Murder on the Mississippi by Norbert Davis

Book Details

Murder on the Mississippi – When a river bum finds Nazi Reichsmarks he becomes the first corpse on a trail of murders. A failing lawyer finds himself walking on that trail along the banks of the Mighty Mississippi, looking for the killer before the killer finds him.

Murder on the Mississippi (1938) – A mystery from across the sea that was solved in a sinister backwash of America’s Father of Waters
Chapter I – Quick and Hard
Chapter II – Lorry’s Place
Chapter III – The Man With the Knife
Chapter IV – “All Right! Laugh!”
Chapter V – The Inquest
Chapter VI – You Can’t Fool Mose
Chapter VII – Danger Island
Chapter VIII – Deep Dark River
Chapter IX – The Politician
Chapter X – Official Capacity
Chapter XI – Chloroform
Chapter XII – Breaking and Entering
Chapter XIII – The Result, Not the Cause
Chapter XIV – Gichaud’s House
Chapter XV – Little Lorry
Chapter XVI – The Murderess

Norbert Davis (1909-1949) was born in Illinois, but at the beginning of the Great Depression moved with his family to California, where he studied law at Stanford. He was first published in Black Mask in 1932. In 1934, when he graduated from Stanford Law School he had had a great deal of success getting works published and so he decided to continue with his writing and never took his bar exams. He committed suicide in 1949 after moving to Connecticut.

Murder on the Mississippi was published in Double Detective in 1938. It contains 3 illustrations.

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1. Davis-MurderOnTheMississippi.epub

Excerpt: Murder on the Mississippi

Chapter I

Quick and Hard

LASIUS’ store was as cluttered and dusty as an old attic, with the fishnets on the walls looking like dirty, shredded waves of sea-foam. There was one long counter extending from the front straight back to within two feet of the back wall, its contents ranging from fishhooks, lines and sinkers at one end, down through the gamut of sporting goods and clothes to hip-high rubber boots at the other end.

Along the opposite wall, at more or less regular intervals, were a stand of oars, a stand of jointed trout-rods, and a stand of bamboo fishing-poles, the last of which looked like a wildly futuristic potted plant. Lasius’ office was a desk, a couple of chairs, and a water-cooler, all appropriately shaded by the bamboo poles.

Lasius was sitting at the desk now, lounging back comfortably, with his fat hands folded over his stomach. He was so short that his feet in their blackly shining shoes didn’t quite reach the floor. His eyes were round and brown and alert behind thick spectacles. His bald head gleamed in the light of the hook-necked lamp that extended out from the desk and poised over his head like a weird halo. He regarded the young man before him complacently.

“I’m broke,” Jeffrey Scott said. “Six months, and I’m flat as a punctured tire, Lasius.”

Lasius watched him, his head tilted slightly. “It is too bad.”

Jeffrey Scott moved his wide shoulders. “It’s not the being broke I mind. I’ve been broke lots of times. It’s what being broke means, this time. It means I’ve failed. I’ve never failed before.”

“It is too bad,” Lasius repeated.

“I can go somewhere else,” Scott said. “I can get a job and work for a while and get enough money to start again. But that isn’t it.” He stared moodily at the floor. “It’s hard to explain. I was on one of the river excursion boats when I saw this place for the first time. I can remember it now. It was in the afternoon, and the sun was shining on the river and making it silver.”

“The river,” said Lasius softly. “The Mississippi, it is a very strange and wonderful thing. It is more than water flowing down to the sea a thousand miles away. It is something that you can feel and love and be a little afraid of, too, eh?”

“Yes,” said Scott. “I saw the bluffs first, when we came around the bend.

The bluffs were like enormous humped old men who had been sitting and staring at the river for a thousand years. And then I saw this town, laid out in terraces one above the other, like a toy village. I knew then that this was what I wanted—this country. I had been born and raised in a city, but this is what I had always wanted. I remembered, and I came back here after I got my law degree and set up an office.”

“Yes,” Lasius murmured.

Scott spread his hands. “And now I’m broke. Why, Lasius?”

Lasius moved in his chair, and it creaked a little under him. “It is hard to say. I think, perhaps, it is because you come from the city. You are too quick and too hard for these people to understand. You drive straight ahead after what you want. You expect people to fight or get out of your way. You leave them no other choice. You are not diplomatic, my friend, and you are not dignified or judicious enough to suit these people’s idea of what a lawyer should be. And you never ask for help.”

