Mourn the Hangman (14 page)

BLAKE WALKED up the alley to Third Street. A car passed. Blake stood in the shadows waiting. As he walked south along Third, he thought about Glintner. The handsome kid. The movie star type. He shook his head. He couldn’t see Stella falling for something like that. Now, maybe a starved old woman, like Grueter. He laughed grimly. Sure, that’s why Grueter didn’t suspect anything although she saw Glintner visit Stella.

He remembered that Glintner lived on the ground floor of the apartment house. It should have been easy for Glintner to get up to the fifth floor and Stella’s apartment unnoticed — unnoticed by anyone except nosey Miss Grueter, who could believe no wrong about the pretty boy, anyhow. And, his heart thudded, Glintner could have gone out that window, leaped to the fire escape. He was young enough. Agile enough. Maybe he’d been scared enough. Blake’s steps hurried.

At Fifth Avenue, he turned toward the apartment house. He saw that there was a police cruiser parked with its lights off, half a block away. He entered the foyer of the building and searched the mail boxes. He saw that his own name had been removed from the fifth floor apartment. God, how those apartment owners must have hated Stella for dying violently on their property! He found the letter box and apartment number he sought. Bixby Glintner, Garage Attendant, 18-A.

He went around the stairs. The corridor was dimly lighted. He moved slowly to the rear of the building. At the door of 18-A, Blake hesitated. There was no light under the door. He listened with his ear against the door facing. There was no sound from within. He tried the knob.

As he’d expected, Glintner’s door was securely bolted. He stood beside it a moment, listening. There was no sound in the corridor. He grasped the knob with both hands and pulled it toward him. He drove his knee against it just under the lock and thrust away sharply at the same time. The third time, he heard the lock snap and part of the wood splintered from the door panel.

He stepped in and closed the door after him. The door would no longer stay shut. He propped a chair against it.

The windows were tightly closed. This was a two room apartment. Either Glintner was out or he cared nothing for fresh air. Blake pulled the Venetian blinds tightly closed and snapped on the light. Without knowing what he was looking for, Blake began a systematic search of Glintner’s room.

He was rewarded almost at once.

In a top dresser drawer, there were dozens of pornographic pamphlets, the half-dollar, poorly printed stories about the
Minister’s Wife, My Day in the Country
and
My City Cousin
. Then there were more cheaply made comic booklets of famous comic strip characters in the nude. What a boy, Blake thought, what a wonderful, upstanding type!

In the next small drawer, Blake found a small packet of letters. These were tied together. When he opened them, Blake found that most of them were addressed to women. And when he read them, he found out why. Glintner had stolen them. Blake had been a private snitch long enough to know about blackmailers. They were from men and Blake supposed the women were all married.

One large envelope fell out. It bore a Tampa postmark, from Sunday. All thumbs, Blake opened the envelope. The note was brief and to the point. That scrawling handwriting, Blake thought. He had seen it somewhere before. But he was too excited at the moment to remember where.

He read the note:

It was unsigned!

Glintner was trying to blackmail some man. Who?

Blake began to sweat. The whole thing was right there in the forepart of his mind, all the answer and yet it needed one more piece to be complete. His belly was empty. His hands trembled. Still holding the letter, he turned around. And then he saw the leg protruding from the far side of the bed.

Woodenly, Blake walked over and looked down.

It was Bix Glintner. The blackmailer. And he was as dead as he was ever going to be. Somebody had battered the top of his head in.

Blake moved the bed and knelt beside Glintner. One of his arms was twisted up under him. Blake turned him slightly. There was something clutched tightly in Glintner’s hand. It was a small brown package, securely tied, as though ready for mailing.

Blake stood up. His hands shaking, he ripped the cord and brown wrapping paper away. He tore the cover off the box and there it was — Stella’s missing shoe!

He would have known it anywhere. He had sat beside her when he had found her dead and wondered what had happened to that shoe. And here it was! Glintner had been in that apartment. Blake remembered the smudge on the window sill. Glintner had gone out of that window!

But Glintner had not been the only one there. This shoe proved it. Just as that letter proved it. Glintner must have gotten into the apartment before the murderer came. It had to be that way. Glintner must have been hiding in the bedroom while Stella was being beaten to death in the living room. And Glintner had stolen the shoe, meaning to trade on it for blackmail, meaning to get rich, because he had seen the man who had killed Stella!

Blake looked down at the shoe twisted in his hand. Then he looked again at the scrawling handwriting. And then his laughter was almost a sob. It was as though the dead Glintner had spoken. He had given Blake the name he sought. The name of a killer.

