The Straw Hat Murders Read online

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  CHAPTER XXV

  CHAPTER I

  Cryptic Summons!

  Chief of Homicide Investigation Huntoon Cambourne, parking his light car under the Chicago Elevated-Traction Road this cool, early-fall, grey-skied afternoon, realized grimly that the straw hat murderer must have struck again.

  For why, otherwise, the note on his, Cambourne’s, desk, when he got back to his office this afternoon after being away from the Police Commission Building for 10 minutes—the note carrying the single telephone message that had come in:

  S.O.T.! No. 633. Will hold everything exactly as is till you, only, come.

  deGelder.

  For what could S.O.T. stand for but “Same Old Thing”? And 633—633, if it were 633 of South Street—on South Street’s famous Down-at-Heel Row—was no less than the technical number of the murder studio. While deGelder—Aert deGelder was the uniformed patrolman who covered afoot that section of South Street.

  Yes, the Straw Hat Murderer—killer of four pianists—must have struck again. Springing—the crazy fool!—across that 7-foot gap in the roofs, three stories up—to get to the single and only ingress that could bring him into the murder studio, the roof trap. Must have struck—unless, perchance, “S.O.T.” stood for something like—like “Samuel O. Torber”—or “Saul O. Tabwith”—at 633 Wabash Avenue—or 633 Dearborn Street—or—

  But if he had struck again, Cambourne reflected, leaving the car, had he again left behind him the straw hat which, apparently, he wore, or carried, to every killing, rain, snow, shine or sun? And had he, as in the last four cases, contemptuously, triumphantly, dropped his usual $20 goldpiece into the repository of the blind, deaf beggar around the corner, to mark his own flight to the depot? And thus make evident to the police the sheer futility of search for him? This latter being a theory, only, of Cambourne’s.

  Well, if the Straw Hat Murderer had struck again, Cambourne told himself grimly, there was going to be, this day, no huge crowd down on Down-at-Heel Row, milling about a police-marked car parked in front of a dilapidated warehouselike place, stopping all streetcar buses and other traffic, and making things generally difficult. For, parking quietly here on Depot Street, under the overhead L-structure not used for years now because of the subway running far underground, would permit him to amble down to South Street, and around to “No. 633”, probably to some two other vital points, also, like any casual citizen seeking some business address.

  And thus he did proceed, and quite casually. A thing possible in view of the fact that he himself was apparently but an ordinary citizen of about 35, clad in grey suit, buttoned tweed overcoat, grey felt hat that matched the grey eyes in his smooth, keen and honest face. Far west could be seen the “double-depot” that marked egress from Chicago to America’s South and Southwest, the one nearer being the low depot made of red brick, and the further, higher, one of pink stone, with a 4-story clock tower. Now he was at South Street, and rounding the corner thereof, still casually, he was face to face with Down-at-Heel Row itself.

  A long, long block it was, filled both sides with once bright red-brick but today smoke-greyed 3-story buildings, jammed tight against each other in most cases—all with fly-specked store windows on their ground floors, and dingy doorways to one or the other sides, with windows above which were, in every case, shadowed with heavy soapstone “eyebrows”. On this side there was today no pedestrian traffic to speak of, because most of the buildings down the street could be seen to be getting used only for storage purposes; the very windows up above all looked dirty from years of unoccupancy or were opaquely painted over because of the present use of their buildings. Many—almost most, it might be said—bore keystones at their tops carrying the date 1874, which meant that they had been erected while Chicago had been rising again from the ashes of the Great Fire which had destroyed it all; the date meant indeed, that during the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1892, when Little Egypt had been brought to civilization to entertain Chicago with a new dance called the Hoochy-Koochy, these buildings were no longer new. Today anyone would agree they needed to be condemned—to be razed.

  Across the street were stores that were in use—dilapidated catch-penny affairs living almost solely on trade from passengers coming afoot into and towards the business section from the two depots—far, far down on that side were three giant gilded balls hanging out bespeaking “Hardupness”. Far on beyond that block, on that farther side, was famous Honky-Tonk Row Block itself, quiet at this hour, yes, but raucous at night with the strident cries of stripteasers, and redolent with the smell of cooking, garlicky hot dogs.