Scott smiled wryly. “I got over that a long time ago. Nobody ever gave me anything but a push in the face. I learned that the only way to get along was to push the other fellow before he had a chance at me. I sold newspapers in Chicago, down in the Loop, from the time I was big enough to carry one. I fought for my corner. I mean—fought. Once or twice a week regularly. Then I graduated to being a circulation hustler, and I had to keep “right on fighting, only more often and with tougher guys. I got in the habit of it.”

“You fight to win—always, to win.”

“Of course,” said Scott. “What other reason is there for fighting?”

Lasius shrugged. “I do not know. I am only telling you what I think. And then, you laugh too much.”

“Laugh too much?” Scott repeated. “Me?”

“Well, perhaps not too much. But at other things than these people laugh at.”

Scott nodded. “I guess so. I’ve had to learn to take my laughs when I can. They’ve never come very often.”

A  BELL high on the wall over the desk made a single plunk, and the feeble reflection of a street light outside slid in a yellow streak across the plate glass as the front door opened. A man peeped around the door cautiously, and then edged himself inside the store in hesitant jerks. He was a small, bent man with twisted shoulders and a matted beard that was streaked with gray.

He wore an incredibly patched pair of overalls and a gray shirt fastened up the front with safety pins.

“Excuse me, please,” Lasius said to Scott. He tipped his chair, got his feet down on the floor, and stood up with a laborious grunt. “Is there something you want?” he asked the little man.

The man ducked his head and nodded bashfully. His eyes were shining eagerly, and he stared around at the cluttered shelves with the dazedly happy air of a child suddenly loosed in a candy store.

“One of them jackets, there,” he said. “One of them like in the window. Them leather ones that’s all shiny.”

Lasius, pushing his way along behind the counter, stopped and pulled his glasses down on his broad nose. “The price is seven dollars and a half —cash,” he said, staring severely.

The little man nodded happily. “Uh-huh. And one of them shirts with the purty stripes, and a pair of them white shoes with the red bands on ’em, and—and a pair of them overalls with the brass rivets in ’em, and—”

“Wait,” said Lasius. “One at a time, please.” He turned around and began to fumble under the pile of leather jackets on the shelf in back of the counter. “What size would you take?”

“I dunno. Gimme it big, though.”

“We will try this one, please,” said Lasius, handing it over the counter.

The little man patted at the leather with stubby fingers, making appreciative murmurs to himself. He slipped into the jacket and turned around in front of the full-length mirror beside the stand of oars, regarding himself with pleased awe.

Scott watched him for a moment, amused. He recognized the man for a shanty-boat tramp, or some similar brand of river drifter. Like their better advertised brethren of the railroad, the hobo and the bindle-stiff, they shifted here and there as the impulse and the current took them, working and fishing some, loafing more. An endlessly casual existence.

Scott tipped his chair back against the wall and stared moodily at the ceiling. The light of the lamp cut his face sharply in profile, pooling the shadow under his eyes and along the blunt line of his jaw. He was tall, but he had none of the looseness most tall men have. Even relaxed he gave the impression of wiry tenseness. His hair was brown, thick and straight, and his eyes were a metallic blue, always narrowed slightly, as though he were studying whatever or whoever he was looking at with cynical distrust.

He was hard, and he was prone to act with headlong violence. To himself he admitted the truth of everything Lasius had said. But admitting it and trying to change himself were two different things. He couldn’t change. His environment had taught him its lesson too well. It was part of him now.

Lasius’ voice suddenly sounded loudly, thick and shaking with anger: “What? What?”

Scott tipped his chair down on the floor again and turned.

Lasius was leaning over the counter, his round face dark with rage. He held his right fist out, shoulder high, shaking it vigorously, and the end of a crumpled green bill protruded between his fingers.

The little man’s purchases had been assembled in a pile on top of the counter, and now he backed away from them and from Lasius, one step at a time, timidly.

“What?” Lasius shouted. “What do you give me this for?”

“It—it’s money,” the little man said.

Lasius shook the bill over his head. “Money! Where do you get this kind of money?”

“I just—just found it.”

“And you think you buy things here with it, eh?”

The little man nodded uneasily. “It ain’t our kind of money, but it’s good. You just take it to the bank—”

“Hah!” Lasius said fiercely. “So I take it to the bank, do I? But you don’t—no! You try to cheat me with it!”

“I thought—thought it was good.”

“You lie, you cheap bum! You try to cheat me with it! Get out!”

“But I—I—”

“Get out!”

The little man backed away another two steps. “But—but wait. I—”

Lasius had found the gate in the counter. He flung it up now and pushed through. His eyes gleamed furiously behind the thick spectacles.

“I’ll show you, you bum! Waste my time and try to cheat me with no-good money!”

Excerpt From: Norbert Davis. “Murder on the Mississippi.”