The Detective O'Malley MEGAPACK Read online

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFO

  A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

  THE GREEN PAINT

  THE RING

  THE SLEEPTALKER

  FINGERPRINTS

  THE FOURTH DEGREE

  IN A MIRROR

  THE WRONG HAT

  SOILED DIAMONDS

  THE LOCKED DOOR

  THE HIGH BRIDGE

  TOO MANY ENEMIES

  NO FINGERPRINTS

  TOO MANY MILES

  THREE BULLETS

  THE MIND READER

  THROUGH THE CABIN WINDOW

  SPILLED PERFUME

  HELP FROM UNCLE SAM

  MRS. WALDER’S DIAMONDS

  CITY WISE

  DECEIVING CLOTHES

  The MEGAPACK® Ebook Series

  COPYRIGHT INFO

  The Detective O’Malley MEGAPACK® is copyright © 2017 by Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.

  * * * *

  The MEGAPACK® ebook series name is a trademark of Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.

  * * * *

  “The Green Paint” originally appeared in Collier’s, November 29, 1930.

  “The Ring” originally appeared in Collier’s, December 13, 1930.

  “The Sleeptalker” originally appeared in Collier’s, April 18, 1931.

  “Fingerprints” originally appeared in Collier’s, May 9, 1932.

  “The Fourth Degree” originally appeared in Collier’s, May 23, 1932.

  “In a Mirror” originally appeared in Collier’s, July 9, 1932.

  “The Wrong Hat” originally appeared in Collier’s, July 16, 1932.

  “Soiled Diamonds” originally appeared in Collier’s, September 17, 1932.

  “The Locked Door” originally appeared in Collier’s, October 12, 1932.

  “The High Bridge” originally appeared in Collier’s, November 12, 1932.

  “Too Many Enemies” originally appeared in Collier’s, February 11, 1933.

  “No Fingerprints” originally appeared in Collier’s, March 18, 1933.

  “Too Many Miles” originally appeared in Collier’s, April 1, 1933.

  “Three Bullets” originally appeared in Collier’s, April 15, 1933.

  “The Mind Reader” originally appeared in Collier’s, July 22, 1933.

  “Through the Cabin Window” originally appeared in Collier’s, July 29, 1933.

  “Spilled Perfume” originally appeared in Collier’s, September 30, 1933.

  “Help from Uncle Sam” originally appeared in Collier’s, October 28, 1933.

  “Mrs. Walder’s Diamonds” originally appeared in Collier’s, November 18, 1933.

  “City Wise” originally appeared in Collier’s, July 31, 1937.

  “Deceiving Clothes” originally appeared in Collier’s, September 9, 1942.

  A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

  This volume collects 21 stories featuring Detective O’Malley from the pages of Collier’s. They date from 1930 through the early 1940s. We haven’t done many police procedurals (not my favorite mystery genre), but William MacHarg’s title character is a lot of fun.

  Of the series (which numbers about 80 stories), Mike Grost wrote: “The brief tales are heavily plot oriented. Some of them have mystery puzzle plots, in others the killer’s identity is simply found through police work. O’Malley puts great emphasis on coming up with ingenious ideas to make the killer confess, or make a damaging admission of guilt; the stories contain numerous gimmicks of this type.”

  Enjoy!

  —John Betancourt

  Publisher, Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidepress.com / bcmystery.com

  ABOUT THE SERIES

  Over the last few years, our MEGAPACK® ebook series has grown to be our most popular endeavor. (Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”

  The MEGAPACK® ebook series (except where specifically credited) are a group effort. Everyone at Wildside works on them. This includes John Betancourt (me), Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Shawn Garrett, Helen McGee, Bonner Menking, Sam Cooper, Helen McGee and many of Wildside’s authors…who often suggest stories to include (and not just their own!)

  RECOMMEND A FAVORITE STORY?

  Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is perfect for the MEGAPACK® ebook series? We’d love your suggestions! You can post them on our message board at http://wildsidepress.forumotion.com/ (there is an area for Wildside Press comments).

  Note: we only consider stories that have already been professionally published. This is not a market for new works.

  TYPOS

  Unfortunately, as hard as we try, a few typos do slip through. We update our ebooks periodically, so make sure you have the current version (or download a fresh copy if it’s been sitting in your ebook reader for months.) It may have already been updated.

  If you spot a new typo, please let us know. We’ll fix it for everyone. You can email the publisher at [email protected] or use the message boards above.

  THE GREEN PAINT

  Originally published in Collier’s, November 29, 1930.

  “This one,” O’Malley said, “is a case where a guy got stabbed and was found floating in the harbor. They couldn’t tell who he was because he didn’t have no clothes on. But now they got the clothes, so they put me on the case. I won’t find out nothing, but I got to go look at the clothes.”

  “Where’d they find those?” I asked.

  “They were in the harbor too. They’d had a weight on ’em but a steamer broke ’em loose.”

