The Detective Megapack Read online

  Table of Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

  ARSON PLUS, by Dashiell Hammett

  IT TORE THE LAUGH FROM MY THROAT, by Meriah L Crawford

  THE TAGGART ASSIGNMENT, by Vincent Starrett

  TOMORROW’S DEAD, by David Dean

  THE FLAMING PHANTOM, by Jacques Futrelle

  MESSAGE IN THE SAND, by John L. French

  THE ASSISTANT MURDERER, by Dashiell Hammett

  ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, by C.J. Henderson

  THE RED THUMB MARK, by R. Austin Freeman

  MONSIEUR LECOQ, by Emile Gaboriau

  THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE, by Edgar Allan Poe

  HELL-BENT FOR THE MORGUE, by Don Larson

  DEATH OF THE FLUTE, by Arthur J. Burks

  OH FANNY, by Raymond Lester

  CLANCY, DETECTIVE, by H. Bedford-Jones

  THE TATTOOED MAN, by William J. Makin

  TRIGGER MEN, by Eustace Cockrell

  BUTTERFLY OF DEATH, by Harold Gluck

  MY BONNIE LIES…, by Ted Hertel

  THUBWAY THAM, FASHION PLATE, by Johnston McCulley

  THE MURDER AT TROYTE’S HILL, by Catherine Louisa Pirkis

  THE AFFAIR OF THE CORRIDOR EXPRESS, by Victor L. Whitechurch

  SECRET SUGGESTION, by Vincent H. O’Neil

  THE FIVE ORANGE PIPS, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  BLACK SUNRISE, by Jack Halliday

  THE LION’S SMILE, by Thomas W. Hanshew

  THE NAIL, by Pedro de Alarçon

  THE ROME EXPRESS, by Arthur Griffiths

  IN THE FOG, by Richard Harding Davis

  OFFICER DOWN, by Robert J. Mendenhall

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  The Detective Megapack is copyright © 2013 by Wildside Press LLC. All rights reserved.

  * * * *

  “Arson Plus,” by Dashiell Hammett, originally appeared in Black Mask magazine, October 1923.

  “It Tore the Laugh from My Throat,” by Meriah L Crawford, was originally published in Chesapeake Crimes 3 (published by Wildside Press, 2008). Copyright © 2008 by Meriah L. Crawford. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Taggart Assignment,” by Vincent Starrett, originally appeared in Short Stories, August 10, 1922.

  “Tomorrow’s Dead,” by David Dean, was originally published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, July 2011. Copyright ©2011 by David Dean. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Flaming Phantom,” by Jacques Futrelle, originally appeared in The Thinking Machine (1907).

  “Message in the Sand,” by John L. French originally appeared in Past Sins, the Matthew Grace Casebook (Padwolf Publishing, 2009). Copyright © 2009 by John L. French. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Assistant Murderer,” by Dashiell Hammett, originally appeared in The Black Mask, February 1926.

  “All’s Well That Ends Well,” by C.J. Henderson, originally appeared in Hardboiled #12. Copyright © 1990 by C.J. Henderson. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  The Red Thumb Mark, by R. Austin Freeman, originally appeared 1907.

  Monsieur Lecoq, by Emile Gaboriau, originally appeared in 1869.

  “Hell-Bent for the Morgue,” by Don Larson, originally appeared in 10-Story Detective, January 1941.

  “Death of the Flute,” by Arthur J. Burks, originally appeared in 1933.

  “Oh Fanny,” by Raymond Lester, originally appeared in All-Story Weekly, November 16, 1919.

  “Clancy, Detective,” By H. Bedford-Jones, originally appeared in Blue Book magazine, April 1926.

  “The Tattooed Man,” by William J. Makin, originally appeared in Blue Book magazine, May 1936.

  “Trigger Men,” by Eustace Cockrell, originally appeared in Blue Book magazine, October 1936.

  “Butterfly of Death,” by Harold Gluck, originally appeared in Smashing Detective Stories, September 1951.

