Delphi collected works o.., p.67
Delphi Collected Works of Peter Cheyney Illustrated, page 67
“Don’t you think it a nice name, Mr. Caution?” she says.
“So your mother was American?” I shoot at her.
“Yes,” she says. “How did you know?”
“Your father can’t pronounce ‘r’s’” I tell her. “So he wouldn’t have christened you Berenice.”
“You are very much more clever than you look, Mr. Caution,” she says. “And you are right about my father. He pronounces it ‘Belenice’; but he has another name for me. It is Chinese. It means ‘Very Deep and Very Beautiful Stream.’ Do you like that Mr. Caution?”
“Lady,” I tell her, “you’re beautiful all right an’ I think you’re plenty deep.”
She starts smilin’ again an’ turns around as the old guy comes inta the room. He comes over to me.
“Gentleman to spleak to you,” he says. “Telephone in hall outside.”
I go out after him. I leave her standin’ there smilin’. It is O’Halloran.
“Listen, you beautiful brute,” he says. “I been amusin’ myself doin’ a little telephonin’ around this town an’ here’s a flash for you. Half an hour ago some cops from the Harbour patrol find a body floatin’ around the New York Dock. They sent it along to the morgue. It’s a dame. I ain’t been around there because I hate leavin’ this whisky, but here’s a rough description. Height about five feet five: weight estimated at 120 to 130 lbs. Blonde an’ bobbed hair. Does that mean anything to you?”
“O.K. Terry,” I tell him. “Just stick around an’ I’ll take in the morgue personally. I’ll be seein’ you.”
The old guy has disappeared. I go back inta the room. She is still standin’ there where I left her.
“Listen, lady,” I tell her. “There’s just one thing more. What clothes was Mrs. Thorensen wearin’ when you saw her?”
“She was wearin’ a blue suit with an oyster coloured crepe-de-chine shirt,” she says. “She had on grey silk stockings and black patent court shoes.”
“Any rings?”
“Yes, a diamond and ruby betrothal ring, and a diamond set wedding ring, and a single ruby ring on her little finger. She always wore those.”
“Thanks a lot,” I tell her. “I’ll be seein’ you some more Very Deep an’ Very Beautiful Stream,” I crack at her, “an’ mind you don’t run out to the sea while I’m away.”
I scram.
I jump a cab that is wanderin’ an’ I go down the hill. I pay off the cab at Kearny an’ walk along past the Hall of Justice to the morgue. This is a long low dump lyin’ beside the hall on the other side of a little roadway.
It has started to rain like hell an’ in spite of the mist it is sorta close an’ heavy. Away down the street I can just see the blue lamp outside the morgue.
Just along by the entrance I can see a dame. She’s got no slicker an’ no hat an’ no umbrella; she is just standin’ there lookin’ as if she was lost an’ likin’ it.
“Hey, sister, don’t you know it’s rainin’?” I tell her as I walk past. “What’s the matter? Has some guy stood you up?”
She looks at me sorta fresh, but there is a scared look in her eye. “On your way, sailor,” she says. “Maybe I like rain; it sets my hair.”
As I turn inta the entrance I am thinkin’ that all dames are nuts anyhow. I go up the entrance steps an’ push the door open. Inside on the right of the hallway is the office. I go in there. There ain’t anybody in it; but there is a bell for the attendant on the desk.
I push it. Then I wait around for a few minutes. Nothin’ happens. I push the bell again. After a bit the door on the other side of the counter opens an’ the attendant comes in. He is in his shirt sleeves an’ his uniform cap is about two sizes too small for him. I start wonderin’ why it is that they always give these morgue guys caps that are too small.
“An’ what can I do for you?” he says.
I show him my badge. “There was a dame brought in here to-night by the Harbour squad,” I tell him. “I wanta have a look at her.”
“O.K.” he says. “This way.”
He opens up the flap in the counter an’ I go through. Then I follow him across the office an’ along a passage an’ down some stairs. As we go down the air gets plenty cold. We go through an iron door at the bottom an’ he switches on the light. Then he gives a sorta gasp an’ points with his finger.
