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

by Frederick Nebel

The man with the pale hard eyes growled: “This guy ain’t no dick! Damn it, this guy ain’t no dick!” He shoved back his chair.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Donahue said.

  The man subsided, but his pale eyes glowered. The youthful man in the gray hat went on making whistling lips but still no sound was heard. He kept looking at the cards in his hands.

  Donahue said: “It’s about Charlie Stromson.”

  The man in the gray hat choked. This startled everybody at the table. The man broke into a violent fit of coughing and the pale-eyed man towered in his chair. The other sneezed, choked, and finally sat with his eyes running water.

  Donahue said: “You get up, put your coat on.”

  The man rose, put his coat on and stood sniffling and wiping his eyes.

  “Pull your hat down a little more.” The man did so.

  “Okey,” Donahue said. “Now sit down again and—and this goes for all of you—keep your hands on the table.” His voice lowered, his eyes were fixed hard on the man in the gray hat. “When Stromson pitched out of the street door tonight, why did you open the door and then duck back?”

  The man sneezed. “I didn’t open no door.”

  The fat man and the bald man both looked very innocent and the pale-eyed man stared hard and bitterly at the man in the gray hat. He seemed about to explode but didn’t. Instead, he tore a card in two and slapped the pieces angrily down on the table.

  Donahue was grim. “No song and dance. I’m in the right scatter and I’m going to get what I came after. I’m looking for the woman. I’m looking for fourteen thousand five hundred bucks. I’m looking for the guys that bumped off Charlie Stromson.”

  The pale-eyed man forgot himself. He jumped to his feet and his chest swelled, his eyes got doubly large and hard and they had a white whiplash look in them.

  “Who the hell bumped off Charlie Stromson?” he bellowed.

  “Sit down, you.”

  The man sat down—but sitting, he towered, his jaw thrust out like a slab of cement.

  The blowzy fat man insisted: “This man’s a dick! I tell you he’s a dick! Listen, now listen—” He stopped and threw a peevish look around the table. “May as well tell him. I’m going to tell him.” He looked up at Donahue. “This Stromson was here. He got tight here. He was here, see, and about eight-thirty he goes. He goes out about eight-thirty. He gets halfway down the steps and falls. Louie”—he nodded towards the man in the gray hat—“Louie goes out and sees. I guess he picks him up. Anyhow, in a few minutes Louie comes back. This is on the up and up. Louie comes back and says, ‘Hell, Charlie’s in bad shape.’ I say, ‘Well, Louie, maybe you and Beef ought to look after him.’ And Louie says, ‘I told Charlie. I said we ought to look after him, but he says he can take care of himself.’ So we think, well, Charlie’ll be all right and we sit down to play. That’s God’s honest.”

  Donahue said: “Why did Charlie come here?”

  The fat man shut up like a clam. The pale-eyed man had undergone a considerable change of expression. He stared at the table with a bright, concentrated look. He was thinking—hard. He looked up suddenly to find Donahue eying him with keen scrutiny.

  “You,” Donahue said, “and this mug in the gray hat were the two pals that stuck up that gambling joint with Charlie. He banked his dough before he went up to stir and you two smart sweethearts chiseled in when he came out.”

  The man in the gray hat choked on this and went into another fit of coughing.

  “Will you stop that!” the pale-eyed man cried.

  Donahue’s voice picked up an edge, swiftly. “I’m not going to monkey around here. I’m no precinct dick. I’m just a sap that walked into a jam out of which I’m getting nothing but a headache and a swell chance of taking a rap for a stunt you eggs pulled off tonight. Well, I don’t take raps. Where’s the jane?”

  The pale-eyed man leaned back. “Guy, we been here in this joint since eight o’clock. You ain’t worryin’ us. We didn’t know this umpchay was bumped off till you told us.” He grinned, seemed confident and suddenly sure of himself. “We’re strictly kosher, and there’s a phone over there if you want to call the cops. See if we care.”

  The fat man began fussing like an old woman: “Now, now, Beef, don’t go makin’ the gentleman mad. Of course, that is to say, well, I’m okey with the skipper and all that—but if I cause him any trouble, it’ll mean a bigger cut. Me and Bill here”—he indicated the bald, red-necked man—“like to play square with everybody.”