  “My Bonnie Lies…,” by Ted Hertel, originally appeared in The Mammoth Book of Legal Thrillers. Copyright © 2002 by Ted Hertel. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Thubway Tham, Fashion Plate,” by Johnston McCulley, originally appeared in Detective Story Magazine, 1920.

  “The Murder at Troyte’s Hill,” by Catherine Louisa Pirkis, originally appeared in The Experiences of Loveday Brooke (1893).

  “Secret Suggestion,” by Vincent H. O’Neil, originally appeared in Crime Capsules: Tales of Death, Desire, and Deception. Copyright © 2011 by Vincent H. O’Neil. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Black Sunrise,” by Jack Halliday, is original to this collection and is copyright © 2013 by Jack Halliday.

  “Officer Down,” by Robert J. Mendenhall, originally appeared in Crimespree Magazine, November/December 2010. Copyright © 2010 by Robert J. Mendenhall. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

  The Detective Megapack selects 30 tales, classic and modern, which we hope will intrigue and entertain you. We really enjoyed putting this collection together. Hopefully you will encounter at least a few authors you haven’t read before. If you like their work here, do seek out their other books and stories.

  This volume was primarily selected by Carla Coupe and John Betancourt, though everyone at Wildside Press helps. And we continue to thank our readers who make suggestions.

  ATTN: KINDLE READERS

  The Kindle versions of our Megapacks employ active tables of contents for easy navigation…please look for one before writing reviews on Amazon that complain about the lack! (They are sometimes at the ends of ebooks, depending on your version or ebook reader.)

  RECOMMEND A FAVORITE STORY?

  Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is perfect for the Megapack series? We’d love your suggestions! You can post them on our message board at http://movies.ning.com/forum (there is an area for Wildside Press comments).

  Note: we only consider stories that have already been professionally published. This is not a market for new works.

  TYPOS

  Unfortunately, as hard as we try, a few typos do slip through. We update our ebooks periodically, so make sure you have the current version (or download a fresh copy if it’s been sitting in your ebook reader for months.) It may have already been updated.

  If you spot a new typo, please let us know. We’ll fix it for everyone (and email a revised copy to you when it’s updated, in either epub or Kindle format, if you provide contact information). You can email the publisher at [email protected].

  * * * *

  THE MEGAPACK SERIES

  The Adventure Megapack

  The Boys’ Adventure Megapack

  The Christmas Megapack

  The Second Christmas Megapack

  The Classic American Short Story Megapack

  The Dan Carter, Cub Scout Megapack

  The Cowboy Megapack

  The Craig Kennedy Scientific Detective Megapack

  The Cthulhu Mythos Megapack

  The Father Brown Megapack

  The Ghost Story Megapack

  The Second Ghost Story Megapack

  The Horror Megapack

  The Macabre Megapack

  The Martian Megapack

  The Military Megapack

  The Mummy Megapack

  The Mystery Megapack

  The Penny Parker Megapack

  The Pulp Fiction Megapack

  The Rover Boys Megapack

  The Science Fiction Megapack

  The Second Science Fiction Megapack

  The Third Science Fiction Megapack

  The Fourth Science Fiction Megapack

  The F
ifth Science Fiction Megapack

  The Sixth Science Fiction Megapack

  The Penny Parker Megapack

  The Pinocchio Megapack

  The Steampunk Megapack

  The Tom Corbett, Space Cadet Megapack

  The Tom Swift Megapack

  The Vampire Megapack

  The Victorian Mystery Megapack

  The Werewolf Megapack

  The Western Megapack

  The Second Western Megapack

  The Second Western Megapack

  The Wizard of Oz Megapack

  The Wizard of Oz Megapack

  AUTHOR MEGAPACKS

  The E.F. Benson Megapack

  The Second E.F. Benson Megapack

  The B.M. Bower Megapack

  The Wilkie Collins Megapack

  The Jacques Futrelle Megapack

  The Randall Garrett Megapack

  The G.A. Henty Megapack

  The Andre Norton Megapack

  The H. Beam Piper Megapack

  The Rafael Sabatini Megapack

  ARSON PLUS, by Dashiell Hammett

  Jim Tarr picked up the cigar I rolled across his desk, looked at the band, bit off an end, and reached for a match.