“Well, can you beat that?” he says. “Look. To-night just after they brought this dame in the freezin’ apparatus down here goes wrong an’ I have to telephone through for a whole lot of ice to keep this place cold, because we got eight stiffs down here. One ice block was put on that iron shelf above the tray they laid that dame on an’ look what’s happened to it.”
I look. Right along the sides of the walls are what looks like white japanned filin’ cabinets, an’ the trays they lay the bodies on come outa these on rollers. Way down at the end of the morgue is a white tray out with a dame’s body on it, an’ a block of ice about three feet square has slipped off the shelf from above the tray right on the face of this dame. It wasn’t no sight for babies, I’m tellin’ you.
I go along an’ look at it. It is dressed in a blue suit with patent court shoes, an’ I can see that the shirt was oyster silk — that is before the ice slipped. I look at the left hand. There is a diamond and ruby ring on the third finger an’ a weddin’ ring set with diamonds next to it. On the little finger is a big single ruby ring.
“O.K. buddy,” I say. “That’s all I wanted to know.”
I scram. I walk back to the Sir Francis Drake an’ go to my room. Terry is there drinkin’ whisky an’ playin’ solitaire. I give myself a drink.
“What’s eatin’ you, Lemmy?” he says. “You been to the morgue?”
“Yeah,” I tell him, “but that ain’t what’s worryin’ me right now. I just got a funny idea. Listen, Terry, you tell me how the freezin’ apparatus at the morgue can go wrong?”
“It can’t,” he says. “Not unless the electricity for the whole city goes wrong with it.”
“O.K.” I say. “This is where you an’ me go out an’ get busy.”
He looks up. “How come?” he says.
“Look, Terry,” I tell him. “When I go down to the morgue I see a dame standin’ outside in the rain just for nothin’ at all. Inside I see that the attendant’s hat don’t fit him. Also he tells me that the freezin’ has gone wrong an’ that they have had to get ice in, an’ shows me how one block has slipped an’ wiped out the face of the dame that was Marella Thorensen. Like a big sap I fell for it.”
“For what?” he says.
“Just this,” I tell him. “We’re goin’ out to find what they did with the real morgue attendant, the one they got outa the way while they brought that ice block in an’ smacked it on the face of that corpse. The guy I saw down there was a phoney. That’s why his hat didn’t fit him.”
I put on my hat.
“I’m layin’ you six to four that we find the real guy down there in one of the trays,” I say. “The girl outside was the look out. When I got in they was fixin’ the job an’ the others got out the back way while one smart guy came back into the office when I rang the bell an’ played me for a sucker while they was doin’ it.”
Terry sorta sighs an’ heaves himself up. We go down in the lift an’ grab a cab outside.
When we get down to the morgue office there ain’t anybody there at all. We go through the office an’ along the passage and down the stairs to the corpse room. I switch on the light an’ light a cigarette an’ then we start pullin’ out the trays with the stiffs on.
We found the morgue attendant all right. He was in number five tray. His eyes are wide open an’ lookin’ sorta surprised.
Which he was entitled to be because somebody has shot this guy three times.
II. TWO-TIME TOOTS
O’HALLORAN FINISHES THE bottle.
“Ain’t it like life?” he says. “Anyhow this dame Marella hadta die sometime. Why couldn’t she get herself a piece of pneumonia or somethin’ normal instead of havin’ herself put outa circulation by some gun guy thereby causin’ plenty trouble for all concerned?” He hiccups so hard he nearly ricks his neck.
“What I wanta know, Lemmy,” he says, “is why some bozos haveta smash this dame’s pan. It don’t make sense to me. An’ look at the risk they was runnin’. It’s just sorta ridiculous. Here is the morgue stuck right next to the Hall of Justice. There is about seven cops on night shift who mighta strolled inta the morgue office any time to pass the time of day with Gluck. I don’t get the idea at all.”
“I get it plenty,” I tell him, an’ as I say this Brendy comes in.
Brendy is the Precinct Captain. He is a nice guy an’ plays along very sweet with anybody who don’t rub him the wrong way. He is a bit sore about bein’ got up over all this besuzuz.
“Well, you guys,” he says, “we got that identification sewn up all right. I had Thorensen down an’ it nearly made him sick. I don’t reckon I’ve ever seen a guy look so green around the trap. It’s Marella Thorensen, an’ if somebody will proceed to give me some sorta low-down on all this ice block stuff I’ll be very pleased to listen to ’em.”
