12 - Black Eagle Mystery by Geraldine Bonner

In the heart of New York, a corporate lawyer plunges eighteen stories from the ominously named Black Eagle Building. Police quickly rule it a suicide, but Molly Morgenthau Babbits, an audacious part-time detective, isnt so easily convinced. The deceased, Hollings Harland, was rumored to be involved in a covert organization controlling the copper market, and was on the brink of being exposed. Just before his death, Harland had a heated argument with the affluent Johnston Barker, another suspected member of the secretive organization. Could Harland have been considering defection? Or was there something more sinister at play? With the help of an insider at the Black Eagle, Molly dives headfirst into her own unofficial investigation, suspecting a foul play murder.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter twelve of The Black Eagle Mystery. This is the
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Recording by Mike overby Parkland, Washington, dedicated to UNI. The

(00:22):
Black Eagle Mystery by Geraldine Bonner. Chapter twelve, Jack tells
the story. Inside an hour, O'Malley, Babbitts, and I were
on our way to Philadelphia. All friction was forgotten. A
bigger issue had extinguished the sparks that had come near
bursting into flame. A mutual desire united us the finding
of Barker. The train and Express seemed to crawl like

(00:45):
a tortoise, But the way I felt, I guess the
flight of an aeroplane would have been slow. I had
hideous fears that he might give us the slip. But
O'Malley was confident. One of his men had got a
lead on Barker through a vendor of newspapers from whom
the capital is twice in the last week, had purchased
the big New York dailies. It had taken several days
to locate his place of hiding. A quiet boarding house,

(01:08):
a far removed from the center of the city, which
was now under surveillance. As we swung through the night,
shut close in a smog filled compartment, we speculated as
to whether he would try and throw a bluff or
see the game was up and tell the truth. At
the station, O'Malley's man met us, and the four of
us piled into a taxi and started on a run
across town. It was moonlight, and going down those quiet

(01:29):
streets lined with big houses and then with little houses,
still dwindling vistas sleeping in the silver radiance seemed to
me the longest drive I'd ever taken in my life.
As we sped, the detective gave us further particulars by
his instructions. The new standman who left the morning papers
at the boarding house had got into communication with the servant,

(01:50):
a colored girl. From her, he had learnt that Barker
he passed under the name of Joseph Sammus, had been
away for twenty four hours and had come back that
more warning so ill that a doctor had been called in.
The doctor had said the man's heart was weak and
that his condition looked like the result of a strain
or shock. Question further, the girl had said he was

(02:10):
a pleasant, civil spoken old gentleman, giving no trouble to anybody.
He went out very little, sitting in his room most
of the time reading the papers. He received no mail there,
but that he did get letters, she had found out,
as she had seen one on his table addressed to
the general delivery. The house was on a street, quiet
and deserted at this early hour, one of a row,

(02:31):
all built alike. As we climbed out of the taxi,
the moon was bright, the shadows lying like black velvet
across the lonely roadway. On the opposite side, loidering slow
was a man who, raising a hand to his hat,
passed on into the darkness along the area railings. Though
it was only a little after nine, Many of the
houses showed the blankness of unlit windows, but in the

(02:51):
place where we had stopped, a fan light over the
door glowed in a yellow semicircle. As the taxi moved off,
we three O'Malley's detective slipped away in the shadow like
a ghost, walked up a little path to the front door,
where I pulled an old fashioned bell handle. I could
hear the sound go jingling through the hall loud and cracked,
and then steps, languid and dragging, come from somewhere in

(03:14):
the rear. I was to act as spokesman, my cue
being to ask for mister Sammus on a matter of
urgent business. The door was opened by the colored girl,
who looked at us stupidly and then said she'd call
miss Graves, the landlady, as she didn't think anyone could
see mister Sammus. Standing back from the door, she led
us into a hall with a hat rack on one

(03:34):
side and a flight of stairs going up the back.
The light was dim, coming from a globe held aloft
by a figure that crowned the nuwel post. The paper
on the walls some dark stripe pattern, seemed to absorb
what little radiance there was, and the whole place smelled
musty and was as quiet as a church. The colored
girl had disappeared down a long passage, and presently a

(03:55):
door opened back there, and a woman came out, tall
and thin in a skimpy black dress. She approached us
as we stood in a group by the hat rack,
leaning forward near sightedly and blinking at us through silver
rimmed spectacles. My maid says, you want to see mister Sammus,
she said in an unamiable voice. Yes, I answered, We've

(04:18):
come from New York and it's imperative we see him
this evening. But you can't, she snapped, he's sick. The
doctor says he mustn't be disturbed. Talking it over afterward,
we all confess that we were seized by the same
idea that this lanky old spinster might be in the game,
and Barker's illness was a fake. Feeling as I did,