  At this end of the block, across the way, and just off the corner, was a mission with a vertical sign reading “Come All Sinners!”. To its right was a weary-looking motion picture show, carrying lithographs showing where the stars of yesteryear were now playing for $250 a picture; a blond woman back inside the cage might have been the same one who sat in the theatre fifty years ago when it was called, simply, a “nickel show”. Alongside it, to the right, was a store that could plainly be seen to be full of trick stuff—phony money—loaded candy bars—naughty books that were not naughty at all after their paper bands were broken—a store getting first “catch” at the particular depot-fleers flowing Loopward.

  Well, here was the chance, Cambourne told himself, to find out, once and for all, whether the killer had done it in the same old way. For here on the sidewalk edge old Piggy-Bank Pete was seated, as usual, behind his upended wooden box, just in from the curb, with his steel “piggy bank” chained to the box in front of him. The crude handlettered sign affixed by tacks to the upended box read HAVE A PLEASANT JOURNEY, and suggested that many—if not a majority—of travelers heading for one or the other of the two depots down Depot Street rounded this corner—perhaps paused here fingering a dubious ten-cent piece or quarter. The various signs over the doorways or stores at this end of the block only, reading such as The Communist Daily Review, The Lithuanian News, The Daily Horse Dope Sheet, and most particularly the one in front of Pete’s “pitch”—The Newspaper for the Blind—showed that one beggar, at least, had found that men working for wages in the typography trade were better and more generous bestowers than hasty travelers hopping off buses to make a train in six seconds flat, or even train-riding irritated people, with suitcases in their hands—such as passed on the other—pressing on toward a Loop hotel.

  Cambourne, stepping over to the curb, surveyed the man there helplessly, wondering how on earth to make the request he must make now—before another moment. The 50-year-or-so old blind man, in his pinned-together ragged overcoat, his grey, bedraggled, unkempt hair straggling out from under the edge of his soiled, flopping brown felt hat, with his fearfully seared face and eyeless sockets, was so—so unapproachable. Deaf as he was, in addition to being blind. And—

  And at that moment Huntoon Cambourne was to learn that being deaf is an advantage—now and then. For a sudden explosion behind him—a bang like a shell—made him jump seemingly two feet into the air. While the deaf man bu
t sat, stony, chin in hand.

  Cambourne had spun about.

  “Sorry!” came a voice from the top of the streetlighting pole on that corner. Cambourne looked up. “Sorry I dropped that 1000-watt bulb, sir.”

  “Forget it,” said Cambourne, rubbing his ears. “No harm.”

  He turned back to the beggar. Paused. Then gazing about at the dingy wooden stairs of the Newspaper for the Blind across the sidewalk’s width, he saw he had the answer. He crossed the sidewalk, and went up the stairs. Into a glass-encased and wall-board-partitioned area of floor.

  A foreman of some sort, ink-stained as to exposed forearms, and wearing a blue denim apron, came up.

  “Cambourne’s my name,” Cambourne said. “Police Department.” And showed his badge. “What time each day does Piggy-Bank Pete take his pig-bank around on Wabash Avenue for the daily unlocking?”

  “Oh,” said the foreman, as one could be practically certain he was, “just before bank close. The pig-bank is at its fullest then. Yes, he takes it then.”

  “Well, would you write out for me, in Braille, on a piece of cardboard, the following message?”

  And Cambourne wrote out on a piece of paper from his own pocket the message.

  “This is Huntoon Cambourne, Pete, of the Police. May I have your piggy-bank and bring you back a receipt for its contents—or you can come along. Must have it opened now.”

  The foreman looked at the paper. “You’ll have to come back, sir, in about 5 minutes. The one operator on duty now, who can do that stuff, is out getting a feed. Come back in five minutes, and I’ll have it.”

  “Okay,” came back Cambourne. And went down the splintered stairs.

