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

On the other hand, if I stall too long, somebody will be sending the riot squad around. So I whisper to the boss:

“Play stinko, quick. You’re as stewed as the spuds in a Dublin dinner. Holler at me; gimme the Bronx razoo, but make it sound as if you meant it and keep it going.”

The Louse nods that he understands. He has been coming through the rye pretty fast anyway and that helps. He begins to bawl me out in very untidy language. He calls a spade a dirty so-and-so of a shovel, with mud on it.

Then I grab the stiff by the shoulders and drag him into the bathroom and leave him there with his head propped up against a porcelain pedestal. I pull the dancing dollie up on her feet:

“Get this, sister. If the lug outside that door sniffs any real trouble in here, you are in a very blue spot. Your husband has been shot; no one knows who did it. You have a gun; you’re up here at a stag party where you’ve no business to be. Think what a Sunday supplement editor could do with that!”

She is scared, all right. I can see the whites of her eyes all around the pupils while I am firing this at her. I don’t stop to explain that I am more concerned about putting the cuffs on Del Grave’s murderer than in saving his widow from a scandal, but I am pressed for time. The guy outside the door is doing everything but use a battering ram.

“What’ll I do? Hide?” She starts for the closet.

“No-no-no,” I say, very soft so no one could hear me above the Louse’s fine, steady stream of cursing. “Go into your song and dance. You didn’t mean to stir up a rumpus between us; you didn’t know the Louse was so jealous; you think I’m not worth his little finger. Spread it on thick. But keep buzzing around the Louse. Let me handle the visiting fireman.”

I put on my Dempsey scowl, unlock the door, open it and snarl, “Whatsa idea alla racket out here?”

The dapper little man at the threshold is about to have kittens; his mustache is quivering with rage and his beady little eyes are hot with indignation.

“We’ve had complaints of shooting,” he squeaks.

“You’ve had complaints!” I plant my dukes on my hips and stand straddle-legged in the doorway, blocking him from seeing too much of the shambles. “You oughta be thankful if that’s all you had. I’m coming down with a bad case of leaping meemies, trying to keep them from setting fire to the joint. Those two are cuckoo.”

Behind me Miss Marsh and the Louse are laying it on thick and fast; he is working back to my distant ancestry and she is alternately pleading with him to forget everyone but her and explaining that I got her up there under false pretenses!

“We don’t allow this sort of thing.” The little man stands on tiptoe to look over my shoulder.

“That’s a niftie, mister! I wouldn’t allow it, either, if I could get rid of the kilkenny cats. Who are you?”

He produces a pasteboard saying he is Milton J. Amend, assistant manager, Hotel Metropole. I read it, reach out and pump his hand.

“You may be a manager to your owners,” I clap him on the back as if I was a shill at a street pitch, “but you’re a life-saver to me. Help me stagger the unkdray into his room.”

He is still trying to twist his neck in a knot so he can see into 803 while I am giving him the bum’s rush to 801.

I have been honing to get in the adjoining room of the suite ever since I find the bathroom door locked on the 801 side. Because it is a cinch that somebody left, through that bathroom, after Del Grave got burned down. Otherwise the light in the lavatory would have been on, when I crashed in the room. The Louse certainly left it on when he came out and one will get you fifty if he put it out as he was going down for the count.

So I figure someone is still in 801; there is a chance all three of the missing are using it for a hide-out. Except for a couple of minutes after the canary got hysterical, I could have seen anybody who tried to get out of 801.

“You have a pass key, Mister Amend? That’s the ticket! Open her up and I’ll toss this slap-happy in bed and let him doze it off.”

The manager isn’t quite sure about it but I am keeping up a line of chatter and standing close behind him so he can’t get back to 803.

He is expecting 801 to be dark and empty; he must get quite a jolt when he gets the door open. There is a man in his shirt-sleeves, crouching on the window ledge, getting ready to take off on an eight-story jump and I don’t notice any parachute strapped to his back.

I am too far away to take him and I have a limited experience with people who like to go against the law of gravity. But I don’t have to be a brain to realize that the only way to stop this suicide is to get his mind off himself long enough to let one of us put the clamps on him. So I holler, “Del Grave, Del Grave!” as loud as I can.