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

by Frederick Nebel

  The man’s right hand started down.

  “Your left hand!” Cardigan snapped.

  The man dropped the automatic on the couch and Cardigan said to Sheffield: “Pick it up, Sam, and make sure the safety’s not on.”

  Sheffield strolled over and picked up the gun and Cardigan turned on the tweed-coated ruddy man and disarmed him of a short-barreled revolver, then gave him a rough shove, saying: “Stand over there with your pal.”

  The ruddy man looked scared and harassed and began to breathe asthmatically; but the other, the tall debonair man, remained cool and tight-faced and sinister.

  Cardigan walked heavily across the room and stopped in front of them, his eyes wide-open and hard like brown marbles and a truculent twist to his mouth. He looked straight at the tall debonair man, said: “Well, where’s the woman?”

  “What woman?”

  “The woman gave you the key to her front door. Laura Harrod.”

  The tall man shrugged. “Never heard of her.”

  Cardigan slapped his face hard and said: “Quit clowning.”

  THE tall man’s eyes shone viciously and his smooth lips curved into a dangerous half-smile, then grew straight again and tightened against his teeth as his eyes narrowed to steady shining pinpoints.

  Cardigan turned on the other. “Well, how about you?” he ripped out.

  The ruddy man ducked and held his hand against his cheek. “Geez, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he cried.

  Cardigan turned back to the other and said sententiously: “You know what I’m talking about. You were in the lobby of my hotel this afternoon and you left with Laura Harrod. Now don’t deny it. You were seen leaving with her. Now where is she?”

  The tall man regarded him levelly. “Did you see me?”

  “No, but I know someone who did.”

  “He’s a liar.”

  Cardigan’s smile had no mirth in it. “How do you know it was a he?”

  The tall man’s eyes wavered for a split instant.

  “Sam,” Cardigan said over his shoulder, “frisk this guy.”

  Sheffield put his gun in his pocket and went patiently, carefully through the tall man’s pockets. On the table he laid a thick roll of bills, some loose change, fountain pen and pencil, a ring containing several keys, a pigskin wallet, and a dozen cartridges.

  “Now the other one, Sam.”

  The ruddy man’s pockets produced much less. Each had an automobile operator’s license and Sam Sheffield said, in a bored voice: “The little guy is Patrick Shannon and the other lad is called Stephen Rewell. Both at the same address—Four Hundred Four Clive Street.”

  “Hold your gun on them, Sam, till I look over that junk.”

  Cardigan found that the roll of bills, which had come from Rewell’s pockets, amounted to twenty-one hundred dollars, in fives, tens, fifties and one-hundreds—mostly one-hundreds. He sniffed, smelled the money and for a minute looked fixedly up at Rewell. Rewell’s wallet gave up a lot of old name-cards—among them a packet of ten engraved with Tully Pomeroy’s name. There were a snapshot of Rewell, an automobile insurance card, a contract for a trunk in storage, a couple of blank bank-deposit slips, a hunting license.

  Cardigan stuffed everything, both Shannon’s and Rewell’s, into his overcoat pockets and said: “O.K., Sam. We’ll take these guys to where they live.”

  Rewell muttered darkly: “You can’t arrest us. What’s the charge?”

  “Arrest you?” Cardigan laughed roughly. “You don’t think you birds are going to get off that easy, do you? Pick up your feet. We’re going to your house.”

  Rewell rasped: “I tell you—”

  “You’ll tell me plenty, Rewell. Close your trap and get going.” He shoved him across the room, shoved Shannon after him and said: “Turn out the lights, Sam.”

  Sheffield turned out the lights and as he did so Cardigan snapped on his flashlight. He pushed and shoved the two men out onto the veranda, down the steps and across to their sedan.

  “You drive, Rewell,” he said. “You sit beside him, Shannon. I’ll ride in back and if you two clown around on the way in I’ll bop you…. Sam, you ride on the running board far as your car, then follow us in.”

  “You think you can handle them, Jack?”

  “What are you trying to do, kid me?”

  Chapter Five

  Beaver!

  CLIVE STREET was on the borderline between midtown and the West End and Number 404 was a stucco apartment house of six floors.

