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

by Frederick Nebel

  Cardigan said: “I don’t suppose you noticed if there were any dents on his car before he hit you.”

  “Nope—I mean, no, sir, I did not. All I noticed was he had only one headlight burning.”

  “Which one?”

  “Well, it was the right one that was out; but shucks, I seen the gentleman was all shook up after the crash, and when I find he is insured all right, I don’t mention the headlight business to the cops. I am not no cad, chief.”

  The telephone rang and Cardigan picked it up.

  A woman’s voice asked: “Who is this?”

  “Cardigan.”

  “If you will get in touch with the Moreland Foundling Home in Cleveland, you will find that Rosamund Dillon was not the mother of Philip Dillon. She adopted an infant in December, Nineteen Thirty-three.” There was a clicking sound in the transmitter.

  “Hello—hello!” barked Cardigan. “Hey, wait! Hello!” He knew the woman had hung up. He hung up too, set the instrument down slowly, a deep shadow between his dark startled eyes.

  “Gee!” exclaimed Geets.

  Cardigan turned.

  Geets was staring pop-eyed, his chubby face wreathed in smiles, his stubby forefinger pointing. “Are you Cardigan the detective?”

  Cardigan, absorbed in other thoughts, went back to his drink.

  “Geez—I mean, holy smokes—I mean I—” Geets shook his head. “Is this not something! Am I not honored!” He pointed, cocked one merry eye. “Ha, I’ll bet you never knew I was a private detective too!”

  Cardigan made a sour, puzzled face. Geets thrust a card before his eyes on which was inscribed—

  This is to certify that R.E. Geets has completed our A-1 course in General Detective Procedure and has qualified as a Detective, Master Class.

  The Black Diamond Correspondence School.

  Geets was bubbling over. “Is that not something?” he demanded jubilantly.

  Cardigan held up a limp hand. “Shake, colleague.”

  Geets pumped his hand enthusiastically. “Yeah. We are sort of confrerries, like the French say.” He waved the card. “Only ten bucks it cost me! Only ten bucks! Master Class!”

  Chapter Four

  With a Gun in His Ribs

  THE stars were out. Pale scud, torn and tattered, streamed endlessly across them. The wind had a lean stride on Dover Street; it slapped and struck with a cutting edge and as Cardigan stepped out of the cab it bellowed in his ears, drummed his trousers cuffs against his ankles, ballooned the skirt of his shabby overcoat up to his hips.

  “Hang around, Geetsy,” he said.

  “You know me, Al,” Geets saluted.

  Cardigan turned and twisted through the wind to the large, carved, oaken door. He pressed a button. A man with the face of a bulldog opened the door a matter of six inches, held it there as Cardigan put his foot on the doorstep.

  “You a member?” the man growled.

  “No, I want to see Ned Dillon.”

  “You see him when he’s to home. No admittance. Scat!”

  Cardigan punched the door open and the bulldog-faced man teetered backward. Cardigan kicked the door shut with his heel and the bulldog-faced man whipped out a blackjack. Cardigan stamped on his toes, ripped the blackjack out of his hand and threw it across the foyer into a brocaded divan.

  “I’ll wait here,” he said. “It’s cold out.”

  Portières parted and a stout man with no hair and no eyebrows said: “What’s up, Hammer?”

  The bulldog-faced man was trying to get his gun out of his hip pocket. Cardigan slapped at the struggling hand, kicked the man in the shins, took the gun out of the hip pocket and gave it to him.

  “Go ahead, have fun,” he said; and turning his back on the bulldog-faced man, he strolled toward the fat man.

  The fat man said: “Say, I could use you around here…. Put it away, Hammer. This guy is good. Shake, stranger. I like to see a man act quick like that.”

  Cardigan held out his hand, the fat man gripped it, held it, and socked him on the chin with a left uppercut. Hammer came up and pressed his gun against Cardigan’s back. Cardigan rubbed his chin and smiled tightly at the fat man.

  The fat man did not smile; he said: “Now, sweetheart, what’s on your mind?”

  “I want to see Ned Dillon. Cardigan.”

  The fat man looked at him steadily. He shrugged. “Why didn’t you say you were Cardigan?” And to Hammer, “All right, Hammer, douse it.”

