by Jerry eBooks
He wheeled up before the entrance to a sizable building with a split log exterior, and green and red neon bordering the towers and castlements giving the place its name. He grinned back at me.
I handed him the twenty. “That was fast enough,” I said. “Stick around half an hour if you don’t mind. If I don’t show up by then, you can go back to town.”
I PUSHED into the place, and a cute pony number tricked out in a page-boy outfit trotted up to snatch my overcoat and hat. I said, “Nix, sister. I’m not playing tonight. I want to see the boss, on business.”
She gave me a sharp look, and snicked the buck bill out of my hand. “The Duchess hardly ever sees people on business nights, but stick around and I’ll see,” she said, and pushed through double doors. I heard soft music and caught a glimpse of couples crowding a dance floor.
So a woman was the boss here! So far I’d just been playing a hunch that I might get a line on the Dahlson grandson at the Pine Castle. But it could be that this Duchess party was the ex-Mrs. Eric Dahlson, Jr., following a business she’d learned at Miami. My hunch got hotter.
There was a man with the girl when she came out. He was thin and narrow, and had a long, sad-looking face. His eyes looked sleepy, but I knew he wasn’t. I tabbed him to be the trouble-shooter for the place.
He came up to me, stepping easily, looking me over. “The boss is pretty busy this time of night,” he said in a soft, slow drawl. “I’m Al Tapp. Maybe I could help you.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But I wanted to talk to the Duchess about Marta Trask.”
His lids opened wide for a flash and then slitted. “I reckon,” he drawled, “she’d like to talk to you—about Marta Trask.”
He jerked his head for me to follow. We went through the double doors, around the wall behind tables and past a small door into a sizeable room fitted up for an office, with a desk, a safe and filing cabinets.
“Wait here,” he said, and didn’t ask me to have a chair. He opened a door in the opposite wall just wide enough to slip his skinny frame through, and closed it behind him. But I heard dice clicking and the clatter of a ball on a wheel.
He wasn’t gone long. A woman came in ahead of him. She was tall and not too slim in a gray evening dress with a purple orchid pinned at the shoulder. Her hair was nearly white, but the face under it was smooth and had little makeup. She had a manner. Twenty years back she’d have been a knockout for looks.
Her eyes were cold and unfriendly, looking me over. “You wanted to talk to me about Marta Trask? How much does she want for those papers she sneaked out of my safe?”
“Not a nickel now,” I said. “She was asking five grand for what she knew, but things have changed up. We’ve got to have a little talk, Mrs. Dahlson. About your son.”
SHE stiffened when I mentioned that name. I noticed the thin lad look at her in a funny way. She said, staring at me hard, “You can leave us alone, Al, but stay around handy.”
“I’ll be right outside,” Al Tapp said, and went out to the gambling room, shutting the door behind him.
“Don’t use that name you just called me again!” the Duchess clipped. “I stopped using it twenty years ago. I’m known by my family name now, Carter. . . . Who are you, and what is your business with me?”
“The name is Rob Riddle and I’m a private investigator working for Mrs. Christina Dahlson,” I told her. “The Trask party tried to sell information about your son to his grandmother. The deal got complicated. Trask is in the morgue at Center City by now. A two-time killer who doesn’t want your son to turn up is looking for him.”
She went white, and tottered a little making it to the chair behind the desk. “I can hardly believe that!” she choked out. “Tell me the facts, Mr. Riddle!”
I condensed them for her into two hundred fast words, not mentioning the foundation thing. I told her that I believed the killer had ridden Flight Nine into Memphis ahead of me, and knew where to find her son.
Her eyes were wide and anxious when I finished, and she was convinced. “Al!” she called out, and the thin chap popped in, his hand under his coat at the lapel.
“Get the Chrysler out and bring it around front, Al!” she snapped an order. “I’ve got to go to the ranch, fast! Hurry!”
Al dropped his hand, looked at me a little disappointed and whipped out of the room. I wondered if I could beat Al drawing from a shoulder-holster, and was glad it wouldn’t be necessary to try.
