Mum's the Word for Murder Read online

  Brett Halliday

  Mum’s the Word for Murder

  Originally published in 1938 under the pseudonym Asa Baker

  To

  George and Lou

  Whose friendship means much to me

  Chapter One

  I WAS COMPLETELY WASHED UP. Mentally bankrupt. Bereft of ideas. For two days the same sheet of white paper had stared at me from my typewriter. Correctly typed in the upper left-hand corner of the sheet was my name and the page number:

  Asa Baker 1

  A third of the way down the sheet was typed:

  Chapter One

  The rest of the sheet was damningly blank. And on my desk lay a telegram from my publisher plaintively asking for the script of my next bang-bang Western novel.

  Figuratively speaking, I was out of ammunition. I felt as though I’d go gaga if I had to turn out another range-war, cattle-rustler, crooked-foreman thriller.

  Nip and Tuck, my Scottie pups, sat on the rug beside my desk, patiently watchful, waiting for that sheet to be covered with words and rolled out of the typewriter—and a walk in the park. I swore between clenched teeth, lit another cigarette, studied Tuck’s bewhiskered face. Something about his eager alertness, which could change like a flash into an expression of dour disapproval, reminded me of Jerry Burke.

  An idea rocketed through my crusted brain cells. The first I’d had for weeks. Why the devil hadn’t I thought of Jerry before? He’s as full of stories as my pups were of fleas after our sojourn through Alabama last summer.

  I shoved my chair back and reached for the phone. It rang before I lifted the receiver. That sort of thing has happened to me so often I’ve stopped wondering about it. I put the receiver to my ear and said:

  “Hello, Jerry.”

  Burke sputtered, “Asa? How’d you know—?”

  “Tuck told me,” I butted in. “What’s on your mind?” He sputtered some more at that. He always sputters and growls when I tell him the smart things Nip and Tuck do. Finally he got his words straight and asked me if I was busy.

  I permitted myself the luxury of a sardonic laugh. He interpreted that correctly and said, “I’ve got to get away from my phone. See you in five minutes.”

  He hung up and so did I—wondering. He sounded queer. Jerry Burke isn’t easily upset. There was irritation in his voice, and more—a note of bafflement.

  I got a bottle of port from the cupboard, and two glasses. The pups crept back to their corner and lay down. They knew I was expecting company and there wouldn’t be any walk until that was over.

  I heard Burke’s official car slide up to the curb outside my bungalow, and I went to the front door to meet him. He came striding down the path, not in a hurry particularly, but as though he wanted to go somewhere and didn’t know which direction.

  I pushed the screen open and he walked into the room. He was bareheaded, and I noticed for the first time that gray was beginning to show in his stubby hair.

  I’d like to have you know Jerry Burke as I know him—as I’ve known him off and on since he was foreman of my father’s ranch on the Pecos and I was going to high school.

  Physically he’s a big rugged man, deceptively tall and heavy, with a square jaw and a network of tiny wrinkles radiating outward from the corners of his eyes.

  There’s an outward placidity about Jerry Burke that is a downright lie. It is an expression of his iron will rather than a true emanation of his spirit. A false front which he has schooled himself to present to the world, concealing a dynamic, almost an effervescent personality.

  He isn’t a man you’d pick for reckless deeds nor for last stands against tremendous odds. Yet just that sort of thing is characteristic of Jerry Burke.

  I suppose I’m the only living man who knows that Jerry wrongfully killed a man in a sudden flare of temper while he was very young. We’ve never discussed it, but I know that tragic incident must still live vividly in his memory, and must be the vital influence behind that almost superhuman self-control which he now exercises at all times.

  Sometimes I feel that Jerry overdoes it. God knows, in this extraordinary case of the Mum Murders there were times when I thought I’d have to throw up my hands and run down the street screaming if he didn’t do something. You’ll probably feel the same way as you read this account of the case—but you’ll realize in the end that the case couldn’t possibly have been solved by a man lacking Jerry Burke’s unswerving determination to be in possession of all the relevant facts before acting. That is the Jerry Burke who walked into my cottage.

