The Glass Key Read online

  “What did you do to them?” Jack asked when they were sitting still.

  “Things.”

  “Oh.”

  Ten minutes passed and Jack, saying, “Look,” was pointing a forefinger at a taxicab drawing up to the Buckman’s side door.

  The Kid, carrying two traveling-bags, left the building first, then, when he was in the taxicab, Despain and the girl ran out to join him. The taxicab ran away.

  Jack leaned forward and told his driver what to do. They ran along in the other cab’s wake. They wound through streets that were bright with morning sunlight, going by a devious route finally to a battered brownstone house on West Forty-ninth Street.

  Despain’s cab stopped in front of the house and, once more, the Kid was the first of the trio out on the sidewalk. He looked up and down the street. He went up to the front door of the house and unlocked it. Then he returned to the taxicab. Despain and the girl jumped out and went indoors hurriedly. The Kid followed with the bags.

  “Stick here with the cab,” Ned Beaumont told Jack.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Try my luck.”

  Jack shook his head. “This is another wrong neighborhood to look for trouble in,” he said.

  Ned Beaumont said: “If I come out with Despain, you beat it. Get another taxi and go back to watch the Buckman. If I don’t come out, use your own judgment.”

  He opened the cab-door and stepped out. He was shivering. His eyes were shiny. He ignored something that Jack leaned out to say and hurried across the street to the house into which the two men and the girl had gone.

  He went straight up the front steps and put a hand on the door-knob. The knob turned in his hand. The door was not locked. He pushed it open and, after peering into the dim hallway, went in.

  The door slammed shut behind him and one of the Kid’s fists struck his head a glancing blow that carried his cap away and sent him crashing into the wall. He sank down a little, giddily, almost to one knee, and the Kid’s other fist struck the wall over his head.

  He pulled his lips back over his teeth and drove a fist into the Kid’s groin, a short sharp blow that brought a snarl from the Kid and made him fall back so that Ned Beaumont could pull himself up straight before the Kid was upon him again.

  Up the hallway a little, Bernie Despain was leaning against the wall, his mouth stretched wide and thin, his eyes narrowed to dark points, saying over and over in a low voice: “Sock him, Kid, sock him.…” Lee Wilshire was not in sight.

  The Kid’s next two blows landed on Ned Beaumont’s chest, mashing him against the wall, making him cough. The third, aimed at his face, he avoided. Then he pushed the Kid away from him with a forearm against his throat and kicked the Kid in the belly. The Kid roared angrily and came in with both fists going, but forearm and foot had carried him away from Ned Beaumont and had given Ned Beaumont time to get his right hand to his hip-pocket and to get Jack’s revolver out of his pocket. He had no time to level the revolver, but, holding it at a downward angle, he pulled the trigger and managed to shoot the Kid in the right thigh. The Kid yelped and fell down on the hallway floor. He lay there looking up at Ned Beaumont with frightened bloodshot eyes.

  Ned Beaumont stepped back from him, put his left hand in his trousers-pocket, and addressed Bernie Despain: “Come on out with me. I want to talk to you.” His face was sullenly determined.

  Footsteps ran overhead, somewhere back in the building a door opened, and down the hallway excited voices were audible, but nobody came into sight.

  Despain stared for a long moment at Ned Beaumont as if horribly fascinated. Then, without a word, he stepped over the man on the floor and went out of the building ahead of Ned Beaumont. Ned Beaumont put the revolver in his jacket-pocket before he went down the street-steps, but he kept his hand on it.

  “Up to that taxi,” he told Despain, indicating the car out of which Jack was getting. When they reached the taxicab he told the chauffeur to drive them anywhere, “just around till I tell you where to go.”

  They were in motion when Despain found his voice. He said: “This is a hold-up. I’ll give you anything you want because I don’t want to be killed, but it’s just a hold-up.”

  Ned Beaumont laughed disagreeably and shook his head. “Don’t forget I’ve risen in the world to be something or other in the District Attorney’s office.”

  “But there’s no charge against me. I’m not wanted. You said—”

  “I was spoofing you, Bernie, for reasons. You’re wanted.”

