Murder Breeds Murder a Dwight Berke Novelet Read online

  Murder Breeds Murder, a Dwight Berke Novelet

  Carl G. Hodges

  * * *

  Murder Breeds Murder, a Dwight Berke Novelet

  Carl G. Hodges

  This page formatted 2007 Blackmask Online.

  http://www.blackmask.com

  CHAPTER I. NO NOOSE IS GOOD NOOSE

  CHAPTER II. THE PLOT QUICKENS

  CHAPTER III. THE FINGER POINTS

  * * *

  EText from pulpgen.com

  Thrilling Detective, April 1947

  One crime leads to another as the killer tries to cover up his guilt—but there are always those little things he forgets.

  CHAPTER I. NO NOOSE IS GOOD NOOSE

  GAIL pointed sleepily through the windshield of the coupe where it had the PRESS label stuck on the glass. “There's the turn into Hazelcrest Farms,”

  she said as she put her hand across her pert face to stifle a yawn. “Darling, why we have to drive out here at eight o'clock in the morning to get a story about a bang-tail called War Commodore is more than I can understand. I'll bet the horse isn't even up yet, let alone Colonel Jurka.”

  Dwight Berke, sports editor of theJournal , grinned happily at his wife, who did the camera work for the paper.

  “It's a treat to get up without Jap bombs for an alarm clock.” His blue eyes warmed. “Two years was a long time without you, baby.”

  He moved one hand off the wheel and chucked her under the chin.

  “The Colonel will be up. He's a bug on fresh air. He drives that yellow roadster of his with the windshield flat and goggles on his eyes. And he gets up at dawn, even if he is seventy. Racing stables have morning workouts at six o'clock.”

  He sent the coupe speeding down the hard road past the Memorial Lawn Cemetery, and made the sharp turn into the poplar-lined gravel road that led into Colonel Jurka's mansion. Behind it sprawled the barns of the Hazelcrest Stables. As they drove between the poplars, “Di” could see the pennant of red and gold flaunting the Colonel's colors over the main barn.

  Gravel churned under the coupe's tires as Di Berke drove forward.

  “There's the Colonel's car parked up ahead,” Gail said, suddenly. Her voice rose. “He must have had trouble. The front wheels are over the ditch and the radiator's smack up against a poplar.”

  Berke drove past the yellow roadster.

  “The Colonel's in it,” he said. “Probably asleep. He was pretty high last night, maybe, and couldn't make it to his bed.”

  He braked the coupe and got out, and walked back over the gravel. He noted that the roadster's bumper was hanging loose where it had smashed into the poplar, and the right front tire was twisted flat under the rim. He could see that the windshield had been screwed flat over the hood, and he could see the Colonel's head lolling on the leather of the seat back, an immense pair of goggles strapped across his eyes.

  Di Berke jumped to the running board and reached over to wake the Colonel. Then his eyes caught the ugly splatter of blood on Jurka's shirt front, and the crude wire noose that had ended his life. He moved back in horror, and stumbled and fell back into the gravel. He picked himself up then, and hurried back to Gail.

  She saw his face, drained of color.

  “What's wrong, Di?”

  Di shoved his hat back off his red hair and drew a deep breath. “The Colonel is dead. Somebody strangled him with a wire noose. Cut his throat from ear to ear!”

  Her face went white, too. “This calls for pix, I guess.”

  She pulled her four by five off the back of the seat by its shiny strap and started back over the gravel.

  “Set the camera, baby,” said Berke, “and let me snap the shutter. He's not a pretty sight.”

  She walked on, purposefully. She climbed resolutely on the running board of Jurka's roadster. Her eyes sought to focus on the corpse without actually seeing it. Her flash bulb popped. She got off the running board and climbed up on, the hood for a shot straight down on the Colonel. Another bulb flashed. She wavered weakly. Di grabbed her and helped her down.

  She smiled, in sick fashion. “Whew! I'm a ninny.” She shook her dark head to get the cobwebs from her brain. “I'm all right, darling. What do we do now? Phone the Journal or call the cops?”

  “Both,” said Berke. “We'll phone from Jurka's house.”

