The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 4: 1935-37

by Frederick Nebel

  Walter

  Cardigan muttered: “It’s almost the same as the one Keenan found—”

  “Except this one’s finished.”

  CARDIGAN threw it on the desk, blew out a breath, wagged his shaggy head. “If that isn’t a suicide note….” He stood up, towering darkly, and ground the fist of his left hand into the palm of his right. “I suppose,” he muttered in a low, savage voice, “I deserve whatever I get. I go around shooting my mouth off and bragging how bright I am. I swear on oath that I believe Symonds is innocent and then the punk pulls a trick like this and leaves me holding the bag—”

  He stopped short. His eyes widened and then narrowed again and he spun and pointed at Sheffield. “The bag. The money. The seventy thousand that was stolen—” He stopped short again and planted his hands on the desk, leaned on his braced arms. “If Symonds snatched the dough, he had an accomplice. The woman—”

  “You chucking over the idea that Mulvaney took it?”

  Cardigan took his hands off the desk, inhaled deeply and strode to the window, his face flushed. He ground out: “I don’t know what to believe. My hunch feels shaky. I had it all figured out that Symonds didn’t—couldn’t—have committed suicide. Now you drag in that letter, with its famous last line—‘I feel it’s the only way out and I hope it won’t hurt too much.’ Cripes, I must be losing my grip.”

  Sheffield stood up. “Take it easy, kid.”

  Cardigan whirled. “Take it easy! If Pomeroy sues us for the false arrest of Mulvaney—and he will—who’ll have to pay?” He deflated his chest, stared sinisterly at the letter, said in a low, somber voice: “Give me that letter. What’s the best way to get to Strafford?”

  Sheffield put his hand down on the letter, said in a quiet lazy voice: “If she was mixed up in it with Symonds, your getting the money back now will only double the case against you when Pomeroy brings action in Mulvaney’s behalf.”

  Cardigan came over to the desk, his face very dark. “Take your hand off it, Sam. The bank hired us to track down seventy thousand dollars that was supposed to have been snatched from their man Symonds. Right now, that’s all I’m interested in.”

  “Why stick your head in the lion’s mouth?”

  “It’s in already. I might as well jump in the rest of the way. Take your hand off.”

  “This gets funnier and funnier. Pomeroy will wind up by having you in court testifying against yourself. No one will know who’s on whose side or why. Ah, well….” He stepped back, shrugged and looked at his fingernails.

  Cardigan took letter and envelope and thrust them into his pocket. “How’s the best way to get out there?”

  “Take an S trolley on Center. I could kick myself in the slats for showing you that letter.” He mooned over to the window. “You look intelligent, and at times you act intelligent, but I guess you’ve just been giving imitations all along…. Ah—Beaver!”

  Chapter Four

  A Couple of Quick Ones

  STRAFFORD was a suburb of Portbridge, five miles from the center of the city by high-speed trolley. Three fourths of the run was through fields, woods or the back yards of factories. Cardigan got off at Main Street, Strafford, and asked the way to Spruce. He walked away from the center of the village, bending his head into a rowdy, blustering wind. Spruce Street was on the edge of the village; its houses were scattered through fields and second-growth timber.

  Number 92 was a rakish, shingled bungalow surrounded by weeds, willows and a few poplar trees. There was no other house nearby. Cardigan approached the veranda by way of a plank walk, climbed the steps and rang the doorbell. The wind whistled about the veranda and among the young trees; it flapped the skirt of Cardigan’s coat and the brim of his hat.

  There was no answer and he rang the bell again and after a minute’s wait he rang it a third time but still there was no answer. Then he noticed a piece of paper sticking from the black tin mailbox beside the door. He pulled it out and saw written on it—Don’t leave any mail today. I’ll be away. I’ll call for it late this afternoon. He frowned, replaced the note in the box and idled up to the front windows, tried them. They were locked. He went around to the back of the house and finally forced a basement window and climbed in.

  A stairway led him to a small, neat kitchen. A few dishes had been washed and stood on the drainboard beside the sink. He opened a swing-door and stepped into the living room, in the center of which was an easel with a canvas showing a partly finished landscape. Paints and an artist’s palette lay on a small table.

