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

by Frederick Nebel

  “You hear me!” Bradshaw growled. “You bungled one job, and you’re not going to bungle another. We can take care of Cardigan later. Get in there!”

  Sterns winced, turned and went into the other room. He closed the door. Bradshaw turned all the lights out but a bridge lamp. He motioned Cardigan to a chair. He put his gun in his pocket.

  “Remember,” he said. “No tricks.”

  He turned the radio off and went to the door. He unlocked it, turned the knob and pulled the door open.

  “Put ’em up, you!”

  Bradshaw stepped back and raised his hands. Cardigan jumped up, leaped across the room and threw the bolt on the connecting door. He heard Sterns’ fists pummel it. He pivoted and saw Bradshaw backing into the room.

  George Hammerhorn said, “Come on, Irish.”

  Cardigan came up behind Bradshaw, reached into Bradshaw’s pocket and took out the gun Sterns had taken from him. He crossed the room and picked up his hat, put it on. Bradshaw was speechless, dumbfounded. Cardigan walked to the door and stood beside Hammerhorn.

  He said, “All right, Bradshaw. I’ll give you till nine tomorrow morning to get out of town.”

  Bradshaw, red-faced, growled, “This man is not Lieutenant Bone!”

  “I’m as surprised as you are,” Cardigan said. “Remember, Bradshaw. Out of town by nine tomorrow morning…. O.K., George.”

  They backed out into the hall side by side, Cardigan with his left hand on the knob, his right holding his gun on Bradshaw. He closed the door.

  “Go ahead, George.”

  Hammerhorn walked to the stairs, and Cardigan backed toward them, watching the door. The door did not open. They went down the staircase, out the front door and into the street.

  “There’s a speak across the street, George. Let’s.”

  “Swell. God, but you’re a goof.”

  “You’ve got a hell of a nerve tailing me around.”

  “Have I?”

  “Yeah,” Cardigan said. “And I like it.”

  “You’re leaving on a job in Buffalo tomorrow.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “What the hell do you think I got you out of that tough spot for, because I like you?”

  Rogues’ Ransom

  Chapter One

  Snatch-Racket Stuff

  THE toll-bridge made a black fret-work against the setting sun. The wheels of the train clicked more leisurely and the Pullmans had a lazy side-to-side heave. The hills beyond the Ohio were burned brown and the river itself was flat and copperish.

  “Wheelburgh!” intoned the porter.

  Cardigan needed a shave and a clean shirt. The ride had been hot. His shaggy crop of hair was damp; it looped wetly around his ears, down his forehead. He shoved it back with his left hand, used his right to yank on a faded gray fedora. As he rose, towering, the porter came along with a whiskbroom.

  “Nix,” Cardigan said, and flipped him a quarter.

  He had a brown Gladstone that was new years ago. He picked it up and went down the aisle, reached the vestibule and pushed on into the next Pullman. Halfway down the aisle, a girl sitting alone dropped a handkerchief. Cardigan stooped, picked it up and thrust it into her outstretched hand.

  He muttered: “Not too close, Pat.”

  “O.K.,” she said.

  He rolled on to the next vestibule, set down his bag and drew a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. They were damp and crumpled and he lit one and it didn’t taste good. The Pullman sloughed over switches. The bong-bong of the loco’s bell was more resonant as the train moved past outlying freight sheds. A porter hauled bags into the vestibule, raised the metal leaf in the platform and opened the door. The train slid into the station and stopped.

  Cardigan swung down the steps, barged through a flock of red-caps and lugged his bag up the platform. Going into the waiting-room, a newsboy shouted in his face: “Read all the latest news about big kidnaping!”

  “Here, kid.”

  He bought a paper, dropped his bag, snapped the paper open and down with a loud report.

  POLICE FOLLOW NEW CLUES IN MILBRAY CASE

  “Cardigan, ain’t you?”

  Cardigan looked over the top of his paper; saw first the baggy knees of black alpaca trousers; next, the tarnished buckle of a broad belt that girded a generous paunch. The black alpaca coat was open and Cardigan followed the plain white shirt up to a black bow tie; then to a hard round chin, a humorless mouth, a scraggly mustache, a nose like a twist of rope—and China-blue eyes, steady, probing.

