Cancelled in Red Read online

  Cancelled in Red

  Hugh Pentecost

  Published by Bold Venture Press at Smashwords

  www.boldventurepress.com

  Cancelled in Red by Hugh Pentecost

  Copyright 1939 by Judson Philips. Renewed 1967.

  By arrangement with the Proprietor. All Rights Reserved.

  This book is available in print at most online retailers.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without express permission of the publisher and copyright holder.

  All persons, places and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to any actual persons, places or events is purely coincidental.

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

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  Table of Contents

  Edition notes

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Connect with Bold Venture Press

  Edition notes

  When Cancelled in Red debuted in 1939, it was the $1,000 Red Badge Prize Mystery winner, and received the $10,000 prize for the Dodd Mead Mystery Contest.

  The novel was serialized in six weekly issues of Argosy, an iconic pulp magazine, and published by Dodd, Mead & Company in hardcover and paperback.

  Cancelled in Red marked the debut of “Hugh Pentecost,” a pen name of Judson P. Philips, a prolific author of mystery fiction. He continued writing for the pulp under his own name, while selling to the better-paying slick magazines as “Pentecost.”

  Inspector Luke Bradley appeared in four novels, and in four short stories published in The American Magazine — “Death Wears a Copper Necktie” (Nov. 1944) and “Trail of the Vulture” (June 1956) were original stories. “Two Were Missing,” (Oct. 1940) was expanded into The 24th Horse. “Mission to Murder” (Jan. 1943 was an abbreviated version of The Brass Chills.

  The 1939 Dodd, Mead & Company paperback was the source for this edition’s text.

  Dedication

  To Spencer Anderson

  Chapter One

  Nassau Street, twisting its way northward toward City Hall Park, is always crowded during the business hours of the day. It is crowded with people hurrying in and out of dingy-looking small shops and office buildings—busy people.

  Almost no one paid any attention to the man who walked with long, uneven strides along the east pavement. One or two did turn to look at him, not so much because his worn, frayed overcoat was far too thin for the bitter March afternoon, or because he wore no hat on his head, which was closely shaven, convict style, but because of the expression on his face. His skin, drawn tightly over the bones of his face, was the colour of old newspaper. There were two faint, hectic spots of colour high on his cheeks. His eyes, sunk in deep sockets, were bloodshot and burned with a smouldering light. Although bumped and jostled by other pedestrians, he kept moving forward with grim, purposeful detachment.

  Presently he entered an office building and walked straight into the elevator.

  “Adrian Stamp Company?” he asked. His voice sounded parched, cracked.

  “Third floor.”

  At the third floor the man got out, went along the corridor, and turned into an office. The waiting room of the Adrian Stamp Company was something to see. The furnishings were impressively modernistic, but the bareheaded man had no eye for them. He did not look at the bright scarlet chairs set on frames of silver pipe, nor at the black walls bordered in chromium, nor at the amazing chequer-board linoleum on the floor, with red and white chessmen painted on its black and silver squares, nor at the black and white surrealistic drawings which dotted the walls. His gaze was centered on the door marked “Private,” just behind the desk where a pretty receptionist sat. His eyes were still on the door when he spoke to the girl.

  “My name is Lon Nicholas,” he said. “I want to see Adrian.”

  The girl looked at his coat, worn through at the elbows. The strong smell of whisky reached her. She made a decision.

  “Mr. Adrian is not in,” she said.

  “We’ll see,” said Lon Nicholas.

  Before the girl could stop him, he strode past her to the door, and pulled it open. He ignored the girl’s sharp cry: “Mr. Louderbach!” He was looking balefully at the man who stood behind the big kneehole mahogany desk in the private office.

  “Adrian!” he said. His thin blue lips seemed to writhe as he spoke the name.

  Max Adrian glanced up quickly. For just an instant his black shoe-button eyes were startled. He was a huge man, standing six feet tall, but his height was dwarfed by his great breadth. He must have weighed two hundred and eighty pounds. After that first startled look, he smiled. His smile was wide and dazzling, displaying very even, very white teeth; but his tiny eyes had a calculating, frosty light in them.

  “I’ll be damned!” he said. “Lon Nicholas.” His voice was suave.

  “Yes,” said Lon Nicholas.

  Another man came hurrying into the office behind Nicholas. He was thin and stoop-shouldered. He wore thick-lensed spectacles that magnified his scholar’s eyes to comic proportions. A fringe of mud-coloured hair surrounded a completely bald head.

  “Look here, my man,” he sputtered, “you cannot do this sort of thing. You cannot intrude—”

  “It’s all right, Louderbach,” said Max Adrian. “Mr. Nicholas is an old friend of mine.”

  “Oh! Very good, Mr. Adrian.” Louderbach retreated, closing the door.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you, Nicholas,” said Max Adrian. “I heard you’d had some hard luck.”

  “Yes … yes, I had hard luck,” said Lon Nicholas. His eyes never left Adrian’s face. They burned like hot coals in their sockets.

