The Mammoth Book Of Roaring Twenties Whodunnits Part 42

"You are to me, honey."

"So why are all these bigwigs in Philly tonight?" she asked.

"They've come for the same reason as that guy," he said, indicating the dapper figure, being shown to a table with a young woman on his arm. "They're all fight fans."

Millie goggled at the newcomers. "That looks like Charlie Chaplin."

"It is Charlie Chaplin."

"Wow! I'm in the same restaurant as a movie star?"

"Correction. A movie star is in the same restaurant as the prettiest gal in Philly," Skip told her, taking the opportunity to stroke her thigh. "You got cla.s.s, Millie. You belong in a joint like this not serving behind that bar. Glad you decided to come out with me?"

"Very glad."

"Skip Halio knows how to treat a lady proper."

"Charlie Chaplin," she sighed, still gazing at the little man in wonder. "I don't believe it. Thank you so much for bringing me here. This has been the most wonderful night of my life."

Skip smiled complacently. "And it's not over yet."

When the cab dropped her off at her home, Millie Eberhart was relieved to see that her husband was not back yet. He always had a night out with the boys on Thursday. True to his word, Skip had given her an unforgettable time before returning her safe and sound to her modest house in the suburbs. Head still swimming, Millie hugged her memories to her breast like the children she could never have. There was only one drawback. She could never share her secret with anyone else, especially with her poor sap of a husband who thought she was visiting a friend.

That, in a sense, was true. What she would never dare to tell him, of course, was that the friend in question was a certain Skip Halio, a guest at the hotel where she was employed. Her husband would be deeply hurt. He was a good man, kind, loving and hard-working but the romance had long been drained out of their marriage. It had taken an evening with Skip Halio to prove that to her. She was realistic about her new friendship. Skip would soon move on and she might never see him again, but that didn't matter. He'd opened her eyes in every way. He'd shown Millie her true potential. And before he did leave Philly, he was going to take her to the Big Fight.

By the time her husband got back, Millie had washed off the smell of Skip Halio and the stink of his cigar. Tucked up in bed, she didn't even feel someone climbing in beside her to plant a farewell kiss on her cheek. She was too busy dreaming about Charlie Chaplin.

To anyone interested in the n.o.ble art, the return to the ring of the world champion was like a Second Coming. Jack Dempsey was an American hero, a teak-hard, no-nonsense fighter who'd learned his craft in a hundred bars, hobo jungles and mining camps, taking on all-comers in brawls that had no room for such niceties as boxing gloves, referees or rests between rounds. In that dog-eat-dog world, there was only one long, unrelenting, blood-covered round. The papers kept harping on about the contrast. Inside the ring, they said, Dempsey was all muscle and iron determination. Outside it, he was gentle, quiet and shy.

The more I read about Dempsey, the more I wondered if I should've put my money on him. Except that I couldn't raise a big enough stake to make a sizeable profit. Ten bucks was all I could afford. For guys like me with slim billfolds, Tunney was the better option. If, by a miracle, he actually won, we'd go home real happy. In order to convince myself that he stood a chance, I found out everything I possibly could about the challenger. I was encouraged.

On the night itself, 23 September 1926, the biggest crowd I'd ever seen converged on the stadium. Hundreds of cops were on duty. Bodyguards made sure that celebrities got safely to their seats. The air of antic.i.p.ation was almost tangible. I was pushing my way towards the entrance when I saw the man who'd first sparked my interest in the contest. He was checking that big gold watch of his and looked as if he was waiting for someone.

"Don't you try to skip out on me, Skip," I cautioned.

"No chance of that."

"I want to collect my dough."

"Only if Tunney wins," he reminded me, "and that's not exactly on the cards. Tell you what. I'm a fair-minded guy. You want to switch your money to Dempsey, that's okay by me."

"I'll stick with Tunney."

"Then you're in the minority, Walter."

"There'll be two of us in that stadium at night who believe that Jack Dempsey will lose," I declared. "Me and Gene Tunney."

"You're crazy. Tunney will be s.h.i.tting his pants."

"Oh, no. He's been waiting a long time for this chance."

"He won't even last the first round."

"You got inside information?"

"I got eyes, Walter. I got instincts."

