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Roy Glashan's Library
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Everybody's, January 1924, with "The Jazz Addict"
The trail of a theft at a brilliant début leads to a dope
ring,
and the scientific detective arrives in time to halt a
murder.
"MY PEARLS were dying, Evangeline. You have restored life to them. They were the first gift of your father to me after we were married and I can think of no one he would rather have wear them than you, dear. They are yours. May they bring you happiness!"
Mrs. Vance had taken the famous pearls from the plush case and held them by the clasp ends. They made a half circle of pink and white luster. The girl leaned forward and about the slim white throat her mother clasped them, then took the beautiful face in her hands and kissed her forehead.
Kennedy had been busy on one of his interminable investigations in the laboratory and I had agreed with young Cornelius Cadwalader, who had incorporated himself into a newspaper feature syndicate bearing his famous old name, to accompany him and write a story on "The Dance of the Dying Pearls."
The perfectly matched pearls in the well-known old Vance necklace had been "dying," losing their luster. Vangie Vance had worn them, had revivified them, and her mother had promised them to her on this night of her eighteenth birthday at a dance which was also Vangie's coming out. Cornelius and I had agreed it was a great newspaper story—the girl, the pearls, the dance in the bungalow roof garden on the Vance Building, a fifteen-story office structure reared on the Fifth Avenue site of the old Vance mansion, atop of which the Vances had built a bungalow, sunken garden, pool, a little bit of country high in the air on the busiest, most fashionable street of the city.
Vangie Vance was a beauty. Her chief charm was easy good manners—that quality of doing the right thing at the right moment, without appreciable effort. Vangie was gloriously slim, graceful, and her gown was white and simple. Here was a girl, I felt sure, who, whatever she might say, really lacked the complexes and inhibitions of the half-baked flapper—with one exception. She was dance-crazy.
I made mental note of the picture. Gay gowns, rippling murmurs of laughter, and the catchy strains of the dance orchestra were enchanting—a perfect background for Vangie.
The fairy-like scene was enthralling. Rows of electric wires with many-colored bulbs made starlike points of light that illumined the white stucco of the low, one-story bungalow with its climbing roses and vines, its broad verandas hospitably furnished, the tennis court, swimming pool, and, most of all, the sunken garden, white pergolas and huge groups of evergreen shrubbery.
Hovering about Vangie, young David Drange never left her for long. He seemed to envy every dance, every look, every minute bestowed on any man except himself. It was impossible for Vangie on this occasion, of all, to be with him much. But he seemed to expect it, resented her interest in other fellows. He was inclined to sulk and that seemed to amuse the others.
David was a tall, attractive chap. Had he not been in the tentacles of a green-eyed monster, his smile and naturally genial disposition would have brought him temporary compensation. As it was, I fancied that from him I might get the "low-down" for my story.
It did not take long to discover that he was insanely jealous of Christopher Venable. "He is the cheapest guy on earth!" glared David at my leading question. "At college we used to call him 'Aristo' Venable. He's rushing Vangie—and I don't like it."
Drange pushed his hands down into his pockets, slouched gracefully as only a boy of his build can, then suddenly shot an apologetic smile at me. "I suppose you think I'm a boob. But I can't help it. I feel so darned happy when I am dancing with Vangie—well, you know what it is—you don't want any other fellow to have that feeling with the girl you really want. He's not good enough for her. I could run him off the roof!"
"Aristo" Venable had an attractive, ingratiating way with him, too. Plainly Vangie liked him. Most of the young people were dancing when Venable and Vangie swung past.
"Oh, Venable! Let me cut in on this one."
"No splits to-night, Drange. I finish every one I start."
"But, Vangie—do you give him that privilege?"
"Cheerio, Davy! You had one dance and the next fox-trot on my list is yours." Vangie wafted him a smile around Venable's shoulder as they floated away.
Drange stared after them.
"Thinks he's another Valentino!" he muttered to me. "Has the picture bug.... Well, he has to show me!"
"Is he in a picture?" I prompted.
"Oh, yes, a small part, for fun, like a lot of others in our set. He has these blonde picture queens on his mind too much to make good, though. Ever hear of Daisy Dimples?" David looked curiously at me.
"The serial queen? The one who flirts with death in every episode? Yes. I've often wondered how she does it."
"I've often wondered that, too.... Well, Venable knows her. He's been threatened by her fellow, Jim Canavan, the ex-pug who plays emissary of the villain in the same serial with her—that thing the Colossus Films are making. Venable's going to get thrashed within an inch of his life some of these days. And there are others, too," he wound up cryptically.
"Threatened? Why?"
"The pug is jealous, of course. Canavan sees Daisy falling for this society chap and it makes him sore. He manages Canavan's, a dance joint in the Village. A lot of us go there once in a while. It makes Canavan see red, Venable with his 'twist and twirl'—that's the way he talks, you know, out of the side of his mouth."
I saw no more of Davy Drange. Mrs. Vance wanted me to meet a mighty clever little girl who was ambitious to write "society" stories. I was endeavoring to be more kindly than harsh in my discouragement when a man's voice came over my shoulder.
"I haven't had the pleasure of meeting you yet, Mr. Jameson, but I have enjoyed those articles, 'Tolerating Tolerance,' you're writing for Cadwalader's syndicate in the Star."