  He went to a desk and rifled the drawers; found paid electric and gas bills and bills for laundry and food. Among these papers he found a snapshot of a girl and a short note from Symonds.

  Dear Laura: I’m afraid they’ll find out and if they do, God knows what will happen. I think even now they’re shadowing me and I don’t want to make any phone calls to you. Write me what you think I ought to do. I’d better use a false name. Send it to James Bronson, care of Postmaster, Station B, Portbridge. I’ll call for it.

  It was dated two weeks before and as Cardigan finished reading it his face soured, his big shoulders sagged. The irony of the whole business lay in that the more he found out, the more Pomeroy’s case against the agency gained.

  He replaced everything in the desk but the note and the snapshot of the girl, which he pocketed. He left the house by way of the cellar window and strode grimly back to the center of the village, caught a trolley to Portbridge and sat with his hat tipped low over his eyes and his arms folded on his chest.

  HE got off and went around to his hotel and was stretching his long legs across the lobby when the clerk at the desk called him and said: “A young lady was in looking for you, Mr. Cardigan.”

  “Yeah? When?”

  “About an hour ago. I told her you were in and out all the time and suggested that she wait.”

  Cardigan half turned, saying: “She here now?”

  “Well, I don’t see her.”

  The bell captain strolled over and said: “That lady that was looking for you, Mr. Cardigan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Some man went out with her.”

  “When?”

  “Oh, about ten minutes after she came in. He was in here before she came. I saw them going out together.”

  “What’d he look like?”

  “Well, maybe as tall as you, maybe just a little shorter. But thinner. Derby and blue Chesterfield and gray spats. About thirty, I guess. Good-looking fellow. Oh, yeah, he had a white silk scarf on too. Snappy.”

  Cardigan said: “The woman—what’s she look like?”

  “She was pretty young and good-looking and she had on a powder-blue overcoat, kind of full, with a big belt and big lapels. And a blue béret, only it was darker blue. She wasn’t very tall. She seemed very excited.”

  “Look like this?” Cardigan said, producing the snapshot he had taken from the bungalow.

  “Yup. Yes, sir—that’s the face.”

  Cardigan turned on his heel and went out to the sidewalk and asked the doorman: “Did you see a girl in a light blue overcoat come out about an hour ago with a fellow?”

  “Lemme think…. Yes, I guess I did.”

  “’D they take a cab?”

  “No. They walked”—he pointed down the street—“that way.”

  Cardigan turned away with a look of deep frustration and went up to his room to get his wallet, which he had forgotten earlier that morning. Plenty was happening, he ruminated bitterly, but there was not one thing that jibed with another. Nothing made sense. No matter in which direction he turned, there was a stone wall. He went round and round the room burning up cigarettes and minute by minute working himself up to a high pitch of nerves.

  After a while he got fed up with this and banged on his hat and went down to the lobby. He said to the clerk: “If that woman comes in again, tell her to wait. Tell her to wait till I get back—no matter if she has to wait all day.”

  He wheeled away from
the desk and almost crashed into Lieutenant Keenan.

  Keenan took a long thin cigar from his mouth and said: “What woman, Cardigan?”

  “What do you do, hide in the furniture?”

  Keenan’s thin white face was expressionless, his cold blue eyes steady. He wore a stiff, pearl-gray fedora smartly over one ear; his thick silvery hair swept dashingly over the other. “You know, don’t you, that we were wondering about a woman? A woman named Laura. Symonds’ woman.” His voice was low, a dull monotone, and his lips hardly moved.

  “I was talking about another woman,” Cardigan snapped, and swung out of the lobby.

  Keenan caught up with him outside and said: “Which way you going?”

  “Whatever way you’re going, Keenan, I’ll go the opposite.”

  “Who’s the woman?” Keenan asked, never raising his voice but making it hard and relentless, anyhow.

  “A friend, a friend. My God, can’t I have a woman call on me without you trying to make something out of it?”

