by A. A. Glynn
For a second, he watched me stagger out of the cell with a sort of superior disgust, like an old lady on the way home from a charity meeting watching a drunk rolling out of the swing doors.
Then he grabbed me and bawled: “Hey, chief! He’s come round!”
From the far end of the passageway, a yellow-lit cloud cuckoo land which I couldn’t bring into focus any too well, a voice growled: “Bring him in here—and keep him quiet.”
The cop pushed me along the passageway and into the yellow-lit world, which turned out to be the inevitable back room of any police station. For a little while, I stood there, blinking my eyes to get used to the yellow light, issuing from under a fly-blown shade up near the ceiling. Then the cop showed me into a hard chair.
There was an old-fashioned desk at one side. A fat guy in shirtsleeves was sitting at it, talking into a telephone. He was saying: “Yes, Mr. Shelmerdine. Yes, Mr. Shelmerdine,” time after time. I wonder if those were the only words his mother had taught him when he was a baby, I didn’t like the look of the fat guy. He was all jowl and paunch and shiny bald head. There were big patches of sweat on his shirt and he was all trussed up in shoulder holster harness, like a Thanksgiving Day turkey.
The big sergeant was sitting on a chair close to a door in the far wall.
The fat guy at the desk went on saying: “Yes, Mr. Shelmerdine.” The sight of his shoulder holster made me take a look under my jacket—which the considerate cops had apparently taken from my car and put on my back before bundling me into the paddy-wagon. The harness was still there, but no gun.
The well-known impartial observer would probably say I sat there a long time, looking very stupid.
At the desk, the chief of police continued to say: “Yes, Mr. Shelmerdine.” After he’d said it eight or ten times more, I got the hang of the situation. Mr. Shelmerdine was speaking to him.
This was Shelmerdine’s town and these were Shelmerdine’s cops.
I started to raise hell.
“You can’t do this to me,” I bawled. “You can’t hold me. What’s the charge? Where’s my car? I want a lawyer! I’m Louis O’Callaghan, from Jackson’s Heights!”
The fat guy slapped a hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.
“Shut him up!” he snarled. “Give him some coffee or something.”
The two uniformed cops were within inches of me. I could smell the serge of their pants and the leather of their jackets.
“Shut up,” said the poor man’s Marlon Brando. “We know you’re Lantry, the shamus from New York. We found your card in your pocket. Quit hollerin’ an’ stay shut up.”
I could see their clubs slapping against their thighs.
So I shut up.
“What did you have to hit him so damned hard for?” snarled the chief. “You knocked him half screwy.” He took his hand from the mouthpiece and continued to say, “Yes, Mr. Shelmerdine.”
The patrolman crossed to a percolator on a greasy table in a corner and returned with strong coffee, which helped me a lot. The sergeant sat on his seat by the door, watching me while I drank it.
At the desk, the chief had changed his tune. Mr. Shelmerdine was through talking to him and the process was reversed. He was talking to Mr. Shelmerdine.
“Sure, Mr. Shelmerdine. I Understand, Mr. Shelmerdine. Not In The Police Wagon, Mr. Shelmerdine. In The Car, With No Police Uniform In Sight.…”
You could hear the capitals. As if Mr. Shelmerdine was some kind of supreme being.
The coffee helped to take some of the screwiness out of me.
I didn’t like this set-up one bit. I had been pulled in by these Rollinsville cops, who were obviously no more than dressed-up Shelmerdine hoods. I looked around quickly, on the wild hope that I might make some kind of a fight and get out of the place. No good. Too much weight against me, not to mention the cops’ clubs.
Big Chief Hole-in-the-Head was in one very tight spot.
The chief of these hick-town storm troopers finished his conversation with the supreme being, and clicked the phone down into its cradle. He swivelled about in his chair and regarded me with eyes that were almost lost in folds of fat. His large nose was touched with a very becoming shade of purple.
“Private dick,” he said. There was a deep disdain in his voice. I thought he was going to spit, but he just about managed to restrain himself.
