Black Mask (Vol. 22, No. 2 — Mary 1939)

“As a matter of fact,” Quade went on, “Stanley Maynard, who was a cartoonist on the Waterloo Morning News some years ago, drew a little comic strip about a St. Bernard dog who was called Desmond Dogg. The strip didn’t go over very well. When he left the News, Maynard got a release from the paper and tried to peddle the strip to a syndicate. They didn’t take it on. Probably because Maynard wasn’t such a good cartoonist and his ideas weren’t so hot.

“But when you got going good out here in Hollywood, Maynard submitted his Desmond Dogg to you, Slocum. You bought it from him.”

“Nothing wrong about that,” said Slocum. “I bought all rights to Desmond Dogg. I put him across. I gave Maynard a job at a big salary. He didn’t complain.”

“Not until recently. He didn’t know that a... a party somehow got the contract in which he signed Desmond Dogg over to you.”

Slocum sighed, wearily. “All right, Quade, if you’ve got to have it all. I wasn’t so prosperous five years ago. I got into a roulette game over in Willie Higgins’ club and lost a pile of dough. I gave the contract to Willie Higgins. That is, I signed over a transfer to him.” Slocum paused. “Of course, it was a gambling debt,” he smiled nervously, mopped at sweat, “and Willie agreed to keep the whole thing quiet until I could buy the contract back. Meanwhile, he went to jail.”

Quade held up his hand. “Let me tell the rest, Mr. Slocum. You transferred the contract to Willie. But Willie was no slouch. He made it very legal. He had witnesses, and a notary public. There was nothing mentioned about it having been a gambling debt.”

Slocum said, “I—”

“Take it easy,” Quade snapped. “All of this comes around into a nice little pattern and I’d like to round it out while it’s hot. When Willie got out of jail he still had the contract. You hadn’t bought it back. So he sold it to Maynard for fifty thousand dollars. All legal and everything. Maynard in turn put the bee on you. He was going to sue you and take over your business, now that he had the contract.”

“He was suing for a cool million,” Buck offered.

“Sure,” Quade said, “and you, Slocum, you were holding out, rather futilely, against Maynard. Your only action was based on the ground that the contract had gone to Willie on a gambling debt. And gambling debts in California are illegal. Therefore, you said a court would figure the contract was still yours. That threw Maynard for a while. But Willie had cinched the contract with a notary and witnesses. If Maynard could produce these, prove the contract was not transferred as a gambling debt, he would win the suit against you. But the transfer to Willie was old, so Maynard hired Chris Buck to find the notary Willie had, and the witnesses. They had scattered out, couldn’t be located. That’s the way things stood when Maynard was killed. Naturally, it looked as though you had done it, Mr. Slocum.”

“But, I—”

“No, you didn’t kill him,” Quade smiled. “I’ve done a little digging around. Since you aren’t guilty of murder there’s no point in my exposing any of the more sordid details of your life at this inquest. I won’t mention the names of the women and all, but the fact was that Paul Clevenger was blackmailing you. Isn’t that true?”

Slocum blanched. “I — yes.”

“He knew a lot about you. From Waterloo, and here in Hollywood. He’d been in town longer than he claimed.”

“It’s a damned lie!” Clevenger shouted.

“It isn’t,” Slocum snapped, “and you know it isn’t. I have your correspondence to prove it!”

Chris Buck grabbed Clevenger. The kid’s face was white, his eyes dilated.

“Well, there it is,” said Quade. “Clevenger had Slocum lined up for a cinch shake-down. For how many thousands I don’t know. That’s immaterial. What’s important is this: Clevenger knew that if Maynard won his suit against Slocum — and Maynard couldn’t help win it once the witnesses were found — Slocum would be stony broke. He wouldn’t have the dough to pay off a blackmail shake-down. In a nutshell, Clevenger would be out of luck. So he killed Maynard, hoping to squelch the whole thing, or at least to stop it long enough so that he could collect from Slocum. Clevenger was broke. His old man had turned him out. The kid was pretty desperate and—”

“Let me at that guy!” Clevenger screamed. “Let me at that son of a—”

Buck hit Clevenger in the mouth. The kid recoiled, put his hand to his lips, looked at the blood on his fingers. Then he seemed to collapse like a deflated balloon. He nodded his head, looked longingly at Thelma, then dropped his eyes again. The girl just stared at him.

Quade concluded: “As for Willie — he was a little stir-whacky. When Maynard was bumped, he figured the contract reverted to him. He was trying to shake half a million out of Slocum for it on sheer bluff.”

Murdock snapped cuffs on Clevenger’s wrists. Clevenger roared helplessly when Thelma put her hand on Slocum’s arm.

Buck said, “Nuts,” and strode out.