"Well, so have I, Skip," I said with conviction. "While Dempsey was taking a rest from the ring, Tunney trained or fought every single day. He's battle-hardened and he's pickled his hands in brine to make them like lumps of stone. For the champ, this is just one more fight. For the challenger, it's everything. Tunney will win because he's hungrier."

Skip grinned broadly. "Thanks for your ten bucks, Walter," he said, punching me playfully in the chest. "You're a brave loser. There's no way your man will win." He stood on his toes, to look over the heads of the people who were thronging past. "I gotta go. Friend to meet. Enjoy the fight and don't say I didn't warn you."

"Tunney," I said defiantly.

But he'd seen the person he was waiting for and skipped off.

If you really want to know what the Roaring Twenties was all about, you should've been there in the Sesquicentennial Stadium. It was like walking into a zoo when all the cages have been opened. Most everyone there seemed to be liquored up and ripe for action, especially the women. The noise was deafening. In the mad scramble for seats, I had to fight to get mine, then put up with the reek of stale sweat and the stench of cigar and cigarette smoke. Stuck at the back, all I could see of the ring was this tiny canvas square that blazed with light. People like Charlie Chaplin, William Randolph Hearst and all the other people who mattered were down at the ringside. Skip Halio would be somewhere close to them.

The other fights on the card were simply there to warm up the crowd, to turn decent, law-abiding citizens into bloodthirsty morons who were on their feet as soon as the first punch was landed. By the time that we reached the main bout, I was part of this seething ma.s.s of humanity that roared like angry lions and that could only be appeased by the sight of ritual slaughter. I was frightened yet I was only in the audience. How must Gene Tunney be feeling?

Well, to his credit, he looked fairly calm during the preliminaries and didn't seem to mind that Dempsey got a much bigger cheer when he was introduced to the howling mob. In the general pandemonium, I didn't even hear the bell but it must have been rung because they came out of their corners with their guards up. Even from that distance, I could see that Tunney was wary, conscious of the champ's reputation. He held back, as if afraid of Dempsey, ignoring the ear splitting jeers from all sides of the stadium and biding his time.

Jack wanted to get it over quick. Charging in with both fists flailing, he tried to floor his opponent by sheer, raw, animal power but his over-confidence let him down. Tunney had kidded him. To show that he didn't really fear the champ at all, he hit Dempsey with a perfectly timed right that sent him reeling backwards and all but knocked him out. Weaker fighters would have been stopped there and then, but Dempsey had the strength to come back. The trouble was that Tunney now had the upper hand. He was fitter, faster and landed much the cleaner punches. Dempsey just couldn't seem to get through his defense.

Unable to knock the champ out, Tunney simply wore him down, round by round, until Dempsey was sweating like a pig on a spit and panting for breath. He was also bruised and bloodied whereas Tunney seemed to be unmarked. He was fighting the crowd as well as Jack Dempsey. They wanted Tunney to slug it out, toe to toe with their hero, to be smashed into oblivion by the famous fists of the Mana.s.sas Mauler. Instead, they saw a courageous fighter being out-foxed and out-boxed by a tall, skinny guy from nowhere. After ten rounds, they were both still standing but there was no doubt who won the contest. Gene Tunney had become the first man in history to take the t.i.tle on a points decision.

The stadium was like bedlam. Arguments started, fights broke out and the first few chairs were used as weapons. All I was interested in was my fifty bucks from Skip Halio. Shoving and shouldering my way down the aisle, I got close enough to the ring to recognize some of the famous faces who'd watched their hero slowly crumble before them. It took me a while to find Skip but I eventually spotted him, making for the exit and having an argument with a woman who was trying to hold his arm. With a sudden movement, he shrugged her off, slapped her hard until she backed away in pain, then vanished through a doorway. In a flash, I realized what he was doing. Unwilling to pay all of us who'd bet on Tunney, he was falling back on his favorite trick.

Skip Halio was trying to skip town.

Most boxers who'd just won a world t.i.tle would have celebrated all night and drunk themselves into imbecility. But not Gene Tunney. He was a modest, clean-living young man. After a shower, he got dressed and went off to a hotel to have several pots of tea. How do I know that? Because it was in all the papers, underneath a picture of the new champ. But even Tunney couldn't dominate the front pages in Philly the next day. The big story was spelled out in a banner headline MURDER AT THE RAILROAD STATION.

