The Case of the Jeweled Ragpicker Read online

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  DEDICATION

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 1948 by Harry Stephen Keeler. All rights reserved.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC.

  www.wildsidepress.com

  DEDICATION

  To

  HAZEL GOODWIN KEELER,

  from whose circus proprietor,

  in her famous short story “Spangles,”

  published in many languages,

  evolved the character

  Angus Milliron MacWhorter

  of this novel!

  Chapter 1

  UNFOLDING OF AN ENIGMA!

  Detective Sergeant Frank DuShane, temporarily assigned as ordinary plainclothesman to the Depot View Police Station, on the down-at-heel south fringe of Chicago’s great downtown district, was just about to go off duty for the night—it being 10 minutes after 6 in the morning—when the telephone call for him came.

  It came on the regular station phone, standing on the shiny wicket ledge next to “The Book,” and presided over by the big blue-uniformed, brass-buttoned, white-mustached day station sergeant.

  The sergeant droned out somewhat puzzledly: “Somebody wants you, Frank, pers’nally.”

  DuShane, in back of the wallboard partition that held the booking wicket and at the same time cut off the front tall-windowed section of the station from the rest of the big white-washed, brass cuspidor-studded room, was at this moment in the act of fixing up his appearance preparatory to going off duty. A procedure which involved very little, inasmuch as he had been assigned to this station as special plain-clothesman to conduct a very special investigation in this particular police area. In short, he stood in front of the cracked wall mirror delegated solely for the use of station sergeants, plastering his thinning hair down with the brass-chain-suspended 10-cent-store brush, with his other hand jerking his own 5-cent aluminum comb through his scrubby and slightly grey-touched brown mustache, and even straightening his ever-tilting shiny blue bow tie.

  Now the heavily uniformed, white-mustached station sergeant—McCrearity by name—was clambering down off his high stool, and again speaking to DuShane. “Take your call over here, Frank. My blood pressure’s so damned low this morning, I’m going on in back for a couple of minutes, and tongue-lash hell out o’ them 3 rookie cops that was wished on me yesterday. It’ll put me in trim for the day’s work!”

  And less than 3 seconds later, McCrearity, licking his lips, was letting himself out of the partitioned section of the room, by depressing the finger-button in the protruding mechanism of the spring-locked door next to the wicket.

  DuShane leisurely completed his beautification process by carefully depositing back on his thinning hair his black derby hat, meticulously arranging its exact set and angle, and then only turning and strolling across the wood-floored space between himself and the phone, casually picking up the instrument, and turning windowward so as to toss one blue-serge-clad shank lightly over the vacated stool. Now he faced the street itself, bathed already in the bright early morning sunshine of this June day. In the nearer car track, a junk dealer’s rickety wagon, headed no doubt for the far North Side for the day, was making a large modern aluminum-gilded truck, derisively tooting in back of it, turn out.

  “DuShane talking,” said the plainclothes police operator curtly.

  “I sure am glad I catch you,” returned a voice in which there was great relief of tone, coupled with a slight but definite thickness of utterance. “I was afraid, Off’cer Du—no, Inspector Du—or would it be Lieutenant Du—”

  “Make it Mister,” ordered DuShane curtly. “And then maybe we’ll get somewhere.”

  The man on the other end eagerly took up this simplification of confusing police terminology. “Yes, Mister DuShane. Well, I’m glad I catch you. I was so afraid you had already, maybe yes, started for home, and—”

  “Well, I ain’t,” DuShane assured him. “As you can figger out, since I’m right on this here wire.” He added irritably. “And so now—who the hell’s talking, anyway?”

  “Oh, I should have said, Capt—uh—ah—”

  “Keep to that ‘Mister,’” ordered DuShane, with considerable asperity. “So, a’right, again. Who is talking?”

  “Well, this is Hyman Silver, Mister DuShane. Propri’tor of the Hotel DeRomanorum on West Pres’dent Street—you maybe know the hotel?”

  “Well,” returned DuShane, puzzled, “I know the dump—by sight. For I certain’y been past it often enough with other detectives—partic’ly while assigned here from the Bureau. And I’ve heard a good deal about it—from them that know. It—okay, bully-boy, what kind of a hot plate is sizzling under your pants, this bright morning of June the 23rd, A.D.?”

