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EText from Pulpgen.com
A fortune in opals, a strangled man and a platinum blonde are all involved in a hotel murder case Dave McClain must crack!
THE basement of the Hotel Richfield, ten steps east of Times Square, was not the most cheerful place on a Monday morning when the weather was as gray as the suit Dave McClain wore. Even with music, Mac decided, it wouldn't have given him any appetite. The big detective, one of the mainstays of the well known Homicide Squad, flatfooted it down a cement-paved aisle after the hostelry's manager.
"A bus boy found him," the manager was saying. "About three quarters of an hour ago. I called in the cop at the corner. He said to telephone to Headquarters."
Dave McClain shifted the cigar he wore as a face decoration from one side of his mouth to the other. Champion weed killer of the Department, Mac felt undressed without his Sumatra wrapper. He didn't like early Monday morning murders and he didn't like the gloomy, odoriferous nether regions of this third-rate hotel to which Captain Mullin had dispatched him.
He passed the hotel's boiler room, a recess where garbage from the kitchens was stored before removal, an empty laundry and a hole in the wall where a tailor did business.
Coming around a turn in the passage, Mac saw three or four people gathered in front of a closed steel door. A couple of frowsy cleaning women, a bellhop and one of the furnace men were there. The manager waved them away with a curt word and, with a dramatic flourish, opened the door.
"In here, officer."
McClain, who didn't like to be called "officer" because it reminded him too much of his pavement pounding days and fallen arches, looked at the group.
"Who found him?" "Eddie," the bellhop said. "He's upstairs." "Get him down."
The manager opened the door. The big detective saw a storeroom for the supplies which kept the Richfield functioning. Shelves were filled with plumbing parts, wires and electrical replacements, tools and gadgets for bathrooms. But Mac didn't pay any attention to them. His keen gaze darted directly to the figure of a man who was lying sprawled out on the floor of the room.
He was medium-sized, fairly well dressed, with dark, slicked down hair. Death, McClain observed, had resulted from a short length of what looked like piano wire which was neatly wrapped around his throat.
MAC shifted his stogie again. He had seen the handiwork of the Grim Reaper so many times that hazarding a guess as to how long the man had been out of this world was a pretty safe conjecture. From the looks of it, Mac figured about four hours.
He made a mental note of that in case "Doc" Bronson, the Homicide's medical examiner, cared to make a small bet before going to work.
"Guest of the---place?" Mac hesitated on the last word. He had almost said "dump."
The manager shook his head. "Never saw him before."
Mac bent over the body. His expert, exploring fingers dipped into the inner coat pocket. They came out with some letters and a leather billfold. McClain held what he found to the shine of a dangling electric light bulb.
"Albert Cooper," he read. "Room Ninety-three, Pentland Building."
"That's just around the corner," the manager said, as if surprised.
"Yeah, so I've heard."
Mac frowned thoughtfully. Resting his weight on both feet, he rubbed his lantern jaw. There seemed to be a slight powdering of something on the shoulders of the murdered man's jacket. And it wasn't dandruff.
McClain took a pinch of it, put it on the palm of one of his ham hands, rubbed it gently with his thumb and finally blew it off. The manager watched, as if expecting to see McClain produce a rabbit or an unfolded American flag.
"What was that?"
"Dunno." Mac shrugged carelessly. He added, musingly, "Funny position that stiff's in. Kind of jammed together. Notice it?"
"No, I hadn't. But now that you speak of it, it is rather strange."
"Eddie's here, Mr. Thurlow," the bellhop said from the door.
McClain gave the body a final glance and shut the steel door after he and the manager went out of the room. Eddie, the bus boy, looked scared. He was an unprepossessing youth, rather sallow and definitely a candidate for liver injections. He licked his lips nervously when Mac gave him a searching glance.
"Give, kid." "I came down here around nine o'clock. Charlie, he's the chef's assistant, wanted a hand suction pump on account of one of the sinks being clogged up. I opened the door, turned on the light and saw him!"
