Black Mask (Vol. 7, No. 5 — April 1950), British Edition

The woman took her face from the handkerchief. She looked at the boy and it seemed to me that there was red rage in her eyes. She said in a low, hoarse voice, “You fool. You utter damned fool.”

The boy blinked and blushed. Mrs. Abbott opened her bag, withdrew a cigarette case. I pulled my head back and groped in my pocket for a cigarette of my own. I furrowed my brow. The Graham brain went into action. I was gestating one hell of an idea.

A little later Sackler emerged from the bedroom. He didn’t look happy and he didn’t answer me when I inquired if he’d discovered anything. He walked silently down the stairs.

Wolfe was still in the hallway sitting by the telephone. Sackler halted before him. He said, “What’s all that disorder in the bedroom? Who frisked the joint?”

“Parry. Obviously. Before he scrammed.”

“Why obviously?”

“He needed dough. It figures easily enough. He had a fight with her. He killed her. He needed cash to make a getaway. So he went through his wife’s bureau looking for money. Or maybe he took her jewels. We’re trying to check on that now.”

Judging from the expression on Sackler’s face this theory didn’t impress him much. He grunted and went out into the street. We returned to the office where we spent a quiet afternoon.

Sackler sat brooding at his desk. I didn’t know whether he was actually trying to figure where Parry might be or brooding about the fact that he couldn’t get his hands on the ten G’s reward money.

Anyway, I wasn’t too interested. I was busily engaged on a mastermind of my own. When I’d forced Sackler to agree to pay me ninety percent of the fee earned on a case which I broke myself, I never had any idea of collecting. My principal aim had been to cut myself in for the ten percent on the items Sackler cracked himself.

But now I had an idea. I knew something Sackler didn’t know. Something which might well lead me to Parry’s trail. Something which would toss the whole case in my own little lap. The concept of this happening, of me holding on to nine grand and handing Sackler ten percent was the most beautiful thought I’d had in years.

Sackler hadn’t heard what the Abbott dame had said to Arthur Parry; he hadn’t seen her face when she’d said it. But I had and it impressed me. It convinced me that whatever she may have been weeping about it wasn’t her dead pal, Agatha Parry.

And I recalled something else. Only yesterday Sackler had said that Parry would probably be found if he didn’t have a girl, that all these runaways who had girls wrote to them, sent them addresses.

I began adding two and two like mad. After a while I came up with a sum.

If the Abbott woman had not been weeping for her old pal, Agatha Parry, who had she been upset about? Parry, himself? It certainly figured that way. And if she was weeping about Parry, it followed that she was fond of him. And fond seemed a mild word. Suppose that Parry intended to send for her after he’d lammed?

Well, Sackler, himself, had given me the answer to that one. It meant that Parry would keep in touch with her, that he’d send her his address. And if I could get that address it would put nine G’s in my pocket and break Sackler’s avaricious little heart.

I left the office early, went home to my furnished room, lay down on the bed and summoned every brain cell into action. As I reconstructed what had happened it all became clear.

Parry, doubtless, had decided to leave his wife, then send for the Abbott woman. He had consulted Sackler to make sure Mrs. Parry wouldn’t be able to track him down. Somehow, his wife had learned of his plans at the last minute, they’d quarrelled, and he’d killed her. The Abbott dame was upset because Parry was a murderer, not because Agatha Parry was dead. It figured perfectly. And if I could somehow get Campbell Parry’s address from La Abbott I was in.

I got off the bed and dressed myself in my best clothes. I decided to call on Abbott, tell her what I knew, point out the coppers would surely get Parry sooner or later and it would be much better for all concerned if he surrendered to me personally. I could pretend an influence in the D.A.’s office which I didn’t have and swear I could fix it so he could cop a plea.

I went out into the night, looked up Abbott’s address in the phone book and climbed down into the subway.

An hour later, I returned home disconsolately. I had got exactly nowhere. A fat and formidable maid had opened the door of the Abbott’s apartment. She viewed me with no enthusiasm whatever and informed me that Mrs. Abbott was in bed and unwell, that she would see no one at all.

My argument that my visit was a matter of life, death and several other vital things got me nothing. I considered bribing the maid to let me see Abbott’s mail before she got it, but one look at her grim, forbidding face forced me to discard that brilliant idea.