The Corpse Who Had Too Many Friends Read online

  $1,000 Title Contest

  Mercury Publications will pay $1,000 in cash for the best new title submitted for this novel by September 28, 1954.

  CONDITIONS OF THIS CONTEST

  1. All entries must be typed or legibly printed and submitted on a postal card addressed to Contest Editor, BESTSELLER MYSTERIES, 471 Park Avenue, New York 22, New York.

  2. Each title must be accompanied by a statement not exceeding fifteen words explaining why you think that title best fits the book.

  3. Titles will be judged on the basis of originality and fitness, and statements will be judged on the basis of clarity and persuasiveness.

  4. The judges are the editors of BESTSELLER MYSTERY books, and their decision will be final.

  5. The contest is open to everyone except the author and employees of Mercury Publications and affiliated companies, and their families.

  6. Contestants may submit as many title suggestions as they wish, but each entry must be on a separate postal card. Be sure to have your name and address legibly printed on each entry.

  7. In case of a tie, duplicate prizes of $1,000 will be given.

  8. All entries must be in the offices of Mercury Publications by 5 p.m., September 28, 1954. The prize will be awarded on October 15, and the winner announced in BESTSELLER MYSTERY Number 176, “The Passionate Victims”, by Lange Lewis, published November 16.

  9. No entries will be returned. All entries submitted in this contest become the property of Mercury Publications and may be used in whole or in part, as the publishers see fit, without consideration.

  10. No entries from outside the United States and its territories and possessions will be accepted. This contest is subject to all federal, state, and local laws and regulations.

  11. The original title of this book, THE CORPSE WHO HAD TOO MANY FRIENDS, may not be submitted.

  12. Acceptance of these rules is an express condition of each entry.

  BESTSELLER MYSTERIES are chosen from those mysteries which have had a large and continuing sale. Sometimes they are cut to speed up the story, with the permission of the author or his publisher, but more often they are reprinted in full—complete and unabridged. This mystery has not been cut.

  A BESTSELLER MYSTERY, NO. 173

  Bestseller Mysteries, Mercury Mysteries, and Jonathan Press Mysteries are published under the MERCURY IMPRINT

  MERCURY PUBLICATIONS, INC., 471 Park Ave., New York 22, N. Y.

  Copyright, 1953, by Hampton Stone. Reprinted by special arrangement with Simon and Schuster, Inc. Printed in the United States of America.

  Hampton Stone

  The Corpse Who Had Too Many Friends

  CHAPTER ONE

  YOU KNOW, of course, about Fiveborough National. Everybody knows about Fiveborough National. It is so big. It is so respectable. It is so solid. It is so firmly rooted in tradition—the financial tradition of Alexander Hamilton, the ethical tradition of Benjamin Franklin’s maxims. You cannot escape Fiveborough National. If you don’t do business with them yourself, you certainly know people who do. If you don’t know the mighty granite monument they have reared to financial stability in William Street, you cannot have missed the far-flung branch banks. Those branch banks all over New York City are neighborhood landmarks. Everybody knows their columned porticoes. You’ve seen them. Every Fiveborough National branch looks like a little neighborhood Sub-treasury.

  We knew about Fiveborough National, Gibby and I. We knew as much about it as we thought anybody need know about a bank of its size. We knew that its size was rivaled only by the austerity of its conservatism. We knew it was never the first to boost the interest rate, always the last to install such innovations as Christmas Clubs or special checking accounts. We knew that when some of the other banks recognized the realities of midsummer weather and permitted tellers and clerks to show themselves before the customers in shirt sleeves or, at worst, in thin office jackets, Fiveborough National adhered to the eternal verities. The eternal verities were that all bankers, however humbly employed, were gentlemen. Gentlemen wore proper coats. Gentlemen wore neat dark neckties. Gentlemen wore white shirts. Gentlemen wore hard white collars. In short, we knew that Fiveborough National conceded nothing to the century.

  We thought we knew that, and, thinking so, we could hardly have been less prepared for the conditions under which we first began the acquisition of a more intimate knowledge of Fiveborough National. Drunks, the Charleston, necking in a bedroom of a hotel suite, fights, cuba libras, bourbon on the rocks, unembellished bourbon, murder, even wilted and something less than white, white, hard collars. It was no good saying this would be the other side of the coin. It was a shock. We’d had every reason to expect that both sides of any coin associated with Fiveborough National would inevitably be of unalloyed gold.

  The report that brought us into the case said nothing of Fiveborough National. The police had it quite simply as a murder at the Hotel Butterfield, and that was enough. I knew Gibby and I would be elected. Since it was murder, the D. A. would be tossing it at Gibby. Since the scene of the crime was the Butterfield, the D. A. would be tossing Gibby at me. It has become a routine setup. Of all the Assistant D. A.’s—and you know the New York County office, it’s stiff with assistants—Jeremiah X. Gibson is way out ahead of the pack on murder; and where a case might require a little something in the way of a cautious approach and a proper regard for some of the town’s more gilt-edged reputations, I, of the whole staff, seem to have the special talent for at least making a try at holding a too-enthusiastic Gibby somewhere within the limits of legality and prudence.

