The Frightened Man

By Dana Chambers

The Frightened Man, first published in 1942, is a fast-paced noir murder mystery set in New York city and featuring private detective Jim Steele. Steele comes upon two murdered bodies and suspicion falls on Steele’s good friend Larry Maxwell, part of a wealthy family but who has been threatened by his brother of being cut out of the family will. Dana Chambers was a pseudonym of Albert Leffingwell (1895-1946).

Gruesome twosome as Jim Steele finds, and dumps, the body of a bodyguard to a good—and frightened—friend, Larry Maxwell, and next finds that Larry’s father has been hung. The facts that Larry is in love with his brother’s wife, that his brother was attempting to have him cut out of his father’s will, that he has been spirited away to a mental home—along with two decorative nurses, give Steele as much as he can handle. Good decor, good and very fast action, and less flash than previous tales.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Phocion Publishing
• Release date: Nov 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781839740060

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Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Frightened Man

A Jim Steele Mystery

DANA CHAMBERS

The Frightened Man was originally published in 1942 by The Dial Press, New York. Dana Chambers was a pen-name of Albert Leffingwell (1895-1946).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 5

Chapter 1 6

Chapter 2 21

Chapter 3 39

Chapter 4 52

Chapter 5 71

Chapter 6 84

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 100

Chapter 1

At four o’clock of a late March morning in Manhattan, the eastern sky is a deep purple just beginning to pale. Against it, Park Avenue’s huge monoliths loom austerely in outlines as pure, serene, and remote as the silhouettes of temples on the Nile. I stopped for a moment to contemplate them and wonder whether I would ever get to Karnak.

I came very close to never getting anywhere, for the falling bottle just missed my head.

It came with rib real warning: the faint whistling shriek far above me screamed to a whist-bang on the pavement not three feet away. It sounded like a bomb exploding, but the reek of splashed liquor was thick and pungent in my nostrils before the tinkle of the falling glass fragments had died. I came out of my instinctive crouch and picked up the nearest fragment with gloved fingertips.

It was part of the bottle neck. It was smashed in two, with long ugly glass prongs curving into a tangle of gold wires: whisky bottle, obviously, and probably a Haig & Haig Pinch. I looked up.

The towering limestone facade of the apartment building was a vast white blind face turned toward the purple sky. It didn’t look like an Egyptian temple to me any more; it looked inscrutable and sphinx-like, a stone sphinx mocking my impotent rage—

Then I remembered...

To the corner of Park and Sixty-third was only a dozen steps. Inside the porte-cochere just round the corner, a uniformed doorman dozed in an ornate marble lobby. I touched his shoulder and he leaped out of his chair like a shot cat. I said, recalling his face vaguely from the two or three times I’d stopped in his lobby before, Is Mr. Maxwell in? Mr. Lawrence Maxwell?

I — Yes sir, I believe he is. Shall I announce you?

Do, I said grimly, holding the jagged bottle neck behind my back. The name is Steele.

He went to a wall phone. Presently he came back. His nurse says she’s very sorry, sir, but Mr. Maxwell isn’t to be disturbed. She —

"His nurse?"

Yes sir.

We stared at each other for a moment. Then I said:

Take me up.

Beg pardon, sir?

"Take me up. And let’s make it snappy, shall we?"

He didn’t want to. But we did.

I left him in the elevator and walked down the long taupe carpet of the eighth-floor hall and slammed my knuckles hard against the white paint of the door at the far end. Nothing happened, so I hit the door again and it swung back.

She was very easy to look at: thirtyish, with corn-yellow hair, and a figure which even the stiff starched nurse’s uniform couldn’t hide. Very red lips and gray eyes with dark lashes. The eyes were, at the moment, frowning. Please, please, she said in a half whisper, holding a professional finger toward her lips. No noise...What is it? What do you want?

I want to see Maxwell, I said. Right away. I still had my hand behind my back.

If you could just call back in the morning —

I could, but I won’t, I said, and shoved rudely at the door. She had to step back or get clouted in the chin, and she stepped back and I was inside.

She regarded me with obvious alarm. I did, of course, reek to heaven of liquor, and my eyes may have-been a little over-bright with wrath. The momentary impasse was resolved by the opening of an inner door, and the old friend whom I loved so well stood there swaying a trifle uncertainly and smiling owlishly at me.

Larry Maxwell was a big man with a reddish, humorous face behind glinting gold-rimmed glasses and thinning sandy hair. It was not exactly an intellectual face, but it was a very likable one. The heavy body below it was wrapped now in a black-and-gold dressing gown, and the big feet below that were thrust in leather sandals.

Well, strike me pink! said Larry Maxwell affably. The Old Maestro in person! Come in, come in. Come in and have a noggin of rum.

I thought his voice had a curious quivering, as though he were shaken with secret laughter, and somehow that made me all the angrier. I brought my hand out from behind my back, and the Haig & Haig fragment lay like an ugly starfish in my hand.

For the love of God, I said, you’ll kill someone someday, and it’ll all be in good clean fun, I realize. But they’ll send you up to Sing Sing just the same.

It was as though I’d kicked him in the teeth. His eyes bulged behind the glasses, the muscles of his cheeks went slack. Wh — what do you mean? he said.

This! I said impatiently, giving the starfish a poke in his direction, so that at last he noticed it.

"Where the hell did that come from?" he said.

Out your window. It just missed me. Why did you —

O Lord! he said. O Lord! Lord! I must have knocked it off the window sill...Very careless of me. Might have been serious, eh?

"It is serious. I’m soaked in Scotch and broken glass —"

Come in and I’ll brush you off. He jerked his head toward the inner door, closed one eye in an urgent wink. I might use a whiskbroom, at that, I said grudgingly.

