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

by Frederick Nebel

  “You look like the big bad wolf,” she observed.

  He said to the waiter: “The goulash and a pot of coffee.” And to Pat: “What’s eating you, bright eyes?”

  “Nothing. You look like the one who is being bit and et.”

  He said: “You look like you’ve been in a beauty parlor all morning. I wonder why the hell the Cosmos Agency pays you a salary. You’re either having your hair set, your nails manicured or your toenails gone over.”

  “Well,” she said, “somebody’s got in your skin today. Of course I was in a beauty parlor this morning. I love beauty parlors. Crazy about them! And besides,” she added, “I found out about Rhea Beach.”

  He slammed down the glass of water he had been drinking and stared at her.

  She said: “And I don’t like the way you come around growling and glaring at me.”

  “O.K., O.K., Patsy. I’m a mug. I know it. But skip it, skip it, angel. What about Rhea Beach?”

  The waiter appeared dolefully and said: “Beg pardon, sir, we are all out of the goulash.”

  “O.K. Those things, then—sweetbreads.”

  “Yes, sir,” sighed the waiter, departing.

  “Now, Patsy… Rhea Beach.”

  PAT lit a cigarette. “Well, the beauty parlor. I looked in the classified section of the telephone directory and made a list of all the beauty parlors. I reasoned that most women go at least once in a while to a beauty parlor, be they rich, middling, or poor. So I began going around, first to one, then to another, and asking if anyone knew Rhea Beach. Finally, at the seventh one I tried, I had luck. A Miss Imogene Holzkopf, one of the beauty-parlor operators, said that Rhea Beach was in for a facial just a week ago. Miss Holzkopf said it was the first time Rhea Beach had been in in almost a year and that she wasn’t Rhea Beach anymore, she was Mrs. Lake. She said Rhea certainly needed a facial, she looked as if she’d been on a bat. Rhea told her she’d just got back to town, Mr. Lake having died way out in Tulsa. Miss Holzkopf said she sent around some cream to Rhea at the Bangs Hotel. It’s a third-rate place over on Potomac Avenue. I went over there but she wasn’t in.”

  “She still registered there?”

  “Yes.”

  “What room?”

  “Four-nineteen.”

  The waiter returned and said sadly: “Sorry, sir, but we are all out of sweetbreads.”

  “Well, don’t tell me it hurts you more than it does me. I’ll fool you: bring me ham and eggs, sunny side up, and fried potatoes.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  When he had eaten, he said to Pat: “Now I want you to do two things. Go to Hilda Helmgard, who was the maid at the time Rosamund Dillon bumped off Sam Salva. Here’s the place she’s working at. Also, find out who was operating the taxicab that Dillon socked the night he was looking for Rosamund. Ask Hilda Helmgard to tell you just what happened that night.”

  They separated in the lobby and Cardigan, going out into Fogarty Street, found the same cab which had taken him to police headquarters. “Go out to the Starlight Home,” he said, “on Winterbourne Avenue.”

  “Hokey, chief. You ever seen our city? I could go straight out, or would you like it should I go zigzag and show you the points of interest?”

  “You just go the shortest way you know how, Geetsy.”

  “It’s akejey by me, chief. You mind if I smoke?”

  “Go ahead, smoke.”

  “Well,” replied Geets, driving up Fogarty, “I do not ever smoke. However, I am seeking to find out how many people mind if a driver smokes and how many do not mind. I am vice-president of the Taxicab Drivers’ Social Center and I think this information would be valuable, yes.”

  THE Starlight Home was a rambling stucco building of two stories. An elderly, white-haired lady sat behind a desk in a bright, spotless office.

  “I’m Cardigan, madam,” Cardigan said, “from the Cosmos Detective Agency. You have a little boy here named Philip Dillon.”

  “Yes, we have.”

  “His father placed him here, I suppose.”

  “Yes, about ten months ago.”

  “Does he come to see him very often?”

  The woman looked embarrassed.

  “Go ahead,” said Cardigan. “I can use discretion.”

  “Well,” she replied slowly, “yesterday was the first time he came here in six months. He wanted to take him home but I couldn’t permit that. Philip is ill with a cold and the doctor won’t let him be removed until he is better…. Hello, Miss Hoyt. How is Philip doing?”

  The girl who had entered the office said: “About the same.”

