Craig Rice
The Big Midget Murders
The Big Midget is the hit of the show in Jake Justus’s night club, until someone puts an abrupt end to the Midget. Why were eleven unmatched silk stockings used as a noose? Who conked Jake when he got on the killer’s trail? John J. Malone finds all the answers with the energetic and hilarious assistance of Jake Justus and the beautiful Helene.
St. Swithin Press
First published by Simon and Schuster, 1942.
Copyright by Craig Rice
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-1-927551-04-2
Chapter 1
“Take him away—he scares me!”
The short, stocky man with the red face put one hand over his eyes and peeked around his finger.
Jay Otto had just appeared on the stage of the Casino. There was a sudden roar of applause from the crowd at the tables. Now he stood there, in top hat and tails, not uttering a sound, just standing there looking over the audience with a mocking smile, swinging a miniature walking stick in one hand. The handsome band leader had hushed his men and was watching for his next cue.
John J. Malone, Chicago’s famous criminal lawyer, mopped his brow with a slightly soiled handkerchief and looked away. “He scares me,” he repeated stubbornly.
Jay Otto performed some antic with the walking stick and stood still again, while the audience howled appreciatively.
“Shame on you, Malone,” said the blonde girl at the same table. “Afraid of a little midget!”
“Especially,” her tall, red-haired companion added, “when that midget is going to pay our rent.” He paused and added piously, “I hope!”
Another wave of laughter went over the audience and Malone looked back at the stage in spite of himself. Jay Otto, in wordless pantomime, had begun his famous imitation of a slightly boiled after-dinner speaker. The orchestra began to play, very softly.
The entertainer, less than three feet high, was a perfect travesty of a human being. Unlike so many of his kind, his proportions were almost exactly the same as those of a full-sized man; his head was not too large for his body; his arms and legs were proportionately the right length. Because of that, and of the fact that he handled his tiny body with such consummate skill, he made it appear that the rest of the world had suddenly swelled out of all proportion. Looking at him and then at the audience, it seemed to Malone that he was in a roomful of people all nine or ten feet tall, with enormous, grinning faces. He shuddered.
“Marvelous,” the red-haired man breathed. He reached out for one of the blonde girl’s hands. “One more week, and we can pay off the mortgage.”
“It’s either that,” she said, “or we’re out on the street without a night club to our name.”
“The old homestead!” Malone murmured, without the faintest trace of sympathy in his voice. He relit his cigar, leaned back in his chair, tried to ignore Jay Otto, and looked about him.
There had been a time when the Casino was so exclusive that only socialites, celebrities, and better-class gangsters could get in. That had been before Jake Justus, ex-reporter, ex-press agent, ex-amateur detective, had won it on a bet from a Chicago millionairess who’d wagered that she could commit a murder without being caught at it, and lost.
Not that Jake had needed to own a night club. His bride, nee Helene Brand, was heiress to more money than Malone cared to count. But Jake had that funny old-fashioned notion about earning his living and supporting his wife.
Malone rolled an eye over the remodeled Casino and shook his head. No, its best friends wouldn’t know it now. “I’d rather have a thousand customers at a buck a head than a hundred at ten bucks a head,” Jake had declared. “It’s just as much dough and ten times as much fun.”
Now, the Casino was half night club, half theater, and two halves circus, Malone reflected. Walls had been knocked down, balconies constructed, the dance floor doubled in size, and a stage—where Jay Otto was now pretending to be a football coach between halves of the big game—built at one side. “The big-best little night club in the world,” Jake had announced modestly on the billboards.
Malone sighed and hoped it would begin to crawl out of the red before the banks got nasty about the money borrowed to pay for the remodeling.
There was a sudden roar from the audience, and Malone instinctively looked toward the stage.
The midget’s walking stick had suddenly shot up to twice its length, and a gesture from him had turned it into a microphone. Now the midget had become Lou Holtz, clinging to the microphone and shrinking coyly from the applause.
He tossed the stick into the wings, and in the same instant a man appeared carrying a piano. Malone blinked. After watching Jay Otto for a few moments, the man with the piano looked like a giant, at least ten feet high, while the piano he carried seemed to be of only normal size.
“A man carrying a piano is always funny,” Jake murmured. “A man carrying a little piano is even funnier. But when a man carries a piano under one arm—”
The man with the piano—an ugly, lowering brute with a surly face and thick, tousled brown hair—put down the piano with exquisite care. It was exactly the right size for Jay Otto. Malone saw that the big man had been carrying a tiny piano stool in the other hand. Now he placed it with mathematical precision before the keyboard. Then Jay Otto sat down and rested both hands on the keys, assuming so soulful and faraway an expression that it was a moment or so before Malone realized that the big man had disappeared into the wings.
“He really is huge,” Helene commented. “He’s six foot six if he’s an inch. But he looks twice that beside his boss. I think he really loathes Jay Otto.”
“So do I,” Malone said in a low growl. “Give me Angela Doll any day.”
Helene sniffed. “You don’t need to tell anybody,” she said, “that you’d rather watch Angela Doll do her strip than a sneak preview of the Day of Judgment.”
“Angela Doll,” Malone said stiffly, “is a great artiste.”
“All of that,” Jake agreed. “And she’s cute, too.”
Jay Otto, seated at the keyboard, imitated a series of famous pianists, from Rachmaninoff to Hazel Scott. Neither he nor the piano made any sound at all. The crowd howled, and at last became thunderous when the big man ran out from the wings, picked up the piano under one arm and Jay Otto under the other, and carried both off stage.
“I still don’t like him,” Malone said.
Jake sighed. “I didn’t ask you here to like him. I asked you here to help me fight out that tricky clause in his contract. We’ll go back and see him in a few minutes.”
Two curtain calls later the orchestra suddenly began to play Angela Doll’s music. The crowd quieted immediately, wondering what was coming. Jake stiffened.
It was Jay Otto who appeared through the maroon-colored curtains, adopting the pose Angela Doll had made famous with her entrances.
“Damn it, he’s always changing his act,” Jake said. “This never was in it before.”
Starting from top hat and tails, the midget began going through the familiar strip routine of Angela Doll. The crowd giggled, then laughed, and then roared and clapped its appreciation. It was a biting, merciless travesty, and watching it Malone suddenly realized that all of Jay Otto’s imitations were cruel, hateful, even brutal. He found himself laughing uproariously as the midget skipped off stage waving a tiny pair of shorts through the curtains in a parting gesture—and immediately