  DI PUT the phone back on its cradle and grinned at Gail. “TheJournal scrapped the first page; going to put out an extra. A boy'll come out to pick up your pix.”

  He walked across the living room of Jurka's home, a living room big enough to hold a dance in if the costly Oriental rugs were rolled out of the way.

  “I called Morf, too. The Inspector will be out here, pronto.” He glanced at the stately vase of brilliant flowers on the Renaissance table. “What kind of flowers?”

  “Gladiolus. Glads to you, mate. Jurka was bugs about them. Raised them in his own greenhouse. Even had one species named after him.”

  Berke looked impatiently toward the staircase. And at that moment a seductive dream came floating down. He pursed his lips and uttered a low whistle under his breath.

  “Howl, don't whistle, wolf!” Gail snapped.

  Mrs. Jurka came down the circular staircase and across the Oriental toward them. She was about twenty-five, and every hair in her sleek, dark head was minutely in place. Her complexion was faultless; her carriage haughty, yet seductive; enticing in a sheer robe wrapped revealingly around her luscious curves. Her eyes caught Di's and the ice-water of her gaze washed over him. Di noted that her eyes were dry, although he knew that her maid had apprised her of the tragedy.

  Di tried to be brief. “We're from theJournal , Mrs. Jurka. Can you supply us with some facts? Where was Colonel Jurka born? When? Did he have any enemies?”

  Her lips moved stiffly, but she was composed. “He was born in Kingston, New Mexico, in 1870. That's where his silver mine was located. He had no enemies. He had few friends.”

  “Surely a man like the Colonel . . .”

  “The Colonel was not a man given to friendships.” Her voice was cold, decisive. “He had many acquaintances, few friends.”

  “Who was he with last night, Mrs. Jurka?”

  “Wilton Esmond. Mr. Esmond called the Colonel last night. He left immediately to meet him.”

  “Who's Esmond?”

  “President of the Empire Finance Company. He's crazy about flowers. Used to teach botany in the High School here.” Her eyes had a veiled look. “Tod Hunter was the Colonel's partner in a silver mine years ago. He could tell you more about the Colonel than I.”

  “Hunter? Is he the gambler that runs the bookie joints and the High Hat Club?”

  “He owns the High Hat.”

  The sound of a wailing police siren floated in from the hard road.

  “That will be the cops, Di,” Gail broke in. “We'd better scram out there and see what big shot Morf's got to say.”

  By the time they drove the coupe back to the scene of the crime, a black police car was parked on the gravel behind Jurka's car and Fleming Morf was on the running board of the yellow roadster. He scowled when Berke came up.

  “Find anything, Inspector?”

  Morf grunted. “Can you smell murder, Berke? What brought you out here so early in the morning?”

  “I came out to see the Colonel about War Commodore. There was a rumor out that he was going to enter him in the Derby next year. Instead, we came on this. ”

  Morf turned his apple-round head and looked at Di.

  “I've searched his pockets. Keys. Cigarettes. A wallet.” He spread the wallet open to show a thick sheaf of bills and several blank checks.

&nbsp
; “What's the folded paper in the pass pocket?”

  Mort opened it. “It could be a hot tip. A note dated yesterday. 'I.O.U. TEN G'S'.” He showed it to Di. “The signature's a scrawl. Can you make it out?”

  Di studied the paper, and his pulse throbbed.

  “Yeah, Wilton E. Esmond. He's a big shot in the Empire Finance Company.”

  Morf grunted. “After I take a look around here, we'll look up this Esmond and see what's cookin'. Ten grand might be a motive for killing Jurka.”

  “Wouldn't a guy that killed him for ten grand take the note along with him?”

  Morf walked away and moved along the line of trees. He stopped where a tiny footprint marked a soft spot in the ground.

  “Looks like we got a woman to look for, too. That print was made some time last night.”

  Berke grinned. “A woman didn't kill Jurka, Inspector. It would take a man, and a strong one at that, to twist that wire noose enough to slash Jurka's throat halfway through.”

  Berke moved along the line of poplars, running the palm of his hand upward along their smooth trunks. Morf grunted cynically as he watched.

