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

by Frederick Nebel

  She smiled gently. “I’m sorry I can’t help you.”

  She was tranquil now—too tranquil. Back of her almost beatific calm a load of emotion was suspended by a single thread. Her face was too white, her eyes too rheumy. She moved past Cardigan and went into the little dressing room. He stared at the open door through which she had gone. No sound issued. After a minute he took a few steps and reached the doorway.

  She was standing in the little cubicle. Standing with her hands clenched at her sides. Her lips puckered. Tears rolled down her face. Silent sobs ripped at her bosom and pain traced its way across her face. Her body began to shake. It trembled all over. Her legs trembled. Her mouth opened and the sobs raked out—hoarse and unimpeded now. Restraint tried to fight them back but emotion was greater. The sobs came faster and her lips quivered but she remained standing there, her heels together, her arms at her sides, her fists knotted.

  “O God… O God….”

  “Listen—”

  “O God….”

  “Please… I was kind of rough….” He made a half-hearted gesture with his hand: he ran the hand through his hair. He started toward her. He gave it up. He stood frowning not unkindly. He felt oafish and uncomfortable.

  “I’m a bum,” he growled.

  He turned and went back into the bed-sitting room, got his hat. He went to the door, opened it and passed into the corridor. He took the stairway down. As he reached the lobby floor he saw Mr. Ullrich enter the elevator. The indicator stopped at the fourth floor.

  Chapter Three

  Cardigan Walks Out

  AT noon Cardigan shouldered into the lobby of the Andromeda. Pat joined him and they went into the Coffee Shop for luncheon.

  “Tell me a story,” Cardigan said.

  “I popped over to Adrienne’s, the lingerie shop where the Monteclara woman models. I looked at some lingerie. I looked at it on Nita. She’s neat to look at and don’t think she isn’t. She uses an accent that she thinks is Spanish but she goes wrong on the Spanish J. I acted dissatisfied. I mentioned a kind of lingerie they didn’t have but they said they expected it any day. I asked them to send Nita to my hotel with some samples.”

  “So I suppose you’ll buy yourself a lot of undies now and charge it up to investigation expenses. You’re not a moron.”

  Pat winked. “You keep scowling that way and some day you’re going to scare me. I reasoned that if I could get her in my room I could lay some conversational traps. If necessary”—she raised a neatly plucked eyebrow—“I could get rough—in a feminine way. Please pass the tabasco.”

  Cardigan nodded, frowned hard at the table top. “The Carmory woman got under my ribs. There’s no buying her. She denied knowing White or anything about him—and then she busted out crying. I never saw a jane cry so hard. So I cleared out.”

  “Weakling.”

  “As I was leaving I saw Ullrich go up in the elevator. The elevator stopped at her floor. I parked across the street and Ullrich came out ten minutes later. The jane came out five minutes later and took a cab to the Congress Place Hotel. I pumped the house shamus there—Willard—and Carmory had an appointment with a dowager of the butter-and-egg trade. Manicure. She’s known at the hotel—and liked. She had appointments there that carry her over till 4:00 this afternoon.”

  “Just a poor woiking goil.”

  “Don’t be a damned cat. Helen Carmory’s a sweet jane that’s getting a raw deal but she’s dope enough to keep her trap shut. The only thing I’m afraid of is that she’ll bump off either White or the Monteclara—or maybe herself.

  “Senator Ackerman’s guts must hurt or he wouldn’t be sending his mouthpiece around trying to find out what I was doing at the casino last night. This laughing jackass Ullrich would be just the guy to throw a wrench in the whole shebang.”

  Pat said, “By the way, when I left the office I saw Ullrich talking at the corner of Sixth and Olive with a great old friend of yours.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Detective Sergeant Bush.”

  Cardigan laid down his fork and glared at Pat.

  She said, “Well, why look stilettos at me?”

  Cardigan cursed, took a savage poke with his fork at a chunk of meat. “He once acted as Senator Ackerman’s bodyguard. They’re like this.” He crossed his fingers.

  Pat leaned forward. “Don’t look. Bush is in the lobby now looking this way.”