He stopped and gave a reasonable facsimile of a shudder.
"What struck you as odd about the corpse?" McClain said. "Or weren't you struck?"
Eddie got what he was driving at and licked his lips again.
"You mean the way he was lying? Like he was folded up, all pushed together."
Mac nodded. "That's all, folks. The detective turned to the manager.
"The medical examiner ought to be around any minute with the camera boys. Photo finish.
That's all, for the time being. I'll wait down here. You get 'em an Indian guide so they can find me when they show up."
"This is terrible!" The manager was fussing now. "This is going to give the hotel a bad name. A murder in our basement, and not even one of our guests!"
He shook his head and left. Mac looked at his cigar and found it needed a match.
"'Bad name,'" he murmured to himself. "The man's a comic and doesn't realize it."
Mac waited until everybody had gone, and then walked out of the hotel.
As the manager had said, the Pentland Building was around the corner on Broadway. An elderly edifice given over principally to the theatrical clan in all its various branches, McClain stood in the lobby and looked at the tenants' directory. It wasn't hard to find the name of Albert Cooper. The white lettering against the black background corresponded with the room number on the letters which were in Cooper's coat pocket.
Mac took an elevator to the ninth floor. He opened the door of Room Number 93. It was one of those dime-sized offices scarcely larger than a telephone booth. There were two desks in it, a surprisingly large safe, a typewriter and a telephone.
A GIRL sat at one of the desks, deep in the pages of a penny-a-day library best seller. Mac had to cough to drag her out of the plot. She looked up with a start, carefully dog-cared her page and reluctantly shut the book.
"Mr. Cooper isn't in," she said. "He won't be back until three-thirty."
"Want to bet?" Mac palmed his badge and let her look. The girl's blue eyes widened.
"Police! What's the trouble?"
"Relax, sister. I'm not after the boss. I'm looking for the party or parties who did some piano tuning on him. Just a few questions and then you can go back to your literature, if you still have a mind to."
"You don't mean something's happened to him?"
"Your boss won't pay you off this week," McClain said cheerfully. He told her what had been discovered down in Hotel Richfield's basement.
He let the news sink in, waited until the girl got her breath back. Then, taking a chair, he draped his big frame loosely in it and went to work.
Her name was Myrtle Gray. She lived in Flatbush. That was fairly obvious. She had worked for Cooper for three months. Cooper, as she explained, was a jewelry broker. That meant that he was the middle man in transactions for his Broadway clientele. Cooper bought and sold on commission. Mac knew the grift.
When actors were in the chips they went for the glitter. Broke, they had to unload. That was where Cooper figured. He sold the stuff. Or, as Myrtle explained, he bought it for them when they were making dough. Cooper attended pawnbrokers' auctions and also did a brisk trade in pawn tickets. Mac digested the information and bit the end off of a fresh panatella.
"So far, so bad. Any enemies that you know of in the three months you've been grinding for him?"
"Sure," Myrtle said brightly. "Nearly everybody who did business with him hated him. Mr. Cooper was a chiseler. He told me, when I came to work for him, he'd give me a raise when I'd been here three weeks. The only raise I ever got was in the elevator."
McClain let that go and puffed on the clublike cigar.
"Who'd want to knock him off, sister?"' he inquired, in his casual, quiet way. "That's your double or nothing question for today."
"Well, it might have been on account of the Lawlor opals," Myrtle murmured, "I mean, they are the best stuff he's handled since I've been around." She put a lot of lipstick into her smile. "Didn't you always hear that opals were unlucky?"
Mac's attention grew sharper. "Lawlor opals? Tell me all about 'em, sister. Start at the beginning and don't miss a comma or semi-colon along the way."
That was shortly before noon. An hour later McClain left the self-service lift in an apartment building close to West End Avenue in the early Eighties, and rang the bell of a door toward the end of the fifth floor corridor.
