Tough as Nails: The Complete Cases of Donahue From the Pages of Black Mask

by Frederick Nebel

  “What—what—?”

  Ames said, “We just about shot apart a friend of yours. We’ll want you too. Make it nice, Miss Saffarrans.”

  “Oh-o!” she whimpered forlornly.

  Ames picked up the telephone, said into the mouthpiece, “Let me speak to the manager.” And a half minute later, “Hello. This is Detective Ames. I’m in eight-ten. Don’t get disturbed. Everything will be all right. I just want to know if eight-ten made a call to the Hotel Brick within the last—say—three hours…. Yes, I’ll hang on.” He looked up.

  Irene was cringing against the wall. Donahue was smiling at her.

  Ames looked at the telephone. “Yes?… I see. All right, thank you…. Yes, everything will be quiet.” He put down the receiver. He nodded towards Donahue.

  Donahue said to Irene, “So you saw me tail your friend away from here. You called the Brick and warned him. Well, he came out of the Brick well heeled.”

  “Oh-o!”

  “Get ready,” Ames said. “Don’t bother taking your bags.”

  She fled into the bedroom, closed the door.

  Ames and Donahue sat down, helped themselves to Irene’s cigarettes, and waited. Twenty minutes later Irene appeared. Her face was tear-stained, but she looked stunning. She held her chin high.

  Donahue remarked to Ames, “Dramatic little soul, Billy.”

  “Ready?” Ames asked.

  “Yes,” she murmured tragically.

  The elevator boy watched them askance on the way down. The manager, the clerks, the bell-hops, stood transfixed in the lobby. Nothing was said. Nobody moved.

  Irene and the men went out to the sidewalk, got into a taxicab, drove off in the growing darkness.

  Inspector Kaltenheimer was a pontifical-looking fat man with small steel-rimmed glasses. He sat in a swivel-chair, fat fingers of fat hands primly together.

  Ames leaned against a radiator, arms folded, small face bland and attentive.

  Irene sat in a chair facing the inspector across a flat-topped desk.

  Donahue stood six feet behind the inspector, hands in overcoat pockets, hair still rumpled, face gray and haggard.

  “Your man died,” Kaltenheimer said slowly. “The gun expert, miss, has just proved that the gun found on him was the one used to murder Mr. Adler in Grove Street, the night of March fifth. Your man—discovered to be Peter Bruhard—died without saying anything. He left the telling to you.”

  “What is there I can say?” Irene asked.

  The inspector raised a hand, all knotted except the forefinger, which jutted imperiously upward. “You were seriously linked with the Crosby murder. Two of your friends are paying—one will pay the supreme penalty in a month—Babe Delaney. The other is serving a term at Sing Sing. Now—your latest acquisition—Peter Bruhard—who has served time in California—your latest acquisition has died by the gun. What sort of conscience must you have, Miss Saffarrans?”

  Her face looked drawn. “Please, please!” She held up a tragic white hand. “Don’t be cruel. I tried to get out of it all—please believe me, I did.”

  Donahue came forward, bitter-lipped, and laid a closed fist lightly on the desk.

  “That’s your old line, Irene. You got Bruhard to do your dirty work. You got him to kill Adler—”

  “I didn’t! I didn’t! I told him the diamond was in the hat. I described the hat. I didn’t tell him to kill Adler. I pleaded with him to use common sense.”

  “Then that was all a lie about your planting the diamond in the tube of paint.”

  She colored. “I had to tell that lie. I was trying to get away from Alfred, and I thought that if the tube had disappeared that would be the end of it. And Peter—I just happened to mention the diamond one night. I was sick of it all. I didn’t want it. He made me tell about it.”

  “He’s dead now,” Donahue said, “so he can’t tell his side of the story. You lied to me. You lied to everybody. You lied to save your skin and you didn’t care who paid the penalty. You’re nothing but a dirty, cheap—”

  The telephone on the desk rang. Kaltenheimer picked it up, said his name into the mouthpiece. Then he looked up at Donahue. “Mr. Hinkle is downstairs. Should he come up?”

  Donahue shrugged. “Sure. He’s my boss.”

  When the door opened Hinkle rolled in, puffing placidly on a cigar. He stopped short, took in the scene with one slow but sure glance, and then relaxed.

