The Monkey Murder

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Lester Leith, his slender, well-knit form attired in a cool suit of Shantung pongee, sprawled indolently in the reclining wicker chair. The cool afternoon breezes filtered through the screened windows of the penthouse apartment. Leith’s valet, Beaver, nicknamed “Scuttle” by Lester Leith, ponderous in his obsequious servility, siphoned soda into a Tom Collins and deferentially placed the glass on the table beside his master’s chair.

If Leith had any knowledge that this man who served him, ostensibly interested only in his creature comforts, was in reality a police undercover man, planted on the job by Sergeant Arthur Ackley, he gave no indication. His slate-gray eyes, the color of darkly tarnished silver, remained utterly inscrutable as he stared thoughtfully at the bubbles which formed on the glass only to detach themselves and race upward through the cool beverage.

The valet coughed.

Leith’s eyes remained fixed, staring into the distance.

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