  Adrian settled himself in his oversized swivel chair. He picked up a heavy glass paperweight from the desk. Absently he hefted it in his right hand and then in his left, examining its flowered centre. Nicholas did not sit down, but he shifted his position as the sunlight falling through the windows behind Adrian’s desk was reflected against the bright chromium wheels and dials of a large safe in the corner.

  “I never did know exactly what happened to you,” said Adrian.

  “Just a bad break,” said Nicholas. He stood looking down at Adrian, his hands sunk in the pockets of his coat. “You knew,” he said slowly, “that I worked a long time—ten years—to raise the capital to go into the stamp business. I … I love stamps, Adrian.”

  “You should have been a collector, not a dealer,” said Adrian. He shifted the heavy paperweight from his left hand back to his right.

  “I couldn’t afford collecting,” said
Nicholas. “But I had to be around stamps, so I went into business.”

  “No go, eh?” said Adrian.

  “No go,” said Nicholas. “I had some tough luck.”

  “Too bad.” The smile seemed to be painted on Adrian’s face. It stayed there, but he wasn’t really smiling at all.

  “I let a man have the bulk of my stock on approval,” said Nicholas. “A man named Oscar Rivero. He had built up a fine credit in the business. But he was a crook. He disappeared after he got my stuff. There wasn’t any such person. His address had been a blind, just a place to get mail.”

  “Too bad, too bad,” said Adrian. “It’s been done before.”

  “It ruined me,” said Nicholas. “I’ve spent two years trying to find out who Oscar Rivero was.”

  Adrian balanced the paperweight thoughtfully. “Very interesting but I’m pretty busy this morning, Nicholas. If twenty-five dollars would help you out …”

  “It wouldn’t,” said Nicholas. His voice suddenly shook. “I came here to collect forty thousand dollars!”

  Adrian laughed. “You’re drunk,” he said. “What do you want me to do, set you up in business again?”

  “You’ll pay me what you owe me,” said Nicholas. “Because I know now who Oscar Rivero was!” His sunken eyes blazed. “You, Adrian! You!”

  Max Adrian’s right hand shot out. There was a sound like the report of a pistol as the heavy glass paperweight connected with Lon Nicholas’s jaw. At the same instant Adrian heaved his huge bulk sideways out of his chair to sprawl on the floor.

  “Louderbach!” he shouted at the top of his lungs.

  The office door opened and the man with the glasses ran in.

  “Good heavens, Mr. Adrian! What’s happened?”

  Very slowly Adrian crawled on his hands and knees around the corner of the desk. He saw Lon Nicholas lying on the thick Turkish rug. Nicholas’s eyes were closed, his face dead white.

  Adrian got to his feet and walked over to Nicholas. He bent down, felt in the overcoat pocket, and produced a gun. He looked at it with a kind of stupefied amazement.

  “He was going to kill me, Louderbach!”

  “I’ll summon the police,” said Louderbach, starting for the door.

  “No!” said Adrian, sharply. “Shut the door.” He stared down at Nicholas for a moment and then launched a square-toed shoe at the side of Nicholas’s shaven skull. He turned back to his desk, blotting at his forehead with a large blue silk handkerchief.

  “No police,” he said. “They’d take up a lot of time. We’d have to prefer charges, appear in court.” He looked at Louderbach thoughtfully; then he smiled. “Get Larry Storm on the phone,” he said. “Tell him to come over here and take his boy friend away if he wants to keep him out of trouble.”

  Chapter Two

  At the north end of Nassau Street, where it opens out toward the Park, is a statue of Benjamin Franklin mounted on a high stone pedestal. It is not a matter of record that the green, weather-beaten face of this replica of the man who flew a kite has ever changed its expression. It does not change during those hours from eleven to two when a series of shifts sends thousands of men and women, boys and girls, milling about the feet of the figure, scurrying to their favourite restaurants, beaneries, or soda fountains. It does not change as they hurry back into the holes where they work, their digestions much the worse for wear.

  If it ever did change, it must have been at the approach of a certain young man who passed that way every day at lunchtime. He was a tall, broad-shouldered young man, with a swinging, athletic walk. His clothes inevitably had a Bond Street look. His hats were always worn at a slightly rakish angle. His manner was amused, leisurely, tolerant as he surveyed the hectic noon-hour throng. And he always spoke to the stone figure of Mr. Franklin. His manner of speaking might have been considered frivolous, even impertinent, but it was definitely friendly.

  On this particular Tuesday afternoon the young man wore a grey suit with a fine, white pin stripe running through it. He carried a camel’s-hair coat over his arm. His cordovan leather shoes bore a mirror-like polish. In the lapel of his suit was a small, bright blue flower, almost as bright and almost as blue as his eyes.

  The young man looked up at Mr. Franklin and saluted with a wave of his hand. “Hi!” he said, pleasantly, and turned south into Nassau Street.

  Outside a ladies’ hat shop the gentleman paused. A faint smile flickered at the corners of his mouth for an instant, and then he stepped into the hat shop. There were hats in the window, hats on the shelves, hats on the glass counter and under it. A sour-faced saleslady, her jaws working methodically on a wad of gum, was sitting by the counter. At sight of the gentleman she seemed to freeze. He took off his hat, exposing his blond hair to view, and gave the saleslady an exaggeratedly courtly bow.