The Duchess got up and reached for a fur coat hanging on a costumer. I helped her into it. “What about this ranch?” I asked.
“My son lives alone in a little house on the stock farm I bought for him, ten miles northeast of here, in Tennessee,” she explained. “He can’t be warned by telephone. We must get over there!”
I said, pretty grim, “I hope we’re in time. The killer moves fast. He probably hired a rental service car as soon as he got uptown and lit out for that farm.”
We got out front fast. Al wheeled up pretty quick in a sleek black sedan. I helped The Duchess into the back and climbed in beside her. Al bore down on the gas.
We tore up the highway a couple miles and turned into a blacktop backroad that he was rough and narrow. Al had to pull speed down to hold the sedan on the road.
“The farm,” The Duchess said huskily, “is on another highway this road intersects. It’s closer to Memphis than the Castle.”
I swore softly. That gave the killer more edge on time. It must have made her feel easier to talk. She told me things then without my asking.
The son had been reared as Donald Carter. He didn’t know he was related to the implement Dahlsons. She had hated them that bad. The boy, now twenty-three, had gone through State Aggie and was nuts about stock raising.
The Trask woman had worked at the Pine Castle as a cashier. She’d kept books and had the run of the office. She had pulled out suddenly, leaving no word, and it was then that The Duchess had checked a private compartment in the safe and missed an envelope she’d kept there. Besides the clippings and the snapshot it had held her marriage certificate, divorce decree and the son’s birth certificate.
“I never trusted Marta Trask, but help was hard to keep out there,” she wound up. “I thought she’d try to shake me down.”
Al Tapp was hearing it, but asked no questions. He was a good driver, but I breathed easier when we hit that other paved highway.
In a little more than a minute Al was pumping the brake. The headlights played on a sign that said “CARTER RANCH. POLLED HEREFORD CATTLE. V mile South” A stranger couldn’t have missed the sign. The sedan rocked into a gravelled lane.
The headlights picked up a small white house at what looked like the end of the lane. There were no lights showing in it. Two red eyes glowed when our headlights caught twin taillight reflectors.
“That ain’t Donald’s car!” Al Tapp exclaimed. “His has got a single taillight!” The sedan leaped when he hit the gas.
I could see by then that the house was fifty yards back from the end of the lane where that car was parked, and that there was a picket fence just in front of the house.
THE sedan stopped on screaming tires. The headlights made a path to the house. I opened my door and jumped out. The stop had spilled the Duchess off the seat. “Stay in the car!” I yelled, but I had an idea she wouldn’t.
I legged it for that picket fence. Al Tapp came pounding along behind me. I had my .38 in my palm now, with the hammer back. I thought I’d seen a shadowy figure by the fence, when I spilled out of the car.
Two red-orange blobs of flame blinked from behind a gate in the picket fence. A slug whined past my ear. I shot twice at a shadow crouching behind the gate. Al’s automatic blasted almost in my ear, and he was cursing savagely.
The shadow broke cover and streaked for the side of the house. I squeezed trigger in two more tries, and Al was blasting a yard behind me. The shadow disappeared suddenly.
A few more yards and I crashed through the gate. I saw the dark lump o
n the grass at about where the shadow had disappeared. One of us, either Al or me, had scored a hit.
I slowed down, covering the lump, and went over there, digging out my penlight flash. Al, breathing hard, was right beside me.
The man lying face down on the sod had white shoulders in a camel’s hair topcoat. There was a revolver just beyond his outstretched right hand. I kicked it away before I turned the man on his back and put the beam on his face.
It was Eustic Wharton, all right. There was some hair missing from the top of his head and a shallow furrow in his scalp was oozing blood. He was out cold and breathing hard.
“One of us creased him,” I told Al grimly. “It ain’t bad and he’s not leaking anywhere else.”
A powerful ceiling bulb on the front porch blossomed then and doors opened. The party opening it was husky in pyjamas and had a shotgun at ready in his hands.
“Hey Donald!” Al yelled. “It’s me, Al Tapp! Be easy with that scattergun!”
