The Scarlet Ace Read online

  Table of Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  THE SCARLET ACE

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  Contents

  Landmarks

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 2018 by Wildside Press LLC.

  Originally published in All Detective Magazine, February 1933.

  *

  Published by Wildside Press LLC.

  wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

  THE SCARLET ACE

  Originally published in All Detective Magazine, February 1933.

  CHAPTER I

  THE COUNCIL

  A faint council of labored breathing came from the men in the penthouse apartment high above the pavements of Manhattan. They didn’t look like men. Great goggle eyes of glass, monstrous masks of flexible rubber covered the faces of Tattersall Lacy’s guests. They had come secretly at his bidding to the very pinnacle of the guarded Cloud Building. They had come to hear a Victrola recital, to listen behind ugly masks to the thin music of death. Their nostrils were clamped tightly. They sucked in through flexible rubber tubes the air that filtered through chemical layers in the yellow canisters on their chests.

  In the very center of the major’s penthouse library stood a tall Victrola cabinet. The lid was raised; but there was no disk on the green felt. The unplayed record was in Major Lacy’s left hand. In his right Lacy held an ordinary playing card lightly between thumb and forefinger.

  A criminal’s calling card!

  The sunlight that flooded the room made the single scarlet pip on the pasteboard gleam like a bright smear of blood. The ace of diamonds.

  Beside Lacy, on the floor, came the sound of scurrying and the healthy squeaks of a pair of white mice from the research laboratories of the Jenkins Foundation. The major glanced at the small wooden cage. He felt a faint surge of pity for these unfortunate little martyrs that were to give up their lives to prove the deadliness of this new criminal enemy of Amusement, Inc.

  Tattersall Lacy was the only man in the room whose face still remained unhooded.

  “Gentlemen, I am about to play the record of the Scarlet Ace. Let no one remove his mask until I give the signal. Sergeant Hogan!”

  The sergeant stood near the closed French windows, a single pace in front of a double rank of silent, masked men.

  “As soon as the record ceases, Sergeant, I want every window opened wide to the air.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lacy glanced at the grotesque figures in the library. All of them had a finger in this sinister pie. Close to his elbow stood the staff officers of Amusement, Inc., Charlie Weaver, Ed Corning, Pat Harrigan. Opposite them in a little semicircular group before the ornate fireplace were six silent figures; men whose real names were never spoken, who answered only to code names based on the days of the week. Men who represented power, wealth, politics. The Emergency Council for Crime Control.

  There were two others. The tall man was chief of police of New York. The younger man with the nervous hands was Richard Marvin, the incorruptible and hard-hitting reform district attorney.

  The major adjusted his own mask. That disk in the closed machine was no ordinary record. It was neither rubber nor fiber. When he had rapped it gently with his knuckles it had given forth a thin, wavering sound like the note of a tapped wineglass. It was metal; and when he had held it for the others to see, they noticed that the surface gleamed brightly as though the needle grooves had been coated with a colorless lacquer.

  There was a faint scratching hum from the machine. Then a woman’s voice was speaking clearly, beautifully:

  “How do you do, Major Lacy? You are about to listen to a message of the utmost importance. It concerns the future activities of a certain secret anti-crime organization founded by you and known only as Amusement, Inc. The message I refer to will be spoken to you directly by my master; the man who has sent to you the Ace of Diamonds. It is necessary that your three staff officers listen to this communication. If they are not, by any chance, present with you now, please stop the record at this point and send for them. It is my master’s wish that these three men hear his voice. Do you understand? Stop the record and send for them.”

  The voice ceased. Tattersall Lacy stood motionless, listening to the brusque scratch of the needle. Did he imagine it or was there a faint haze in the closed room? Silence and a monotonous needle whirring.

  The woman’s voice came sweetly again. “Thank you, Major. Thank you also, Messrs. Corning, Weaver and Harrigan. I introduce you now to the master; to the man who has chosen to call himself The Scarlet Ace.”

