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

by Frederick Nebel

  “Skip it, skip it. Any floor, so long as it’s cool and has two exposures.”

  The clerk called: “Front…! Take Mr. Cardigan to Six Twelve. See that everything is in order.”

  612 was a large, airy room, on a corner. The bellhop opened the windows a little wider, made sure there were towels in the bathroom, and caught Cardigan’s tip on the fly.

  “Anything else, sir?”

  Cardigan was already getting out of his shirt. He shook his head and going into the bathroom started hot water running in the tub. He stripped, lay in the tub for ten minutes, then stood up and showered cold. By the time he had rubbed himself dry he was whistling La Cucharacha and that led to a drink of Irish whiskey straight from the neck of the bottle. He put on clean underwear and a clean shirt and then stuck his long husky legs into his wrinkled trousers.

  From his wallet he took a slip of paper, scooped up the telephone and said into the transmitter: “Rockland One-two-one-one.” He put a cigarette between his lips and cracked a match to flame on his thumbnail. “Mr. Pennock’s office?… I want to talk to Mr. Pennock…. Cardigan.” He snapped smoke through his nostrils, peered at his watch which lay on the bed table. “Mr. Pennock?… Yes, I just got in. It was a hell of a hot drive but I feel better now…. Sure I can…. O.K. I’ll drive right over.”

  He hung up, snapped on a blue bow tie, not even getting it close to dead center, and put on his coat. The coat was wrinkled and bagged at the pockets. His hair, which no comb could have put in order, was thick around his ears and grew far down on the back of his powerful neck. Though he still whistled, the intent and businesslike look with which he had walked into the lobby had not left his face. He took an elevator down and as he strode out he slapped his lop-eared hat on his head.

  The smash of the sun on the street was terrific and when he stepped into it he squinted against the glare. He walked up to the corner, turned right and in another minute pulled open the door of his roadster. As he put his foot on the running board he felt something hard shoved against the small of his back and he did not have to know that it was the muzzle of a gun. He took his foot off the running board, felt his hip pocket slapped, heard a low, laconic voice say: “I wouldn’t do anything foolish, buddy, if I were you. Get ’em up.”

  Cardigan raised his hands and turned about. People had stopped and were staring wide-eyed. Some were nearer than they cared to be but were too frightened even to retreat. The man who faced Cardigan was short, broad as a cathedral door; he wore a black alpaca suit with one coat button fastened across a heavy belly. His shirt was white and he wore a celluloid collar with a plain blue tie. The face beneath the hard straw hat was broad, short, clean-shaven, with putty-gray eyes. Back of him stood three uniformed policemen. He said in his laconic voice: “I suppose you think you’re a smart guy, breezing into this car like you owned it.”

  Cardigan said: “I’ll bet you’re a sergeant.”

  “I’m not a betting man. You want to walk around to headquarters like a nice fellow or should I put the cuffs on?”

  “I don’t want to walk around to headquarters with cuffs or without them. Suppose you stop pulling rabbits out of your hat and let a guy in on the joke.”

  The broad man stepped back, said: “Put the cuffs on him, boys. He’s taken it into his nut to be funny.”

  The three cops closed in around Cardigan and began to roughhouse him. He reared back, snapping: “Now hold on! I’ll be damned if you guys are going to—”

  “Oh, no?” said one of the cops as he brought his nightstick down on Cardigan’s head.

  Cardigan reared back again, kicked the cop in the shins. The cop yowled and brought his nightstick down again, this time with a vengeance. Cardigan’s knees buckled, his eyes rolled, the starch went out of his whole body. He fell to the sidewalk. A woman let out a choked little cry, another turned away, a third cried out, “Hitting the poor man that way!” in an outraged voice.

  One of the cops said: “Lady, suppose youse mind your own business.”

  Cardigan, sprawled all over the sidewalk, muttered and groaned, and the broad plainclothesman very dispassionately took a pair of handcuffs and used them on the big op’s wrists. “These big palookas,” he said to no one in particular, “make a lot of noise standing and also falling. Grab his dogs, Mike, and we’ll heave him in.”