He grabs himself off a glass an’ gives himself a snifter.
“Also,” he goes on, “I wants know just what we are goin’ to do about these killin’s. This job starts off as a Federal Investigation inta some sorta low-down that Marella Thorensen says she has got about Federal offences around here. O.K. Well, now the situation has changed plenty. There’s two bump-offs in my precinct, an’ that’s a matter for me an’ the Chief of Police. How’re we goin’ to play it, Lemmy?”
“Look fellers,” I tell ’em. “Let’s take this thing easy, shall we? Brendy, you don’t know that you got two bump-offs. You’re only certain that you got one. You know that Gluck, the morgue attendant, was murdered, but you don’t know that Marella Thorensen was, an’ that’s why somebody put that act on with the ice block.”
They get interested.
“Here’s how I see this thing,” I tell ’em. “The doctor says that Marella Thorensen was dead before she was chucked inta the drink. O.K. He knows this because there ain’t any water in the lungs. So she died before she went inta the water, didn’t she, an’ at the present moment there ain’t any medical examiner who can say just how she did die. Well I’m goin’ to make a coupla guesses.
“Here’s the way I reckon they played it. Somebody shoots Marella through the head, an’ the next thing is to get rid of the body, so they take it along down to the wharf an’ slam it over the edge.
“Now you tell me something, Brendy. How was it that the Harbour Squad found Marella floatin’?”
“Some guy calls through on the telephone to the Squad Office,” he says. “Some guy says he has seen a stiff floatin’ around the Little Basin, an’ then he hangs up. The Squad go out an’ look around an’ they find her.”
“All right,” I say, “an’ then the Squad pick her up an’ stick her in a patrol wagon an’ send her along to the morgue, an’ that’s that.
“Now you guys have gotta admit that there is something screwy about that call. If the guy who called through was a legitimate guy he is goin’ to say who he is, ain’t he? But he don’t. He just hangs up an’ scrams. So it looks to me as if he called through just so that Marella Thorensen should be found, an’ what does that mean. Well, it means that somebody wanted the world to know that she was dead, see?”
They nod.
“O.K.” says O’Halloran, “so what?”
“Well, if you guys are goin’ to accept that, maybe you will accept this as well: What reason would some guy have for bumpin’ Marella, throwin’ her in the ditch an’ then callin’ through so’s the Harbour Squad will find her an’ get her identified? Well it looks to me as if the reason might be this one: This dame Marella Thorensen has sent a letter to the Bureau of Investigation to say that she is goin’ to spill the beans on the 10th January — to the operative who is sent down. Well now, if somebody kills this dame to-night an’ we all find out that it is her, then the Federal operative knows durn well that he ain’t goin’ to take any statement from Mrs. Marella Thorensen, don’t he? So what does he do? He reckons that the two deaths — Marella’s an’ Gluck’s — are just the business of the local Police Department, so he scrams back to Washington, don’t he?”
“That sounds like sense to me,” says Brendy.
“It is sense, an’ it’s just what I ain’t goin’ to do,” I tell ’em. “I reckon that if these guys took all that trouble to let us know that Marella was dead then they done it because they wanted me to pack up on this job, an’ the reason they would want me to pack up is because I might find out from somewhere else just what she wanted to talk about, an’ that’s why I’m goin’ to stick around.”
“O.K.,” says Brendy, “an’ supposin’ for the sake of argument that that is right too, we still ain’t got any further with this ice business, hey Terry?”
Terry shakes his head. “Me — I just cannot understand about that,” he says.
I grin. “I reckon it’s simple,” I tell ’em. “Look, here’s how I figure it. This guy who has shot Marella Thorensen an’ had her chucked in the harbour has either called through himself or got some guy to call through to the Harbour Squad so’s they’ll find her an’ so’s we’ll know she’s dead, like I told you before.
“O.K. When all this business is over an’ the body has been sent down to the morgue, this guy suddenly gets a very funny idea. He remembers that the probability is that the bullet he shot this dame with is still in her head an’ he particularly don’t want the medical examiner to find that bullet. Now you guys know as well as I do just why he wouldn’t want that bullet found.”
They both look up. They’re gettin’ interested.
