The Oxford Book of American Det (63 page)

“Oh, that!” he observed, touching his eye gingerly. “Your mother put a silver knife smeared with butter on it last night. Quite a person, Mother.” He said I was to excuse his appearance, because he had been busy all night with the police. He’d go and clean up.

“You’re not moving out of this room until I know what’s been going on,” I stormed.

“I’m running a fever right now, out of pure excitement.” He put a big hand on my forehead. “No fever,” he said. “Just your detective mind running in circles. All right. Where do I start?”

“With the postman.”

So then he told me. Along in the spring, Elinor had come to him with a queer story.

She said she was being followed. It made her nervous. In fact, she was frightened. It seemed that the man who was watching her wore a postman’s uniform. She would be having lunch at a restaurant—perhaps with what she called a man friend—and he would be outside a window. He would turn up in all sorts of places. It sounded fantastic, but she swore it was true.

Some faint ray of intelligence came to me. “Do you mean it was this man Mrs.

Thompson saw going into your office?”

“She’s already identified him. The real letter carrier had been there earlier. He had seen Mrs. Hammond reading a magazine. But he had gone before the Thompson woman arrived. The one she saw was the one who—killed Elinor.” I knew before he told me. I felt sick. “It was Fred, wasn’t it?”

“It was Fred Hammond. Yes.” Dr. Barclay reached over and took my hand. “Tough luck, my dear. I was worried about it. I tried to get her to go away, but she wouldn’t do it. And then she wore a dress at a party with a scarlet A on it, and I suppose that finished him.”

“It’s crazy!” I gasped. “He adored her.”

“He had an obsession about her. He loved her, yes. But he was afraid he might lose her. And he was wildly jealous.”

“But if he really loved her—“

“The line between love and hate is pretty fine. And it’s just possible too that he felt she was never really his until—well, until no one else could have her.”

“So he killed her!”

“He killed her,” Dr. Barclay said slowly. “He knew that nobody notices the postman, so he walked into my office and—“

“But he was insane,” I said. “You can’t send him to the chair.”

“Nobody will send him to the chair.” The doctor hesitated. “I was too late last night. I caught him just as he fired at you, but he put up a real battle. He got loose somehow, and shot himself.”

He went on quietly. There was no question of Fred’s guilt, he said. Mrs. Thompson had identified his photograph as that of the postman she had seen going into the office and coming out shortly before she heard the nurse screaming. The bullet with which she had been shot had come from Fred’s gun. And Margaret—poor Margaret—had been suspicious of his sanity for a long time.

“She came to see me yesterday after she learned the Thompson woman had been shot.

She wanted her brother committed to an institution, but she got hysterical when I mentioned the police. I suppose there wasn’t much of a case, anyhow. With Mrs.

Thompson apparently dying and the uniform gone—“

“Gone? Gone how?”

“He’d burned it in the furnace. We found some charred buttons last night.”

“Why did he try to kill Mrs. Thompson?” I asked. “What did she know?”

“She remembered seeing a postman going in and out of my office. She even described him. And Margaret found the uniform in the attic. She knew then.

“She collapsed. She couldn’t face Fred. She locked herself in her room, trying to think what to do. But she had told Fred she was going to see Mrs. Thompson that day, and she thinks perhaps he knew she had found the uniform. She doesn’t know, nor do I.

All we do know is that he left this house that night, got out his car and tried to kill the only witness against him. Except you, of course.”

“Except me!” I said.

“Except you,” the doctor repeatedly dryly. “I tried to warn you, you may remember!”

“But why me? He had always liked me. Why would he try to kill me?”

“Because you wouldn’t leave things alone. Because you were a danger from the minute you insisted Elinor had been murdered. And because you asked Margaret on the phone why she had visited Mrs. Thompson, and who had shot her.”

“You think he was listening in?”

“I know he was listening in. He wasn’t afraid of his sister. She would have died to protect him, and he knew it. But here you were, a child with a stick of dynamite, and you come out with a thing like that! That was when Margaret sent me to warn you.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve been a fool all along.”