  WHEN Cardigan came to he was sitting in a battered leather chair in a square office whose walls, painted a battleship gray, were plastered with odds and ends of bulletins, notices, photographs. There were a couple of heavy, chipped desks and some plain heavy chairs. Behind one of the desks sat the broad short man eating a sandwich and drinking from a quart bottle of milk. His hat was off. He was completely bald and his head looked round as a bowling ball and quite as hard. The look in his putty-colored eyes was as expressionless as ever.

  “Still feel funny?” he asked through a mouthful of bread.

  Cardigan spotted a water cooler against the wall and without replying he rose, crossed the room noisily and drank two glasses of water. He returned to the chair, felt in his pockets and with darkening eyes growled: “Where the hell’s my wallet?”

  “In the custody of the police. This is headquarters.”

  “Well don’t forget that there was sixty-one bucks in the wallet and three dollars and twenty-five cents in my pants pocket.”

  “I said you were in police headquarters—”

  “I heard what you said and that’s why I’m reminding you.” He ran his hand through his tumbled hair and groaned as he touched the bump on his head. The grimace he made turned into an expression of black resentment and he shouted: “I want that wallet and money!” He heaved to his feet and began pacing angrily up and down and throwing vindictive looks at the broad man. “And I want to get out of here. Who the hell do you think you are, anyhow?”

  “Sergeant Inch, buddy, and I don’t like the way you talk. Where’d you get those license plates on your car?”

  “Bought ’em when I registered the car in New York.”

  Inch took a drink of milk and shook his big head. “No you didn’t. I got your registration card and the pad number on it ain’t anything like the pads on your car. In fact, they ain’t even from the same state. The pads on the car you’re driving were lifted from a Chevvy in Westerly, Rhode Island, a couple of weeks ago.”

  Cardigan laughed harshly. “You’re nuttier than a bowl of almonds.”

  “Take a look out the window.”

  Cardigan strode to the window, took one look at his car, which was parked below, and then spun about with deep, angry wrinkles between his eyes. “This is a gag!” he snapped.

  “If it was April First, I’d say maybe yes. But we’re in August now.” Inch crumpled the paper in which his sandwiches had come and popped it into a wastebasket. “We got some nice clean cells downstairs. If you want some grub, you can send out for it.”

  “Now wait a minute; now just wait a minute,” Cardigan said in a slow, heavy voice, his dark eyes heavy on the sergeant. “If you got my wallet, you know who I am. I don’t know how those pads got on my car but I do know that I didn’t put ’em there. You look on my registration card and you’ll find the engine number there tallies with the engine number on the car.”

  “And still it’s a case where two and two don’t make four, or even twenty-two. You got Rhode Island pads on a New York car. The pads were lifted in Westerly. You’re supposed to be Jack Cardigan, according to the registration card, but how do I know you are?”

  Cardigan pointed to the telephone. “Call Cabot Pennock. I got a date with him for lunch.”

  “You know him?”

  “Would I be having a date with him if I didn’t?”

  “How long you known him?”

  “I never met him. I came here from New York—”

  “To meet him. But you never met him, so he don’t know what you look like. He wouldn’t know if you are really the guy that came to meet him.”

  Cardigan’s face was getting red.
He rapped out: “Get him here! Get him here!”

  “What’s the use? He still couldn’t identify you.”

  “Get him here!”

  Inch said in his dull dispassionate voice.

  “The law is the law and I got to protect Cabot Pennock as much as I can.”

  “Call my agency office in New York. Ask for Hammerhorn, my boss.”

  “He couldn’t identify you on the phone.”

  “He could identify my voice!”

  “I been fooled many times by voices on the phone.”

  Cardigan, red with exasperation, put his fists on his hips. “So what d’you think you’re going to do?”

  “Oh, toss you in the can. You can phone this agency of yours, reverse charges, and have ’em send a man up who can identify you.”

  CARDIGAN threw up his hands. “I can’t wait that long,” he shouted. “I didn’t come to this town for the ride—I came here on business and I came fast and I’ve got to get down to business fast.” He leaned on the desk on braced arms, said in a changed, earnest voice: “Listen, sarge—be a white guy. You’ve got my registration card, you’ve got my signature. I’ll write my name on a hunk of paper and you can—”

  Inch said slowly: “I ain’t a handwriting expert.”