“What’s the big idea of pulling me in when I wasn’t even in your jurisdiction?”
“You’re anybody’s game, buster. Jurisdiction don’t come into it. You’re wanted for shooting a guy and you’ve been pulled in,” he said flatly. Then he sniggered.
I sniggered. Even though I had damned little enough to snigger about.
“So you’re going to turn me over to the South Bend Police,” I said.
The chief sniggered again.
I knew full well these Rollinsville cops would not turn me over to the South Bend Police. They were so many Shelmerdine torpedo-men and I was caught.
After a little while a car grunted to a halt outside the door close to which the sergeant sat in his tilted-back chair. Ike Tescachelli, of the neat moustache, came in with four hoods at his back, following him like small-fry shipping in the wake of a big steamer. One of them was the lean and hungry Slats. The three remaining gentlemen were new to me.
Tescachelli glowered at me. I liked his glower less than I liked the feel of his automatic slapping into my mouth.
The door was open behind the Shelmerdine mobsters, and I could hear the motor of a car thrumming in the darkness outside.
“Thanks for holding him, Chief Richards,” grunted Tescachelli. “We’ll take it from here.”
“It” was me, and they weren’t notably genteel about “taking” me.
I put up a feeble sort of trouble, but didn’t stand a chance with the odds against me. Somebody clapped a big hand that tasted of nicotine over my mouth and I was carted bodily out of the police station. The door in the wall of the back room gave on to a dark alley where a big saloon crouched, growling.
They bundled me into the car. Tescachelli sat beside one of the other hoods, who drove while the remainder crowded into the rear compartment, holding me down to the seat. The car couldn’t have seemed more crowded if the Republican Party held its convention in it.
I did not get much of a chance to see the sight of Rollinsville as the saloon jerked out of the alley and went down what I took to be Main Street.
The hoods were crowding on me so intently that I only caught sight of a few lighted windows, a movie theatre with a glittering awning and one or two buildings, then we were out of town and driving through the darkness. There were trees on either side of the road and we seemed to be well and truly in the sticks.
Nobody spoke, which was just as well by me. I was still woozy, and I doubted if these representatives of the Great Unprincipled would have added anything to the world’s store of eloquence, anyway.
The driver swerved the saloon suddenly and I had a glimpse of high gateposts flashing past, then the car purred along a driveway that seemed as long as 42nd Street and shuddered to a halt.
The strong-arms hauled me out without ceremony. Standing in the night was a mansion that looked like the sort of place people write historical romances around. It had wide steps and white pillars in the old Colonial style, but I wasn’t allowed too much time to drink in the building’s architectural beauty.
Tescachelli prodded me in the ribs with his gun.
“Don’t make no noise,” he advised me.
“Mr. Shelmerdine don’t want his wife and child wakened up.”
He prodded me up a narrow path running to the side of the house and the rest of the boys came along, just to be sociable.
Tescachelli shoved me up a short flight of steps and into a small door that was probably reserved for the servants back in the days when a dollar was a dollar.
He and his friends further persuaded me to take a short walk through what had obviously once been the exclusive
domain of the serfs, then Tescachelli’s gun prodded me through another door which led to the mogul’s territory.
Anyone who really believes crime doesn’t pay—materially, at least—should have seen that place. My guard of honour took me along a soft carpeted corridor. There was an opulent scent of beeswax polish in the air, and the paintings on the walls were not cheap reproductions.
We came to a larger room and I was shoved into the presence of Athelstan Shelmerdine himself.
Only Tescachelli and Slats entered with me. The other hoods remained in the corridor. Maybe they were too much of the hoodlum class to be near Shelmerdine, too much of a reminder of the days when he himself had been pretty close to the gutter.
Shelmerdine was big. The room was big.
But I wasn’t interested in either at first glance. I was interested in Joanne Kilvert, sitting on a chair in the centre of the wide sward of carpet. There was nothing dramatic about the set-up, she wasn’t bound and gagged. She simply sat there, demure as a nursemaid being interviewed for a job. But she was somewhat peaked and pale. And the sniffles had developed into a heavy cold, I could tell when she said: “Hi!” when I entered.