It seems that a bookie named Skip Halio was violently attacked by a local man. In the course of the struggle, Skip was deliberately hurled across the track, seconds before a train came steaming into town. Iron wheels ploughed on regardless, mangling the body beyond all recognition and ruining an expensive gold watch into the bargain. The killer made no attempt at escape. He gave his name as Walter Eberhard, a cab driver from Philadelphia.

"It wasn't really the fifty bucks," I told them. "It was the way I saw him treat my wife at the fight. n.o.body hits Millie like that and gets away with it."

The Broadcast Murder GRENVILLE ROBBINS.

The early 1920s saw a Radio Craze in Britain and America. The first commercial radio broadcast began in 1920 from Station SMK in Detroit, and the BBC began broadcasting over Station 2LO in London in 1922. And this story, written and published in 1928 is, so far as I know, the first radio murder mystery certainly the first "locked room" one. Robbins was a newspaperman who wrote for The Times. He was also a writer for radio, and though he had no books published (leastways, not under that name) he had several unusual stories in the popular magazines of the 1920s and 1930s, several of which I hope to resurrect in later anthologies.

The Oxford voice from the wireless loud speaker, to which I had been listening, suddenly stopped in the middle of a word. There was silence for a second, and then a terrifying yell rang through the room. It came from the loud speaker. I jumped up and gaped at it in frozen astonishment.

"Help!" gasped the voice. "The lights have gone out. Someone's trying to strangle me. I-"

There was another terrible shriek, an agonizing gurgle, and then all was silence. There seemed no doubt whatever that the announcer, whoever he was, was either unconscious or dead. And the whole thing had not taken more than a second. He had been strangled, alone, and with no one to save him, while hundreds of thousands of people, who were unable to help him, had been listening to every sound.

While I was still gaping at the loud speaker, I heard the sound of a scuffle come from it. Then there was a crash, as though the microphone had been upset, and then there was the sound of someone coming into the room. Help had come at last and, from the ominous silence, it had come too late. Then the machine went "dead", and I knew that the apparatus had been cut off.

I turned off my set almost automatically.

And that was how I came to be in at the beginning of the great "Wireless Murder". "Great", not because the crime and its unravelling were so out of the ordinary, but because the circ.u.mstances were so exceptional.

It was certainly the first time that so many people had been present at the beginning of a crime of this kind. Thousands and thousands of people knew about it at the very moment of its being done. Thousands knew about it before even the newspapers could tell them. Thousands, in short, had listened in to a new kind of programme, such as even the newly const.i.tuted Government Broadcasting Corporation had not contemplated.

For some months before this there had been a great outcry as to the need for more "reality" in the wireless programmes. They had given us reality this time with a vengeance.

I was sitting in my lodgings at Birchester, when the thing happened. What Birchester thinks today, as everybody knows, London thinks tomorrow, or never thinks at all, which is sometimes just as lucky for London. Anyway, Birchester is one of our largest provincial cities and is not slow to be proud of the fact.

I, "James Farren, 33, hazel eyes, florid complexion, scar over " and so on, as the police might say if advertising for me, was in a nice, comfortable position on its leading newspaper. And everyone knows that the Birchester Mercury makes papers like The Times and the Manchester Guardian look like poorly produced pamphlets.

I was single then, and, as I was still living in lodgings, had turned on the loud speaker while I was having a lonely early dinner before I turned out to start my evening's more or less honest toil, which was usually devoted to misinforming the minds and inflaming the pa.s.sions of the inhabitants of Birchester. Throughout the meal, the immaculate Oxford voice at the other end of the loud speaker had been droning on methodically. It was the time of the local news bulletin. We had already had the weather from London with its local depressions. Now we were hearing the local woes from the local studio.

A Mrs Jones had apparently mislaid a baby while shopping. "Would anyone," the voice was saying, "who finds the lost child, restore it to its parents at-"

It was there that the voice stopped and the scream rang out.

Now, I am no wireless "fan" myself, but I knew that most of my readers were, and that they would all want to hear more about this unusual crime on the morrow. So I rang up the office at once and had a couple of my sprightliest young men put on to it, to go into the matter as deeply as they could for the edification of the public.

