It is September 19, 1932, a clear, brisk Fall day. There is peace along the docks of Shantytown and Alphonse Capone is under lock and key in Atlanta Federal prison for cheating the government out of his ill-gotten income tax. Anna Lonergan still wears her weeds of widowhood. On the hillside grave in which Wild Bill rests no fresh flowers have appeared since Martin went the way of others who hated Lovett.
In a score of police stations scattered throughout New York City the fingers of teletypes are clicking out this message:
FOUND IN EAST RIVER OFF FULTON STREET THIS MORNING BODY OF A MAN IN LATE THIRTIES WITH HANDS BOUND WITH WIRE AND BURLAP SACK TIED OVER HIS HEAD APPARENTLY CHOKED TO DEATH. PAPERS FOUND IN HIS POCKET BEAR THE NAME FRANK BYRNES RECENTLY RELEASED FROM PRISON ON PAROLE.
It is a long time since the name of Fiddler Frank Byrnes has been on the tongues of men in Brooklyn.
He was safe in prison, but not forgotten.
Overnight someone paid another stealthy visit to the grave of Wild Bill. There is a bunch of fresh red roses on the lawn-covered mound... and a little card:
O. K., Bill
Fiddler Byrnes was choked to death, according to the code of outlaw men. It was with his tongue that he betrayed Wild Bill Lovett into the hands of the police for the first time and gave impetus to Bill’s plunging descent from a mild-mannered, religiously inclined youth who couldn’t bear to see a fly swatted, to a ruthless muscle-man who killed and directed killers in a lust for power which grew out of an insensate hate for two men who had taunted him about his white hands, his puny body. Though he is nearly a decade in the grave, the muscle he built still possesses its ferocious quality. Men still kill in his name. Men still kill in memory of Wild Bill Lovett.
Dead Man’s Eyes
by Stanley Day
To Shamus Maguire, the Overturned Chair and the Missing Bottle of Whisky Were Telling Secrets of the Mysterious Death Behind the Closet Door
I
Shamus Maguire, house detective of the fashionable Hotel Paragon, rocked his two hundred and sixty odd pounds backwards and forwards on his size thirteen feet and looked calculatingly from one to another of those in the room.
From the group in the center came moans mingled with soothing phrases. The moans were contributed by a girl in the uniform of a chambermaid who lay in the middle of a large bed; the soothing phrases by the housekeeper and two other maids who, with the aid of cold cloths and smelling salts, attempted to banish the other’s distress.
Close by the door, ready to depart at an instant’s warning, stood the hotel electrician. Beside him, equally skittish, was a black-bloused porter.
“Got a knife?” queried Maguire abruptly of the electrician.
The man fumbled in his overalls and produced an oversized jackknife which he extended in the direction of the detective.
“That’s all right,” rejected Maguire magnanimously. “I just wanted to know if you had something you could cut him down with.”
“Me!” said the electrician concernedly. “No, sir, not me.” He edged slowly out of the room.
“Come back here,” ordered Maguire sternly. “You want the guy to die on us?”
“He’s already dead.”
“How do you know? Get busy and cut him down.” The electrician turned a sickly gray.
“And you, too,” went on Maguire turning to the porter. “The pair of you. Get in there now.”
He advanced on them threateningly and they began to move hesitantly toward the open door of a deep clothes closet. At the end of the closet, almost invisible in the deep gloom, a bulky object swung against the wall. It was this object that had caused the hysterics of the young woman on the bed. On the floor lay an overturned chair.
“Get busy,” Shamus commanded, urging them in with a shove.
The electrician picked up the chair and placed it gingerly against the wall beneath the bulky object. With a last appealing look at the obdurate Maguire the porter turned to assist. Shamus planted himself in the doorway to superintend things.
“You,” he said to the electrician, “climb up and cut the rope. And you,” to the porter, “hang onto him so he won’t land on the floor when you cut him loose.”
The electrician climbed reluctantly up onto the chair and made ready to saw through a taut length of rope. The porter, smothering his distaste, seized the object about the legs and made ready to bear its weight.
“Just a minute,” Maguire called suddenly. The electrician lowered his knife and the porter backed away relievedly.
“Get down,” the detective ordered curtly.
When the electrician had complied Maguire stood back and surveyed the scene. Something, decidedly, was wrong. Closer inspection served to fortify his opinion.
The chair upon which the man must have climbed to place the rope about his neck was close to the wall, directly under the body, yet the extended feet were a good two inches short of touching it.
How, Maguire asked himself, did the suicide get the rope around his neck and then kick the chair from under him with the seat of the chair at least two inches from the soles of his feet? The answer, obviously, was that he could not, and had not.
“Okay,” Shamus snapped. “Get going.” As the two returned to their task he lit a “Little Policeman” cigar and puffed at it furiously.
Suddenly the rope parted and the body slumped forward. The porter struggled frantically to keep it from pitching head first to the floor.
“Bring him out and lay him on the bed,” Maguire instructed.
Between them the porter and the electrician maneuvered the inert mass out into the bedroom. As they appeared in the doorway the screams from the bed trebled, and the group of women dissolved hastily towards the corridor.
When the corpse had been stretched decently on the bed, Maguire went to the telephone and made a brief report to the management and he complained that although he had put in an emergency call for the doctor at least twenty minutes previously, that gentleman had not yet appeared. When he was assured that the matter would be attended to with dispatch he hung up the receiver.’
The room was strangely vacant. Housekeeper, maids, electrician and porter, all had departed silently.
II
Although he had already given t the room a cursory examination Shamus now commenced, in the light of the puzzling circumstance of the chair and the inadequate length of the suicide’s legs, to re-investigate the premises with a greater attention to detail.
A letter lying open on the desk was the first thing to re-engage his interest. This letter, written on hotel notepaper, opened with the statement that its author, finding the world too much for him, hereby intended to hang himself.
For this act no person but himself was to be held responsible. He requested that the authorities communicate the fact of his death to officials of the Coatstown National Bank, Coatstown, California. It was signed, J. Wesley Beard.
Maguire read this missive over three times and folded it carefully away in his pocket. Next, he turned to a table bearing a collection of bottles. Three of the bottles had contained ginger ale. A fourth had contained what its label called a quart of whisky. So had a fifth.