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

by Frederick Nebel

  “Hey—stop!” he shouted.

  The running shape did not stop.

  Cardigan fired and the figure crashed against the summer house, bounced back and fell to the ground. As Cardigan walked toward the summer house he could hear hoarse, labored breathing. Lights had gone on in the big house and the radio had stopped. Cardigan, holding his gun low, leveled, held to his course, drew nearer to the hoarse breathing; came at last to the shape sprawled on the ground. It was pitch dark here by the summer house.

  CARDIGAN picked up the long, lean body, draped it over his shoulder and walked out onto the graveled driveway. When he came to the front door Burnside was standing there, eyes and mouth round, face dead white. Burnside stepped aside. His lips trembled. Cardigan carried the body into the library, knelt and rolled it off onto the divan.

  A pair of wild, feverish blue eyes stared up at him. Cardigan’s thick brows snapped together and he looked up at the portrait on the wall. Then he looked at Burnside, on whose dead-white face sweat stood out like beads of oil. Then he looked down at the man on the divan.

  “Jonathan Dill, eh?” he said, half to himself.

  He crossed to the safe, which Sam had got open at the last instant and whose door now stood slightly ajar. Cardigan pulled it all the way open, jumped back as the body of a man rolled out at his feet. The man’s head had been bashed in. His face reminded Cardigan of somebody else. He turned and said to Dill: “You killed him.”

  “I killed him,” said Dill in a weak, scraping, unpleasant voice.

  CARDIGAN turned to the safe, found an envelope addressed to Cabot Pennock. He ripped it open, drew out a letter. It said—

  My dear Pennock,

  If I should die under circumstances out of the ordinary, or perhaps even be kidnaped, tell the police to arrest Tom Drift. His real name is Thomas Mariano. My secretary, Louise Mariano, is his sister. Also arrest Dr. Niles O’Fallon.

  Jonathan Dill.

  Cardigan looked at Dill, said: “What’s the idea of this?”

  “It’s self-explanatory.”

  “Who killed Bevans?”

  “I did.”

  “Who told you Bevans was coming?”

  “I was in touch with Burnside.”

  Cardigan shot a look at Burnside.

  Burnside quavered: “I felt it my duty to my master, sir.”

  “Tell the truth,” Cardigan snapped at him.

  It was Dill who spoke: “He’s an escaped convict. He knew he had to do what I told him to do. I told him to be sure to leave open the window facing the safe, after he told me that Bevans was coming.”

  “I suppose it was you phoned Pennock and told him that cock-and-bull story about Tom Drift heading west.”

  Dill’s voice was quite weak. “Yes,” it creaked.

  Cardigan gazed down at the dead man on the floor. “I thought he looked a lot like Louise Mariano. What’d you hit him with?”

  “A lead slab I used as a paperweight,” Dill muttered, the wild light rising in his eyes again. His voice broke. “I—I wanted to marry his sister. I—I offered her anything—anything. She wouldn’t have me. Then I found out about her brother—Tom Drift, outlaw. When she wanted to leave her job here, I told her that if she did I would tell the police how to find her brother—through her. She was in love with O’Fallon. He knew about her brother but he loved her too. And I told O’Fallon that she’d never marry him, because if she did, if she left here, I’d tell the police. And I warned them that if any harm came to me, there was a letter that would be given to the police. I—I had them all checkmated,” he cried in a choked voice. Then his voice dropped. “Until her brother came the other night.

  “He sat there—right there—and made fun of me. ‘An old guy like you,’ he said, ‘wanting to marry a young girl like Louise.’ He laughed at me. He drove me mad. I picked up the lead weight and—and—and—killed him. Then—I pushed and shoved him into the safe, intending to take him out later, very late at night, and dump him somewhere. But—” his eyes bulged wildly—“I forgot the combination to the safe! I couldn’t remember it! I—I dressed and went out for a walk, thinking the air and the walk might calm me and help me remember. But I couldn’t remember it. I can’t remember it now!” he screamed.

  His lips bubbled and his eyes closed.

  “You,” said Cardigan to Burnside, “call the police and also an ambulance.”

  Burnside went to the phone. “Will I be apprehended also, sir?”

  “Not unless Dill squeals on you.”

  “You mean you won’t, sir?”

  “Do I look like a piker?”