  Cardigan climbed out of the sedan and then opened the front door and said, “Get out.” His hand was in his overcoat pocket. As Rewell and Shannon got out Sheffield drove up and parked directly behind the sedan. He joined Cardigan and then marched Rewell and Shannon into the lobby. There was a small desk behind which stood a bespectacled thin man of many years.

  “Oh, Mr. Rewell,” he called out, holding up a slip of paper. “Gentleman’s been trying to get you on the phone. Called about half a dozen times. Didn’t give his name but wants you to call this number as soon as you get in.”

  Rewell, his face expressionless, took the slip of paper from the clerk’s hand and thrust it into his pocket without looking at it. Then he changed his mind and glanced at it. His lips tightened and he said, “If he calls again, tell him I’m not in.”

  “Oh. Oh, all right, sir.”

  Rewell strode toward the elevator and Cardigan and Sheffield crowded both men as they got in. Going up, Sheffield said in a pleasant voice: “Damned decent of you, Mr. Rewell, to invite us up. I for one appreciate it no end.”

  Rewell stared ahead, said nothing, and they all got out at the fifth floor. Rewell’s apartment was spacious, comfortable, and as they filed in he took off his overcoat and hat, flung them on a divan.

  He poured a drink, said: “Well, now that you’re here, go on with the comedy.” He downed the drink sullenly, smacked down the glass. “And I’m not inviting you to a drink.” He sat down, stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit up.

  Shannon, still very uneasy, sat on the very edge of the most uncomfortable chair in the room.

  Cardigan poured a drink anyhow, threw it down his throat and said: “Help yourself, Sam.”

  “Thanks,” said Sheffield, and took one too.

  “Keep these guys covered while I look the place over.”

  Cardigan disappeared into another room; looked in the bathroom, the pantry, all the closets, and reappearing, said: “Well, where is she, Rewell?”

  Rewell said: “You going back to that again?”

  “I never left it.” Cardigan emptied his overcoat pockets onto a table, again smelled the roll of bills curiously. He stood for a full minute staring down at them, then picked up the storage contract and studied it. He sat down and looked at the bills more closely, one at a time, and wrote down numbers. Then he went to the telephone and called the manager of the bank who had hired him to track down the seventy thousand.

  “This is Cardigan,” he said. “I wish you’d do a favor for me…. Well, that’s swell of you. I wish you’d call police headquarters and ask for Captain Straub, of the bank squad. I can’t because they’d be on my neck in a minute. Ask him to look in his files and check up on some currency. I’m mainly interested in a few one-hundred-dollar bills. Got a pencil and paper? I’ll give you the serial numbers. They run in sequence.” He told off the numbers and then said: “This might not be recent. In fact, I don’t think it is…. Yeah. Call me back at Clive Two Twelve,” he finished, and hung up.

  SHEFFIELD scratched the fuzz on his head perplexedly. Shannon looked bewildered and Rewell’s face was dark and stony, his hard narrowed eyes fixed steadily on Cardigan. Cardigan waved the storage contract, said: “What’d you put in storage two months ago, Rewell?”

  “It’s none of your business—but it happens to be a lot of books and some pictures.”

  Cardigan frowned and thrust the storage contract back into his pocket.

  Rewell said in a snarly voice:
“I don’t suppose I’m allowed to make a phone call, am I?”

  “It all depends. If you want to phone the woman and tell her to come around, swell.”

  Rewell said tartly: “I want to phone Circle One Thousand.”

  Sheffield looked sharply at him, then at Cardigan.

  Cardigan smiled bleakly. “Police headquarters, eh?”

  Rewell stood up with a black, angry scowl. “Yes, damn you, police headquarters! I’m tired of this horseplay! If I’m going to be pushed around, I want to know why! Get the cops over here! Go ahead! Do you think I’m afraid of the cops?”

  Cardigan laughed shortly. “You think I’m dumb, Rewell? You know damn well that the cops are sore at me. I know what you’re trying to do. You want to get out of my hands, slide out of this because it’s getting too warm.”

  “I demand the right to call the police!” Rewell snapped, and strode toward the phone.

  Cardigan blocked him and sent him flying back onto the divan; said in a low, slow voice: “No you don’t.” He turned and took three fast steps, snatched up Rewell’s overcoat and drew from its pocket the slip which the desk clerk had given Rewell. It read—Call Western 3300. Urgent.

