Hildegarde Withers: Uncollected Riddles by Palmer Stuart

Author:Palmer, Stuart [Palmer, Stuart]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crippen & Landru
Published: 2017-01-29T00:00:00+00:00

The Riddle of the Hanging Men

History was changed, and the city of Rome saved, by the screaming of a flock of geese. Therefore it was in the best of tradition that the entire course of Miss Hildegarde Withers’ life was altered by a turkey.

The turkey was dead and roasted, and it reposed in the show window of Pugh’s Star Delicatessen on lower Sixth Avenue, New York City. At two o’clock of a soggy September morning, Patrolman John Duncan came along the avenue, swinging his nightstick. He looked in the delicatessen and saw the turkey in question. With the keen eye of one ambitious to become a plainclothes detective, Patrolman Duncan likewise noted, in the full glare of the lighted show-window, that the turkey was being rapidly devoured by a large and apparently very hungry tortoise-shell cat.

There was nothing unusual in old Pugh’s keeping open until two in the morning, for much of his business came in the shape of late calls for sandwiches from the big apartment houses of lower Fifth Avenue, one block to the eastward. But it was unusual to see the best behaved cat on Duncan’s beat thus engaged in open unabashed felony. The young cop struck the window with his night-stick, but the cat only eyed him insolently and went on voraciously chewing turkey.

The cop opened the door and yelled “Hey!” but nobody answered. Slowly Duncan went on back through the shop, past counters loaded with cold meats and canned delicacies. He was eager, alert — filled with a strange certainty that something was up.

He came into the rear room, where a door stood slightly ajar admitting the moist September air mingled with odors typical of a Sixth Avenue alley. Slowly the alley door swung shut, as if closed by the wind. But Duncan had no eyes for the alley door and whatever dark secrets might be concealed in the shadows beyond. He was staring through the glass door of the big refrigerator room at the face of Herman Pugh.

It was greenish-black, and unpleasant in the extreme. This was caused by the fact that Pugh, along with numerous hams and dressed poultry, hung by his neck from a hook in a high oak beam.

Anybody could see that the man was dead. But Duncan had been trained to seek confirmation of first impressions. He had his knife out in a moment, and slashed the necktie which served as a noose. He eased the body down to the floor, and then dragged it out of the icy chill of the cold room.

Then he freed the neck from its tight band, and attempted brisk artificial respiration. After a moment he realized that he had come in time. The horrible grayish-green had ebbed from the face of the delicatessen keeper, and his heart pumped very faintly ... erratically ...

Duncan knew his instructions. This was a case for the emergency squad. Leaving Pugh where he lay, the young cop hurried into the front of the store and snatched up the telephone.

It

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