  “O.K., then get your handwriting expert.”

  “He’s up-country, fishing, and won’t be back till tomorrow. You’ll just have to stay here till he gets back or till some guy from your office comes up and identifies you. So you just—”

  There was a knock on the door but before Inch could say anything the door opened and a wiry little man with a panama tipped over one eye breezed in and said: “Hello, Jack. I heard the gendarmes picked you up for theft, arson and murder. Hello, Sergeant. Still abiding by your old slogan, eh? ‘A crook a day keeps the inspector away.’ How’s Mrs. Inch and all the little Inches?”

  “All jake, Mr. Clifford,” Inch said in a slow, puzzled voice. He asked: “You know this man?”

  “Who, him? Jack Cardigan?” Clifford laughed, slapped his thigh. “Hey, Jack—he asks me do I know you? Do I know my mother? Do I know my father?”

  Cardigan took another drink of water to cover his confusion, then said: “O.K. Tell the sarge in plain words. I think he’s slow on the uptake.”

  Inch thought out loud. “But the pads on his car—”

  “Oh, those,” laughed Clifford. “My office boy said he saw a guy switching pads on that roadster while he was parked up past the hotel. I told him to go back and hang around to see what happened and he did and came back and told me.”

  Inch leaned back in his chair, making it creak. He didn’t smile. His face remained expressionless, his voice dry and without emotion. “Well, you identified him, so—” he looked at Cardigan blankly—“you can go.” He laid a large brown envelope on the desk, added: “There’s your stuff. The car stays till you get new pads.”

  Cardigan counted his money to the last cent, found his hat on a rack and slapped it on his head. “Tell that fly cop that conked me that if I see him again I’ll turn him inside out like a stocking.”

  “The law’s the law,” said Inch laconically.

  Cardigan was on his way to the door. “Yeah, one third common sense and two thirds nightstick.”

  He went out, walked down the corridor with Clifford striding jauntily beside him. They went downstairs, out into the street, and stopped at the curb.

  Cardigan said: “Well, mister, what’s the catch? I don’t know you from Adam.”

  “Nor me you. Ever hear of a guy named Sam Bodine?”

  “Do they sometimes call him Sam the Mope?”

  Clifford nodded. “The same. He saw the whole thing happen. He was only about twenty feet away—across the street, in fact.”

  “Why didn’t he talk up then?”

  “He’s playing the blind-man racket. He knew if he talked up that it’d kill his game. So he came to me and told me what’d happened and showed me an old picture of you he’d clipped from a Detroit paper. He gave me fifty bucks to come over here and chisel you out. You can see him almost any time around the corner of Middle and Clover Streets.”

  “What’s your game?”

  “Counsellor-at-law. If you need one sometime, look me up.” He passed his card. “And take a tip. Inch is a hard cop. He’s got a one-track mind—the law.”

  Clifford walked off.

  Cardigan walked three blocks in the opposite direction, bought a newspaper and hailed a cab. As it drove off, he spread the paper, concentrated on the right-hand column. It was all about a man named Lester Bevans, a safe expert connected with the Wright-Monarch Safe Company, who had been murdered the night before. The Wright-Monarch Safe Company was one of the Cosmos Agency’s clients.

  Chapter Two

  The Girl in the Case

  CABOT PENNOCK was a tall stick of a man with a high, narrow forehead beneath which frail nose glasses shimmered like discs of sheet ice. His mustache and his lips were precise. His collar was high, stiff. The dark suit he wore was of heavy blue serge, yet he looked miraculously cool.

  Cardigan, who was running sweat again, said: “I’m a little late. Some cops let what they thought was a bright idea run away with them. They got in my hair.” He thought of the bump on his head and added—“Plenty!”

  Pennock said precisely: “I don’t understand.”

  Cardigan sprawled into a high-backed chair. “Oh, it’s nothing. Somebody swiped the plates off my car while I was washing up in the hotel and clamped on pads from a stolen car.” It irked him a little that he could not see Pennock’s eyes for the shimmer in his glasses. He ran his handkerchief over his sweaty face. “We can let that slide for the time being. What’s new about Jonathan Dill?”

