10-Story Detective, June 1945 — page 30: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

28-—————- 10-STORY DETECTIVE — tomcat, Humbert! An’ stand aside while we ransack this joint for the moolah. Nowadays nobody can eat or pay rent without workin’. He must live by crooked means, Alvin.” “Yeah, where is the tomcat?” I ask Humbert. “After what he did to me,” Humbert says. “I took more’n enough from that cat. I took him over to Saddle River an’ threw him in. Weighed the cuss down with rocks. Be an awful job to find it.” “You beast!” I says. “Your only alibi n’ you—” “How did I know one of my aunts was murdered when I tossed the cat in the drink?” Humbert howls. “Sure [I got nearly twenty thousan’ dollars in my mattress upstairs, but it was earned hon- est, I saved my money and spent nothin’ so’s I could retire. Thrift runs in the Furbish fam’lies, They all hated banks. Don’t you dast touch my money, you fiends!” Well, Louie, we cut Humbert’s mat- tress open and found the hoarded legal tender. Who wouldn’t have suspected the jerk? He can’t show us the tomcat that gouged him. He has a best suit in his boudoir; admits he was across the Hud- son the night before, but won't tell us where he was and why. We try and make him tell where he hid the other half of the purloined moolah, but he acts dumb about it all, “Let’s take a ride, Humbert,” Hambone .Noonan says. “Git into your blue serge there as you will want to look nice for the grill room.” ‘Tt is an outrage,” Humbert yeips. “Just because I drowned a tomcat an’ can’t—where is the democracy they—?” Wy EL. the case builds up against Humbert while we were in Hohokus, Hard Hat Hafey and another cop get prints off the back of a chair in the base- ment apartment of the sisters Furbish. When we compare Humbert’s prints with them they match. Humbert then con- fesses he was in the brownstone house the night of the murder. “J sneaked in to get somethin’ thai belonged to me and that they wouldn’t never give to me,” Furbish says. “My pa left it to me in his will. A silver shavin' mug with a big F on it. It had sedimental value and I—” “Oh, brother!” Hambone says and makes’ the walls of the grill room, the third degree salon, shake. “I have heard stuff on the radio you could believe more. Well, it looks like you are booked with & murder rap, Humbert. How much bail cam you put up?” “He don’t git any bail,” the D.A, says. | “This is too much of a cold-blooded mur- der. Toss him into a cell.” We turn the dough we found in Fur- bish’s house over to the D.A. Me and Hambone go down and see Isolde and tell her she can at least live half as well as before anyway. “So it was Humbert?” Isolde says, She is alone now, so it looks like half the dough will see her through. Anastasia igs being tidied in the mortician’s next door. Hambone hints at some kind of reward, Louie. You know him! So the bereaved old spinster says for us to wait here. She goes into the next room and comes out with a stereopticon that delighted your grandpa way back. She says it is for Hambone for exposing the guilty citizen. It serves the fathead right. Two hours later we forget the [ur- bish case, until the trial, at least. I tell Hambone it is going to look funny, Hum- bert’s lawyer draggin’ the Saddle River for a defunct tomcat. “Well, that is his only chance, Alvin,” Hambone snickers. Next afternoon I happen to be in the neighborhood where the rub-out took piace, so I called to see how Isolde and Horatius were getting along. Isolde says Horatius is fine at the moment, but that he had a bad spell the night before. “He got to choking, Mr. Hinkey,” Isolde Furbish says, sipping at a cup of tea, “I sent for the veterinary and he had quite a time with Horatius. I’ve heard of cats getting a ball of fur in their stummicks, but not a parrot getting some yarn in his throat.” “What?” I asks. “Why, yes. The doctor removed it after a while. I kept it.” Isolde shows me some dark blue yarn. Quite a chunk of it. “Where would he git a bite of a sweater?” I want to know. “You or your late sister been knittin’ for the Red Cross?” “No, Mr. Hinkey. It was too much for us. We saved fat and old papers though. Isn’t the war just terrible?” “Worse’n that,” I says. I wonder then if Humbert Furbish owned a blue sweat- er. I decides to call up Hambone. I get him finally in Tony Buffo’s tavern on Canal Street. “Hambone, I just been to see Miss Fur- bish. She—but let me talk. I was not try- in’ to chisel a reward out of her—I was just—listen, Hambone! Split with you or you’ll what—? Look, you cabbage-head, I am trying to tell you—oh, nuts.” I hang up. What is the sense of trying to work with the lug? I make up my mind to go out to Hohokus that very eve- ning, which I do. CORMIE KOOKS (E(e)