“Who would be holding that check?”
“Any number of persons. Our daily tabloid, the worst scandal sheet in the country. Or the Fusion crowd. Or Pat McHugh, the boss of the old party. Or somebody unknown to me who hopes to reap a fortune by passing it on to someone else. But there you are. There’s the situation. I blundered into this because I’m not as smart-alecky as a lot of people. I’m entirely innocent. You might say that my son would come to the fore and admit the check was written to clear him. But the rest could shoot that down—and they could buy off the woman. You see?”
Cardigan had slid way down into the chair. He regarded Holmes through narrow-lidded eyes. Suddenly he knew he liked Holmes, saw his position. Cardigan, no reformer himself but a hard party down to the core, had a habit of admiring qualities which he himself did not possess.
He sat up, taking out a notebook. “All right now, Mr. Holmes. Give me all the names of persons you suspect, and addresses if possible. I don’t suppose you asked the woman who cashed the check for her.”
“I dare not go near her. I will pay the person who holds that check now the amount written on it—but I must have it.”
“You’ll get it,” Cardigan said.
Chapter Two
Dough for a Dick
AT midnight Cardigan lay awake in the dark of his hotel room thinking. The rain had stopped. The sound of a crosstown trolley came up sharply out of the street.
Elections were a month hence, and old Mayor Holmes had things to think about. A reform platform is a ticklish thing to stand on. Wiseacres are always ready to accuse you of trying to kid the public, of playing the wolf in sheep’s clothing. A confessed mountebank is always colorful, a good man rarely popular.
Thus thought Cardigan—until a sound at the door dismissed philosophy and snapped him to the immediate present. He reached over to the little bed-table, got his hand on his revolver and sat up with the same motion. He heard the not quite silent movement of a key in the lock, a final click. Then a pause of utter silence. Then a vertical line of light appeared where the door opened on a crack. The door swung wide slowly, silently, and three men stood there. Two of them had guns drawn while the third moved into the background. One of the armed men reached in a hand seeking the light switch.
“That’s far enough,” Cardigan said. “One slight move out of any of you birds and the management’ll be disturbed.”
The two armed men remained motionless. Then one said: “Police, Cardigan.”
“Show me.”
The two men turned back their lapels.
Cardigan lowered his gun. “It’s damned funny that I can’t get a night’s sleep without you guys prowling around here like correspondence-school detectives.”
The horse-faced man snapped on the lights and said, “I’m Lieutenant Strout. This is Sergeant Blake. That’s Massey, the house officer. You can go, Massey.”
Strout closed the door in Massey’s face. He put away his gun and Blake did likewise. Blake was a chubby-cheeked fat man with a sly, smiling face. Strout was tall, muddy-eyed.
“Let’s see that rod,” he said.
Cardigan reversed it and Strout took it by the butt. It was a jointless solid-frame gun. Strout smelled the barrel, examined the chamber, hefted it thoughtfully, tossed it back on the bed.
“That the only one you carry?”
“Yeah.”
“Look around, Blake. There’s his bag.”
Blake ransacked Cardigan’s handbag while Cardigan stuffed a pipe and watched him with mild amusement. Strout went through Cardigan’s clothes, opened the dresser drawers. Blake left Cardigan’s clothes on the floor beside the bag.
Strout sat down on a chair, struck a match on the veneered frame of the wooden bed, left a long scratch there.
“What were you doing in the mayor’s car tonight, Cardigan?”
“Was I in the mayor’s car?”
Strout spurted smoke through his nostrils. “Don’t give me the runaround.”
“Well, was I?”
“You got in it at the railroad station and the chauffeur was killed twenty minutes later on Prairie Avenue.”
“Says who?”
“Says me.”
“Get your proof, lieutenant, and we’ll continue.”
“Listen, you,” Blake said with his sly smile. “We’ve heard a lot about you.”
Strout went on. “It was a stolen car. You got in and the chauffeur wasn’t the mayor’s chauffeur. He was all shot up when we found him and the car was busted. He was cold meat. You rode with him.”