Despite the after-twelve hour, the girl who opened the door and glanced warily out looked as if she had just gotten up. An amazing housecoat, sleek and shimmering, accented her willowy curves and set off her pink-and-white complexion and platinum hair. She had a couple of sloe-brown eyes behind lashes that seemed almost to brush her chin and the smallest feet Mac had ever seen off a doll, shod with bright red wedgies.
"Miss Flower?" McClain asked. "Miss Clemence Flower? Headquarters business. If it's all right with you, I'd like to come in and set for a spell."
He backed that up with the badge. The blonde did about what Myrtle had a while earlier. She told him to come in. So Mac took his brogan out of the door and ankled into a charming living room with an oblique view of the Hudson River in the distance.
"You knew a party named Cooper?" he led off with. "He's been rubbed so don't let's lose any time. You tell me everything you know about him and don't get absent minded."
"I'd be glad to help you." "I was told that Cooper was handling a string of opals for you. That's why I'm here. No opals were found on the body and none were in his safe at the office. Take it from there."
THE sloe-brown eyes widened. The chin-dusting lashes swept up swiftly. A mouth, coral-colored and bow-shaped, parted to reveal the glint of teeth radio commercials went into ecstasies about. Clemence Flower looked both startled and shaken.
"I---I gave Al the necklace to sell for me. He said he had someone interested. He said he could get me ten thousand dollars. They were the Lawlor opals."
"Yeah, I know."
McClain could have told her that he knew all about Tommy Lawlor, Broadway playboy, spendthrift and man about sixty. Lawlor's penchant for stage favorites was a legend along Lovers' Lane. His romances were hectic while they lasted and usually wound up with a payoff gift from some Fifth Avenue jewel emporium. So, while a heart might be broken, a throat, wrist or finger was in perfect condition to wear a necklace, a bracelet or ring. Such, Mac surmised, had been the case with the girl on the divan across from him.
Now, Mac knew, Tommy Lawlor wasn't around any more. One night the previous winter, after looking on wine well if not wisely, the wealthy cut-up had stepped out on his penthouse terrace for a breath of air. Apparently forgetting where the bronze railing ended, he had finished his career twenty-six stories below. Which, the big detective recalled, had sent a lot of frail but lovely young ladies back behind the footlights.
"Tommy gave me the opals for my last birthday," Clemence Flower explained with considerable agitation. "He got them out of his safe-deposit box. They had belonged to his grandmother, he told me. They came from Amsterdam originally. That's in Holland."
"Is that right?" Mac dropped one knee over the other. "I thought it was an avenue."
"I hardly ever wore the opals. They were so valuable. In fact, Tommy took them and had the clasp fixed. But even then I was afraid, on account of them being worth so much. What's the use of having jewelry you're afraid to wear?"
"So you decided to sell them. When did you give them to Cooper?"
"Two days ago. He came up here and got them."
"Anybody outside of Cooper know that you let him have them?"
The smooth, alabaster forehead wrinkled in thought.
"Only Marge," she said finally. "She's the girl at the beauty shop, the Vanity Box, over on Broadway."
"Marge what?" "Burns. I think I mentioned them to her the last time I got a facial. That was Friday."
McClain looked around for an ashtray. He found one in the form of a silver duck and dipped his long white ash in it.
"Any insurance?"
The brown eyes grew troubled. "No, not now." He heard the breath she drew. "Tommy took out a policy when he first gave them to me. After he---he died, I let it lapse. That's why I'm so anxious to get them back. You will try?"
Mac climbed to his oversized feet. "That's what I always do, sister---try. I'll let you know if hear anything."
He shook his head when he was in the elevator, going down. Dames were a mystery. He could solve cases but not women. The girl he had just left, for instance. Not a word about Al Cooper's unfortunate demise. Only the monetary value of the unlucky opals, the fact they weren't insured. Which, probably meant that if they weren't recovered, the little blonde would have to start hoofing again.