  Cardigan followed the fat man down a wide, polished corridor that emptied into a large circular room fitted with gaming tables. Men and women were playing and no one looked up. The fat man pointed to a door.

  “He’s in the bar right now.”

  Cardigan went through the door, down a flight of three carpeted steps, into a small, oak-paneled bar behind which a barman in a white monkey-jacket was mixing old-fashioneds. Dillon and a girl were the only ones at the bar. They were sitting on high stools with empty old-fashioned glasses before them. Dillon looked slightly tight. He didn’t see Cardigan until the big op came up and leaned on the bar beside him.

  Cardigan said: “I’d like to see you alone.”

  Dillon turned, startled. He was a big, lanky man in his early thirties; handsome if you like curly-haired blonds with light blue eyes, full lips, dazzling teeth and a way of wearing expensive clothes with a certain carelessness.

  “Oh,” Dillon said, dropping his eyes from Cardigan’s face to his chest, “so it’s you again. Well, I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “Skip the drink.”

  Dillon hiccupped. “Oh, he’s got things on his mind. Well, you must meet Edna. Cardigan… Edna.”

  SHE was a lean-flanked brunette with wicked red lips, olive skin, and a pair of dark, slumbrous eyes. She said: “Oh, you’re the man’s been taking up all the newspaper space. How charming! Do you really wear a false beard sometimes, like detectives I’ve read about? And I’ll bet you can say ‘Boo!’ very threateningly, too.”

  Cardigan said to Dillon: “Alone.”

  Edna asked: “Is that hat you wear a regular detective’s hat? I thought they wore big black ones, and black capes.”

  “Ha, ha,” laughed Dillon.

  “Like in a book,” mocked Edna.

  Cardigan said: “Come on, Dillon, where we can be—”

  Edna interrupted: “I’ll bet he carries handcuffs and a magnifying glass and wears crêpe-soled shoes and everything.”

  “I also, once in a while,” said Cardigan, “slap fresh dames like you down. Get wise to yourself and take a walk. I’ve met hundreds like you, girlie, and the pain is always the same and right in the same place.”

  Dillon erupted: “Look here, you can’t insult Edna!”

  “Listen, my friend, I haven’t even started to insult Edna.”

  Edna got down off the stool, said: “He wants to monopolize you, Ned. See you at the chuck-a-luck table,” and sailed hotly out of the bar.

  Cardigan said to Dillon, “Over here,” and walked to a small table in the corner. He sat down and Dillon, bringing a fresh old-fashioned with him, sat down opposite him with a surly droop to his lips.

  “It’s hard luck for you,” Cardigan said, leaning with both elbows on the table.

  Dillon brought his eyes upward by fits and starts until they met Cardigan’s. He raised his glass and sipped.

  Cardigan said: “You’re out exactly two hundred thousand dollars.”

  Dillon lowered the glass slowly to the table and stared at Cardigan with his light, slightly foggy, blue eyes.

  “Because,” said Cardigan, “your late wife never gave birth to a child. The will says, ‘If she has given birth to a child and said child survives her.’ The kid was adopted.”

  Dillon’s eyes bulged, his lips shook. “That’s a lie! It’s her kid—my kid!”

  “I phoned the Moreland Foundling Home in Cleveland and they gave me the straight goods.”

  Dillon struck the table. “It’s a lie! She went to Cleveland to have t
he baby. She came back with….” His jaw fell slack, his eyes widened stupidly.

  “She came back,” Cardigan said, “with a foundling.”

  Dillon stammered: “She told me—told me—it was ours.” His mouth was out of shape, his face deathly pale, stricken. Then he blurted in a panicky voice: “But if it was adopted, it’s mine now—hers—the money—”

  Cardigan intoned: “If the wife’s dead, and hadn’t given birth to a kid, the money goes to a cousin of the old man’s. It says nothing about an adopted kid. It’s in black and white, ‘If she has given birth to a child….’ You’re out of luck, Dillon.”

  DILLON raised the drink to his lips. His hand shook so badly that the rim of the glass clicked against his teeth. His wild blue eyes stared fixedly at the table.