Cardigan put his bare feet on the floor, buttoned up the coat of his blue cotton pajamas, pointed his pipe stem at Strout.
“Now I’ll tell you what I did. I came out of the station looking for a taxi. A guy with a chauffeur’s cap on said, ‘Taxi!’ like that. So I thought it was an independent, and as it was raining and the car was handy I climbed in. I told him to drive to the Hotel Flatlands. After a while I began to wonder where he was going. I asked him and he said where I told him. He began to look queer to me, but I wasn’t looking for trouble. So I got out at a cigar store and went in and bought some tobacco. I thought it out. I left the store and walked away. I walked back to the city and came here.”
Blake laughed in a shrill, mocking tone. “That’s a fast one!”
“Well, what are you going to do about it?” Cardigan said.
“What are we going to do about it?” Blake cried. “Damn you, you can’t—”
“Shut up, Jake,” Strout said dully and kept looking at Cardigan with his muddy, humorless eyes. “This is damned funny, Cardigan,” he went on. “You were in a stolen car and the guy that drove it was murdered.”
“With my gun, I suppose.”
“Not with that gun there, but that don’t say you didn’t have another.”
Cardigan laughed harshly. “And they pin medals on you guys!”
Strout blew cigarette ash to the carpet. “What did you come here for?”
“To sleep.” He swung back into bed, pulled the covers up to his neck.
“I mean the city,” Strout said.
“To get the hell pestered out of me by a couple of dumb clucks wearing badges.”
Strout looked sullen. “None of your lousy cheap wit, Cardigan! You may have a name where you come from for being a pretty swell dick, but names are all the same to me on a police blotter.”
The bed covers erupted and Cardigan was sitting up again. “Any time a client engages me it’s just the same as if he engaged a lawyer. He gets my confidence and the benefit of silence.”
“But there’s murder in this.”
“Because a heel in a stolen car starts taking me for a ride, for some reason I don’t know, and I’m wide awake enough to slip out of it; and because a little later the heel is murdered with a gun that isn’t mine— Listen, Strout, why the hell should I get all hot and bothered and tell you the story of my life? Do you mean to sit there in those pants and tell me I ought to get gray worrying about it? Hot dog, what school did you go to?”
Blake snapped, “This mutt is looking for a bust in the puss!”
“Yeah, and I suppose you’re going to do it. Any minute now I’m going to break into convulsions!”
Strout pushed Blake back and said to Cardigan: “You come down to headquarters tomorrow.”
“Like hell I will. If you want me to come to headquarters go get a warrant for my arrest. You got a lame tip somewhere, Strout, and you’re trying to make me believe that it’s red-hot. At your age you should know better than try that one. It was whiskered before I was born.”
Strout got up, put his bony fists on his hips, regarded Cardigan with sullen eyes. “You’re bright as hell, ain’t you?”
Cardigan lay back in bed, pulled up the covers. “On the way out, Strout, douse the lights and lock the door.”
CARDIGAN was singing deep-throated under the shower next morning, when the doorbell rang.
“Wait a minute,” he yelled.
&nb
sp; He stopped the shower, climbed out and rubbed himself down with a towel and then alcohol. He heaved into a bathrobe, kicked his feet into mules and tramped through the bedroom.
A little plump man with pomaded sandy hair and narrow shoulders stood holding a derby chest-high with both hands. Thirty-odd, he had a clerical air. He wore expensive dark clothes.
“May I come in?”
“You’re a new one on me,” Cardigan said, “but come on.”
The man crossed the threshold and Cardigan’s hands darted to his person, slapped pockets rapidly. Out of the man’s left pocket he took a small, dark automatic, palmed it.
“You see,” he said, “I never know,” and kicked the door shut.
The little man smiled. “You’re a man of parts, Mr. Cardigan. I’m sorry to have intruded so early. Be careful—the safety may not be closed.”
“I find that out the minute I touch a gun. It is.”
“Truly a man of parts.”
