“No, I don’t,” said Pat Seaward. “I was in Toledo then.”
“Well,” said Cardigan, pulling the telephone over. “I got the lug’s fingerprints on this telephone receiver, anyhow.”
Pat chuckled. “Ten’ll get you twenty you haven’t.”
Cardigan jabbed her with a look.
Miss Elfoot said: “Mr. Know-it-all had to call headquarters.”
“I told him,” Pat said, “not to use it but he just laughed and said you were trying to put something over on him.”
Cardigan pushed the phone away, threw up his hands and said: “Well, I always wondered what happened to cops when they became lieutenants, and now I know: they put their brains away in mothballs.”
One of Shadd’s eyes bulged while the other narrowed down very tightly. He barked out: “I’m sick and tired of being insulted around here—first by the dames and then by you! It looks damned funny to me that this here S.N. Talbott’d be important enough for a guy to pull a stick-up over and you don’t even remember what about Talbott.” He shook his finger at Cardigan. “I ain’t no fool!”
“Don’t be too sure about that,” Cardigan said. “You’ve been wrong before.”
Miss Elfoot said, “Crazy people never think they’re crazy, either,” and went into the front office.
Cardigan stood up, said: “Suppose you blow, Boze. You get in my hair like dandruff.”
“Listen,” grated Shadd, red-faced, “what hospital’s the kid at, huh?”
“The South Side Emergency.”
Shadd took off his hat and slapped it back on again. “O.K.,” he bit off, his jaw determined.
“Now you listen!” Cardigan yelled. “You leave that kid alone. He’s undergoing an operation and when he comes out, if he does come out, you leave him alone. He don’t know anything. He just happened to walk into something.”
Shadd, on his way, said over his shoulder: “I wouldn’t trust you no further than I can throw a horse, and I can’t throw a horse.”
“You sure can throw the bull, though,” Miss Elfoot said.
“If you were a man, sister, I’d slap you down.”
“If I were a man, pickle puss, you wouldn’t dare.”
Shadd snorted, “Mayhn!” and banged out. They could hear his heels slamming hard on the way down the corridor.
AT midnight the hospital waiting-room was deserted except for Cardigan. He lay slumped in an armchair, dozing, with his big feet propped on another. The boy had been through the operation but was in a coma and Cardigan had been in the hospital for the past three hours.
Presently the clicking of heels on the cement floor stirred him, did not rouse him completely. A nurse came round a corner of the corridor and reaching him stopped and said: “Mr. Cardigan.”
“Hahn? Huhn?” he muttered, blinking.
“On the telephone.”
He yawned and heaved out of the chair and started down the corridor.
“This way,” the nurse said.
He turned around and followed her to a switchboard set in an alcove. She picked up a phone and handed it to him and he said: “Yowss?… Yup…. Why?… Well, why didn’t you say so? I’ll be over in a shake.”
He hung up and turning, said: “Nothing new about the kid?”
The nurse shook her head.
He went back to where he had been sitting, put on his shabby old ulster, pulled his hat down over his shaggy hair and left the hospital. The wind was sluggish and laden with a damp cold. Mist sheathed the street lights and the sound of a distant trolley car slapping over a switch was sharp, distinct. He coughed and the sound echoed round his head. When he had walked two blocks he found a cab standing outside an all-night lunchroom. The cab was empty and he reached in and punched the horn button. The lunchroom door opened, the smell of frying hamburger sailed out, and with it came the driver.
“Y’ wish a cab, sir?”
“Yeah. Hit for Sixth Street,” Cardigan said and climbed in, sprawling in the back seat as the cab shot away from the curb. He could hear the tires sucking at the wet pavement, the driver humming cheerfully to himself.
When they reached Sixth Street Cardigan said: “Turn right and keep going till I tell you to stop.”
Beyond a wide parking-space and hard by the flat dull side of a brick warehouse, a cluster of lights glowed wetly in the cold mist. Figures moved. One came out into the street and held up his hand. Metal buttons and a shield gleamed.
“Pull up,” Cardigan said, and stepping out, as the cop came up, “I’m Cardigan. Where’s Shadd?”
A voice brayed from the mottled darkness: “You, Cardigan?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought so by the loud mouth.”
There was an ambulance among the parked cars. The mist had beaded on the wires and was dripping like rain. Other uniformed cops moved among the crossed beams of the various headlights. There was a cleared space alongside the warehouse and lying in the short bleached grass between it and the sidewalk was the body of a man.
The red end of a cigar moved from Shadd’s mouth down to his side and he said: “Well, here’s S.N. Talbott.”