  The haze that emerged from the doors of the machine was pale blue, Lacy thought. Barely visible. Insidious. The blue of distant mountain peaks wavering in clear morning air. He could barely see it; but it was in the room, stealing everywhere in a swift, almost colorless stain. Every molecule of the air was heavy with it.

  The men in the library leaned forward to miss no word from the Victrola.

  “John Tattersall Lacy, you bother me. Your activity has become a serious nuisance to me. It interferes with my sleep. I need plenty of calm, untroubled sleep. I am not, like yourself, a man of robust health. Therefore, the Scarlet Ace now pronounces sentence upon you. The sentence is death!”

  The measured tones paused. The words were flat, evenly spaced, harshly uttered.

  “A few months ago, Major Lacy, you organized Amusement, Inc., and became field leader for a committee of six men whose names, I confess, are still unknown to me. You began your campaign by killing an obscure firebug named Harry Lipper; a humble cog in my organization. You shot him to death in the back alley of a Bronx tenement. From that first killing you have slowly climbed on the dead bodies of Phil Casaba, Ned Bjorski and a dozen others to a point where you have become a serious threat to me.”

  The disembodied voice laughed and the sound was like the dull clash of metal.

  “Major Lacy, because of that you are dying now! Do you hear me, you fool? You too, Harrigan, you, Captain Weaver, and you also, Edward Corning. Too late to run; too late to cry out! Your lungs are already rotten with death—your heart is pumping it along your veins and arteries. Death, from the Scarlet Ace!”

  The dull laughter clashed again.

  Lacy’s eyes jerked to the small wooden cage atop the Victrola. The scurryings and the squeakings had ceased. The unfortunate mice lay huddled in a corner of their tiny prison. A grim proof of the deadliness of this supreme enemy of Amusement, Inc.

  “Farewell to a meddling nuisance; farewell to a stubborn-minded soldier,” said the low tones of the murderer in the Victrola. “Requiescat in pace…”

  A pale blueness dyed the poisoned air.

  Tattersall Lacy reached forward and cut the switch, placed the small wooden cage on the library floor and removed the record. Sergeant Hogan’s arm gestured promptly.

  The double line of masked men behind the sergeant turned on their disciplined heels and threw wide every window in the sealed room. The warm breeze from the west gushed in, blew the curtains strongly, rattled the sheaf of papers on the major’s desk. The blue fuzziness faded through the opened windows.

  After a while Lacy inserted a forefinger under the edge of his rubber mask and took a cautious breath. In a moment or two he slipped the hood from his head and wiped the perspiration from forehead and face with a silk handkerchief. He was smiling faintly.

  “All clear, gentlemen,” he told them mildly.

  There was a quick motion of relief all through the room. The grotesque coverings came away and he saw the sweating faces of his friends. On a July day like this, the close fitting helmets were like individual Turkish baths.
<
br />   District Attorney Marvin was annoyed. He disliked anything that had no rational explanation.

  “What does it all mean?” he asked sharply.

  “It means death, my dear Marvin. It means an original and fiendish attempt at murder that places the historic poisonings of the Borgias on the plane of high-school chemistry. It failed because of pure chance plus my own cautious habits.”

  “Who is this fellow this Scarlet Ace?” growled the chief of police.

  “I don’t know. I wish I did!”

  “And that damned blue fog? Was that—”

  “Gas,” said the major softly. “A lethal gas that I suspect may prove interesting when it is isolated in a laboratory and tested qualitatively and quantitatively. I intend to send this phonograph disk to the Chemical Welfare Service in Washington for laboratory test.”

  He held the record in his hand and tapped it again lightly with his fingernail until it rang thinly.

  “Metal, you see. Not composition. Looks very much like an alloy of the aluminum group. See how it gleams in the light. It’s been lacquered with a coating of some clear liquid. Notice the sheen? Only in the playing grooves. The center and edges are untouched. Obviously the friction of the whirring needle creates sufficient heat to transform the lacquer coating into highly volatile gas; the thin blue haze you saw before the windows were opened. If you think it was imaginary just step over and glance at these unfortunate mice.”