  The elderly woman explained to Cardigan: “This is Miss Hoyt, who has looked faithfully after Philip almost since the time he came here.”

  The girl was a blonde, tall, slender, with a quiet, subdued face.

  The elderly woman smiled compassionately. “Miss Hoyt will hate to see Philip go.”

  “Yes,” said the girl. “He’s such a good boy and I’ve taken care of him so much. One becomes attached to them, I suppose.” She looked drearily at Cardigan. “Have you come for him?”

  Cardigan chuckled with rough good humor. “Not me, Miss Hoyt. I’m just a private detective checking up.”

  She frowned thoughtfully, then asked: “Is anything wrong about Philip?”

  “Not about the boy, no. But his mother’s uncle left a couple of hundred thousand. It was to go to his mother but she’s dead, so it goes to the boy, in care of his father. Just routine. No need to worry about the boy.” He said to the elderly woman: “Thanks a million, madam,” and barged out.

  Geets was standing in front of the taxi with his chin thrust out into the wind. He called: “Ha, this is not no wind at all! When I was in Kansas—”

  “I believe you, pal,” said Cardigan, holding his hat tight to his head. “Let’s go.” He dived out of the gale, into the cab, and called out: “The Hotel Bangs.”

  “Oh, you don’t want to go there, chief. It’s what I might call, was I impolite, a dump, and you—”

  “I want,” said Cardigan, “to go to the Hotel Bangs. Get going!”

  Geets drove to the Hotel Bangs in a pout. As he stepped out Cardigan said: “Hang around, Geetsy.”

  The hotel was part brick, part frame, and had a narrow entryway six steps up from the sidewalk. The lobby was gloomy, the leather seats in the chairs were worn and cracked and the clerk behind the desk was middle-aged, scrawny-looking with a thin hatchet face decked with a waxed mustache. He wore a loud gray suit and a black-and-white-striped collar.

  Cardigan went up the wooden stairway to the fourth floor and rapped on the door of 419. There was no answer, no indication that there would be an answer. He rapped again, waited a minute and then returned to the lobby. Striding straight to the desk, he asked: “Does Four-nineteen ever come in?”

  The clerk was writing in a ledger and did not look up. “I wouldn’t know,” he droned.

  “You’d know if she was out or in, wouldn’t you?”

  The clerk, looking very disgusted, turned to the pigeon-holes back of him and snapped, “She’s out!” and returned sulkily to his ledger.

  Cardigan tossed a five-dollar bill on the desk. “I’ve been trying to date this gal ever since she came to town but I can never get her in. Give me a ring at the Kingman, will you? I’m in Nine-twenty-six. Just give me a ring when she comes in.”

  The clerk’s hand closed over the five-dollar bill and he spirited it into his pocket. “O.K.,” he said, and continued with his ledger work.

  Cardigan went outside and reentered the cab. “Back to the Kingman, Geetsy.”

  “In a trice, chief, in a trice.”

  IT was three o’clock when Cardigan walked into the Kingman lobby. Pat wasn’t around, so he went into the bar for a couple of beers. When he came out, twenty minutes later, Pat was sitting on one of the divans. He crossed to her, sat down and hooked his hat on one knee.

  Pat folded a newspaper she had been reading and said: “The story is pra
ctically the same as the one Hilda Helmgard told the police. She was awakened at half-past ten by the sound of the shot. She slept on the top floor. She put on a bathrobe and went out into the hall and as she did, Dillon came out of his bedroom. He preceded her down to the living room. The first thing she saw was Rosamund Dillon holding a gun and saying, ‘My God, I killed him!’ Then she saw Sam Salva on the floor. Rhea Beach was standing spellbound by the piano. Then Rosamund Dillon let the gun drop to the floor and sank to her knees in a sort of faint.

  “Dillon told Hilda to run down to the drug store and get some smelling salts. Hilda put an overcoat on and went. When she came back, Rhea was gone and Dillon was dressed and excited. He said, ‘Mrs. Dillon ran out. I’m going to get her.’ Then he ran out. Then Rhea Beach, who still looked stunned, said, ‘I think we ought to call a doctor, and make sure if this man’s dead.’ She phoned for a doctor. The doctor phoned the police. They came. Dillon came back at twelve thirty, worn and haggard, and said he’d been unable to find Rosamund. He said he was sure she’d gone to their cabin in the hills but when he got there she wasn’t there, so he came back. He’d been delayed, he said, because he’d crashed into a taxicab in the city on his way back. Hilda went to bed then, so she didn’t hear any more.”

