Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 104, No. 4, August 22, 1936

“He didn’t, from what I gathered, although he hated to admit it. But the tramp did, and tried to commit suicide this morning when he realized what he’d done, they just stopped him in the nick of time. Then when the constable asked him what he’d tried it for, he told him, thinking the constable knew all along.”

“Nuts!” somebody said. “It’s enough to make a guy want to resign!”

“Don’t worry, I’m keeping it from the press if I possibly can,” he agreed. He gave out a couple of petty-larceny assignments, then turned and asked me: “Well, Dokes, you got any eyesight left after the way you’ve been going after that modus operandi file?”

I grinned shamefacedly and asked him if he had anything in line for me.

“Not right this minute,” he said.

“Okay if I chase over to St. Thomas’ Church, then, Chief?” I asked. “It’s my kid sister’s wedding-day, she’s getting married at five, and I’m supposed to stand up for the guy.”

“By all means,” he said heartily. “Give her my best, and see that you bring us back a piece of the cake.”

They all laughed and Leftwich, putting on his hat to start out after the Blaney murderer, said: “I’ll take mine inside of a bottle!”

Chapter II Terror in the Files

I beat it home to put on a stiff collar and my best blue serge, and found the place turned upside-down with all kinds of female goings-on, just like before any wedding. The kid was standing there in the middle of our parlor with about six miles of cheesecloth around her, looking pretty as an angel, and the old lady was down on her knees with a mouthful of pins — but able to talk just the same! — and the old man was pie-eyed in the kitchen, having a lone-wolf celebration. They shooed me out ahead to go over and wait at the church with the groom, and I shoved a flat bottle of rye into my back pocket and took it with me to see us both through.

I found this guy Hilton pacing back and forth in his room and just about as nervous as any guy would be before his marriage. “Gee!” he groaned, “I thought you were going to stand me up!” His collar had melted, and I helped him on with a new one, and we each had two-fingers of, his own liquor, so I didn’t have to open the bottle I’d brought over. I didn’t tell him about the Blaney case cracking, and that otherwise I probably wouldn’t have been able to show up, because it didn’t seem right to talk about a thing like that on his wedding-day.

I didn’t know him very well at all; he’d only started coming to the house the past month or so, although the kid had first met him six months before. She was dippy about him, naturally, and the old man and woman seemed to think pretty highly of him too, so that was good enough for me. He seemed to be a decent enough sort — “a perfect gentleman” was the way the old lady put it — and he was apparently drawing good wages at some kind of white-collar job or other. I’d been meaning to ask him what line he was in, and hadn’t gotten around to it somehow. I hadn’t had much time off, hadn’t been home much, since that damn Blaney thing had started up — but I took it for granted the old folks knew all there was to know about him. Leave it to the old lady when it came to getting information out of anybody! So I slapped him on the back, said “Buck up, Hilton, it can only happen to you once!” and we started out for the church. He kind of laughed as we got in the cab and said, “I guess you may a well start calling me Frank from today on.”

It was a very touching sight, to see that pretty little kid and him kneeling there side by side in front of the altar, with soft light falling on them through a strained-glass window from above, and tapers gleaming, and the scent of flowers in the air, and the holy father murmuring “—until death do ye part,” and a gold ring twinkling and a soft kiss being exchanged. My own lousy racket seemed to belong in another world; crime seemed very far away from here.

After it was over I went up and pecked at her, and her eyes were wet and she said, “You’ll come and see me real soon, won’t you, Ritchie?” Then they all crowded around her, like they do, and Hilton was left out of it for a minute. So I grabbed him by the arm and said, “Come on, let’s duck into one of the side-rooms here and have a quick bracer before you leave — I’ve got a bottle with me.” A few of the other fellows came with us, old beaux of the kid’s, but none of his own friends; matter of fact, none of them seemed to be at the church at all, but that didn’t occur to me at the time.

We all ducked into a little place banked with flowers, and I took out the bottle and tried to dig the foil off the neck with my nails. “Who’s got a knife?” I asked, and one of the guys opened a penknife and passed it to me. I sliced the foil off all right, but went too heavy on it and opened the ball of my thumb. It wasn’t anything to speak of, but it flooded red right away—