Dead Man Inside

  Dead Man Inside

  A Walter Ghost Mystery

  Vincent Starrett

  TO

  SCOTT CUNNINGHAM

  WHO WATCHED IT GROW

  The incidents

  and characters of this tale

  are entirely fictitious

  Chapter One

  To Rufus Ker, slowly approaching from the north, the phenomenon was as surprising as would have been an unpremeditated “To Let” sign upon his own front window. There was a placard on the glass-paned door of Bluefield, Incorporated!

  He snorted with indignation. In all the years as man and boy that he had opened that door to trade, no such vulgarity had been permitted. Had Bluefield, slightly mad, overthrown all the sacred traditions? Or was this the prank of some miserable clerk, newly hired, to make the house ridiculous?

  There it was, underneath the chaste gold letters of the firm’s remarkable name: a hasty square of paper pasted to the inside glass.

  He shuffled forward in fussy anger. With the proper key between his fingers he paused and bent his near-sighted gaze upon the outrage. Then the bunch of keys fell jingling to the frosty morning sidewalk. It was perhaps a miracle that Rufus Ker did not drop beside them.

  Dead man inside!

  said the square of white paper. And Rufus Ker would have sworn that the letters were a foot in height and vocal as the record of a phonograph. The words were blocked in office ink. Beneath them, in somewhat smaller lettering, he read another dreadful message:

  I am dead. this store will not open to-day.

  For a moment, stunned, he stood before the once familiar door, screening the placard with his body. Then he stooped quickly, snatched the fallen keys from the sidewalk, and let himself in with fumbling hands. In an instant he had torn the square of paper from the glass. He stood trembling and triumphant, while the door closed smoothly on its automatic mechanism.

  It would be twenty minutes or half an hour before another clerk arrived….

  He looked about him fearfully. The shop, its curtains drawn, its lights extinguished, was melancholy as an empty church. Yet all was apparently as he had left it the evening before.

  He shuddered and pushed a button in the wall, flooding the place with light. Then relief came to him swiftly, and he laughed aloud.

  All was as it should be, as it always had been. At the back, the door of Bluefield’s office stood open. He could see within. The desk was neatly ordered, as usual, and the chair before it was vacant. The square of paper was some ghastly joke whose perpetrator would be discovered and discharged. Some disgruntled employee, leaving among the last, had contrived to stick the thing upon the glass and escape unnoticed. There it had remained throughout the night—a malicious wafer calculated to hurt the reputation of the firm.

  Great God, what a thing to have had happen! What a libel! How many persons already had read the screaming sign upon the door? It was a marvel that it had not been reported to the police.

  “And how glad I am,” said Rufus Ker aloud, “that I came down a little early this morning.”

  His mind began a canvass of the members of the staff. Regan—Jacobs—Humphries—Phildripp— Thain. These were the newer and younger men about the shop. Was it possible that any of them…?

  His blood began to boil. For a few moments he hated them all.

  They would be coming to work soon. Or would one of them fail to appear? Would the scoundrel guilty of such an outrage dare to show his face again upon the premises? Was not this horrible jest the last insult of a man already sure of a position some place else? Of course the fellow would deny authorship. Young clerks were always dissatisfied, and they were usually liars.

  Rufus Ker glanced at the big clock ticking on the side wall and began his duties of the morning. The racks of overcoats and suits looked singularly gloomy in their enveloping shrouds; the long tables revealed almost sinister outlines under their coverings. Terrible doubts again assailed the ancient clerk. He moved from rack to table and from table to rack with tremendous courage, snatching the coverings away with dramatic gestures. He was a little late now, and he would have to hurry.

  All was as it should have been—as it always had been. His doubts left him. Again he was filled with fury at the unknown trickster who had wrought this agitation.