A second telephone call, preceded by an unmannerly altercation with the exchange, who informed me that my number was engaged before I had mentioned it, got me in touch with the chief police station, and in another minute I was on my way there in a taxi.

I must say that I was very lucky throughout all this business in having a friend at court. He was a friend, too, in spite of being a relation. William Garland, the gentleman in question, was some vague kind of a cousin and a jolly good fellow to boot. He was also a jolly good detective, although he was never called anything so obvious as that. He had a kind of roving commission in the Birchester police force.

I knew that, if he were about, he would be the first to be sent by the police to the scene of the crime, and, when I rang up, he was just off in answer to an urgent message from the broadcasting people. He told me to buzz round to the police station at once. I took his advice and "buzzed".

He was standing on the pavement when my taxi got to the police station, and, ordering it to go on to the broadcasting studio, which was about a mile away, he jumped in and we were off again.

"Not in the way, I hope?" said I politely.

"Not more so than usual," he answered, and I knew that he was glad to see me.

"You might even be some faint help," he went on, puffing at his pipe. "You newspaper men are so used to inventing things that you might be able to invent a solution to a crime. Were you listening in?"

"Yes."

"So was I, as it happened. Horrible row, wasn't it? Sounded as if he were throttled to death."

"Who was it?"

"Name of Tremayne," he answered. "Their princ.i.p.al announcer. Didn't know him myself, except by his voice, and that wasn't anything unusual."

"How is he?" I asked.

"I don't know," he answered.

"Didn't you ask?"

"Yes."

"Well. Why don't you know?"

"Because they didn't know," he answered placidly.

"Don't be a fool," I said impatiently. "They must know."

"Don't be silly," he answered. "They don't."

"But don't you even know if he's dead or not?"

"No. He's vanished."

"What?"

"Yes, vamoosed from a hermetically sealed studio."

"Good G.o.d!"

"And after being strangled pretty thoroughly, too."

"They must be all mad," I said.

"I wonder," he said, thoughtfully puffing at his pipe.

A policeman was already stationed outside the door of the studio when we arrived, and he saluted us when he saw who my companion was. Inside the vestibule a youngish man was fidgeting. We soon found out that this was the chief of the studio. Stephen Hart was his name. He was a comparative newcomer to the establishment, and I had not met him before, but he struck me very favourably. He was probably thirty-two or thirty-three years of age, and was not only good-looking but also obviously endowed with a good deal of intelligence.

When he saw us, he came forward eagerly.

"Mr Garland?" he said with a quick smile. "I am the chief here. I rang up the police station directly the thing happened. I've heard of you, sir. I'm so glad you were able to come."

William introduced me, and we all shook hands.

"I suppose," went on Hart, "that you'd like to go straight to the studio. Nothing's been touched, except the telephone, and I answered that when the poor chap's wife rang up. Naturally she was very frightened. I told her to stay at home, in case the police wanted to see her. Was that all right?"

"Quite," answered Garland. "There's a telephone actually inside the studio then, is there?"

"Yes. It's not often used, but occasionally, when the broadcasting isn't actually going on, we want to get in touch with someone in the studio."

"I see. Well. Shall we go straight up?"

Hart led the way. We mounted a couple of flights of stairs and pa.s.sed through an open door into a typical broadcasting studio. In the middle of the room was the overturned microphone and by it an overturned wooden chair. That was all the furniture. The place was brilliantly lighted, and otherwise was quite bare. The lights were high up in the middle of the ceiling, and were turned on and off by a couple of switches just by the door. On the other side of the door was the telephone. In one corner was a thing rather like a telephone box. It was, I gathered, soundproof, and, when necessary, it was used to check the performance that was going on in the studio. There was no furniture inside it. Nothing but a pair of earphones. On the floor of the studio was a thick carpet. The walls, which were bright yellow in colour, were covered by thin curtains. That was all.

"Would you mind shutting the door?" said William to Hart. He did so. It closed automatically with a spring lock and fitted flush into the wall.

"You have a key, of course," went on William.

"Yes, and there are two or three others belonging to the staff. It is shut like that to prevent the possibility of any stranger barging in in the middle of a performance. Of course, it's not likely-"

"It seems to have happened tonight all right," said the other dryly.

"Yes," agreed Hart. "I can't understand it."