The doctor’s good eye twinkled. “I wouldn’t go so far as that,” he said. “That stubbornness of yours really broke the case. Not that I like stubborn women.” I had difficulty in getting him back to the night before. But he finally admitted that he had been watching the Hammond house all evening, and that when Fred came to our kitchen door he had been just outside. Fred had seemed quiet, drinking his coffee.

Then I had walked out to the street with him. ‘

It had looked all right at first. Fred had started down the street toward home, and he followed behind the hedge. But he lost him, and he knew he was on his way back. Fred had his revolver lifted to shoot me when he grabbed him.

Suddenly I was crying. It was all horrible: Elinor at the window, and Fred behind her; Mrs. Thompson resting after a hard day’s work, and Fred shooting her. And I myself—

Dr. Barclay got out a grimy handkerchief and dried my eyes. “Stop it,” he said. “It’s all over now, and you’re a plucky young woman, Louise Baring. Don’t spoil the record.” He rose abruptly. “I’m giving up your case. There’ll be someone in to dress that head of yours.”

“Why can’t you do it?”

“I’m not that sort of doctor.”

I looked up at him. He was haggard with strain. He was dirty, he needed a shave, and that eye of his was getting blacker by the minute. But he was big and strong and sane.

A woman would be safe with him, I thought. Although she could never tell him her dreams.

“I don’t see why you can’t look after me,” I said. “If I’m to look bald I’d prefer you to see it. After all, you did it.”

He grinned. Then to my surprise he leaned down and kissed me lightly on the cheek.

“I’ve wanted to do that ever since you slammed that lipstick down in front of me,” he said. “And now will you please stop being a detective and concentrate on growing some hair on the side of your head? Because I’m going to be around for a considerable time.”

When I looked up Mother was in the doorway, beaming.

ROBERT LESLIE BELLEM (1902-1968)

In some 3,000 short stories written for the pulp magazines during the 1930’s, 1940’s, and 1950’s, Robert Leslie Bellem demonstrated an ability to conform to the hard-boiled formula and to transcend it at the same time. It is fair enough to describe this prolific maverick with a string of clichés: he possessed an ear for dialogue, an eye for the ladies, a sixth sense for humour. In short, he kept a finger on the pulse of popular fiction. But he did more than that, too.

Critics marvel at Bellem’s ability to stand out from the crowd of pulp writers even while remaining an enthusiastic member of the group. He embraced every hard-boiled convention of language, character, and milieu. No slouch at slang, he loved lurid language, wisecracking, and tough talk; but there is always the sense that he was playing with words intentionally rather than working in a limited idiom.

His characters, too, fulfil the stereotypes of the pulps: the femme fatale, the starlet, and, of course, the gumshoe himself. But again, there is a playfulness that endows the characterisations with a ‘camp’ quality.

If his characters are sometimes intentional exaggerations of stereotypes, his choice of milieu is suited to this, particularly in his Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective, stories.

With its glitz and glamour contrasting with seediness, with its posturing and poses, and with its false promises, Tinseltown is the perfect backdrop for pulp characters unusually aware of the roles that they are playing on the stage of American life.

Turner is not Bellem’s only series character—the prolific author used several others—

but the Hollywood Detective is certainly his most memorable. The offbeat exuberance of the Turner stories, with their swift pace and fast talk, kept readers eager for more for almost two decades. From the character’s first appearance in
Spicy Detective
in 1934 to his central role in the magazine created and named for him eight years later, Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective, this sleuth has been first and foremost an entertainer—who was created, managed, and directed by a true artist of pulp fiction.

Homicide Highball

I tossed another coin on the counter and the bleached blonde handed me three more baseballs. I hefted one of them, prepared to heave it; but before I could let fly, the yellow-haired gal dropped dead with a crushed skull. Five minutes later I was collared for the killing.

Putting it that way, it sounds about as impersonal as a telegram condensed to fifty words for economy’s sake. It didn’t seem so impersonal to me at the time, though. My neck was in a lonely spot and I mighty well realised it. If ever a guy had been draped with a murder frame, I was that guy.

The whole thing started the previous afternoon when Roy Cromwell, ace director for Paravox Pix, ankled into my agency office with an embarrassed look on his handsome mush. He was a stalwart ape in the loudest set of tweeds this side of an air raid alarm, and his fame for making hit films was exceeded only by his rep as a Romeo in private life.