Mac shrugged. To blazes with the dames! He had a killer to smoke out, a murderer to find. Opals ran a bad second to that important fact. And, he told himself, he'd better get busy without delay if he expected to turn up results.
He was never much for brilliant deduction and flashy dramatics. From the first day he had become a cop, and then a plain-clothes man, McClain's progress had been slow and unspectacular. Yet, at the payoff, he was usually in the money.
HE STOPPED in a corner drugstore and telephoned the Hotel Richfield. The substance that had been on the shoulders of Cooper's coat was sharp in his mind when he asked for the manager.
"One more question," McClain said. "How about your laundry? When I passed it this morning it seemed to be closed. Don't you operate it?"
"Not for the last few months. Too hard to get help. We send all our stuff out."
"Where?" "White Star Laundry." "Thanks."
McClain hung up and ambled out to the avenue.
It was still gray and cheerless, the kind of a day that called for some elbow bending. Mac found a tavern without the aid of a map, propped himself up against damp mahogany and thirstily watched the barman comb the fluffy head off some tall, brown October ale.
While he sampled it Mac thought about opals and a platinum-haired babe who wore red wedgies and smelled like her name. He remembered the dead man in the hotel basement's storeroom and thought about Tommy Lawlor.
Finally, with a shrug, he went out and took the subway to the Bronx.
Myrtle had obligingly supplied the address of her defunct employer. Mac found Cooper had lived in the south half of a two-family house. The north portion was empty, a rather surprising fact in lieu of the housing shortage. McClain walked around the place leisurely, sucking on a cigar.
He tried the cellar door and found it was open. He went down into semi-gloom. A short flight of stairs led him up to another door. That, too, proved to be unlocked and the big detective stepped into a small but complete kitchen.
From there he went through a constricted dining room, across a hall and into the living room. Mac stood in the doorway and rolled his cigar between his lips. The room looked as if the Marines had used flame-throwers to establish a beachhead there. Furniture was upturned, pictures knocked down and one set of curtains well trampled underfoot. McClain stared thoughtfully at the damage for a long minute before he turned away and let himself out.
Back at Headquarters, he wandered into his chief's office to see what, if anything, had turned up on the Cooper kill. Captain Mullin, stocky, fishy-eyed and tough as rawhide, flung him a questioning stare.
"Where have you been all day?" "Around." Mac slumped in a chair near the desk. "What have you got on Cooper?"
"Nothing. What have you got?" Mullin's voice sounded like a couple of pieces of sandpaper being rubbed together.
"I know where he was killed," Mac murmured. "I know how he got into the Hotel Richfield's storeroom, I know the motive and I've got a fair idea where I can reach the party who twisted the wire around his gullet."
Mullin stared harder. "Yeah? Then why don't you do something about it?"
"All in good time, chief." McClain yawned. "You know me, slow but sure. Like an elephant. Takes awhile to get underway but when it starts moving nothing stops it." He straightened up. "If you don't mind, I'll use your phone."
Mullin pushed it over and, after a glance at his watch, Mac called his house.
"Hello, Francie. Dave. Look. Tell the old lady I won't be home for supper."
"Passing up your peanuts," Mullin said sarcastically.
McClain got up. "Guess I'll go out and round up this wire-twister. By the way, chief. The party who composed that remark about opals being unlucky---"
"What about him?" "Nothing, except I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't right."
MAC, figuring the Vanity Box Beauty Shop would probably close at six, barged into it at ten of. It was a place of pleasant aromas and busy girls. A woman with spectacles, who seemed to be presiding over the cash register, gave him an inquiring look. Mac half expected her to make some crack about whether he wanted a permanent or a shampoo. But she didn't.
"What can I do for you?" she asked. "I want to see Miss Burns. Personal." "Miss Burns left at five-thirty." "What's her home address?"