  The pups came out of their corner and nuzzled him in a dignified way. He patted their heads and said that their Presbyterian manner made him feel like a pagan. But he was clearly in no mood for joking. As I came toward him he pulled a folded newspaper from his pocket.

  “Seen the Free Press today?” he asked shortly, and sat down in the chair closest to the bottle of port.

  “No. Nor yesterday’s Free Press, nor the day before,” I responded. I sat down and mildly asked him what all the excitement was about.

  “It’s folded back at the column of personal advertisements.” He handed the paper to me. “Take a squint about halfway down, and then turn to the front page.”

  I squinted about halfway down. The advertisement jumped out at me:

  SO YOU’RE PRETTY HOT STUFF, MR. BURKE? THERE’LL BE MURDER IN EL PASO AT 11:41 TONIGHT. IT’S YOUR MOVE.

  MUM.

  That was all. I read it half a dozen times while my mind tried to click and couldn’t.

  I looked up at Jerry Burke, and he was staring at me with a glass of port lifted. My eyes went on past him to an electric clock on the mantel. It was 10:50. My gaze traveled around the face of the clock to 41, and I realized there were 51 minutes to go. I looked back at Burke, and his square face was grim. His big fingers tightened on the thin glass as though he could crush it.

  I said, “What is it? A new sort of gag?”

  He shrugged his broad shoulders and settled down a little farther in his chair. “Your guess is as good as mine, Asa. The Free Press crowd is taking it plenty seriously.”

  I turned to the front page while he sipped his port. There was a front page editorial in a box. The personal advertisement was quoted in italics. The editorial was in the form of an open letter addressed to Jerry Burke—a sarcastic, sneering letter.

  I knew the Free Press had been on his neck ever since his appointment a month before as co-ordinator of all the law enforcement agencies in El Paso and general cleaner-up of the local crime situation. Editorially, they seemed to expect Burke to go out with a six-shooter in his belt and a knife between his teeth to make good on his reputation. That wasn’t Burke’s job, and I knew he hadn’t paid any attention to the yapping up to now.

  I laid the paper down and poured myself a glass of port from what Jerry had left.

  He said, “That paper’s been on the streets since five o’clock. My phone hasn’t stopped ringing since I came in from dinner.”

  “But it can’t mean anything, can it?”

  He turned his head and looked at the clock. “We’ll know in about forty minutes.”

  “But a man would be insane to advertise he was going to commit murder, and then pull it off on schedule.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of, Asa,” he replied, and hunched his shoulders forward. “A maniac kills ruthlessly and without motive. It’s the devil’s own job to catch ’em.”

  “What have you done?”

  He grinned at me without mirth. “That’s what every Tom, Dick, and Harry in El Paso has been calling up to ask me. A lot of them had suggestions. One was that I put every known law-abiding citizen in jail and keep them there until midnight.”

&nb
sp; I began to see what Burke was up against. Actually there wasn’t a thing for him to do but wait. I looked at the clock again. It was 11:14.

  He said, “I left word at headquarters to call me here if anything breaks.”

  Then I knew he was taking it seriously. I drank my port and tried to think of something to say. All I could think of was that the minute hand of the clock was moving awfully slowly; that somewhere in El Paso a killer was also watching the clock; and that some one of the hundred thousand persons in the city had less than half an hour to live.

  I saw it was going to be a tough half-hour. I tried to lighten it by saying, “Well, this is what I was praying for. I haven’t touched a typewriter key for weeks. My mind’s been a blank. I was reaching for the phone to ask you to come over and spin me a yarn when you called.”

  Burke filled his pipe from a leather pouch and lit it. His movements were deliberate—consciously so, and by an effort, it seemed to me. He looked at me from beneath bushy eyebrows and said, “Why not try a detective novel for a change?”

