Hue and Cry Read online

  Contents

  HUE AND CRY

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  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

  HUE AND CRY

  #1 in the Singer Batts series, by Thomas B. Dewey.

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 1944 by Thomas B. Dewey.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC.

  www.wildsidepress.com

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  Hue and Cry was also published as Room for Murder.

  CHAPTER 1

  I don’t know how many times the bell rang before I woke up. I was dead asleep that night and the night bell doesn’t make a lot of racket anyway. The first thing I knew I had the sheet wound around my neck, the telephone in one hand, and I was saying, “Hello, hello,” over and over as fast as I could. Then I caught on that it was the night bell, not the telephone, and I hung up and found my slippers, pulled on my pants and a sweat shirt, and went into the sitting room.

  The light was on in there and Singer was still up. He was sitting at his little desk over against the wall between the two big windows, working away on something I didn’t know about and probably wouldn’t have understood anyway.

  I looked at my watch. (I sleep with it on, ever since one time when the telephone rang at three o’clock in the morning and somebody asked me for the time. I told him to go to hell, and the next morning I found out it was the only really permanent guest the hotel had and he moved out that day and never came back.) It was two-forty-five. I had been in bed for four hours. I couldn’t remember when Singer had been in bed. I think this was the twenty-third straight hour without sleep. It might have been more or less.

  “It’s two-forty-five,” I said. “Why don’t you go to bed?”

  No answer.

  “Singer,” I said, “I don’t care if you ruin your health, but I got a job to think of. If you pass out what happens to me?”

  He looked around then, very serious. “But I’ve told you many times, Joe, that if anything happens to me the hotel will go to you. You’ll own it.”

  I stared at him.

  “I thought you went to bed a long time ago,” he said. “I did.”

  “I see.”

  Never wait for Singer Batts to ask a personal question. He doesn’t operate that way. You live your life, he’ll live his. It’s only when there’s something he thinks he’s got a right to know that he’ll ask questions. Then he’ll ask plenty. Questions to drive you crazy.

  “I did go to bed a long time ago,” I said.

  “Have I kept you awake?”

  “Hell no, friend. The bell rang.”

  “The bell?”

  “As manager of this hotel,” I said, “in which you take such a tremendous interest that you don’t even know I got a bell in my room that the night clerk can ring if he wants me.”

  A look of horror came over Singer’s face. “Your grammar gets worse all the time, Joe. You didn’t even try to finish that sentence.”

  The bell rang again in my room, twice.

  “Grammar,” I said. “About grammar I don’t know nothing.” (I did that on purpose. I know better, really.) “Anyway, that sentence was getting too long.”

  “So you have a bell,” Singer said.

  “Sure. Hear it?”

  “Yes. There must be a pin in it. Who’s on the other end?”

  “Our night clerk. Fellow name of Jack Pritchard. Been working here for twenty years. Your old man hired him. Remember?”

  “He must be the man who used to peel apples for me when I was a child,” Singer said. “Nice old man… You’d better see what he wants, I guess. That must be hard on the battery—or whatever it is that makes a bell ring.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll go right away. Probably wants to know what happened to that paper clip that was on the desk when he came to work.”

  “Never criticize people for being conscientious, Joe.”

  “You better go to bed,” I said, and went on into the lobby.

  Pritchard was sitting on the bell all right, but the reason for it was bigger than a paper clip. The reason was big Pete Haley, the town marshal, and he was having quite a time. He was standing in the middle of the lobby hanging onto two kids by their collars. He had one at the end of each arm. They kept trying to get away. They’d start to turn around and swing on Pete and he’d give them a little twist and they’d jerk back into position, all the time cussing at him and carrying on. He had such a tight grip on them by now that their faces were bright red.

  All the time, Pete kept saying over and over: “Now, boys, calm down, stiddy there, calm down, take back a little. Remember your father, remember your mother, take back a little…” And every time he had to give them another twist, he’d say, “Stiddy there, whoa, boys.”

  It was pretty funny at first and I started to laugh, and then all of a sudden I thought, “What the hell is he doing bringing them in the hotel like this?”

  I walked over and stood just out of reach of those kids’ arms. I recognized them as a couple of high-school boys from respectable families. I couldn’t remember their names.

  Pete looked across his big belly and saw me.

  “What’s the matter?” I said. “The drugstore cowboys get a little too much?”

  “They ain’t bad kids,” Pete said right away.

  “Who said they were?” I said. “What are they doing in here?”

  “I brought ’em in,” Pete said. “Had to do somethin’—way they was carryin’ on out on the street.”

  “You’ve got a jail right down the street,” I said. “Hasn’t been used for fifteen years. Why not take them down there?”

  “Now, Joe,” Pete said, “you know it would hurt these kids’ folks if they was to turn up in jail. No need for it—no need to hang a record on ’em. I thought, maybe—”

  Pete had done this before. The big softy couldn’t stand it to enforce the law. Luckily in Preston it didn’t make much difference.

  “You thought maybe you’d like to put ’em up here and let ’em sleep it off?”

  “Well—yeah—that is, ’course I’ll pay.”

