OTHER COLLECTIONS YOU MAY ENJOY
The Great Book of Wonder, by Lord Dunsany (it should have been called “The Lord Dunsany MEGAPACK™”)
The Wildside Book of Fantasy
The Wildside Book of Science Fiction
Yondering: The First Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories
To the Stars—And Beyond! The Second Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories
Once Upon a Future: The Third Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories
Whodunit?—The First Borgo Press Book of Crime and Mystery Stories
More Whodunits—The Second Borgo Press Book of Crime and Mystery Stories
X is for Xmas: Christmas Mysteries
CRIME GETS A HEAD
Milton T. Lamb
Originally published in Ten Detective Aces, September 1943, under the pseudonym “Milton T. Lamb”.
CHAPTER I
Percival Smith, my boss, was reading a book written by some guy named Freud when the phone rang. He didn’t look up from the book. He said, with a nod, “Answer it, Willie.”
I was glad to, glad of the chance to do something. Percival Smith has long periods of silence when’s he not very good company. I’d been twiddling my thumbs and trying to doze for the last hour.
I got out of my chair, walked to his desk, and picked the phone up. I said, “Yeah?” A torchy voice asked, “The Smith Agency?”
“None other,” I said, thinking that the female who owned the voice must be plenty easy on the eyes.
“Is Mr. Smith in?”
The boss kept reading. I nudged him with my elbow and pointed to the phone. He frowned at me, shook his head, and looked back at his book.
I said, “I’m sorry, but he’s not here. Can I help you? This is Aberstein. I’m his assistant.”
“I’m Alicia Droyster,” the voice said. “I…”
I covered the mouthpiece with my hand. “The Droyster dame, boss!”
He sat up at that, closed his book with a pop. He reached out a hand which the little blonde dish at Central Barber Shop manicures twice every week.
The Droyster dame was saying something about a calling card and a Great Dane dog, when I broke in. “Just a minute. The boss has just blew in.”
I handed him the phone, stepped back to watch him. He began asking Alicia Droyster a lot of questions. His eyes sort of got warm-looking and I could see his hand get tight on the phone. Well, I been with him long enough to know the signs. I wondered what in hell it would be this time.
Smith can get into more messes in five minutes than you or me could in ten years. He began to smile and it made my stomach nearly do a flip over. I wished he would tell the Droyster dame good-by and hang up. But I knew from the way he was grinning that he wouldn’t do that. Smith is a private shamus because he wants to be. And that kind of guy always hunts trouble.
I moved around the desk and sat down. I was already betting myself three to one that Smith would find what he was hunting—if Alicia Droyster hired him.
Two days ago, Mark Droyster, Alicia’s loving hubby, had gone home late in the afternoon, gone in his bedroom, and rigged up a contraption with coat hangers and a sawed-off shotgun. I thought it was a very messy way for a guy to kill himself. When they found Droyster there hadn’t been anything left of his head.
The bulls had marked it up as suicide without thinking about it much, and Droyster had been put six feet under late yesterday. It had been a very private funeral. Alicia Droyster, a sawbones named Lawrence Jordan, the preacher and pallbearers were all the people the Droyster dame would let come into the cemetery.
As usual, the boys on the news sheets made a big splash with it. This Mark Droyster had been as tough as a bulldog. He’d started as a kid selling papers, muscled his way up in a rough and ready style until he was a big shot. But when he cashed in his chips, the newshounds hinted that he was busted. It was odds around town that losing his dough had put him in such a funk that he killed himself.
But I didn’t see it that way. Like the boss says, I may be sort of dumb, but I couldn’t get it in my head that Droyster was the kind of guy to bump himself off. It didn’t jibe with the way he had come up. You don’t beat your way to the top like he did only to kick off. If you lose your dough, you go after it again.
The whole thing smelled to me like a red herring, and now to have Alicia Droyster calling Smith…
The boss put the phone down, leaned back in his chair. “Perhaps I don’t give you enough credit, Willie.”
“Yeah?”
“Droyster—the remarks you made about his death might be nearer right than I thought.”
The boss was usually blessing me out. He didn’t say things to make me feel good and I wanted to make the most of it. “Well, boss, now that you realize just how smart I can be sometimes…”
He laughed. “Oh, Willie, climb down. Alicia Droyster might simply be running a case of nerves—or greed.” He frowned, and it didn’t fit his face much. He looked back at me.
“Droyster was really broke, Willie, as flat as a tramp. Even the house he bought for his wife is mortgaged to the hilt. She said nothing to the police about his suicide, yet now she tells me she thinks it was murder. It doesn’t add up nicely.”
I didn’t get what he was driving at. I said, “Uh huh.”
He began sort of talking to himself. “All Droyster had left was insurance. And they do not pay off for suicide.”
I sat up straight. “Yeah! I get it! Nerves—or greed. If it was really suicide, the insurance isn’t worth the ink it took to print it. But if it was murder…”
He laughed softly, “I must give you a raise, Willie.”
“Honest?”
He looked at me a minute, then waved his hands, shook his head. He pushed his chair back from