  He paused a second out in front. DeGelder said he was “holding the fort”. Maybe there hadn’t been a straw hat murder at all! Maybe “633” represented a number on another street. Maybe—But if this all was a case of the Straw Hat Murderer striking again, then to get hold of the gold piece—to examine it for fingerprints—was the vital thing. And next—if, yes, it was a case of the Straw Hat Murderer striking again—next was to find out from Wily Max if he had again rented the studio. And who, if he had, the victim was bound to be now.

  He strode across the street, and down the block about halfway, to where a second-hand office furniture store stood with flyspecked street window showing battered and sometimes varnishless desks and whatnot in the windows, including a couple of dusty typewriters and even an ancient-looking adding machine. On the window was painted, in green letters:

  MAX GOLDFARB

  Second-hand Office Furniture

  (formerly Emmanuel Goldfarb’s Store)

  He turned in.

  A small Jewish girl of about 6 or 7, with very red lips, black eyes, and in black cotton smock and white bobby socks, was dusting around, her black hair all in disarray.

  “Where’s Max?” Cambourne demanded.

  “Well—ah—uh—he is—”

  “I’m a policeman,” he said.

  “Oh?” she said. “Oh, yes.”

  Then:

  “I will get him.”

  She went to a rear partition.

  “Papa,” she called out. “A policeman wants to see you!”

  CHAPTER II

  Max, the Defiant!

  Now a tall man of about 30, dark and swarthy, with a huge beak of a nose and glittering black eyes, appeared in the doorway of the partition. His hair was getting thin already. His shirtsleeves were flamboyant.

  His face fell when he saw Cambourne.

  He came forward, glumly.

  “Howdy, Inspector,” he said. “How goes?”

  “Max,” said Cambourne, without delay, “have you rented—the piano studio—again?”

  He tossed his head around rearward of himself across the street.

  Max Goldfarb started.

  “Is—is—is anything wrong?” he asked.

  Cambourne drew a breath. Knew he must lie.

  “No, nothing’s wrong. Except that—except that a friend of mine was told by a friend of his that the studio is occupied—by a friend of his. And—well—what about it?”

  Max licked his unusually thick lips.

  Spoke.

  “See here, Inspector, you—you people—can’t shove me around. I beat you in court, right after my wife died, when you tried to say I had no right—to rent the studio—where murder did occur.”

  “That’s right, Max. But generally decency does count. After all, you get nearly full use of that building when you don’t even rent out that—that top floor at all. You—”

  “Oh, yeah?” shrilled Max. “I don’t got to have a heated place for storing furniture—but I got me a heated place just the same—all because the old man’s old man, back in days of the 1st World War, signed up for steam-heat from that—that und’ground conduit. So if I have to pay for steam-heat today—when I don’t need steam-heat for storage—then—”

  “Oh come, come, Max! The price your grandfather, Abraham Goldfarb, signed up for, in the long long ago, is sheer—sheer peanuts today. It’s a wonder the central heating plant up street and around the corner doesn’t go bankrupt, if it has many old holdovers like you. And—but all right—let’s get down to business. Who’s occupying that studio—now? That dangerous studio,” Cambourne corrected meaningfully, “for—pianists?”

  Max Goldfarb shrugged his shoulders.

  “Oh, don’t worry so much. There’ll be no more of that weird bump-off stuff. There’ll—”

  “I—hope so,” said Cambourne, and almost sepulchrally. “Well, who’s renting it—now?”

  “A—a Greek—a youngish guy with—with longish hair—named—named Elftherios Paleogus.”

  “Well, that’s Greek, all right, all right! Well, what hours does he do his piano-key hammering—or don’t you know? Oh, I have reason for asking. So answer, please?”

  “Oh, if it’s answers you want to people’s piano-poundings, I can give ’em. In this case, I mean. I happen to know he tickles the ivories ’bout every night from 8 to midnight. For he studies all day at the Conservatory.”