  Legality and prudence are not a bad idea for an Assistant D. A. anywhere. They are among the necessities for any sort of success in public life, and this job of ours is public life, if you can call it living. At the Butterfield legality and prudence would be essential because, after all, the Butterfield is frequented by the best people. That isn’t snobbery, whatever Gibby says it is—and he does say it’s nothing more than that. It is simply a matter of recognizing the fact that as long as you can manage without, it is wiser to avoid stepping on the toes of the best people. The best people have sensitive toes, and there are long and very special nerves attached to the toes of the best people. Those nerves can run all the way to Albany. Step on a toe at the Butterfield and the odds are one hundred to one the Governor will feel pain. It isn’t good for an Assistant District Attorney to make the Governor feel pain.

  How far the nerves of Fiveborough National run I still don’t know. They might run anywhere; but, as I was saying, we went into it not knowing that the bank would be involved. As we rode up Park to the hotel, though, I tried to get in a couple of preparatory licks.

  “There won’t be anything to this one,” I said.

  “The Old Man told us murder, didn’t he?” Gibby argued.

  “Yes,” I said, “but at the Butterfield.”

  “Nuts,” he said. “They’re no different from other people except that they put up a bigger front, and that doesn’t make it any easier. The bigger the front, the more a killer has to hide behind.”

  The way things were at the Butterfield that night did me no good. Gibby might have been prophetic. It was obvious that he thought he was. We were hardly out of the lobby before he began looking altogether too self-satisfied. The lobby was quite according to expectations, discreetly gray, discreetly lighted, discreetly quiet. The bellhops were neither so rigidly to attention as a movie-palace usher nor were they as relaxed as Third Avenue barkeeps. The desk clerks were soft voiced and well brushed. The patrons were sleek and unflurried. Gibby looked around as we came in.

  “No faces you’ll recognize from the line-up,” I said
.

  “Exactly,” Gibby growled. “The big front. You have to chip that away before you can even begin talking to anybody.” He went to the desk and started chipping. “District Attorney’s office,” Gibby said curtly.

  The clerk nodded. To read his face, you might have thought Gibby was trying to get a room without having made an advance reservation. He looked politely regretful and he looked as though he were trying to keep out of his face his feeling that he might have wished that Gibby had never come in off Park Avenue.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “Would you wait just a moment?”

  Gibby shook his head. “We wouldn’t,” he growled. “All you have to do is tell us where it is.”

  “It’s upstairs, sir,” the clerk said, and there wasn’t even the smallest crack in his manner. “You might have some difficulty with finding it. I will have some one here directly to take you up.”

  “The police are up there, aren’t they?”

  The clerk nodded. “They are,” he began.

  Gibby didn’t let him finish. “I recognize cops when I see them,” he said, breaking in on him. “Just tell us what floor. We’ll take it from there.”

  “Five,” the clerk said coldly, and turned away to speak to the girl on the switchboard.

  We went across to the elevators.

  “Five,” Gibby told the elevator operator.

  Our boy shut the door and pushed his lever. We started up.

  The car stopped, he opened the door and he gulped. I don’t know whether I also gulped. I know I blinked and I know I heard Gibby mutter something lofty about a front that was bigger than most and thinner than most. I didn’t for a moment believe what I saw but I must nevertheless report seeing it because it was quite evident that the elevator boy and Gibby had seen the same thing.

  It was a chase, but a chase straight out of burlesque. One young man was chasing about a dozen shrieking girls. He was a rather spindly and insufficient young man; and the girls, as they sped by in their flight down the corridor, struck me as formidable. They were big girls, husky girls. A few of them seemed notably overweight, but most of them appeared to be at the very top of their fighting trim.

  The whole pack was fleet of foot. Multicolored chiffon and taffeta and satin trailed behind them as they fled. Holding their skirts up, they showed more than the customary length of nylon. They were showing it, furthermore, at both ends, because not one of them had shoes on.

  That, however, was nothing when compared to the situation of their pursuer. The young man was wearing his shoes. He was wearing his socks and he was also wearing his garters. He was wearing a white shirt and a dark blue necktie and a correctly gray jacket—banker’s gray, in fact. He was also wearing a pair of pink and white striped shorts. There was no mistaking them. His white shirttails showed from under the banker’s gray jacket, and the peppermint-stick shorts showed beneath the shirttails. The young man was without his pants.

  Gibby shrugged. “Where’s the murder?” he asked the elevator boy.

  “Its somewhere up here,” the boy said vaguely. He waved in the direction from which the chase had come. “They went that way,” he said. “You might try down there.”

  We tried down there. He didn’t even watch us go. He was looking in the other direction. I think he was hoping the chase might come back his way and he might have another look.

  Down there the corridor turned a corner and, as we came around it, we saw cops. They were plain-clothes men but a couple of them I knew. Gibby knew a lot of them. Gibby was a cop himself once. That was back when he was studying law at night school, but he’s always kept his contacts with the force alive.

  One of the brighter young detectives—Tom Brady—came over to talk to us. He was grinning.

  “Hi,” he said. “Your reception committee got diverted all of a sudden, but it looks like you found it without him.”