Got a f-fine one, right in the bedroom, he said, a little thickly, and I noticed that his forehead was shining, as though with sweat. I looked at him more closely. I’d known him for nearly fifteen years — ever since I was a gangling freshman at Cambridge and he an Ail-American back at Princeton, and someone had introduced us in the Yale Club bar after some long-forgotten game. I’d seen him tight, I’d seen him sober; I’d seen him gay, I’d seen him sunk. I’d never seen him unstrung like this —

And then it came to me. It wasn’t alcohol. This whole massive phlegmatic organism was in the grip of what is doubtless the second oldest and certainly the most unpleasant of all human emotions — terror. Which was so amazing that I forgot all about my rage...

The living room had pine paneling, a lot of sporting prints and silver cups, and a very strange object sprawled on its big Spanish-leather divan. It was the thick body of a man who seemed to be fast asleep. Not that his sleeping was strange; it was the man himself who looked out of place in the dim luxurious room. He was wearing a short white jacket and dark trousers with a braid stripe, also white socks and heavy shiny black shoes. The costume made you think of a houseman, only he didn’t go with the costume. He had been a sailor; you could tell that from the tattooing on the backs of his muscular hands. He had also been a fighter. The flattened nose, the cauliflower ear, the relaxed sullen forward thrust of the strong jaw and chin as well as the tell-tale lumps on the shining bald skull all said that. He lay on his shoulder blades with both legs stretched out.

Who’s this monkey? I said, pausing beside him. Larry’s arm now hooked through mine drew me on. Albert? He’s my body guard, he said. Come on in the bedroom —

The blonde nurse was close behind us. The door to the bedroom was open. We went past the divan, and there was a faint sound in the bedroom and a girl came through the open door and stopped when she saw me. Oh! she said in a husky voice. Oh, I —

She too seemed to be a nurse, because she wore a nurse’s uniform. But she was far too beautiful — in a faintly theatrical way — to be anything more mundane than a Hollywood nurse, a nurse straight out of shadowland. She had disheveled black hair and her lashes seemed to me, even from fifteen feet away, to be all of an inch long. Her eyes were deep blue. Her face was small, heart-shaped, pure and beautiful in outline and ivory in color.

Larry Maxwell said, Margot’s on old friend of mine. Jim Steele. Presenting Mr. Steele, Miss Lynch.

I bowed.

"And, my friend added, if you two girls...Oh — Mr. Steele — Miss Faulkner... He gestured vaguely toward the blonde who had admitted me, and nods were exchanged. If you two girls will do what you can for Albert there, m’old friend and I will have a brief private chat."

The dark lovely said huskily but sweetly, I — I haven’t got the bags all packed yet, Mr. Maxwell —

"Quite all right. Quite all right...This way, Jim..."

It was a large and very disorderly bedroom; Larry kicked the door shut. A trio of huge pigskin traveling bags stood at the foot of the bed, not yet locked but jammed with crumpled clothing. A chromium bridge lamp between two easy-chairs shed a respectful glimmer of light on another pinch decanter and a trayful of glasses on a low tabouret. Sit down, my friend urged, and we’ll toss one down the hatch. His thick fingers busy at the tray were shaking visibly now. I said in a low voice:

Larry, just what’s wrong?

Wait a minute...I’ll tell you. He handed me a drink, sat down. He said, the owl eyes wide and pale behind the glinting gold spectacles, Frightful jam — cheerio — and I mean frightful.

Ah. Can I help?

His glass emptied at one gulp tottered as it hit the little stand and clinked to its side. Dunno, he said. I’m in a hellish jam. Ever hear of a place called South Wind Farm?"

No.

I’m going there. Starting any minute, I hope...I told Sam to bring the car round by half-past four. Want to ride up with us?

Certainly not. Where is this farm — and why?

Litchfield Hills. Northwest Connecticut. Near the Massachusetts line.

You crazy? Be colder than hell up there now.

A clock on the mantelpiece struck a single note, very soft. Maxwell glanced its way, sprang to his feet. He began stuffing some cravats and a pair of fur-lined slippers into a bag which obviously had too much in it already. Here, I said, let me give you a hand. You talk and I’ll work.

He gave me a grateful look as he straightened up. The point is — he began, and stopped. For the door opened and the blonde girl came through it. She looked frightened. Mr. Maxwell, she said, we can’t get him awake. He won’t move...

Maybe I can shake his eyes open — I began, and then I stopped. The telephone on the stand beside the bed emitted a discreet drone.

Maxwell said, That’s probably Sam, Linden. Answer it, will you? I’ll have a look at Albert. Stay with her, Jim. And he was gone.

Yes? Miss Faulkner said in a cool professional tone. Oh...yes, Sam...Oh, just a moment. Maxwell’s eyes were inquiring in the doorway. Sam says the car is round the corner on Park. He says shall he help with the bags or stay there?

I saw Maxwell look at me thoughtfully, saw the heavy features harden in sudden decision. Tell him to bring it in front of the door here, he directed. Jim will help us down.

Before Miss Faulkner had the receiver back in place, Larry had become a dynamo of energy. Linden, he said, you come with me. We’ll get Albert awake somehow. He finished stuffing his dressing gown into the last bag. Jim, will you snap the bags shut? I think my shoes are under the bed —

He had his arm around the girl, forcing her toward the door. I wasn’t surprised. I’d seen these lightning mood changes of his, this swing from lethargy to frenetic action, many times before. I found his shoes, rocked the bags, got his coat and a thick glossy coon-skin motoring coat out of the closet and laid them on the bed. I straightened my tie. There was a flat pint of Scotch, unopened, below the window sill where I’d placed it, and I slid it in my own jacket pocket.