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

The room is dark, but with the light behind me I can see someone sidling along the wall at my left. I reach for the light switch and somebody smashes a chair over my head. I duck just in time to save a fractured skull; with the same movement I take a flying tackle into the dark.

I crash into this punk I can’t see, but I feel him, take my say-so. We hit the floor together with the busted pieces of the chair. I whale away at him with the muzzle of my gun instead of pulling the trigger, because there is always a chance in mix-ups like this that the lad who boffs me thinks I am a hijacker instead of a guard.

Anyhow, my sock doesn’t do him much damage because he slugs me over the head again — this time a glancing blow with a beer bottle. That makes me sore. I yank his feet out from underneath him, pin him against the wall and hook a solid left to where his chin ought to be. It must have been his mouth, because I cut three knuckles and feel some teeth give; I am getting ready to send in my Sunday punch when something clips me behind the ear like a hammer and I fall flat on my face.

I am not quite out, because I can hear dim sounds way off in the distance and I sort of sense someone using me for a doormat and doing a fast exit. When my ears quit ringing and the fireworks stop exploding in my brain, I stumble to my feet and put the lights on.

The room looks like something a bomb has been dropped on; table overturned, glasses smashed, bottles broken, chairs wrecked and two corpses stretched out stiff on the floor.

At least I think they are both dead, but a quick once-over shows me that my boss is unconscious but alive and that the other guy is conscious but nearly checked out. I have never seen this Larry Del Grave before, though he is the biggest drawing card on Broadway and his profile is familiar enough to me, from the newspaper pictures.

Maybe he is supposed to be handsome in the role of the Great Seducer, but he isn’t much to peer at now lying all twisted up on his side and groaning his guts out. The slick blond hair is all unstuck and the effect of the toothpaste teeth in the suntanned face is sort of spoiled by his contorted features.

He looks as if he is grinning, but I figure he can’t feel so ha-ha on account of the bullet hole that had torn open the knot of his fancy four-in-hand and made his breathing sound like a cross between a kid blowing soap bubbles and a peanut-vendor’s whistle.

I am wrong, though. He is laughing like crazy at some terrific gag. He looks up at me with his eyes kind of squinting as if he is trying hard to understand something that puzzles him. I lift him up, not that it is going to do him any good.

“Huh, ha,” he burbles. “You can... tell ’em... the old one—” he gasps and whistles for air.

“What old one?” I ask him, feeling a bit queer playing straight-man to a dying actor.

He chuckles again, as if he is giggling and gargling at the same time. “The old one, you remember.” It’s a wrench for him to finish. “I didn’t... know it... was loaded.”

Let me wise you, there’s nothing funny about watching a man laugh himself to death!

The final spasm leaves him with a grimace like that clown that sings the solo while his heart is breaking. Blood is drooling, drop by drop, from the corner of his mouth, and it is the only thing that moves in all of room 803.

I pull myself together after making sure his breath doesn’t leave any moisture on the back of my watch. The first thing I naturally look for is a gun, but the only one on the premises is in my own hand.

On the floor, in a corner where they had fallen when the table had tipped over, are a couple of leopard cubes, but there is positively no currency in sight anywhere.

Now the Louse does not operate a game without plenty of folding money on the cloth, so I figure there is something screwy. A kill like Del Grave’s, with everybody taking a powder in a hurry, does not seem like a legitimate hold-up, if you can call it that.

I take a quick gander in the closet to make sure no one is lurking about to hang another clout on top of the headache I already have; then I grab the phone and ask for Mike Rubin.

Mike is the snoop-shoe who keeps the Metropole’s good name untarnished by demanding to see the license after the bellhop reports a couple have checked in with a suit-case full of old phone books. He is no Einstein, but smart enough.

“Mike,” I say. “This is Vince Mallie in 803.”

“What goes on, pal?” he growls back, hoping nothing has happened to break up his three ayem nap on the mezzanine.

“Nothing to call out the reserves for. You might put a collar on any cluck who seems anxious to get out of the hotel minus his benny or topper. Just do that and don’t run a fever and I’ll tell you all about it later.”

I’d seen the polo coats and chesterfields still hanging in the closet, as well as a shelf full of assorted felts and shinies; it was a cold night and anybody trying to scram out in a tuxedo would look a little silly.