Cardigan said: “Now get this. I just got up. I haven’t eaten yet. I’m a lousy guy to do business with most of the time, but especially before breakfast. Cut out the drawing-room tricks and speak your piece.”
“A most definite man also. My compliments.” Smiling, the little man showed exquisite white teeth and crinkly red lips. “Very well. I shan’t be long. Primo: what are you doing in the city?”
“Answer: none of your business.”
“Of course, you are here working for the mayor.”
“The words are in your mouth, not mine.”
“Doubtless you came here to regain possession—for the mayor—of a piece of paper. Green, let us say. And watermarked. You know—those little wavy lines? Correct?”
“You make me sick,” Cardigan growled. He extracted six .25 caliber shells from the miniature Webley, shoved the Webley in the man’s pocket, turned him about and shoved him to the door. “In a word—scram!”
The man turned, smiling with his shell-like teeth. “Would five thousand dollars interest you?”
“A thousand would, but what’s that to you?”
“I have a friend who would pay you five thousand dollars for that little oblong strip of green, watermarked paper.”
“I work for a living,” Cardigan said, “and the agency I work for has a reputation. I don’t think it would go nuts about doing business with you.”
“But how about you?”
Cardigan took three long strides and gripped the little man by his shirt front. “Who the hell are you?”
“Please don’t get pugilistic,” the little man said in a tranquil voice.
Cardigan turned about with him, hurled him across the bed. “I’ve been here only twelve hours,” he growled, “and I’m getting fed up on a lot of people.”
He straddled the man, held him down by the throat with one strong hand, used the other to go through his pockets. He pulled out a wallet, keys, some envelopes. Getting back on his feet, he said: “Now stay there,” and began sifting the articles.
Presently he shrugged, tossed the lot back on the bed. “You can go,” he said. “And tell that lousy tabloid you work for that they couldn’t buy me for a hundred thousand! And mark me, little morning glory! If you go monkeying around here again things may happen to you. Out—and goom-by!”
The little man rose, patted down his clothes, picked his derby from the floor and bowed at the door. His shell-like teeth gleamed. He backed out saying nothing, closed the door quietly.
When Cardigan went downstairs fifteen minutes later, Massey, the house dick, headed him off.
“What did that reporter from the tab want, Cardigan?”
“A short autobiographical sketch, Mr. Massey. Something like ‘From Plowboy to Mastermind.’ I said mine wasn’t interesting. Referred him to you.”
“And for that you gave him a split lip, huh?”
“He stubbed his toe and fell against a radiator.”
“Yah!”
“Goom-by!”
Cardigan ate breakfast in the coffee shop, went out carrying his topcoat under his arm. Under the facade, he looked up and down the street. Across the way, diagonally, a man stood in front of a Western Union window. Cardigan walked west, turned south into Sixth, used a store window as a mirror and saw the man follow him.
He turned around abruptly and retraced his steps, putting a cigar in his mouth. The man who had followed had no time to duck. He slowed down, however. Cardigan came up to him, stopped, said: “Got a match, brother?”
The man was young. “Sure,” he said, and passed a packet.
Cardigan lit up, returned the packet, said: “Spider on you!” and struck the man’s lapel lightly. Beneath the cloth he felt the hardness of a police shield.
The man looked bewildered.
“Give Lieutenant Strout my love,” Cardigan said, and rolled on, puffing enthusiastically.
The plainclothesman did not follow.
Chapter Three
The Girl in 616
TEN minutes later Cardigan got out of a taxi in front of a six-story apartment house. He pounded a broad flag walk and tramped in through a broad, imposing entrance. The livery of the negro elevator boy hurt his eyes.
“How is every little thing?” Cardigan grinned.
“What floor?”
“All right, be dignified— Six, colonel.”
The elevator rose in silence. Cardigan got out at the sixth floor and walked on carpets resilient as sponge rubber. He stopped, raised a bronze knocker on the black door of 616, let it fall back.
A girl with a shock of blonde hair opened it and looked at Cardigan with wide, baby-blue eyes. She had on blue pajamas and a blue peignoir trimmed with sand-colored old lace.