(04:38):
I was ready to leap forward, grab her, and lock
her in her own parlor while the others chased up
the stairs. I could sense the slight, uneasy stir of
the two men beside me, and I tried to inject
a determination into my voice that, while it was civil,
was also informing I'm sorry, but it's absolutely necessary that
we transact all business with him. Now. Can't you give

(04:59):
me a min she demurred, squinting her eyes up behind
the glasses. I'll see that it's delivered in the morning. No, madam,
this is important and it can't waite. We won't be long.
We only have to consult with him for a few minutes.
She gave a shrug, as much as to say, well,
this is your affair, and drawing back, pointed to the stairs.

(05:21):
He's up there, fourth floor, front, second door, to your left.
To each of us. The suspicion that she was in
with Barker had grown with every minute. The idea, once
lodged in our minds, possessed them, and we went up
those stairs, slow at first, and then as we got
out of earshot, faster and faster. It was a run
on the second flight, and a gallop on the third.

(05:43):
On this landing there was no gas lit, but a
window at the end of the passage let in a
square of moonlight that lay bright on the floor and
showed us the hull's dim length and the outlines of
closed doors. It was the second of these, on the
left hand side, and creeping toward it, we stood for
a moment, getting our wind. The place was very cold,
as if a window was open, and there was not
a sound. Standing by the door, O'Malley knocked softly. There

(06:07):
was no answer in that half lit passage, chilled with
the icy breath of the winter night, and held in
a strange stillness. I was seized by a grisly sense
of impending horror. If I'd been a small boy, my
teeth would have begun to chatter. At thirty years of age.
That doesn't happen. But I doubt whether anyone whose body
was supplied with an ordinary act of nervous system would
not have felt something sinister in that cold, dark place,

(06:30):
in the silence behind that closed, shut door. O'Malley knocked again,
and again there was no answer. Try it, I whispered,
and the detective turned the handle locked. He breathed back.
Then stand away there, I'm going to break it. There's
something wrong here. He turned sideways, bracing his shoulder against
the door. There was a cracking sound, and the lock,

(06:52):
embedded in old soft wood, gave way, the door swinging
in with O'Malley hanging to the handle. The room was
unlit but for the silver moonlight that came from the window,
uncurtained and open. At that sight, the same thought seized
the three of us. The man was gone, and O'Malley,
fumbling in his pocket for matches, broke into furious profanity.

(07:12):
I had a box, and as I dug round for it,
took a look about and saw the shapes of a
chair with garments hanging over it an open desk, and
against the opposite wall of the bed. It was only
a pale oblong and looked irregular, as if the clothes
were heaped on it, as the man had thrown them back.
I could have joined O'Malley in his swearing gone when

(07:34):
our fingers were closing on him. Then I found the
matches in the gas, burnt over our heads. My eyes
were on the bed, and O'Malleys must have been for simultaneously.
I gave an exclamation, and he leaped forward. There asleep
under the covers lay a man, quick as a flash
of lightning. The detective was beside him, bending to look
close at the face. Then he drew back with a sound,

(07:55):
a cry of amazement, disbelief, and pulling off the bedclothes,
eat his hand on the sleeper's chest. God in Heaven,
he gasped, turning to us, He's dead, Babbitts and I
made a rush for the bed. I to the head,
where I leaned low to make sure, staring into the gray,
pale face with its prominent nose and sunken eyes. Then

(08:17):
it was my turn to cry out, to stagger back,
looking from one man to the other, aghast at what
I'd seen. It's not Baca at all. For a moment
we stared at one another, jaws fallen, eyes stony. Not
a word came from one of us, the silence broken
by the hissing rush of the gas turned up full
cock in the sputtering ribbon of flame. I came to
myself first, turned from them back to the dead face.

(08:39):
It's marble, calm and strange contrast to the stunned consternation
of the living faces. It's not he, I repeated, I've
often seen him. It's not the man, well stammered O'Malley,
coming out of a stupor. Who on earth is it?
How do I know, Samus? I suppose it's like him,

(09:01):
the nose and the eyes, and the eyebrows and the mustache.
But I looked at them, gazing like two stupefied animals
at the head on the pillow. It's not Johnston Baca. O'Malley,
with a groan of baffled desperation, fell into a chair,
his hands hanging over the arms, his feet limp on
the floor. Before him, Babbitt stood paralyzed, leaning on the

(09:23):
foot of the bed. It was an extraordinary situation. Three
live men hot on the chase of a fourth and
in the moment of victory, faced by the most inscrutable
and solemn thing that life holds, a dead man. We
couldn't get over it, couldn't seem to think her act.
Grouped round the bed with the whistling rush of the
gas loud on the silence. Then suddenly, another and more

(09:44):
distant sound broke up our stupefication. Someone was coming up
the stairs. It jerked us back to life, and I
made a run for the door. O'Malley's whisper, hissing after me.
If it's that woman, keep her away for a while.
I want to go over the room. It was Miss Graves,
ascending slow with the help of the balustrade. I caught
her on the landing and told her what we'd found.
She was not greatly surprised. The doctor had warned her.

