Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 51, No. 2, June 28, 1930

And across the two sharp words there shivered an ear-piercing scream as Linda Price fell in a dead faint to the floor before Farren who stood beside her, could catch her.

To be concluded

Miracle Murder

by Harold de Polo

Frayne looks over the “lilies of the field” for the slayer of the lovely Baa-Baa Jackson...

I

“On your toes, Don. Five-four in games, remember. If I lake this one it ’ll give me the set.” Inspector Frayne walked to the service line.

“Better give me all you’ve got, chief,” came back Haggerty. “I’ve just been kidding you along.”

The famous manhunter’s answer was a nod and a smile and a ball that Haggerty was barely able to lob over the net. Frayne killed it, and Haggerty grinned.

“Still kidding you, sir,” he said.

Frayne laughed, this time. He rarely laughed. He enjoyed these games with Don, though. Although Don was younger and had been a tennis crack in college, the two were fairly evenly matched. It was the only outdoor sport in which the police official indulged, and he drove to this upper West Side club whenever he could find the leisure. There was no better physical exercise on the market, in his opinion, and he had to keep himself in trim.

Frayne, after a beautiful volley, took the next point. And took the following one after a still harder tussle. He didn’t get a chance, however, to put over his next serve.

A club attendant came rushing up excitedly. All club attendants had strict orders to interrupt any game at any presumably crucial moment, if necessary, if an official call came over the wire.

“Mr. Haggerty, sir,” the man was literally bellowing, apparently enjoying the importance of the layman at being mixed up in police business. “From headquarters. Lieutenant Geogan. Very important. He’s on the wire, sir.”

Frayne dropped his arm, nodded just once, and Haggerty took a hurdle over the net and raced for the clubhouse.

Haggerty was Frayne’s right hand man; his protégé; his buffer. It was Don’s task, before anything else, to see that his superior was not troubled with any murder problems that might have been dissected by any average detective. No one was allowed to communicate with the famous manhunter directly; they had first to give their stuff to his assistant.

Frayne had been forced to lay down this law. Otherwise he would have been swamped with all the unimportant and easily untangled eases that are bound to occur in the five boroughs that comprise the miracle city of the world, New York.

Frayne was twirling his racket, impatiently. Lieutenant Geogan wouldn’t have called unless the affair had been a vital and baffling one. Geogan was one of the shrewdest men on the New York force.

But Haggerty was back, now. He was running his fingers through his reddish hair, as he invariably did when he thought a mystery was on deck.

“Baa-Baa Jackson, chief,” he said, his keen face alive with enthusiasm. “Paid the so-called wages of sin at last. Found in her bed this morning. Cold murder. Beaten up first, then stabbed. A kitchen knife from her own apartment. She—”

“Why not?” Frayne cut in with a frown. “She must be — yes, she must be thirty-eight. She had a long run. Couldn’t Geogan put his Broadway crew on the job?”

“Wait, chief, wait a minute, please,” replied Haggerty. “The maid let herself into the apartment with her key at nine o’clock this morning, as she always did. Baa-Baa sort of half woke up and said she didn’t want to be disturbed until eleven. The maid got busy on the job of cleaning up the place. In something less than half an hour, as near as she can figure, the doorbell rang. It was Vince Lamont. He insisted on waking Baa-Baa. They found her dead — beaten up and slabbed. Geogan swears that the colored maid is O.K. Good rep, and she also stood up under questioning. She says she can’t be wrong; that Baa-Baa spoke to her when she came in at nine. The bedroom window was latched. Besides, the maid didn’t hear a sound.

“Chief,” Haggerty finished, “it looks nice!”

Frayne, fingering his well trimmed mustache with the thumb and index finger of his right hand, was smiling a trifle skeptically. His voice also had the same tone.

“Another of these miracle murders, eh?”

Haggerty didn’t answer this one. Haggerty wasn’t supposed to answer it. Haggerty knew just when, and when not, to speak, which was one more reason why he was a valuable asset to the great manhunter.

Frayne’s eyes, of that cold blue of a particularly cold winter sky, had gone to triangular slits. They always did, when he was musing on murder.

Murder, it so happened, was his hobby. It was more than his hobby. It was food and drink to him. It was what made his blood keep on pumping and his brain keep on throbbing. It was his life.

“Lamont?” he suddenly asked.