  He swung back the inner curtain and stepped into the shop window, still darkened by the closedrawn hangings and the shade beyond. The wax dummy of a man, correctly attired in evening wear—he had been nicknamed “The Ambassador” by the younger clerks—sat immovable, as always, in his gilded chair, with hats and sticks around him. Crossed gloves and a silver cigarette case were on the low stand beside him. On miniature standards, like a row of footlights across the window front, were the latest in cravats and handkerchiefs.

  The house of Bluefield was famous throughout the fashionable world.

  Rufus Ker swung back the heavy silk hangings and anchored them at the sides. He let the shade up to the window top. It was like the rising of a curtain upon a section of the world. “Act One: A Street in Chicago” might have been the title of the episode, supposing an auditorium to lie behind the window of the shop.

  But there was no longer any drama in the incident for Rufus Ker. He had looked out too often upon that section of the world. At the moment he noted only that a light rain had begun to fall and that passers-by had buried their heads in their collars. One citizen, attracted perhaps by a movement in the window, glanced in as he went past, and for a moment his startled eyes rested upon the gangling figure of Rufus Ker, the lanyard of the window shade still clutched in his hand.

  “Umbrellas to-day,” murmured Rufus Ker, peering out into the mist. “I must get that line of black silks ready.”

  He backed gently out of the window and reentered the shop, dropping the curtains behind him.

  For a few happy moments he had forgotten the hideous message, now crushed inside his pocket. Umbrellas only were upon his musty mind…. They were in a stock closet at the rear of the shop….

  He turned the handle of the door and put his head inside.

  Then Rufus Ker bleated weakly, once, like a frightened sheep, and reeled backward against the nearest support. With eyes that bulged with horror he stared into the closet gloom and into the face of the waxen dummy, sometimes humorously called “The Ambassador.”

  Hanging quietly by his coat collar, from a hook, the human semblance was impersonating a hanged man with singular fidelity.

  On a gilded throne, in his own shop window, Amos Bluefield, a modest enough executive, who was ordinarily somewhat difficult to see, sat quite still, looking out with blind eyes at the mounting congestion of the boulevard.

  Chapter Two

  All that was on a Friday morning.

  It was quite late, however, Friday night, before Miss Holly Moment, glancing idly at the evening paper—which had been tossed aside by her father a little time before—came upon the column destined to upset her slumber. She uttered a little squeal in which were blended somewhat of discovery and somewhat of dismay.

  Then in shocked tones she observed, “Good heavens!”

  Her father laid aside his book. “What is it now, dear?” he asked mildly. Then he waited, confidently expecting to hear of a staggering reduction in feminine wearing apparel somewhere in the Loop.

  “Mr. Bluefield has been murdered!”

  Chandler W. Moment returned to his book. “Yes,” he said, “I noticed it. Quite a fantastic affair. I used to buy my hats there. Probably it will turn out to be suicide, after all. Why do you read that sort of thing when you sleep so badly?”

  But he put aside his book again at her next remark.

  “He was murdered, Father—and I am probably the only person in Chicago who ca
n prove it.”

  “What!” cried her father, like a character in a book. “What are you talking about, Golly?”

  That was a name he sometimes called her—a campus corruption of her actual name as written in the family Bible.

  “I didn’t tell you before because I had forgotten about it; but last night Stephen Robey and I passed Bluefield’s—quite late. We went to Sperry’s, as I told you, after the show, and had something to eat. It was after midnight when we left, and we walked to the corner to pick up a cab. Naturally, we passed Bluefield’s.”

  “And saw the proprietor murdered,” observed her father; “after which you forgot about it!”

  Miss Moment frowned.

  “Don’t be silly, Father,” she said, annoyed. “I didn’t say I saw him murdered. What I saw was the murderer. It must have been he. As we were passing, I happened to look up. At that minute the window curtains were drawn aside and a man looked out into the street!”

  “Probably Bluefield himself,” said her father. “Did Stephen see him, too?”

  “No, he didn’t; but I told him about it. Of course, as soon as he saw us, the man inside disappeared. Stephen thought he was probably a caretaker or a night watchman.”