  But it was at this juncture that the disquieting suspicion popped squarely into DuShane’s head that this whole thing was a cunning check-up on police personnel on “courtesy”—one of those things maliciously inaugurated every now and then by the mayor. And DuShane decided immediately to be polite, no matter how much it hurt.

  “Here I am, Silver, back on the wire. Was talking to ‘Bully-boy’ Murphy, one of the rookie cops. Well, now about your dum—your place—’twas put up years ago, wasn’t it, by some scholard with too much inher’ted mazuma and a bug for old Rome and the Latin classicals, and what not? Even to puttin’ the possessy case o’ ‘Romans’ after that there hifalu-tin’ French ‘De’ what means ‘of the.’ See, I remember my own parish school days, heh? When Father Mullaney whipped a little Latin into—But anyway, gettin’ back to your hotel there, I’ve seen the two stone statutes enclosin’ the front door there on Pres’dent Street and bolting up the lintel stone. With leaves about their noble brows, and their speeches rolled up in their mitts—Cicero and Oak Park they rep’sent, don’t they?—no, Cicero and Catyline, I guess ’twas! And I’ve heard,” went on DuShane, “about the famous Roman bath you’ve got downstairs, with tiers of marble seats all around it. Or did have,” he corrected, “a few ownerships back of yourself! And I’ve heard about the rooms—with Roman numberals on the doors instead of regular digitals—and Roman scenes in sillywhoetty stenciled about the wall tops of each room, and with even a transylated saying, from the Latin classicals, painted acrost at least one wall in each, and—”

  “Well, we ain’t got all them things today, Mister DuShane,” said the hotel proprietor glumly. “For the place has been goin’ down in the world, you know! And each propri’tor, includin’ myself, makes a change here, a change there. As for the famous bath—well, most o’ the guests what hear about it like to go down and lamp it, yeah—but it ain’t piped with steam or nothin’ any more t’day—it’s just used by us for our laundry. The translated class’cal sayings on the walls—well, some of the rooms still have ’em. Others—well,” th
e speaker broke off, “we ain’t even no more got the status of a cheap theatrical hotel, as the place was all the years after it took its first tumble and up to a couple years back. We’re just today—”

  “I know,” said DuShane grimly. “Yeah, I know, Stiver. You’re today a no-questions-asked hotel! Yes, no? For I saw a heav’y-veiled, wealthy-lookin’ woman—Glencoe or Winnetka stuff, maybe Beverly Hills stuff so far’s that goes—and a wealthy-lookin’ man—Lake Front Drive stuff—comin’ down t’gether, the other day—and without baggage—them marble stairs that lead from your second floor to your side entrance there on Canyon Street, well back o’ Pres’dent by the whole depth of your place. And I saw ’em get into different cabs out on Pres’dent Street, to go home to their matey-mates. Ain’t you afraid, Silver,” DuShane now taunted him, “that in maintainin’ a side stairway, ’way off from your foyer and main stairway, people will beat their bills?”

  Hyman Silver, proprietor of the Hotel DeRomanorum, gave a humorless laugh. “Well, Mr. DuShane, I admit that the highbrow that built this hotel didn’t know human nature. But we don’t worry here about that side street exit at all. Nor did them as had the place before me, it being orig’nally a theatrical hotel, and—’nough said? In short,” the speaker explained, “this is a strictly cash-in-advance place. And anybody who wants to ‘out’ by the side entrance on narrow Canyon Street can go that way. We don’t have to watch our foyer stairs. Besides, the guests don’t like all their comin’s and goings observ—”

  “Yeah, I know,” retorted DuShane, confident now that his own little observation had caused him to have the situation well in hand! “Like the veiled woman and the wealthy-looking man, both without baggage, heh?” Now he got definitely tough. “Well, what’s on your mind, Silver?”

  Now the voice of Hyman Silver dropped like the voice of a man who knew that pleasantries and banterings could no longer go on—that now had to come serious and distressing business, at least for a hotel proprietor.