  A man’s voice said, “Why, hello, Mr. Cardigan.”

  Cardigan stood up. “Hello, Mr. Reams… Miss Seaward, Mr. Reams.”

  He stood chatting for a few minutes with Reams, sat down when Reams departed and said, “Head of the Civic Service League. I once investigated a poverty case for him.”

  PAT left before Cardigan, and when Cardigan went into the lobby five minutes later Bush buttonholed him. Bush had two stock expressions; he could either look very hard and mean or he could assume a fixed smile brimming with suspicion. This time he wore the latter and poked Cardigan in the ribs.

  “Big business, eh, Cardigan?”

  “I thought there was a bad smell around here.”

  Bush poked Cardigan in the ribs again, stuck his blunt hard jaw close to Cardigan’s chest. Cardigan jabbed him in the stomach and Bush said, “Oomp!” and made a face.

  “You’re soft, Bush, like dough. Why don’t you drag your pants out of easy chairs once in a while?”

  Bush always resented any slur against his physical condition. His face got hard as granite. “You might be on a case, big boy, that’s going to get you a pain in the neck.”

  “You’re giving me a pain right now—and not in the neck.”

  “Yah!”

  “All right, make funny noises.”

  Bush took hold of Cardigan’s lapel. “I could give you some good advice, Cardigan. You think you’re pretty hot. You think that agency you work for is just about the most powerful in the United States. Don’t—” he prodded Cardigan’s chest—“think so.”

  Cardigan stared hard at him while taking two slow puffs on his cigar. “You get this, Bush. You tell a certain party that if anybody slams into my parade I’ll start the biggest political upheaval that you or anybody else ever saw. It’s damned funny that I can’t go about my business around here without having you master-minding all over the place.”

  “I’m just telling you—”

  “You could tell me that you’re the swellest cop on the force and I’d believe that too. In a horse’s neck I would! Go chase yourself around in circles till you get dizzy, fat-head.”

  Cardigan left the lobby and went through the doors like a blast of wind. For a minute he walked with a rolling, hard-heeled gait and anger crackled in every line on his weathered face. For a minute he was oblivious to the noontime crowd. His attitude toward Bush contained far more of disgust than genuine hatred. He carried a healthy contempt for Bush that a long series of petty interferences had evoked.

  When he walked into his office he found Miss Gilligan blindfolded and lashed to her chair. Miss Gilligan was a spinster. Cardigan said nothing. He crossed the small office, took off the blindfold, removed the bonds.

  “Oh,” exhaled Miss Gilligan. For a moment she looked dazed and slightly awry. Then she said, “Whew!”

  “Who did it?”

  “I was inside in your office going over some files. I didn’t hear anybody come in. Of course—between 12:00 and 1:00—I was the only one here. Then when I came in here that rag was pulled around my eyes. He must have been behind that bookcase. There was another one. They put me here and then I heard them going through the file cases. Then one of them came back and gripped me by the neck. He said, ‘Are there any more files?’ I said, ‘You better go. I just pressed this button under the desk with my knee. It notifies police headquarters.’ He got scared and called the other one and they went out.”

  The button she alluded to was once used to call her when the desk had been in Cardigan’s office. Now it was out of use.

  “Good girl,” Card
igan said. “You didn’t get a look at them?”

  “No. But one of them lisped.”

  Cardigan made a fist, rapped the knuckles slowly on the desk. “Somebody still has a guilty conscience. Busting into my office, eh? Take a look, Miss Gilligan, and see if anything’s been lifted.”

  Nothing had been taken.

  “Do you know who they are?” Miss Gilligan asked.

  “I think so.”

  “They ought certainly to be arrested.”

  Cardigan muttered, “I’ve got a better way.”

  AT 11:00 that night Cardigan was climbing into plain cotton pajamas when the telephone beside his bed rang. He crossed the room pulling up his pajama pants, knotted them at the waist as he sat down on the bed, and then picked up the telephone.

  “Yeah…. When?” His face became leaden; his voice dropped to a low note when he said, “I’ll be right over.”

