The Collection (108 page)

"It what?"

"I said crochets. For a hobby. But it's a mocking bird
for a vocation. But, I'm not going to explain everything over the phone. If you
want to make twelve bucks, come on over."

McCracken gasped. "Twelve bucks? Listen, Cap, they
didn't transfer you to the narcotic squad and put you testing samples, did
they? What do you mean, twelve bucks?"

"Okay, don't come then," Zehnder said stiffly.
"That's all the money, in cash, he's got. But maybe you can blackmail him
for more if you get him off. He'll have a salary check coming from the theatre,
if they don't fire him."

"But holy cow, Cap, I can't handle a murder
investigation for a twelve buck advance. What's it about? Who'd he kill?"

"Don't you read the papers? Story's in the
Morning
Blade.
Of course, if you haven't got three cents--"

"Okay, okay! Save your breath to cool your soup. I'll
drop around and see what the guy looks like."

"Fine, Mack. Listen, Jerold Bell's coming over to see
him, too. I told him to stop by and pick you up. Thought I'd save you cab-fare
or a walk."

"Bell?" echoed McCracken. "Oh, the insurance
guy.I remember him. Where's he figure in?"

"He insured the ring," Zehnder explained.
"It's in the papers. Buy one, and I'll refund your three cents."
There was a click in the receiver.

McCracken took his hat from the bottom drawer of his desk,
and put it on his head. He'd wait for Bell in the lobby and read the newspaper
meanwhile.

He looked at his reflection in the mirror of the elevator
and wondered if he'd been a triple-dyed sap to quit a paying job for a gamble
on being his own boss. Six months ago, he'd been drawing down a paycheck every
week, and no overhead to worry about. And this morning, he'd had a cup of
coffee for breakfast, instead of the ham and eggs he usually ate.

Twelve bucks would buy a lot of ham and eggs. He hoped
Zehnder hadn't guessed how badly he needed that twelve bucks.

The elderly walrus at the cigar counter was waiting on
another customer, and McCracken fished up the contents of his pockets and
looked at them. There was a folder of matches, three keys, and two pennies in
cash, one of which was Canadian.

He shoved his hand back into his pocket, as the walrus
turned.

"Morning Blade,
George,"
said McCracken. He grinned engagingly. "Got a case today, George! So
don't let the credit worry you. I'll be back in the money soon. Give me a pack
of cigarettes, too."

"That's fine, Mr. McCracken," said George.
"But if you're working, how come you can't pay--"

"Don't quibble, George. I'm going over now to pick up
my retainer. I'll pay you this afternoon."

The walrus looked at him darkly, and then passed the cigarettes
across the counter. McCracken had meanwhile picked up the top newspaper from
the pile alongside the cash register.

The
banner line read: "Italians Suffer New Reverses." That wouldn't be
it. "President Vetoes --" No. But there was two-column head at one
side halfway down the page. It read:

SLIMJIM
LEE MURDERED, ROBBED

The walrus had followed the direction of his gaze.
"Say, is that the case you're gonna work on, Mr. McCracken?" he
asked, and there was respect in his tone of voice.

McCracken's eyes caught the words "Mocking Bird"
in the second paragraph. He nodded absently, continuing to read.

"Golly," said the walrus. "Reckon whoever's
hiring you has all kinds of dough, then. Slimjim used to be the biggest bookie
in town. And the way he sometimes threw money around . . . You stick 'em for
plenty, young feller."

"Mmmm," said McCracken, and started to add that
you couldn't throw money around the way Slimjim Lee had thrown it, and still
have much left, and that the big-shot gambler was reputed to be broke. Anyway,
he wasn't working for Slimjim's heirs, if any.

Then he closed his mouth again. The way the walrus was looking
at him awakened new possibilities.

"Say, George," he said, "I'm short of cash
until I get that retainer. Let me have a buck and put it on my account, will
you?"

