The Star Reporter Mystery Read online

  Table of Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 1955, renewed 1963 by Norvin Pallas.

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidepress.com

  DEDICATION

  To my mother

  CHAPTER 1

  Barry Knight Is Missing

  It was nearly eight o’clock, on the second morning after Christmas, when Ronald Wilford came up the steps of the Cleveland Union Terminal, carrying a suitcase. He had had an enjoyable vacation at home in the little town of Forestdale, spending Christmas with his mother, his younger brother Ted, and some family friends. He had revisited the office of the Town Crier, the local newspaper where he had made his start, and where his outstanding work had enabled him to get a job on a metropolitan daily.

  But it was pleasant to be getting back to his job again, too. The smell of fresh newsprint and printer’s ink, the rolling of the great rotary presses, the hustle of the newspaper office—all had an elusive attraction that he missed when he was away too long.

  He had taken the sleeper in, which allowed him an extra day at home, but he hadn’t eaten on the train—not at Pullman prices, not without an expense account. Glancing at the big terminal clock, he decided he’d just have time for a little snack at the coffee shop off the main lobby, below street level, before reporting to the office.

  Stopping only long enough to pick up a morning paper from the newsstand, he entered the shop and found a seat on a stool in front of the counter.

  “Hi, Ronald,” the waitress greeted him.

  “Hello, Sandra. Anything new in town while I was gone?”

  “Nothing much. Judging by the Twilight Star, the whole town’s in hibernation. They must have given the entire staff a vacation. You should have seen the big banner headline Christmas morning: ‘SANTA CLAUS ARRIVES ON SCHEDULE.’ Kind of corny for a big city, but I guess people liked it.”

  “The Fire Chief goes for those sentimental touches once in a while.”

  The editor of the Star, Jason Burnett, had acquired his nickname as a young reporter when, it was alleged, he generally managed to beat the fire engines to the scene of a fire. Maybe it never happened more than once or twice, and only then by accident, but a reputation like that didn’t hurt anything in the newspaper business.

  Ronald gave the menu only the briefest glance, before deciding, “Bacon and scrambled eggs, orange juice, coffee, and toast, please.”

  “Coming up!”

  Sandra had been very nearly right, Ronald concluded, as he looked over the front page while waiting for his breakfast. All the big stories had come in on the wire. There seemed to be very little of purely local interest, other than a few accidents. Fortunately no big disaster had marred the holiday scene. Elections were all out of the way, sports were in the doldrums, and if there were any big exposés coming up, the editors were sitting on them until after the first of the year. This was the usual post-Christmas slump.

  Coming out of the terminal, Ronald saw that this was to be a clear, cold day. The city must have had plenty of snow, but the snow removal crews had been efficient, at least on the principal arteries. Loads of salt had turned the snow into slush, and trucks had hauled most of it away, although here and there were huge piles awaiting attention. The Christmas tree still stood on the square, which was no novelty to Ronald, for it had been erected immediately after Thanksgiving, though it retained a fresh, sparkling look. Even the soldiers’ and sailors’ monument, which many people condemned as an artistic monstrosity and civic eyesore, conveyed a “welcome home” feeling.

  Because he still had a few minutes to spare, Ronald decided against fighting the winds across the square, and turned up Euclid Avenue instead. Then he crossed Euclid and entered the arcade, where he climbed the stairs to the Superior Avenue level. A small matter was weighing on his mind, and he kept turning it over and over again.

  Would it be all right for a raw cub reporter like himself to ask Barry Knight, the paper’s hard-hitting crime reporter, to have lunch with him? Well, why not? he argued. They had worked on several assignments together. Knight had given him a helping hand during his early difficult days on the paper, even covered up a couple of his blunders. Just the same, Knight was a person who was a little difficult to approach. His uncompromising newspaper stories had earned him many enemies, and although he knew a great many people, there was no one who could accurately be described as his friend. Something about Knight repelled gestures of friendship.

  Still, somebody’s got to take the first step, Ronald decided. His growing experience with the many people he had met had taught him that most people are friendly, if you can only get them to thaw out. Why shouldn’t the same be true of Knight? Anyway, it was only a lunch. By the time he had crossed Superior Avenue he had made up his mind to ask him.

  Passing the large windows through which the printing presses could be seen, he headed upstairs toward the editorial rooms. Because of the reputation Knight had earned for himself, he rated a private office and secretary, and Ronald saw that Miss Curtis was already at work. He stuck his head in the door.

  “Hello, Miss Curtis. Has Knight been in yet?”

  “Not yet, Ronald.”

  Ronald never felt quite at ease with Miss Curtis. Although friendly enough in the office, a couple of times she had passed him on the street and had cut him off with the coolest glance. Apparently she was determined that their relationship should be strictly a business one, and if that was the way she wanted it, Ronald was content to leave it that way for the present.

  He stepped into the office and hesitated. “Do you happen to know, Miss Curtis, whether Knight has any plans for lunch today?”

  “I don’t know, Ronald. Knight hasn’t been in for several days. I haven’t seen him since the day you left.”