  Cardigan rubbed his palms together, saying, “So that’s all I came here for. To find Rosamund; or if she was dead, a kid she’d given birth to. But,” he added, “a new angle comes in. When I gave the news to the press that the kid was not in line to get the dough and that I was through with the case, the News-Telegram hired me to stay on the case and finish my leads. Those birds have pestered me plenty since I came here, so I’m charging double what I’d charge ordinarily. Besides, the cops have been getting in my hair and there’s a certain wiseacre that came into my hotel room with a gun. And besides, I’d like an awful lot to meet Rhea Beach.”

  Dillon looked haggard. Two hundred thousand dollars snatched from under a man’s nose is apt to make one look very haggard. He got up slowly, fumbling dazedly with his tie; walked slowly out of the bar, feeling his way, like a man in a stupor.

  Cardigan stood up, tossed a dollar on the bar and said: “Give me a shot of rye.”

  “Mr. Dillon looks sick,” observed the barman.

  “Yeah,” said Cardigan. He downed the rye straight.

  “You must have handed him some bad news.”

  Cardigan said, “Yeah,” climbed up out of the bar and headed across the gaming room toward the foyer.

  Edna sauntered into his path, put her hands on her hips and said: “Say, you visiting horse’s neck, I don’t like you.”

  “No?”

  “No!”

  “So maybe what?”

  “This!” She spat, and took a wild swing at him.

  He stopped the blow with his open palm, picked her up in both arms, turned and saying, “Catch!” to the hairless fat man, heaved her. Then he went on his way, slapped the portières aside, unlocked the front door and stepped out into the blustering wind.

  Geets said: “Once upon a time I knew a gentleman what was so misfortunate as to lose his shirt in this den of vice and inickety.”

  “Now go to the Hotel Bangs,” said Cardigan.

  Geets wagged his head dolefully. “Mr. Cardigan, you don’t want to go to that dump.”

  “Geets,” said Cardigan, indicating the steering wheel.

  Geets sighed and climbed in behind the wheel.

  The wind moaned in the trees along Dover Street, whanged and whistled in the power lines overhead. The metal cover of a refuse can had blown off and was skating and skittering along the sidewalk with a great clangor. A patrolman was standing on a corner ringing in and holding his cap to his head with one gloved hand. The big arc light above him was swaying and creaking.

  In a little while Geets was rolling his cab down the lean, rakish stretch of Potomac Avenue, past poolrooms, second-rate movie theaters, second-hand stores, beer halls.

  He pulled up at last in front of the dim, drab Hotel Bangs and said: “Okie-doke-doke, chief. I am really embarrassed being saw parked in front of this jernt, but go ahead. Why, I would not advise my worst enemy to enter them portals. Not even my mother-in-law, was she alive, which she is not, God rest her soul. Only the other day—”

  But Cardigan was on his way into the lobby.

  THE middle-aged, scrawny clerk was behind the desk, reading a newspaper. Cardigan laid both fists on the desk and said: “Five bucks is five bucks, mister.”

  The clerk looked up, did not smile. “I tried to get you an hour ago. They said there was no answer.”

  “Is she in?”

  “Yeah. And tight. And noisy. Maybe you’d better not go up.”

  Cardigan said, “I have a very soothing nature,” and swung his big feet toward the stairway. He climbed slowly, his hands sunk in his overcoat pockets, his hat crushed down to his bushy eyebrows. When he came up to 419 he rolled his knuckles down the door panel. There was no answer. There was a glass transom above the door, closed, and he could tell that there was no light in the room. He knocked again, a little louder, waited. There was no answer.

  He took a bunch of keys out of his pocket, began trying them on the lock. The eighth worked and he opened the door, felt around for a light switch. He found it but before snapping it on, he stepped into the room and closed the door.

  The knotty-faced young man in the dark blue Guards coat was sitting on a straight-backed chair. One knee was crossed on the other; balanced on the top knee was the barrel of his gun. It was a small, shabby room, with a scarred brass bed and a chipped and battered bureau. There was no one in the room but the knotty-faced man. He said: “Imagine your surprise.”

  Cardigan leaned back against the door, the upper half of his face shadowed by the brim of his hat. The wind rattled the window panes and moaned over the roof tops. The man with the gun sat motionless, relaxed, at ease. The light shone on his polished black shoes, the buttons of his dark gray spats.

  “I wasn’t,” he said in his dry, unhurried voice, “kidding you when I paid that call on you.”