  “Three for a buck,” he said. “You must want me to break a couple of laws for you this time.”

  I had been doing business with this fat sheriff of Sacramento County for four or five years—ever since I came to the Continental Detective Agency’s San Francisco office—and I had never known him to miss an opening for a sour crack; but it didn’t mean anything.

  “Wrong both times,” I told him. “I get them for two bits each, and I’m here to do you a favor instead of asking for one. The company that insured Thornburgh’s house thinks somebody touched it off.”

  “That’s right enough, according to the fire department. They tell me the lower part of the house was soaked with gasoline, but the Lord knows how they could tell—there wasn’t a stick left standing. I’ve got McClump working on it, but he hasn’t found anything to get excited about yet.”

  “What’s the layout? All I know is that there was a fire.”

  Tarr leaned back in his chair and bellowed: “Hey, Mac!”

  The pearl push buttons on his desk are ornaments so far as he is concerned. Deputy sheriffs McHale, McClump, and Macklin came to the door together—MacNab apparently wasn’t within hearing.

  “What’s the idea?” the sheriff demanded of McClump. “Are you carrying a bodyguard around with you?”

  The two other deputies, thus informed as to whom “Mac” referred this time, went back to their cribbage game.

  “We got a city slicker here to catch our firebug for us,” Tarr told his deputy. “But we got to tell him what it’s all about first.”

  McClump and I had worked together on an express robbery several months before. He’s a rangy, towheaded youngster of twenty-five or -six, with all the nerve in the world—and most of the laziness.

  “Ain’t the Lord good to us?”

  He had himself draped across a chair by now—always his first objective when he comes into a room.

  “Well, here’s how she stands,” he went on. “This fellow Thornburgh’s house was a couple miles out of town, on the old county road—an old frame house. About midnight, night before last, Jeff Pringle—the nearest neighbor, a half-mile or so to the east—saw a glare in the sky from over that way, and phoned in the alarm; but by the time the fire wagons got there, there wasn’t enough of the house left to bother about. Pringle was the first of the neighbors to get to the house, and the roof had already fallen in then.

  “Nobody saw anything suspicious—no strangers hanging around or nothing. Thornburgh’s help just managed to save themselves, and that was all. They don’t know much about what happened—too scared, I reckon. But they did see Thornburgh at his window just before the fire got him. A fellow here in town—name of Henderson—saw that part of it too. He was driving home from Wayton and got to the house just before the roof caved in.

  “The fire department people say they found signs of gasoline. The Coonses, Thornburgh’s help, say they didn’t have no gas on the place. So there you are.”

  “Thornburgh have any relatives?”

  “Yeah. A niece in San Francisco—a Mrs. Evelyn Trowbridge. She was up yesterday, but there wasn’t nothing she could do, and she couldn’t tell us nothing much, so she went back home.”

  “Where are the servants now?”

  “Here in town. Staying at a hotel on I Street. I told ’em to stick around for a few days.”

  “Thornburgh own the house?”

  “Uh-huh. Bought it from Newning & Weed a couple months ago.”

  “You got anything to do this morning?”

  “Nothing but this.”

  “Good. Let’s get out and dig around.”

  We found the Coonses in their room at the hotel on I Street. Mr. Coons was a small-boned, plump man with the smooth, meaningless face and the suavity of the typical male house-servant.

  His wife was a tall, stringy woman, perhaps five years older than her husband—say, forty—with a mouth and chin that seemed shaped for gossiping. But he did all the talking, while she nodded her agreement to every second or third word.

  “We went to work for Mr. Thornburgh on the fifteenth of June I think,” he said, in reply to my first question. “We came to Sacramento, around the first of the month, and put in applications at the Allis Employment Bureau. A couple of weeks later they sent us out to see Mr. Thornburgh, and he took us on.”

  “Where were you before you came here?”