  “You haven’t?” Ronald frowned. “I didn’t know he was going to take off.”

  “No, I didn’t either.” And now Ronald noticed that she looked very worried.

  “Hasn’t he called in?”

  “No.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Knight. Did you try to phone him?”

  “Five times yesterday, and twice this morning. There wasn’t any answer. I don’t know—holidays always sort of depressed Knight—I suppose it’s not having any family, or anything. Anyway I wasn’t too much worried until this morning.” She remembered something then. “Oh, Ronald, Burnett wants to see you in his office right away.”

  “The Fire Chief himself? Well, what do you know?”

  “I think he’s waiting for you. I’m pretty sure it has something to do with Knight.”

  The editor’s door was open, and Ronald walked in.

  “You wanted to see me, Burnett?”

  As a newcomer, Ronald had always addressed the editor as Mr. Burnett, until one day his superior had called him in and told him they didn’t have time for titles on a newspaper. Later Ronald learned that this was a standard speech, which informed a cub that he had passed his trial and was now accepted as a permanent member of the staff. Office bo
ys and new cubs, though, still called the editor “Mr. Burnett.”

  “Yes, Wilford. I won’t ask you to sit down because it’ll only take a moment. I don’t know what’s happened to Knight, and I want you to run out to his home and find out. It may be that the big goof is sick and ashamed to admit it. Anyway, we’ll try to pretend that’s all it is until we learn something different.”

  “Right. I’ll check in at the city desk—”

  “Don’t bother. I’ve talked to Fogarty already. And when you get back, report directly to me. I’m very much interested—or maybe worried would be a better word. Just put that suitcase down somewhere—it doesn’t have a bomb in it, I suppose?”

  “I don’t know. I hope you find out before I do.”

  Leaving the building, Ronald turned northward toward the lake and walked rapidly to the parking lot where he had left his car before the Christmas holiday. He had expected that he might have to dig it out of the snow, but fortunately it was parked to the leeward side of one of the tall buildings, and there was no trouble. His battery, too, proved equal to the occasion. Within a few minutes he was on his way across the valley over the Main Avenue Bridge. There was a cloverleaf at the western approach to the bridge, and he recalled that the first time he had tried to negotiate it he had been—well, if not lost, at least temporarily confused.

  But he no longer had any trouble there and easily made the turn into the lake-shore drive. Traffic eastward was still heavy, but in his direction there was little congestion, and he drove as rapidly as winter conditions would permit. To his right, off Edgewater Park, was Lake Erie, and he could see that the water was frozen, far out past the breakwater, in the rough fashion typical of a large, restless body of water. All shipping had ceased nearly two months before.

  When he was far enough west, he turned south until he reached Franklin Boulevard. Although he had Knight’s number, he had never visited him at home before. Knight didn’t encourage that type of intimacy, although Ronald was perhaps as close to him as anyone. When he had found the right number, it proved to be a fine old home that had since degenerated into a rooming house. Ronald’s ring was answered by the landlady, who asked him inside and introduced herself as Mrs. Patrunik.

  “I’m from the Star, Mrs. Patrunik. Knight hasn’t reported in for several days, and we’re wondering what happened to him.”

  “I wish I knew that myself. His phone was ringing all day yesterday, and I wanted to answer, but his door was locked. Of course I have another key, but I didn’t feel—”

  “Quite right, Mrs. Patrunik. Then I take it he isn’t here?”

  “Oh, yes, he’s not here. He left the Thursday morning before Christmas. I heard him leave the house about the usual time, and so I supposed he’d merely gone to work. But later I found his suitcase was missing—”

  She stopped quickly, and Ronald smiled to himself. She had used her key after all.

  “He didn’t check out, then? The room’s still paid for in advance?”

  “Certainly, I’ve never had any trouble like that with Mr. Knight. With some of my roomers, perhaps, but Mr. Knight is a gentleman of high character.”

  “I’m well aware of that, Mrs. Patrunik. Then you have no idea at all where he went or when he’ll be back?”

  “No, I do not. Of course it was Christmas time, and so many people were going home, but I understood he didn’t have any family. Christmas is such a dreary time to be alone. I had thought perhaps I might be able to bring a little cheer into his holiday, but he didn’t stay.”

  Ronald considered. “Would it be all right for me to see his room, Mrs. Patrunik?”

  “You didn’t have in mind going through his papers and things like that, did you?”

  “No, nothing like that,” Ronald assured her, but did not explain further. To himself, he wondered just what he expected to find that would be of any help to him. If Knight had taken himself off voluntarily, as seemed to be the case, there wouldn’t be any clues left lying around the room.

  Mrs. Patrunik was saying, “I hope you won’t mind showing me your credentials, young man? I’ve no doubt you’re who you say you are, but Mr. Knight knew a great many people, not all of the best sort. A man of high character himself, but I can’t say as much for some of his acquaintances.”