  “For what?”

  “Killing Taylor Henry.”

  “That? Hell, I’ll go back and face that. What’ve you got against me? I had some of his markers, sure. And I left the night he was killed, sure. And I gave him hell because he wouldn’t make them good, sure. What kind of a case is that for a first-class lawyer to beat? Jesus, if I left the markers behind in my safe at some time before nine-thirty—to go by Lee’s story—don’t that show I wasn’t trying to collect that night?”

  “No, and that isn’t all the stuff we’ve got on you.”

  “That’s all there could be,” Despain said earnestly.

  Ned Beaumont sneered. “Wrong, Bernie. Remember I had a hat on when I came to see you this morning?”

  “Maybe. I think you did.”

  “Remember I took a cap out of my coat-pocket and put it on when I left?”

  Bewilderment, fear, began to come into the swarthy man’s small eyes. “By Jesus! Well? What are you getting at?”

  “I’m getting at the evidence. Do you remember the hat didn’t fit me very well?”

  Bernie Despain’s voice was hoarse: “I don’t know, Ned. For Christ’s sake, what do you mean?”

  “I mean it didn’t fit me because it wasn’t my hat. Do you remember that the hat Taylor was wearing when he was murdered wasn’t found?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about him.”

  “Well, I’m trying to tell you the hat I had this morning was Taylor’s hat and it’s now planted down between the cushion-seat and the back of that brown easy-chair in the apartment you had at the Buckman. Do you think that, with the rest, would be enough to sit you on the hot seat?”

  Despain would have screamed in terror if Ned Beaumont had not clapped a hand over his mouth and growled, “Shut up,” in his ear.

  Sweat ran down the swarthy face. Despain fell over on Ned Beaumont, seizing the lapels of his coat with both hands, babbling: “Listen, don’t you do that to me, Ned. You can have every cent I owe you, every cent with interest, if you won’t do that. I never meant to rob you, Ned, honest to God. It was just that I was caught short and thought I’d treat it like a loan. Honest to God, Ned. I ain’t got much now, but I’m fixed to get the money for Lee’s rocks that I’m selling today and I’ll give you your dough, every nickel of it, out of that. How much was it, Ned? I’ll give you all of it right away, this morning.”

  Ned Beaumont pushed the swarthy man over to his own side of the taxicab and said: “It was thirty-two hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “Thirty-two hundred and fifty dollars. You’ll get it, every cent of it, this morning, right away.” Despain looked at his watch.

  “Yes, sir, right this minute as soon as we can get there. Old Stein will be at his place before this. Only say you’ll let me go, Ned, for old times’ sake.”

  Ned Beaumont rubbed his hands together thoughtfully. “I can’t exactly let you go. Not right now, I mean. I’ve got to remember the District Attorney connection and that you’re wanted for questioning. So all we can dicker about is the hat. Here’s the proposition: give me my money and I’ll see that I’m alone when I turn up the hat and nobody else will ever know about it. Otherwise I’ll see that half the New York police are with me and—There you are. Take it or leave it.”

  “Oh, God!” Bernie Despain groaned. “Tell him to drive us to old Stein’s place. It’s on …”

  3

  THE CYCLONE SHOT

  I

>   Ned Beaumont leaving the train that had brought him back from New York was a clear-eyed erect tall man. Only the flatness of his chest hinted at any constitutional weakness. In color and line his face was hale. His stride was long and elastic. He went nimbly up the concrete stairs that connected train-shed with street-level, crossed the waiting-room, waved a hand at an acquaintance behind the information counter, and passed out of the station through one of the street-doors.

  While waiting on the sidewalk for the porter with his bags to come he bought a newspaper. He opened it when he was in a taxicab riding towards Randall Avenue with his luggage. He read a half-column on the front page:

  SECOND BROTHER KILLED

  FRANCIS F. WEST MURDERED

  CLOSE TO SPOT WHERE

  BROTHER MET DEATH

  For the second time within two weeks tragedy came to the West family of 1342 N. Achland Avenue last night when Francis W. West, 31, was shot to death in the street less than a block from the corner where he had seen his brother Norman run down and killed by an alleged bootleg car last month.

