The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 1: 1931-32

by Frederick Nebel

  Cardigan picked up the gun with one hand and with the other drew manacles from his pocket and lunged at the girl. The leveled gun cut her scream in the bud. He drew her from the divan, made her sit on the floor and manacled her to the unconscious little man.

  “Now be quiet,” he said huskily.

  He began searching the room. He turned out all the drawers in a high, narrow secretary. He found a bank book showing a deposit of twenty thousand dollars two weeks ago. He scanned letters. He ransacked the living room and the bedroom with a vengeance. In the bedroom he knocked over a vase of flowers into a pink waste basket. Cursing his clumsiness, he picked them up, and spotted a small card and a small envelope lying in the waste basket. The card had written on it: “Just a remembrance for a favor from you know who.” A plain white card such as florists supply. And on the accompanying envelope, printed in green, on the flap: “The Shelman Florist.”

  Cardigan pocketed card and envelope and went back into the living room. The girl was shivering.

  Cardigan said: “This guy here works for the daily tabloid, so look out for him. Why the hell don’t you tell me who cashed that check and get the benefit of silence? Do you want to have your name sprawled all over the papers?”

  “I w-wish you’d leave.”

  “You little scatter-brained fool, they’ll use you eventually! This guy is looking for the same information I am, but he wants to spread it in the tab.”

  “I—have nothing to say.”

  Cardigan shrugged. He bent down, unlocked the manacles and put them in his pocket. He threw the Webley on the velours divan, started for the door.

  “B-but this man!” cried the girl. “What am I going to do with him?”

  “Try ice bags or smelling salts. I wouldn’t care.”

  He opened the door, went out, down the corridor. He punched the elevator button and went down with the stony-faced negro.

  THE Shelman Florist Shop was in the small arcade of the Shelman Hotel. It was a small, chic cubicle with a floor of lozenge-shaped tiles. The attendant was a girl in a black jersey ensemble. She smiled brightly and Cardigan took off his hat, leaned on the black marble counter.

  “If I asked you in a nice way miss, would you tell me who sent flowers to Miss Roberta Callahan, 4111 Danneford, in the last day or two?”

  “Strange request, isn’t it?”

  “Strange as strange. How about it?”

  “I don’t know.” She tapped her foot and kept throwing little glances at him. “It’s unusual. I never had it happen before. I don’t know what to say. Who are you?”

  “By one look at my ugly map couldn’t you tell I was a detective?”

  “No.”

  “You’re being kind. I am.”

  She blushed. “Wait a minute.”

  She went to the rear of the shop, looked through a file of carbons. In a minute she returned. “I’d like to keep my name out of this,” she said.

  “Sure thing.”

  “They were ordered by a Mr. P.K. McHugh.”

  Cardigan went out finding the air a sweeter thing to breathe. P.K.—Pat—McHugh, the boss of the old party. Pat McHugh sending flowers to Roberta Callahan by way of remembering a favor she had done him! Pat McHugh, arch-enemy of the reform ticket and Mayor Evan Holmes—

  On his way back to the Flatlands Cardigan picked up three different newspapers, went to his room and read them. Last night’s murder was front-page stuff. The dead man had finally been identified as Carl Dorshook, alias Charles Dorn, alias James Matson. His record went back to Toledo, Chillicothe, Dayton, Pittsburgh and Baltimore. According to the police, however, he could not be linked up with any local mob, though apparently he had been. Theft of the mayor’s car enlarged the headlines and evoked a picture of the mayor in each paper.

  Cardigan tossed the papers aside and thought things out. He knew the police were not through with him yet. He knew they couldn’t hang anything on him but he also knew that they could make things uncomfortable for him. He wanted to protect himself, to steer away from any hint that he was working for the mayor.

  He went out and took a high-speed train out to a suburb five miles distant. From the telegraph office at the railroad station he sent a code message to the main office in New York. Translated, the message said:

  In a jam. Send a long wire. Make it a follow up on a fake case to kid the cops. Use your own judgment.