  “Good afternoon,” he said.

  “Huh!” said the saleslady, squaring her shoulders.

  “Any customers been enquiring for me?” asked the gentleman, in an innocent tone of voice.

  “If there had been, I’d have told them nothing!” said the saleslady.

  The young man shook his head. “You should really write to the Times about it, or Commissioner Moses, or Franklin P. Adams. In short, my dear Miss Fishbein, you should do something about it.”

  “I am not Miss Fishbein,” said the saleslady. “Miss Fishbein owns the shop!”

  “You will always be Miss Fishbein to me,” said the young man, with warmth. “But something should really be done. Here you are at 64½ Nassau. But the beer parlour next door is also 64½. And the main office building is also 64½. There ought to be a law, Miss Fishbein.”

  “If you want to buy a hat,” said the saleslady, grimly, “buy one!”

  The young man shuddered as he looked around him. “God forbid!” he said. He replaced his own hat on his head and gave the brim a little downward tug. “I look forward to these visits with you, Miss Fishbein. Somehow you always give the day a lift for me. Goodbye, and may your cash register play sweet music all the day long—to be poetic.”

  He went out, leaving the saleslady who was not Miss Fishbein muttering angrily under her breath.

  The young man sauntered past the beer parlour and came to the dingy entrance of an office building. Like the hat shop and the bar it bore the number 64½. To the right of the front door, attached to the brownstone upright, was a glass case. Inside the case, pasted on a white cardboard background, were a couple of dozen postage stamps. The glass front of the case had been so badly spotted by rain and dust that it was necessary to peer closely to see what the stamps were and to read the printed card at the bottom.

  LAWRENCE STORM, INC.

  STAMP BROKER, 7A

  The young man frowned, and then walked into the lobby of the building. It was dark. An elevator shaft, one of those old-fashioned iron grill-work affairs, ran up from the centre of the lobby. The elevator stood now at the ground floor, its gate open, an unshaded electric-light bulb burning in the centre of its ceiling. A negro elevator operator leaned against the wall, a cigarette dangling between his lips.

  “Good afternoon, George,” said the young man.

  “’Aftahnoon, Mistuh Storm.” The operator, by a tremendous effort of will, pulled himself upright and followed Mr. Storm into the car. The cables rattled over their heads.

  “’Tis a nice day, George,” said Mr. Storm.

  “Ya’suh.”

  “But methinks ’twill rain,” said Mr. Storm.

  “Ya’suh.”

  “On the other hand, methinks ’twill not rain,” said Mr. Storm.

  “Ya’suh.” George sounded inexpressibly weary.

  “Have you ever read Hamlet, George?” Mr. Storm asked.

  “No, suh.”

  “Then your opinion of the brilliance of my wit will not be dampened by any suspicion of plagiarism,” said Mr. Storm.

  “No, suh, Mistuh Storm.”

  “George,” said Mr. Storm, “I love you.”

  As Mr.
Storm got out of the elevator at the seventh floor and proceeded along the corridor, George shook his head. He was thinking that if he were to act and talk like Mr. Storm they would lock him up in the City Hospital.

  Mr. Storm turned to the left and went down a dark little cul-de-sac. At the far end of it was a door, its top half of frosted plate glass. If an electric light had not been burning on the other side, Mr. Storm’s name on the glass would have been invisible. Mr. Storm opened the door and went in.

  The main office of Lawrence Storm, Inc. was a long, narrow room with two windows at the far end. If the building boasted a window cleaner, he had neglected Mr. Storm’s office for a long time. Across the front end of the room stretched a wide counter, glass-covered. Under the glass were hundreds of postage stamps. A pair of bridge lamps with adjustable necks threw light on this exhibit. Beyond the counter was a large, old-fashioned safe, its door standing open. It seemed to contain nothing but a collection of unwieldy-looking books.

  At the far end by the windows were two flat-topped, wooden desks. At one of these sat a girl. She was blond with naturally curly hair, clear hazel eyes, and a humorous little mouth painted bright red. She was dressed primly in black with a neat white collar at her throat and neat white cuffs at her wrists. As Mr. Storm came in she looked up quickly from her work. Mr. Storm’s blue eyes met hers.

  “Hi!” said Mr. Storm.

  “Hi, Teacher!” said Ellen Dixon.

  Mr. Storm’s attention was then taken up by other matters. Standing behind the counter was a boy of about fifteen. He was tall for his age, and his clothes had not quite kept up with him. His coat sleeves left large bony wrists exposed. His trousers revealed a pair of brilliantly chequered socks. Wiry red hair had been generously doused with water and slicked down, but patches of it stuck out from his head. On the customer’s side of the counter, kneeling on one of the hard wooden chairs, a newsboy’s canvas bag slung over his shoulder, was another boy of about the same age. His face was a replica of the map of Ireland, pug nose, aggressive chin, and all. A little pile of stamps lay between the two boys on the counter. At the sight of Mr. Storm, the red-haired one hastily covered them with a sheet of paper.