“I’m as a rule consortin’ at de Red Slipper, in Mohican Street, after ten at night. I’m posin’ dere as a hog raiser from Indiana by de name of Hiram Swain, so don’t let me down. Dere is a couple of not very bright young lads dere dat t’ink dey are some shakes at tossin’ de bones an’ am I laughin’ up me sleeve.”
“Did you see that guy that switched my plates?”
“I seen a guy foolin’ around de car but all de time, pal-o, I did not know it was your property, dat is a fact. But I seen de guy. He was a young lad wit’ a gray hat an’ a gray suit an’ he was indeed very dark complected. I would not say he was a bad type, Jack. Wit’ de proper bringin’ up he might ha’ turned out to be a upstandin’ citizen, wit’ civic pride—”
“O.K. O.K., Sam. I’ll drop around the Red Slipper.”
THE very pale-haired young man rolling poker dice with the barman at the Three Aces wore a collar that was too tight for him and a suit that must have cost a hundred dollars. He had a chubby little body, fat short hands with bitten-down fingernails. His face was colorless, one corner of his mouth sagged loosely, and his eyes were milky.
Cardigan leaned sidewise against the bar and said: “You Whitey Slake?”
The man rolled the dice without looking up, said without interest: “Yeah.”
“When Doty told you this morning that I was due here in town today, why’d you phone him back later to keep it under his hat?”
Slake said in a lazy, whiskied voice: “I did one crossword puzzle today. Do I have to do another?”
“You look like a tenth-rate newspaperman. If I’m wrong, stop me.”
“Joe,” said Slake to the barman, pushing aside the dice, “we apparently have with us today a man with a bone to pick.” He turned lazily against the bar and looked at Cardigan with his milky eyes. “The name, please?”
“Cardigan.”
“Occupation? Hobbies? And are you accustomed to getting out of bed on the right side or on the left side?”
“Are you a betting man?”
“Yes, I bet at times.”
“Well, I’ll bet you five bucks that with one crack in the kisser I can drive you against that wall so hard that the picture hanging on it will fall down.”
“Hey, nix!” barked the bartender. “Dat’s the boss’s favorite picture!”
Slake forced an uneasy smile. He said to Cardigan: “Hell, bud, can’t you take a little kidding?”
“From a guy I like, yes. From you, no.”
The barman raised his voice. “Now looka here, stranger. You’re pickin’ a fight, see, an’ if you don’t lay off you’re gonna skate outa here on your ear.”
“If you want to get mixed up in this, bartender, keep it up. I’m not talking to you, so keep your big mouth shut.”
The barman put two fingers between his lips and whistled. Chairs scraped somewhere and four men came sloping out of the back room.
“Hanh?” said one.
“Dis lug,” said the barman, “would like to get tossed out.”
The four men piled on Cardigan without preliminaries, dragged him to the door, opened the door and heaved him onto the sidewalk. When he got to his feet the first thing he did was pick up his hat. He put it on and pivoted to face the door. The four men were standing there, each with a fist primed. Cardigan walked up to the one on the end, took a swing but in the middle of the swing shifted and hit the man next to him. He tripped up the man on the end, butted a third on the jaw and knocked the wind out of the fourth with a short blow to the belly. As he went through the door the barman threw a bottle that missed Cardigan and knocked out the man he had tripped. Cardigan clipped the barman on the side of the head and plastered him against the wall so hard that the picture came down with a crash.
“Geez,” the barman groaned, “the boss’s favorite picture!”
Slake had gone. Cardigan burst into the rear room. Slake was not there. A rear door was wide open. Beyond it, a long narrow alley led to another street. Slake was not in sight. Cardigan ran up the alley to the street but the street was crowded, people were moving in both directions. He did not see Slake among them.
Chapter Four
Death in the Raw
LOUISE MARIANO said, “This is Doctor O’Fallon,” and Cardigan, bulking in the library, dipped his head toward him as he leaned back against the table, hands in his coat pockets. He was a husky man of about thirty-five with a thick bush of brown hair, a hard-packed face, strapping shoulders. He had a look straight and sharp as an arrowhead.