  “That,” I told him, “is what I decided to do about a minute ago. My detective is a raw-boned man, somewhere on the other side of forty. His face is tanned and freckled. He wears his clothes as though he regretted the necessity. He looks like a Texas cowpuncher.”

  A fleeting grin broke through Burke’s grimness. “Which is what he is at heart.”

  “And was until the big fuss broke out and the War Department, with its usual perspicacity, stuck him in the Intelligence Corps instead of the cavalry where he belonged.” Burke’s grin became a little broader. “Whereupon the ex-cowpuncher covered himself with glory and came out with a hatful of medals and the rank of Major.”

  “Proving,” I put in, “that miracles didn’t end with the Crucifixion.”

  He puffed on his pipe meditatively, looked at the clock, and then glanced at the empty port bottle.

  “I’ve a bottle of Haig and Haig in the cupboard,” I told him, “but we’ll save it to celebrate with when 11:41 passes and no one gets croaked.”

  “But that,” Jerry said, “would ruin your book before it was started.”

  “So it would.”

  “I don’t think it will. I’ve got a hunch, Asa.” He looked at the clock again, and I looked with him.

  It was 11:27.

  A curious feeling of unreality got hold of me. I wet my lips and tried to break away from it by continuing with the description of my detective.

  “The war was just beginning for my detective,” I said. “He came back to his native state and tried a hitch with the Texas Rangers. By the way, what was the balk in that, Jerry?”

  He gave me a sidelong glance and said dryly, “Routine.”

  “So he spiced things up a bit by running munitions to revolutionists in Central America—”

  “Until the revolutionists went over to the other side and left him stranded.”

  “Then he bobbed up in China—”

  “Which was only a step to Russia.” Jerry knocked the ashes from his pipe and we looked at the clock again.

  It was 11:32.

  “We next hear of him in New York,” I continued hastily, “as head of his own detective agency.”

  Burke’s heavy face was placid. “Where he did quite well for himself until he had to take a run-out powder to escape the stink of graft.”

  “At which time,” I recited, “El Paso got the bright idea of importing her favorite son to stamp out the local crime wave.”

  “Not neglecting to mention,” Burke said cynically, “the flag-waving and parade on St. Patrick’s Day when the Irishman arrived to take charge.”

  It was 11:38.

  “After which the Free Press began quoting statistics to show that local crime had taken an upturn at his advent.”

  “Your detective stepped on too many important toes,” Burke said grimly.

  “Exactly. He’s a blunt fellow with little or no finesse. That brings us up to April fifteenth and the case of the murderer who believes in advertising.”

  Jerry Burke was watching the clock. He said quietly, “You get a story, Asa, or I miss my guess, in just one minute.”

  It was 11:40.

  Sweat stood on my forehead. Burke’s face was expressionless. I recalled that this was just routine to him.

  The minute-hand moved on—inexorably. The slow-moving hand was an instrument of death. The fantastic thought came to me that I could prevent murder by just stopping the movement of the minute hand. I fought down a crazy impulse to jump up and jerk the plug from the wall.

  A strange light shone in Burke’s eyes. We were both leaning forward expectantly.

  Abruptly I wasn’t seeing the clock. I was gazing at a sea of shadowy faces. Other people, like myself, who were tensely watching the clock. One of them was about to die. One who expected death no more than Burke or I expected death.

  That thought struck through to me with numbing effect. Perhaps it was Jerry Burke—or me. The mist before my eyes cleared, and I stared at two open windows across the room. The shades were up. I fancied I discerned a movement outside.

  Then I glanced at the clock. The minute hand stood past the appointed time. I knew we were safe. But I knew, also, that a life had been snuffed out in the city.

  I think Burke knew it too. He relaxed and said, “That’s that,” with a curious note of finality.

  He got up and strode up and down, moving slowly, in close proximity to the phone. I looked for my hat. I hadn’t been invited, but I intended going with him when the call came.