  Francis West, who was employed as waiter at the Rockaway Café, was returning from work at a little after midnight, when, according to those who witnessed the tragedy, he was overtaken by a black touring car that came down Achland Avenue at high speed. The car swung in to the curb as it reached West, and more than a score of shots are said to have been fired from it. West fell with eight bullets in his body, dying before anybody could reach him. The death car, which is said not to have stopped, immediately picked up speed again and vanished around the corner of Bowman Street. The police are hampered in their attempt to find the car by conflicting descriptions given by witnesses, none of whom claims to have seen any of the men in the automobile.

  Boyd West, the surviving brother, who also witnessed Norman’s death last month, could ascribe no reason for Francis’s murder. He said he knew of no enemies his brother had made. Miss Marie Shepperd, 1917 Baker Avenue, to whom Francis West was to have been married next week, was likewise unable to name anyone who might have desired her fiancé’s death.

  Timothy Ivans, alleged driver of the car that accidentally ran down and killed Norman West last month, refused to talk to reporters in his cell at the City Prison, where he is held without bail, awaiting trial for manslaughter.

  Ned Beaumont folded the newspaper with careful slowness and put it in one of his overcoat-pockets. His lips were drawn a little together and his eyes were bright with thinking. Otherwise his face was composed. He leaned back in a corner of the taxicab and played with an unlighted cigar.

  In his rooms he went, without pausing to remove hat or coat, to the telephone and called four numbers, asking each time whether Paul Madvig was there and whether it was known where he could be found. After the fourth call he gave up trying to find Madvig.

  He put the telephone down, picked his cigar up from where he had laid it on the table, lighted the cigar, laid it on the edge of the table again, picked up the telephone, and called the City Hall’s number. He asked for the District Attorney’s office. While he waited he dragged a chair, by means of a foot hooked under one of its rounds, over to the telephone, sat down, and put the cigar in his mouth.

  Then he said into the telephone: “Hello. Is Mr. Farr in.… Ned Beaumont.… Yes, thanks.” He inhaled and exhaled smoke slowly. “Hello, Farr?… Just got in a couple of minutes ago.… Yes. Can I see you now?… That’s right. Has Paul said anything to you about the West killing?… Don’t know where he is, do you? Well, there’s an angle I’d like to talk to you about.… Yes, say half an hour.… Right.”

  He put the telephone aside and went across the room to look at the mail on a table by the door. There were some magazines and nine letters. He looked rapidly at the envelopes, dropped them on the table again without having opened any, and went into his bedroom to undress, then into his bathroom to shave and bathe.

  II

  District Attorney Michael Joseph Farr was a stout man of forty. His hair was a florid stubble above a florid pugnacious face. His walnut desk-top was empty except for a telephone and a large desk-set of green onyx whereon a nude metal figure holding aloft an airplane stood on one foot between two black and white fountain-pens that slanted off to either side at rakish angles.

  He shook Ned Beaumont’s hand in both of his and pressed him down into a leather-covered chair before returning to his own seat. He rocked back in his chair and asked: “Have a nice trip?” Inquisitiveness gleamed through the friendliness in his eyes.

  “It was all right,” Ned Beaumont replied. “About this Francis West: with him out of the way how does the case against Tim Ivans stand?”

  Farr started, then made that startled motion part of a deliberate squirming into a more comfortable position in his chair.

  “Well, it won’t make such a lot of difference there,” he said, “that is, not a whole lot, since there’s still the other brother to testify against Ivans.” He very noticeably did not watch Ned Beaumont’s face, but looked at a corner of the walnut desk. “Why? What’d you have on your mind?”

  Ned Beaumont was looking gravely at the man who was not looking at him. “I was just wondering. I suppose it’s all right, though, if the other brother can and will identify Tim.”