“I was hoping to run into you,” Cardigan said.
“Why?”
“Why not? You’re Dill’s doctor and you were out riding with the girl here when Bevans was killed.”
“So I was.”
“If a real tough cop wanted to be nasty, he’d say that’s a poor alibi.”
“Do I need an alibi?”
Cardigan shrugged. “You’re not green, Doctor. You’re all in this—you and Miss Mariano and Burnside and Phelps and even Pennock. And,” he added, “some other guys who are connected with one of you.”
O’Fallon crossed his heavy arms. “Other guys?”
“The real dirty work is being done by somebody who was hired to do it. The lad who switched my license plates in order to land me in jail was not one of you. There’s no indication that Dill was ever threatened by kidnapers. I will put ten on the nose that the root of the stink is somewhere close to home. You’re all nice people on the surface, but I’ve been tripped up by nice people too often to lay myself wide open again.”
O’Fallon said: “Do as you please, only think twice before you get high-handed with Miss Mariano.”
“Oh, Niles, don’t—”
“Been weeping on his shoulder?” Cardigan asked.
O’Fallon chopped in: “It was Burnside told me how you talked to her.”
“I talked straight to her. I never learned how to talk around corners. You’d better think hard and see if you can’t find out exactly where you were at nine last night. It’s for the girl’s sake as well as yours. I’m not trying to make anyone guiltier than anyone else, but you look like you’ve got a head on your shoulders, so don’t stand there and try to be tough.”
The doorbell sounded and Burnside let in Pennock. Pennock’s traplike mouth clipped out precisely: “I have received a strange telephone call, Mr. Cardigan. A man phoned me and said, ‘Mr. Dill is safe and will return in a few days. He wishes me to tell you that the man who drove him from the house was also the man who killed Lester Bevans’.”
“Did he mention names?”
“The killer, he said, is Tom Drift, who headed west by plane. I tried to ask him more, but he hung up.”
There was a low sigh, the sound of a body falling. It was Louise Mariano’s body; she had fainted. O’Fallon, his face suddenly set, his eyes full of a sudden hot emotion, knelt and lifted her in his arms, carried her to a divan. Burnside was standing in the library doorway.
“Get water,” O’Fallon said, and then pulled out a bottle of smelling salts. Pennock’s eyes were wide with wonder.
Cardigan said nothing until Louise Mariano came to—slowly. She looked around as though she had awakened in a strange room. Cardigan walked across the room toward her.
O’Fallon, his jaw rigid, got in front of him. “Take it easy, Cardigan. This is not what you think. She’s been accustomed to having fainting spells for the past three months. I have records to prove it.”
“You think up fast answers, Doctor.”
O’Fallon was grim. “I didn’t have to think this one up. I say it’s not what you think. It was just coincidence.”
“A rather strange coincidence,” observed Pennock frigidly.
O’Fallon shot at him: “You’d better tend to your own business, Mr. Pennock. The circumstances surrounding Bevans’ death don’t entirely exempt you from suspicion.”
“I resent that extremely!” retorted Pennock, his lips shaking.
“Doubtless.”
“I—I’m sorry,
” murmured Louise Mariano, brushing a hand across her eyes.
Cardigan turned to Pennock. “What did the safe people say about sending up another man?”
“They refuse to put the life of another of their men in danger.”
“That safe,” said Cardigan, “has got to be opened.”
“In view of the phone call,” said Pennock stiffly, “I refuse to have it blasted. I will take the matter to the courts if I have to.”
Cardigan turned to Burnside. “Have you ever seen Miss Mariano faint before?”
“Several times, sir,” said Burnside.
Cardigan’s mouth grew taut. He looked at Pennock—at Louise Mariano—at O’Fallon—at Burnside. He popped his lips apart with an exasperated outburst of breath.
“Maybe,” he rapped out, “all you people are sane and I’m the guy that’s nuts!”
TEN was a good hour at the Red Slipper. It was a low-ceilinged, noisy joint, with a bar in one room and small red tables in another. The lad who whanged the piano was a fat darky with eyes full of fun and a mouth full of big white teeth. He was woolly-haired and black as soot. The waiters slammed drinks around as though they were doing the trade a favor and the barman was a pockmarked, slate eyed man whose left ear was larger than his right. You wouldn’t have trusted anyone in the place ten minutes with your sister or two minutes with your eyes closed.