  “Hello, Inspector… Ames… Miss Saffarrans…. Well, Donny, where’ve you been? Trying to locate you since noon.”

  The inspector said, “I guess he’s been around. He got tangled up in a fracas. Hence Miss Saffarrans. And a chap in the hospital. Peter Bruhard. Ames there shot it out with Bruhard in Forty-second Street. Seems Bruhard murdered Adler.”

  Hinkle’s eyes twinkled. “Good work! Splendid! You know Donny got the stone the whole rumpus was about.”

  Irene started.

  Kaltenheimer blinked his eyes but went on looking pontifical.

  Hinkle opened his overcoat, took out a large wallet, opened the wallet, took out the stone and laid it gently on the desk blotter. The light from the green-shaded electric glinted on it.

  Kaltenheimer picked the stone up, turned it round and round, sat back and looked up at Hinkle.

  “So this is it—the stone was hidden in the hat?”

  “That’s it,” Hinkle said. There was a droll look around his mouth.

  Irene was leaning forward, her fingers twitching, her throat throbbing, her dark eyes wide with yearning.

  “But the rub,” Hinkle said, “is that it’s not a good diamond.”

  “It is!” Irene cried. “That—stone is worth ninety thousand dollars!”

  “H’m,” the inspector mused.

  Hinkle bowed. “If you will pardon it, madam, an expert on my staff came in today and examined it closely. It is not glass. It is an inferior diamond—worth—at the maximum—four hundred dollars…. Keep it, Inspector, among the other H.Q. souvenirs.”

  Kaltenheimer said, “You’re sure, positive?”

  “Say, boss,” Donahue broke in, “it can’t be. That stone—”

  “I’m positive, Donny. Greenberg knows stones, if nothing else.”

  Irene fell back in her chair, staring into space, strange dark lights knotted in her eyes.

  “Well,” the inspector said, turning the stone round and round, “it’s often the case. Even crooks get fooled. But—anyhow—we got the murderer of Adler and”—he looked at Irene—“we have the murderer’s inspiration. And this time, Miss Saffarrans—you will go behind the bars. I promise you that.”

  Donahue picked up his hat. “I’ll be going then.” He looked down at Irene. A bleak smile appeared on his gray, haggard face. “This comes of two-timing, sister. And no tabloids to help you this time.

  “If I had my way—if I had my way—” His fist thumped slowly, his lip curled.

  “Come on, Donny,” Hinkle said.

  “Sure.” Donahue relaxed, turned away from the desk.

  They said good-bye all around, left the room, left Police Headquarters. Walking down Centre Street, Hinkle said cheerfully:

  “I know a nice quiet speak where we can get some good food and a bottle of Chablis.”

  “Yeah. Let’s,” Donahue grunted.

  Then he slowed down, swayed, fell against a pole.

  “What—!” Hinkle started.

  “Get a cab, boss. I’m caving—”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Arm… here….”

  “Good God, I didn’t know! Why didn’t you say something?”

  Donahue grinned. “I was getting around to it, boss.”

  Hinkle held him up, shouted, “Taxi! Taxi!”

  Brakes squealed.

  Donahue went to the hospital.

  Get a Load of This

  Tough dick Donahue, of the Interstate, goes after big game in the underworld jungle.

  Chapter I

  The hock-shop was on Fourteenth St
reet, east of Union Square. It was about the width of a railway coach, and half the length. The window was littered with cheap novelties. The interior was dark and gloomy. Behind the showcase a man sat at a high desk and regarded the insides of a wrist-watch beneath a bright green-visored light whose concentrated radiance did not extend beyond the desk.

  Donahue kicked the screen door open, walked in casually, and the screen door banged behind him. He drifted down the length of a beam of spring sunlight that came in through the door. He wore a neat pepper-colored suit, a gray soft hat, and he smoked a straight-stemmed shell briar.

  He leaned indolently on the counter and said, “Hello, Mr. Friedman.”

  The man got down from the high stool and approached the back of the counter. He was small, slim, with a young-old sallow face, horn-rimmed glasses, black curly hair.

  “What can I do for you?”

  Irony was in Donahue’s crooked slow smile. “Remember me?”

  Friedman did not look Donahue in the eye, but he said, “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “Well, don’t be afraid.” Donahue drew his hand from his pocket and laid a large diamond on the showcase. “Then maybe you remember this.”