  “In Seattle, sir, with a Mrs. Comerford; but the climate there didn’t agree with my wife—she has bronchial trouble—so we decided to come to California. We most likely would have stayed in Seattle, though, if Mrs. Comerford hadn’t given up her house.”

  “What do you know about Thornburgh?”

  “Very little, sir. He wasn’t a talkative gentleman. He hadn’t any business that I know of. I think he was a retired seafaring man. He never said he was, but he had that manner and look. He never went out or had anybody in to see him, except his niece once, and he didn’t write or get any mail. He had a room next to his bedroom fixed up as a sort of workshop. He spent most of his time in there. I always thought he was working on some kind of invention, but he kept the door locked, and wouldn’t let us go near it.”

  “Haven’t you any idea at all what it was?”

  “No, sir. We never heard any hammering or noises from it, and never smelled anything either. And none of his clothes were ever the least bit soiled, even when they were ready to go out to the laundry. They would have been if he had been working on anything like machinery.”

  “Was he an old man?”

  “He couldn’t have been over fifty, sir. He was very erect, and his hair and beard were thick, with no gray hairs.”

  “Ever have any trouble with him?”

  “Oh, no, sir! He was, if I may say it, a very peculiar gentleman in a way; and he didn’t care about anything except having his meals fixed right, having his clothes taken care of—he was very particular about them—and not being disturbed. Except early in the morning and at night, we’d hardly see him all day.”

  “Now about the fire. Tell us everything you remember.”

  “Well, sir, my wife and I had gone to bed about ten o’clock, our regular time, and had gone to sleep. Our room was on the second floor, in the rear. Some time later—I never did exactly know what time it was—I woke up, coughing. The room was all full of smoke, and my wife was sort of strangling. I jumped up, and dragged her down the back stairs and out the back door.

  “When I had her safe in the yard, I thought of Mr. Thornburgh, and tried to get back in the house; but the whole first floor was just flames. I ran around front then, to see if he had got out, but didn’t see anything of him. The whole yard was as light as day by then. Then I heard him scream—a horrible scream, sir—I can hear it yet! And I looked up at his window—that was t
he front second-story room—and saw him there, trying to get out the window! But all the woodwork was burning, and he screamed again and fell back, and right after that the roof over his room fell in.

  “There wasn’t a ladder or anything that I could have put up to the window—there wasn’t anything I could have done.

  “In the meantime, a gentleman had left his automobile in the road, and come up to where I was standing; but there wasn’t anything we could do—the house was burning everywhere and falling in here and there. So we went back to where I had left my wife, and carried her farther away from the fire, and brought her to—she had fainted. And that’s all I know about it, sir.”

  “Hear any noises earlier that night? Or see anybody hanging around?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Have any gasoline around the place?”

  “No, sir. Mr. Thornburgh didn’t have a car.”

  “No gasoline for cleaning?”

  “No, sir, none at all, unless Mr. Thornburgh had it in his workshop. When his clothes needed cleaning, I took them to town, and all his laundry was taken by the grocer’s man, when he brought our provisions.”

  “Don’t know anything that might have some bearing on the fire?”

  “No, sir. I was surprised when I heard that somebody had set the house afire. I could hardly believe it. I don’t know why anybody should want to do that.…”

  “What do you think of them?” I asked McClump, as we left the hotel.

  “They might pad the bills, or even go South with some of the silver, but they don’t figure as killers in my mind.”

  That was my opinion, too; but they were the only persons known to have been there when the fire started except the man who had died. We went around to the Allis Employment Bureau and talked to the manager.

  He told us that the Coonses had come into his office on June second, looking for work; and had given Mrs. Edward Comerford, 45 Woodmansee Terrace, Seattle, Washington, as reference. In reply to a letter—he always checked up the references of servants—Mrs. Comerford had written that the Coonses had been in her employ for a number of years, and had been “extremely satisfactory in every respect.” On June thirteenth, Thornburgh had telephoned the bureau, asking that a man and his wife be sent out to keep house for him, and Allis sent out two couples he had listed. Neither couple had been employed by Thornburgh, though Allis considered them more desirable than the Coonses, who were finally hired by Thornburgh.