  Louie, the man in the gray hat, moved nearer to the pale-eyed Beef, and the pair assumed an attitude of mixed hostility towards the operators of the joint. And Beef said:

  “I don’t care. This palooka ain’t goin’ to faze me none. I’m clean. You guys know me and Louie been in this dump since eight or before.”

  Donahue remained silent for a long moment. Then he shrugged, grinned and put his gun in his pocket. The fat man sighed and smacked his hands together.

  “Now, now, sir, that is what I would call—well, so to speak, that is—”

  Donahue was at the door. He said: “Fourteen thousand five hundred bucks are floating around somewhere.” He was noisy going down the stairway. He did not go far. There were many nooks in the dark hollow square. He pressed back into shadows and waited.

  Chapter V

  Twenty minutes elapsed. Then Beef and Louie appeared on the landing. Both wore hats and coats. The door closed behind them and their feet came down the stairway. They did not go towards the door leading to West Tenth. They went around the bottom of the stairway and passed through a hole in the board fence. Donahue went after them. In the street, they walked into a cigar store. Donahue went on, walking rapidly. At the corner he climbed into a cab and said:

  “Just wait here a minute.”

  He watched through the rear window, and when he saw Beef and Louie come out of the cigar store accompanied by two others, he said:

  “Drive around the corner and park.”

  In a minute the four men, walking briskly, crossed Hudson Street and got into a cab on the east side.

  “When that Checker starts,” Donahue told the driver, “swing around and tail it. Don’t get too close—but don’t lose it.”

  The tail led up the West Side, went across town at Fortieth as far as Madison, and then north. It made a right turn into the Fifties, swinging in with a few eastbound cars. The Checker stopped at the next block and Donahue, passing in his cab, saw the four men get out. He let his cab cross to the east side of Park, then got out, paid up, tipped generously and walked back to the west side of the avenue. The four men, he saw, had started walking west. They walked in pairs, Louie and Beef in front. A little farther on, they turned and climbed a brownstone stoop, opened a door and disappeared. Donahue waited a couple of minutes, then went up the steps, opened the door there and entered a high, narrow corridor.

  There was the sound of a piano being played lazily. Muffled drone of voices. A girl reached for Donahue’s hat and coat. He gave her a quarter but kept both. At the end of the corridor was a wooden door with a glass port high up. He went down and looked through the glass. There was a chummy bar inside, half a dozen men. Beef and Louie and the others were not present

  Donahue pushed open the door. There was a wide door at the right, a dim-lit room beyond. A man was drowsing over piano keys, playing lazy rhythm. A girl was leaning on the piano singing in a whisper.

  Donahue said: “Rye high,” to the bartender. Turning, he caught a glimpse of a small young man leaving the other end of the bar, heading for a curtained doorway at the rear. Donahue moved slowly, then a little faster as the curtains opened and closed. He pulled them aside. There was a small lighted sign halfway down the hallway: Men’s Room.

  Donahue took two long running steps. The small man turned around. Donahue had his gun out. He did not stop. With his left hand he grabbed the small man by the collar and hustled him into the men’s room. The door swung shut.

  “Quick, you!” Dona
hue clipped in a hoarse whisper.

  “Look out now—”

  “You’re the nice-faced punk I saw at Penn Station tonight! Where is she?”

  “I don’t know what—”

  There were voices coming down the hall. Donahue rushed the man into one of three closets. The cabinets had half-doors, with two feet of open space at the bottom. Inside, he snapped the catch and kept his gun jammed in the small man’s back. Several men entered. He heard them talking, laughing. In a few minutes they went out.

  “Now,” Donahue said, “spill it!”

  “You’re hurting me!”

  “Oh, am I? Listen, you! There’s an open window leading to an alley. If you don’t yap, I’ll let you have a bellyful and take that window out. Quick, now!”

  “Honest, I don’t know anything.”

  Donahue took a big gun from the man’s pocket “You’re just an angel, I suppose. You’re going to be an angel for me, sweetheart. Where’s the jane? By——where is she?”

