Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia

by Gruber, Frank

  “He’s a quick spender,” Quade commented. “Two G’s in one day. Guess he dropped it on the races.” He poked at the various objects he had taken from the unconscious ex-­convict’s pockets. “I guess I was right, after all.”

  “What’d you find?”

  “Nothing,” Quade said. “Nothing but the money. If I’d found something else, I’d have been wrong. Put the money back.”

  “Back? Why, that’s more money than I ever saw in my life.”

  “It’s small change to what Willie had before the G-boys started in on him. His trial cost him a hundred thousand. His back income taxes ran almost to a million. And I imagine the fifty-thousand-dollar fine he had to scrape up before they let him off the Rock just about broke him.”

  “Except for the change.”

  Quade shook his head. “He’s made this since he got out … Ah!”

  Higgins was twitching. Charlie backed away hastily, darted into the other room of the suite and came back without the automatic. He winked at Quade.

  Higgins sat up and held his jaw. “You lug!” he spat at Charlie.

  Boston grinned. “No hard feelings?”

  “I’ll let you know about that later!”

  Higgins got to his feet and, still holding his jaw, started for the door. Quade shook his head at Boston and the latter blocked Higgins.

  “I want to ask you some questions, Willie,” Quade said.

  Higgins suddenly thought to look in his pockets. He pulled out the bank roll, ruffled it and nodded in satisfaction.

  “Why didn’t you light out with the fifty thousand, Willie?” Quade asked.

  “I was going to,” said Higgins, “until you said Slocum wanted to see me. Up to then I was hanging around—just in case.”

  “Just in case someone tried to pin a murder rap on you, eh? All right, you didn’t bump Maynard. Who did?”

  “I don’t know,” said Higgins. “I came out of the Rock without a dime. All I had was a chunk of—something. I sold it for fifty thousand. Then the guy got knocked off. Somebody might have said I did it. That long-legged shamus was nosing around. Maynard might have told him about me.”

  “He had,” said Quade. “That’s how I got interested. Well, we won’t be seeing you around then?”

  Higgins shook his head. “I guess I’ll see what South America looks like.” He started for the door and looked at Charlie. “Look me up if you come to South America, big boy.”

  “I want to see America first,” retorted Boston. “No hard feelings?”

  Willie Higgins shook his head and went out.

  “I think,” said Quade, “we’d better hurry if we want to get down to that inquest.”

  Lieutenant Murdock said to Quade: “I was just going to send out some boys for you.”

  “You can always count on Quade,” Quade said cheerily. “Well, I see everybody’s here. Got it all sewed up?”

  Christopher Buck said, “In a knot, old chap.”

  “Can you tell now who’s paying your fee, Christopher?” Quade asked.

  “Sure, why not? Young Clevenger. His old man owns a bank in Iowa. He wanted me to see that Miss Wentworth didn’t get mixed up. But she won’t be called to testify. The lieutenant said it wouldn’t be necessary.”

  “Well,” said Quade, “if you don’t want to be shown up as a sucker in front of the newspaper boys, I suggest you call the principals into the next room.”

  Murdock glared at Quade. “You’ve pulled enough jokes!”

  “The joke’ll be on you,” said Quade, “if Tommy Slocum files a suit against you for false arrest.”

  Buck’s eyes rolled. “What’s that, Quade?”

  “I mean you didn’t hit the jackpot after all, Buck, old fellow. I just had a little chat with Willie Higgins.”

  “Willie Higgins!” exclaimed Murdock. “The fellow who just got out of Alcatraz?”

  “Yep. Remember Willie, Christopher? You’re the lad who told me about him yesterday.”

  Buck fidgeted uneasily. “Maynard gave me a bum steer, there.”

  “You mean you changed horses when your first one dropped dead. Well, you going to call them into the next room? Or would you rather have me spill it on the stand over there, Lieutenant?”

  “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to hear him,” Buck mumbled to Murdock. “He’s wrong, but—”

  “Bring Slocum’s lawyer, too,” said Quade. “So he can get an idea for how much to sue.”