  Mechanically, Ronald produced his press card. Apparently satisfied, Mrs. Patrunik led the way upstairs and unlocked a bedroom door. Ronald stepped into the room, with the landlady close behind him. It was a large combination bedroom and sitting room, with a huge old-fashioned bedstead, a bureau, a table and several matching chairs, a large easy chair and a reading lamp in front of a bookcase, a desk with a telephone, and a radio-television-phonograph set. The contents of the desk drawers might have been enlightening, but he knew Mrs. Patrunik wouldn’t allow him to take such a liberty, and he doubted whether he could find anything of immediate value in any case. Instead he turned his attention to the clothes closet.

  Walking across the room he threw open the door. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said, but although Mrs. Patrunik did not answer, she had followed him and was watching him very closely. Ronald looked through the clothes on the hangers. It appeared to him that only summer clothes remained, and that Knight had taken all his winter things with him. The suitcase, too, if there really had been one, was missing. He did discover one thing that surprised him, a violin case on the shelf.

  “Is that Knight’s?” he asked. “I didn’t know he was a musician.”

  “I’ve never heard him play,” the landlady replied. “I dusted it off once in a while, but I don’t think he ever opened it himself.”

  But a trained musician treasures his instrument and plays on it regularly, which keeps it in trim and enhances its value, Ronald thought. Still, he had no assurance that it was a valuable instrument, after all, or that Knight was even able to play it.

  That seemed to be all the room had to offer, and Ronald went downstairs, though with a feeling of reluctance. After thanking Mrs. Patrunik, and having her promise to call the newspaper if anything should turn up, he left the building.

  He returned downtown by way of Franklin. This had once been a tree-lined boulevard, but now many of the big trees were gone. He recalled that a tornado had struck this area several years before. First sighted near the airport, the tornado’s cone had dipped near West 117th Street, wiping out a new real-estate development, then had cut a swath through the West Side, uprooting most of the tree population, before dipping once more near Franklin and Twenty-fifth with disastrous results. Then it had swept across the valley, still gusty enough to blow out a charity street fair on Short Vincent—for once the Vincent Street know-it-alls had been caught short themselves—before losing itself over the lake. This was the story that had brought Knight into prominence with his on-the-spot reporting, though a worse tornado the same day in Flint, and one the next day in Worcester, had deprived him of national attention.

  Approaching Twenty-fifth at Rowdy Row, he decided that as long as he was out this way he might as well stop at the Daisy Avenue police precinct. Most of Knight’s important tips came through the central station, but there were times when he thought he could do more on the precinct level, and this was one of his haunts.

  Ronald knew the officer at the desk, Sergeant Hensel, and he tried to make his voice sound casual.

  “Thought I’d look in and see if you had anything for me.”

  “Look over the blotter if you want to,” Hensel replied carelessly. But there were going to be questions just the same, for why was a cub reporter cutting in on Knight’s territory, if Knight were available? “What’s happened to Knight? I haven’t seen him since last Thursday.”

  “Wednesday,” said the patrolman at his elbow. “I remember, because I had peanut butter sandwiches in my lunch.”

  “His wife always puts peanut butter sandwiches in his lunch,” the sergeant remarked to Ronald. “It was Thursday.”

  Ronald made a pretense of looking over the blotter; there wa
s nothing there that the regular police reporter couldn’t just as well pick up later. “Did he say what he wanted?”

  But the sergeant wasn’t at all deceived by Ronald’s manner. “What’s the matter? Did you lose him, or something?”

  “Not exactly, only he hasn’t yet returned from his holiday. Did he want anything in particular when you saw him last Thursday?”

  “Said he was looking for a character named Dixie Orlando, which is just odd enough that it might be his real name.”

  The bars were down now, and Ronald knew that they weren’t fooling each other. “Do you know where I can find this Orlando fellow?”

  Hensel raised his hands hopelessly. “Where do you ever find a Short Vincent character except on Vincent Street? That’s all I know.”

  Without explaining further, Ronald thanked him and left. He didn’t feel he had accomplished a great deal, except that now he knew for sure that Barry Knight was missing, had left suddenly and without explanation, with no known motive, and that maybe some character named Dixie Orlando might know something about it.

  CHAPTER 2

  Short Vincent

  Returning to the office, Ronald reported directly to Burnett.

  “Well, what did you find out, Wilford?” Burnett asked him.

  “He’s gone, all right. As nearly as I can make out, he packed up his winter clothes and left without saying anything to anybody. The only clue I picked up was that he’d been asking at the precinct station for a Vincent Street character named Dixie Orlando. Does the name mean anything to you?”

  “Orlando? Yes, I’ve heard it before. I think Miss Curtis would know more about that than I do.” The editor paced briskly back and forth, one time knocking into Ronald’s suitcase. Ronald made a movement to pick it up, but Burnett stopped him with a wave of the hand. “Don’t bother. That’s only the third time this morning. We’re old friends by now.”

  His face was very thoughtful, and at last he said, “I don’t mind admitting that I’m very much worried about this, Wilford. I want you to drop everything else and stick with it. We’ll transfer Corrigan to police court—he’ll be glad to get off crank calls. All you’ve got to worry about is finding Knight! I won’t say don’t come back without him, but be sure you come back with something.”