tumble to that.”

Chappell turned to me, horror deepening in his face. “What—?”

The door-bell rang.

Chappell ran to the door and presently came back excitedly tearing a special-delivery-stamped envelope open. Inside was another of the crudely printed letters.

MARTIN CHAPPELL

DEAR SIR—

WE GOT THE MONEY ALL RIGHT BUT HAVE GOT TO HAVE MORE TONIGHT THE SAME AMOUNT AT THE SAME TIME AND EVERYTHING ELSE THE SAME. THIS TIME WE WILL HONESTLY SEND YOUR WIFE HOME ALIVE IF YOU DO AS YOU ARE TOLD. IF YOU DO NOT OR SAY A WORD TO THE POLICE YOU KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT AND YOU BET YOU WILL GET IT.

DEATH & CO.

Callahan said: “What the hell?”

Muir growled: “Them ¾ ¾ at the window must be blind.”

I looked at the postmark on the envelope. It was earlier that morning. I asked Chappell: “Well, what are you going to do?”

He swallowed and said: “I'll give them every cent I've got if it will bring Louise home safe.”

At half past eleven o'clock that night Chappell left his house with another five thousand dollars. When he returned the first thing he said was: “The money I took last night is really gone.”

This night was much like the previous one except that he had less hopes of seeing Mrs. Chappell in the morning. Nobody said so, but all of us expected another letter in the morning asking for still another five thousand dollars.

Another special-delivery letter did come, but it read:

MARTIN CHAPPELL

DEAR SIR—

WE WARNED YOU TO KEEP THE POLICE OUT OF IT AND YOU DISOBEYED. TAKE YOUR POLICE TO APT. 313 AT 895 POST ST. AND YOU WILL FIND THE CORPSE WE PROMISED YOU IF YOU DISOBEYED.

DEATH & CO.

Callahan cursed and jumped for the telephone.

I put an arm around Chappell as he swayed, but he shook himself together and turned fiercely on me.

“You've killed her!” he cried.

“Hell with that,” Muir barked. “Let's get going.”

Muir, Chappell, and I went out to Chappell's car, which had stood two nights in front of the house. Callahan ran out to join us as we were moving away.

The Post Street address was only a ten-minute ride from Chappell's house the way we did it. It took a couple of more minutes to find the manager of the apartment house and to take her keys away from her. Then we went up and entered apartment 313.

A tall slender woman with curly red hair lay dead on the living-room floor. There was no question of her being dead: she had been dead long enough for discoloration to have got well under way She was lying on her back. The tan flannel bathrobe—apparently a man's—she had on had fallen open to show pinkish lingerie. She had on stockings and one slipper. The other slipper lay near her.

Her face and throat and what was visible of her body were covered with bruises. Her eyes were wide open and bulging, her tongue out: she had been beaten and then throttled.

More police detectives joined us and some policemen in uniform. We went into our routine.

The manager of the house told us the apartment had been occupied by a man named Harrison M. Rockfield. She described him: about thirty-five years old, six feet tall, blond hair, gray or blue eyes, slender, perhaps a hundred and sixty pounds, very agreeable personality, dressed well. She said he had been living there alone for three months. She knew nothing about his friends, she said, and had not seen Mrs. Chappell before. She had not seen Rockfield for two or three days but had thought nothing of it as she often went a week or so without seeing some tenants.

We found a plentiful supply of clothing in the apartment, some of which the manager positively identified as Rockfield's. The police department experts found a lot of masculine fingerprints that we hoped were his.

We couldn't find anybody in adjoining apartments who had heard the racket that must have been made by the murder.

We decided that Mrs. Chappell had probably been killed as soon as she was brought to the apartment—no later than the night of her disappearance, anyhow.

“But why?” Chappell demanded dumbfoundedly.

“Playing safe. You wouldn't know till after you'd come across. She wasn't feeble. It would be hard to keep her quiet in a place like this.”

A detective came in with the package of hundred-dollar bills Chappell had placed under the brick-pile the previous night.

I went down to headquarters with Callahan to question the men stationed at a nearby apartment-window to watch the vacant lot. They swore up and down that nobody—“not as much as a rat”—could have approached the brick-pile without being seen by them. Callahan's answer to that was a bellowed “The Hell they couldn't—they did!”

I was called to the telephone. Chappell was on the wire. His voice was hoarse.

“The telephone was ringing when I got home,” he said, “and it was him.”

“Who?”

“Death and Co., he said. That's what he said, and he told me that it was my turn next. That's all he said. ‘This is Death and Co., and it's your turn next.'”

“I'll be right out,” I said. “Wait for me.”

I told Callahan and the others what Chappell had told me.

Callahan scowled. “—,” he said, “I guess we're up against another of those — damned nuts!”

Chappell was in a bad way when I arrived at his house. He was shivering as if with a chill and his eyes were almost idiotic in their fright.

“It's—it's not only that—that I'm afraid,” he tried to explain. “I am—but it's—I'm not that afraid—but—but with Louise—and—it's the shock and all. I—”

“I know,” I soothed him. “I know. And you haven't slept for a couple of days. Who's your doctor? I'm going to phone him.”

He protested feebly, but finally gave me his doctor's name.

The telephone rang as I was going towards it. The call was for me, from Callahan.

“We've pegged the fingerprints,” he said triumphantly. “They're Dick Moley's. Know him?”

“Sure,” I said, “as well as you do.”

Moley was a gambler, gunman, and grifter-in-general with a police record as long as his arm.

Callahan was saying cheerfully: “That's going to mean a fight when we find him, because you know how tough that — is. And he'll laugh while he's being tough.”

“I know,” I said.

I told Chappell what Callahan had told me. Rage came into his face and voice when he heard the name of the man accused of killing his wife.

“Ever hear of him?” I asked.

He shook his head and went on cursing Moley in a choked, husky voice.

I said: “Stop that. That's no good. I know where to find Moley.”

His eyes opened wide. “Where?” he gasped.

“Want to go with me?”

“Do I?” he shouted. Weariness and sickness had dropped from him.

“Get your hat,” I said, “and we'll go.”

He ran upstairs for his hat and down with it.

He had a lot of questions as we went out and got into his car. I answered most of them with: “Wait, you'll see.”

But in the car he went suddenly limp and slid down in his seat.

“What's the matter?” I asked.

“I can't,” he mumbled. “I've got to—help me into the house—the doctor.”

“Right,” I said, and practically carried him into the house.