  I started to say, “You’re damned right you’ll—” then I looked at Pete’s big, round, baby face. “Okay, the hell with it,” I said.

  One of the kids swung on Pete, twisted and got away. He headed out, tripped over Pete’s foot, and stumbled into the desk. I caught him and straightened him up. Then he swung on me and hung a beauty right on the side of my face. I grabbed his arms—little spindly arms, felt like they’d splinter if I put any pressure on—and held him off. He jerked and twisted and cussed me out and glared at me, and blew his breath in my face. Then he did something I don’t like. He spit at me.

  “All right, Junior,” I said and lifted him off the floor. “You quiet down, or Uncle Joe will let you have it right in the teeth.”

  I shook him a little and he cooled off some. But he still glared at me and ran off at the mouth, talking thickly and not making any sense. Then he started twisting again and kicking at me. He had the very devil in him.

  “Cut it out,” I said, and I slapped him hard across the face.

  “Now, take it easy, Joe,” Pete said. “No need to hurt him.”

  “I’ll kill him,” I said, “if he doesn’t stand still.”

  Jack Pritchard, a little thin, dried-up old man with snow-white hair and wearing a bow tie and a celluloid collar, stood behind the des
k and shook his head slowly. He looked at Pete with his kid and me with mine and then he put his hands in his pockets and looked at the ceiling.

  “Any vacancies?” I asked him—as if I didn’t know.

  Jack Pritchard just sneered.

  “Well?” I said.

  “Ten vacancies,” he said. “Most of ’em are way upstairs on the third, fourth, and fifth floors, which is as high as this here hotel goes. But there’s one on the second floor, right up at the head of the stairs. Number 7.”

  I looked at Pete.

  “How you going to make them sleep it off?” I said. “You going to tie them to the bed?”

  “Well, I figured we’d sober ’em up first—give ’em a cold bath—”

  “Give ’em a bath?” I said. “Who? You going to call up their mothers and get them down here?”

  “Now, Joe, ’twouldn’t be much trouble—”

  “I’ve got guests in this hotel,” I said. “I should just drag a couple of village idiots upstairs, turn on the water, throw ’em in and let ’em yell?”

  One of the kids started talking sense.

  “Listen,” he said. “Don’t put me in any cold water. Please. I can’t stand it. I’m all right now. I’m sober.” Pete let go of him. The kid took three steps and fell flat on his face. He just lay there.

  The one I was holding gave up the struggle. I gave him a little push and he slid down against the desk and sat on the floor.

  “Maybe they’ll go to sleep after all,” I said.

  “Why, sure,” said Pete, proudly. “They’re good kids.”

  “Oh, my God!” I said. “I’ll take this one upstairs, Pete, and you take care of the one that passed out.”

  “Sure,” said Pete.

  “Stand up, Junior,” I said to the kid, taking hold of his collar.

  He came up all right and walked across the lobby without any squawk. But when we got to the bottom of the stairs he stopped and hung back.

  “Where you taking me?” he said.

  “Go along, son,” Pete said. “You’ll be all right. Get a good night’s sleep.”

  “I don’t want to stay,” he said. “You got no right.”

  “He’s got a right to throw you in jail for thirty days,” I said. “Now come on so I can get back to sleep.”

  “No,” he said.

  “What are you afraid of?” I said. “You’ll be in a nice hotel room, with a traveling salesman on one side and a beautiful schoolteacher on the other—”

  “Miss Mason?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah?”

  “This could go on forever,” I said. “Come on.”

  He came right along, as quiet as you please, tiptoeing upstairs. I got out my master key and opened the door to Number 7. It was a warm May night and there was a bright moon. It flooded into the room, lighting up the old steel bed and the chair beside it and the dresser over by the wall near the window. I snapped on the light and the moonlight disappeared.

  “Take off your clothes,” I said, “and give them to me.”

  “What the hell?” the kid said.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Just do what I tell you.”

  He was swaying a little on his feet and his eyes were staring. There was a bright little pin-point of light in the middle of each eye.

  He took off his coat and handed it to me. Then his tie and shirt. He looked at me staring at him and squirmed a little.

  “What are you staring at?” he said. “Don’t a guy get any privacy?”

  “You’re not just drunk,” I said.

  “No?” he said. “So what?”

  I studied him. After a couple of minutes he looked away.

  “I’ve got you now,” I said. “You’re Roy Blake, Joshua Blake’s kid.”

  His eyes jerked back to mine. “You wouldn’t squeal to my old man, would you?”

  “Give me the rest of your clothes and get in bed.”

  He started to put his hand in his pants pocket.

  “Oh, no,” I said. “Everything.”

  Reluctantly he took off his pants and tossed them to me. He sat down on the edge of the bed to take off his shoes and socks. I heard Pete Haley puffing up the stairs. He came pushing through the door just as the Blake kid handed me his shoes and socks and drew his feet up under him on the bed. Pete was carrying the other kid like a baby in his arms. He dumped him on the bed beside the Blake kid. Roy Blake looked at him without expression.

  “Who is he?” I asked Pete.