  WHEN Cardigan walked in on Sam the Mope an hour later, Sam was gloomily smoking a cigarette and the handcuffed man was still on the bed.

  Cardigan said: “Dill killed Tom Drift and stuffed him in his safe.”

  The man on the bed looked gravely at Cardigan for a long minute. “Then that explains a lot,” he said.

  “For instance?” asked Cardigan.

  “Tom went there that night to talk to Dill because Dill was shaking down Tom’s sister. When the news broke that Dill had disappeared, and when Tom didn’t show up, I figured that Tom’d waltzed him off and was holding him some place. I did my best to slow up any investigation, and when Whitey Slake happened to remark at breakfast in the Bean Hole that Pennock’d made a hotel reservation for a guy named Cardigan, I figured you were a private cop. So I had a pair of spare pads and I hung around the hotel and when you blew in I switched the pads.”

  Cardigan unbound him. “This about makes us even.”

  “Yeah. I knew something was screwy there but I sure didn’t figure on murder.”

  “It was murder, all right, and in the raw.”

  “Tom was nuts about that kid sister of his.”

  When Cardigan and Sam were in the room alone Cardigan said: “Here’s fifty for opening the safe, Sam.”

  “Nope, pal-o,” said Sam in a gloomy voice. “I done dat out o’ de goodness o’ me heart. It makes me feel kinda better, after considerin’ de number o’ times I backslid. Consider it as a gift, Jack, pal-o.”

  “O.K. then, kid,” Cardigan said, and slapped on his hat.

  He was almost through the door when Sam called: “Uh—Jack.”

  Cardigan turned. “Huh?”

  Sam the Mope was grimacing. “Somehow, pal-o, I can’t lie to youse. I got a hunch dat you’ll be havin’ t’ fork over fifty bucks before youse leave town.”

  “How come?”

  “Dat guy Clifford, de mouthpiece I got to git youse out o’ headquarters. I got a hunch he’ll be wantin’ fifty bucks offa youse.”

  “But I thought you paid him.”

  Sam snuffled. “Dat’s jus’ it, pal-o. It was a counterfeit fifty-dollar bill I give him. I was mindin’ it f’r a friend.”

  The Curse of Cardigan

  Chapter One

  Luncheon for the Law

  RAW wind of a late November day almost tore the taxi’s door from its hinges as Cardigan stepped out. He caught it, slammed it shut. The wind clapped the skirt of his baggy old ulster, drummed the brim of his bashed and shapeless fedora against the crown. He poked a dollar bill at the driver, whose chin and cheeks were red bulbs.

  “Some wind,” said Cardigan, digging his back against it while waiting for change.

  “Oh, I seen worse,” said the driver. “I was in a tornado once. Out in Kansas. I was driving a gentleman, it was a Buick I was driving. The tornado hit—bingo!—and I seen a lunchwagon go past and I remember remarking, ‘That is certainly Mickey Meehan’s lunchwagon but I never knew it could move, especially as it has got no wheels.’ Then I am like on a merry-go-round and a trolley car is going down a street where there ain’t no trolley tracks. And then there is a blank period and then all is calm and I am going along driving a Lincoln instead of a Buick and there is a doll in back and she has me arrested for stealing her Lincoln.”

  “Tough, pal; tough on you,” Cardigan sympathized, tipping him a dime.

/>   “Thanks, chief. If you need a cab again, call Hillside One-two-one and ask for Geets. R.E. Geets is me name. Twenty-four hour service. Puncture-proof tires.”

  “O.K., Geetsy.”

  THE big op from the Cosmos Agency turned and the wind slammed into his face, beat his overcoat collar against his jaw. He ducked his head and barged through the wind, climbed the six granite steps to the dull yawning entrance of police headquarters and swung into the barnlike central room. There was a narrowed-down glitter in his eyes and as he came up to the pulpit-like desk he blew his nose loudly and said: “Where’s Boylan’s office?”

  “And who,” droned the hammer-jawed sergeant without looking up, “wants to see Inspector Boylan?”

  “Nobody. Boylan wants to see me.”

  “Take a seat. Inspector Boylan’s having lunch in his office right now.”

  “He can have his lunch and he can see me at the same time. Tell him Cardigan’s here.”