I recognized Wesley Brown. He was a self-made man. His boyhood had been spent struggling for an education. By sheer pluck and courage he had won an enviable position among attorneys and was now breaking into politics. In fact the thing he liked to hear most was that he "had the makings of another Lincoln." He was a friend of the people from whom he had risen, yet counsel for many of the wealthy and nearly-wealthy—for the Vance estate, among others. Wesley Brown was tall, plain of face, almost homely, and plainly attired. Nearly everybody respected him, even in this set. He had looked in at the dance, seemed to know everybody.
"Well, Norma," he remarked to the little girl with me, "I was just going when I saw you with Mr. Jameson. Don't dance too late."
She waved a saucy farewell as he departed down the steps to the private lift.
Then to me: "Goodness! You have to pay to be great! Think of leaving a party like this at this time. What time is it?" I looked at my watch. "About half past ten."
"Hardly started. At a party like this," she rattled on, "I never leave until three, anyway." She looked up at me with enthusiasm ill concealed under the assumed ennui of thirty.
AT MIDNIGHT a huge bell tolled twelve, booming from the center
of the pool on which a mausoleum, painted to resemble marble, had
been built on a small barge. As the bell tolled the barge pulled
by unseen wires began to move slowly over toward a
flower-bordered edge. A spotlight focused on the barge.
There was no need to round up the guests. They crowded toward the broad edge of the pool. Slowly on one circuit after another the lights went out. It was dark, the more intense by contrast with the previous illumination.
The door of the mausoleum opened slowly. A specter stepped out in most dignified manner. I looked to see what made it so deathlike. The specter wore black tights. Painted on them with radium paint, the bones of the body glowed brilliantly in the darkness.
There was laughter, just a bit subdued, with a tinge of creepiness in it as the guests were directed to pass before the specter and receive long, flowing ghost gowns of white crèpe paper with hoods. Next on the program was to be a ghost dance—done in the darkness—with an accompaniment of drums.
"It won't be long!" I smiled to Norma. But I saw no response. In fact there was a weirdness as we obeyed the commands of the hollow-voiced specter. At least the ghosts themselves were lively and laughing soon, as with robes and hoods thrown over them they scattered, waiting for the drums.
There was a long beat, to assemble on the lawn. It was all in fun, yet I fancied there might have been just a touch of clamminess under ghostly robes to some otherwise warm hands.
Quickly one of the figures moved forward and seized another.
"Help! Help!"
There was another, inarticulate, suppressed cry of fear. No one moved. Probably that was part of the game. "The pearls!"
Vangie had fallen in a heap on the lawn.
The crowd was now aroused. Some fellows started to close in on the figure backing away in the darkness.
"Everybody stand just where you are—or I'll shoot!"
It was a clear, bell-like voice of command, the voice of a woman, too. Nervously now, they looked.
"Is it part of the party to scare the life out of us?" I heard little Norma nervously now. "I'm going to see. I'll have a light.... The switch is over there!"
"Stop!"
A shot rang out and the glass gazing-ball near which Norma had been standing was shattered.
Naturally, no one at the party was armed. We were at the mercy of these two, the man and the girl in the robes and hoods. Skilfully, coolly, the girl with the gun covered the get-away of the man with the stolen pearls as he backed toward the steps down to the lift.
On the lawn now Vangie was trying to rise, pointing desperately. "It's real—I tell you! They have my pearls!" As she half rose she tore the paper robe, revealing a bare white neck.
DOWN the broad marble staircase to the fifteenth floor the two ghostly intruders disappeared, locking the door.
A moment and there was a rush, some to the door, some to Vangie, others for lights.
I made for the door. By one of Craig's devices I soon had it open. On the fifteenth floor we could hear the elevator, a private automatic lift, descending. Instantly I turned to the house telephone and called the first floor. Tim, the doorman, answered.
"There's been a hold-up—the pearls.... The thieves are coming down the private lift. Be ready.... Get them!"
"The bloody burglars.... Yes, sir.... Here it comes!"
There was silence as I held the line.
"You must be mistaken, sir! There's no one in the lift!"
"No, not mistaken. Lock the street doors. Let no one pass. Watch out for a man and a girl."
If they had not gone down in the elevator, they must have taken to the stairs. Down I rushed, followed by several others. But on each of the fourteen floors we searched hastily, finding nothing.
"Stand!" This was at the first floor. "Where's your partner?" It was the doorman.
"Oh, I'm Jameson, Tim, who just phoned to you. No one has gone out? Well, keep guard while I telephone."
I called Deputy O'Connor; then I called Craig. "We searched the bungalow and top floor," I told him hastily, "are holding all the guests, came down through the building, found no one. Here's one thing, though. The doorman tells me there's not an opening in this elevator shaft from the top floor to the ground—a private lift in a private shaft.... And the car arrived at the ground floor—empty!"
"I'll be there right away," answered Craig simply, hanging up.
IT was only a few moments after the police that Kennedy
arrived. Already they had started a methodical search of the
building from the ground up, posting a guard about it.
Craig went directly upstairs in the private lift, slowly, assuring himself that there was indeed no exit from the shaft to any floor until we reached the fifteenth.