  “He’s Harley Granger’s kid, Sam.”

  Harley Granger owned the hardware store and some real estate. He was well off.

  “Well,” I said to Pete, “take off young Master Granger’s clothes and come down to the lobby. Bring the clothes with you and my master key—after you’ve locked the door.”

  “Bring the clothes?” Pete said stupidly. He was still breathing hard from the stair-climbing.

  “Yeah,” I said. “All of them.”

  Roy Blake looked at me, pleading. I figured it wouldn’t do him any harm to worry a little, so I just gave him a stony stare. As I started out the door, he called, “Hey!”

  I stopped without turning around.

  “Hey,” he said, “does Miss Mason live down at the end of the hall there, at the front?”

  “Yeah. What about it?”

  He whistled.

  “Shut up,” I said. “You go to bed and keep quiet. If there’s any racket in here I’ll call up your old man and tell him to come and get you. And Pete,” I said, thinking of the lovely Miss Mason, “don’t forget to lock the door.”

  “All right, all right, Joe,” Pete said. He had already started to take off the Granger kid’s clothes.

  I went downstairs to the desk with young Blake’s clothes wadded up under my arm. I laid them on the desk and said to Jack Pritchard: “There’ll be some more of these. Put them on the lost-and-found shelf and we’ll give them back to the punks when they wake up.”

  Pritchard lifted his nose. “In the old days—” he began.

  “In the old days,” I said, having no respect for age, “it was the same thing. Wasn’t it?”

  He sniffed. I had never got along with Pritchard, but he stayed on as night clerk because one of the provisions of the will by which Emory Batts left the Preston Hotel to his son, Singer, was that Jack Pritchard should have the job as long as he wanted it. It was easy to see that Pritchard was going to want it for the rest of his life. He was the damnedest old maid I’d ever known and he drove me nuts with his superior airs and righteousness, but he was honest. And he never went to sleep on the job—which is more than I could say for the day clerk. Pete came downstairs with Sam Granger’s clothes. “Give ’em to Jack, Pete. We’ll take them up to the kids when they wake up.”

  “What’s the idea of that, Joe?” Pete said.

  “Just a little insurance,” I said. “I don’t want them banging around in the hotel, and you don’t want them back on the street again.”

  Pete gave me my master key.

  “I appreciate this, Joe,” he said. “Mind if I use your telephone? Want to call the kids’ folks, tell ’em they’re all right. No need to worry ’em.”

  “What a copper!” I said. “Go ahead. You’re off duty at midnight. Don’t you ever sleep?”

  “Oh, sure. I’m going home soon as I finish these calls.”

  “Good night,” I said.

  Pete picked up the phone. And to Jack Pritchard I said: “Don’t ring that bell again. If we catch fire, just send the boys in after me.”

  This was not Jack Pritchard’s idea of a joke. He sniffed. As I went off toward the suite I could hear Pete Haley fussing around with his explanations as to why Roy Blake hadn’t come home yet. What a copper!

  Singer was still at it. I went over to the table and looked at what he was doing. He had an old book that looked like it was about to fall apart and some sheets of paper covered with scrawls.

  “What’s that?” I said.

 
Singer laid down his pencil and folded his hands.

  “It’s a murder case out of the sixteenth century. One of Queen Elizabeth’s maids—killed in her bed. Nobody ever solved it.”

  “Maybe she bit him,” I said.

  There was a long silence. Then Singer said slowly: “I have been assuming all along that she was killed by a woman—even Elizabeth herself. But why? Maybe you are right, Joe. Maybe it was a man and perhaps she did bite him.”

  “Oh, God,” I said. “Now you’ll never get to bed.”

  I started toward my own room.

  “What was the trouble?” Singer asked.

  “The trouble?”

  “Why did your bell ring?”

  I turned around. “You’re interested?” I said.

  “Of course.”

  “Okay. A couple of young blades about town were raising hell with the public peace. Jovial Pete Haley couldn’t stand it to throw them into the clink. He brought them over here so we could put them up for the night.”

  “And did we?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, “right between the traveling salesman from Detroit and a beautiful schoolteacher, the lovely Miss Marion Mason.”

  “You think they’ll be safe?”

  “The kids—they’ll be safe. I don’t know about the others.”

  “Oh?”

  “They weren’t just drunk. They were hopped up. Marijuana.”

  Singer blinked.

  “Figure that one out,” I said. “I’m going to bed.” And I did.

  CHAPTER 2

  I slept later than usual that morning and didn’t get into the sitting room until nine o’clock. Singer was still up, his thin shoulders hunched over the table, his head resting on his hands, looking like a human question mark, trying to figure out a murder that happened three hundred years ago.

  “Had any breakfast?” I said.

  He didn’t even answer and I didn’t press the point. I don’t like to talk before breakfast anyway.

  I went out to the kitchen and got something to eat and told Dora, the cook, to take something in to Singer.

  “And make him eat it,” I said, “if you have to feed him with a spoon.”

  Dora sighed and clumped off to find a tray.

  “I declare,” she said, “that Singer Batts wouldn’t live three days if you wasn’t around to look after him.”