Erle Gardner - Dead Men’s Letters

The stories in this collection originally appeared in magazine form in the following issues:

Dead Mens Letters, Black Mask, September 1926

Laugh That Off, Black Mask, September 1926

The Cat-Woman, Black Mask, February 1927

This Way Out, Black Mask, March 1927

Come and Get It, Black Mask, April 1927

In Full of Account, Black Mask, May 1927

Argosy Communications wishes to extend its grateful appreciation to the following people who helped to make this volume possible:

Jean Gardner and Grace Naso, who approved it;

Lawrence Hughes, who sanctioned it;

Betty Burke and Katharine Odgers, who coordinated its manuscript;

Mary Bowling and Mark Dunn of The New York Public Library, who came to its rescue;

Herman Graf, who demanded it;

James Mason, who cultivated it;

Robert Weinberg, who guided it;

and

Eva Zablodowsky, who inspired it.

Ive always been particularly sensitive to the eyes of others. I can tell whenever a person is looking at me, just by a peculiar, crawling sensation that comes along my spine.

Almost as soon as this flapper commenced to give me the twice over I knew what was going on, and I shifted around in my chair so I could see her out of the corner of my eye. On the surface she was just like all the rest of em, boyish bob, long black eyelashes, vivid lips, low, short dress and rolled socks.

It was the man who was with her that drew my gaze. He was like a great octopus. His body seemed to sag beneath his evening clothes, just as though the flesh was too flabby to cling to the bones. It started at his forehead where his eyebrows seemed to fold down over his eyes, and his cheeks sagged down into his collar. His nose hung down and his head drooped; his chest was on top of his stomach and the rest of him was hidden by the edge of the table. But it was his arms and hands that were striking. His hands were great, red, hairy affairs with long, red fingers that kept twisting and twining about. His arms were restless as well, and they flung about over the table like two great serpents that were joined to the flabby body at the shoulders.

Also there was a reddish tinge to his eyes, and a beak-like nose that still further bore out the impression of an octopus I had received. There was a fascination about those long threshing, restless, nervous arms, a something that held ones eyes. He couldnt keep them still. The rest of his body was a limp mass of hanging flesh, but his two arms, contrasting against the white of the table cloth, twined and twisted about, while the fingers wriggled and squirmed.

Particularly he couldnt seem to keep his hands off of the girl. Neither could he keep them on her. There was a temperamental inability to keep his hands still in any one place. Hed thresh his arms about over the table, finger a salt shaker, play with a knife, shift the sugar bowl, and then slide his red, hairy hand along the bare flesh of the girls shoulder, down the smooth, gleaming skin of the arm, and back to the sugar bowl. All of this time neither his body nor his face moved a muscle.

I could almost see the girl wince under his touch, and yet she didnt give him a glance. Her eyes were on me, studying my face, boring into my back whenever I would avert my head. There was a steady, unwinking something about her gaze that spelled desperation, also a dazed something, like a dove thats held by the glittering eyes of a serpent. That girl had something on her mind beside the boyishly bobbed hair that was done in the latest style.

She was young and she was good looking. How young I couldnt tell, but young enough to look well in a boyish bob, young enough to have a thin figure without sag lines in the skin of her face, young enough to have eyes that gleamed with the sparkle and vitality of youth, for all of their dazed expression of incipient terror.

About us was the blare and jazz of the cabaret. Couples twisted about the narrow space of the floor, the odor of food, perspiration and coffee mingled with the composite smell of cloying sweetness which is the result of blended perfumery. Over all crashed the syncopated rhythm of jazz music, music that assailed the ears, insulted the mind, and yet appealed to some inner urge in a series of throbbing pulsations.

On the whole it was no place for me. I wasnt exactly hiding, but I wasnt courting attention from young flappers in a jazzy cabaret. Ever since some young and ambitious reporter had featured Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook in a Sunday magazine supplement, my life had been miserable. That article had been a wonder, and it would be years before it was forgotten. I was a marked man.

If that flapper didnt know who I was, it was because she didnt read the papers, or because she hadnt a good memory for faces. From the look in her eyes I fancied she did know who I was. Of course Id changed my apartment, had resorted to all of the petty, simple things to throw the public off of my trail, but I could only go so far. If Id had to, I could have hidden myself pretty effectively, but I didnt exactly want to. In the first place there was no necessity for it, and, in the second place, it had got so it tickled my vanity to be pointed out as the man who was too slick for the police. However, I didnt like to advertise too much.

That flapper over there was looking at me with some fixed purpose, and it was just as well for me to get started for some other place. There were lots of cabarets to go to, and then there was a book I hadnt finished reading at my apartment. I stretched, yawned, and decided Id go and slip on a dressing gown, read for a couple of hours and go to sleep. Id had enough cabareting for one night, anyway.

As I paid my check, the flapper got up, walked past me, and went to the ladies dressing room. I sized her up and she sized me up. Her skirts were as short as the shortest ones Id seen, but, aside from that, there was nothing about her I hadnt noticed when she was at the table. As soon as she was out of sight I left, called a taxi, and headed for home.

Halfway there and I knew I was being followed, and it was a slick job. The other machine wasnt tailing right along behind, but was working its way through traffic a block below, waiting for me at the intersections, swinging up and crossing ahead or behind the taxi, running circles around it, and always keeping the taxicab in sight. It was one of those low-hung roadsters that are as long as a battleship, have a pickup that nearly jerks the spare tires off, has four wheel brakes for emergencies, and a flexibility of performance that makes a taxicab look like an ice wagon. The bird that was handling that car could sure handle it, too. It was as though the traffic just wasnt there.

Somehow I got the idea of an aeroplane escorting a big dirigible, and that made me grin. Hang it! If anyone wanted to know where I was hanging out they were welcome to the information. If someone else was going to try and frame something on me and make me the fall guy for a gang of crooks they could hop right to it, but theyd better be sure their life insurance premiums were all paid up.

I drove right to the apartment house where I have my rooms, paid off the driver, and waited a second or two in the dark of the doorway after the cab had driven off. There was the usual line of traffic whining by on the boulevard a block away, and one or two machines that came down my side street, but nothing suspicious. Five minutes passed, ten, and then the big roadster with the balloon tires slipped around the corner and the four-wheeled brakes ground it to a stop fifty feet away. The bird had been parked down the block somewhere, waiting for me to get all nicely settled. I could get a glimpse of him as he unwound from behind the steering wheel, a slim figure wrapped up in a coat, and then there was the sound of light steps on the pavement and a shadow slipped up into the doorway.