Up the broad flight of marble stairs with hand-wrought iron railings we mounted to the roof. All about were the young folks, scared and vexed at the dramatic and sudden end of the dance. Kennedy smiled at the ghostlike couples as I caught sight of Vangie and Mrs. Vance.
"LET them tell you, first-hand, Craig." I suggested as I
introduced him.
"Yes, Mr. Kennedy!" cried Vangie scarcely waiting. "They've stolen my necklace—and spoiled my party!"
Mrs. Vance, visibly perturbed, took the loss more calmly, however. She seemed reassured by the arrival of Craig. Over and over she insisted that she suspected none of the servants.
"It all happened so suddenly I'm shaking yet," broke in Vangie. "I tried to have my party different. It surely was."
Kennedy nodded reassuringly to Vangie, then turned to me. "The police have started from the bottom up. I shall start from the top down."
Searching for hiding places in an office building when you have a pass key is not so difficult as it is time-consuming. We had gone down four floors without discovering anything when Craig, instead of taking the next flight that wound about the public elevator shaft, turned out under a glowing red fire-exit light to the fireproof stairs outside. On the outside balcony he flashed his electric bull's-eye over on the roof of the ten-story Union Pipe and Tank Building next door.
There, on that roof, was a wide plank long enough to reach across the twelve-foot gap over the sheer shaft to the ground.
Kennedy regarded the plank only a moment. "Down the fireway stairs, crossed to that roof, down that building with an entrance around the corner!" he exclaimed. "The descending lift was just a blind to gain time by diverting you."
VANGIE, who had followed us, more and more nervous under the
tension, was crying. I tried to comfort her, assure her that
Kennedy and the police between them would undoubtedly recover the
pearls. It did not seem to quiet her even when I learned that the
pearls had been insured.
"That's not over the pearls," whispered Kennedy, aside, a few moments later. "What then?"
"She knows something—or fears it."
"But what?"
"We shall have to wait to find out that.... It will come out.... Only wait."
IT was in the forenoon of the next day that Kennedy opened the
laboratory door to Vangie, Venable and an older woman. The older
woman stood for a moment in tremulous indecision.
"Mr. Kennedy?" she inquired at length. Craig bowed. "I am Mrs. Drange. I want your advice. Vangie has insisted on my coming to you first. And I want you to hear Christopher's story, too." She stopped, then in a choking whisper added, "David has—disappeared!"
Vangie had her arm about David's mother, looking at Craig. "Never mind the pearls," she entreated. "Find David first!"
"David—disappeared?" repeated Kennedy. "When did you see him last?"
"I saw him last at the dance, about eleven," explained Vangie. "But Chris saw him later. Tell what you know, Chris."
Venable shifted his eyes from Craig's face, although he talked to him. He seemed uneasy, kept pushing his hands through a pompadour that needed no further dressing. There was something, I couldn't tell just what, that made me dislike the young man, a feeling of distrust that grew as he unfolded his story.
"Well, you see, Norine Nash, Dave and I cut the dance for a while to go down to Canavan's in the Village where they were having a Marathon. I know that's against the law. It seems we let ourselves in for a mix-up. We hadn't been there a quarter of an hour when some one shouted, 'The cops!' There was a scramble. Mixing it in the fight was the last I saw of Dave or Norine. I thought they knew the passage through the back yard, that they were following me." He ran his fingers again through his hair. "It seems they didn't."
Briefly, Venable had made a get-away, supposed David had, too, with Norine. Norine had been arrested by the police, carted off with some other girls and fellows, finally found herself in the Night Court for women. It was thus that the story had come out. Norine had been rescued from the court by her family, a very chastened young lady. She had sent word to Wesley Brown, attorney for the family. Brown had got in about eleven, had gone to bed, but his Jap servant answered the call, waked him, and Brown had her out before morning. In fact it had been easy for Brown, for in his police-court days he had once been the attorney for Jim Canavan when he was a "pug" and got into gunman scrapes.
"But what could have become of David?" asked Kennedy.
"Tell him the reason Dave went with you, Chris," interrupted Vangie. "Dave wouldn't have left my party for any old Marathon." She said it confidently. Mrs. Drange was keeping back the anxious tears.
Venable shifted restlessly, then turned to me. "Ever hear of the Jazz Gyppers?"
"Only in the police news—a busy little bunch of blackmailers, are they not?"
He nodded. "Norine was in bad with them—Dr—they knew something—Dr—nothing in itself, you understand, but it looked bad. They'd been threatening to tell Norine's folks. They started on her and she paid 'em her allowance several times to shut them up before she sailed abroad. When she came back, they tackled her again, the day before Vangie's dance. It was more than she could pay. I didn't have it to help her out, either. So we went to Dave. Dave said not to pay, to tell them where to go. He said the way to handle blackmailers was to call them, get the jump on them; if we didn't shut it up now it would get more and worse. There was only one way to handle a bunch like that—tell them where they got off. Norine was crying and Dave said he'd do it, he'd fix these Gyppers."
"Wasn't that just like Dave?" put in Vangie. "He made himself a—a Don Quixote for us!"
"Then you think that David may have been beaten up by these Jazz Gyppers, in the raid, for defying them?" asked Craig.
Venable nodded.
KENNEDY turned suddenly toward Vangie. "What did you mean just
now by 'made himself a Don Quixote—for us'? What's the
scandal?"