Cardigan strolled in at ten past ten. He always felt at home anywhere—in a fine hotel or a knock-down-and-drag-out dive. He had been around too much to be moved by sudden changes in environment. The minute he entered the bar he saw Sam the Mope glooming at one end of it. Sam wore a straw hat that was too small for him and steel-rimmed spectacles that perched ludicrously on his long, out-of-true nose. His suit looked as though it had come out of the left-overs at some country general store. Cardigan leaned on the bar next to him and ordered a drink. Under his breath he said: “I’m going to walk out of here when I finish this drink. I’ll turn left. Meet me at the next block.”
Sam nodded but did not turn his head. Cardigan had never seen him look so gloomy; and when he had finished the drink he paid up and went out. He walked to the next corner, leaned against a house wall and lit a cigarette. People kept drifting by in the warm summer night. A man stopped with a cigarette in his hand and said cheerfully: “Got a light, brother?”
Cardigan held out his burning cigarette and the man, using his left hand, held his own up to it. Instantly Cardigan felt something hard pressing against his left hip and at the same time the man said: “That’s a gun you feel, Cardigan.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I want to give you a little friendly advice, kid. You’re steaming around town like a house afire and if you keep it up you’re going to get hurt.”
“What’s the novelty about that?”
“You’ve never been killed, have you?”
“No.”
“That’d be a novelty, then, wouldn’t it? I’m telling you for your own good.”
Sam the Mope came gangling up the street, looking like a rustic who had just come to town. He seemed not to notice what was going on, but when he came abreast of Cardigan and the man with the gun, he said: “Excuse me, please, but could one o’ youse gentlemen tell me how I c’n git to Central Square. I’m a stranger in town. I been raisin’ hogs out in Indiany f’r years, but I’m damned if c’n find me way back t’ Central Square.”
The man with the gun did not turn, but he said: “Walk four blocks, turn left and walk three.”
“T’anks loads, mister,” said Sam as his long arm swooped. His hand gripped the man’s wrist, bent it downward in his pocket. “Youse is a dead man if youse peep,” he said.
“You’re busting my wrist.”
“Raisin’ hogs makes a man strong, podner. Jack, dis is de lad switched your plates.”
Cardigan said: “Take your hand out empty, fella.”
The man’s hand came out clean and Sam removed the gun from the pocket.
“You live around here, Sam?” Cardigan asked.
“In de next block.”
“Let’s go.”
THE room where Sam the Mope lived was small, strangely neat. It was on the second floor of an old brick building and there were cats yowling on the back fence.
Cardigan shoved the young man down into a chair and said: “Who’re you working for?”
The young man leaned back easily and brushed his sleeves. “That’d be telling, Cardigan.”
“Sure it would. Suppose you tell.”
The man chuckled, shook his head. “I was kind of brought up not to say an awful lot.”
Sam sat down on the bed and looked gloomily at his hands.
Cardigan’s face was dark, tight-muscled. “I’ve been taking a lot of kidding since I came here, fella, and I’m getting fed up on it. A man was killed and another guy vanished. You switched my license plates. Now who sent you to switch ’em?”
The man tucked at his shirt cuffs, shook his head. “You don’t seem to be taking me seriously, Cardigan. I don’t talk.”
“Can you take it?”
“Try, and we’ll see.”
Cardigan pulled him out of the chair with his left hand, hit him with his right. The man crashed against the wall, sank to the floor. He sat there, hurt but smiling.
“Try again,” he said.
Cardigan moved his lips against his teeth. He took a step toward the man, then stopped, muttered an oath. From his pocket he took a pair of handcuffs, locked the man’s hands behind his back. He took a strap from Sam’s suitcase and lashed his feet together, then bent the legs at the knees, looped another strap from the first to the handcuffs and pulled it tight. Then he wadded a couple of dirty handkerchiefs into a huge ball and stuffed them in the man’s mouth.
“Come on, Sam,” he said.