  He gave the address of the Hotel Flatlands. He suspected that Massey, the house dick, would get a copy of it, and he wanted it so. Because Massey would turn it over to Lieutenant Strout. He took the tram back to the city and at one o’clock he received a message.

  The girl may also be using the name of Sterrit. Her hair is dark red instead of brown and she was last in Cleveland, not Springfield, Ohio. She has stenographic ability and can also play on the harp. If there is any place of amusement there featuring a harpist look into it. She affects an English accent and has a complex for using big words such as amanuensis and gymnosophist. Her parents are desolated, so show results and spare no expense in obtaining same. If you feel you need the assistance of another operative let me know.

  George Hammerhorn,

  President,

  The Cosmos Detective Agency.

  Cardigan appreciated the message, excepting the nonsense about the harp. Certain that the mayor’s wire was being tapped, he walked six blocks to a Postal Telegraph office, wrote out a message and saw a messenger depart with it.

  He was in his room at two o’clock when Otto Shreiner, the mayor’s chauffeur knocked. Cardigan put him on a chair.

  “You can help your boss and me in a big way,” Cardigan said. “At midnight I want you to come here to my room and stay here for an hour while I’m out. The night telephone operator comes on duty at that time and she’s never heard my voice. At a quarter past twelve I want you to call her and ask her the time. At twelve-thirty I want you to call the Union Station and ask the best train to St. Louis tomorrow forenoon. At a quarter to one I want you to call the operator again and ask her to call you at eight in the morning. Got that straight?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Try to speak like me. You know, rough, as if you owned the place or something. Get me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You took a room here all right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What room and what name?”

  “I signed Henry Josephs of Indianapolis. Room 411.”

  “O.K. Stay in your room and use the stairs on the way down.”

  “I used them on the way up.”

  Cardigan slapped his back. “You’ll do, Otto!” Then he let the chauffeur out.

  The tabloid, Cardigan knew, had no political stand, no moral stand. It had a personal grievance against Mayor Holmes dating back to a day six months ago when the mayor, in a radio speech, had called it “a filthy, depraved rag”; this because two of the tabloid’s reporters had broken into the home of a woman whose daughter had been slain in a love tangle. In an effort to steal photographs and letters, they had bound the mother and precipitated a nervous breakdown. On the other hand, the Press-Clarion was politically definite in its stand against Holmes, carried considerable heft in the south and east ends, and obviously would jump at the opportunity to undermine the mayor’s character.

  Cardigan knew for certain that the tabloid was after that check. He had a strong hunch that Pat McHugh possessed the check. And he wondered if The Press-Clarion had a finger in the pie too. The murder of Dorshook was an accident—a bad one. It was reasonable to suppose that some mob in the extortion racket had got wind of the check, had wanted Cardigan for purposes of extracting definite information. Thus Cardigan had three distinct groups of enemies. And he was hampered by the police.

  Chapter Four

  Strong-Arm Stuff

  AT three o’clock he went down to the lobby for the afternoon editions. He was on his way across to the newsstand when he saw Strout and Blake come barging through the swing doors. He sensed tr
ouble. A savage doggedness was in Strout’s gait and manner and Blake wore a wily, bitter smile.

  “Now don’t give me any back talk,” Strout chopped off. “Over to headquarters with you.”

  “What’s this—another one of your bright moments?”

  Blake gripped Cardigan’s arm. “Ixnay on that back chat.”

  Cardigan looked disgusted. “Wait’ll I get my hat and coat.”

  Blake shook him. “You come right along!”

  “You go chase yourself. I get cold in the head easily.”

  Strout muttered: “We’ll go up with you.”

  In his room Cardigan took his time. “What have I done now?”

  “Snap on it!” Blake clipped.

  Cardigan picked up Hammerhorn’s wire. “Have you seen this?”

  Strout read it, looked up at Cardigan with his muddy eyes, looked down at the wire again. Then he tossed it on the bed and said: “Come on.”

  Cardigan said: “D’you know of any place around here featuring a harpist?”

  Blake took a crack at Cardigan’s ribs from behind. Cardigan, whirled, cursed, his eyes blazing, but Strout grabbed him from behind. Blake snickered and went to the door, opening it, and Strout marched Cardigan out. They went to headquarters in a taxi.