"Sure, Mr. McCracken." The walrus rang up
"No Sale" on the register and passed over a bill from the drawer. He
made a notation on a slip of paper on the ledge.

"Makes it eleven dollars and--no, twelve dollars
even." McCracken winced slightly. "Thanks, George," he said, and
moved a few steps away to lean against the wall, while he studied the article
in the
Blade.
It was quite brief--understandable as the murder had been
discovered only half an hour before deadline of the
Blade's
final
edition.

Slimjim Lee, whose real name was James Rogers Lee, had met
his death probably between midnight and three A.M., although the body had not
been discovered until four-thirty. Autopsy might determine the time of death
more closely.

His body had been found in the visiting parlor of a
theatrical rooming house on Vermont Street. He had been killed, presumably, by
a long slender needle called a crocheting needle in one part of the story and a
knitting needle in another paragraph. It had been thrust into his heart.

He was known to have been wearing, shortly prior to the
murder, his famous ring with the huge solitaire diamond for which he was
reputed to have paid six thousand dollars. His billfold was found empty.
Undoubtedly, according to the police, robbery had been the motive, and the
solitaire diamond the principal objective of the murderer.

Mr. Lee, according to the newspaper article, had been a
close friend of Perley Essington, who roomed at the house in question, and was
a frequent visitor at the Vermont street address. Perley Essington was a
vaudeville performer specializing in whistling and bird imitations, and he was
billed as "The Mocking Bird" on the Bijou's current bill.

Harry Lake, another vaudevillian and inmate of the rooming
house, had seen Slimjim Lee enter the house at around midnight, and had assumed
he was calling on Perley Essington.

Another vaudevillian and roomer, one LaVarre LaRoque, a dancer,
had discovered the body when she came in at four-thirty in the morning. She had
opened the parlor door when she had noticed a crack of light under it.

McCracken read the story for the third time, and was
putting the paper in his pocket, when he saw Jerold Bell coming through the
revolving door into the lobby.

"Hi, Mack," Jerry greeted him. "Haven't seen
you since you left the force. Have a quick one before we go see our fine
feathered friend?"

Over a Scotch-and-soda, McCracken asked:

"You're in this because Continental insured the ring?
How much was it really worth, Jerry?"

"He
paid four thousand for it," Bell said. "I doubt if it could be sold
now for over two and a half. Openly, I mean. As stolen
property,
whoever has it will be lucky to get a thousand. It's insured, incidentally, for
two thousand."

McCracken nodded. "Cap Zehnder said you sold the
policy. How come? I thought you handled only investigations for
Continental."

"Ordinarily, yes. But in cases where unusual factors
influence the amount of the premiums, I generally get called in. The regular
salesman gets a cut, too, but turns the closing over to me and I help advise
the amount of the premium."

"And what was unusual about this policy?"

Bell grimaced. "Just that Lee insisted on wearing that
rock twenty-four hours a day, which made the risk much greater than is
ordinarily the case with jewelry that valuable. Most people keep their stuff in
safes or vaults, and wear it on special occasions. And then there was his
occupation to consider, of course. A gambler, who goes to all the places a
gambler goes to, and associates with the kind of people--well, I had to talk
the company into issuing the policy at all."

"Leaving you out on a limb, now that the ring is
gone?" McCracken grinned. "Any chance that Slimjim might have sold
the ring himself?"

"Not an earthly one," Bell said. "That ring
was his luck, he thought. He'd have sold his shirt and shoes first. I've sat in
on games with him, and knew him well enough to be positive of that."

"Ever met this Perley Essington?"

Jerry Bell nodded. "Wait until you see him, Mack. A
crackpot of the first water. I never thought he'd pull anything like this--if
he really did. Cap Zehnder says he has him cold, but I don't know what the
evidence is."

"How well you know him?" McCracken asked.