  Murdock walked off and spoke to the various principals in the case: Slocum, Thelma and Clevenger. As they passed into another room Quade fell in beside Slocum. “I just left Higgins, Tommy. He was looking up the sailing schedules to South America.”

  Slocum groaned. “You blithering fool! You let him get away?”

  “Sure. He didn’t have what you wanted. But don’t worry. Desmond Dogg will save you.”

  Murdock growled, “Mr. Quade has some things he wants to talk about.”

  Quade nodded and began: “Mr. Slocum, how long have you been making Desmond Dogg cartoons?”

  Slocum’s nostrils flared. “Six years. But I was doing other cartoons for three years before then. I don’t see though what that’s got to do with this.”

  “This is the laundry,” Quade said. “Everything gets washed. I saw a preview of one of your Desmond Dogg pictures today. The screen credit says: ‘From the famous character created by Tommy Slocum.’ That isn’t quite so. You didn’t create Desmond Dogg, Slocum.”

  Tommy Slocum remained quiet.

  “As a matter of fact,” Quade went on, “Stanley Maynard, who was a cartoonist on the Waterloo Morning News some years ago, drew a little comic strip about a St. Bernard dog who was called Desmond Dogg. The strip didn’t go over very well. When he left the News, Maynard got a release from the paper and tried to peddle the strip to a syndicate. They didn’t take it on. Probably because Maynard wasn’t such a good cartoonist and his ideas weren’t so hot.

  “But when you got going good out here in Hollywood, Maynard submitted his Desmond Dogg to you, Slocum. You bought it from him.”

  “Nothing wrong about that,” said Slocum. “I bought all rights to Desmond Dogg. I put him across. I gave Maynard a job at a big salary. He didn’t complain.”

  “Not until recently. He didn’t know that a—a party somehow got the contract in which he signed Desmond Dogg over to you.”

  Slocum sighed wearily. “All right, Quade, if you’ve got to have it all. I wasn’t so prosperous five years ago. I got into a roulette game over in Willie Higgins’ club and lost a pile of dough. I gave the contract to Willie Higgins. That is, I signed over a transfer to him.” Slocum paused. “Of course, it was a gambling debt,” he smiled nervously, mopped at sweat, “and Willie agreed to keep the whole thing quiet until I could buy the contract back. Meanwhile, he went to jail.”

  Quade held up his hand. “Let me tell the rest, Mr. Slocum. You transferred the contract to Willie. But Willie was no slouch. He made it very legal. He had witnesses, and a notary public. There was nothing mentioned about it having been a gambling debt.”

  Slocum said, “I—”

  “Take it easy,” Quade snapped. “All of this comes around into a nice little pattern and I’d like to round it out while it’s hot. When Willie got out of jail he still had the contract. You hadn’t bought it back. So he sold it to Maynard for fifty thousand dollars. All legal and everything. Maynard in turn put the bee on you. He was going to sue you and take over your business, now that he had the contract.”

  “He was suing for a cool million,” Buck offered.

  “Sure,” Quade said, “and you, Slocum, you were holding out, rather futilely, against Maynard. Your only action was based on the ground that the contract had gone to Willie on a gambling debt. And gambling debts in California are illegal. Therefore, you said a court would figure the con
tract was still yours. That threw Maynard for a while. But Willie had cinched the contract with a notary and witnesses. If Maynard could produce these, prove the contract was not transferred as a gambling debt, he would win the suit against you. But the transfer to Willie was old, so Maynard hired Chris Buck to find the notary Willie had, and the witnesses. They had scattered out, couldn’t be located. That’s the way things stood when Maynard was killed. Naturally, it looked as though you had done it, Mr. Slocum.”

  “But, I—”

  “No, you didn’t kill him,” Quade smiled. “I’ve done a little digging around. Since you aren’t guilty of murder there’s no point in my exposing any of the more sordid details of your life at this inquest. I won’t mention the names of the women and all, but the fact was that Paul Clevenger was blackmailing you. Isn’t that true?”

  Slocum blanched. “I—yes.”

  “He knew a lot about you. From Waterloo, and here in Hollywood. He’d been in town longer than he claimed.”