  He had the man by the throat now. He pressed hard, while his knee kept the man pinned to a sidewall of the cabinet. The man twisted and writhed, his tongue stuck out and his eyes bulged.

  “Where is she?”

  “Leggo.”

  Donahue eased up. “Now.”

  “Upstairs.”

  “How’d she get here?”

  “I—brought her.”

  “Who wanted her?”

  The man shook his head and Donahue went to work on his throat again.

  It came out—choked: “Hagin….”

  “He upstairs?”

  “Ugh—yeah.”

  Donahue said: “Okey, sweetheart. Now don’t think you’re going to waltz right after me and….”

  He struck with the man’s gun—on the head, a short, hard chopping blow. The man sank without a sound. Donahue pushed him against the back wall of the cabinet. He did not unlock the door. He got down on hands and knees and crawled out. Looking at the outside of the door, he saw that the indicator said: Occupied.

  He put a gun in either pocket and left his hands on them. He went out into the corridor and began climbing the stairway. In the hallway above, he stood for a moment, then went to the rear and peered through a windowpane there. He unlocked and opened the window. There was a fire-escape outside, leading to a court below. He left the window open. The lazy sound of the piano seemed far away.

  Moving up the hall, he listened at doors. At the third from the rear, on the left, he listened longest. Then he retraced his steps to the door nearest the rear window. He tried it. It was open and he entered a large bedroom. A small bed lamp glowed. The room was empty, and an open door gave into another room that was dark. He moved into it on soft rugs and saw a long, thin sliver of light where sliding doors had not quite closed. He returned to the bedroom, took stock of his bearings, then turned out the bed lamp. All was in darkness now. Looking through the open door, he could see the thin sliver of light. He moved towards it.

  The slit was not large enough for him to see through. He counted four or five different voices. There was a heated argument, everyone was talking at once. He pried the doors apart, a bare half-inch, noiselessly. Now he saw Beef and Louie and the two men they had picked up downtown. The four were in a dangerous huddle around a blonde burly man, at the far side of the room.

  Donahue pulled out his guns. He worked the doors apart another inch. No one noticed him. Bit by bit he got them far enough apart to enter. He entered and stood quite silent. He saw the girl on a couch. She looked unconscious. Her hair was down and her clothes were twisted. He stood waiting, the guns in his hands, level with his hips.

  It was the burly blonde man who saw him first. The others stopped talking.

  “Hold that pose, all of you,” Donahue said.

  “It’s him!” muttered Beef.

  Donahue said: “So you and Louie were just a couple of home-loving card players. Fighting over the split, huhn?”

  The burly man began: “These mutts—”

  “You’re Hagin,” Donahue said.

  “I’m Hagin. These mutts walked in on me. Let me walk out of this huddle and it’s worth a thousand bucks to you.”

  “Put the thousand on the table.”

  Hagin took out a wallet, emptied it. “I got only nine hundred here. I’ll get the rest up. Now lend me one of those rods and I’ll teach these grifters a lesson.”

  “You sit right down in that chair,” Donahue said. “You other guys hold that pose.”

  Hagin dropped down into the chair, his eyes wide. “Why, you dirty—”

  “Pipe down. There’s a lot of dough flying loose around this burg tonight. Most of it I can’t touch. So I’ll touch what I can.” He moved slowly to the table, caught up the sheaf of bills with the two end fingers of his left hand. “Somebody’s got to pay my taxi fare. You, Hagin—you were the guy ran that joint Stromson and these two heels crashed that night. Right?”

  “Right! And now these two bums tango in here with a couple of punks—”

  “Pardon me. I want to get this straight. It figures, then, that the little punk downstairs was the guy you sent after Stromson. He got Stromson and then he went to Penn Station to head off the jane. You didn’t know just where the dough was bunked. You figured the jane might know. I got to her ahead of the punk. The punk tailed us, camped on my doorstep. I went out. The jane went out later and he clamped on to her and brought her here. What I can’t figure out is”—he looked at Beef—“where you guys horn in.”