She was trying hard to be breezy and cocky and I admired her for it.
Shelmerdine was sitting behind a desk. It’s funny the way they get a desk-complex when they hit big-time gangsterdom. Mussolini had a thing about sitting behind a large desk, so had Hitler.
Shelmerdine was fat and grey and he had a smart little moustache, which made him look just like any businessman who drove to the office six mornings out of seven and played a reasonable round of golf.
There was nothing about him to suggest the old booze-running days when they settled their disputes in Chicago with submachine guns. He had rings under his eyes, like a fellow who worried about his stocks and bonds, his nose was kind of flat, and he had a flashy mouth.
A hood, a youngster who was just learning the trade, was hovering at his back, keeping a fishy eye on Joanne. I wasn’t much interested in him, but the room was something to take in.
A big french window stood off to one side, three walls were hung with expensive-looking paintings, and a huge chandelier swung from the ornate ceiling. The fourth wall, backing Shelmerdine’s desk, was one huge bookcase.
I eyed the titles. History. The books ran the gamut from popular stuff like Wells’ Outline of History to works by present-day American historians like Durant and the Englishmen, Toynbee, and Trevelyan.
I’ve heard of racketeers who opened flower shops, owned racehorses, and there were some who helped out the people they sprang from, like Al Capone, who opened soup kitchens for the Chicago poor during the depression.
With Shelmerdine, it was academic pretensions. He read history.
“You’re a fool, Lantry,” he said, as Tescachelli clicked the door behind me. It wasn’t a particularly hostile observation. He could have been quietly chiding me for making a business investment he thought unwise. “You’re a fool, Lantry. You stuck your nose into the wrong business when you shoved it into this one. I’m afraid I have little time for private detectives. They’re fine for divorce-snooping, I suppose, but altogether too exasperating when they interfere with a man’s business.”
“That’s what you are—a businessman,” I observed. “A neat line in general racketeering behind legitimate fronts—with the old-fashioned payoff, Chicago style, when something snarls up a deal.”
Shelmerdine shuddered slightly. I guess he liked to keep the old Chicago memories thirty years at his back. Tescachelli nudged me roughly and said: “Shaddap” in his usual tones.
Shelmerdine sniffed, like a butler suffering from injured dignity. He reached out a pair of neatly manicured hands and fondled a package that lay plumb centre on the desk. I recognised it as the package of incriminating papers Joanne had taken from his safe.
“Our Miss Jones was a very foolish young lady when she thought she could get away with these papers,” went on Shelmerdine. “I may say I’m rather surprised at your organisation sending personable young girls on such a mission as you entrusted to Miss Jones, but your method of penetration was very neat—though it was rather opportune for you that I chose her to replace my original secretary.”
This shook me. The fact that I had been found to have a connection with the girl had made the Shelmerdine crowd think she was one of World Wide’s agents.
“I’ve heard of your organisation, Lantry,” went on Shelmerdine. “I thought it was a smooth-running outfit—the crude business of your shooting Speedy Kornes and leaving him spread-eagled on a lawn in residential South Bend rather belies that impression. The radio newscasts paint quite a vivid picture of poor Speedy lying there, butchered by a private eye, and the South Bend police are hunting high and low for you. Not that Speedy was valuable to me, he wasn’t—he was a dope. However, the incident is likely to bring an unwelcome focus upon me and my business, and your lady operator and yourself have been handling papers which I prefer to reserve for my own eyes. I’m afraid settlement in what you earlier termed ‘Chicago style’ is indicated for Miss Jones and yourself, Lantry. Shall we say a long car ride to Lake Michigan, followed by a permanent swimming trip for you two? It will be a pity in Miss Jones’ case: both my wife and child were fond of her.”
I heard Joanne give a little gasp.
I knew the type of swimming trip Shelmerdine meant. A dip in the water for two—wearing concrete boots to make sure it was for keeps.
