The Kid Passes the Sugar
By Erle Stanley Gardner
The police knew six things about the man who had killed Grahame. First, that he was short and powerful; second, that he smoked Chesterfield cigarettes; third, that he wore a wrist watch; fourth, that he was well tailored; fifth, that he had killed Grahame by mistake, thinking that his victim was The Patent Leather Kid.
Sixth and last, the police knew that this man would die. The enemies of The Patent Leather Kid had a way of vanishing from what has been so aptly described as “this vale of tears,” and the manner of their vanishing was always somewhat unique, yet invariably effective.
Seated in his club, sprawled in a luxurious easy chair, Dan Seller discussed the matter with Inspector Phil Brame. Listening in, were Bill Pope, the tropical explorer, and Renfroe, the banker.
“That Patent Leather Kid,” growled the inspector, “gives us more trouble than all the rest of the crooks put together. Not for publication, I don’t mind telling you that I sure wish that bird hadn’t made a mistake, and that he’d gunned out The Kid.”
Dan Seller seemed slightly bored by the conversation.
“How does The Kid make you so much trouble?” he asked.
“Keeps the whole damned underworld stirred up, and on the front page of the newspapers,” growled the inspector. “He never lets things quiet down, keeps the department in hot water all the time.”
Bill Pope, hard bitten explorer, skin the color of mahogany, eyes the color of steel, volunteered a comment.
“Seems to me he’s doing society a favor,” he said. “The man drifts through the underworld and rips it apart. If you ask me, The Kid’s got a keen sense of humor, and does his stuff out of a love of adventure, just like I get a kick out of puttering around the head waters of the Amazon.”
Dan Seller flashed him a swift glance, but the explorer was studying the tip of his cigarette, and his face was utterly impassive.
Inspector Brame growled a surly reply.
“It ain’t doing the police any good to have the underworld stuck over the front page of the newspapers all the time.”
Renfroe, the conservative banker, nodded his approval.
Dan Seller, laying down his newspaper, arose, stretched and yawned.
“Well,” he said, “I’m taking a little walk in the open air before I turn in. I take it, inspector, that you haven’t any clews on the Grahame murder other than the description of the man who pulled the job?”
Inspector Brame chewed meditatively upon the end of a cold cigar.
“We’ve heard rumors,” he said cautiously, “that’s all. Grahame was to have met The Patent Leather Kid in that apartment. The Kid got wise and never showed up. The girl at the desk remembers seeing a man who was short, powerful, well tailored. He looked at his wrist watch to check the time, tossed a cigarette into the urn filled with sand, and barged into the elevator. Half a minute later the shots were fired. Grahame lived long enough to tell the police he’d been shot by mistake, that the man who did it thought he was The Kid, and was sorry. He didn’t mention any names. The underworld never does.”
Dan Seller yawned again.
“Oh, well,” he said, “maybe the man’ll turn up.”
“On a marble slab,” grunted the inspector, “and then there’ll be some more publicity.”
Dan Seller walked out of the room, and Bill Pope, raising his eyes, regarded the doorway through which Dan Seller had vanished, with eyes that were mildly speculative.
Those gray eyes of the explorer had seen much of life, and, if there were any occupant of that exclusive club who suspected that Dan Seller, ostensibly a mere millionaire idler, was, in fact, none other than The Patent Leather Kid, Bill Pope would be that man. Yet there was no evidence of suspicion in his eyes, merely a speculative appraisal.
And if Dan Seller had been aware of that speculative appraisal, he gave no sign. He caught a cab when he had walked a matter of five or six blocks from the hotel, sent the cab in a figure eight around a couple of squares, making certain he was not being tailed, and then went to a fashionable hotel where he kept a room as Rodney Stone. The employees of that hotel knew him as a business executive who travelled extensively.
Shortly after eleven o’clock, Dan Seller, in his role of Rodney Stone, the business executive, slipped out of the hotel by a back entrance and service stairway. Within two doors of the place where he hit the street was The Maplewood, an apartment hotel.
Dan Seller entered this hotel, and became at once a creature of another world.
The man at the desk looked up. His face was twisted in a smile. His eyes did not smile. The girl at the telephone smiled with both her eyes and her lips.
“Hello, Kid,” said the man behind the desk.
“Hello, Kid,” said the girl.
One and all in this strange new world, submerged beneath the business life of the city, they called Dan Seller “The Kid.” It was not a mark of familiarity so much as a badge of respect. He was known in the underworld as The Patent Leather Kid, and by no other name. He was, after a fashion, as much of a mystery to the underworld as Dan Seller was to the fashionable club in which he lived the other half of his strange dual existence.
The girl at the telephone desk slipped off her headphones and came over toward the barrier. She was regarding The Kid meaningly.
“Didja hear about Grahame?” she asked.
The Kid didn’t answer her question directly. Instead, he turned to the man who was standing back of the desk, just a little ways from the girl.
“A guy was telling me a hot one tonight, Winton,” he said.
The clerk raised politely attentive eyebrows.
“Indeed?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said The Kid, casually, almost too casually to be casual, in fact, “he told me that the tip that I was going to be at the place where Grahame got rubbed out came from a leak from the hotel where I lived. That’s a good one, eh? Ha, ha, ha!”
And, still laughing, he strode toward the elevator.
But the man behind the desk was not laughing. He was standing perfectly rigid, and the sudden pallor of his face emphasized the fact that he had not shaved that morning.
The elevator operator greeted The Kid with deference, whisked him up to his penthouse apartment. The telephone was ringing by the time The Kid had the door unlocked.
The Kid took down the receiver.
“Yeah,” he said, “what is it, Gertie?”
The voice of the girl at the telephone desk breathed softly through the receiver.
“Just thought you’d like to know,” she said, “that Winton went into a panic, took what was coming to him out of the till, and beat it. He’s quit his job. Went out of the door so fast you could have played checkers on his coat-tails.”
The Kid grinned.
“Thanks, Gertie, only I don’t play checkers.”
“No?” she asked, “What do you play, Kid?”
“I play fair,” he said. “Gee, Gertie, I saw a swell platinum watch in the jewelry store on the corner. A lady’s wrist watch, with . . .”
She interrupted.
“Gee, Kid, I saw it too!”
“Well,” said The Kid, “maybe tomorrow night at this time you could tell what time it was without looking up at the clock.”
Her choking exclamation of thanks was merged in a cautious comment. “Kid,” she asked, “could I wear it in the open, or would it be hot?”
“When I give a woman anything,” observed The Kid, in a voice of dignity, “she can wear it anywhere.” And he slid the receiver back on the hook.
The Kid paused in front of the display window of the jewelry store. That window showed evidences of a business depression. A series of brightly colored tags with prices marked on them, and red lines drawn through the prices, showed where articles of jewelry would repose in the daytime. The risk of unlawful abstractions was too great to leave the articles on display at night.