The insurance man laughed. "A month ago, he wanted to
take out an insurance policy on--believe it or not, Mack--on his whistle! How
could you insure a whistle? That was when he first got his engagement at the
Bijou. He'd been 'at liberty' for a long time before that. I think Slimjim
loaned him money to live on."

"You didn't issue the policy?"

"Heck, no. I saw him a few times and pretended to give
it consideration only because he was a friend of Lee's. I wanted to keep Slimjim's
good will, and that meant I had to go easy with Perley."

At Headquarters, they found Zehnder alone in his office. He
barked an order into his desk phone.

"I'm having your Mocking Bird sent up here," he
said. "If you want to talk to him in private before you go, Mack, you can
do that in his cell when we send him back. Okay?"

McCracken nodded. "Sure. It won't matter, if he's
innocent. And if he's guilty, I don't want it."

Zehnder chuckled. "Then I'm afraid you're out twelve
bucks."

"Any news on the ring?" Bell asked.

The captain shook his head, but before he could add to the
negation, the door opened.

A fat little man, whose head was as devoid of hair as a
banister knob, came in. A uniformed turnkey was behind him, but stepped back
into the hall and closed the door from the outside when the captain signalled
to him.

"Mack," said Zehnder, "this is Perley
Essington. Your client, maybe. You said you already know him, Bell?"

McCracken put out his hand and shook the pudgy, moist one
of the little bird imitator.

"Tell me about it, Mr. Essington," he said.
"All I know now is what I read in the paper."

The little man beamed at him. "I saw the paper,"
he said. "It's right as far as it goes. I wasn't home when Jim Lee came
there at midnight."

"How do you know he came at midnight, then?"
asked Zehnder.

Tim McCracken frowned at the captain. "Tut, tut, Cap.
It says so in the paper. Don't you read the
Blade?
Or haven't you got
three cents?" He turned back to the vaudevillian. "Where were you at
midnight, Mr. Essington?"

"Call me Perley, Mr. McCracken," the actor said.
"Why, at midnight, I was just walking. After the show I went for a walk in
the park. It was a warm night, and I didn't get home until about two o'clock. I
didn't know Jim was coming around last night."

"See anyone you knew while you were out?"
McCracken asked.

"Nope." Essington shook his head. "And
you'll ask next if I stopped in anywhere. I didn't. I sat on a park bench for
awhile and listened to a nightingale. I had a sort of conversation with him.
Like this."

He pursed his lips, and suddenly the little room was filled
with a sweet, lilting melody. The clear notes throbbed to silence. McCracken
saw that Jerold Bell, who was standing behind Perley's chair, was grinning at
him.

McCracken cleared his throat. "Say, that's good,
Perley. You that good on other birds?"

"Better," said the little man complacently.
"On some, even the birds can't tell the difference. On the stage, I'm a
wow. And I have a line of patter with the whistling that knocks them out of
their seats and rolls them in the aisles. Just last week, the manager was
telling me that I was the greatest--"

"That's fine," interrupted McCracken. "But
let's get back to Slimjim Lee. How well did you know him?"

The look that had been in Perley's eyes while he talked of
the stage faded to awareness of the present.

"Very well," he told them. "I guess he was
just about my best friend, and vice versa. Yes, I know most people
think--thought--it was funny, because Jim and I are--were--so completely
different. But I guess that was why we liked each other."

"You saw him often?"

"He came to see me two-three times a week. Generally
after the evening show. We'd play chess or whistle until nearly morning."

"Whistle? Late at night?"

"Sure. He liked whistling. But he couldn't very well,
and I was teaching him how. He just couldn't get the knack of it."

"But didn't the other roomers--"

"Not in a place like that, Mack," Jerry Bell cut
in. "They're all slightly nuts. It's liberty hall. Last time I was there, there
were acrobats jumping off the banister at four o'clock in the morning. Slimjim
took me there after a game."

Zehnder nodded. "Yeah, I've been there," he said,
"and I'd believe anything. We picked up a guy there a month ago."