  “The way you sailed out of that elevator and spoke to that guy at the desk, I think I have reason to make something out of it. Come on, wherever you’re going, I’ll go along with you and we’ll talk it over.”

  “I’ve got nothing to talk over, bright eyes. And I’m not walking with you.” Cardigan swung off down the street but he knew that Keenan followed, he could hear Keenan’s quick steps right behind him.

  “My legs are as long as yours, Cardigan,” Keenan called.

  CARDIGAN said nothing, nor did he look back. He cut through Albion Street to Center and when he reached Center, heavy motor traffic was stopped against a red light. Cardigan lingered on the curb and Keenan came up and stopped beside him, saying: “We may as well cross while the light’s with us.”

  Cardigan stared hard at him. “I don’t like you, Keenan. Maybe it’s because of that hat you wear.”

  “What’s the matter with the hat?”

  “It’s cheap—like you.”

  “Yeah? I’m not cheap, you lug—and the hat’s a Buscan.”

  “I’d have to see that to believe it.”

  Keenan took his hat off and said: “Take a look at it.”

  Cardigan took hold of the hat, looked at the sweatband and said, “Well. I guess you’re right,” and then turned and scaled it down the sidewalk.

  Keenan’s lips ripped apart: “Why, you dirty—” But he stopped and made a dash after his hat.

  Just as the lights changed, Cardigan plunged across wide Center Street and the heavy motor traffic closed in behind him. Keenan, who had recovered his hat, was stranded on the other side. Cardigan strode hard and fast up Center, through the Mitchell Arcade, out into Pope Street, up Pope to Fleming and eventually back to Center by a roundabout route.

  It was noon when he walked into Sheffield’s office. As he entered, a small, bearded, sorrowful man was leaving. When Cardigan and Sheffield were alone, the attorney wagged his fuzzy head regretfully.

  “I hated to turn him down,” he sighed.

  “Who?”

  “The old gentleman who just went out. He’s the one doesn’t like Napoleon. Let me tell you about it—”

  Cardigan growled impatiently: “Cut the comedy, Sam!” He lit a cigarette and flung the match into a tray. “I was out to Strafford but she wasn’t in. I crashed the house and found another note and I took away a snapshot of a good-looking gal.” He tossed the note and the snapshot on the desk. “I came back to the hotel and they told me a gal was looking for me and the gal that was looking for me is the one in the snapshot.”

  Sheffield read the note, made a wry face. “You sure can collect evidence against yourself, fella. Why the hell didn’t you tell Hammerhorn to pay the forty grand and call it quits? You’re sinking deeper and deeper.”

  “After the gal waited a while in the lobby, she left with a guy. She’s Laura Harrod or God didn’t make little green apples.”

  “And if she is, what? If she’s Laura Harrod, and if Laura Harrod was a confidant—or an accomplice—of Symonds, why the hell should she be waiting to see you? It’s like saying two and two are five—or six—or eight; all the answers are wrong.” He leaned back, pulled at his lip, mused aloud: “Maybe she meant to proposition you—and had the guy along to cover her in case you got tough.” He tapped the note which Cardigan had given him and said: “This, Jack, is more incriminating than the one I found in Symonds’ room. Symonds was scared, nervous and—” He stopped short, leaned forward. “You know, Jack, I might be right. Maybe the girl did want to proposition you. Maybe she’s nervous and has the dough and wants to either cut with you or give it all back to you. People do screwy things when they’re scared.”

  Cardigan said abruptly: “If she doesn’t try to get me again this afternoon, I’m going back to Strafford—to the bungalow. She’s bound to show up there.”

  “I’ll go with you. We’ll take my car.”

  “You stay the hell home.”

  “No kidding, Jack. Besides, I own a lot out there I’ve never seen. Won it in a crap game one night. We can play Beaver on the way out.”

  THE woman did not appear again and, at dusk, Sheffield and Cardigan started out in a long-hooded roadster with a slanting windshield and beveled wings. It was a custom-built Bentley, not so fast on the pick-up but a wildcat on the straightaway.

  They did the five miles to Strafford between smokes and as they were rolling through the village Cardigan said: “We don’t want to park in front of the house, Sam.”