The Duchess ran through the gate then. How she’d made it so fast in the coat and evening dress and high-heeled slippers I’ll never know. She ran right up on the porch and caught Donald in her arms, gun and all. The lad sputtered bewilderedly asking to know what it was all about.
“This is the sheriff’s territory, I suppose, Where can we find a phone and call in, Al?” I asked. “We got to get this guy to a Doc.”
“There’s a store over on the highway with a phone,” he said, “The fellow lives in the back. I know him.”
I went to the porch steps then. “You don’t want any further part in this, Mrs. Carter,” I said. “Let’s Donald get dressed and drive you back to your place. I’ll see you there later. Al and I will take care of things. And you better explain the business to Donald.”
She glanced at the sprawled figure on the lawn, and shuddered. Then she went into the house with a badly puzzled son.
Over in the storekeeper’s back room we propped Eustic Wharton in a chair and mopped his head and face with cold water. After a little he groaned and started coming around. I hoped his head would ache as bad as mine had after the shock he gave me.
He looked pretty sick when he was far enough along to recognize me. He said, thickly, “You were smarter than I thought Riddle. Sorrels underestimated you, I think.”
“You haven’t been very smart, Wharton,” I said grimly. “Was that job with The Dahlson Foundation worth risking the hot seat to cinch?”
“It wasn’t only that,” he said dully. “I’ve juggled some of the old lady’s money the past few years. I thought: that once I had the handling of The Foundation funds, I could cover that.”
I’d had a hunch it would be like that. I figured now that Buford Dyess had been suspicious of his aunt’s financial manager.
I didn’t get any more out of him. He clammed up and nursed his head in his hands, looking awfully dreary. I found the rest of Mrs. Carter’s papers in his inside coat pocket, and a slip where he’d written down directions how to find the Carter Ranch. He had a receipt for a rentacar deposit from a garage.
The sheriff’s county prowl car dispatched on my call sirened up pretty quick. The two deputies in it were nice chaps and reasonable. I gave them a quick sketch of the business and they put the cuffs on Eustic Wharton and took him away to hold for Center City cops. They said they’d look after the car he’d been driving.
I thanked the storekeeper and slipped him five bucks for his trouble. Al and I drove back to the Pine Castle then. We had a stiff drink together at the bar before I joined The Duchess and her son in the office.
I shook hands with Donald Carter Dahlson. He looked sober and bewildered. I guessed that what he’d been told about his family connections had been quite a shock, along with other things.
I GAVE his mother all of her papers, and told them that Eustic Wharton was on the road to the clink, and would live to burn. Then I told them about the crippled old lady and her plans for The Dahlson Foundation, and how eager she was to have a grandson named Dahlson at its head.
I did a darned good job telling it. Donald’s eyes began to glow, getting the picture. His mother noticed it, and her face softened up some.
“Donald’s interested in farming and farmer’s problems,” I said, winding up. “Maybe it’s a good time to bury an old hate and let him put his hands to something really big.”
“Perhaps you are right, Mr. Riddle,” The Duchess said. “Perhaps I’ve been wrong about Donald’s grandmother all these years.”
“I’ve got to make a couple of long distance calls,” I said, very brisk. “How’s about using your phone there?”
It was all right. I talked to Tim Sorrels first. He started yelping when he caught my voice. “Where are you, you no-good tramp? I picked up the Dyess guy and he’s mad as hell about it. He admitted knowing the blonde, and being mad at her because she broke a date with him for last night. But he was playing bridge at his club all afternoon and fifty reputable guys will swear to it.”
I told him where I was and that his killer was wrapped up nice ready for delivery to anybody that called for him, and that I had a gun his ballistic sharp would be tickled to check. He nearly blew a fuse when I mentioned the killer’s name. I told him I’d see him soon and hung up while he was still sputtering.
I put in the call for Mrs. Christina Dahlson then, and while the operator was working on it, I said, “I think it would be swell, Mrs. Celia Carter Dahlson, if you and Donald got ready and flew back to Center City with me. I think you’d like Grandma Dahlson.”
She looked at Donald and saw the eagerness in his eyes. She smiled, and nodded.