Crossing my threshold, he flashed me a sheepish grin. “Hiya, Philo. How’s the best private eye in Hollywood?”

“The name is Dan Turner,” I said. “Mister to you.”

He reddened. “Still sore, eh?”

“I never forget a raw deal.”

“I didn’t mean it to be as raw as it turned out,” he protested mildly. “Why pack a grudge?”

“I’ve got every reason to pack a grudge. You had a girl in a Sunset Strip dice club one night a month ago. The joint was raided. You begged me to take the doll off your hands and pretend I was her escort. Like a dope, I agreed.” He said: “I appreciated the favour. Honest I did.”

“Sure,” I sneered. “Only it developed that she was engaged to Bernie Ballantyne, production mogul for Paravox; in other words, your boss. That’s why you palmed her off on me. If Bernie found out you were entertaining his sweetie, he might get even by dropping your option, so you picked me for a fall guy.”

“But, Dan, listen—“

I waved him quiet. “So what happened? Bernie made me the target of his jealousy; barred me off the lot. I used to get all of the Paravox snooping business; picked up some fat fees. But now, thanks to you, I can’t even go through the gates.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Cromwell said placatingly. “Ballantyne wants to bury the hatchet.”

“Yeah. In my dandruff.”

“No. He’s got a job for you.”

I gave him the surly focus. “Quit ribbing.”

“A thousand dollars is no rib.” He took a check from his wallet, threw it on my desk. It was for a grand, made out to me, and signed with Bernie Ballantyne’s scrawled autograph. “That’s only the retainer. You’ll get more later.” My ire began to fade. “He must crave somebody cooled for this kind of geetus.” All the colour leaked out of Cromwell’s pan; left it a floury mask. His glimmers bulged. “Wh—what makes you think a thing like th—that?” he choked. Then he recovered some of his poise. “For a minute I thought you were serious. Shall we go on out to the studio? Bernie’s waiting.”

I said: “Okay,” and we hauled bunions. Leaving the building, I wondered why my casual remark had put the director in such a dither. For an instant he’d acted like a bozo with something nasty on his conscience.

His Packard speedster was parked down at the curb, but I preferred my own jalopy for convenience. I trailed him until a traffic semaphore separated us halfway to Culver City. Cromwell beat the red light by a whisker, pulled ahead; and when I finally got a green signal I’d lost him. I remembered this later, although it didn’t seem to matter at the time. I didn’t need anyone to guide me to Bernie Ballantyne’s private sanctum.

The Paravox production bigwig had a layout of offices in the main executive building, just inside the mammoth wrought iron entrance gates. An assortment of secretaries passed me through the various anterooms until I came to the last one, a sort of Gothic waiting chamber architecturally designed to awe you before you entered the holy of holies. I wasn’t very impressed, though. I was too interested in a brunette honey who had just stepped out of Ballantyne’s room.

I recognised her and said: “Greetings, Toots.”

She drew a sharp breath as she tabbed me. She was a fragile little dish, delicate as a Spring breeze in a modish confection of white silk jersey. Her wavy hair was blue-black to match her peepers, and she had a complexion three shades richer than the cream off the top of the bottle. But there was a tremulous quiver to her ripe pomegranate lips, and her mascara was smudged as if she had recently leaked a trace of brine.

This needled my curiosity. Since she was emerging from Bernie Ballantyne’s office you’d naturally think he was responsible for her turning on the weeps; which seemed queer in view of the fact that she was his fiancée, Vala DuValle.

She didn’t look happy at meeting me. “Mr. T
—
Turner!”

“Skip the formality and call me Danny-boy. You know, the unfortunate jerk that took you off Roy Cromwell’s hands the night a certain dice drop got knocked over. Or have you forgotten how I stuck my neck out for an alleged pal and wound up on the wrong end of a hotfoot?”

She drifted toward me in an aura of expensive fragrance. “Please!” she whispered.

“Don’t link my n
—
name with Roy’s. Bernie might hear you.”

“Would that be such a disaster, hon?”

“You know it would. For Roy, and maybe for m
—
me, too.” I said: “Then you shouldn’t play with fire. Cromwell’s dynamite for a jane who’s engaged to somebody else.”