“Not all,” Gleason interrupted. “This is a private robbery.” He smiled grimly.
“Personally,” Darcy resumed, “I should object to being held. But I would understand your point of view. The point is, shall we all remain here? Wouldn’t we be trying your nerves to remain any longer — what with so many other trinkets about, as Mr. Durling has pointed out” — he smiled the same cold, humorless smile at Tim’s friend — “and the lights likely to go out again at any moment” — and this time the smile was for Tim.
“I told you,” Tim sprang up, “that it was accidental. If you wish to question—”
“I meant nothing, Mr. Crosby,” the Englishman explained placidly. “You are too impetuous.”
Choking another angry word, Tim sat down again, his face as white as a sheet, for we could not help it; but the circumstances — the lights, Durling, Darcy’s notice that the search had not been regular at first — compelled in our faces, no doubt, something akin to skepticism. And when I turned to Nan, she was in tears.
“Then,” Darcy went on, “if there are no objections, and if Mr. and Mrs. Gleason will understand that we mean only to relieve them of an undesirable situation, I move that we make our adieus.”
“There is an objection.”
“From whom?” Darcy turned in surprise to face Tim Crosby.
“From me.”
“Tim,” spoke Durling, “Mr. Darcy’s right. Let’s go.”
“I won’t.”
“You will.”
Durling’s voice held a command. His words were short, snapped out, and we looked at him in surprise. Tim met his gaze for a minute and then, after a pause, submitted.
“All right,” he said.
Durling and I rose uncertainly. Gleason followed us. Darcy smiled around.
“I’m sure,” he said, picking up his demitasse, “that we all regret to the very bottom of our hearts what has taken place here. It is the most unfortunate thing I’ve ever known.”
He put the cup to his lips, and at that second Tim Crosby jumped to his feet.
“Grab him!” he cried.
Durling flung himself directly across the table, crashing the cups and glasses and dishes recklessly, while his hands shot out and seized Darcy’s.
It was pandemonium. Tim was around the table in a flash. Nan screamed. I shouted something — I don’t know what. All I could tell was that Durling was being dragged across the table, sweeping everything to the floor, that Tim was shouting unintelligibly, and that Darcy was fighting furiously, desperately, to break Durling’s hold. And then Tim struck the Englishman.
His fist caught Darcy on the point of the jaw, a blow that might easily have broken it, and the fight ended there. Darcy dropped to the floor, unconscious. In a flash Tim was astride the prostrate form, had turned it face up, and was running a finger around inside Darcy’s mouth. A smile came to his face. He withdrew the finger, held it up. There were Polly’s three rings!
A half-hour later Darcy, sullen and silent, was sitting awkwardly in a stuffed chair, his hands bound behind him.
“Now,” Nan spoke, “tell us.”
Tim sat down. “Well,” he began, “I want first to give you Mr. Durling’s correct identity. He is from Scotland Yard, in this country on important business. And Mr. Darcy — he is wanted certainly for one theft and homicide case in London, and suspected of several others. He has a few aliases that I can’t remember. I recognized him, I thought, when we met at the Brandons’, from the pictures published in the London papers while I was over there last summer. After what happened I was pretty certain of it.
“I cabled to Scotland Yard. It happens that I am interested in such matters. I’ll confess it — I am a detective. What my professional connections are doesn’t matter. But before Durling came, there was the Merritts’ party, so I brought along another detective — my old ‘college chum.’ ”
“And the first man — at the Brandons’ — who was he?”
“What he said he was — what I said he was — really and truly an old army pal. But the detective flunked me. We got nowhere, could do nothing. The Merritts’ coup — planned — turned out a failure. Then Durling came.
“Briefly, Durling recognized Darcy at once. We had planned to get him outside after dinner, make the arrest with as little fuss as possible and let the party go on. Then came that clumsy accident when I turned off the lights, which really was an accident. Evidently Darcy was waiting to take advantage of the first opportunity that came up. And then we couldn’t arrest him until we found out what had become of the rings.
“The search failing, we were up a tree until at last, when Durling had a hunch that something might turn up as Darcy prepared to go. Darcy started to drink his demitasse — and it was cold as ice! It flashed on me what he had done — he had dropped the rings in his black coffee. And to put me in a more humane light, I hit him on the jaw to prevent his swallowing Polly’s rings. Does that answer all the questions?”
We nodded, speechless.
“And now,” Tim said, “I have a question — for Nan.” He turned to her. “You thought I had taken them, didn’t you?”
She turned red. “Yes,” she replied truthfully, “only... only, I didn’t care if you had.”
Day Keene
With only so many plots to go around, the difference between a top-notch crime writer and a pedestrian crime writer is often subtle. What distinguishes Day Keene’s sauciest novels is his sense of humor — ruthlessly dark and foreboding — his sentences — crisp and abstemious — and his eccentric and often harrowing story lines. Keene published more than 50 novels from the late 1940s through the mid-1960s. Since all of them currently await reissue in this country, may I suggest three to any publishers who may be reading? There’s Dead Dolls Don't Talk (Crest, 1959) with its outrageous cover blurb, “He figured her for just another one-night stand... until he found her still there in the morning — murdered.” There’s Too Hot to Hold (1959 Gold Medal). This time the cover copy cried out, “She was a female Judas leading men to torture... and death.” But Keene’s foremost treasure is Sleep with the Devil (Lion Books, 1954), featuring Les Ferron. An enforcer for a loan shark who moonlights as a model for a true crime magazine, Ferron tries to make a new start in life, in upstate New York and $150,000 the richer. But when he meets comely and virginal Amy Stanton, he discovers country life isn’t what he bargained for. One suspects much of Keene’s knowledge about true crime magazines came from writing for pulps like Lionel White’s Underworld Detective. Underworld published this grim tale about a killer criminology student, under Keene’s William Richards pen name in 1951.
Strangled
It was a glum day in the Federal Housing Administration offices in Fresno, California.
For though the sun shone outside and flowers bloomed and the glad sounds of spring were all about, on this Monday, April 2nd of 1951, something was amiss.
What was amiss was that Benny was not at work and there’d been no explanation of her absence. Benny was Hazel Benson Werner, 30-year-old former WAC, whose ebullient personality and irrepressible vitality had kept the office morale on an upward arc for three years.
Married to a GI student at Fresno State College, a handsome girl, tall and lush bodied, with an unfailing smile and a gay retort for all sallies, Benny was the bellwether of the office. As Benny went, so went the work, and since Benny always went the sunny route, good will and ambition prevailed in her orbit.