Vangie did not hesitate. She glanced at Venable, then answered Craig frankly. "I may as well make a clean sweep of it. It will all come out now, anyhow. You see, one afternoon last spring just for a lark a lot of us went out on Canavan's boat to Rum Row to bring in fifty cases of stuff from the three-mile limit. There were six of us: Jim Canavan and Daisy Dimples—you know, the picture actress—Norine and Chris, Dave and I.
"Well, we got out there all right, got the stuff off a terrible-looking schooner. But just then one of the revenue boats was between us and the shore. So we went to sea, hoping to zigzag our way in after dark without getting picked up. We got in, all right, safe, with the stuff. But we were out all night on this cabin cruiser. There wasn't anything really wrong—but I suppose it was scandalous. We alibied ourselves with our folks and got away with it. That's what really happened. But then these Gyppers began to threaten to tell a lot of things that didn't really happen. They began on Norine. Norine was frightened. Her folks are pretty strict. She paid, like a little fool. I thought it was only a question of time when they'd try to shake down the rest of us. And it was. So there; now you know the dirt! When Dave heard they were going to start on me next if Norine didn't come across, he got wild, went down to clean them out."
Kennedy shook his head thoughtfully at this new instance of miscarriage of what should have protected young people. But he did not stop to improve the occasion to read a lecture. The event had been lecture enough on law violation. He turned to the telephone and soon had the Bureau of Missing Persons at work.
Craig seemed to inspire confidence in Mrs. Drange. But Vangie seemed unable to curb her impatience.
"May I help?" she asked.
Kennedy smiled. "If you will take my advice, you will both keep as quiet as possible. Above all things, don't go down to Canavan's. There's danger in it for you. They know you too well."
I knew Craig himself wanted to start on Canavan's. But there was no use going there until it opened in the afternoon and we could go under at least some kind of cover. Besides, he had laid out an investigation of his own.
I had already written my first story of the robbery for the Star and I spent the afternoon keeping in touch with the men on the case and the news associations, hoping to pick up some news of Drange.
IT was about five o'clock when we got to Canavan's in the
Village. Having no girls with us, we had to assume the role of
rounders looking for excitement.
Decoratively I was disappointed at Canavan's. I wondered why these youngsters of the rich found a craze for it with its general mussiness. Perhaps that was the very reason. At any rate, it had one requisite, a splendid little dance floor. Around were tables and in the rear three or four smaller rooms. There were several couples dancing. They looked like curiosity seekers.
We had been there only long enough to establish confidence in the waiter when I heard a voice at the door.
"Where's Jim? Is Jim here?"
A girl had entered, was speaking to the head waiter. I recognized Daisy Dimples.
DAISY was a round-faced beauty, with low broad forehead, a
little straight nose, full, bow-shaped lips. Her eyes were large
and dark, shaded with long silken lashes. Little curls peeping
out from under her snug-fitting street hat were golden and
softened her face, which seemed, as I glanced a second time,
strained and harassed.
The waiter jerked his thumb toward one of the smaller rooms in the rear.
But her voice had evidently carried. A fellow appeared in the doorway. I knew it was Canavan. It must be. That concave face, with broad nose and full, hairy nostrils could have belonged only to an ex-pugilist. To make his face even more repulsive his nose must have been broken in some ring encounter and knitted unevenly. Besides, he had a cauliflower ear. I could well imagine him as the titular head of the "Gyppers."
He did not come forward. He leaned against the door and waited for Daisy to come to him. As she crossed the floor he watched her with eyes speculative and scheming. He made me think of a hairy ape.
"Well?" he muttered in a gruff growl.
"Where's Dopey Sniffen?"
"You know! Ten days on the Island!"
"But, Jim!" There was a whispered word or two, then I caught the word, "Please!"
As I watched I could not help thinking there was something peculiar about Daisy which even the make-up could not conceal. The muscles of her face twitched. Her lips trembled. Her eyes were watery. I caught Craig watching her fascinated. What did he see?
Canavan nodded sourly toward another back room. She opened the door. It seemed to lead to a kitchen.
A moment later she returned. One moment she had been horribly upset. Now she came back a different girl—eyes bright, alert and animated.
"Feel any better?"
"Yes!" She whispered again.
"Say! How do I know where he is?"
Somehow I felt sure she had been talking about David Drange now. In a moment I knew it.
"Is that what's the matter with you?" he laughed.
"But what happened to him, Jim? I just heard of it."
Canavan scowled. "Shut up. I don't know where he is." Then he leaned over toward her darkly. "Say! You got no show there. Stick to your old friends, understand? Jim Canavan'll take care of you. Haven't I just shown it? That Vance flapper's the kid with Drange. You're not in it." He laid his hand on her arm.
She tossed her head. "What do you know about it?"
"I have to know what these guys are up to, don't I? That Venable was only playing around with you. You know it."
"Of all the nerve! Venable was playing around with me—Davy Drange don't care a whoop about me, eh? I won't stand it! It's all that Vangie Vance. I hate her! I'm going to put her out, too!" The movie serial queen paused and drew herself up. "Look at me. What's wrong with me? Ain't I pretty enough?" She stamped her foot.
Canavan smiled cynically. He might have felt it, but he wouldn't admit it. "Then I s'pose when you want some more of the stuff you'll be back to see Jim again—huh?"