  “It’s a damned lie!” Clevenger shouted.

  “It isn’t!” Slocum snapped, “and you know it isn’t. I have your correspondence to prove it!”

  Chris Buck grabbed Clevenger. The kid’s face was white, his eyes dilated.

  “Well, there it is,” said Quade. “Clevenger had Slocum lined up for a cinch shakedown. For how many thousands I don’t know. That’s immaterial. What’s important is this: Clevenger knew that if Maynard won his suit against Slocum—and Maynard couldn’t help win it once the witnesses were found—Slocum would be stony broke. He wouldn’t have the dough to pay off a blackmail shake-down. In a nutshell, Clevenger would be out of luck. So he killed Maynard, hoping to squelch the whole thing, or at least to stop it long enough so that he could collect from Slocum. Clevenger was broke. His old man had turned him out. The kid was pretty desperate and—”

  “Let me at that guy!” Clevenger screamed. “Let me at that son of a—”

  Buck hit Clevenger in the mouth. The kid recoiled, put his hand to his lips, looked at the blood on his fingers. Then he seemed to collapse like a deflated balloon. He nodded his head, looked longingly at Thelma, then dropped his eyes again. The girl just stared at him.

  Quade concluded: “As for Willie—he was a little stir-whacky. When Maynard was bumped, he figured the contract reverted to him. He was trying to shake half a million out of Slocum for it on sheer bluff.”

  Murdock snapped cuffs on Clevenger’s wrists. Clevenger roared helplessly when Thelma put her hand on Slocum’s arm.

  Buck said, “Nuts,” and strode out.

  “Quade,” Slocum said, “you said Needham wanted me to give you a contract to be Desmond Dogg’s voice. I’ll give you a contract, but it’ll be for Maynard’s job.”

  “Ollie!” cried Charlie Boston, standing by the window. “The car! Some hit-and-run driver smacked it!”

  The yellow sports job had been hit. One headlight was gone, a fender and running board crumpled and the hood badly damaged.

  Quade looked at the car and turned to go out the door after Chris Buck.

  “Where are you going, Mr. Quade?” asked Thelma.

  “To hunt up Mr. Christopher Buck. He admired this car yesterday. I’m going to sell it to him, now, at a bargain. Sight unseen!”

  Oliver Quade at the Races

  Oliver Quade put the napkin on the table and leaned back in his chair. “That,” he said to Charlie Boston, on the other side of the table, “is what I call a fine lunch.”

  “I like their dinners better,” said Charlie Boston. “There’s more to them.”

  Quade signaled to the waiter. “The check, please. And let me have your pencil.”

  The waiter put down the check, but did not add his pencil. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said, “but I have orders not to let you sign this check.”

  Across the table, Charlie Boston winced. A light came into Quade’s eyes. “Well!” he declared. “If that isn’t something! Would you mind asking the dining-room manager to step over here?”

  The waiter went off, but it was the manager of the hotel rather than the dining-room manager who came to their table. He said:

  “Sorry, boys, but that’s all.”

  “What’s all?” Quade demanded.

  “All of everything,” the manager replied. He pulled a slip of paper from his pocket. “You’ve been at this hotel four weeks, now. Your bill, including room, meals in the dining-room, telephone and incidentals, amounts to $424.38. I shall give you until six o’clock this evening.”

  Oliver Quade frowned. “That’s rather short notice. Ah—I rather doubt if I can get the money by then.”

  “That will be too bad—for you.”

  “You mean you’ll lock us out?”

  “No,” said the hotel manager, “you won’t be locked out. You will be locked up—in the city jail.”

  “Shucks,” said Quade. “You can’t lock up a man just because he’s behind in his hotel rent.”

  A glint came into the eyes of the hotel manager. “I think,” he said, “this can be called more than rent delinquency. Intent to defraud is a better phrase. You’ve been here four weeks, you’ve gotten advances, you’ve charged up all sorts of things, and you haven’t paid one cent. I shall give you until six o’clock this evening. Full payment by then, or …” The manager turned and strode out of the dining room.