The old lady’s sharp voice came on the line then. “Riddle? Did you find my grandson? Is everything all right?”
“Right as rain!” I said, grinning. “Hang on, Mrs. Dahlson. Here’s somebody that wants to say hello to you,” and I poked the phone at Donald. He was startled, but he took it.
“Hello, Grandmother Dahlson!” he said, very shaky. “This is Donald—your grandson!” I left him talking. I went out to the bar and Al Tapp was waiting there to have another stiff one with me.
DEATH COMES GIFT-WRAPPED
William P. McGivern
SERGEANT BURT MORAN was a tall man with hard flat features and eyes that were cold and dull, like those of a snake. He was that comparatively rare thing among cops, a man equally hated by crooks and by his fellow officers. Operators on both sides of the law forgot their differences and came to agreement on one point at least: that Moran was a heel by any or all standards.
Moran was a bully who shook down petty crooks for a few bucks whenever he got the chance. But he left the big boys alone. He lacked the imagination to serve them and, consequently, he never got in on the important payoff. There would have been some dignity in being a big grafter, but Moran grubbed for his few extra dollars the hard way, the cheap way, the way that earned him nothing else but contempt.
There was a streak of savage brutality in him that caused the underworld to mingle their contempt with a certain fear. Moran had killed six men in the line of duty, three of whom were unarmed at the time, and another who had died after Moran had worked him over with a sap for fourteen hours. The story of the men he’d killed wasn’t told because a corpse is an unsatisfactory witness. Moran knew this. He knew all about killing.
Now, at two o’clock in the morning, in the cheap room of a cheap hotel, Moran was going to learn about murder. He had to commit a murder because of something new in his life, something that he had always sneered at in the lives of other men.
Moran was in love. And he had learned that love, like anything else, costs money.
He stood just inside the doorway of the room and watched the scrawny, thin-faced man who was staring at him from the bed. The man was Dinny Nelson, a small-time bookie who, Moran knew, carried all his assets in a hip wallet.
Dinny brushed a hand over his sleep-dulled features and said, “What’s the pitch, Moran? You got no right busting in here.”
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sp; Moran drew his gun and leveled it at Dinny. He knew what would happen with crystal clarity, not only to Dinny and the portions of his body hit by the heavy slugs, but after that, to Dinny’s corpse, to the police department and to himself, Moran. It was an old story to him. He had killed six men in the line of duty and he knew the way everything worked. No one would doubt his story.
Dinny saw his fate in Moran’s face. He began to beg in a cracked voice. “No, no, you can’t,” he said. “There’s no reason to kill me—I ain’t done nothing. Don’t.”
Moran fired three shots and they were very loud in the small, thin-walled room. Dinny’s body jack-knifed with the impact of the slugs, rolled from the bed to the floor. He didn’t live long. Moran watched expressionlessly as Dinny’s limbs twisted spasmodically, then became rigid and still. Underneath Dinny’s body the roses in the faded pattern of the rug bloomed again, bright and scarlet.
There was two thousand, three hundred and thirty dollars in Dinny’s wallet. Moran left thirty. The money made a comfortable bulge against his leg as he sauntered to the phone. . .
While the coroner did his work and two lab technicians went over the room, Moran told his story to Lieutenant Bill Pickerton, his immediate superior at Homicide.
“Tonight I seen him taking bets in the lobby,” Moran said. “This was eleven. I started across to him but he seen me and ducked into the bar and then out to the street. So I drifted away. Around two I came back, came right up here to his room. I told him to get dressed but the fool went for me. I had to shoot him.”
Lieutenant Pickerton rubbed his long jaw. “This stinks worse than your usual stuff, Moran. You could have handled him with your fists. He doesn’t have a gun.”
Moran shrugged. “Why should I risk getting beat over the head with a chair or something?”
Pickerton looked at him with active dislike. “Okay, turn in a written report tomorrow morning. The old man won’t like this, you know.”
“To hell with the old man,” Moran said. “He wants us to bring ’em in with a butterfly net, I suppose.”
