Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 25, No. 2, August 13, 1927

“Nobody has heard,” he said. “No sounds can get out of this room. You’ve got time to get out of here. I don’t know who you are, but you look — look decent. You don’t want to be in this. Get out of here. Through the door I came in.

“Three flights down, then into the main hall and keep to the back stairway. It lets you out on an alley. You can get away from the place without the boys in the hall seeing you.

“Hurry. It will be lots of trouble for you, if the police come before you get away. Although I’m going to tell them that I did it. I’m proud that I did it. That wasn’t a man I killed. It was a devil. He belonged where I sent him — to hell!”

By this time Elsie was at the door. She fled down the rear stairways and with a relieved heart made her way out of the apartment house unseen. She hastened to her car and was soon a way.

Fifteen minutes later she was in her room at her hotel, shaken, cowering, unable to dismiss from her vision the wild-eyed youth, the white-faced terror that had flashed into Slim Gegan’s face when the shots rang out, the grotesque manner in which his head had bumped the table, rebounded, and his small body had curled or, rather, flopped spinelessly and lifeless to the floor.

Dopey, after her flight, had stood for nearly a minute leering at the upturned face of the murdered man. Then his frail body had suddenly straightened. He ran from door to door of Gegan’s library and down each hallway screamed wildly:

“I’ve killed him! I’ve killed the fiend of hell!”

His cries brought Markey, the butler, and Jack and Madge running into the room where they halted, shocked at the spectacle of the slain, crumpled body on the floor.

In the rear doorway stood Dopey Buddy pointing, leering at the corpse. But before either of the three could speak to him he turned and darted down the rear stairs, filling the corridor as he went with the sounds of cracked and hideous laughter.

Emerging from the apartment house he dashed through the alleyway into the street. There he paused to open the box of drugs. One, two three of the paper packets he opened and gobbled the white powders they contained.

He waved his arms and yelled incoherences as he started once more to run at top speed. But at the second corner he came to a gasping halt. He tottered toward a lamp-post and succeeded in flinging a supporting arm around it. But his head with its disorder of long, straw-colored hair sagged against the mail box affixed to the post. His knees gave way. And next he sagged into the arms of a traffic policeman.

“The law couldn’t get him!” said the boy with a slow smile, “but I did!” Ten minutes later an ambulance surgeon said to the policeman:

“Morphine — heart. Dead as a doornail.”

Chapter XXXIV

Out of Thin Air

Mr. Rodney Fairfax paid twenty-five thousand dollars a year for a suite in a Park Avenue apartment. But this didn’t constitute his home. That was a grand mansion amid lakes and hanging gardens situated in one of the woodland sections of Long Island with the broad, blue Sound beyond. The Park Avenue establishment was merely for the use of himself and wife when the opera season was on and the affairs of society generally at their height.

All of which suggests that Mr. Rodney Fairfax was a man of great wealth. He was indeed. Millions had been inherited and by his own business acumen augmented until his fortune stood at figures to seem fabulous.

His wife, Grace, shared the fame of his riches with a celebrity apart. She was known as the possessor of jewels enormous in quantity, exquisite and rare as to quality. It may be recorded that they were insured for one million and five hundred thousand dollars.

Nor were these gems allowed to glitter unseen in safety deposit vaults and other strong boxes. Mrs. Fairfax was unhappy if unadorned by them, even by day. At night in her opera or theater box or at this or that ball, reception, dance, she blazed with them.

There were separate sets for different costumes. Sometimes she appeared wholly in the prismatic flare of diamonds. Again in the creamy sheen of lovely pearls. Or the red glow of rubies, the soft blue of turquoise, the pale green of rare Chinese jade or shimmering in the flash and fire of gorgeous emeralds.

Not that Mrs. Fairfax entirely ignored the use of safety deposit vaults. But when in town she was passing in and out of them frequently, taking one or two sets of her famous jewelry away while replacing others she had recently worn. Twice a week unfailingly she appeared in her opera box in the world-renowned “Diamond Horseshoe” and on such occasions always wore the stones appropriate to that celebrated oval.

And now comes the record of a morning in the Fairfax apartment in Park Avenue when Mr. Fairfax arose by custom at nine for his bath while his wife continued to sleep beneath the purple satin and white lace coverings of the twin bed adjoining. When he had emerged from the bathroom, his valet shaved him and then laid him a light breakfast in the small sun parlor.