  Time stood still. Everything seemed to have ended at 11:41. I was conscious now, after the tenseness of the moment passed, of only one thought running monotonously through my mind: What a swell beginning for a detective novel, if I get it down on paper as I’m actually seeing it happen.

  The telephone rang with a loud jangle. I experienced a cold shiver through my body, as though the rasping tone of the bells vibrated with every nerve.

  Jerry reached for the receiver with a deliberate movement and said, “Burke talking.” He listened without a change of expression. I put on my hat and waited.

  He hung up the receiver. “Here’s your story, Asa,” he said. “A man was murdered out on Kern Boulevard at exactly eleven forty-one. Let’s go.”

  He was on his way out the door and I followed.

  Chapter Two

  IT GAVE ME AN EERIE FEELING to sit there by Jerry Burke and watch his set, expressionless face. He must have been giving vent to a lot of stored-up emotions with the screeching siren and the car doing ninety. His big hands gripped the wheel fiercely, and I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for the murderer once Jerry closed in on him.

  We didn’t have any trouble finding the place. A police car stood in the street outside a curving driveway, lights shone all over a big house set well back among a grove of trees, and a crowd was beginning to gather.

  Burke cut out his siren and rolled up the drive. A uniformed cop met us at the wide front door. He said, “Down the hall to your right, sir,” as we pushed past him.

  A middle-aged woman, with frowzy hair and a faded cotton wrapper, wept hysterically outside the door of the study. A cop was having a tough time holding her back from the room. Without hesitating, Burke surveyed her from head to foot with a keen gaze and shoved on into the study.

  A police sergeant got up from examining the body lying just in front of a swivel chair at the left. “He’s dead, sir,” the sergeant said, and stepped back.

  The man on the floor was large-bodied and middle-aged. A round hole pierced the center of his forehead, and the back of his head was messy. From the edge of the soggy Oriental rug a little stream of blood crawled across the polished floor toward the desk.

  I recognized the man at first glance. Charles Malvern. A civic leader whose picture is often in the papers. In life he had been a florid, vigorous man. His face was ghastly in death.

  Two windows opposite the desk were open from the bottom. The sergeant p
ointed to a rip in the screen wire of the left window.

  “Someone coulda stuck a gun through from the outside,” the sergeant said in a placid voice. He was a large man, with a complexion like a dead fish, making a perfect setting for his pale blue eyes.

  Burke nodded. He hadn’t said a word since coming into the death-room. I didn’t know whether he recognized the dead man or not. He acted as though he didn’t give a damn who it was. He gave the impression of looking for something he couldn’t find—and was perturbed because he didn’t see it.

  The sound of a screeching siren penetrated the air, and brakes were jammed on outside. I went to the window and peered out, only to be blinded by headlights from about fifty parked cars.

  Burke walked around the body to stand by the swivel chair in front of a flat desk. He looked at the rip in the screen, at the chair from which it was evident Malvern had tumbled, then in a straight line behind him. An old-fashioned iron safe was directly in the line of fire. He went to it and leaned over to pick up a shapeless mass of lead. He weighed it thoughtfully in his hand just as a police surgeon, a stout, brisk man who wore glasses, entered the room with the El Paso Chief of Detectives.

  Chief of Detectives Jelcoe, a tall man, bald and thin-faced, had a nervous, irritable expression. His eyelids twitched in a peculiar manner, and his eyes shot nervously from one article to another about the room before finally coming to rest on the dead man on the floor.

  “Charles Malvern!” he exclaimed, and swore under his breath. “This is ghastly, Burke. Ghastly!”

  Burke inclined his head slightly in a brief nod. He held up the bullet and pointed toward the window. “The shot must have been fired from outside.”

  Jelcoe moved around the room rubbing his hands together nervously. The sergeant stood stolidly at the window. The surgeon rocked his fat body on his heels and said curtly, “Death was instantaneous. You don’t need me.” Taking up his medicine case, he left the room without further ado.