  Beef growled: “Stromson took the rap for us and kept his trap shut. When he come out, we crowded him. He bunked the dough in the country before he went up. We knew he took the rap and he kept his jaw shut. We dickered and he offered us two grand apiece and that was okey by us. Then for some goofy reason he takes a boat to South America, soon as he’s out of stir, and comes back on the same boat. We try to roll him for some dough by gettin’ him into a card game. We get him drunk three nights runnin’, but he won’t play. And we don’t know where he’s bunked the dough.

  “There was a little guy hangin’ around Bill and Henry’s for a week. Bill says he’s hidin’ out. This little guy leaves about half an hour before Stromson does tonight. Stromson was belly-achin’ about a jane he had to meet at Penn Station. When you bust in there tonight we know there’s only one guy’d be after Stromson. Hagin. So up we come, after Stromson’s dough. The little guy’s Hagin’s punk. We saw him downstairs but didn’t let on. You drop them guns, fella, and you get a third of the dough. Hagin’s got it.”

  “You’re a damn’ liar!” Hagin said. “I haven’t got it.”

  Beef snarled: “You bum, you got it! When we crashed in here the jane was out cold!”

  “If I got it,” Hagin growled, “why the hell would the jane be out cold?”

  She was lying now with her eyes open.

  Donahue said to her: “Get up, put your hat and coat on and go out. Got the wallet?”

  She shook her head.

  Donahue said: “Hagin, give her the wallet.”

  “It’s in the desk drawer,” he said.

  Donahue said: “Get it, Laura. See he hasn’t taken anything out.”

  She got up and made her way to the desk, took out the wallet, examined it. “It’s all here.”

  “Where’re your bags?”

  “I checked them at the station. I thought it would be best to check them. After I checked them a little man followed me to the information booth. Then he said he’d shoot me if I didn’t go with him. He brought me here.”

  Hagin said: “I only tried to get the checks out of her.”

  “He’s got them!” Beef snarled.

  “No,” the girl said, “I’ve got them.” She turned down the left cuff of her coat sleeve. She said to Donahue: “I couldn’t make up my mind whether to give them up or not.”

  Donahue said: “Which one is for the little bag?”

  “This one,” she said, holding up a cardboard square.

  “Put it o
n the table. These rats would run you down for it, no matter where you went”

  She sighed. “I guess you’re right. I don’t want it anyhow.”

  Hagin stared at it. Beef and the others stared at it—hungrily.

  The girl had her hat on.

  Donahue said to the men: “This hurts, but it’s my only out.” He motioned to the girl. “Come on. Go through those rooms and into the hall. There’s a back window open. Go down the fire-escape, through the alley. Get a cab, get your suitcase, go to a hotel and leave on the first train you can get. I won’t be seeing you again.”

  She came very close to him. “Thanks,” she said. “Thanks for everything.”

  He waited fully two minutes, then began backing out. The men remained like images. They couldn’t understand his letting almost fifteen thousand dollars slide by. He reached the next room, turned and sped swiftly to the bedroom. The hall was empty. He went out the window, down the fire-escape, through the alley. He breathed thankfully. The girl had gone.

  He grabbed a taxi and rode to Penn Station. The driver passed a stop-light and was held up for five minutes by a long-winded cop. Presently he moved on. It was dark and deserted in front of the station. No trains were moving, and inside the station it was quite deserted also. He didn’t see the girl. She would have been here already, he reasoned.

  He saw four men heading for an exit. He started, then stopped. The four men walked swiftly in close formation and passed out through the doors. Donahue broke into a fast walk. He reached the doors and pushed one open when a vicious snarl of gunfire broke loose in the street. The mad sound of a sub-machinegun was touched up with the bark of heavy pistols.

  He saw four men lying on the sidewalk. A car roared on the getaway. One of the four figures moved and the gun in his hand blazed four times. The car turned suddenly, heeled over on its rubber, hurtled diagonally across the street with full power on. It struck a building and seemed to bounce back into the street. He couldn’t tell definitely. Because the car exploded in a sheet of flame. The fourth man on the sidewalk was motionless again, on his back now, his arms outflung. It looked like Beef.