The eyes behind the spectacles roamed appraisingly over him.
"Who are you?" the woman asked.
For the third time that day Mac produced his credentials. A glance at the badge was enough to supply him with an address hastily jotted down on a slip of pad paper. McClain thanked her and shoved off.
His next stop was in the Sixties, a shabby apartment house hemmed in between Columbus Avenue on one border and Eighth on the other. He consulted names in battered mailboxes, trudged up to the second floor and worked his knuckles out on a door when he couldn't find a bell.
It opened and the smell of something frying wafted out to him. McClain looked down into the upturned face of a girl who was about as big as Myrtle and with a figure something along the order of Clemence Flower, only not so streamlined.
"I'm busy," she mapped. "Besides, I've got a vacuum cleaner, I don't need any brushes and I haven't time to read books or magazines."
"You've got time to talk to me, honey," Mac informed her. "Either me or the District Attorney. Punch the ticket the way you want it."
He brushed her aside and walked into a tawdry, furnished living-dining room. The frying was taking place in an adjoining kitchenette. Mac turned the light down under the pan and swung around to meet a pair of indignant hazel eyes.
"You've got a nerve," the girl said. "What do you mean by busting in here?"
"Sit down and relax." Mac waved one of his packing house hands in the direction of a lumpy divan. "I'm a cop and I want to split some conversation with you. You know Miss Flower. Friday she told you about some opals her ex-boy friend had given her. You passed the information on to somebody else, didn't you?"
"I don't know what you're talking about." But Mac saw that she knew, all right. In the places where her rouge wasn't, color faded swiftly out of her face. Her fingers began to flutter like wind-stirred leaves. Her mouth opened as if to make quickened breathing easier.
Glancing around, McClain saw a card table in the rear of the room set for two. Knives, forks, glasses and paper napkins. He put his hat down on top of a radio cabinet and helped himself to the middle seat on the divan.
"Okay, Margie. Speak your piece like a good little girl and I won't have to take you downtown. Got a fellow you're keeping steady company with? Maybe you spilled to him. And maybe"--- Mac spoke as it he were weighing each word---"he's working for the White Star Laundry?"
The girl stifled an exclamation, her widening eyes peering at him in blank amazement. McClain watched her narrowly. He never knew how dames would react and this rib looked like she knew most of the answers.
"Who told you?" she asked.
Before Mac could answer there was a tap on the door. Marge Burns wheeled around, choking on another exclamation. McClain crossed his legs and shoved out his number elevens, denting the mangy carpet with his heels. The knock was repeated.
"Open up," Mac suggested.
She hesitated another minute. McClain got up quickly, passed her and opened the door himself. Outside, a tall lanky young man with a hard, wise face peered at him, obviously puzzled.
"Come on in," Mac invited. "Don't stand out there when dinner's almost ready."
THE lanky young man came slowly into the room. McClain shut the door behind him and shifted his cigar.
"Who's this man, Marge?" Suspicion made his voice tight and terse. "What's he doing here?"
"He says he's a cop, Joe. He says he's going to take me downtown unless I talk!" She wrenched the words out in a thin, squeezed tone.
"Talk about what?" "Opals, a party named Al Cooper and how he came to be in a jammed-up position in the Hotel Richfield's store room," Mac said. "You're Joe. You must be the fellow who works for the White Star Laundry. Right?"
Joe didn't answer. His narrowing gaze focused on the beauty shop operator, but Mac felt he didn't need an answer. Joe was sure that Marge had already handed out the information. His heavy-lidded gaze was full of accusation.
"So you talked," Joe said, in the same tight voice.
"I didn't tell him a thing! He did all the gabbing. Honest, Joe, I never said a word! He answered all his own questions."
"Habit of mine," Mac murmured. "This doll told you what a little blondie called Clemence Flower told her. About how she was giving a mug named Cooper a ten grand string of opals to sell for her and so forth. That gave you ideas. Not good ones, but a blueprint showing you the way to some quick coin."