Athelstan Shelmerdine’s smooth talk snapped me out of the wooziness brought on by the clubs of his pocket police force. It was my turn to talk and I began to talk fast. He thought Joanne Kilvert was one of my operators. Let him think that.
“Listen, Shelmerdine,” I hooted. “Do you think World Wide Investigations is a collection of dumb-clucks? You don’t stand a chance of rubbing out Miss Jones and myself. World Wide is watching this place and your territory in general. You’re washed up, Shelmerdine, you and all your hangers-on, from the smooth businessmen in your front organisations to the cheap bums from the other side of the tracks who do your trigger-work.…”
Tescachelli nudged me heftily.
“Shaddap,” he snorted.
I turned around on him.
“Shaddap yourself,” I told him.
And he did.
Shelmerdine was standing now, leaning his hands heavily on the big desk. Behind him the youthful mobster was looking a little agitated.
“What do you suppose we did all that time in South Bend?” I asked Shelmerdine. “Don’t bother to guess, I’ll tell you. We made copies of everything in that package—typewritten copies of every document Miss Jones took from the safe. That’s all we ever intended to do. Miss Jones was to return the papers as soon as we had completed the copies. That was the original plan, of course. If it had been pulled off smoothly, you would be none the wiser. Miss Jones would have returned the papers to where she found them, and would have continued working with you until the copies we took caused your little empire to explode under your shoes. Things got a little snarled up, but we took those copies, and they are already on their way to the Crime Commission in Chicago. You’re through, Mr. Athelstan Shelmerdine, even if you do finish off Miss Jones and I.”
Shelmerdine was white. My fast talk was working, I could tell by the way he blanched, and the way the kid mobster at the rear of his chair began to jitter even more noticeably. I took a sly glance around me.
Ike Tescachelli was at my back, with his gun in his hand. Slats was standing a little way at his back, looking lean and hungry and scared. Of the three hoods, only Tescachelli was flourishing a gun. The jitters were contagious, passed on from their boss, who was obviously affected by my bluff. Only he knew what was in that package—and he knew that copies of the documents it contained, if placed in the hands of the Crime Commission, were sufficient to break him.
I thought of the nearness of Tescachelli with his gun, the distance between the french window and myself, and the position of J
oanne Kilvert, seated between the window and me. I continued talking: “Don’t think this is bluff, Shelmerdine. You know those papers can ruin your whole combine.” I nodded to his pretentious books on history. “You should know that every empire crumbles eventually. Yours started to dissolve when we made copies of those papers.…”
I kept on talking, fast. And it was working. Shelmerdine and his hoodlums were falling for the spiel, hook, line, and sinker.
While I talked, I thought of Tescachelli and his gun, wondering how fast the remaining mobsters could produce their cannon if I managed to turn on Tescachelli and whip the automatic from his hand. Then there were the other hoods who’d stayed outside when Tescachelli shoved me into the room. If they were still outside the door, I would have them to contend with if too much noise was made.
I kept talking, unnerving Shelmerdine. I remembered a judo move.
And risked it.
In mid-sentence, I whirled around, grabbed Tescachelli’s gun hand by the wrist, using both hands. I shoved one leg diagonally across the mobster’s shins and hauled on his arm with the same action.
He went hurtling forward, taken completely by surprise, hitting the expensive carpet with his face and dropping the gun. I made a dive for the weapon and yelled to Joanne: “Run for the window!”
I had a blurred impression of Slats and the young hood moving for their guns as I grabbed Tescachelli’s automatic.
Tescachelli was rolling about the floor, holding the fine Italian nose that had contacted squarely with the floor. I came to my feet, trying to make myself into an uncoiling spring.
Slats and the youngster had their guns clear of their clothing, Shelmerdine came waddling around the desk. He was jittery, his smooth talk was gone.
“No gunplay here,” he wheezed. “Not here. My wife and child—”
Vaguely, I wondered if his wife henpecked him. Maybe the little woman would give him hell if she found bullet holes and spent cartridges around the place.
Shelmerdine was within grabbing distance. So I grabbed him.