A COP sprayed a flashlight down upon the dead man. Cardigan bent over, bracing his arm straight against the cold wet wall of the warehouse. The face of the dead man was white, it was a middle-aged face, small, kindly even in death. White-gray hair bushed around the head. Overcoat, suit-coat, vest and shirt had been opened and the wound was darkly visible—beneath the heart and a little to the left.
Cardigan straightened. He said in a low voice: “How do you know it’s Talbott?”
Shadd held out a gold watch, its back cover open. “I opened the back of it. It’s engraved inside. Samuel Naylor Talbott, with great affection from his staff. It was in the watch pocket of his pants. The guys that knocked him off must have missed it, because all the labels are ripped out of his clothes. They figured he’d be pigeon-holed as an unidentified man.”
“Who found him?”
“Schwartzhaus, on the beat. About half an hour ago. Offhand, the doc says he’s been dead about a couple of hours. Now I suppose you’re going to stand there in all your bare face and tell me that you know nothing about S.N. Talbott.”
“Did you get me down here to start that over again?”
“Listen, Cardigan—”
“I suppose with the kid in the hospital, still unconscious, and maybe dying, that I’d try to fox you. Don’t be as dumb as you look, Boze. I tell you I don’t know anything about Talbott. He wrote us—all right, he wrote us, because we had a file on him. But what it was about, I don’t know. Am I a memory expert? This lug that swiped that file—he knew Talbott wrote us, he came in and swiped the file, to get his hands clean. He knew I didn’t remember about Talbott. So with the bridges burned, it was safe to kill Talbott—but why he was killed I don’t know.”
A plainclothesman came up and said: “Lieutenant, I phoned all the hotels and there ain’t no S.N. Talbott registered at any of them.”
“Did you look in the local phone directory?”
“Yes. No soap there, either.”
“Well, if he ain’t registered at any hotel, he must live here anyhow, and no phone.”
Cardigan said: “If he lived here and wanted to consult us about anything, ten to one he’d have phoned or dropped by the office, instead of writing.”
The ambulance doctor said: “How about it, Lieutenant—can we load up and shove off?”
Shadd was biting his lip. “Yeah,” he grunted. “Yeah, go ahead. To the morgue. I’ll want the bullet.” He turned and strode off; then swiveled and came back again and said to Cardigan in a hard, rasping voice: “By cripes, if you’re horsing around with me!”
Cardigan started to say something, but he spat disgustedly and stamped over to the taxicab.
Shadd came after him, grinding out: “I said if you’re—”
Cardigan whirled on him, his mouth savage. “If you think I am, damn you, pinch me! Toss me in the can! But cut out ai
ring your dirty mind around me! By cripes, I think they stuck you in plainclothes because they ran out of uniforms! Nuts to you—especially big ones, like walnuts!”
He slammed into the cab and said: “Hotel Romany.” As he drove off he caught a glimpse of Shadd’s bitter, anger-ridden face.
When he reached his hotel room, he was still boiling. He uncorked a bottle, slopped liquor into a glass and threw it down his throat. Undressing, he walked up and down the room and left his clothes strewn about; climbed into a pair of wrinkled blue pajamas and had another drink and then picked his clothes up and hung them in the closet. He scrubbed his teeth, gargled loud and long, and then piled into bed.
The telephone woke him up an hour later and he said into the transmitter: “Yeah, this is Cardigan.” His eyebrows snapped together and his hands tightened on the instrument. Now his voice came very thickly: “Sure, we’ll take care of things…. Nope, he didn’t have any parents…. Uhn—thanks.”
As he put the telephone down his big hands shook a little and the cordlike muscles in his neck stiffened, bulged. His face got dark as a thundercloud and his lips flattened so hard that his teeth appeared, clenched.
“Died… poor kid,” he muttered.
Chapter Three
The Empty House
WIND blew the mists away, and by morning the streets were dry. But the wind was strong, heavy-handed; it whistled on the boulevards, cracked and boomed in the alleys, tore the smoke from chimneys. Cardigan cut through it across Twelfth and dug down into Olive Street, his ulster ballooning at his knees, the brim of his weather-beaten fedora clapping against the crown. Auto horns and trolley bells crackled and bonged around him. He turned into the Edge Building, pounded his feet up two flights and strode into the Cosmos office.
Miss Elfoot was grave. “I’m sorry about Buddy—”
“H’m.”
He had been over all that with Pat.
Pat said: “Every time I think of it…” and grimaced.