  Cardigan’s brain began to simmer. His eyes opened wide and for a moment he stared at Rewell in frank amazement. Then his eyes dropped, clouded. He looked worried, he bit his lip, and his hand closed hard and tight over the slip of paper. Indecision battled in his eyes, round his restless, flexing lips. Then suddenly his lips hardened and his eyes flashed.

  “Sam,” he snapped, “you sit here on this chair. Shannon, you go and sit beside your pal. Sam, sit here and keep your gun trained on them and don’t take it off till I get back.”

  “Suppose the call comes in?”

  “Don’t pay any attention to it. I’ll ring him again.”

  “But, Jack—hey, wait—”

  Cardigan had scooped Rewell’s belongings back into his pocket and was on his way to the door. “And don’t open the door for anybody. I’ll take the key.” He banged out with Sheffield’s protestations ringing in his ears, took the elevator down and sailed out into the street. Two blocks away he caught a taxi, said, “Tremont and Baxter,” and hopped in.

  It was a ride of about ten minutes and when Cardigan got out in front of a drug store, he gave the driver a dollar and said: “Now wait here. Keep your flag up. You’re taken, see?”

  “I get you.”

  Cardigan punched open the swing door into the drug store and strode to a telephone booth in the rear. Closing himself in the booth, he spent a minute chewing on his lip, drumming with his fingers, his eyes excited. Then he deposited a nickel and called Western 3300.

  He leaned far away from the mouthpiece and when he heard a heavy male voice at the other end, he began to shout in a high-pitched, Negro voice.

  “Ah was passin’ down Clive Street an’ by an apartment house theah, it wuz Number Four Hundred Four, Ah found a ten-dollah bill wrapped in a piece o’ paper. Paper says, ‘Call Westuhn Three Three Hundred and tell man to take her somewhere else. Keep the ten-spot.’ Tha’s whut it says, boss man…. Yassuh, right down in front o’ dat apartment house, Numbuh Four Hundred Four. Yassuh, boss.”

  HE hung up, banged out of the booth, went out a side door of the drug store and walked up Baxter opposite the Axminster Arms. Several cars were parked against the curb and he stopped behind them, obscured from the front of the Axminster. Five minutes later he saw the lobby door swing open and Tully Pomeroy come barging out in great haste. A cab was parked near the entrance and he went heavily toward it.

  Cardigan stretched his long legs to the corner of Baxter and Tremont, climbed into his waiting taxi and said: “See that one pulling away up the block? Follow it. Let him get a start first and don’t follow too close.”

  The taxi, which Pomeroy had taken, headed out Baxter. There was quite a bit of traffic and there was nothing conspicuous about the way Cardigan’s cab trailed along. Seven blocks out, the cab ahead made a right turn into Willis and rolled along past cheap restaurants, radio stores. It turned left into Dill Street and a truck turned in after it and Cardigan’s driver rolled along behind the truck. This went on for a distance of eight blocks, and now Dill Street was dark and gloomy with battered old rooming houses.

  Cardigan’s driver said: “I think he pulled up.”

  “O.K. Go past the truck and then go past the stopped cab. Here’s your pay. When you get a block beyond, slow down just a little, but don’t stop, and I’ll hop off.”

  When he had jumped from the running board, Cardigan stood for a moment in the darkness. The truck boomed past. Pomeroy’s cab was still parked, the door nearest the curb wide open. Cardigan made his way back up the street cautiously, keeping to the shadows of the old buildings. He stopped thirty yards short of the cab and stood behind a pole.

  It was fifteen minutes before he heard a door bang and then he saw Pomeroy’s bulky shape come down a wooden stoop accompanied by a woman, whose arm he held. He thrust her into the cab and heaved in after her and as the cab pulled slowly away from the curb Cardigan jumped out, pulled his gun and leaped to the running board.

  “Keep going, driver!” he snapped, and yanked open the rear door, thrust in his gun. He climbed in and slammed shut the door and sat down on one of the spare seats. He said: “Where were you going, Pomeroy?”

  Pomeroy was heaving around on the seat like a man in breathless agony. He spluttered: “What—what’s the meaning of it? Get out of here! I’ll call a policeman!”

  “Go ahead. Yell your lungs off.”

  “This is—this is—”

  “Save it,” Cardigan chuckled; and to the driver: “Go to Four Hundred Four Clive Street and step on it.”