  Charlie Boston groaned. “We’re sunk, Ollie. We’ll never raise that much money by this evening.”

  “I wonder,” said Quade, “how the food is in the city jail.”

  A middle-aged man wearing pince-nez got up from a nearby table and came over. “Excuse me, gentlemen, but I couldn’t help hearing what the manager said.”

  Quade fixed the intruder with a cold stare. “So?”

  The man took a twenty-dollar bill from his pocket. “How would you like to earn that—for a half-hour’s work?”

  Quade picked up the bill and scrutinized it. “What is the name of the man you want killed, and where can I find him?”

  The other chuckled. “It’s not that bad. All you have to do is deliver a letter for me.”

  “A letter?” Quade looked at the twenty-dollar bill. “A two-cent stamp will deliver it anywhere in town. Or, if you’re in a hurry, Western Union will deliver it for about forty cents.”

  The man with the pince-nez shook his head. “There’s a little more to it than that. Did you observe those two men who were sitting at the table near the door?”

  “The ones who are going out now? The rather large men?”

  “Precisely. I believe those men will follow you and try to take the letter away. They surely saw me approach you.”

  Quade screwed up his face. “A punch in the jaw—for twenty bucks? How about it, Charlie?”

  Charlie Boston glowered. “I didn’t take a good look at them. But neither of them was eight feet tall, was they?”

  “No,” said the man with the pince-nez. “Neither were that large. You’ll deliver the letter?”

  Quade nodded.

  The other reached into his breast pocket and drew out a thin letter. Quade took it and read the address: “Martin Lund, 98641 Sunset Boulevard. What do I do, wait for an answer?”

  “No, just give the letter to Mr. Lund. But make sure he gets it personally.”

  “Suppose he isn’t there? What do I do with the letter?”

  “I’m registered at the hotel. My name is George Grimshaw. However, Lund will be at that address. He’s expecting me.”

  Quade pushed back his chair. “We’ll go right now.”

  At the door of the dining-room, the waiter caught up with Quade and Boston. “Your check!”

  Quade bared his teeth, but gave the man the twenty-dollar bill he had just received. After a moment he got $18.30 in change. He tipped the waiter the thirty cents.

  There were only a fe
w people in the lobby and Quade had no difficulty in picking out the two men who had left the dining-room just before them. They were standing near the cigar counter.

  “O.K., Charlie,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  “They’re following,” growled Charlie Boston.

  “Yes. It’s odd what man will do to make a living these days. Somehow, I’ve a feeling I’m going to get more than just a punch on the jaw out of this.”

  They stepped out of the hotel door and their pursuers were directly behind them. There were two taxicabs parked nearby. Quade stepped up to the first and opened the door.

  “All right, Charlie,” he said softly.

  He whirled suddenly and sent a sizzling uppercut into the face of the foremost pursuer. He followed it up with a left to the stomach.

  The man gasped and reeled back. But he returned instantly with a right that crashed through Quade’s guard and hit him a devastating blow just under the heart. Quade’s back hit the taxicab so hard he bounced away from it, straight into another punch that caught him in the mouth. He went back and again hit the taxicab. To cover up he dropped to his knees on the sidewalk.

  But that was all there was to the fight. Charlie Boston panted: “Look at ’em run!”

  Quade raised his head. The thugs were indeed running, were already past the hotel entrance and going strong.

  “Hell, I hardly hit the one bozo,” snorted Boston. “Oh-oh, looks like you stopped a couple.”

  Quade got to his feet and shook his head to clear the bees from it. “What a man’ll do for twenty bucks!” he said disgustedly. He jerked open the door of the taxicab and stepped inside.

  The cab driver turned around in his seat. “Those lugs try to slug you?” he asked.

  “No!” snapped Quade. “They wanted to play tag with us. We wouldn’t play…. D’you suppose you’ve got time to drive us out on Sunset?”

  “Oh, sure. Sure!”

  “Damn decent of you,” Quade said politely.

  Boston sat down beside Quade and the cab zoomed to the corner. It turned right and the driver gunned the motor. A moment later they made another right turn on to Sunset Boulevard. Quade looked out of the rear window.