  “I didn’t think you were,” said Cardigan dully. “I wasn’t kidding, either, fella, when I said I was going to see Rhea Beach.”

  The man stood up. “Let’s go.”

  “We can talk right here.”

  “We’re not going to talk. We’re going to ride. Keep your hands out of your pockets. Open the door.”

  “Now listen—”

  “You’re doing the listening. I’m doing the talking. Open the door.”

  Cardigan opened the door and the man motioned him into the corridor, closed the door and got behind him. “Down the stairs and out the side door.”

  They went down the stairway, Cardigan two steps ahead of the man. They went out the side door into a narrow street. The man now had his gun in his pocket but his hand was on it and he said: “Keep walking. Potomac.”

  They turned into Potomac and stood on the corner and the man with the gun barked: “Taxi!”

  GEETS pulled up to the corner in a sour pout and the man with the gun looked at Cardigan and jerked his chin toward the cab. Cardigan pulled open the door and climbed in and the man said, “Drive down to Water Street,” and climbed in also.

  The cab moved off and after a while Geets called back: “Water Street is not a very safe place at this time of night. Maybe there is another street you would like to go instead, if I may say so.”

  “You’ve said so,” replied the man. “Now drive where I told you.”

  “Ah, well,” sighed Geets.

  He drove on, speeding.

  Cardigan said: “Can I smoke?”

  “No,” said the man beside him, his gun held against Cardigan’s ribs.

  “You think Rhea’s worth this?”

  “Keep your mouth shut. You’re wasting your breath and I don’t need entertainment.”

  Cardigan lounged dejectedly in the corner of the seat. He saw the stores begin to thin out, the lights become less frequent. The wind was skating and spinning odds and ends of paper across the street. A sign reading Midnight Club in blue electric lights flashed by and there was the sound of a hot jazz band; it faded soon.

  “That was Water Street you said, was it not?” asked Geets.

  “Water Street, dummy,” said the man with the gun.

  “It’s probably as good as any,” chuckled Cardigan.

  “Yes, sir,” said Geets.

  The prod of the gun against Cardigan’s
side recommended silence in terms more definite than any spoken word would have done.

  A dairy depot loomed, rolled past. Dark, tattered fields unrolled, and there was the smell of the river. A truck with an array of colored lights on its cab lumbered past, heavily laden with barrels.

  Geets shifted in his seat, reached up his right hand and tugged at the back of his collar. The cab heeled. Geets slapped both hands on the wheel, tugged at it. The cab jounced, swayed. It swerved suddenly, wildly, flung the man with the gun hard against Cardigan. But the gun’s muzzle dug into Cardigan’s ribs, the man muttered: “Easy, Cardigan!”

  The cab bounced over a curbstone, its rear end flying high, slamming down. Both Cardigan and the man with the gun hit the roof. The cab plowed through a light board fence. Boards snapped and cracked. Cardigan was thrown to the floor. He tried to draw his gun. The cab bounced again and hurled the man with the gun on top of him. The cab heeled over, poised on two wheels, then slammed back to all four. The door flew open and Cardigan and the man with the gun were flung out into dry, crisp weeds. A boulder stopped Cardigan abruptly, stunned him. The cab stopped. Geets jumped out with a wrench in his hand.

  The man with the gun leaped to his feet and Geets chopped with the wrench. It missed the man’s head, grazed his shoulder, swept down his arm and knocked the gun flying from his hand. He reeled backward and Geets jumped after him, swinging again. The man ducked, turned and began running away through the weeds. Geets ran after him, stumbled and fell. He struggled up, took a look at the bounding figure and flung his wrench after it. It missed wide. The man ran on, faded away in the darkness.

  Chapter Five

  Lady Killer

  GEETS plowed back to the cab and found Cardigan getting slowly to his feet, shaking his head from side to side. He was hatless and his hair was down over his eyes. Geets took hold of his arm and Cardigan took a swing at him.

  “Hey!” yelled Geets, jumping. “It’s me—R.E. Geets!”

  “Oh,” grunted Cardigan, staggering around in the weeds. “Sorry, Geetsy. Where’s…?”

  “He did take to his heels, chief. Bless my soul, I knew there was something most definite not on the up-and-up. Excuse the bumps, but I figured it was the only way to kind of bust things up, so to speak. Good I got blow-out-proof tires.”