BLAKE SAT down on a straight chair in the murderer’s darkened bedroom. His ripped hands were bleeding. The pain was nothing beside the agony that ate at his guts. He let the blood drip on the floor. Once he shoved his hand in his coat pocket, closing his fingers over Stella’s shoe.

It seemed hours that he sat there. He let his mind go back over all of it, chewing at it, looking for holes. And knowing there were none. He had his man this time. And he had him dead to rights. He heard movement in the hall and he stiffened on the chair.

He heard Arrenhower’s arrogant voice. “Goodnight, Al. It was a good show, wasn’t it?”

“I guess so, boss. I don’t go for them dame skin shows though, the way you do.”

Arrenhower laughed. “Still brooding over the one that got away, eh, Al. Well, when the boys find him, I’ll give him to you first. How’s that, Al?”

“Thanks, boss. Well, goodnight. Sorry you missed the first part of the show. The comedian was okay.”

“I don’t care for comedians, Al. I don’t like men. I like pretty women. I like the late shows. The strippers. Anyway, I had a little business early in the evening.”

The business of killing the blackmailer, Bix Glintner? Blake asked silently inside the darkened room.

He heard the door open. A shaft of light spilled in. For a moment Arrenhower stood there, framed in the light. You could kill him now, Blake thought, and maybe escape. But that wasn’t what he wanted. He was Arrenhower’s executioner. What happened to Blake afterward didn’t matter.

Arrenhower closed the bedroom door, snapped on the light. For a moment, he stared, awestruck, at Blake sitting across the room. He started to heel about, grabbing for the doorknob. Blake spoke evenly. “Don’t do it,” he said. “I’ll kill you before White can get in here to you anyway. Either way, Arrenhower, you’re going to get it. You’ve been boasting what a man you are, let’s see you take it like a man.”

Coldly, Arrenhower turned and faced him. “How did you get in here?”

Blake smiled icily. “I got out once, remember? Well, I got back in the same way. It’s easy if you know how, Arrenhower.” He held up his ribboned, bloody hands that he’d torn on the barbed wire. “And if you don’t care what happens to you. You see, Arrenhower, I don’t care. I haven’t cared about anything since you killed Stella.”

Arrenhower’s eyes wavered. “What crazy notion is this? I didn’t even know your wife.”

“You knew her, all right. You were in Lowering’s private hospital a year ago. You meet a lot of queer ducks in a private hospital. Somebody told me that. And now I know it’s true. Stella met you there, didn’t she? While she was taking the cure? Young and beautiful. You can’t resist ’em, can you, Arrenhower? And usually, they can’t resist you. Arrenhower has millions. Arrenhower’s an old pig with arthritis, but he’s got millions.”

“All right, I met your wife. At Lowering’s. What does that prove?”

“It proves you knew her. If you knew her and she resisted you, you’d pursue her, wouldn’t you? Just what you would want after all your easy conquests — the Ybor City babes and the ones you bought with diamond rings.”

Arrenhower looked at him. “I’m sorry, you’ll have to get out of here. I’m going to bed now.”

Blake stood up. He took a step toward him. “And you’re never going to get up, Arrenhower. Not all your money nor all your goons are going to save you. It’s just me and you now, Arrenhower. And my hands about your throat. If you want to tell me why you killed her, you’d better talk fast.”

“I didn’t kill her.”

Blake’s voice flared. “Don’t lie!” In one ripped and bleeding hand, he held out the scrawled letter he had found in Glintner’s apartment. “It’s the same handwriting that I saw in Bruce Bricker’s desk drawer. You had written ‘for value received’ when you paid him ten grand to sell me out.” He flung the blood-smattered letter at Arrenhower.

He drew out Stella’s twisted shoe. “Glintner wasn’t lying when he wrote to tell you he knew you had killed Stella. Glintner was hiding in the bedroom. He stole her shoe and went out the window. After you were gone. And he was going to blackmail you. Only he didn’t know he was dealing with a killer.”

Arrenhower stepped toward the door. “Now he knows,” he said quietly. “But you don’t, Blake. Why would I want your wife dead?”

“I even know that,” Blake said hoarsely. “I didn’t know why Stella was so insistent that I give up that job in your plant. Before, she had told me she wanted me to get another job. But after I went to work spying on you, she didn’t talk about anything else. I remember thinking she was distraught on the subject. She even drank to keep from thinking about it. She knew I was working against you. And she knew you. She knew how dangerous you were.”

“That may be true. But that’s still no reason for me to kill her.”