  Farr, still not looking up, said: “Sure.” He rocked his chair back and forth gently, an inch or two each way half a dozen times. His fleshy cheeks moved in little ripples where they covered his jaw-muscles. He cleared his throat and stood up. He looked at Ned Beaumont now with friendly eyes. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I’ve got to go see about something. They forget everything if I don’t keep right on their tails. Don’t go. I want to talk to you about Despain.”

  Ned Beaumont murmured, “Don’t hurry,” as the District Attorney left the office, and sat and smoked placidly all the fifteen minutes he was gone.

  Farr returned frowning. “Sorry to leave you like that,” he said as he sat down, “but we’re fairly smothered under work. If it keeps up like this—” He completed the sentence by making a gesture of hopelessness with his hands.

  “That’s all right. Anything new on the Taylor Henry killing?”

  “Nothing here. That’s what I wanted to ask you about—Despain.” Again Farr was definitely not watching Ned Beaumont’s face.

  A thin mocking smile that the other man could not see twitched for an instant the corners of Ned Beaumont’s mouth. He said: “There’s not much of a case against him when you come to look at it closely.”

  Farr nodded slowly at the corner of his desk. “Maybe, but his blowing town that same night don’t look so damned good.”

  “He had another reason for that,” Ned Beaumont said, “a pretty good one.” The shadowy smile came and went.

  Farr nodded again in the manner of one willing to be convinced. “You don’t think there’s a chance that he really killed him?”

  Ned Beaumont’s reply was given carelessly: “I don’t think he did it, but there’s always a chance and you’ve got plenty to hold him awhile on if you want to.”

  The District Attorney raised his head and looked at Ned Beaumont. He smiled with a mixture of diffidence and good-fellowship and said: “Tell me to go to hell if it’s none of my business, but why in the name of God did Paul send you to New York after Bernie Despain?”

  Ned Beaumont withheld his reply for a thoughtful moment. Then he moved his shoulders a little and said: “He didn’t send me. He let me go.”

  Farr did not say anything.

  Ned Beaumont filled his lungs with cigar-smoke, emptied them, and said: “Bernie welshed on a bet with me. That’s why he took the run-out. It just happened that Taylor Henry was killed the night of the day Peggy O’Toole came in in front with fifteen hundred of my dollars on her.”

  The District Attorney said hastily: “That’s all right, Ned. It’s none of my business what you and Paul do. I’m—you see, it’s just that I’m not so damned sure that maybe Despain didn’t happen to run into young Henry on the street
by luck and take a crack at him. I think maybe I’ll hold him awhile to be safe.” His blunt undershot mouth curved in a smile that was somewhat ingratiating. “Don’t think I’m pushing my snoot into Paul’s affairs, or yours, but—” His florid face was turgid and shiny. He suddenly bent over and yanked a desk-drawer open. Paper rattled under his fingers. His hand came out of the drawer and went across the desk towards Ned Beaumont. In his hand was a small white envelope with a slit edge. “Here.” His voice was thick. “Look at this and see what you think of it, or is it only damned foolishness?”

  Ned Beaumont took the envelope, but did not immediately look at it. He kept his eyes, now cold and bright, focused on the District Attorney’s red face.

  Farr’s face became a darker red under the other man’s stare and he raised a beefy hand in a placatory gesture. His voice was placatory: “I don’t attach any importance to it, Ned, but—I mean we always get a lot of junk like that on every case that comes up and—well, read it and see.”

  After another considerable moment Ned Beaumont shifted his gaze from Farr to the envelope. The address was typewritten:

  M. J. Farr, Esq.

  District Attorney

  City Hall

  City

  Personal

  The postmark was dated the previous Saturday. Inside was a single sheet of white paper on which three sentences with neither salutation nor signature were typewritten:

  Why did Paul Madvig steal one of Taylor Henry’s hats after he was murdered?

  What became of the hat that Taylor Henry was wearing when he was murdered?

  Why was the man who claimed to have first found Taylor Henry’s body made a member of your staff?

  Ned Beaumont folded this communication, returned it to its envelope, dropped it down on the desk, and brushed his mustache with a thumb-nail from center to left and from center to right, looking at the District Attorney with level eyes, addressing him in a level tone: “Well?”