This is a work-in-progress. It is set in San
Francisco in 1929. It is an excerpt from The
Pendulum, the 33rd installment of the Cyrus Skeen mystery series.
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Chapter 1: Quarrels
“Tick-tock, tick-tock,” I said as Dilys read Mickey Kane’s
roundup in the Observer-World of the Gideon Knowles case. “The mouse ran up the clock, its
little paws slipped, but scamper as he might, he fell, and with a squeak, the
tiny creature was beheaded by the wicked pendulum.”
We sat at the
breakfast table on Friday morning, November 15th, having just finished plates
of Anika’s strawberry pancakes and orange juice. We lingered over coffee and
cigarettes.
Dilys glanced up
from the newspaper. “That doesn’t rhyme at all,” she protested with a brow
knitted in a feigned but slightly humored mien, “And there’s no rhythm, either.”
“It’s free verse.
I’m experimenting with a new meter.” I put on my most defiant, insouciant
expression just to aggravate her. “Besides, it does rhyme. At least in the beginning, and has rhythm, too.”
Dilys shook her
head, and made her own nonchalant face. “You’ve dispensed with Hickory, Dickory,
too. I have half a mind to write Mother Goose, and warn her never to hire you
to edit her nursery rhymes. You’d butcher them. If mothers read your stories to their children
they would be left whimpering, cross-eyed and breathless. Even free verse has
rules, sweetheart.”
“You’re too late, darling,
if you do write her. She’s bobbed her hair, wears knee-length dresses, has
learned the Charleston, and has thrown the baby out with the bath water.”
“Has she gone in
for free love, too?”
I nodded. “Rumor
has it she’s filched Lady Windermere’s fan, and is quite a hit with the young
at heart, even though they they tend to be sexagenarians.”
“No wonder she
threw out the baby and the bath water. You couldn’t enjoy free love or free
verse with those encumbrances always underfoot.”
I smiled
pointedly. “Are you speaking from experience, sweetheart? If so, you must have
done a lot of star-gazing from the recumbent position.”
Dilys flicked the
newspaper closed. “You don’t have to insult me just because you can't
competently adapt a nursery rhyme to fit your own fiendish schemes!”
It went on that
way, until we both became aware of Anika, standing at the kitchen door,
listening to us with a puzzled look, holding a fresh carafe of coffee. She was
our maid and cook. She was short, dark-haired, and compact, and all of
nineteen. She was a student at Fogerty College, had been with us since July.
I asked her, “Yes,
Anika? Is something the matter? Have you forgotten how to make toast?”
The girl grinned.
“No, no, Mr. Skeen. It’s just that you and Mrs. Skeen often make no sense at
all. I can't help hearing you from the kitchen.” She paused. “Is it a lovers’
code? Forgive me for asking.”
Dilys smiled at
me. “She’s found us out, darling. She’ll probably report us to the straight
talking authorities and repeat all the gory details. They’ll arrest us, put us
in a tumbrel, and parade us up and down Market Street. The populace will hurl
tomatoes and raspberries at us.”
“We confess,” I
said to Anika. “We've been shamelessly negligent in our speech.” I lit an Old
Gold.
“And mystifying,
too,” Dilys said. “You see, we use a personal Morse code.”
“It’s suitably
mystifying. Especially to eavesdroppers held captive in kitchens,” I added,
scowling with humor at Anika. “Are you going to do something with that coffee?
You must know that water grows heavier every second it is held in abeyance, or
transported over a parched mountain pass. Perhaps you are training to replace
Gunga Din?”
Anika grinned,
took the old carafe from the trivet on the table and replaced it with the new
coffee she had been holding.
“Where did you
hear about a lovers’ code, dear?” Dilys asked.
“I read about it
in a book, in the Fogerty library,” the girl answered, and returned to the
kitchen without enlightening us on the book subject or title.
Dilys folded the
newspaper and handed it back to me. “I hope you rewarded Mickey for this
story.”
“I did,” I
answered. “I gave him some of the cash that was in Juncker’s pouch. That was
before he wrote his scoop here.”