  He turned on them the cold grimace of his smile.

  “The reason I summoned you all here to listen to a death monologue under carefully planned conditions, was to show you that our war on organized crime has scarcely begun. Amusement, Inc., is still faced with an unknown foe—probably the most dangerous foe that law and order has ever locked horns with. He’s coming out into the open at last—this so-called Scarlet Ace—the silent brain I’ve always suspected from the moment I first accepted your commission to fight death with death.”

  He nodded toward the six silent men, of the Emergency Council. Richard Abbott frowned uneasily and fingered his grey mustache. Abbott was a world famous corporation lawyer, chairman of the council, and Mr. Monday in the code.

  “Scarlet Ace, eh? Sounds melodramatic. Like a piece of childish humor,” Abbott said, gruffly. Lacy shook his head.

  “Humor, yes. Childish, no. Whoever he is, this Scarlet Ace is a man of deadly power.”

  There was a pause and nobody spoke for a moment.

  The chief of police said, “How was the disk and the ace of diamonds delivered? How did they come to you? Through the mails?”

  “No. They came by messenger. The man who brought them was honest enough; a poor middle-aged bookkeeper: out of a job. He was standing idly on the sidewalk of 49th Street, watching the derricks and the steel girders of the new Radio City, when he was handed a package, told to deliver it personally to me, and given a crisp ten-dollar bill for his trouble.”

  “Any description of the man who gave it to him?” snapped the police chief.

  “It happened to be a woman,” Lacy replied evenly. “She appears to have been a wise choice for the job. She quite dazzled the poor bookkeeper. Lovely legs; color of slippers and stockings unknown. Hair blonde or maybe light brown. Slender figure, but not thin. The bookkeeper went into admiring details to convince me that she was not exactly thin. But he was vague about the color and style of her costume. I gave him an extra ten dollars, took his name and address, and dismissed him.”

  “Mmmph. And when did all this happen?” asked the police chief.

  “Yesterday morning.”

  “How did you know the deadly disk was coated with poison gas?”

  “I didn’t. As I remarked before, it was pure chance the habit of caution that saved the lives of my staff and myself.”

  He glanced at the cage containing the stiffened bodies of the white mice and he shuddered slightly.

  “Poison gas was farthest from my thoughts. But you can imagine I was on my guard. I thought the thing might be explosive; perhaps an incendiary device. I had Hawkins, my butler, wheel the Victrola out on to the north terrace where there is nothing but a blank wall and windswept tiles.”

  He nodded, toward Charlie Weaver.

  “My staff will tell you that we had a damned narrow squeak. Even in the open air the poison seems to have an enormous ratio of concentration. I couldn’t see anything, but I felt a peculiar wine-like burning on my soft palate and the back of my throat. Weaver’s eyes were glassy; Harrigan was swaying on his feet.”

  He smiled with a wispy recollection.

  “You see, gentlemen, I’m tolerably familiar with the lethal properties of gas. For two months I was in charge of the gas school for noncommissioned officers of the A.E.F. at Vitryle-Grand. I hustled Harrigan and the others into the penthouse and slammed the French windows tightly. Harrigan had the worst of it. I let a full hour tick by before I went out again to the terrace and retrieved this interesting disc.

  “You understand now, I think, why I secured a supply of the latest type Army head mask before I summoned you gentlemen to listen to the Scarlet Ace’s challenge.”

  The police chief looked at Lacy.

  “Major, we’ve got to lay hands on this Ace fellow without any delay!”

  “How?” the district attorney groaned. “Where’s the lead? Where are we to start?”

  The members of the Emergency Council were whispering together. Their chairman, Abbott, spoke finally to the major.

  “Have you any idea, sir, who the man is? Where his headquarters might be?”

  “None whatever, Mr. Monday.”

  “How are we to go after him?”