(10:07):
I explained the broken door by telling her that we
had been alarmed by the silence and had forced our
way in, and that too. She took quietly and turned away,
gliding shadowlike down the stairs to send out the servant
for the doctor. When I re entered the room, its
aspect was changed. A sheet covered the dead man, and
O'Malley and Babbitts, with all the burners and the chandelier blazing,
had started looking over the room. The detective was already

(10:30):
at work on the papers in the desk, Babbitts going
through the clothes over the chair, and the few others
that hung in the cupboard. Hustle and get busy, said
o'mali as he heard me coming in. If this isn't
Johnston Barker, it's the man we've been trailing, and I'm
pretty sure it's the one that attacked Ford. There was
a table by the bedside with a reading lamp and
some books on it. Moving these I came upon two

(10:51):
newspaper clippings relating to the suicide of Harland. In both,
Anthony Forbe was mentioned. The reporter had evidently spoken to
him that on the street, gleaning any fragments of information
they could. One alluded to the fact that he was
employed in the office below Harlan's, The Azalea Woods estates.
Those words were heavily underlined pencil. Looks like it from this,

(11:13):
I said, showing the clipping to O'Malley. He glanced at
it and grunted, going back to his inspection on a
sheaf of papers he had found in one of desk
prison holes. Meantime, Babbitts had found in the coat that
hung over the chair a wallet containing one hundred dollars,
a tailor's bill for a suit and coat re seated
in bearing a New York address, and Tony Ford's house

(11:34):
in street number written in pencil on a neatly folded
sheet notepaper. Besides these, there was one letter, dated January thirteenth,
typed and bearing no signature. Its content was as follows. Enclosed,
please find one hundred dollars of two bills of fifty.
We'll send the same amount on the same date next month.
If work should be still delayed, we'll communicate further later.

(11:57):
The envelope, also addressed in typewriting, was directed to Joseph
Sammus General Delivery, Philadelphia, and bore a New York postmark.
We were working too quickly for much comment, but Babbitts
held out the paper with Ford's dress on at toward O'Malley.
This spares it out too, he said. O'Malley looked at
it and snapped the elastic back on the documents he'd

(12:18):
been going over from what I have seen here, he said,
Samus was the man forbe was with in the real
estate business. These are all contracts, bills, and some correspondence,
the records of a small venture that went to smash.
He pushed the roll back in his pigeonhole. Not another thing.
It is not another thing in the room, I answered,

(12:40):
except two novels in a sack of New York papers
on the floor there by the bureau quiet, there were
feet coming up the stairs in a twinkling. Everything was
as it had been. Babbitts and O'Malley withdrew to the window,
and I went out to see who was coming. It
was Miss Graves and the doctor. I explained the situation,
and found the doctor brusquely business like. In matter of fact,

(13:02):
it was what might have been expected when he had
been called in that morning. He had found mister Samus
a very sick man, suffering from angina pectoris and in
general condition of debility and exhaustion. He had asked him
if he had been subjected to any recent exertion or strain,
but had been told no other than the trip the
day before to Washington. Miss Graves said it was undoubtedly

(13:24):
this trip that had done the damage. He had been
well when he started on Tuesday morning, but on returning
twenty four hours later, had been so weak and enfeebled
that one of the other lodgers had had to assist
him to his room. An examination proved that he had
been dead some hours. Who his relations were or where
he came from. Miss Graves had no idea and would
turn the matter over to the authorities. It was close

(13:46):
on midnight when we left, and there being no vehicle
in sight, we walked up the street. The moon was
as bright as day and swinging along between those two
lines of black houses, with here and there a light
shining yellow in an upper window. We were silent, each
occupied by his own thoughts. I could guess those of
the other two. Babbot's chagrin at once again losing his

(14:07):
big story, O'Malley's sullen indignation at having followed a clew
that led to such a blind alley. But their disappointment
and bitterness were nothing to mine. All my hopes gone again,
and this last puzzle helping in no way, In no way,
as I then counted help end of Chapter twelve,