The telephone rang. Hammill’s voice. “I found both of ’em. Wally’s home. I told him. The old guy Wheelock is on his way over.”
I dug out the phony reward circular and showed it to Ethel Furman. “This is what got him into the can. Did you ever see that picture before?”
She started to say “No,” then a frightened look came into her face. “Why, that’s — it can’t be. It’s — it’s a snapshot I had — have. It’s an enlargement of it.”
“Who else has one?”
Her face became more frightened, but she said, “Nobody that I know of. I don’t think anybody else could have one.”
“You’ve still got yours?”
“Yes. I don’t remember whether I’ve seen it recently — it’s with some old papers and things — but I must have it.”
I said, “Well, Mrs. Furman, it’s stuff like that that’s got to be checked up, and neither of us can dodge it. Now there are two ways we can play it. I can hold you here on suspicion till I’ve had time to check things up, or I can send one of my men back to New York with you for the check-up. I’m willing to do that if you’ll speed things up by helping him all you can and if you’ll promise me you won’t try any tricks.”
“I promise,” she said. “I’m as anxious as you are to—”
“All right. How’d you come down?”
“I drove,” the Randall woman said. “That’s my car, the big green one across the street.”
“Fine. Then he can ride back with you, but no funny business.”
The telephone rang again while they were assuring me there would be no funny business. Hammill said, “Wheelock’s here.”
“Send him in.”
The lawyer’s asthma nearly strangled him when he saw Ethel Furman. Before he could get himself straightened out I asked, “This is really Mrs. Furman?”
He wagged his head up and down, still wheezing.
“Fine,” I said. “Wait for me. I’ll be back in a little while.” I herded the two women out and across the street to the green car. “Straight up to the end of the street and then two blocks left,” I told the Randall woman, who was at the wheel.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“To see Shane, the man who’s going to New York with you.”
Mrs. Dober, Wally’s landlady, opened the door for us.
“Wally in?” I asked.
“Yes, indeedy, Mr. Anderson. Go right on up.” She was staring with wide-eyed curiosity at my companions while talking to me.
We went up a flight of stairs and I knocked on his door.
“Who is it?” he called.
“Scott.”
“Come on in.”
I pushed the door open and stepped aside to let the women in.
Ethel Furman gasped, “Harry,” and stepped back.
Wally had a hand behind him, but my gun was already out in my hand. “I guess you win,” he said.
I said I guessed I did and we all went back to headquarters.
“I’m a sap,” he complained when he and I were alone in my office. “I knew it was all up as soon as I saw those two dames going into Fritz’s. Then, when I was ducking out of sight and ran into you, I was afraid you’d take me over with you, so I had to tell you one of ’em knew me, figuring you’d want to keep me under cover for a little while anyhow — long enough for me to get out of town. And then I didn’t have sense enough to go.
“I drop in home to pick up a couple of things before I scram and that call of Hammill’s catches me and I fall for it plenty. I figure I’m getting a break. I figure you’re not on yet and are going to send me back to New York as the Detroit hood again to see what dope I can get out of these folks, and I’ll be sitting pretty. Well, you fooled me, brother, or didn’t — Listen, Scott, you didn’t just stumble into that accidentally, did you?”
“No. Furman had to be murdered by a copper. A copper was most likely to know reward circulars well enough to make a good job of forging one. Who printed that for you?”
“Go on with your story,” he said. “I’m not dragging anybody in with me. It was only a poor mug of a printer that needed dough.”
“Okay. Only a copper would be sure enough of the routine to know how things would be handled. Only a copper — one of my coppers — would be able to walk into his cell, bang him across the head, and string him up on the — Those bruises showed.”
“They did? I wrapped the blackjack in a towel, figuring it would knock him out without leaving a mark anybody’d find under the hair. I seem to’ve slipped up a lot.”
“So that narrows it down to my coppers,” I went on, “and — well — you told me you knew the Randall woman, and there it was, only I figured you were working with them. What got you into this?”
He made a sour mouth. “What gets most saps in jams? A yen for easy dough. I’m in New York, see, working on that Dutton job for you, palling around with gamblers, and racketeers, passing for one of them; and I get to figuring that here my work takes as much brains as theirs, and is as tough and dangerous as theirs, but they’re taking in big money and I’m working for coffee and doughnuts. That kind of stuff gets you.
“Then I run into this Ethel and she goes for me like a house afire. I like her, too, so that’s dandy; but one night she tells me about this husband of hers and how much dough he’s got and how nuts he is about her and how he’s still trying to find her, and I get to thinking. I think she’s nuts enough about me to marry me. I still think she’d marry me if she didn’t know I killed him. Divorcing him’s no good, because the chances are she wouldn’t take any money from him and, anyway, it would only be part. So I got to thinking about suppose he died and left her the roll.
“That was more like it. I ran down to Philly a couple of afternoons and looked him up and everything looked fine. He didn’t even have anybody else close enough to leave more than a little of his dough to. So I did it. Not right away; I took my time working out the details, meanwhile writing to her through a fellow in Detroit.
“And then I did it. I sent those circulars out — to a lot of places — not wanting to point too much at this one. And when I was ready I phoned him, telling him if he’d come to the Deerwood Hotel that night, some time between then and the next night, he’d hear from Ethel. And, like I thought, he’d’ve fallen for any trap that was baited with her. You picking him up at the station was a break. If you hadn’t, I’d’ve had to discover he was registered at the hotel that night. Anyway, I’d’ve killed him and pretty soon I’d’ve started drinking or something, and you’d’ve fired me and I’d’ve gone off and married Ethel and her half-million under my Detroit name.” He made the sour mouth again. “Only I guess I’m not as sharp as I thought.”
“Maybe you are,” I said, “but that doesn’t always help. Old man Kamsley, Ben’s father, used to have a saying, ‘To a sharp knife comes a tough steak.’ I’m sorry you did it, Wally. I always liked you.”
He smiled wearily. “I know you did,” he said. “I was counting on that.”
His Brother’s Keeper
Collier’s, February 17, 1934
I knew what a lot of people said about Loney but he was always swell to me. Ever since I remember he was swell to me and I guess I would have liked him just as much even if he had been just somebody else instead of my brother; but I was glad he was not just somebody else.
He was not like me. He was slim and would have looked swell in any kind of clothes you put on him, only he always dressed classy and looked like he had stepped right out of the bandbox even when he was just loafing around the house, and he had slick hair and the whitest teeth you ever saw and long, thin, clean-looking fingers. He looked like the way I remembered my father, only better-looking. I took more after Ma’s folks, the Malones, which was funny because Loney was the one that was named after them. Malone Bolan. He was smart as they make them, too. It was no use trying to put anything over on him and maybe that was what some people had against him, only that was kind of hard to fit in with Pete Gonzalez.