“Sure I know,” says Brendy. “He don’t want that bullet found because we can identify the gun that fired it from the bullet itself. That means to say that Marella was bumped by a guy who has already ironed out somebody around here, and whose gun has been identified once before by a bullet taken out of a corpse.”
“Swell, brother,” I tell him, “you’re gettin’ warm. That bein’ so what does he do? He knows durn well that if that bullet is found we’ll know who killed Marella an’ we’ll also know who it was who was so keen to get her outa the way so’s we shouldn’t find out about this letter she wrote.
“So he takes a chance. He loads some ice blocks on a truck, he gets down to the morgue, he gets Gluck downstairs on some pretence inta the corpse room an’ bumps him. Then he opens the back door an’ the other guys come in with the ice blocks. They drop one of ’em on Marella’s face an’ they get the bullet. They’re just finishin’ off when they hear the bell ring in the office upstairs. That’s me. I’ve just arrived. So one of ’em — a guy with a nerve — grabs off Gluck’s cap, takes off his coat an’ comes up an’ does that act with me.
“When he hears that I’m a Federal Officer who’s come around to have a look at the stiff that’s just been brought in, he gets a bit of a shock, but his nerve is still workin’ so he pulls that story on me about the freezin’ apparatus havin’ gone wring, an’ I fall for it.”
They look at each other.
“Lemmy, I reckon you’re right,” says Terry. “It looks like that’s the low-down.”
“Maybe,” I tell ’em, “an’ if it is we still got a clue. Maybe we can still find this guy an’ d’ya see how?”
“Sure I do,” says Brendy. “All we gotta do is to go through the Police records an’ make a list of every guy whose gun has been matched up by the ballistics department with a bullet that has been taken outa some stiff during the last year or so. Then I reckon the guy we’re lookin’ for is somewhere on that list.”
“O.K. Brendy,” I say. “Maybe you’ll do that for me. Another thing is this,” I say, “you guys have gotta realise that this Marella Thorensen killin’ is tied up like I said with a letter she wrote to the Director of the Bureau. O.K. We don’t wanta play these two killin’s separately. Let’s make this one job. I reckon we can all help each other. What do you say, Brendy?”
“That’s O.K. by me,” he says. “Lemmy, I don’t mind playin’ around with you. I’ll speak to the Chief in the mornin’ an’ get his O.K. on it. Where do we go from there?” he says.
I light myself a cigarette. “You tell me about Thorensen, Brendy,” I say. “What happened when you got him down to the morgue to-night?”
“He wasn’t lookin’ so good,” says Brendy. “He comes down an’ I tell him that maybe we’ve got a bit of bad news for him. I tell him that a Federal officer was trying to find his wife this afternoon an’ couldn’t, that a body has been found by the Harbour Squad, an’ we’d like him to have a look at it. I tell him that maybe he’d better prepare himself for a shock.
“He don’t say anything very much. He just says O.K. So I take him down to the corpse room and I show him Marella. He just looks at it like he was poleaxed, then he nods his head an’ he says ‘that’s her all right,’ an’ that’s that. Then he went back home, and,” Brendy goes on, gettin’ up, “I reckon I’m going home too. I can do with spot of sleep all right. I wish guys wouldn’t kill each other so much around here.”
“O.K. Brendy,” I say, “but tell me somethin’. Who’s the guy on duty at the Precinct Office? Is he an intelligent guy?”
Brendy looks at O’Halloran an’ grins.
“Terry’s on to-night,” he says. “I don’t know whether he’s intelligent or not.”
“I’ll chance it,” I tell him. “Look, Terry,” I say, “it’s a quarter to two now. I’m goin’ to buy myself a cab an’ I’m goin’ up to see Thorensen. I reckon he won’t expect to be seein’ anybody before to-morrow. I wanta talk to that guy.
“Well, let’s suppose that I’m with him until three o’clock. Here’s what I want you to do. At a quarter to three you ring up Lee Sam at his place an’ tell him that you’re sendin’ up a squad car to pick him an’ his daughter up; that you want ’em to come down pronto. You get ’em down to the Precinct Office an’ you keep ’em down there askin’ ’em a lotta phoney questions until about four o’clock. Then you can let ’em go an’ it’ll give me time to do what I wanta do.”