  The clothes were at the police station. We looked at them. They were of fine quality and make, but of old style and worn. The tailor’s label had been cut out of them. There were small spots of green paint on them. The clothes had been tied into a bundle with a heavy cord and the police had cut the cord so as to preserve the knots. There was no doubt they were the dead man’s clothes because they had a picture of him and the holes in the clothes corresponded with the stab wounds. He was a fine-looking man of middle age, and he had been stabbed several times.

  “Those are neat knots,” I commented. “Whoever tied them knew his ropes.”

  “You’re good!”

  We went back into the outer office.

  “They identified that guy yet?” O’Malley asked the sergeant.

  “They have now,” the sergeant answered. “I just got it. There was a laundry mark on his shirt and they traced it down. They got who he was and where he lived, and the key in the clothes unlocked his door. Marlind, the name is.”

  He gave us the address.

  “Well,” O’Malley said, “I suppose we got to go out there.”

  We went. It was one of a row of brownstone fronts remodeled into cheap apartments. The basement floors were shops; at the street end was the river. Marlind had had a single room, with easy-chair and reading lamp and books. There were several pictures of two very beautiful women. Nothing had happened in the room, for it was all in perfect order, but there was a cop there waiting to see who came.

  We went across the hall and rang a bell.

  “You know Mr. Marlind?” O’Malley asked the woman.

  “To say howdy-do to. That’s all anybody knew him.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “Four days ago.”

  “Who used to come to see him?”

&nbs
p; “I never knew of anybody coming to see him.”

  We rang all the bells and asked everybody the same questions and then we went out into the street and asked the storekeepers. Everybody knew Marlind to speak to but nobody knew anything about him; he never had any visitors.

  “This guy,” O’Malley said, “seems to have been what they call a recluse. That means a guy that a smash has been handed to, so that he’s lost interest and stopped trying. He said good morning to everybody but nothing else, and when he wanted company he sat in a store and talked with the storekeeper; and he spent his evenings home. How you going to figure who’d kill a guy like that? You can’t.”

  * * * *

  The last place we came to was a Chinese laundry. The floor was freshly painted green. The Chinaman was ironing and I didn’t like his looks.

  “You’re all painted up here,” O’Malley said to him. “Who done that?”

  “Me.”

  “When did you do it?”

  “One time.”

  He wouldn’t answer anything else. We went out and walked all around to find where the Chinaman bought his paint, but there was no paint store in the neighborhood. At the end of the street, on the river, was a place that sold marine stores and, in back of it, in a big clean room with a concrete floor two men were working on a boat—a big man and a smaller one; the small man had red hair. On a shelf on the wall were cans of paint.

  “You sell the Chinaman some paint?” O’Malley inquired of them.

  “Sure,” the big man answered. “We were paintin’ her hull and the Chinaman came in and wanted some paint of that color and I sold him some.” The hull was painted green.

  “When was that?”

  “Four days ago.”

  “You know Marlind?”

  “Sure,” the big man said. “He comes and sits here. Anything happened to him?”

  “That makes the case,” I said, when we had got outside. “The Chinaman did it.”

  “You’re smart! I got enough now to make out a report.”

  “What are you going to report?” I asked.

  “No clue.”

  I didn’t see him till next day.

  “Well,” he said, “I got who this Marlind was now, anyway. His business got wiped out and his wife and daughter got killed in an accident, so he stopped taking interest and was just living till he died. He had some bonds left and he lived on the interest. If he had money he didn’t clip the coupons. The day he died he clipped ’em for four months—about a thousand dollars.”

  “And told the Chinaman,” I said.

  “Told somebody, all right.”

  We went out to the boatbuilders’.

  “You stay outside,” O’Malley directed, “and I’ll go in and move around, and you tell me when you can’t see me.”

  He went in, and I watched him and then went in afterward.

  “When you were in this corner by the door,” I said, “I couldn’t see you.”

  “Get me a bucket of water,” O’Malley directed.

  “What’s the idea?” the big man demanded; but he brought the water.

  O’Malley emptied it on the floor at the point where I had been unable to see him; and the water spread out over the uneven, cracked concrete and then gathered into several small puddles and one larger one. O’Malley mopped up the large one and then dug the dirt out of the cracks in the concrete where the water had been and put the dirt in an envelope.

  “What’s that for?” the big man demanded.

  “Not a thing.”

  The little man said nothing, but he watched intently.

  “Now what?” I inquired, after we had left the place.

  “That’s all,” O’Malley answered.

  We went to the station house and O’Malley gave the envelope with the dirt to an officer, who went away with it. We waited four hours. Then two plainclothesmen came in, bringing the little red-headed man with them.

  “Where’d you get him?” O’Malley inquired.

  “Grand Central. He’d bought a ticket to Montreal.”

  “Find anything on him?”

  “We ain’t searched him yet, but he ain’t thrown anything away.”

  They searched him and produced Marlind’s coupons.

