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

The lad on the sill swivels his head around; it is Meyer Levinson. How he managed to get his six-feet-three skeleton out on that narrow ledge I cannot figure, but the desperate grimness of his big, ugly mouth and the frantic light in his sad, blue eyes tells me he is not pulling a phony. His bald head is shining with sweat and his big bat-ears and that cerise scarf he has on makes him look like a scarecrow in a cornfield. He is way off balance, now; only the grip of his bony hands on the sill keep him from joining the obituaries.

Amend, the hotel manager, makes a rush for the window; I stick out a shoe and trip him so he takes a header.

“Leave him alone,” I growl. “Mister Levinson knows what he is doing.”

Levinson squints at me suspiciously. “Larry,” he says, and has to wet his lips with his tongue before he can say anymore, “Larry’s gone.”

“Not yet,” I stretch a point. “You ought to see him, before he goes.” I couldn’t be sure if he had been key-holing on 803 and knew Del Grave was cold meat. “Unless you’re afraid.”

“Afraid?” He looks blank for a second. “Yes. I’m afraid. But not of that.” He indicates the hundred foot drop an inch behind his heels.

“Of course not,” I mutter. It gives me queer sensation in the middle of my appetite just to think about that dizzy drop, but I have to stooge for him, don’t I? Here is one of the greatest musical geniuses in the land and a very popular person, too, getting ready to smear himself over the sidewalk. “You ought to be careful about who’s below. You wouldn’t want to hurt anybody.”

“No,” he agrees and turns to look down. I am waiting for this and I take a sprint start and lunge for his scrawny neck. He hears me coming and nearly topples off trying to wriggle out of my reach. But I hook my fingers onto that wacky cerise necktie and brace myself. Levinson waves his arms around like a windmill; I make a stab and hang onto a wrist.

He comes in off the sill, flopping like a fish on a river bank. And a forty-five automatic spills out of his hip-pocket to the carpet.

I pick it up by the smoky end, use my handkerchief to cover the butt while I investigate. There is one empty case in the magazine; by the smell of the muzzle, the heater has been used within an hour. Unless I am badly off center, this is what the newspapers will term “the lethal weapon.”

Levinson picks himself up, wearily; goes over to the bed and sits on it. Amend is twittering around like a damned sparrow, wanting to know why Levinson tries to give his hotel a bad reputation, where Del Grave is; so on and forth.

I wrap the automatic up for Exhibit A.

“Yours?” I don’t have to ask; I can see the answer in the composer’s eyes.

“Mine. And it’s the one Larry was shot with.”

“Oh. You didn’t jerk the trigger?”

He shakes his head.

“Who did?”

He does a ditto on the headshake. Amend is getting white around the gills as he realizes there is a murdered man practically under his nose.

“The killer’s finger-prints will be on it, Mister Levinson. It’s only a matter of hours before we know. Might as well take it the easy way.”

“Mine,” he mumbles. “My prints. They’ll be on it. That’s all.”

‘“If someone else had this forty-five in his hand, his prints will be on it, too. Under yours in spots, naturally. But good enough to take off, in other places. You might save a lot of trouble if you put a name to him.”

The muscles of Levinson’s jaw are all knotted up; his lips are bloodless, he is pressing them together so hard.

“You’ll have to be held as an accessory,” I get up and motion him to go out in the hall. “And we’ll pick up Zara in an hour or so.”

“It wasn’t—” he snaps out and then thinks better of it.

“Oh, then it was Hipper Dipper, huh?”

The musician marches into 803 without another word. He keeps his eyes away from the corner where Del Grave was lying before I lugged him into the lavatory. Miss Marsh is as astonished to see him as he is to find her there, but they do not say anything to each other.

I go over to the Louse, who looks as if he has been sleeping on a junk pile for a week. I hand him my Police Positive. “Keep an eye on this bird, boss. Don’t let him get close to a window; he might fly away. I’m going hunting for Harry Frinkey.”

“Frinkey?” The manager was hopping up and down with rage at the condition of 803, but even more excited at the thought of harboring a homicide suspect. “Did you say Frinkey? I checked in a Mister Frinkey tonight. In 705.”

“No fooling.” Imagine a stupe who has the most humorous man in the world in his hotel and does not even recognize him! “Let’s truck down to the seventh floor.”

Before I depart, I frisk Levinson. The heavy winner has no important money on him, anywhere.

When Amend and I get to the door, the dancer chirps:

“If you feel like jumping out the win-down, Meyer, I’ll be glad to open it for you.”