  “What’s the deal up here?” Gibby asked.

  Brady shrugged. “Over toward Broadway,” he said, “they’d call it an orgy. The Park Avenue name for it I don’t know.”

  “So drunk that even murder doesn’t sober them up?” Gibby asked.

  Brady scratched his head. “Most of them don’t know about the murder,” he said. “But, even so, I don’t get it. There are some drunks, but they’re behaving themselves. It’s the ones who aren’t drunk that are doing the carrying-on. They act like they was kids in a school recess.”

  “What about the murder?” Gibby asked.

  “Garroting,” Brady told us. “Black canvas strap about an inch wide. It has one of those buckles on it with a slide catch. Slipped over the guy’s head and pulled tight. You know how those things work. You have to jerk them tighter to loosen the catch. The guy was dead when they found him, but it wouldn’t have made any difference. No way of getting that thing off his neck without cutting it off, and that canvas takes some cutting. The damnedest noose you ever saw.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I’ll show you,” Brady said.

  He took us around another turn of the corridor, stopped at a closed door and knocked. The room number was 524-5-6. The door opened a guarded inch.

  “Nobody is allowed in here,” a gruff voice started to say from the other side of the door.

  “It’s okay,” Brady said. “It’s Brady. I’ve got the D. A.’s office with me—Gibby and Mac.”

  The door was opened for us and quickly shut behind us. In the room things were ordinary enough. That is, they were as ordinary as a room can be when it contains a case of murder. The Medical Examiner’s people were there and the usual police detail. The body was also there. It was the body of what in life must have been a pleasant-looking man in his late fifties. There was a neatly groomed gray mustache and thinning gray hair. The clothes went with the mustache. They also were of a dignified gray shade. They were well kept and they were of good quality.

  “Who is he?” Gibby asked.

  “The name’s Coleman,” Brady said. “Homer G. Coleman.”

  “Part of the orgy or innocent bystander?”

  “Part of it,” said Brady.

  There were two men in the room I didn’t recognize. One was standing at the window. He had his back to us as he might if he were looking out, except that he wasn’t looking out. The window draperies were drawn shut, and if he was looking at anything he was looking at them. The other man had been hovering. Now he came forward.

  “You people are getting the wrong impression,” he said. “You must understand that if you look below the surface this is all the most innocent…”

  That word “innocent” was more than Gibby could take. He might have held still while someone tried to feed him an innocent explanation of the happenings out in the corridors, but he wasn’t going to waste time on innocent explanations of a corpse that had to be cut loose from the black canvas strap that had choked the life out of him.

  Gibby interrupted the man with a question. The question, however, was not addressed to him. It was fired at Brady.

  “Who’s the fixer-upper?” Gibby asked.

  “Mr. Willard,” Brady said.

  With beautiful politeness Brady introduced Mr. Willard to us and us to Mr. Willard. Brady was enjoying himself. He’s a bright cop and he has a taste for the ironies of his trade. I could see that just then he was savoring an especially flavorful batch of ironies.

  “Cary Willard,” Mr. Willard said. “Gentlemen, this is the most shocking thing that has ever happened. If I have ever known a man of saintly character, a man who was universally loved, it was Homer Coleman.”

  Gibby took a long look at the remains of Homer Coleman. He also took a long look at the black canvas strap. From the strap he looked back to Mr. Coleman, this time concentrating on the ugly weal that circled the dead man’s throat. Homer Coleman had died horribly.

  “That you would have us believe was an excess of affection, Mr. Willard?” he asked.

  “That,” Willard said stiffly, “was the act of a madman.”

 
“You have a madman handy?” Gibby asked.

  Willard scowled. “Mr. Gibson,” he said, “I don’t like your tone.”

  “My tone,” Gibby snapped, “is a small thing in comparison with what happened to your friend. This man was your friend?”

  “I am proud to say it,” Willard declaimed. “He was my friend.”

  “Then don’t try to fluff off his murder,” said Gibby. “Do you know anything about what happened here?”

  “Nobody knows,” Willard answered.

  “I didn’t ask you about anybody else. I asked what you know.”

  The gentleman at the window turned from his contemplation of the draperies. He was an older man. His mustache was white, as were his hair and his eyebrows. His was a very dark gray suit, a very white shirt, a very white and very hard collar. He had that distinguished look. He might have been a retired colonel of one of the better British regiments.

  “Gentlemen,” he said. “We are going about this in the wrong way.”

  Gibby applied to Brady. “Who’s this one?” he asked.

  The gentleman answered for himself. “I am an old friend of your chief’s,” he said. “When you next see him, please tell him that Nick Lansing was asking after him. Nicholas Cooper Lansing.”

  I tried to take over. With Nicholas Cooper Lansing it would be better that Gibby shouldn’t see red. The merest suggestion that somebody is trying to push him around inevitably makes Gibby push back, and Nicholas Cooper Lansing was nobody to push.

  I don’t say I carried all the man’s directorships around in my head, but I did know that he was president of Fiveborough National. I knew that at one time or another two or three Secretaries of the Treasury had asked him for advice. This was no phony. This was a pillar of society. This was the acme of respectability. This was a big shot of purest ray serene.