  In a dusty office on the second floor a uniformed cop sat in one chair and the negro elevator boy from the Danneford Avenue apartment house sat in another. His eyes got round when Cardigan looked at him and then Blake knocked Cardigan into a chair and chuckled loosely.

  “Is this the guy?” Strout said to the negro.

  “Yassuh.”

  “O.K.” Strout sat on the desk, dangled one leg and turned his horse face to Cardigan. His eyes got muddier, his face dark and dour. “Now spout, big boy.”

  Cardigan knew it was no time for horseplay. He saw in Strout a good cop, a hard one, short on speech and not a man to be kidded when he was in deadly earnest. Blake was a wind bag, but he could be nasty too in a mean, sly way. The presence of the negro was hint enough that something had gone wrong at the apartment house. More properly, in Roberta Callahan’s apartment.

  “Spout about what?” Cardigan asked.

  Strout indicated the negro with a nod. “This guy described you to a T. The minute he described you I knew it was you. You called on a girl named Roberta Callahan this morning. Right?”

  “Tell me some more.”

  “All right. When you came down the elevator the boy here says you looked red and mad and mean. What the hell were you doing in Roberta Calahan’s apartment.”

  “What proof have you I was in her apartment?”

  “There are eight other apartments on that floor. We asked the occupants in those apartments if they’d had any callers. They hadn’t.”

  “I thought the Callahan girl might have told you.”

  “She couldn’t. She’s in the hospital.”

  Cardigan felt a chill knife his spine. His brows bent. “Was I the only guy in her apartment?” he snapped.

  “The boy says you were the only man got off at that floor before ten-thirty. She went out at ten-thirty. At two o’clock she was picked up on a road near the Wabash, unconscious. She was beaten up. She has a black eye and a fractured jaw and we don’t know if she’ll live.”

  Blake shook his fist. “By cripes, Cardigan, you can’t pull off a thing like that!”

  Cardigan glowered. “You horse’s neck, do you think I’d beat up a woman? Outside of my personal habits in a job like that, d’you think the agency’d stand for it?”

  “Listen,” said Strout dully. “I don’t know you except from what I’ve seen of you. You’ve been handing us the run-around since you hit the city. Now what the hell were you doing in her apartment?”

  Cardigan folded his arms. “You read that wire, didn’t you?”

  “What of it?”

  “I was on a tip that the girl I’m tailing was seen in the company of Roberta Callahan. I went there and saw the Callahan girl. She got touchy because I busted up her sleep and we had an argument. I was mad because I thought she knew something about this girl and wouldn’t tell me. She finally threatened to call in the management if I didn’t take the air.

  “As I was about to leave a man called on her and I didn’t want to make a scene, so I left.”

  “Who was the man?” Strout asked.

  “How should I know?”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Kind of small, I remember. It was dim in the room and I didn’t bother to look at him close enough.”

  Strout looked at the negro. “I thought you said he was the only man got off that floor before ten-thirty?”

  “Yassuh.”

  Strout looked back at Cardigan. “Well?”

  “Well? Well, they have a staircase in that place, haven’t they?”

  “Why the hell should anybody climb six flights when there’s an elevator?”

  “How should I know? Either the dinge is lying or the guy climbed the stairs.”

  “I ain’t lyin’,” growled the negro.

  Blake chattered, “It’s this guy’s lying! This big bum right here! I know his kind! He can keep a straight face all he wants but he’s lying! He’s a lousy two-faced liar! There’s only one way we can make this baby talk!”

  Strout looked at Blake absently, looked back at Cardigan. Blake jumped on Cardigan where he sat, planted a knee in Cardigan’s stomach and gripped his throat with both hands. Cardigan wore a cold, crooked smile.

  “Spring it!” Blake rasped.

  Cardigan chuckled. “Nuts.”

  Blake struck him across the face with an open palm. The chair creaked. Cardigan jammed his hands under Blake’s armpits, rose mightily and sent Blake sprawling across the desk. The negro yelped. Blake fell to the floor, carrying a chair down with him. He came up spitting oaths and drawing his blackjack.