Marge Burns pressed a hand over her heart. Hands in his pocket, Joe looked at McClain with a sneer.
"Got it all figured. What else?" "Not much. You dropped up at Cooper's place in the Bronx last night. What did you tell him---that Miss Flower had mentioned he had the Lawlor opals, that you were interested in buying them and, if it was okay, you'd run up and take a look? Something like that. Anyway, you whaled Cooper down, strangled him with a hunk of wire."
"Joe!"
Joe paid no attention to the girl's throaty cry. The sneer bit deeper into his face. Rocking gently back and forth on his heels, he stared at the detective.
"Just like that," Joe said. "Maybe you didn't intend to kill him. Maybe Cooper got suspicious. Anyway, you had a battle and wound up by strangling him. How to get rid of him? I figure you lugged the body downtown in your car. Then you got a bright idea. Why not jam Cooper into one of the empty wicker laundry baskets you had to drop off at the Hotel Richfield this morning? Why not dump him when you got there. A swell idea, Joe. Only you ought to have taken a whiskbroom along, to brush the wicker particles and dust off Cooper's coat. Because, from his folded up posture and the wicker dust, ou'll land in the death chair!"
Joe's hand slid out of his pocket. It held a long handled, ivory-sided knife. The touch of a button and its blade, razor-thin, darted out like a erpent's tongue to rest a half inch below the top button of McClain's vest.
Marge screamed softly. Mac obligingly raised his hands and Joe laughed under his breath.
"Smart cop! Got it all lined up, just the way it happened. How about the end? You haven't said anything about the way I'm carving you up, like a Thanksgiving turkey. Go ahead, mention that."
"Joe!"
"Get inside and pack a bag, Marge." Joe spoke without turning his head or moving his glittering eyes from McClain's expressionless face. "We'll have to lam after I finish with this monkey. And you'd better not look. It's apt to be messy."
Standing there, McClain knew he was face to face with a crack-brained killer. He had been in similar spots before. That afternoon he had told Captain Mullin he moved like a placid pachyderm. But there was nothing slow or ponderous about the way the McClain mind functioned in that moment of danger.
RESTING his weight on his left foot, the big detective raised his right a few inches from the floor. His gaze stayed locked with Joe's. What he was about to do had to be accomplished with swift and certain dexterity or the carpet would be crimson with blood. His!
McClain brought the foot down with all of his one hundred and ninety-seven pounds in its driving force. It crashed on Joe's instep with the bone-crushing impact of a dropped safe. His would-be carver backed with a strangled scream of agony. Mac, ducking nimbly to one side, left-hooked him and grabbed for the shiv with his other hand.
Twisting the knife out of Joe's opening fingers, McClain tore into him with savage ferocity. He was getting a little out of practise in these slugging festivals of late. But he brought himself up to date when he mashed Joe's teeth in with a straight left to the mouth. It needed only a right hook to the button to drop Al Cooper's murderer in his tracks.
Mac picked up the knife, closed it and bent over Joe, searching his pockets quickly. Then he glanced at the stricken Marge.
"Do me a favor. Pick up that phone and get me Police Headquarters. Ask for Homicide, Captain Mullin."
Some two hours later, McClain, off duty and on his way home, headed for the nearest subway entrance. A half hour earlier he had stopped in to see an old friend of his, a gem expert connected with one of the largest Fifth Avenue shops.
Now, as he reached the corner and saw the traffic light against him, McClain stopped. One of his big hands came out of his pocket. Crunched in its palm was a string of opals. Mac held them to the street light and grinned faintly. Then, leaning down, he tossed them accurately down the sewer opening in the gutter beneath his large, flat feet.
"He must have made the switch when he had the clasp changed," Mac thought. "Smart playboy, even if he did step off a balcony. Yeah, I guess opals are unlucky---even phonies!"