  “Nobody climbed them trees and then jumped into Jurka's car. Not at night. Jurka drove too fast for that.”

  “Did Jurka always drive with the windshield down, Inspector?”

  “Every time I saw him drive, he did. He was a bug on fresh air.”

  Morf moved back to the roadster. He took the loop of wire from around the dead man's neck and wrapped it in a cloth he found in the glove compartment. He returned to the police car and spoke to Chuck Ryan, his oafish aide.

  “Get headquarters on the radio and tell 'em we got a job for the coroner. You stay here till he comes. Then bring Jurka's car to headquarters so we can check it for fingerprints. I'm going to can on Wilton Esmond.”

  Di signaled to Gail. “Looks like the Empire Finance Company is our next stop.”

  Morf called after him, surlily. “Keep out from underfoot. Berke. The police can handle this without you butting in.”

  THE Empire Finance Company occupied small but ornate offices in the Gray Building. When Di Berke and Gail entered, the cashiers' cages were empty and the clerks and stenographers were gathered, murmuring, in a circle around Wilton Esmond, who held a copy of theJournal extra with its glaring headlines, COLONEL JURKA MURDERED.

  Berke talked above the murmuring to the dapper, silver-haired executive, who wore a dignified pin-striped suit and a pair of rimless glasses hanging from a black ribbon fastened to a gold reel on his vest. Berke thought he could pass for a movie version of a successful banker.

  “Mr. Esmond, we're from theJournal. Could you talk to us for a few minutes?”

  Esmond gave the paper to a girl, and signaled his visitors toward his own office.

  “Certainly. If it concerns the death of my friend, would you mind waiting a few moments? Inspector Morf is on his way up.”

  In five minutes Morf barged in. His eyes slitted when he saw Berke.

  “I thought I told you to keep out from underfoot?”

  “News is news, Inspector, and it's my job to get it. What are you beefing about? It's okay with Mr. Esmond.”

  Esmond smiled warmly and passed a humidor around the desk. He lit a cigar and shook his handsome head.

  “His death was a profound shock. I was with the Colonel last night. And now. . .” He left the sentence hanging sadly in the air.

  Morf handed the note he had taken from Jurka's wallet across the desk to Esmond.

  “Did you sign this note?”

  Esmond smiled, sadly. “I did. As a friendly joke between us.”

  “Joke?” Morf exploded. “Is it a joke for you to owe a man ten thousand dollars?”

  “But that note,” Esmond explained, “doesn't refer to money, Inspector. Ten g's refer to the ten gladioli bulbs which the Colonel gave me last night.”

  “Flowers?” Morf's voice trembled on a shrill note of incredulity.

  “Yes. The Colonel was—what my pupils used to say about me, too—bugs on flowers. Especially glads.” The fervor of his hobby swept him away. “The Colonel had a ruffled hybrid—primulinus—he had developed himself. He gave me ten bulbs for the gateway at Memorial Lawn Cemetery.” He added, proudly, “I'm a director on the board of Memorial Lawn. I planted the bulbs myself first thing this morning.”

  Morf got up. “That's all I wanted.” He snorted angrily. “Flowers!”

  Di questioned Esmond. “Do you know of any enemies who might have. . .?”

  “No one who would kill. The Colonel was extremely jealous of his wife. She was young and beautiful and it was only natural that men should be attracted to her.”

  “What men, for instance?”

  “Jon Graco, for one. He's the band leader at the High Hat. Plays the trumpet.” He smiled sadly at a memory. “I met the Colonel at the High Hat last night. He would never meet me there before. But he came last night. It was funny. . . his wife was there, too, apparently without his knowledge. She and Graco were having a little tete-a-tete during the intermission, when the Colonel came in. There was quite a scene. Jurka squirted a full bottle of seltzer all over Graco, and then walked off with the mute to Graco's trumpet. Then the Colonel stormed into Tod Hunter's office and tried to get him to fire Graco.”

  “What happened?”

  “Hunter told him to go chase himself. Seems like Hunter didn't like the Colonel any better than the Colonel liked him.”

  “What did Graco and Mrs. Jurka do?”

  “They went out, I guess. They were gone when the Colonel came out of Hunter's office.”

