Murder Breeds Murder a Dwight Berke Novelet Read online

  Mrs. Jurka crossed her nyloned legs and a flicker of annoyance rippled her cold features.

  “Why did we have to wait an hour for him? Must we be subjected to questioning by a reporter from a yellow rag, Inspector?”

  “Keep your rouge on, sister,” Ryan ordered. “You can talk when the boss says the word.”

  Hunter took his feet off the desk. “It's irregular.”

  Berke grinned at Morf. “While we're getting ready, you might have Ryan make a search for weapons. I don't want to be shot or stabbed right in the middle of my questioning.”

  The search revealed that only Hunter was armed. He wore a snub-nosed automatic in a shoulder holster. Ryan swiftly removed it and laid it on the desk, away from the gambler. Then he looked at Di.

  “They're clean, Berke.”

  The reporter got to his feet. He glanced at Hunter, at Esmond, at Graco and Mrs. Jurka.

  “Any one of you could have had a good motive for killing Colonel Jurka. Hunter was barred from the track because of Jurka and he probably had other reasons for wiping out old scores. Graco might have wanted to kill him because he found out that the Colonel and Mrs. Jurka were setting him up for a blackmail scheme.”

  Berke smiled briefly at Mrs. Jurka's start of surprise.

  “Yes, we found the recording and the cameras this afternoon, Mrs. Jurka. We know now where the Colonel got his money. He was using you as blackmail bait. You may have wanted him dead so you could collect all the blackmail for yourself.

  “You, Esmond, owed the Colonel ten thousand dollars. You stood to gain ten grand by killing him. And rid yourself of an ogre.”

  Esmond smiled and sat calmly in his chair.

  “I told you that the I.O.U was for ten gladioli and not for ten thousand dollars. No amount of melodrama can change the facts.”

  Berke didn't answer him directly. He faced all the suspects.

  “Anyone of you might have wanted to kill Colonel Jurka. The one who did also killed Ralf Leone, because Leone knew who the killer was.”

  Mrs. Jurka's tone was flip.

  “We all know that, smart man. You don't have to be a two-bit reporter on a yellow sheet to figure that out. But who did the killing? Tell us that.”

  “I will.” Berke turned slowly to face Wilton Esmond. “Esmond, you killed Colonel Jurka to stop him from blackmailing you.”

  ESMOND showed utter shock. He regained his calmness slowly and smiled. “I've never had my picture taken in Mrs. Jurka's bedroom.”

  “No. But you appropriated money from the Empire Finance Company to play the horses. I found out tonight from your auditor that you were short over fifty thousand dollars. Jurka also found it out and was blackmailing you. So you figured out what you thought was a perfect blueprint for murder to rid yourself of him.”

  Esmond moved in his chair and started to rise. He lost his calmness under the awful drag of fear and his face flushed with rage as he looked at Morf.

  “Inspector, this farce has gone far enough!”

  “Sit down!” Morf barked.

  “Last night,” Berke continued, “you put your plan into action, Esmond. You called Jurka at his home and asked him to meet you here at the High Hat. You also asked him to bring you ten gladioli bulbs. He came here, and you made excuses for not being able to pay, but you did give him a note for 'ten g's'.

  “You left here in your car and drove out to the Memorial Lawn Cemetery. You're a director on the board. You parked your car and walked through the trees to the gravel road that led through the poplars to Colonel Jurka's home. You stretched a wire across the road between the poplar trees and waited for Jurka. You knew that he always wore goggles and drove with the windshield down. The wire almost decapitated him. You cut the wire off the trees, then, and formed a wire loop around Jurka's neck, because you wanted to make it appear that he had been strangled by someone riding with him.”

  Esmond's face was white. “Poppycock!”

  “Shut up,” Morf said. “Let him finish.”

  Berke went on.

  “You left Jurka, then, and returned to your car and drove back to town. You had no way of knowing that Ralf Leone was hidden in the turtleback of Jurka's car, and that he trailed you and got the license number of your car.”

  Morf broke in.

  “Mary 6584. Then the name and number we found on Leone's table was not Mary Graco's telephone number, but the license number of Esmond's car. Maryland 6584.”

  “Right. Leone went down to the City Hall this morning and looked up the number in the books. Then he started to blackmail Esmond for the five grand he knew he could never collect from Jurka. Esmond agreed to pay him the money. Instead, Esmond went to Leone's room and killed him with the stiletto he'd stolen from Hunter's desk.”

  Esmond squirmed. “Purely a chain of circumstances that you've invented. You don't have a shred of proof.”

  Di Berke smiled and pointed to the pasteboard box on the table.

  “But I have proof. Proof that will put you in the electric chair.” He continued. “This morning you carried out what you thought was the clever part of your plan. You drove out to Memorial Lawn Cemetery and parked your car in the same spot you used last night. Then you planted the ten gladioli bulbs that Jurka had given you. But you dug the hole deep and buried the wire that killed Jurka. I dug it up less than an hour ago.”

  Esmond's eyes wavered and now they had the look of a cornered animal, with the shiny glaze of terror. His voice trembled.

  “Poppycock! Memorial Lawn is built over an old auto wrecking yard. You dug up some old wire.”

  “This wire had blood and bits of poplar bark on it,” said Berke, drily.

  Inspector Morf moved slowly across the room toward Esmond. Then he froze in his tracks. For Esmond leaped to the desk and swept up Hunter's gun with his clutching fingers and turned to cover them menacingly.

  “Sure, I killed the rat! He needed killing! And the jockey stuck his nose in too deep so I had to kill him, too. Murder breeds murder! Make one move to stop me, and I'll blow you apart!”

  Esmond edged toward the door, and Chuck Ryan moved away under the threat of the gun.

  Then Tod Hunter got to his feet and spoke, drily.

  “You can pull the trigger on that pop gun till your finger falls off! It ain't loaded!”

  Esmond whirled with blazing eyes and swung the gun to cover the gambler. He pulled the trigger in a blind frenzy. There was only a metallic click. He threw the gun in a rage as Mod and Ryan closed in on him. He struggled briefly, until they put cuffs on him, and then he subsided, sobbing.

  Morf growled at Berke.

  “You let him scare us half to death with that unloaded gun. Why didn't you tell me that you and Hunter had cooked up that deal to make Esmond convict himself?”

  “I phoned Hunter right before you got here. I didn't tell you because I didn't know how good an actor you were.”

  Mrs. Jurka came across the room with the sinuous grace of a panther cat in her seductive body. She put her hand on Di's arm and fairly purred.

  “I take back everything I said about you. I think you're wonderful.”

  Morf glared stonily at her. “Listen, sister. You got no clean bill of health with me. Maybe it'd be smart for you to move to some other town where the cops like cameras and trick recordings and blackmail. Let's say thirty days, sister.”

  Gail moved across with a slinky motion and put her hand on Di's arm and looked up in her husband's face, aping Mrs. Jurka with her words.

  “I think you're wonderful.”

  Di gave her a playful peck on the cheek and a slap where it would do the most good. .

  “You got good judgment, baby.” Then he grinned, and moved his hat back off his red head with the boyish gesture that she adored. “Come on,” he said, “we've got a story to write.”

  Table of Contents

  Beginning

  Carl G. Hodges

  CHAPTER I. NO NOOSE IS GOOD NOOSE

  CHAPTER II. THE PLOT QUICKEN
S

  CHAPTER III. THE FINGER POINTS

 

 

  Carl G. Hodges, Murder Breeds Murder, a Dwight Berke Novelet

 

 

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