  He said: “Selling something?”

  “Advice, maybe.”

  Cardigan regarded him for a brief moment, then bent down, scooped up his bag and started past. A big freckled hand closed on his left arm. He looked at the hand and then at the man’s China-blue eyes.

  He said: “Take your advice and that hand, stranger, and go places.”

  The man didn’t say anything. He smiled humorously and turned back the lapel of his coat.

  “Badge ’n’ everything, huh?” Cardigan said.

  “And the name’s Michaels.” He lifted his thumb. “There’s an empty office down there. I want to talk to you.”

  Over Michaels’ head Cardigan saw Pat Seaward. She was standing just inside the platform entry holding a black patent-leather suitcase and watching him with a cool, quiet look. He made no gesture.

  “Sure,” he said to Michaels.

  THEY went down past the baggage room and entered a small cubicle of an office furnished with two chairs and a roll-top. The office was hot as an oven and smelled of coal dust. Michaels closed the door, turned sluggishly, took off his hard straw hat and mopped the sweatband with a handkerchief. His hair was dry, thick, reddish; it bunched down over a low forehead, overlapped the back of his collar. He fanned himself with his hat.

  “Now get this, Cardigan,” he said. “We know all about you. We know you’re an A-1 dick. But we don’t need you here. We don’t want you clowning around Wheelburgh.” He spoke in a throaty monotone, thick and harsh. “That train east is a nice one. Grab it and give New York a break. We don’t need you.”

  “Is that all?”

  “That’s all.”

  Cardigan picked up his bag again and started toward the door. Michaels put his broad bulk between.

  “Where you going?”

  “Hotel,” Cardigan said. “Bath, shave, drink, meditation.”

  “You can do all that on that train.”

  Cardigan dropped his bag and jammed his fists against his hips. “Copper, I’m going to a hotel. For a few days I’m going to live in your lousy city, not because I like it, but because I’ve got a job here. All this bright conversation on your part is just a lot of bushwa.”

  “It’s worth its weight in gold, Cardigan.”

  “I’m off the gold standard.” He picked up his bag and walked around Michaels.

  Michaels grabbed him. Suddenly his big freckled hands slapped Cardigan’s pockets.

  “Cut it!” Cardigan snapped.

  Michaels grabbed his wrists. “Where is it?”

  “What?”

  “Your rod.”

  “Fat-head, the Cosmos Agency has a license to operate in this state!”

  “The license don’t say anything about packing a gun.”

  Cardigan’s eyes drooped. “Right away you’re getting lousy, huh?”

  “Where is it?” Michaels nodded to the Gladstone. “Open that.”

  Cardigan eyed him darkly. Then he swore. Then he took a ring of keys from his pocket, selected one and opened the bag. He shoved his hand down beneath his linen, drew out a gun and hefted it in his palm.

  “I’ll take it,” Michaels said.

  “O.K.,” Cardigan said.

  He half-turned, hurled the gun. It smashed a window pane and went outside into the yard.

  Michaels reddened. “Tricks, eh?”

  “You started it.”

  Michaels had his gun out. “Come on. We’ll get it.”

  “
You want it. You go get it.”

  “Get outside, Cardigan!”

  Cardigan sat down. “Waving that rod don’t kid me, Michaels. You want my gun. You go out and get it. I know a frame when I see it and you’re trying to frame me.”

  Michaels went to the door, looked out. He called: “Hey, Brady!”

  A uniformed cop came down from the waiting room and Michaels said: “Watch this guy, Brady. He’s funny.”

  “O.K.,” the cop said, and twirled his nightstick.

  Michaels went on down the corridor, found a door near the end and shoved out into the yard. His heavy shoes crunched cinders. He reached the broken window, looked in and saw Cardigan sitting on the chair. Then he swung around and his eyes swept back and forth across the cinders. He saw no gun and he saw that there was no place where it might be concealed. The cinder field was flat and stretched to the nearest rails, fifty feet beyond. He cursed. He turned and saw Cardigan leaning in the window. He reddened. Then he crunched around on his heel and reentered the building, reentered the office.