  “Nothing,” Pennock’s small, definite voice said. He sat down behind his desk, clasped long, narrow hands lightly together. “He seems to have vanished completely.”

  Cardigan took from his pocket a crumpled cigarette, lit it. “Now let’s get this straight. Night before last, sometime between nine and ten o’clock, Jonathan Dill disappears from his house. His secretary, Louise Mariano, leaves him at eight sitting in his library and goes home. The servants, Burnside and Phelps, are out. Burnside comes in at nine and doesn’t find Dill anywhere in the house. Dill had been in lounging pajamas and robe—he had a bad cold and the doctor’d ordered him to stay in the house. Upstairs in Dill’s bedroom Burnside finds the pajamas and robe. On the face of it, it looks like Dill got dressed and went out. Burnside shrugs and goes to bed. Phelps, the cook, comes in at ten and doesn’t bother to look if his boss is home or not—that’s not his business anyhow. Next morning, no Dill. Noon, no Dill. No word from Dill. Burnside gives you a ring because you’re Dill’s attorney. Right?”

  Pennock was watching Cardigan with a cool shrewd squint. Now he said: “Exactly. I have in my possession a letter written by Mr. Dill to me about a month ago. It instructs me to open his safe if any harm should come to him and look for a blue envelope addressed to me. I have, of course, power-of-attorney to this legally. I had not, unfortunately, the combination to his safe. I sent to the makers in New York to send up a man to open it. They sent a man named Lester Bevans, who was shot to death on his arrival.”

  “While at the safe, you mean.”

  “Yes. I went with Bevans to Mr. Dill’s home at nine last night and as Bevans knelt before the safe he was shot. The shot came through the window directly opposite the safe. I ran to it but saw no one. I called in the police. They were pretty rough and kept hinting that I might have had something to do with it, since I was the only one in the room at the time Bevans was killed.” His thin lips twitched and he took a breath. “I felt I had to establish my innocence, protect my reputation, so I phoned your agency.”

  CARDIGAN watched him closely. “The funny thing about this case, Mr. Pennock, is that the safe people are clients of ours too. I hope it don’t matter much to you that I’m here in their interests as much as yours.”

  Pennock
’s glasses shimmered. He said with precise, nimble lips, “Not at all,” and kept his neck very rigid.

  “The police been pushing you around any more?”

  “They were here twice this morning. Once an inspector and the second time a sergeant—the man who came when I phoned last night. Inch is his name.”

  Cardigan chuckled. “He was the guy picked me up and I thought I was being wise by telling him to phone you. No wonder he wanted to keep me in the hoosegow. D’you know if Dill was threatened by kidnapers recently?”

  “No. I know he never told me, if he was.”

  “Do you know if he had a habit of going away without telling anybody?”

  “His secretary would surely have known. He told her to come around as usual in the morning and said nothing about going away. In fact, being ill, he was to remain indoors. He was forgetful at times regarding important matters but he was very concerned with his health—he’s fifty-eight—and I can’t imagine why he dressed and went out when the doctor told him specifically not to.”

  “Who besides you knew that you were sending for a man to open the safe?”

  Pennock said flatly: “Louise Mariano, Phelps, Burnside, and Mr. Dill’s physician.”

  “Who besides you knew that you phoned for me?”

  “No one.”

  Cardigan shook his head. “Someone must’ve. My license plates were stolen and others tacked on to get me in a jam, to keep me out of this as long as possible.”

  “I called your agency on my private wire. There was no one else in the room.”

  “Then you phoned the Bryce Hotel and made a reservation for me?”

  “Yes,” Pennock said. “I telephoned the Bryce at nine this morning, asked for the room clerk and made the reservation.”

  “Where does Louise Mariano hang out?”

  “I dare say you’ll find her at the Dill house.”

  “What’s Dill’s business?”

  “He’s retired. He used to be in the textile trade. He’s now engaged in writing a long history of his family, hence Miss Mariano.”

  “Dough?”