She had turned toward the door.
"Working to-night?"
"Just finishing some retakes on the last episode, getting ready for the next. Some tests, too. Now, Jim," she weakened, "don't get sore at me." She smiled. "You know I was a bunch of nerves when I came in."
He grunted as she smiled her way out.
Underneath, now, I saw there was more or less open conflict between Daisy and Vangie over David. Once Canavan had been Daisy's ideal. But that must have been before she met Chris Venable. The smattering of education in pictures had made her rather admire a fellow who seemed to have a certain polish. Then she had met David. David, to her, was a "regular guy." I saw Daisy's infatuation for him. Only Vangie Vance seemed to monopolize David. Hence, in a nature like Daisy's, jealousy and hate. I wondered. What might that arouse in a nature like Canavan's?
Next to this conflict of Daisy and Vangie, one thing seemed to stand out in Kennedy's mind as we left Canavan's—the appearance of Daisy as she entered the place and as she was a few minutes later.
"It isn't the forbidden dancing, nor even the illicit sale of bootleg that's the hellgripping thing there," remarked Kennedy. "That's a depot for the dope peddler, one of the many little nests of addicts all over the city, young addicts who are looking for a new thrill. That's a line on it I can get from O'Connor's Narcotic Division."
On the way Kennedy stopped at the laboratory. Waiting for him there was a message from Vangie.
"WHAT a girl!" exclaimed Craig, vexed. "There, Walter. Read
that. She has done the very thing I told her not to
do—but has found out something I haven't, yet. I hope she
is home now."
I read:
### Letter
Mr. Kennedy:
I have been working all afternoon to find David. I have found no direct clue but I have found that Daisy Dimples is a drug addict. She gets her dope often from the flat over the old saloon a block north from the Colossus studio. A lot of the girls and fellows in the Gypper gang are dopes.
Do you suppose they did him up and have taken him to that place or some place like it? Is there any way for you to find out? The password is, "It's all over."
Hastily,
Vangie Vance.
Evidently in Vangie's mind there had been only one idea: Where was David Drange? She had gone to work on her own with the confidence of her generation. And she had discovered something, too. But how? Where was she?
Kennedy called her home. The butler did not know; no one knew, and they were worried.
We went on down to Deputy O'Connor at headquarters.
O'Connor shook his head. He was forced to confess to Kennedy that the police had not a clue to the pearls, yet. They had learned nothing through any of the "fences"; there was not a trace reported from any pawnshop; not a hint had come from Maiden Lane or from any jeweler, either in the city or in neighboring cities.
O'Connor leaned back, regarding Craig speculatively. "There are two things that run through my mind," he remarked, narrowing the crow's-feet of his eyes. "Are those pearls hidden somewhere? Or are they going to be secretly smuggled out of the country, abroad where it won't be so dangerous?"
Kennedy smiled quietly. "There's nothing to prevent both those things from being true." With a frown O'Connor turned over the afternoon papers. They had taken up the case, with a great deal of unwarranted criticism of the police. And of course the loss of the pearls and the disappearance of Drange were featured together. O'Connor had been reading one of the staff writers on the Record who called it "The Mystery of the Marathon":
### Quote
Hidden away in this dance hall was being conducted one of the prohibited Marathon dance contests. This raid was a part of the "clean-up" of the Village. Why stop there?
The truth is, the speak-easy has bred the dance-easy. No sooner is a thing prohibited, verboten, than it is the one thing every one wants to do. It becomes fashionable. Youth is attracted by the mere fact that something has become at once risky and risqué.
O'Connor flung the paper down in disgust. "What's the matter these days? The young folks are going to the dogs!"
"No." Kennedy shook his head. "With all the jazz mania, one-piece bathing suits, frank talk of sex, and the other things they criticize the flapper and the cake-eater for, they are no worse than the young folks of the past—in fact are not so bad. They're really better for the frankness in facing the facts of life. The vice of the past was never in the open. Underneath, young people are really conservative. Human nature is incurably striving for better things. Now, I shall need the help of your Narcotic Division. Can you assign some one to me?"
O'Connor nodded good-naturedly. "I'll assign the chief—Dr. Peters!"
"YES," nodded Dr. Peters as Kennedy laid before him what we
had discovered, "I suppose New York comes close to being the
clearing-house of the illicit' drug trade of the country. The
supply is almost unlimited; nearly every ship that enters the
harbor brings some of it. I know that place of Canavan's in the
Village. We've had it under observation. One of my best stool
pigeons, Jasper, an ex-addict, has been gathering evidence on
it."
"May I have him to-night?" asked Craig.
The doctor summoned Jasper, a pasty-faced young man. The joint near the studio was new to Jasper. At least he said it was, although I don't always place entire confidence in these ex-addicts.
"And may I ask you, doctor, to hold yourself in readiness in case I need you? There's a peddler of the stuff, Dopey Sniffen, on the Island...." Kennedy whispered aside a minute. Neither Jasper nor I could hear. Dr. Peters nodded.
Following Vangie's clue we found the saloon apartment, one of those nondescript places that might house anything. Criminals in the dope game are usually desperate. In plain words I was afraid.
It was a vicious old character who opened the door, a man with a long filthy beard, and high receding forehead that accentuated his extreme baldness. I wondered whether the palsy from which he suffered was really a blind for serpentine strength in those long grimy fingers.
