Стюарт Стерлинг - Collection of Stories

“When was this, Jerry?”

“This a.m. Quarter past ten. Doc says it’s been lying there, or under the head of the pier, more’n a week. Some pupae of flies in the end of the bone. Eggs must’ve been laid seven, eight days ago, anyway.”

Helen Dixon bent over the tray. She didn’t peer at the discolored bone, her finger pointed to brown shreds of fiber which clung to the outside of the oilcloth.

“You said it was tied with string?” she asked.

Teccard pointed to a soggy tangle of frazzled gray in one corner of the tray. “Was. Doesn’t mean a thing, though. Million yards of that stuff used every day.”

“But these look like rope strands to me.”

He squinted at them. “I noticed those. I’m going to send ’em up to the lab, for a microscopic. But the reason I sent for you—”

“You figure this might be one of the Happiness cases?” She moved past his chair to the window, opened it from the bottom a few inches, stood staring down into Centre Street.

“There’s better than an even chance. That’s why I asked the Policewomen’s Bureau to send you up here. I know you’ve been plugging like hell on that assignment. If Crim. Ident. can help, maybe you and I can work together on it. Like old times, when you were playing Big Sister to the floozies we picked up on Sixth Avenue.” He swung around toward her. “My office wouldn’t want any credit.”

She touched his shoulder lightly for an instant, spoke without turning around.

“Damn the credit! If I could only break the case. I’ve been running around in circles for three weeks, hoping it’s just another flock of old maids forgetting about friends and families because wedding bells are still ringing in their ears. But if this,” she inclined her head toward the tray, “is one of them, it means the very nastiest kind of murder.”

Teccard nodded. “Never knew a suicide to cut off her leg. It’s pretty obvious.”

“Any special reason to think she was one of this matrimonial agency’s customers?”

He lifted his chin, ran a finger around under his collar uncomfortably. “Remember what you said that day we had lunch at the Savarin? About the kind of heels who have to find their females through an ad? Especially when they pick on dames who’ve had the lousy luck to be disfigured or crippled?”

Her voice was bitter. “I’m not likely to forget. Every one of those five appeals for inquiry come from friends or relatives of women who have some physical disability — or some facial blemish that would put them at a disadvantage in the national pastime of husband-hunting. Of course those poor lonely lambs could be led to the slaughter, by some unscrupulous devil who flattered them and promised them... whatever he promised.”

Teccard fiddled with pipe and pouch. “Well, that thigh bone was broken. In two places. While she was living, I mean.”

Helen Dixon turned, perched on the window sill. “The left leg?”

“Yair. Wasn’t there one of those dames...?”

“Ruby Belle Lansing.” The sergeant eyed the oilcloth with repugnance. “Spinster. Thirty-six. Grade-school teacher in Tannersville. Hip broken in automobile accident, October 1939. Double fracture, set at Catskill Memorial Hospital. Entered into correspondence with the Herald of Happiness in August 1941. Came to New York, October sixth, after being introduced, by mail, to Philip Stanton, then of 4760 Madison Avenue, this city.”

The lieutenant consulted his report sheet. “Length of femur, 18.1 inches. Let’s see — factor for women is three and six-tenths. About sixty-five inches tall. Would this Lansing—”

“She was just five feet, five, Jerry. By the Tannersville Board of Education records. What must have been more important to Stanton, Ruby Belle had a little more than two thousand dollars in the savings bank at Phoenicia. Three days after her arrival, she had this deposit transferred to the Emigrant Bank here. On October tenth, the next day, it was withdrawn, except for ten dollars. Since then, there hasn’t been a trace of her. Or of Stanton!”

“Any description of him?”

Helen shrugged. “Nothing to count. He never went to Tannersville. Her uncle — the one who asked us for a check-up — said he saw a snapshot of Stanton. But all he remembers is, the fellow was good-looking and had a mustache.”

“That’s a great big help!” Teccard called for a policeman to take the thigh-bone back to the morgue. “What about the people where Stanton lived?”

“A rooming house. Man who runs it’s nearly blind. Stanton didn’t seem to use the room much, anyway. Half the time the bed wasn’t disturbed. Best I could get was, he was kind of dark.”

“Ah! Send out an all-borough to pick up dark guys with mustaches! And reserve Central Park to hold ’em in! Yair! How about the other four who’re missing? Same skunk, each time?”

Helen bent over the oilcloth, peered at the brown fiber again. “I wish I could remember what that stuff makes me think of. About the men in the other cases — I’m up against one of those things, Jerry. The disappearances were strangely similar. In every instance, the man resided in New York. The woman involved always lived in some small town, upstate. And every time the man sent the woman a ticket to come to the big city. What’s more, flowers were invariably sent. Can you tie that? A bouquet for the unseen bride! Also, every one of the five dropped out of sight within three or four days — after sending for their home-town funds.”

“All cut from the same pattern!”

“I thought so, at first. But the men in each of the cases had different names. Different addresses.”

“What the hell! A crook of that kind could pick out a new alias or a new address as easy as you choose a blue plate!”

“I saw some of the letters these men wrote. In the agency files. The handwritings don’t bear any resemblance.”

“He could fake them. Or get someone else to write them for him.”

“Not usual, is it? A murderer taking someone into his confidence? Unless it’s a gang. Which it might be, from the varying descriptions of the men — according to the photos. There was always a snapshot, you see. One of the Happiness rules. One man had a beard. Another was partly bald. One was around fifty. The fellow in the Schwartz case couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, the victim’s brother claims. You wonder I’ve been stymied?”

Teccard spread his hands. “We’ll have to go at it from this end. That oilcloth probably came from the five-and-dime — be tough to trace. But if this killer chopped the Lansing woman up, there’d have been more than a thigh bone to dispose of. Not so easy to get rid of a cadaver. And he slipped up this once. If he was careless again, we’ll get somewhere. I’ve put a crew from the precinct on that. They’ll sift that whole damn waterfront through a sieve, if necessary.”

The sergeant sauntered toward the door. “I hope you beat me to it, Jerry. I haven’t been sleeping so well, lately. Thinking about some other poor, lonely fool on her way to meet a murderer. If this guy — or this gang — has gotten away with it five times, there won’t be any stop now. It’s about time for another one. They’ve been spaced about a month apart.”

Teccard frowned. “I thought you said you were up a blind alley on it. What do you mean, beat you to it?”

She smiled, tightly.

“I didn’t say I was licked. I still have a card to play.”

“If we’re going to work together—”

“That would be all right with me. But this is something you couldn’t very well come in on. I’m entered in Cupid’s Competition.”

He jumped to his feet. “Now what in the hell!”

She nodded, calmly. “Current issue of the Herald of Happiness, Meeting Place of the Matrimonial Minded Department. ‘Miss Mary Lownes, single, thirty-one. Of Malone, New York. Pleasant disposition. Capable housewife, though suffering from slight spinal complaint. Occupation, nurse.’ I was, you know, before I turned policewoman. ‘Anxious to meet amiable, sober businessman under fifty.’ That ought to get him, don’t you think?”