  “This seems to have been smart work, O’Malley,” I said. “I thought it was the Chinaman.”

  “The Chink never tied them knots,” he answered. “Some guy used to boats did. So I was looking for someone on the river all along.”

  “But what had the pail of water to do with it?”

  “This Marlind wasn’t killed at night; he stayed home nights. But he was put into the river at night, or the guy would have been seen. If he was killed in the shop he was kept there till dark. He’d been stabbed several times and the shop was all cleaned up; they don’t keep those places clean like that. I poured the water where I thought his body must have laid, and the water puddled in the spots where the blood must have puddled. That didn’t mean a thing to the big guy; he wasn’t in on it. But the red-head guy, who’d seen the blood there, knew what it meant. The red-head, I figure, killed him just before closing time when he and Marlind were alone there. If we’d searched him then we wouldn’t have found nothing; but when he started to light out he took the coupons with him. I wasn’t even sure either of them had done it, or that the chemist would find blood in the dirt out of the cracks, but now I know he will.”

  “You’ll be promoted for this, O’Malley.”

  “Say! Listen: I’ll be lucky if, after these other cops get through making out their reports, anybody knows I was even on the case.”

  THE RING

  Originally published in Collier’s, December 13, 1930.

  “This is a case,” said O’Malley, “where a guy was taken for a ride. He was on the front seat of whatever kind of car they were in and somebody on the back seat shot him in the back of the head and they pushed him out in Morningside Park. We don’t know who he was and we don’t know who they were and we ain’t going to be able to find out; but we got to go and look at where they found him. This is the place.”

  We got out and looked at it.

  “Nobody knows this guy,” O’Malley said, “so he probably come from somewheres else. Everything had been taken out of his pockets and there ain’t a label or a laundry mark that could be traced. How you going to solve a case like that?”

  He picked up a brightly colored scrap of paper out of the grass; then he picked up a second, then a third and fourth. The scraps said “Square. 40c.” and bore serial numbers.

  “Here’s more trouble,” he observed.

  “Why?” I asked. “Those are only the halves of motion picture theater tickets that the customers keep. Anybody might have thrown them away.”

  “Sure. Probably anybody did. But it’s all we’ve got. If I was goin’ through a guy’s clothes and found those I’d be likely to throw ’em away as not meaning nothing. There’s a hundred squares in this town and every one of ’em has got a picture house named after it; and we don’t even know it was this town. There’s plenty others. Well, we got to go and ask. He was found in Manhattan, so we’ll start in Brooklyn; if he’d been found in Brooklyn we’d do the other way about.”

  We drove to Brooklyn. The sixth picture theater identified the tickets.

  “You couldn’t remember who bought those tickets, sister?” O’Malley asked.

  “Not a chance,” the young woman told him.

  “But you can tell when they were used?”

  “Sure,” the young woman assented. “Last night. The numbers show that.”

  * * * *

  “Well, nothing in that,” O’Malley said, as we were driving back. “It didn’t lead nowhere. So we’re back where we started and we’ll have to try something else. I’m going to call the office.”

  He went into
a telephone booth and I waited till he came out again.

  “They got the guy identified,” he stated. “He came from Buffalo. He had a roll of money on him and was going to Paris. His baggage is at the pier and he didn’t show up. He didn’t know anybody in New York, so it probably was like this: He met some fellows he’d never seen before and they saw his roll and said, ‘Let’s go to such and such a place and have some fun.’ He said all right; but Morningside Park was where he stopped. How you going to find out who they were? You can’t. Well, I got to go to a newspaper office and put in an ad.”

  We stopped at a newspaper office and O’Malley wrote his ad. It read:

  “Found. In —— Square picture theater Thursday night. Diamond ring with engraved motto. Valuable. Owner phone Bryant 0001 for appointment.”

  It was my telephone number.

  “What’s this about a ring?” I asked.

  “This here’s the ring.”

  He gave it to me. It was a big white diamond and inside the gold band was engraved “Fide, sed cui vide.”

  “That’s a fine ring,” I said. “It must be worth several thousand dollars. And it’s a wise motto: ‘Trust, but be careful whom.’ But what’s all this got to do with this business? Was it the dead man’s ring?”

  “It was on him.”

  “But what’s the idea of saying you found it in the theater? Who do you expect is going to answer the ad?”

  “Listen,” O’Malley said. “What you don’t know you won’t be thinking about. If I told you who might answer the ad, maybe you wouldn’t be so useful to me. All you got to do if someone calls you about the ring is say you found it under your seat in the theater; at first you was going to turn it in at the theater office, but then you saw it was valuable and decided to advertise it.”

  * * * *

  The next morning the ad appeared in several newspapers. In the afternoon a voice called up and, an hour later, the speaker appeared at my apartment. He was a short man, heavy set and dark. He looked steadily at me.

  “You got the ring?” he asked.

  “I have. Can you describe it?”

  “Sure. It says inside of it, ‘Fid sed q vid.’ ”