“Isn’t that
illegal? Withholding or destroying evidence?”
I shrugged. “It
might be, except that Juncker deposited the check for $25,000 with a bank and
deducted some cash to live on. The check is mentioned in the AFA letter from
Soros. The police have seen the deposit at the bank and the cash he paid the
Humboldt building for the office space Juncker never used. For all practical
purposes, the cash was lost. It was never there. And I never mentioned it to
anyone else. Lieutenant Raggio saw it but he won't say anything about it and
won't ask what happened to it. I think he’s beginning to tolerate me.”
I opened the
newspaper and scanned Kane’s story yet again. I could never get over how he
could encapsulate a mountain of information in any of his news stories.
GIDEON KNOWLES, ASSASSIN
CHIEF, NABBED BY SKEEN
Traced to Hideout in Marina
Police
Arrest Nazi Enforcer Mastermind
Feds
Raid AFA in Chicago,
More
Nazi agents apprehended
Agents
in the City Here also Arrested
Special to Observer-World, by Mickey
Kane
November 11 –
Gideon Roscoe Knowles, the American-born British mastermind behind attempts to
murder the detective, was traced by Cyrus Skeen to an apartment building in the
Marina. His two hired assassins, Deryk Juncker, and Karl Zimmer, were foiled by
Mr. Skeen in their attempts to murder him.
Mr. Juncker,
injured by Mr. Skeen as he fled from a failed attempt outside his Nob Hill
apartment building, was hospitalized but was later murdered in his bed, likely
by Mr. Zimmer when he later tried to break into Mr. Skeen’s office. He was shot
and killed by Mr. Skeen. Police have tentatively determined that the knife used
to attack Mr. Skeen in his office was the same used to murder Mr. Juncker. A
motive for the murder has not been determined.
Peter Tripp, who
owns the Marina building in which Mr. Knowles was hiding, was arrested and
charged with aiding in the flight of a wanted fugitive. Another person, Charley
Franken, a confederate of Mr. Tripp, was also taken into custody. Mr. Knowles
had been using the name of “Gary Goldberg” while staying in Mr. Tripp’s house,
and is so listed in the telephone directory.
In another
development, Ignatius Roush, nominal director of the AFA, already under
indictment in a federal court, by the Treasury Department and the Bureau of
Investigation, for fraud, and for aiding and abetting a foreign organization
hostile to the United States, the NSDAP, was rearrested and incarcerated
without bail in Chicago and further charged with complicity in a conspiracy to
commit murder. Also arrested was Rudolph Soros, who ran the AFA with Roush.
The NSDAP is the National
Socialist German Workers Party, or the Nazi Party. The AFA is the Avalon
Freedom Alliance with close ties to the NSDAP in terms of finance and American
membership in the domestic Bund to advance the Nazi line in this country. Mr.
Knowles was intimately connected to the AFA. The attempts on Mr. Skeen’s life
apparently were an outgrowth of a vendetta after the detective identified a group
of Nazis in Palo Alto responsible for the murder of Lucien Maxey, and got the
gang corralled by the authorities….
The telephone
rang. Anika answered it. It was the doorman downstairs. Valda Redfern was on
her way up to model for Dilys, who was making sketches for her depiction of
“Circe.” Valda was a perfectly proportioned green-eyed vixen with black hair,
which was now in a Louise Brooks bob. She modeled the latest fashions from
Paris for stores downtown. She had a habit of forgetting that I was married to
Dilys and was devoted to her. She would traipse around the penthouse in the
altogether, oblivious or indifferent to my presence and Dilys’s. Her body was exquisite, and she was proud of
it. Dilys rarely objected to Valda’s penchant to flaunt herself in my presence.
Nor did I object.
Her occasional and flamboyant nakedness did not arouse or interest me, although
at times it made me uncomfortable. She knew that I loved Dilys and that no
dalliance was possible. Dilys realized it, too. We were amused by Valda’s
idiosyncrasy. It was a perfect relationship.
©
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