  The sergeant looked up, said in a hard, rusty voice: “So you’re the one-man circus that’s come to town. I’ve been hearing things about you. Well, well, ain’t I impressed, though! The great mastermind himself, in person, right here in our fair little city. Tsk, tsk! I’m so impressed I can’t—”

  “Lay off the sarcasm. Nobody’s trying to impress you. Tell Boylan I’m here.”

  The sergeant smirked, jerked his chin. “He’s expecting you, fresh guy. Second floor, head of the stairs.”

  Cardigan growled: “You don’t impress anybody, baby,” and strode down the corridor, climbed the staircase and pushed open a glass-paneled door inscribed—

  DETECTIVE DIVISION

  T.K. Boylan

  Inspector

  Boylan was sitting at his desk finishing a steak sandwich. He was a plump man, with narrow fat shoulders, white plump hands with pink fingernails. His face was plump, very white, beneath a mane of wavy, glossy, black hair. His mouth was small, fat, and turned up at the corners. He had black, smiling, deceptive eyes and a small thin nose. His clothes were black, snug, and his stiff white collar pinched into his short neck. A chip of a diamond glittered in each gold cufflink.

  He laughed in a high, thin voice: “Oh, Cardigan. Thanks for coming around. Sit down, sit down.”

  Cardigan dropped heavily into a chair, thrust out his legs and scaled his hat onto the desk. He had nothing to say, so he said nothing.

  Boylan brushed his fingers with a paper napkin, shoved the tray over to one side and put his elbows on the desk. He leaned forward, a smile dancing round his lips, a sparkle in his dark, shrewd, nimble eyes.

  “Let’s get down to cases, Cardigan,” he said cheerfully. “For three days now you’ve been slamming around Wheelburgh like a guy with the devil at his heels. You’ve ripped up a dead case by the roots and you’re waving it around to beat hell. You’re rehashing things that we hashed up a year ago and buried. The News-Telegram is giving you a big play. Cardigan this and Cardigan says this and Cardigan says that. Come down to earth, buddy. The News-Telegram is using you. They’re kidding you. They don’t believe a word of what they’re printing but they hate the present police set-up and you’re out to knock it down. Wake up. Come down to earth.”

  BOYLAN slapped the desk and sat back with an air of finality. Cardigan said nothing. He lounged in his chair with his elbows on its arms, his big hands interlaced beneath his chin. Boylan, whose speech had not made the impression he had hoped it would, leaned forward again.

  “Listen, Cardigan,” he said. “Rosamund Dillon died by an accident. You’ve seen our reports on the case. You’ve seen the coroner’s report. Dillon and Rhea Beach identified the body after it was washed up. Boze Carney’s testimony proved that two hours before Rosamund shot and killed Sam Salva, she was pie-eyed drunk. When she shot Sam Salva she lost her head and ran out of the house, jumped in the flivver roadster and headed for the summer cabin she and her husband, Dillon, owned up in the hills. She was drunk, she drove recklessly, she skidded on the Sky High Drive and plunged down to the river. We found her car three days later and her body a month later, what was left of it. It was open and shut, Cardigan. It’s dead, closed, finished. For crying out loud don’t be a heel!”

  Cardigan said: “That all?”

  “Listen, pal—”

  “O.K.,” Cardigan said, standing up. He slapped on his hat and headed for the door.

  “Wait, wait,” Boylan called out. “Now listen—”

  Cardigan swiveled and came back to the desk, his eyes narrowed, his mouth set stubbornly. “And you listen, Inspector. When I first came here you guys gave me the horse-laugh. I practically had to get a court order to look at the data on the case. Then when I wanted to go over it with you, you were always busy, or out, or a lot of crap like that. You guys around here thought I was a false-alarm!” He braced his heavy arms on the desk and dropped his voice confidentially. “I was sent here to tell Rosamund Dillon—I didn’t know she’d married; I was looking for Rosamund Sherwood—I was sent here to find her and tell her that her uncle in Australia had died and left her two hundred thousand bucks. O.K., I find she’s dead. O.K., the money’s to go to her kid, if she has a kid. She has. She left a kid that’s now three years old; so the kid’s father, Ned Dillon, gets the handling of the money.