  “Probably was,” agreed Chandler W. Moment. “After all, nobody can say at what time Bluefield entered the shop. My advice to you is to forget all about it.”

  It was excellent advice from a parent, but Miss Moment—luckily or unluckily—was a young woman of conscience. She was also small, dark, and the possessor of her mother’s jaw. Professor Moment noted the resemblance and sighed.

  “I wish you would keep out of things that don’t concern you, Holly,” he complained. “And don’t set your jaw at me that way! It makes you look like General Andrew Jackson.”

  “I shall call up the police the first thing in the morning,” asserted Miss Moment. “It is my duty, Father.”

  “Duty,” retorted her father evenly, “be damned!” He entertained a pleasant passion for minding his own business a circumstance which he often mentioned.

  “That is all very well,” said his daughter, “but the reason Chicago is as bad as it is, is that its citizens don’t coöperate with government.”

  This was a line he had himself read to her from a morning newspaper editorial.

  For a few moments her parent studied her through a thin fog of tobacco smoke.

  “Very well,” he said, at length, “if you are determined, I’ll call up the chief of police myself in the morning. I happen to know him slightly. But I doubt that you have anything to contribute.”

  In point of fact, it occurred to him, the chief of police would probably listen politely, make a note or two, and then forget the matter. It was what he wanted to do himself.

  Nevertheless, he was vaguely uneasy. Holly, he recalled, had always been a problem.

  “You can, of course, describe the man who looked out of the window,” he continued suavely, after a few minutes of silence. “You noticed his hair, his necktie, the color of his eyes?”

  Miss Moment was startled. “Why, no—I can’t,” she confessed. “It was just a glimpse, you see; really only a part of his face. Then the curtains dropped, and he was gone. It was dark, too, and—” she hesitated—“I’m afraid I really couldn’t describe him.”

  “Splendid!” cried her father, relieved.

  He greatly disliked publicity—of the wrong sort—and was now certain that there was no danger of it in the immediate future. It was possible, indeed, that by morning his daughter would be in another frame of mind. It was even possible that he would, himself, forget to call up the chief of police.

  He did not forget, however. The morning papers were rather full of the sensational affair. Bluefield, after all, had been a citizen of distinction, and the spectacle of him seated, dead, in his front window, was well calculated to enrich the public imagination. There is no telling how many lives were uplifted and ennobled by the double column photographs on the back pages of the morning journals—for the enterprising camera men had been on hand before the body could be removed.

  Over the breakfast coffee Chandler W. Moment and his daughter digested the reports….

  The possibility of suicide had not been ruled out; but the notice on the shop door was not being taken very seriously. The thing was not in keeping with Bluefield’s known habits of restraint. The books of the murdered man were said to be in order, and it was agreed that if the haberdasher had contemplated suicide he would have selected a less public place to die. It was announced that an inquest would be held that afternoon at two-thirty o’clock.

  Rufus Ker, it appeared, had been taken into custody. The rest of the clerks and clericals of the establishment were under surveillance.

  “An excellent word, too,” commented Chandler W. Moment. “Nobody can pronounce it, so it has an appearance of significance. It suggests at once great police activity and intelligence. Sand in the eyes of the public. Can’t the jackasses see that no clerk employed by Bluefield would have imagination enough to commit such a crime?”

  “Why not sand in the eyes of the murderer?” asked his daughter. “If he thought suspicion centered on the staff of the shop, wouldn’t he feel safer? Wouldn’t he take greater chances? Besides, what can you know about Bluefield’s clerks, Father? Why shouldn’t a clerk have imagination? It was that dummy in the window that suggested it all, of course!”