  “Mr. DuShane,” the hotel proprietor said, “some-p’n was fetched into my hotel last night, and de-pos’ted in one of the rooms what’s on my first room-floor—the second floor, of course. And to keep you from wonderin’ whether ’twas a trunk, or a live alligator, or a suitcase full of dynamite, or what, the thing that was planted on me in the night was a human body.”

  Chapter 2

  AN ENIGMA GROWS!

  “A body?” ejaculated DuShane. “Deposited in one of your—” He broke off, and added caustically, “Well, where the hell was you, or your all-night room clerk, when all this happ—Oh, this body, you mean, was lugged in by that same side stairway we been talking about? If so—”

  “No, Mr. DuShane. Them what fetched it into my place maybe went out that way—I wouldn’t know—but they fetched it up and in by way of the fire escape—on the west or alley side. The reason I know is that the body was inside a room containing nothing but a few pails and mops. And now and then a occasional stepladder, or bag of outgoin’ laundry and all that. Because it—”

  “—Oh yeah, I getcha. Because it connects to the fire escape, and can’t be used? Well, how you know the fire escape was used to lug this—”

  “—Because, Mr. DuShane, the swinging, counter-weighted stairway o’ the fire escape is down to the ground this morning. And a long 8-foot len’th of stiff, heavy wire, with a bent hook on the end, is still ’ttached to it, showin’ they reached up in the dark and pulled it down. And the window of this room was way up.”

  “Any persons in rooms whose windows open near the fire escape hear any of all this lugging?” inquired DuShane, still a bit skeptical about this unusual incident. “Though I suppose,” he added in fairness, “it is too early to’ve inquired.”

  “Wasn’t any rooms rented on that side of the house, Mr. DuShane,” returned the proprietor lugubriously. “They’re hotter’n hell in summer. We rent from the street sides first, then start in on the alley side. We never got full up so far as even the alley side, up to any part of last night.”

  “Oh yeah, I see. No witnesses, then, to sights, sounds, nor gruntings? Well, I guess the long hooked wire, and the fire escape stairway down on the ground, tell the facts pretty well. So go on with your tale.”

  “Yes, Mr. DuShane. Well, how they went out after they fetched the body in, I wouldn’t, as I say, know. Maybe they just went back down the fire escape, and rejoined the car what brought ’em here: or maybe, again, they went out by that side entrance of ours, and rejoined the car up the street or some-thin’.”

  “How in hell,” demanded DuShane helplessly, “do you know a car even brought them, whoever they are?”

  “I don’t know nothing, Mr. DuShane, Other than that a big fine car, like a Rolls-Royce, slithered out the alley mouth last night, at around 10 o’clock or so, wound past the front o’ the hotel, and dis’ppeared. Where, I wouldn’t know. I didn’t even see all this. My night man mentioned it, that’s all.”

  “Rolls-Royce, eh? Distributin’ bodies in hotels, by way of rear fire—Listen here, Silver; a car c’n cut through in Chicago, can’t it, from one street to another, by way of an alley, any hour of the day or night?”

  “That’s right, Mr. DuShane.” One could almost see Hyman Silver nodding complete assent. “But it don’t seem to make no diff’ence anyway, so far as I can see. How they went out, I mean. Or came. Since the body itself—”

  “—Yeah, we had better get over to that, hadn’t we? Well, what kind of a body was it? Some medical-school stiff, maybe? Or some hit-and-run victim from the alley itself?”

  “No, Mr. DuShane. It was a murdered man.”

  “Oh-oh! Shot somewhere, eh?”

  “No, Mr. DuShane. No—not shot.” There was a most peculiarly sepulchral tone in the voice of the proprietor of the Hotel DeRomanorum.

  “Clipped then, eh, in the side of the dome? Well, it’s prob’ly somebody that some gal, working the lure-game there on West Pres’dent Street, decoyed down the alley to her pals, who beaned him too hard. But why in hell, if he is that, should they have run him up into your—well, what kind of a body is it?”