  “We can’t. We can only check on our defenses here in the Cloud Building and wait for his next thrust. However, there’s one small satisfaction I intend to have no later than tonight.” The Iron Major smiled cheerfully.

  “I intend to talk to this blood-red Napoleon and accept his challenge.”

  “Eh?” Abbott looked puzzled. “I thought you said you had no knowledge whatever of the man or his whereabouts.”

  “That’s correct. However, I’m quite optimistic about talking to him.”

  “How?” they chorused.

  He told them softly with one word. The district attorney shook his head doubtfully.

  “It’s damned unusual. There’ll be objections, I’m afraid.”

  “Objections? Certainly. We’ll override ’em, that’s all. Mr. Monday, you are chairman of this council. When l accepted your commission you promised me full cooperation and unlimited backing for my wishes, however fantastic and unusual. Is that true?”

  “It is.”

  “Very well... Make the arrangements for me.” Mr. Monday’s aristocratic old hand closed into a taut fist. He nodded grimly.

  “I’ll attend to it personally. If it becomes necessary I’ll go directly to the President of the United States!”

  CHAPTER II

  MENACE OF THE ACE

  At precisely a quarter before seven that same evening every chain radio station in the country suddenly went dead. In New York City the municipal WNYC stopped likewise without warning.

  Dinner music ceased in the middle of a bar. Sport announcers choked off in mid-sentence. “Yale, six, Princeton, nothing—” Silence. Not a sound except the squeals of two-bit stations in the low bands. Nothing doing. No ads, no prize contests, no crooners. The carrier waves were dancing into space from their steel towers without any program noise.

  For sixty seconds this strange silence continued. Then sound flowed suddenly back to the airways. The curt voices of announcers were heard.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we have interrupted our regular program for a few minutes, by order of the Federal Radio an important message which will be broadcast immediately. There will be no local station announcement. Please stand by.”

  Silence. Then Tattersall Lacy’s voice. Low, cultured, clearly distinct in every spaced syllable, “Attention. Please listen carefully. I am broadcasting a me
ssage for the ears of one man—the gentleman who calls himself the Scarlet Ace. Any member of his organization who hears this message is requested to notify the Scarlet Ace at once, in the event that he is himself not listening. The message follows: The disk was received. The victims are alive. The challenge is accepted. I will repeat.”

  The slow voice reiterated the three cryptic sentences. A pause.

  “That is all. Thank you, and good night.” Listeners stared at one another as the loud speakers renewed their accustomed noisy bleat of jazz and song.

  “What did that mean?” George Public asked his wife. “Do yuh s’pose it’s a gag? A buildup for some magazine with a brand-new mystery program?”

  There was no answer. Nobody knew. But a lot of hardboiled gentlemen of the press did their damnedest to find out. Their damnedest was not enough. The Federal Radio Commission had nothing to say. The broadcast officials were dumber than oysters at high tide. Wise city editors pulled wires, but the ends of the wires were loose and came in without anything attached.

  Nothing. Not a rumble. Heywood Broun kidded the mystery in his newspaper column and Walter Winchell kidded Broun. And that was all that happened.

  Whoever the suave party on the radio might be, he had very definitely hung up on curious America.

  * * * *

  A one-armed faker worked his swift graft down the crowded aisles of the subway express that was thundering northward toward Times Square. On the lap of every passenger he tossed an envelope containing a nail file and a printed plea for a dime. Suddenly his lackluster eyes flicked with attention. He leaned closer toward a pimply-faced man in a grey cap. The sleepy passenger sat up and nodded.

  “The day?” whispered Pimples.

  “Twenny-thoid,” said the one-arm salesman.

  “The hour?”

  “Two o’clock.”

  “The place?”

  “Same.”

  One-Arm left. The man in the cap got up presently and walked to the side door.

  The train roared into Times Square. The pimply-faced passenger took the shuttle to Grand Central, changed to a southbound Lexington local and got off at 33rd Street, the nearest station to the Cloud Building.