  He got out of his pajamas, into undershirt and shorts. In three minutes he went down in the elevator to the basement garage, climbed in his old roadster and tooled it out. Where Lindell crosses Grand he swung right and went south on Grand, crossed the bridge and burned the wind. Five minutes later he pulled up at a dark intersection as two men were lifting a stretcher into an ambulance. A small crowd had gathered.

  Cardigan climbed out of the roadster and got a look at the white face on the stretcher. He turned around and Bush and Haas were looking at him. A couple of cops kept yelling at the crowd. Bush made a spitting sound and smoke popped from his lips.

  “What do you think of this, Cardigan?”

  Cardigan looked back at the ambulance. His brown face was expressionless. “What happened?” he said.

  A cop said, “I was up the block when I heard the shots. Three shots. I came runnin’ down here and there she was layin’ in the gutter. See the blood there? She was layin’ there. A guy says he saw a black sedan go past the next block, only another guy says it was a blue coupe and another guy says it was a dark red convertible. So you can tie that and whaddaya got? A knot. What I mean!”

  Cardigan looked at Bush. “How is she?”

  “How would you be with two shots in your belly and one through your leg?”

  The ambulance bell clanged. The ambulance roared away and the crowd lingered.

  Bush, wearing his sly leer, said, “Want a lift, Cardigan?”

  “I’ve got my own.”

  “Then we don’t need a taxi. Haas and me are going your way.”

  They crowded into the roadster beside Cardigan. Cardigan swung the car around and headed north. Bush was in the middle. He seemed pleased with himself. Cardigan didn’t say anything. He stared grimly through the windshield and exceeded the speed limit.

  Bush said, “Goddard went with her. She may come to and say something but the doctor says not a chance. Me, I’m kind of interested in you.”

  Cardigan remained silent.

  “Very,” Bush added.

  Cardigan looked like a man who was thinking hard. He said nothing. He seemed unaware that Bush was speaking. He reached Lindell and stopped at the corner.

  “You go east,” he said. “I go west.”

  Bush made his voice very soft, “Aren’t you going to drive us to headquarters?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Oh, yes you are.”

  Cardigan said nothing. He clicked into gear, swung right and drove east, slowly. Ten minutes later he pulled up in front of police headquarters.

  “Do come in,” Bush said.

  Cardigan remained silent for a while, then shut off the ignition and growled, “You ought to have your head examined and find out what you use in place of a brain.”

  There was a neat, quiet office on the third floor. Bush closed the door after Haas and Cardigan had entered and then brushed his hands lightly together. He went to a desk and called the hospital.

  “I see…. Yes, stay there anyhow, Goddard, until it’s all over.”

  HE hung up, relit his dead cigar and sat on the edge of the desk, swinging one hard, stubby leg. Haas hadn’t spoken yet. He watched Bush in a manner that implied he would act according to Bush’s wish.

  “Now what’s behind it?” Bush said. He was at ease. He overdid the fact that he was at ease.

  “You’re the whole police department, it seems. And you ask me?”

  “You knew her, Cardigan. I tailed you this morning when you went to that apartment house. I asked the woman at the desk who you went to see. She told me. I didn’t think it was anything, so I left. We found her handbag tonight. The names were the same.”

  “You didn’t see anybody else go in after me, did you?”

  “I didn’t hang around.” Bush narrowed one eye. “Who else?”

  “I don’t know. I just thought somebody else might have been hanging around.”

  “Who bumped her off, Cardigan?”

  Cardigan looked surprised. “Who bumped her off! How the hell do I know?”

  Bush stuck his jaw out and came up close to Cardigan. “I want to know who put the finger on Helen Carmory.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You called on her this morning, damn you!”

  “I was in her apartment about fifteen minutes. When the murder was pulled off I was home. You know that because you phoned me and I was there. Have I denied that I was at the Carmory place?”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “I knew Helen Carmory. I was out to Phil Gould’s casino last night and Helen Carmory fainted on the veranda upstairs. I happened to be there. I picked up some things and stuck ’em in my pocket. I forgot to give them back. I gave them back this morning. Start working on that.”