  “It’s the body of a man, Mr. DuShane, who ain’t nothing less than a ragpicker! He’s a black Negro, ’bout 30 years old, ragged and dirty. Wearing different shoes each foot, a high one and a low one. No socks at all. The high black shoe is laced with twine. The other one, a tan oxford, is held together only with a rusty paper clip! Burlap pants—”

  “Burlap pants? For the love o’—”

  “Yes, Mr. DuShane, and handmade, for they’re sewed with coarse, dirty, oncet white grocer’s string. And he’s wearing a filthy tattered shirt so black that—well, it’s obv’ous it ain’t been changed for months. In fact, when you put your nose clost to it, it smells of garbage. His nails is just bulging with dirt and ashes and—”

  “Ashes, eh? Ragpicker type, all right. Go on.”

  “—And he’s even wearing a belt to hold up his burlap pants that’s nothin’ but a len’th of clothesline.”

  “Lord, he must be a card! Well, he sure ain’t any lure victim. In fact, it’s plain he don’t even pay income tax. What a sweet sort of a find for a hostelry that’s still got some semblance of standing, and—listen here, Silver—you got any enemies?”

  “Are you kidding me, Mr. DuShane? Enemies? Who in hotel business ain’t? Dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands for all I know. Think o’ the people I’ve had to refuse room to on credit, and others I’ve had to put out. And sometimes hold their baggage. And the shenanigans I’ve had to stop—in rooms. And the bus’ness cards I’ve found acc’dentally dropped in rooms, and the vi’let-scented hank’chiefs with names sewed on ’em. Enemies? I’ll say! Thousands, I guess. But enemies, Mr. DuShane, won’t explain about this here body being shoved off on me. Because of—” Silver paused, and finished cryptically: “—well, because of the circumstances of the body itself.”

  “I see. That
is, I see like a bat under a thousand-watt lamp. For a body such as you describe is enough to suggest that a hotel where it’s found is nothing but a dump—but all right. Well, it seems to me, Silver, that this is just a routine affair, no matter how it looks to you. So I’ll make a report to the station sarge here when he gets back to his stool, and before I go off duty—I’m going off now, you know. Besides,” DuShane hastened to clinch his argument, “I’m only assigned here anyway for a while to investigate Honkey-Tonk Row to the east of us here—to find out, in short, all that goes on along that stem each night after the peep-shows, the girl stuff, and the stem-hustlers peddling their phoney junk shut up shops.” He broke off. “I’ll report your matter to the sarge when he gets back to his stool here, and have him handle your little embarrassment over there! McCrearity may even be able to figure out why they lugged the body into your place! He—”

  “I don’t need him nor nobody else to figger why, Mr. DuShane. It was to give them what did the job a good gen’rous head start out and away from Chicago. In short, Mr. DuShane, ’twas to insure that no headlights of no autos, going through the alley in the night, showed up that body a-laying there, and—”

  “Showed up the body? Well, what could the body of a black’ ragpicker show as to the identity of them as conked him in the bean? Remember, I don’t yet know how he met his death, and ain’t sure you do yourself, for you ain’t yet—You mean there is something about the body that might involve or point to somebody?”

  “And how!”

  “Strangled to death, maybe,” ventured DuShane sardonically, “with a wampum necklace? Meaning Chief Hates-All-Enemies-Black-and-White, who sells gen-u-ine herb remedies along Honky-Tonk Row, should ought to be picked up?”

  Hyman Silver, most dignifiedly, would not answer for a moment.

  “Mr. DuShane,” he finally begged fervently, “don’t turn this over to your station chief. He’s a hard man, that McCrearity, with a rep’tation for arresting ever’body connected with a—You see,” he added lamely, “you was pointed out to me the other day as an off’cer who’d been on the Hom’cide Detail at the Detective Bureau in your day—rather, as a p’lice invest’gator who didn’t go haywire in a killing, and suspect ever’body about, as havin’ somethin’ to do with it. And accusin’ ever’body, bar none, of lying like hell. And of concealing clues. And what not. The party said you had lots of exper’ence in strange murders. So won’t you come over yourself, and take over, first of all? For this murder,” finished Mr. Silver, like a man playing a high trump, “contains an angle so damned strange, it’ll knock you for a row. For two rows, Mr. DuShane. In short, you may think you’ve just heard about a simple case of a black ragpicker, bumped off and dumped onto a decent hotel. But you ain’t heard nothing yet. Nothing, see? So will you come?”