  Pomeroy stammered: “But—but—now look—now listen—”

  “What’s the matter, your false teeth getting away from you?” Cardigan growled. “Shut up!”

  The girl said nothing. She was muffled in a light blue sports coat, its big collar up around her ears, half concealing her face. She lounged in the corner. Only when they passed near a street light could Cardigan see her eyes: they were wide, fixed with terror or fear or awe. The cab banged madly on its way and Pomeroy spluttered and gestured and slapped his knees and pulled his big fat hands across his face.

  Cardigan jeered: “Well, why don’t you call a cop?”

  “I—I’ll—” Pomeroy pointed in the darkness and his heavy voice shook. “I’ll have your hide for this!”

  “How was my Negro accent?” Cardigan chuckled.

  “How was your—” Pomeroy fell back in his seat with a vast groan and lay there making no sound now, only breathing heavily, thickly.

  WHEN the cab stopped in front of 404 Clive, Cardigan got out first, stood on the curb and clipped: “Come on, both of you, get out. Get out, I said!”

  The girl almost stumbled to the sidewalk and Cardigan gripped her arm, held it. He said to Pomeroy: “Pay the taxi fare.”

  Pomeroy thrust a bill into the driver’s hand and then Cardigan grabbed him by the arm and said, “This way, counsellor,” and marched Pomeroy and the girl into the lobby and across it and into the elevator. He did not let go of their arms. Pomeroy’s face was flushed, beady with sweat, and his breath, coming hard and fast, kept puffing out his lips. His eyes rolled and his whole fat body shook. The girl was stiff, tense, her eyes round and blank, her face white as a sheet.

  Cardigan walked them down the fifth-floor corridor, took out the key and was inserting it in the lock when the door whipped open and Rewell and Shannon crashed into him. They were as shocked as he was but he was quicker on the uptake and his left fist shot upward, crashed against Shannon’s jaw and drove him back into the living room. Rewell twisted with panther-like speed, his face dark and contorted, deadly. He clubbed an automatic pistol at Cardigan’s head, missed his head but ripped the skin of his cheekbone. The pain made Cardigan suck his breath in between gritted teeth and his right fist smashed into Rewell’s belly and drove him bac
kward, off balance, into the living room, where he finally fell flat on his back.

  Pomeroy started down the hall but Cardigan caught him by the coattail, swung him around and sent him tumbling into the living room, where he fell upon Rewell, who was trying to get up. The girl was flattened against the corridor wall, her hands pressed to her cheeks and her eyes stark with terror. Cardigan grabbed hold of her and thrust her through the doorway, slammed shut the door; shoved her roughly out of the way and took a flying leap at Rewell, who had again started to rise.

  He flattened Rewell on the floor, snarled: “Cut it, Rewell, or I’ll use a gun!”

  Shannon staggered up behind him and took a kick at his head. Cardigan grunted, “Ugh!” and turned, ducked the next kick, caught Shannon’s foot and yanked him down. Then Pomeroy, all reason gone from his eyes, hurled his massive body upon Cardigan and crashed the big op against Rewell, who was still with his back on the floor. Rewell yelled and Pomeroy clubbed with his fists against Cardigan’s head and Shannon, though groggy, was able to crawl over and join in.

  “You asked for it, Cardigan!” Pomeroy cried wildly.

  Arms and legs and bodies threshed violently over the floor. Cardigan was on the bottom, with Rewell and Shannon and Pomeroy clubbing and kicking him. His face was red and swollen and one eye would be black and blue before long. Rewell’s lip was cut. Pomeroy’s nose was bloody and Shannon had a torn ear, but they were heavy, hard, rough—and mainly, they were desperate.

  Then suddenly Cardigan saw Rewell fall to one side and lie groaning on the floor, and while he was being amazed at this Pomeroy grunted and fell on the other side, rolled over and lay on his back. Shannon became terrified and started to heave off, but he grunted too, made a bitter face and plunged to the floor.

  Cardigan saw the girl standing, holding an iron poker. Her face was dead white, her lips shook, her breath beat through her nostrils.

  She choked: “I didn’t know you were Cardigan—until I heard them say your name.”

  He got to his feet, his tie and shirt torn and his face bruised and smeared with blood. He stared hard at the girl. Then he grinned.