  Bush forgot his smile. He grated, “I don’t believe you.”

  “That doesn’t knock me over.”

  Bush took a handful of Cardigan’s vest. His face worked. “I’ve got enough of you, Cardigan! I’ve got just about enough! Since you came to this city three years ago you’ve been handing me a kick in the slats every chance you got! By God Almighty, this is one time when you ain’t—”

  Cardigan barely moved, yet he straight-armed Bush in the chest and Bush went reeling backward, knocked over a chair and landed on his back, his short legs flying. Haas looked sour and leaped in front of Cardigan with a blackjack. Red color was flooding Cardigan’s face, his mouth was crooked and a little open, showing set teeth.

  Bush scrambled up, his trouser legs wrinkled, the cuffs halfway up his lower legs showing his socks. His eyes popped. He had his blackjack out and his lips were sputtering wetly.

  “You—you—you damned son-of-a—” he choked.

  Cardigan’s body engulfed Haas like a tidal wave and Haas went down. Cardigan’s fist whipped in a short chopping blow. It caught Bush on the jaw and Bush slammed against the wall. Haas was up, off balance, but he took a wild swing with his blackjack and glanced a blow off Cardigan’s head. Cardigan went down.

  Bush rubbed his jaw and hefted his blackjack and Cardigan got up and said, “There’s one word I don’t like to be called.”

  The three of them stood breathing heavily.

  The telephone rang. Bush answered it. When he hung up he said, “She just died. Never came to. Now, Cardigan—”

  “Shut up!” Cardigan’s voice carried a whip. “I told you I was at her apartment this morning. I told you why I went there. That’s all I’m going to tell you and if you think you can hold me on that then you’ll have to rewrite the criminal code.”

  Bush snarled, “I’ll hold you over night and take a chance on that. I’ll hold you over night. I’ll hold you for striking an officer! Ha! How’s that?”

  “Fast but not fast enough,” Cardigan shot back at him. “I can pull out of this. Right now! And I can make you take it through the nose!”

  “Yeah?” snarled Bush.

  Cardigan pointed to the phone. “Get Ullrich down here.”

  “Get—” Bush stopped short, gasped. The room suddenly became silent. Then Bush spluttered, “Why, dam
mit—”

  “Get Ullrich,” Cardigan hammered out. “He’s not my friend. He’s yours. But get him.”

  “To hell with you. You can’t bluff me.”

  “I’m not bluffing. Get him. Get him or get Inspector Lewiston in here and I’ll break up this little clique of yours. If you’re going to pinch me because I called on Helen Carmory this morning then, by cripes, you’re going to pinch Ullrich!”

  “That’s a stinking lie!”

  “Get Inspector Lewiston and inside of half an hour he’ll have Ullrich down here. I asked the woman at the apartment house what apartment Ullrich asked for. She said Helen Carmory’s. In just three seconds you telephone Lewiston or I walk out that door.”

  When Cardigan walked out Bush looked dumbfounded.

  Chapter Four

  “How Much Do You Want?”

  IT took five minutes for Cardigan to reach his office on foot. The building was dark. He turned on a light and began pacing up and down heavily. He kept combing his shaggy hair with his big brown fingers. There was a sharp, concentrated look in his eyes.

  Presently he sat down and called a telephone number. After a while the operator said, “Party does not answer.” He hung up and sat drumming his fingers, nibbling at his lip, staring hard into space. He made another call.

  “Sorry, Pat…. Yeah. I’m down at the office. How’s to run down? As soon as you can powder your nose.”

  Pat was one woman in a thousand. Fifteen minutes after the phone call she walked in. She looked wide awake, neat, comely. She wore a droll smile that always hinted that the world was a funny old place but all right so long as you took it as a joke.

  “At this hour you get me down to your private office.”

  “Helen Carmory was bumped off.”

  She said nothing, but her smile vanished.

  Cardigan slapped the desk. “Bumped off! Out on the South Side. About 11:00. She lived about half an hour. Never came to. Bush flagged me over there and then hauled me to H.Q. and began acting up.”