"It's all over!" We let Jasper do the talking at first.
The man's eyes glinted evilly as he saw a large roll of bills in Craig's hand. "Dimples sent us." The man chuckled, showing teeth yellow and fanglike.
Another chuckle and the wretch shuffled off, beckoning us to follow. Jasper was like a passport. Back of Craig I watched behind me, expecting to be collared or choked any moment. There was a queer, nauseating odor in the narrow passageway that almost made me dizzy. It was dark until we came to a door. Beyond that was a sheet metal door that slid in grooves. I could see the grimy fingers fumbling in the darkness as a signal was given and the door slid open.
A STEEP flight of steps and we found that we were down in the
back of the cellar. Here was a very Oriental octagonal room with
Persian rugs, walls draped with vividly embroidered Asiatic
silks, small tables, on one of which was an opium layout, on the
ceiling a fresco of groups of languorous lovers.
About six of the eight sides were odd-shaped little rooms partitioned off by nothing heavier than plaster-board. You could hear through them. I looked in one, then across at another. Pinched wan faces on the divans, haggard eyes, for the most part dull and lusterless, sometimes, perhaps, shining like the old man's with unnatural brilliancy in the darkened sockets, nervous, twitching facial muscles, needle-punctured, shrunken arms, hopeless, disillusioned disappointment.
"She beat us to it." Craig was a few feet in front of us. I started when I saw Daisy Dimples in another of the little divan rooms, almost dead to the world. Lying there, she seemed too beautiful a girl to be an habitué of that cellar of sin. She seemed to be more restless than the others.
"Got any H?" the addict asked.
Kennedy had given the cue to Jasper to get heroin. The old man shook a palsied assent and shuffled off. Kennedy moved over on the thick rug and quietly we took possession of the cubby-hole next to Daisy's. The heroin was produced, paid for, and we went through the motions of sniffing it. Jasper showed us how to fake it.
Daisy was muttering, rambling under her latest shot of the drug. We listened intently, trying to catch it.
"Yes—yes—I'll do it—but I don't want to—if you give me all the decks I want—all I want...."
I could scarcely breathe in my eagerness to miss nothing.
"Vangie—always Vangie.... I'm sick of Vangie—those pearls...."
"Say, kid, can that stuff!"
Another voice that sounded familiar had interrupted Daisy's raving through the partition.
"Where is she?"
I started; it was Jim Canavan's voice.
"Down in the studio.... I heard that she went to Wesley Brown for help to find Dave, that he warned her to keep away from your place.... She came in—to the casting director—hung around.... They decided to give her a try-out...." Daisy laughed, reviving at the thought.
I saw it. Vangie had gone directly from Kennedy, in her anxiety, to Wesley Brown to get him also to help in finding David. Brown had tried unsuccessfully, as Craig bad done, to warn her to keep out of it, to avoid danger from the Gyppers.
Like many another girl, Vangie was movie-struck, too. She had gone to the Colossus studio for a job—really to play amateur detective.
"It was easy, Jim.... She fell for the picture game like a boob.... Oh, Jim! Tell me—where is Dave?"
"Shut up! How do I know? Ain't you going back to work? I got a little job on tonight, with the boat."
"No. ... I don't want to work. ... I don't want to go on the boat, either.... Work? Daisy and Vangie can't work in the same studio! They're casting for the new episode, 'The Gilded Girl,' getting some one to double for me. I won't do it. I lent them my maid—and another maid...."
"WALTER," whispered Kennedy, "I've had enough. Are you ready to go? There's some danger to Vangie!"
We passed out into the main octagonal room. But it was impossible for three of us to do that quietly and without being seen.
"Hello!"
Jim Canavan had caught sight of us. Jasper was leading. He poked his ape-head out into the half-light.
"Well, I'll be—— That's Jasper, that damned dirty stool pigeon for the police—and you two—I saw you down at the place this afternoon.... What do you want? Are you squealers for the bulls, too? Well, you won't squeal this!"
Canavan bounded over with all that remained of his agility of the prize-ring, and that was considerable yet. I closed in to help Kennedy. Jasper was no help to anybody. It was only a moment when I felt myself spinning among the layout, the teak-wood table and a divan by it. I picked myself up to return to an attack in the rear. There are no rules in a fight like this. The Marquis of Queensberry never contemplated bouts in the dark of a dope joint.
I narrowly missed an encounter with Canavan again. But this time it was slightly different. Kennedy was flinging him with all the art and gusto of jiu jitsu acquired on one of our recent Japanese cases. I had to dodge Canavan's feet to save my own head.
"Get to that iron door, Jasper. Keep it open!" panted Kennedy. He dragged Canavan to his feet before that leather pusher could rise, and as he did so, he jammed his blue-nosed automatic sharply into the man's kidneys. "Now, hands up—and not a move! Walter, get Daisy—make her walk—carry her.... Come on!"
As between an old addict and a young ex-addict, Jasper had won over the old man. The door was open.
With his automatic still in the small of Canavan's hack while Jasper and I half carried, half shoved the logy Daisy along, we got out on the street. I saw the studio far down the long block. Somehow I felt, in that atmosphere, there was peril to Vangie. I had no idea what to expect. One thing I knew, though. We must hurry.