“Yes?” she chirped in a babyish voice.
“I have grave news for you,” Cardigan said with a judicial air.
Acting fatherly, he took hold of her hand, patted it with rough tenderness, the while he worked himself through the doorway and kicked the door shut. He scaled his hat into a velours divan, grinned broadly at the girl. She shrank back, drawing her peignoir about her small, rounded body.
“What—what do you want?” she asked, fear tailing her words.
Cardigan grinned. With his ungodly shock of hair and his heavy powerful shoulders he filled the room. He indicated a love-seat.
“Sit down, Miss Callahan.”
“W-what d-do you—”
He suddenly crossed the luxurious living room, looked in the bedroom, the bathroom; turned and regarded the girl across the length of the room.
“Now let’s put the cards on the table, sister. I know who you are and what you are, so don’t try to pull an act on me or throw a faint or in any way try to kid me into believing that you don’t know what it’s all about. I may look like a gorilla, but I’m not going to slam you down. All you have to do is answer a question.”
The baby-faced girl swallowed. “W-what is it?”
“Who cashed that twenty-thousand dollar check for you?”
Miss Callahan sat down on the love-seat, sinking into one of its twin cushions. She gripped her knees with white hands the nails of which were lacquered in red. Her baby-blue eyes dilated. She looked innocent and hurt.
“Come on, come on,” Cardigan growled, thumping across the carpet. He was big, towering, inimical in a leather-faced way.
The girl made a sound that sounded like “Eek!” and drew her knees up to her breast, gripping her ankles.
“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she cried in a tiny, breathless voice. “I—I d-don’t know you. What right have you got to come in here? You b-brute!”
“For God’s sake sister, don’t pull a hack line like that. I tell you I know you. I know you got a check for twenty thousand. I know you cashed it—and not in a bank.”
She jumped to her feet and began pacing up and down dramatically. “This is an outrage!” she cried. “I don’t know you and I don’t know what you’re talking about. You forced your way in my apartment and if you don�
��t leave right away I’ll call the management and we’ll see. Now—” she indicated the door—“get out!”
“Tone down, girlie!”
She stamped her foot. “Get out!”
He grabbed her. Her eyes popped and the flat of his hand stifled a scream. His hair stood up on his nape. He shook her.
“You fool! Pipe down!”
“Release the lady, Mr. Cardigan.”
Cardigan stiffened, twisted his neck. The reporter from the tabloid stood with his back to the door holding the small Webley and smiling with his shell-like teeth.
“Naughty, naughty!” he mocked.
Cardigan released the girl. She reeled away from him, bounced into the love-seat and lay panting and choking out hysterical little sounds.
“So,” grunted Cardigan, his big hands hanging at his sides, his face lowering.
“Just so, Mr. Cardigan. Observe the steadiness of this gun and act accordingly.”
“Cool, ain’t you?” Cardigan growled.
“As the proverbial cucumber.”
“N-now who are y-you?” cried the girl.
“Your benefactor,” said the little man. “I eavesdropped.” He smiled politely at Cardigan. “You’ll be going directly, won’t you, Mr. Cardigan?”
Cardigan felt the red color of chagrin flooding his face and neck. He felt suddenly oafish in the presence of this cool little man with the gun and the steady hand. He crossed to the velours divan, picked up his hat. He kept looking at the girl and backed up toward the door. In a mirror back of the divan he could see his own and the little man’s image. The little man was behind him, holding the gun, smiling.
Cardigan’s right elbow shot backward and upward. It caught the little man neatly under the chin and snapped his head back violently to the tune of clicking teeth. Cardigan jumped to one side and pivoted at the same time. His fist traveled a foot and smashed against the little man’s chest. The little man slammed against the wall so hard that he rebounded and ran into Cardigan’s short left. That straightened him momentarily. The gun dropped from his fingers. Glassy-eyed, he went down like a balloon suddenly deflated.
The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 1: 1931-32 Page 6