  “Things get funnier,” he said, husky-voiced. Some of the red color of his face seemed to have gone to his eyes.

  Cardigan picked up his bag. “Well, I’ll be going.”

  Michaels’ face looked bloated. He stepped in front of Cardigan.

  “Get out, get out,” Cardigan said.

  Michaels stepped aside. The cop took this as a hint and lowered his nightstick. Cardigan swung out of the office and went hard-heeled toward the waiting room. He didn’t pause once. He went straight to the sidewalk and climbed into a taxicab.

  “The Wheelburgh,” he said.

  THE room was big, on the fifth floor. The hotel was on a grade. The fifth-floor window overlooked smoke-grimed roofs; and beyond these were warehouses, freight yards, and beyond all, the copperish river. There was a red haze in the air, the wake of a sun gone down. The hills made a bowl and in the center of the bowl lay the city; hot, smoky, unlovely.

  Cardigan had shaved and put on a fresh white shirt, but it made him look no less shaggy. He was good to look at in a hard male way. He was cramming a pipe when a knock sounded on the door.

  “Who’s it?”

  “Me, chief.”

  He let Pat Seaward in, closed the door, took her arm and led her to the window. He bowed, nodded: “Beautiful Ohio. Am I right or am I?”

  “Here’s your gun.”

  “What a pal, what a pal!”

  She took a flat black automatic from the sleeve of her light-weight blue coat and slid it into his palm.

  “How’d you know?” he said.

  “Well, I saw him take you in the office so I went around outside and crept up beneath the window. Incidentally, when you chucked the gun out, kind sir, you almost beaned me…. So I took it and said ‘abracadabra’ and—lo!—I vanished.”

  He muttered: “Little wonderful!”

  She began fanning herself with a newspaper, and stared blank-eyed at the Ohio. “What was the matter with that dick?”

  “Professional jealousy—maybe.” He bent his wiry brows, warped his mouth. “Or something screwy. He burned me up, that baby!”

  “Hear from Blaine and Stope?”

  “They got in on the 4:30 bus from Harrisburg. They’re in 209 awaiting orders. What are you in?”

  “One floor down—412. The dick tailed you here. I tailed him. He got your room number from the desk and then went away.”

  “O.K. Now you go down to your room, wash the coal dust off your face and catch up on your reading till you hear from me. I’ve got to see Milbray. Scoot, chile!”

  She smiled—that bright, certain smile he liked. Then she turned and went out, trim from white nape to bright patent-leather heels.

  He put on a hat and a coat and caught an elevator down. Twilight was in the hilly streets, and the air hung motionless like a warm invisible cloud. He walked around the block, looking over his shoulder at each turn. Then he hopped a taxi and gave an address.

  The cab climbed out of the heart of the city. The street lights were turned on and presently a broad avenue opened before the cab. It followed this for a quarter mile, turned right and followed a winding road past large, pretentious houses. It stopped before a stone gateway across which a heavy chain had been stretched. Cardigan got out, paid up, and went toward the chain. A short, leather-faced man appeared there.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Cardigan. Mr. Milbray’s expecting me.”

  “Oh, yeah. I’m the gardener.” He unhooked the chain. “Just follow the driveway.”

  It was a hundred yards to the broad veranda of the big white house. A dumpy old woman in a black dress and an Eton collar opened the door.

  “My name’s Cardigan.”

  “Oh, thank goodness you got here!”

  He entered and she took his hat and steered him across a foyer, through a music room to the entry of a library. A lean man with white hair and a drawn face rose from a divan, drew shut the folds of a silk dressing gown and knotted a rope at his waist. Cardigan crossed the soft carpet with his right hand extended. They shook and stood for a moment looking at each other in silence. The old woman backed out, closed the door quietly, and the white-haired man sat down, sighed, laid a hand on either knee and stared morosely at the carpet.

  “Please sit down,” he said.

  Cardigan turned, walked several paces, picked up a straight-backed chair and brought it over to face the divan. He sat down.

  “Let’s have it,” he said in a low voice.