“All right. Here it is. You tried to buy me, remember? Ten grand to leave the country. You were over there Saturday. I had gotten away from the plant on Friday night to go to Jax so I could come in to Gulf City on the train. You tried to buy Stella, didn’t you? You offered her how much, Arrenhower? How much to betray me — to set me up for you and your goons? And Stella? She couldn’t be bought — any more than I could. She threatened to tell me, meant to tell me, didn’t she? And you knew you had to kill her!”

He took another forward step. “Only you didn’t know that Glintner was up there. Why? Because he had seen you coming there when I was away. Or maybe Grueter had told him about you. And about Manley. Manley was trying to force her to repay the cost of Lowering’s hospital. Only Stella wasn’t telling me any of that because she didn’t want to worry me with her past. And Glintner thought she was right for blackmail. Only when you killed her, he thought he really had a fine one for plucking.”

He moved forward again, his hands dripping blood. “That’s how you found out about me, isn’t it, Arrenhower? You were chasing Stella. She tried to keep you away without telling me. You wondered why her husband was so seldom home, didn’t you? And the next step was to find out that I was a private investigator. It must have been quite a shock to find out I was investigating you under the name of Robert Cole, employee.”

His face was hard. “And that’s it, Arrenhower. That’s my case against you. If you want to yell for help, now’s the time to do it. It’s not going to save you. But go ahead. Yell!”

It was painful for Arrenhower to move quickly. And that would explain why the room had been wrecked before he could kill Stella. But now the man jerked around and leaped for the door. His voice came from the top of his terrorized throat. “White! Al! For God’s sake! Al! Save me!”

Blake leaped after him, feeling his hands close on Arrenhower’s throat. He dragged him back from the door. Arrenhower’s voice croaked again in terror — “Al!”

From beyond the closed door there were the sounds of many cars, police sirens and then quick staccato gunfire. But it was all vague to Blake. His hands closed on Arrenhower’s neck. He felt Arrenhower sink to his knees, heard his rasping breath as he tried to speak, pleading for his life.

Then he saw the gun that Arrenhower had fought free from his pocket. Arrenhower’s purple face was murderous. He brought the gun upward. Blake growled at him. “Pull that trigger, damn you. You’re going to die anyway. Pull it!” As he talked, his fingers tightened. He could see that it was costing Arrenhower all his strength to lift that gun and there wasn’t enough left even to trip the hair trigger.

“You killed her!” Blake wept. “And now I’ve got you. Now I’ll kill you — and nothing in the world can save you!”

Arrenhower’s eyes seemed bursting from their sockets. He was still trying to lift the gun. But it slid from his fingers and banged on the floor. At that moment the door was flung open.

His fingers still digging into Arrenhower’s fat throat, Blake looked up, willing to die, expecting to die. But it wasn’t Al White. It was Connell, the detective, and beyond him the sharp-featured old maid, Ada Grueter.

“That’s him!” She wailed at Connell. She pointed an accusing finger at the strangling Arrenhower. “He used to come to see her all the time. And he’s the one who slipped into Bixby Glintner’s room and killed him. I know. I was standing hidden in the hall, waiting for Bixby to come out — I just wanted to look at him. Now I never will!”

Connell leaped forward and grasped Blake’s hands, ripping them away from Arrenhower’s throat.

“Let me alone!” Blake screamed. This was the man who laughed at senators and told congressmen when to breathe This was the man who believed he could buy anyone in the world he wanted; he only had to find the price. Here was Arrenhower who could have any woman in the world he wanted. But had wanted the only one he couldn’t have, couldn’t get and couldn’t buy. He wanted Stella until it became a mania. Until the mania drove him wild, until he couldn’t let her live, knowing she was laughing at him, knowing she couldn’t be bought. Knowing that she was good and that she belonged to a guy named Steve Blake. His voice broke and he sobbed. “I’m going to kill him.”

Connell wasn’t quiet any more. He wasn’t patient. His voice rasped. “You are going to kill him, Blake,” he said. He pulled Steve away from the gasping man on the floor. Arrenhower’s mouth was open. He was breathing like a fish out of water. “But you’re going to do it through the law, Blake. Arrenhower broke most all the laws and got away with them, but not this time. You don’t need to take the law into your hands. We’ve rounded up Arrenhower’s goons. And we’ve got a case against him. You’ve nothing more to worry about. A lot to forget, but that’s all. And you can do that if you’ll get out of here now and get back to that girl over there.”

Blake looked at him. Gradually his breathing subsided. He looked down at Arrenhower on the floor. His shoulders straightened. He nodded. He stepped over Arrenhower without even looking at him again and went out through the door, along the hall, down the stairs. His steps quickened. By the time he reached the gravel drive, Blake was running.

THE END.