  Friedman’s eyes riveted on the stone. Lines appeared on his forehead. “I can’t say I do.”

  “Ah, cut out the horseplay, Friedman. Sure you remember it. And you remember me. A guy named Bonalino hocked it here a month ago. I came in with him when he took it out. You said at the time that you would give him eight hundred for it any time he wanted to sell it.”

  “I said that?”

  “You said that.”

  Friedman shrugged. “Maybe I did. I can’t remember everybody comes in here. A lot of people hock things here.”

  “That diamond,” Donahue said incisively, “isn’t worth eight hundred. Not seven. Not six. At best it’s worth four hundred, which means that your top price would be two. Now when Bonalino hocked it you gave him two hundred and fifty bucks—”

  “Say, who are you?”

  “I’m a private dick. You remember me now?”

  “Sure I remember you now.”

  “Okey. How’s to come across?”

  Friedman frowned. “But I don’t get what you’re driving at.”

  “Your brain’s not as lame as that. I’ll tell you what I’m driving at. The diamond that Bonalino hocked here was worth ninety thousand bucks. You duplicated it with this hunk of cheap ice. Bonalino doesn’t know a diamond from a good hunk of crystal. You knew that much. When he came back here with me to get his ice, you gave him this.”

  Friedman laughed. “Ah, be yourself, guy!”

  “I’m being myself, sweetheart. We’ve got a letter from the Anglo-Continental Indemnity Company, of London and Geneva. They’re looking for that hunk of ice, and this is not it.”

  “I don’t get you at all.”

  Donahue wagged his finger. “Listen. A guy name Alfred Poore and a jane named Irene Saffarrans brought the diamond over here from France. Poore lifted it from a dowager duchess in Cannes this winter past. Coming over, the jane planted it on an artist named Crosby. They were afraid of the Customs. Crosby got knifed to death by a guy named Babe Delaney, who made Poore and the Saffarrans jane let him in on the racket. He’d found things out. Poore gunned for Delaney and I got Poore and they sent him to the Big House. Nobody concerned got the ice.

  “It turned out that the ice had been planted in one of Crosby’s hats, and when he got home Crosby gave his janitor, a guy named Adler, some old clothes—among them the hat. The Saffarrans jane got clear after Poore went up, and she hooked up with a guy named Bruhard. Bruhard bumped off Adler in Grove Street, got the hat but not the diamond. Adler had got the hat cleaned. Bonalino worked in the hat-cleaning store, and when he took the lining out he found the ice. He hocked it here. Bruhard got gunned out in Forty-second Street, the jane got ten years. Nobody concerned got the real ice. Do you get me now?”

  “No, I don’t. I loaned Bonalino two-fifty on this diamond. He paid me two-fifty and got the diamond back. That’s all I know, and you can believe it or lump it.”

  Donahue’s voice rose—“I don’t believe it and I’m not going to lump it!”

  “Listen, master-mind.” Friedman leaned on the counter and laid narrowed eyes on Donahue. “I don’t know what your game is, but it’s not on the up and up. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, and I don’t have to carry on a conversation with you. Why don’t you get a brainwave and take the air?”

  Donahue got interested. “So you’ve decided to get tough, eh? Trying to brazen it out, eh? Well, pipe this, sweetheart: It won’t work. That diamond was worth ninety thousand bucks till it reached here. Do you want to play house with me or do you want me to go to Headquarters and tell what I know? They don’t know that Bonalino hocked it. They think he had it in his possession from the beginning. I kept back the news to clear Bonalino.”

  “Go to Headquarters.”

  “Yeah? You keep books, you know. You’re supposed to enter every article pawned here. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Sure.” Friedman swung a ledger on to the counter, flipped the pages, stopped, turned the ledger around so that Donahue could read it, and laid a finger on an entry. “There it is. I valued it wholesale at eight hundred. I loaned two-fifty on it. My books are okey. Go to Headquarters.”

  Donahue looked up at him, smiled without humor. “Your brain’s not lame, Friedman—not at all.”

  “There it is—in black and white.”

  “Okey. But I don’t believe everything I read. Be seeing you some more, baby.”

  Donahue went out wearing a sultry look that was not without chagrin.

  Asa Hinkle, the Interstate in person, looked up from his flat-topped desk when Donahue entered and said:

  “You look down-hearted, Donny, my boy.”