  “What time was this?”

  “About midnight.”

  “Why are you so sure?”

  “We waited to see the floor show. Then I took my bulbs and drove home. The Colonel was still there when I left. He was a little tight.”

  Gail broke in, “Mrs. Jurka said that you called the Colonel last night, and immediately afterward the Colonel went to the High Hat to meet you. Yet you say now that Mrs. Jurka was there with Graco when the Colonel arrived. The two stories don't agree.”

  Esmond was not flustered in the least. “I had to wait a long time for the Colonel. She could have left their home after he did and still gotten to the High Hat first.”

  “Is Graco a married man?” Berke asked.

  “I don't know, I'm sure.”

  CHAPTER II. THE PLOT QUICKENS

  IT WAS almost noon when Di and Gail entered the High Hat. The chairs were piled on top of the tables and scrubwomen were busily cleaning up the litter of the previous night from the cocktail lounge and the midget dance floor. Off to the south end of the big room, behind a door hidden by a screen painted with a life size picture of a racing horse, they could hear the quiet rustle of paper. They moved to the door.

  This was Tod Hunter's bookie joint, that enabled him to cater to the gambling instincts of his patrons the clock around. A sleepy ticket writer was on duty, lazily entering the morning line on the track charts and attaching racing forms to the chains on the baize- covered tables. The man glared through his cigarette smoke at Berke.

  “Tod don't like to be bothered so early in the morning. Go peddle your papers.”

  Berke spoke quietly. “Tell Hunter there's somebody from theJournal to see him, or I'll mash your head together so your ears touch!”

  The ticket writer lost his cigarette in his comical alacrity to move away from Di and enter Hunter's office.

  Gail giggled. “One of these days you're going to bluff the wrong guy.”

  “You notice I only bluff the little guys,” Di admitted shamelessly.

  The ticket writer came out of Hunter's office and sidled around a table, away from Berke. “Go on in, tough guy.”

  Tod Hunter was huge. He sat behind his desk, slitting mail open with a stiletto-like paper knife. The thin weapon looked like a toy in his big fist. His clothes were evidently costly but just as evidently stock size and his huge bulk stretched the seams flat. Hi
s eyes were hard, cold, cynical with his seventy years but his voice was brisk and booming.

  “What do you want, Berke? I've got no time for reporters with long noses.”

  “Colonel Jurka was murdered last night, Hunter. Strangled with a wire noose.”

  “I read the papers. So what? Somebody should have killed him long ago. Why come to me?”

  Di answered that frankly but he masked his words with a smile and edged his hat back off his head.

  “You happen to be one of the few men I know that could cut a man's head nearly off with a wire noose.”

  Hunter gave him a quizzical look. He sat silently for a long moment. Then he allowed the stiletto to rattle on the desk top and leaned back in his groaning chair. A deep laugh boomed out of him. Then his face set sternly.

  “I'm happy the old buzzard's dead. Happy that somebody caught up with the phony. That's what he was, Berke, a phony. Now he's dead, maybe folks will forget his money, his flowers, his young wife . . . and remember what a phony he was.”

  Berke made no move to speak.

  “Even his title was phony. He won it by sitting in a poker game down in the Black Range for forty-eight hours without getting out of his chair. He and I were partners in a rotten silver mine down in Kingston, New Mexico in the early nineties. He double- crossed me in a deal and I beat him over the head with a beer bottle and I never saw him again until he came here with his baby bride.”

  “Silver mine? That where Jurka started his fortune?”

  “Naw. It was an old, abandoned mine that we reworked. Not much more than day wages in it. Jurka got his money some other way. Stole it probably. I've got a hunch his wife knows plenty. There ain't no more heart in her than a cantaloupe. She's cold as ice and just as hard.”

  Berke grinned. “I'm still listening.”

  “Jurka bought the Hazelcrest joint and brought in some racing stallions for breeding. War Commodore was one of the colts. He started a stable of his own and began running his nags in the early races at the local track. I was running a hand book out there when he hit town. He had me barred, just for meanness. Then I built the High Hat. And the grape-vine told me that Jurka had plans for a new night club on the drafting board. Anything to fight me.”