  “8 to midnight, eh? Hm? And Greek? Hm? Well that latter fact means you got him as you did the Englishwoman who dressed in men’s clothes—and the German before—by putting an ad in a foreign paper. Like—” And Cambourne read off, from personal knowledge and memory, the ad that had gotten the others. “‘For Rent, cheap! A wonderful secluded studio, with $3000 grand piano, for use only by professional piano-student who expects to study at the Chicago Conservatory of Music. Write to Max Goldfarb for particulars, 633 South Street, Chicago.’”

  Max licked his thick lips again.

  “I—I have my rights. I—”

  “You have no rights, Max,” roared Cambourne, “to make it possible for that jumping mountain goat to come—and kill more pianists. I don’t care what you say. I—”

  “Then why,” roared Max, lustily, “does the Fire Department say they will fine me $1000 if ever I nail up the roof trap? And why did Judge Woolfather sentence me to one year in jail but suspend the sentence—by request of the damned Fire Department—for closing up that rooftrap the time I did? Why—”

  “Because, you fool, there is only one ingress in there today—the way your father bricked up all the windows and front streetdoor—and that is the law. There must be two. Specially a rooftrap so the firemen can pour tons of water, if needs be, down into the place in case of fire. The Fire Department expects you to leave the place unrented. They—oh, what’s the use? Max, your father, Emmanuel Goldfarb was, from all I hear, the finest old man this block ever had. The best man, they tell me, in Down-at-Heel Row. You, Max, are greedy—self-seeking, and, in some ways, a murderer.”

  “Don’t—don’t you call me that. I’ll—”

  “Sue me,” said Cambourne coolly. “You can’t get a judgment against a policeman for making allegations. Well,” he frowned, “to put a stop to investigations, I’d suggest you tell Paleogus—that he rents the studio at his peril. Or get hi
m out of there. Okay. I’m going.”

  And go he did! Back to where he could find whether the killer had struck. Viz, the blind man and the piggy bank!

  CHAPTER III

  Cut Off from the World

  But first—and perhaps, even at that, to get back to the other side of the street where Piggy-Bank Pete held forth at the further corner—Cambourne crossed directly across South Street. Dodging a few motor trucks and Loop-bound streetcar busses to do it.

  Here, coming up on the curb, and facing the building directly confronting him, he took it all in once more. And dourly! Wondering just what kind of a ghastly sight lay within at this moment—in case “633” referred to it. And “S.O.T.” to “Same Old Thing”.

  Like all the rest of the structures in this block, it was a narrow-fronted once-bright-red brick building now today grey with smoke, three stories high. Its sidewalk-facing window was painted heavily over with opaque black paint, and was even covered by a rusty and rusted steel expansion grating that further said, “Not in use”. The windows looking down on the sidewalk from above were all, without exception, bricked in solid. The door at the side of the storefront was bricked in solidly, too. A sign on the brick there said, “Not for rent, this place. Used for over-flow storage from second-hand office furniture store across street.”

  Unlike many of the places in this block, this particular building had a gangway each side of it. A gangway full seven feet wide. Not that the gangway was visible; it was only because Huntoon Cambourne happened to know it was there. For the redbrick front had been extended originally each side, to meet the building next. Old Abraham Goldfarb, Emmanuel’s father, and Max’s grandfather, who had built it during days right after the Great Fire, had wisely foreseen that someday the City Council might arbitrarily pass a cunning law that there had to be gangways between all buildings—thus insuring a great “tear-down” without the preposterous cost of condemnation. Old Abraham had insured that, if this law ever passed, the false front each side, one story high, could be knocked out. Gangway!

  It was forbidding, the place was, with its bricked-up windows. Which, on the sides looking down, were bricked up too. As Cambourne knew. And which, out in the rear, were also bricked up. As Cambourne also knew. While this structure was, quite openly, as the sign said, an “overflow depot” for second-hand office furniture, the buildings each side had frankly been converted to being “warehouses”. For each one carried a handpainted sign stating it to be a “warehouse”. The one on the right for machinery. The one on the left for Soda Parlor equipment. The streetfacing windows and storefronts of those establishments were not painted opaquely; they were just plain “dirty”, with dirt and spiderwebs—no one could see through any of them.