  “Why?”

  “Habit. Go out this road and when you come to the end of it park and douse your lights—all of them.”

  Sheffield parked beneath a big maple and when they had got out he looked at the street signs and said: “That looks like the lot I won.”

  “Where?”

  “That marshland.”

  Cardigan pointed. “We go this way.”

  They walked up Spruce Street past vacant fields, past one house and then another and then past a stretch of woodland. Beyond the woodland, the bungalow was a dark blur in the shadows. Not a single light shone.

  They walked as far as the veranda but instead of climbing it Cardigan led the way around to the rear. He opened the cellar window and said: “Go ahead, drop down.”

  Sheffield said, “I don’t like this a bit,” but backed into the opening and dropped to the cement floor.

  Cardigan followed, pulled the window shut and snapped on his flashlight. He led the way across the basement to the stairs and up to the kitchen. He stopped and Sheffield stopped close beside him. There was no sound but the wind in the trees and in the long grass outside. Presently Cardigan moved into the living room, then to the bedroom door. The bedroom was empty and the bed had not been slept in.

  “I guess she didn’t come home,” Sheffield commented.

  “We’ll wait. Don’t turn the lights on. Find a chair and sit down and I’ll turn out the flashlight.”

  They sat in the darkness, Cardigan smoking his pipe and Sheffield smoking a cigar. The room was pitch-black, for there was no moonlight, no nearby street light. The wind whined in the eaves and sometimes the windowpanes shook and the room was chill. The red end of Sheffield’s cigar brightened and dimmed as he inhaled, exhaled. Half an hour passed.

  He said drowsily: “I told him what he ought to do, he ought to go to a collector, or someone who made a specialty of that sort of thing.”

  “Who?”

  “The chap who doesn’t like Napoleon. You see, Jack, he—”

  “Sh!”

  “Huhn?”

  “A car.”

  “Where?”

  Cardigan stood up. “Out front. Can you see me?”

  “Just about.”

  “O.K. There’s a closet in the back of the room. Come on.”

  Moving, he took hold of Sheffield’s arm and steered him through the darkness. He opened the closet door and said, “Get in,” and when Sheffield went in, Cardigan crowded in after him and closed the door. He spa
t into his pipe, putting it out. “Step on your cigar, Sam,” he said, and Sheffield dropped his cigar, ground it beneath his heel.

  THERE was dead silence, and then, in a few minutes, Cardigan heard a key grate in a lock, heard a door creak. The sound of footfalls came to his ears and the creak again and the sound of a door being closed. A moment later he could tell, by the crack above the door, that the living-room lights had been turned on.

  He heard footsteps moving about the room; they faded, went into another room; came out again and drew very close and then went away. For several moments there were no footsteps but there were other sounds—as if a chair were moved, a drawer opened. Then silence. Then the sound of the chair scraping again and after this the footfalls, wandering about the house, drawing near and then going away and then suddenly coming very near. Too near. Right outside the closet door.

  Abruptly the door was pulled open and quite as abruptly Cardigan drew his gun and held it leveled, stomach high.

  A short ruddy man in a tweed overcoat and a blue fedora stepped back, his eyes and mouth springing wide, his hands already half raised. Behind him, in the middle of the room, another man was lifting a cigarette from a brass humidor. He dropped it and his right hand darted toward his coat pocket.

  “Don’t,” said Cardigan, stepping from the closet.

  “Where’d you come from?” muttered the man in the tweed coat.

  Cardigan said: “You took the words right out of my mouth.”

  The man in the middle of the room had drawn in a breath and was still holding it; his black eyes were sharp, hard, and his hands pressed against his overcoat pocket. He wore a blue overcoat, a derby, a white silk scarf.

  Cardigan said: “You don’t live here, do you?”

  “Do you?”

  “No. So we start from scratch. Except you’re one up on me—you came in with a key.”

  “Maybe I live here.”

  “Maybe the monkeys have no tails in Zamboanga,” Cardigan said. “Reach into your right-hand coat pocket with your left hand and take out that gun and drop it on the couch.”