AN AMBULANCE clanged around the far corner. Craig prodded us
along. Suddenly it stopped before the studio.
"Hurry!" he cried again. We broke into a run and reached the studio just as the white-coated ambulance surgeon disappeared in it. In the confusion the door had been left open. We pushed on in.
Everywhere there was excitement. The director scarcely noticed our arrival, nor did any one else pay much attention. The doctor took it for granted. We followed right up to the dressing-rooms. A pitiful sight greeted us. On the floor, gasping for every breath, eyes popping out of her head, passing from one convulsion into another, was the radiantly beautiful and happy girl of the night before. Only, Vangie was nude and painted from head to foot with gold paint. Over her now a filmy sheet was tangled like a winding sheet.
"My God, what devilment in the name of art and the movies!" exclaimed Craig, aroused at the fiendishness. "Didn't any of you know that that would kill a girl?"
He shoved the gun into my hands to cover Canavan. Daisy was trembling, sank on a settee in the hall with Jasper near her. Desperately Craig and the doctor worked. "All the banana oil you can get from the paint and carpenter shop," ordered Craig stridently. "Get busy. Don't gape! Every second counts. Turpentine, too, only hurry."
With the doctor he tried to rub the paint off with water. It stuck to the dying girl's skin tenaciously. Alcohol did a little better.
"Who did this?" muttered Kennedy under his breath to the director as they worked.
"Daisy Dimples' maid. She was to be in the dressing-room as soon as the girl returned. She's not here. We didn't suspect any trouble until some one knocked on the door and received no answer—only the sounds of some one suffering. I got the ambulance right away. I knew she could live only twenty minutes comfortably that way. It's been nearly half an hour since we finished shooting the scene."
"Who's responsible for the lack of cold cream under this make-up?" demanded Kennedy. "A hot bath might have fixed things pretty quick if that had been used."
No one answered. Meanwhile, with the banana oil the doctor and a couple of other maids were working desperately to get off the paint. Craig cleared the room of all who had not something to do with saving Vangie.
In the door he caught sight of Daisy Dimples now standing forlornly by a pile of props, her hands before her eyes as if striving to shut out something too awful to see.
"Did you tell your maid to leave off the cream and then beat it?"
Only a nod was Craig's answer at first. "I—had to," she stammered. "But the thought of it set me crazy. I went to the hop joint to forget. But I didn't think it would kill her—only hurt her."
Kennedy said nothing. He moved quickly over to a telephone in the director's office, called Dr. Peters. Then I heard him trying to get Wesley Brown and Chris Venable.
It was not a quick operation to save Vangie. Her pulse and respiration were better, though she was still unconscious. The paint had been removed and the efforts of the doctor were now showing some results.
"Ever hear of the old medieval pageant in Rome when the page boy was covered with gold leaf?" Kennedy explained to me as we waited. "The boy died before they could get it off. People don't realize how we breathe through our skin, throw off poisons through the pores. Why, when the Indians used to go on the warpath, they painted themselves generously. Sometimes in their ferocity they would paint too much of their skins and die. They knew no better."
"Yes, Miss Vance came to us, said she was willing to play that peril in this episode, double for Daisy who refused to do it. She was just the right build. But I didn't think it would be a real peril. I thought the maids would take care of her."
I wondered as the director explained. All in the company were not Gyppers, at least. What about the maids? From the balcony now I could look down on the set used in the "Gilded Girl" episode, as I thought of poor Vangie smeared with the gold paint, not a pore that was not clogged, sealed. It had been an attack not only on Vangie's youth and beauty but on her life.
"She might have known that they didn't need to gild her for pictures," observed Kennedy beside me. "Gold photographs black. She'd have been as black as the queen of spades on the film. They might as well have used burnt cork."
There was the noise of several people entering. I caught sight of Dr. Peters of the Narcotic Division and with him a shifty-eyed individual who I learned was Dopey Sniffen. But behind the two was David Drange!
I stared. "Well—where have you been?"
David smiled that attractive smile of his. "On the Island."
"The Island? The workhouse?"
He nodded. "I got pinched in that raid, same as Norine. Only in court I refused to give my real name, my address, anything. I had just heard a remark by 'Dopey' Sniffen here about Canavan and a big deal with a man he called the 'Dope King'— fifty-fifty. Canavan was to get half for marketing the stuff this fellow was going to bring in and pay for. I thought if I went along with Dopey when he got over there and the craving came on I could get the rest of the story, get rid of these Gyppers forever. So I went to the workhouse for ten days. Only Mr. Kennedy, not satisfied with the court record, discovered me there. He was good enough to keep quiet, let me stay until I got my story."
Kennedy smiled at Drange. "Only now," he apologized, "I had to hurry things up a bit and call Dr. Peters in. Tell the doctor what you found, David."
"I found a lot. But there's more yet. I don't need to tell Dr. Peters that peddling dope has many ramifications. It's not that in this case, though. It's the root. I mean where the dope comes from."
Dr. Peters smiled encouragingly. "It's certain there's no home-brewing of dope. There may be 'synthetic' dope. But it's manufactured somewhere and the root of this evil, like the root of all evil, is money."