  “That’s very sweet for Ned Dillon, except I’ve got to prove first that Rosamund Dillon died by an accident. I know what your reports say. But it was a sloppy investigation. I come here and find that six people who knew Rosamund Dillon claim she never drank, that the minute she’d taste liquor she’d vomit. I find tucked away in your data the statement of an old guy named Horace Plimm who lives in a shack on the Sky High Drive. He said that at midnight of the night Rosamund Dillon cracked up, two cars went by his place at a high rate of speed, one right behind the other. It was only a quarter of a mile beyond his place that Rosamund Dillon’s car pitched down to the river. There’s no sign that any one of you guys took any stock in that story.”

  Boylan said: “The old guy was a little off in the head.”

  “Suppose he was?”

  “Besides,” said Boylan, “we found a guy named Harris who said he’d been driving the Sky High Drive at about that time. He thought he passed a woman driving along there.”

  Cardigan said dully: “Rosamund Dillon’s husband was also out driving that night.”

  “Sure. When his wife ran out haywire that way, he went out looking for her.”

  “And came back empty-handed and with a bashed mudguard.”

  “Sure. He smacked a taxi in Level Street and got a ticket for it. We went over all that. He was excited, naturally. Rosamund lost her head and then he lost his by going out and trying to find her. Their house guest, Rhea Beach, and the maid, Hilda Helmgard, were the only ones left with the dead man. Rhea Beach called a doctor and the doctor called us.”

  Cardigan said in a very low steady voice: “And I’m still looking for Rhea Beach. I know you guys are scared stiff that I might turn up something. You slopped over the case in the first place. The newspaper’s on your neck for the way you bungled the Devine murder a month ago. I’m not playing with the newspaper, Boylan. I told them to stay out of my hair and I’m sore at them for all this publicity. I work better without it. But I’m not getting out. I’m going to find Rhea Beach.”

  Boylan’s fat mouth became a small red knot. “Don’t expect any help from this department.”

  “Don’t make me laugh.”

  “You’re just a wise guy that thinks he’s smarter than any other six guys put together.”

  Cardigan went to the door, yanked it open and said: “Maybe I’m just a guy that does a job up brown.”

  Boylan colored. “I’d like to wrap a blackjack around your kisser sometime.”

  “You want to be sure that I’m sound asleep, Inspector. Those teeth of yours wouldn’t do you any good knocked out.”

  Chapter Two

  Heir to Murder

  WHERE the end of Fogarty Street joined Mulholland Avenue,
the Kingman Hotel lifted six red brick stories amid the clatter of streetcars, the honking of taxis, the bawling of newsboys. Smoke from the factories down the valley had darkened the bricks of the Kingman.

  Cardigan punched open the heavy glass swing-door at one o’clock, got out of his overcoat as he headed long-legged across the lobby toward the coffee shop. Marron, of the News-Telegram, pushed himself away from a marble pillar and said: “Hey, Cardigan.”

  “Hello,” said Cardigan, on his way.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Marron called, going after him.

  Cardigan pivoted and snapped: “Listen, Marron. I’ve got one shadow. I don’t want another one. Go away somewhere, will you? Take a trip or something.”

  “I was sent around,” Marron said, grinning, “to make you a proposition. We’ll pay you five hundred bucks for a two-hundred-word statement, signed, in which you will state that the police department of this city is lax, corrupt, feeble-minded, and anything else you want to add.”

  “Five hundred, eh?”

  “Five nice crisp centuries.”

  “I could buy lots of groceries with that, huh?”

  “Just give me a general idea of what you want to say and I’ll write it up in impressive English.”

  Cardigan patted him on the shoulder. “You’re a nice young fellow, Marron. You comb your hair nice and you look intelligent. Now run along back to your boss and tell him to offer me a thousand bucks. Then come back and make the offer and I’ll tell you something.”

  Marron said jovially: “Hell, Cardigan. I don’t have to go to him. He said I should go as high as a thousand.”

  “Swell. Now go back and tell your boss to go plumb to hell.”

  Marron gaped.

  Cardigan strode off, chucked his hat and overcoat into the arms of the checkroom girl and shouldered into the coffee shop. Pat Seaward, his very small and very chic assistant, was eating sweetbreads at one of the blue marble tables. She stuck out her foot and kicked him in the leg as he went by and he turned, said, “Oh, Pats,” and sat down opposite her.