  Cardigan was set for him. Strout turned and blocked Blake, took the blackjack away from him and shook his head. Blake cursed. Strout shook his head and shoved Blake into a chair. Strout dropped the blackjack to the desk and looked dourly at Cardigan.

  A windy glitter was in Cardigan’s eyes. “You pipe this, Strout! I’ve got a lot of power behind me and a lot of money—enough of both to make you and this whole police department take water! And as for that fat-head partner of yours, he’ll get his jaw broken if he tries any rough stuff on me. I’m no heel! I’m no cheap back-alley gangster! I work for a salary and it’s damned small considering what I have to put up with. And unlike you guys I get no graft.”

  “Shut up,” said Strout.

  “I’ll shut up when I damned well feel like it! If you—listen, Strout—if you want to pinch me, go ahead and pinch me. You haven’t got a thing on me. You know damned well I wouldn’t beat up a woman. You pinch me and I’ll be out inside of three hours. And what can you pinch me for? Because some heel tried to take me for a ride? Because I called on a girl who later was taken for a ride? Damn it, I’ve got a reputation! A big one! And not in any hick town, either! And I should throw a fit over a couple of hicks like you and Blake? You’ll pinch me—yes, you will!”

  Strout colored. “Can’t a man ask you a question?”

  “Oh, that’s what you call it! That’s what you call busting into my hotel room last night! That’s what you call falling on me in a hotel lobby! That’s what you call dragging me down here like a red-hot! Oh, what big eyes you have, grandma!”

  He bent down, picked his hat off the floor, punched it back into shape and slapped it violently on his head.

  “I’m going out of here,” he said, “and I’d like to see you stop me. And I’d like to see you come around and bother me again. I’d just like to see you!”

  He yanked open the door, shot Blake a look of scorn and banged out.

  AT eleven that night Cardigan walked into the Flatlands lobby, bought some tobacco at the newsstand. He asked for mail at the desk. There was no mail, but another fake wire from Hammerhorn supplementing information on the “r
unaway girl.”

  “I have to work in my room tonight,” he told the clerk. “And I don’t want to be disturbed by anybody.”

  On the way across the lobby he ran into Massey.

  “I hear they had you down to headquarters,” Massey said.

  “Did you ever hear the story about a hotel detective who solved a great murder mystery?”

  “No.”

  “You never will.”

  Cardigan went up in the elevator, checked his wrist-watch with the elevator boy’s, said good night, and strode to his room. At a few minutes to twelve Otto Shreiner came in and Cardigan impressed on him the necessity of making the three telephone calls. Then he put on his coat, turned up the collar, and pulled his hat down low on his forehead.

  He went downstairs by the stairway. The stairway was enclosed, with a door on each floor, and was really a fire-escape. It terminated near the side entrance of the hotel, and Cardigan left unobserved and put his head into a brisk fall wind. The city had very little night life, and what it did have was not obvious. Cardigan used darkened store windows for mirrors and walked three or four blocks to make certain he wasn’t being followed.

  Roberta Callahan was still unconscious. Cardigan knew who had given her that beating—or pretty nearly knew: the little man from the tabloid. What Cardigan did not know was whether the beating had served its purpose and extracted information. Lester Sisson was the little man’s name. Had he given her the beating alone or had he hired strong-arm men?

  Cardigan hopped in a taxi and gave a West End street corner as his destination. Ten minutes later he got out and watched the taxi speed away. The wind clapped the skirt of his overcoat smartly. The sky had a wintry look, with tattered scud driving across the moon. The wind threshed in a big sycamore tree and telephone wires hummed. Cardigan got his bearings and moved up a wide, deserted street where substantial houses stood far back from the sidewalks.

  He crossed an intersection and kept on. He saw the tail-light of a parked car halfway up the block. He crossed to the other side of the street. He walked with long, purposeful strides. He looked across the street at the car because he heard its big powerful engine purring softly. There was something familiar about the car. It was a big touring, with the curtains up. He looked straight ahead. Fifty feet farther on he turned his head to the left and looked at the fieldstone house of Pat McHugh. It was dark.