Erle Gardner: he Case of the Stuttering Bishop

"Well, gents, I figured that this dame in the lobby was waiting for him and he wouldn't be up in his room more than five minutes before she'd join him. Now, it ain't easy to argue with a guest and tell him you want his room. Sometimes they get rough and threaten lawsuits. Most of the times it's a bluff, but it's a lot of trouble just the same. So I figured it would be a lot easier to let this jane go up to the room, and then spring it on this bird-you know what I mean."

Mason nodded, and Drake said, in a voice which was a soothing murmur, "I told you he was smart, Perry. Plenty smart! That's using the old noodle."

Pauley said, "Well, sure enough, in about five minutes the jane gets up and goes upstairs. I figure I'll give her about ten minutes alone with him and then I'll make a racket on the door. But she ain't up there over three or four minutes when she comes down. She pushes out of the elevator and crosses the lobby like she was going to a fire. I started to say something to her, but then I figure I ain't got nothing on her and I'm going to have enough trouble with Mallory, anyway. So I decides to let her go, since she ain't a guest in the hotel, and if she'd make a squawk I'd be out on a limb.

"So I go up to Mallory's room, 602, and there's been a fight, plenty of fight. A couple of chairs is busted, a mirror's smashed, and this guy Mallory's lying in the middle of the bed dead to the world from a sock on the bean. The fight must have made something of a racket, but it just happens there's no one below and the people on the sides and across the corridor were out. Well, I make a dive for this guy's pulse and I can feel his pump working. It's faint and stringy, but still a pulse. So I grab the telephone and tell Mamie at the switchboard to get an emergency ambulance. About five minutes later an ambulance shows up and they go to work on this guy.

"Did he regain consciousness?" Mason asked.

"No, he was out like a light," Pauley said. "Well, of course I want to keep the name of the hotel out of it. No one knows anything about the fight, so I persuade the ambulance boys to take him down the freight elevator and out through the alley. Now then, here's the funny part of it: About that time, another ambulance shows up. Mamie says she only put in one call, but records show there were two calls, both of 'em from women with young voices. Now figure that one out. I can't do it, unless that red-headed baby sapped him to sleep, and then went down and ordered a wagon for him."

Mason nodded. Pauley pushed the frayed, wet end of the cigar back into his mouth, and scraped a match into flame. Mason glanced at Paul Drake over the detective's head and raised furtive eyebrows. Drake nodded in answer to the lawyer's unspoken question and said, "I wonder if you'd like to see the way a detective works, Perry. Jim's going up and give the room a once-over and see if he can find out anything that'll be a clue to who did the job. As soon as I saw you drive up, and knowing the way you work on a case, I figured you might like to see a real detective in action."

Pauley puffed out several mouthfuls of white smoke from the moist cigar and said deprecatingly, "Aw, I ain't no genius. I just know my business, that's all."

"Sure thing," Mason said, "I'd like to see Pauley in action."

"Well," Pauley said slowly, "of course the police might not like it if I took someone else in. They usually want house detectives to keep in the background while a bunch of hams, who are appointed because they've got political pull somewhere, go in and mess the clues up. But, if you fellows promise not to touch anything, we'll go up and give it a quick once-over. Maybe I can give Mr. Mason a pointer or two, at that." He walked toward the elevator, jabbed a pudgy forefinger against the button, and tilted his head slightly backward so the cigar smoke just missed his right eye. After a moment, the elevator cage appeared. Pauley entered as soon as the door slid open. Mason hesitated long enough to say to Drake in a surreptitious undertone, "Was one of your men on the job, Paul?"

Drake nodded, then followed the house man into the elevator.

"Six," Pauley said. The elevator shot upward and stopped. Pauley said, "This way, boys," and walked down the long corridor. Drake said to Mason in a low voice, "With any luck one of my men followed her, but don't let Pauley even suspect it."

They followed the house detective to a room near the end of the corridor. He produced a passkey, opened the door, and said, "Be sure not to touch anything."

A chair was overturned, two of the rungs smashed. A floor lamp had been knocked over and the bulb had exploded into myriad fragments of frosty glass which twinkled up from the carpet like bits of ice on a strip of pavement. A mirror, pulled loose from its fastenings, had plummeted downward to the floor and cracked into numerous wedge-shaped segments, some of which were still held in place by the frame of the mirror, while others were littered about the floor. There was a depression in the white counterpane of the bed where a man's body had been stretched out. A Gladstone bag, labeled "WANTED IN CABIN S.S. ' MONTEREY,'" was lying on the floor. Several articles of wearing apparel had been jerked from it. A light wardrobe trunk was standing open. A small portable typewriter was lying bottom-side-up on the floor. The cover of the typewriter case also bore a sticker, "WANTED IN STATEROOM S.S. ' MONTEREY.'" The closet door was partially open, disclosing three or four suits. Mason's eyes focused upon a brief case. A sharp knife had cut around the lock, leaving a flap of leather dangling grotesquely.

"The red-head tried to roll him," Pauley announced, "and he caught her at it. She konked him and then decided to take a look around, probably looking for money."

"Then this red-headed girl must have been a pretty hard customer," Mason said.

Pauley laughed grimly and waved a hand at the wreckage. "Don't that look like it?" he asked. Mason nodded. "One of the first things I've got to do," Pauley remarked, pulling a pencil from his pocket, "is to make an inventory of the stuff that's here. When this man wakes up, he'll claim a lot of stuff is missing, and he's as like as not to to claim some of it was taken after he went to the hospital because the hotel didn't use proper diligence in safeguarding the stuff he'd left behind… Oh, you've got to be on to all the tricks to handle the stuff that crops up in a hotel!"

"I'll tell the world," Drake said. "You know, Perry, lots of people think a house detective hasn't got so much on the ball as some of the other boys because he isn't always out on the firing line, but you can take it from me a good house detective has to have everything."

Mason nodded and said, "Well, I have an idea we'd better be going, Paul."

"Thought you were going to stick around," Pauley said.

"No, I just wanted to get a slant on how you went at things," Mason said. "You're going to make a complete inventory now?"

"That's right."

"You don't mean to say you can make an inventory of every little thing that's in the room here."

"Sure I can. And you'll be surprised at how fast I do it."

Mason said, "I'd like to see that inventory when you get done, just to see how you go about it and how you list the stuff."

Pauley pulled a notebook from his pocket and said, "Sure thing."

"We'll drop in after a while," Mason said. "In the meantime, thanks a lot, and it was a real pleasure to see how you worked. A lot of people wouldn't have noticed that girl in the lobby."

Pauley nodded in agreement. "She was clever as hell. Just standing up and giving a little slant to the eyebrows was all the signal she gave. She'd evidently picked him up somewhere and had a date with him here in the hotel."

"Well," Mason said, nudging Drake in the ribs, "let's go."