"Yes," David hurried on. "And dope-running is worse than rum-running. There's no bulk to dope. Dope running is big business—quick profits and a percentage that would make Shylock look like a piker. What I was after was to find out who is back of this dope-smuggling, who finances it, who is taking the risk and the rake-off. Whose money is this Dope-King using?"
The dressing-room door opened. Vangie was now lying weak but conscious on a couch with somebody's old kimono loosely over her.
"May I see her?" David pleaded with Kennedy. "Say! When I hear of a thing like this, it makes me realize how much I care for that little girl. Please!"
Kennedy smiled into his big brown eyes. "She has asked to see you."
Drange was in the room in a second. He put his arms around Vangie gently. "That fox trot's still mine!" he reminded with a smile. "And there'll be no splits or cuts—all our lives—Vangie."
On his knees beside the couch, his dark head close to hers, he was a picture I like to remember. "Tell me, Vangie, why did you come down here?"
She had her hand in his. "I wanted—to find out what the Gyppers knew about you. I decided to play 'detective, like Mr. Kennedy, find out some things I wanted to know. I was impatient."
"And did you?"
"Yes—I found that the cast is wild over the way things are going. They're not eating regular! Colossus Films has roped in a lot of people's money—and it's as good as lost. The bottom has dropped out. Something had to be done immediately to save it. I knew many of my friends had invested in it—and, oh, Davy, there's more to it, too!... I was just getting the story back of it, when——"
She closed her eyes and sank her head in vexation at the defeat and her temporary weakness. It was maddening.
David looked on her with almost worship in his respect. "And I suppose that information that you had, and what you might get, made you dangerous—to some one!"
Kennedy turned to the door. Wesley Brown had come in with Chris Venable. I saw Kennedy eying Venable's face sharply. Nor could I take my eyes off it once my attention was directed to him. There was a terrific change in Venable's usually dapper and debonair manner. I had come to recognize it by this time. It was lack of dope.
"I suppose you're dying for a deck, Venable," shot out Kennedy. "Perhaps Daisy can spare some!"
It took me a moment to wake up to the fact that, after all, Chris Venable was a young and careful addict.
"Daisy," prompted Kennedy, now, feeling about for a way to bring out the truth as he knew it by playing them all one against the other, "you might as well tell all you know. It will go easier with you in the end."
"All I know?" She smiled nervously. "Why, everything was going all right last night. Chris Venable got Dave and Norine down to Canavan's. It would have been all right except for that confounded raid. The robbery of the pearls went off all right —just what we wanted—some one else who had been invited to the party might have been suspected...."
"The pearl robbery?" put in Vangie, rising on her elbow with new strength. "Were you in that?"
Daisy looked hard at Craig. It came as if the words were being wrung from her. "Yes. I was the girl."
With a smile of confidence, Kennedy swung about toward Canavan standing, surly, in front of me. "I suppose you know, Canavan, it's no use. That fifty-fifty deal is all off. Sniffen is here. We know it all. The Dope King has thrown you over. That's all."
"The hell you say!" Canavan looked about defiantly.
Kennedy did not take the bluff. "Yes. You were ready to go out on your boat to-night to get the big haul of the bootleg dope, weren't you? You have a half-interest in it, for peddling the stuff. Isn't that so? You see, I know the whole thing. You'd better come clean. Now, Daisy, why did you do it?"
"Why did I do it?" Daisy stared helplessly. "Why? I was threatened with exposure to the public as an addict. You know what that can do to a picture actress. And then, where else was I going to get my dope?" She was staring wildly now. "But this last Gilded Girl episode—that was too much for me. I may be an addict. But I haven't sunk as low as that!"
Canavan scowled threateningly at her. But Kennedy stepped between them. "Go on," he said in a low voice.
"I went to that hop joint to get hopped up." She was staring helplessly at David and Vangie now. There was no hope there. "Besides, it was my alibi." She raised her voice in desperation. "I can have an alibi as well as any one else—even if I haven't a Jap servant to be for me!"
"You see, Canavan, the game is up," prodded Kennedy. "Another minute and she'll confess that you did the hold-up with her. Besides, I happen to know that Wesley Brown is counsel for the Union Pipe and Tank."
"Damn you! You been snitching, you squealer!"
I JAMMED Craig's automatic into Canavan's back until he
squirmed as he started to jump forward at Wesley Brown, then fell
back with a scowl at me.
"There's half o' them poils in his safe yet. He took 'em in the building where his office is, let us out, quiet. We had a deal with the captain of this here rum-runner who's smuggling in twenty-five thousand dollars' worth of German synthetic dope."
"This is another of your ventures, is it not, Brown—this studio and picture company?"
Wesley Brown was too good an attorney to commit himself. "I decline to answer that——"
Kennedy's eye caught Vangie and David, his arm supporting her, as they bent forward, realizing now what each had found out in the unmasking.
"You were terribly involved with your clients' money in tins company, Brown. The trade knows it. I know it. The Vance pearls would save the company, pay the dope runner out there, leave you a handsome profit."
"On the level now." Canavan himself was pleading with Kennedy and me. "Put up that gat. I'll play fair."
Kennedy nodded, and smiled. "When thieves, fall out!"
Canavan stepped over and, with one of those quick underworld frisking movements, ripped Wesley Brown's coat open.
"Don't I get no reward for recovering half o' them poils?"
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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