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

She was still known, at the present period, in every night club in town, and when her escort happened to be a particularly generous one the host always asked Baa-Baa to get up and do her stuff. Sing her once famous “I Want to Be Somebody’s Baa-Baa Lamb,” in other words. She could always get a kick out of that. She had been getting a kick, recently, out of Vince Lamont.

He had not in any form or fashion, by any remote possibility, been another of her “protectors.” Not Vince. In fact, he rather wasn’t averse to having ladies take him under their wing. The minute you gave a dame even a lousy nickel, was his ironclad axiom, right from then you lost all her respect.

Vince was another lily of the field who neither toiled nor did he spin. Not in legitimate pursuits, anyway. He was a race track tout; a fixer for a few big gamblers; a go-between in an occasional important bootleg deal.

His interest in Baa-Baa, rumor had it, was because business had been a bit slack, and because Miss Jackson had been in funds. A wealthy South American coffee planter, Broadway gossip ran, had presented her with a perfectly good check for ten grand, not a month previously, when he had sadly taken the boat back to his tropical shores after having enjoyed a hectic few weeks of her hospitality.

III

Inspector Frayne was reminding himself of this gossip, anyway, as his car zoomed along down town. Inspector Frayne, incidentally, knew more about New York and the various characters in it than any man living. He had been born there. He loved the place as if it were his own flesh and blood. He found it highly profitable, also, to know as much as he could of what was going on in the miracle city of the world.

Don brought the car to a halt before an old apartment on West Fifty-Seventh Street. It had been a grand apartment in its day, perhaps, but its day had been in the ’80’s and ’90’s. A five story affair, with only two flats on a floor. Big rooms but dark rooms, running the length of the building and known as the railroad type, with only the front and rear getting any light to to speak of. There was no elevator, no hallway attendant. A seedy place for seedy people.

There was a little knot of loiterers before the steps, as well as an officer in uniform. The latter cleared the steps with a sweep of his night stick, as Frayne descended, and stood rigidly at salute:

“Morning, sir.”

“Morning, Harrigan,” said Frayne pleasantly, leaving the cop flushing with pleasure at having his name remembered.

Upstairs, in the apartment, the man-hunter found Lieutenant Geogan and one of his plain-clothes squad, Davis.

“Anything new since the phone call, Geogan?” he asked.

“No, sir.”

“Uh huh.”

Frayne, nodding, glanced about. The hallway was a wide one, with the entrance door about in the center. A kitchen and dining room were toward the rear, with a bath next, almost opposite the door. Then came two bedrooms, with the living room up in front of them, facing the street.

“Where is she?” asked Frayne.

Geogan pointed to the first bedroom.

Frayne went in. A pathetic death chamber, seeing that Baa-Baa had previously had some exceedingly nice boudoirs in other and more genteel parts of the city. There was too much gilt in this one. Too many laces; too many beribboned pillows; too many startling colors.

She lay on the bed, in scant negligee, with a big red bruise on her left jaw and a big dark red patch on her left side with a kitchen knife sticking in the center of it.

“Denham been here yet?”

Denham was the finger-print expert.

“No, sir. We waited for you,” said Geogan. “You’ve asked us to always—”

“Thanks,” said Frayne, and added: “Get Denham, Don.”

Don was at the telephone before Frayne could speak again.

“Maid and Lamont up ahead?”

“Yes, sir. In the living room.”

The manhunter walked up forward, to a room quite as garish as the one in which Baa-Baa had met her death.

Vince Lamont and the colored maid, with an officer in charge, were there. The tout was sitting in a rocker by the window, comfortably stretched out, smoking a cigarette. He didn’t rise, but raised inquiring eyebrows. The maid — a “high yaller” type — was walking the floor and moaning.

“Come out of it,” snapped Frayne.

“Y-yessuh,” she said, and changed her moaning to a sob.

“What’s your name?”

“B-Bethenia, still. Bethenia Gibbons.”

“All right, Bethenia. The sooner you get hold of yourself the sooner you can go — back home, or behind bars, one of the two. Let’s get to work and get your story.”

“Bellin’ bars, suh. Oh, Lawdy, suh, you ain’t meanin’ that for me, is you?”

Frayne didn’t look at her as he spoke. He looked at Vince Lamont, as if silently asking his opinion.

Lamont shrugged. It was an expressive shrug. It said that the maid had, after all, been found in the apartment with her dead mistress.

Frayne nodded, as if in understanding, and then spoke with gentle patience.

“Come now, tell me what happened, Bethenia.”

Bethenia Gibbons did try to pull herself together. She somewhat succeeded. Her lower lip quivered and she shook her head.