  “That’s practically the same story she told the cops.”

  “Except one thing. The police didn’t ask her if Rosamund drank much. I did. She said she never saw Rosamund take a drink.”

  Cardigan said grimly: “That’s one thing, the main thing, that sticks out like a sore thumb.” Then he asked: “And what about that taxi Dillon hit?”

  “It was driven by a man named R.E. Geets.”

  Cardigan slapped himself in the face.

  Pat looked at him. “Why, what’s got into you?”

  “Geets! That clown’s been driving me all over town!” He jumped up and legged it out to the sidewalk, but Geets’ cab was not in sight. He asked one of the other drivers: “Where’s Geets?”

  “Oh, he left about ten minutes ago. Some guy wanted to get to Pleasanton in a hurry. Geets was in line. It’s twenty miles out and twenty back and he’s welcome to it.”

  “When he comes back, tell him I want to see him. Room Nine-twenty-six.”

  He bought a newspaper from a young Negro, snapped it open as he went back into the lobby and saw boxed in the center of the first page—CARDIGAN TO SHOW UP LOCAL POLICE.

  He growled “Nuts!” under his breath and snapped the paper shut, tossed it into an empty armchair.

  “Smoke gets in your eyes, eh?” Pat said.

  Chapter Three

  Geets—Master Detective

  CARDIGAN showered hot, then cold. When the cold water struck him he groaned and sobbed and whistled and blew and went through a lot of fantastic contortions. He spattered floor, walls and ceiling of the small bathroom. Then he hopped out to the bathmat and raked a towel back and forth and around his body until he was dry. He wrapped another towel around his loins, poked his big feet into worn leather Pullman slippers, yanked open the bathroom door and stepped into the bedroom feeling like a million dollars.

  He saw the man with the gun leaning comfortably back against the corridor door and drawing thoughtfully on a cigarette. The gun was steady in ungloved hand. The man wore a dark blue Guards overcoat, a derby. He had a hard, intelligent, knotty face, and was somewhere in his thirties.

  He said: “Sit down, Tarzan.”

  Cardigan barked angrily: “Can’t you read signs?”

  “Sure.” The man drew a Do Not Disturb from his overcoat pocket and tossed it on the floor. “I thought somebody left it on your door by mistake. Go ahead, sit down.”

  Cardigan shot him a dark, contemptuous glance, scooped up a pair of fresh undertrunks and got into them. He reached for his trousers, heard the click of the hammer going back on the gun the man held. He looked narrowly at the man.

  “Your pants can wait,” the man said dryly. “I told you to sit down.”

  Cardigan lit a cigarette, picked up a magazine and lay down on the bed. The man moved to the foot of the bed, rested the barrel of his revolver on the footboard, its muzzle aimed at about Cardigan’s belly. Cardigan pretended to read.

  The man’s dry voice said, “You’re very funny, or maybe just phony.”

  “Whenever there’s a chance I might get shot,” Cardigan said, turning a page, “I lay me down. I knew a guy once that was shot while he was standing up. It wasn’t the shot that killed him. It was the fall.”

  “This hammer is cocked, big boy, and one of those jokes of yours might make me bust out laughing so suddenly that the gun will go off.”

  Cardigan flung the magazine across the room and sat up in bed. His eyes were dark, malignant, and one corner of his wide mouth was drawn down tightly. “If you’ve got something on your mind, get it off,” he snarled.

  The man was immovable. His lips hardly moved when he said: “I’ve got something on my mind, loud-mouth. Stay away from Rhea Beach.”

  Cardigan took a drag at his cigarette, chuckled. “So it’s Rhea Beach that’s on your mind, eh? Coincidence: she’s been on my mind ever since I came here.”

  The man’s voice was hard, slow, toneless. “I mean what I say. Stay away from Rhea Beach.”

  “Who sent you: Dillon or Boylan?”

  “Nobody sent me. Rhea Beach was dragged through enough publicity last year. She’s a sick woman. You’re not going to rake up what’s past and dead and finished. You’re going to leave Rhea Beach alone.” His words were relentless, low, definite, and his dark eyes never left Cardigan’s face.