  MILBRAY straightened, then leaned back in the divan and thrust his hands into his robe pockets. “She was abducted a week ago today. Right out of the garden.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Three. At four o’clock Mrs. Floom, the woman who let you in, called the nursemaid from the garden. My wife is ill. Her fever was high then and she’d fallen out of the bed and it took her nurse, Mrs. Floom and the nursemaid to get her back. Little hysterical, you understand. When the nursemaid returned to the garden, ten minutes later, Gloria was gone. There was a note in the carriage. It said: ‘Don’t tell the police. You’ll get a letter tomorrow.’ But the women were all upset. Mrs. Floom called the police. I wasn’t here, at the time. In Pittsburgh on business.”

  “Any of the help see anybody in the garden—before or afterwards?”

  “No. There are woods behind the house. Whoever kidnaped Gloria could have gone that way, easily, and not been detected. So the police came, and the newspapers, and at nine there was an extra on the streets. I got home at midnight. The police were still here, droves of them, and the newspapermen—all asking questions. I was shown the note the kidnaper left. I—I told the police to get out. I—you understand, I wanted to get my baby back!”

  “Naturally.”

  Milbray ground the heel of his hand on his knee, stared hard into space. “Next day—the letter. Twenty-five thousand dollars and instructions where to put it at nine that night. The police came again. The reporters again. It was like a madhouse. They wanted to know what arrangements had been made. I told them I would not tell them. The child was mine, the money mine, and all of it no affair of theirs.

  “Well, this is the fourth kidnaping in Wheelburgh in five months and the three others were successful. The administration has been booed from all quarters and the police are desperate. They’re determined to get the criminals in this case—even, I believe, at the risk of sacrificing my child. You see?” he cried out suddenly, shaking.

  “Go on.”

  “Yes—yes of course. Well, I kept the letter secret. I managed to get twenty-five thousand cash. I was instructed to take it to the abandoned Marsh farm on the Hillside Road and to place it under the right side of the front porch. An hour later I was to receive Gloria. The letter explained that she would be left in some doorway with a note pinned to her dress explaining that the finder should notify me.

  “Well, I started out for the Marsh farm. I placed the money under the porch and drove away. I ca
me home. I was barely in the house when the telephone rang. A man’s voice said: ‘Not this time, Milbray. You might just as well go back and get that money. We told you not to bring the cops along. The ante is up another ten thousand. You’ll get a letter in a day or so.’ So I drove back there and sure enough the money was under the porch. As I took it out half a dozen plainclothesmen jumped on me. They apologized. Imagine!” he cried. “Apologized!”

  Cardigan grunted. “I’ve had an example of this burg’s gumshoe,” he said. “The example was terrible…. So now what?”

  “The kidnapers have got bolder. They instructed me to engage an agent to act as intermediary. They have named an attorney to act as their representative. You probably know what procedure to go through. You will meet their agent, talk with him and arrange matters. I have the cash on hand.”

  “Who’s the shyster?”

  “His name is Aaron Steinfarb. He has an office in the Metals Building. But, remember—this is in strict confidence. The police seem to have acquired a grudge against me simply because I refuse to take them into my confidence.” He thumped his chest and his voice was clogged. “After all, my child is—my child!”

  Cardigan stood up. “Been bothered today?”

  “All day. If it’s not the police it’s the newsmen. Driving up. Ringing bells. Taking pictures.”

  “O.K.,” Cardigan grunted and held his hands out, palms down. “I’ve got two men assistants and a woman along. We’ll keep these grounds clean. I’ll see Steinfarb.”

  They shook and Cardigan strode into the foyer. Old Mrs. Floom got him his hat.

  “You’ll try your best, sir?” she pleaded.

  “Madam—yes.”

  She opened the door and there was a man standing there. “I’m Casey of The Morning Trib and—”

  “Oh, yeah?” Cardigan said.

  He moved. He caught Casey by the nape with one hand, by the seat of the pants with the other. He heaved once and Casey never touched a step on the way down. Cardigan walked down the steps and reached the gravel as Casey was rising.

  “You fell,” Cardigan said, unpleasantly. “It breaks my heart.”

  “What the hell’s the idea—”

  “Blow, sweetheart, blow!”