They went out into the hall and Sam locked the door and then they walked down to the street. Outside, Cardigan said: “When was the last time you opened a safe, Sam?”
“Four years ago, pal-o. In Omaha. De cops was very unjust about dat. I was only openin’ it f’r a friend but de cops—”
“I know, I know, Sam. I’d like you to open one tonight. Here’s the fifty I owe you. I’ll give you another fifty if you get the safe open.”
“Pal-o, I would do it f’r you f’r nuttin’.”
“That doesn’t sound like you, Sam. You were always a good businessman.”
“Pal-o, I been gloomin’ a lot t’day, t’inkin’ about me wrongs. I feel like doin’ a good deed in de hopes dat if ever some gazabo smoiches me name, youse won’t t’ink too bad o’ me.”
“You sound drunk.”
“I ain’t. I just been gloomin’. Where’s de safe?”
“Let’s grab a cab.”
CARDIGAN quietly opened the front door of the Dill house with a master key. The only light he had seen was one on the top floor. As he stepped into the hall he could hear, faintly, the sound of radio music high aloft—probably Burnside. He stepped aside and let Sam enter, then closed and latched the door and stood for a moment motionless, listening. The darkness crowded around him. Presently he withdrew a small flat flashlight from his pocket, held it against his thigh, clicked on the light and kept the beam close to the floor. He moved slowly, quietly into the library. When he stopped before the panel that concealed the safe, Sam was beside him, motionless, silent as a shadow. Cardigan slid back the panel and revealed the safe, then snapped off the light.
“That’s it, Sam.”
“Geez, pal-o, dis is sort of a kind of a creepy spot. It gives goose pimples. I was in a joint like dis about nine years ago, liftin’ a hunka joolry out of a safe f’r a friend—”
“Pipe down, Sam. Go to work on it. I’m going to watch the windows.”
“Gimme de flashlight till I look dis egg shell over.”
Cardigan handed him the flashlight and then moved to the center of the room. He looked at all the windows, saw that they were closed. He did not look at Sam but kept his eye
s moving from window to window. His gun was down now, hanging at his side. He could hear Sam whispering to himself. The radio upstairs made a very faint sound.
When Cardigan thought he saw a shadow against one of the windows he raised his gun to his hip and squinted hard. He wasn’t sure. He shifted his position, thrust his head forward. The shadow grew larger, and against the night Cardigan could make out the vague outlines of a hat, a pair of shoulders. Then he saw the right shoulder rise, bringing what looked like an arm up with it. He thought he saw a brief metallic glint. He fired through the top of the window. The glass blew apart.
Sam fell over backwards and said: “Just as I got it—”
Cardigan was heading for the door. “Beat it, Sam. You don’t want to be mixed up in this.”
“Right, pal-o.”
Cardigan unlatched the front door, whipped it open and reached the driveway in a bound. He saw a dark shape speeding among the trees of the estate and set off after it, his big feet crunching on gravel, then pounding muffled on turf.
“Hey you!” he yelled. “Stop!”
There was a stab of gunfire among trees and Cardigan jolted to a stop, tried to aim. It was no use. There were too many trees. He ran on among them, lost sight of the fleeing shadow for a moment and then saw it again at the edge of the woodland. It paused for a moment and there was another stab of flame. A small branch cracked and fell down on Cardigan’s head. He brushed it off and barged on among the trees, saw the figure race across a short clearing and then duck behind one of the outbuildings. Cardigan cut across through the woods and came out on the other side of the outbuilding. He squinted in the darkness, then bent over and raced to the front of the building. As he reached it, a gun boomed behind him and a slug chipped wood an inch from his nose. He threw himself to his knees, then flat; then he twisted and fired without aiming. He saw the shape disappearing among the trees again.
His big feet carried him back among the trees and in a few minutes the figure broke from them across the driveway and plunged into the shrubbery. Cardigan came to the edge of the trees and took a pot shot at the shrubbery. He saw the figure reappear twenty feet beyond and bound long-legged across the driveway toward a rustic summer house. Cardigan stepped into the center of the driveway.
The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 4: 1935-37 Page 11