  Donahue paced the floor a turn or two, scowling. He was baffled, and now that he was away from unfriendly eyes, his manner showed it. “That guy Friedman wasn’t born yesterday.”

  “Oh, that’s it!”

  “I felt like caving in his mug.”

  “Only a city dick can do that—and get away with it. What did he say?”

  “Nothing worth a damn. He made the entry in his book okey. The guy’s solid and he knows it. He valued it at eight hundred. If anybody argues he can say that was what he valued it at. There’s no proof he had the real diamond. No proof at all. It’s changed hands so much that anyone might have fluked it.” He dropped the bogus stone on the desk. “I guess you can let the Police Commissioner have it back. It didn’t work.”

  Hinkle took off his diplomatic pince-nez. “That diamond must be in America, Donny. Poore and the Saffarrans woman know stones. They wouldn’t have tried to bring in a fluke.”

  Donahue squinted. “What do you want me to do—go down and see Friedman again, get him in the back room and punch him around until the yellow runs? I’ll do it! By God, I’ll do it!” His dark eyes glittered, his fists were rocks at his sides.

  Hinkle smiled, shook his head. “Donny, don’t be so thoroughly Irish.”

  Donahue turned away, growled, “That’s an old one of yours!”

  Chapter II

  Donahue was eating ravioli in an Italian speak in West Tenth Street at noon the next day when Libbey, a city press association reporter fell in through the door, picked himself up and headed for the bar in the rear.

  “Some day you’ll knock your brains out,” Donahue called.

  “Oh, hello, Donny.”

  Libbey changed his course, came over and flopped down in a chair facing Donahue. Drink had sapped the color in his cheeks. Drink had given him that young-old face. The crown of his hat was dented in, and his tie was crooked against his collar. He reached for the bottle of red wine beside Donahue, poured a water-glass full, swallowed it without a pause. He smacked his lips.

  “How’s the ravioli?”

  “How’s the wine?”

  “I don’t like wi
ne…. Hey, Skinny, bring me a Bacardi cocktail, and I don’t mean rosewater…. Well, wine is all right, Donny, if there is nothing else but water around. I feel depressed. That louse Sweeney is God’s most ungrateful man. I telephone him immediately after the murder happens and what does he do but wisecrack and accuse me of being drunk. I’m going to throw the job and get down to writing a novel.”

  “Who got gunned out?”

  “A fellow gave pennies and baubles to little kiddies. It’s a shame, Donny.”

  “Around here?”

  “Fourteenth Street.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. A hock-shop man, Friedman.”

  Donahue looked up. “How’d it happen?”

  “Nobody knows. Some guy just came in, apparently, and blew him apart and went away, taking with him some loot—possibly. At any rate, there was a chamois gem bag on the floor near the pool of blood.”

  “What time?”

  “About eleven, I guess…. If you could see the pool of blood—”

  “What’s the cop on the job think?”

  “Who… Roper?”

  “Roper on it?”

  “Yeah. Great mind, that Roper… for a moron. Well, what the hell could he think? What do I think? What does anybody think? Look now: Murder and robbery, of course. But of an odd nature. There is the chamois bag lying beside the pool of blood. But it appears that the safe was not rifled and nothing stolen from it. Then what? Well, either the chamois bag was flung down in disgust by the murderer-thief, or it was discarded after he had taken something out of it. In the latter case, it’s plausible to assume—hic—to assume that Friedman had something shady in his possession. What was it? Who knows? Ah, my son, that is the mystery…. Well, it’s about time, Skinny!”

  Libbey tipped the Bacardi cocktail against his lips and drained it at two swallows. “Encore, Skinny…. How’s to, Donny?”

  “No, thanks. And what does Roper think exactly? Did he figure things out that way?”

  “No. God, no! Roper? Pardon me if I seem to chortle…. How’s the ravioli?”

  “Fine.”

  “Think I’ll have some spaghetti. By the way, I kidded our friend Roper a bit. I said to him, quite offhand, ‘If you find it hard, Roper, look up Donahue.’ You should have seen him! And do you know what he said? He said, ‘Whenever I look that palooka up, it’ll be to put bracelets on him.’ I said bracelets were kind of effeminate; you might object. He spit on the floor, showing how he was brought—or dragged—up…. Cripes, Skinny, you take long! A guy would think this belly-wash was custom made.”