  “Theatrical!” said her father contemptuously. “Do you know who I’d look for, Holly, if I were handling this affair? I’d look for the author of the latest three-act thriller. Nobody else would have thought of such a thing. But, no! The police must line up all the clerks and errand boys and give’em the third degree. ‘Did you murder Amos Bluefield and stick him in his window?’ ‘Certainly not!’ ‘Where were you on Thursday night when this affair must have occurred?’ And how many of them will care to answer that question, in this day and age? Half of them were probably out with chorus girls. A nice thing for their wives to find out!”

  He chuckled sardonically and returned to his reading.

  “But apparently they have two strings to their bow. Listen to this: ‘Detectives hurried at once to the dead man’s hotel—an outlying hostelry of fashionable reputation, where the wealthy haberdasher kept sumptuous bachelor quarters.’ No mention of the hotel by name, of course: it probably advertises in the papers. Note the subtle suggestions in that single line of type! ‘Fashionable reputation— wealthy haberdasher— sumptuous bachelor quarters.’ Instantly we have a picture of disorderly parties, young women in négligé, and three rings for ginger ale and ice. Cherchez la femme, eh? The second canon of police dogma. As if a woman could have committed such a crime!”

  “Not enough imagination?” queried his daughter, faintly ironical.

  “Rubber-stamp detective methods,” said Chandler W. Moment. “No wonder murderers escape. In ancient Italy they used to employ the toughest criminals they could find to keep the cities free of the rest of the tribe. Paid’em well, too. It’s an idea we might take over to-day, with modifications. Call in another murderer on a case like this, and we’d quickly know who did it.”

  Miss Moment laughed. “He’d have to be at least as clever as the first one. Your idea would be splendid in the case of gangsters and gunmen, perhaps; but suppose this murderer to have been a clergyman or a professor of history?”

  “Did he look like either?” asked Professor Chandler W. Moment swiftly. “If he was a professor of history, he did it because he couldn’t afford a new hat. Probably he had a daughter who afforded too many.”

  They agreed upon one thing: that the real mystery was the manner of Bluefield’s death. There had been no wound upon the body, no sign of terror upon the face. It had been, apparently, a rather benevolent face that had looked out of that dreary morning window—fat, placid, and with the high cheekbones of Bluefield’s Dutch ancestors of New Amsterdam and, perhaps, the Dry Tortugas.

  “For Blauvelt, you must know, my dear,” said C
handler W. Moment to his daughter, “was in his day an eminent pirate. There is still a seaport carrying his name, somewhere in Central America—in Honduras, I believe. And what an end for the descendant of a famous pirate! Not this murder— which, after all, is rather fitting—but to make his fortune as a haberdasher. I remember I used to think that something persisted in the Bluefield strain. I have paid him as much as twenty dollars for a hat.”

  His daughter sighed. “What a passion you have for hats,” she said. “Yet I never see you wear one.”

  “Because one is never to be found,” said Chandler W. Moment. “They hide themselves at my approach. It’s a case of the perversity of inanimate objects. One notices it also in the matter of pipes and blotters.”

  “Where is the one you bought last week?” asked his daughter—“the one that was too large? I could cheerfully murder the haberdasher who sold you that. You look like a reservation Indian in it. On the day the Great White Father issues hats to his children. Pirates indeed!”

  “The truth is, my dear,” asserted Chandler W. Moment, “all business is just piracy, operating under the law. Legalized scoundrelism! I can’t say that I feel particularly sorry for Bluefield; but it must be admitted that his murder is a very neat problem for the dabbler in detection.”

  Thus Professor Moment discussed the death of Amos Bluefield with his daughter Holly, who had seen the murderer in a window. He rose from the discussion immensely edified and kept his promise at the telephone.

  “Great Jonathan!” exclaimed the chief of police, when he had listened to the report. “Can you put your daughter in a taxicab, Professor, and send her down here to me? And that young man who was with her—where can I get hold of him? I want to see them both.”

  Reluctantly the professor revealed the name and address of his daughter’s midnight companion.

  “I’ll bring Holly down to you myself,” he said; “but, as I’ve already told you, she didn’t really see the man at all.”