  Cardigan leaned with his elbows on his knees. “So you’re that way about Rhea Beach, eh?” he drawled, a crooked smile on his lips. “Well, buddy, that’s just too bad. You’re talking to a mug now that likes to finish things he starts. I want to get Rhea Beach’s story from her own lips. I want to see her. I got Dillon’s. I got the maid Hilda Helmgard’s. I got the cops’. I still want Rhea Beach’s.”

  The man’s lips were dry. “You heard what I said, Cardigan. I know what murder is and I’m not nuts about committing it, but you won’t see Rhea Beach. You’ll have to get past the muzzle of this gun first, and you won’t get past.”

  Cardigan’s eyes were bright, insolent. He said caustically: “Why the hell don’t you save yourself a lot of legwork and shoot me now?”

  “I came here to give you a break,” the man said. “After this, if you get shot in the back, it’ll be your own fault.”

  Cardigan flung a leg over the side of the bed.

  The man snapped: “If you move now, it’ll be in the belly!”

  Cardigan remained motionless, eyeing him with a hawkish stare.

  The man turned and backed slowly to the door, reached back with his left hand and closed it on the knob. He said: “I’d rather shoot you, if I have to, when nobody’s looking. If you try any bright stuff now, I’ll take my chances and shoot you anyhow. Stay put, fella.”

  He opened the door, backed out, closed the door swiftly.

  CARDIGAN bounded off the bed, whipped into a shirt, opened the closet door, slipped his gun out of the spring holster hanging on a hook. He lunged for the door, yanked it open and jumped into the hall. He saw the man vanish around a corner toward the elevator bank as a huge fat man came strolling placidly into view, took one look at Cardigan and then charged into him. Cardigan and the fat man crashed to the corridor floor.

  “Lemme go!” Cardigan bellowed.

  The fat man held on grimly and they rolled over and over, their heads, elbows, heels banging on the floor and against the walls. Then suddenly the fat man was sitting on Cardigan’s chest—easily two hundred and fifty pounds of flesh and bone pinning Cardigan to the floor.

  “You can’t do this,” said the fat man hotly, indignantly. “In your underpants running out into the halls of a first class, respectable hotel. Shame on you!”

  “Ugh—lemme—get up.”

  “Certainly,” said the fat man, rising and pulling
Cardigan with him. “Now get right back in your room. Quick, before somebody sees you!” He grabbed Cardigan’s arm and hustled him back to the room. Cardigan flung his gun angrily on the bed.

  The fat man said from the doorway: “I know you’re a very well known detective, Mr. Cardigan, but I’m the house officer here and—”

  Cardigan said: “All right, all right. Take the air.”

  “Shame on you!” cried the house officer, and left, closing the door with a hard, indignant slam.

  Frowning, cursing under his breath, Cardigan poured himself a long drink of rye and stood by the window drinking it. Lights were glowing in the street below and the tops of automobiles moved like an endless chain. The sounds of the city rose in a harsh but muffled melody.

  THERE was a knock on his door and Cardigan turned, picked up his gun and rasped: “Come in.” The door opened, revealing R.E. Geets, hat in hand. Geets took one look at the gun, almost fell over backward. Cardigan pitched the gun back onto the bed and said with a chuckle: “O.K., Geetsy. Come right in.”

  Geets swallowed hard, fanned himself with his hat and came uncertainly into the room. He said: “To tell the truth, chief, you give me a most uncomfortable start.”

  “Do you remember a smash-up you had about this time last year with a fellow named Dillon?”

  “Me?… Oh, yeah, sure.”

  “Quite a crash, wasn’t it?”

  Geets scoffed. “Nah. Why, say, chief, once I was driving a barouche out in Columbus, Ohio. It was new. I had just obtained it the day before—”

  “Suppose we stick to the one you had last year here in Wheelburgh.”

  “Oh, the Dillon one, yes, sir. Why chief, that gentleman was no gentleman. He come right at me like he had a grudge or something against me, like he made it a pastime sort of—I mean, you know, going around running into people that never harmed him at all. I was distinctly mortified. It wasn’t as if he didn’t see me. I had all me lights on, I was making a right turn into Level Street, and this gentleman cut right in on me, socko! And after I was socked, I sat right there saying to meself, ‘R.E. Geets, this gentleman must be screwy. In fact, he must be utsney.’”