“Sh, sh,” Cardigan said, giving her a slap on the shoulder. “It’s tough, Patsy. It’s done and it can’t be undone—though I’d give my right arm to have that kid alive. But”—he scowled—“some things can be done. Miss Elfoot—”
“Yep?”
“Call the motor-vehicle bureau—long distance. Ask ’em if a man by the name of S.N. Talbott ever took out a license. If he did, get the address.” He swiveled. “You, Pat—you hike over to headquarters. If I go over, there’ll be a fight. Turn on the personality and find out if the bullet they took out of Buddy matches with the bullet they took out of Talbott. Go right to Corniff, the ballistics man. Step on it, kid.”
HE WENT into his office, sat at his desk and ran through the morning’s mail. It took him twenty minutes to do this and he was taking time out to light a cigarette when Miss Elfoot appeared in the doorway and said: “I’ve got them on the wire. Samuel Naylor Talbott—”
“That’s it!”
“Operates a dark blue Farman five-passenger sedan. License number KX22101. Motor number 1324659—”
“Address.”
“Just Dryden Hill, Missouri.”
“Oke.”
“That all?”
“That’s all from them. Hang up and get Dryden Hill on the phone pronto. It’s a little town out in the Ozarks.”
Five minutes later the Dryden Hill operator was on the wire and Cardigan said: “This is the Cosmos Detective Agency, St. Louis. Has Mr. S.N. Talbott got a phone?… Ring him.” He waited until another voice, a woman’s voice answered. He said: “Are you Mrs. Talbott?… Oh, his housekeeper. Is Mrs. Talbott there?… Oh, I didn’t know. Well, do you know who Mr. Talbott went to see in St. Louis?… Do you know who would know?… I get it. And thanks.”
He hung up and said to Miss Elfoot: “Dryden Hill again. This time Oscar Hedvig at the Dryden Sentinel. Talbott runs it.”
When he was connected with Oscar Hedvig, he said: “This is Cardigan, the Cosmos Detective Agency, St. Louis. Mr. Talbott left there for this city and I wonder if you knew who he was going to see?… Oh, me, eh? Well, he never got to see me. He must have seen somebody else first. D’you know who it might be?… I see…. No, go ahead.” He began writing on a piece of paper. He asked: “Do you know why?… Oh, he was, was he?… Well, Mr. Hedvig, it’s bad news—bad as bad. Mr. Talbott was found dead last night in Sixth Street, here. Shot…. I don’t know. Nobody knows…. The police department, of course…. I’m sorry as hell, Mr. Hedvig.”
Miss Elfoot stood watchfully in the doorway. “Soap?” she said, as Cardigan hung up.
He nodded. “Maybe. Talbott left Dryden Hill, driving, three days ago. He was coming to see the agency—and, Hedvig thinks, some automobile club called the Coast-to-Coast Auto Tourist Society. Ever hear of it?”
“No.”
“Look it up in the telephone directory.”
She looked it up, shook her head. “Nope.”
“O.K. Call the post office, ask for McAlmon, tell him who you are and ask if they’ve got an address.”
Five minutes later she reported: “Out on Washington, number—”
He wrote the number down, stood up and said: “Now go through the storage garages listed in the classified directory. Call the garages and see if Talbott’s car is stored in any of them. Mention his name and the license number.” He was getting into his overcoat. “I’ll be back.”
“If Shadd turns up, what should I do?”
“Spit in his eye.”
“I can’t spit, chief. Every time I try, I whistle.”
“Well, whistle.”
He sloped out of the office, caught a downbound elevator and crashed into Shadd in the lobby. Shadd reeled back, almost lost his hat, recovered it with one hand and pointed with the other.
“Hey, you!” he barked.
Cardigan went sweeping out to the sidewalk and found a cab waiting at the curb. He said: “Go to—”
But Shadd was there, spinning him around. “Cardigan—”
Cardigan shoved him away, turned back to the cab-driver and started again: “Go to—”
Shadd pushed in between Cardigan and the cab and clamped an iron hand on Cardigan’s arm. “No, you don’t!” he grunted, his eyes hard and angry, his face a deep scarlet. “So you tell me everything. You don’t hold nothing from the police department. Ha!”
“All right. Ha! What do I know now? Maybe I’ve been going around—”
“Listen, you big loud-mouthed Irish bum! A guy out in Dryden Hill just calls up and asks what about Talbott, his boss? I say, ‘Who is this and what do you know about Talbott?’ He says, oh, Mr. Cardigan phoned him and said Talbott was dead—”
“Well?”
“Well!” yelled Shadd. “How the hell did you know Talbott came from Dryden Hill? I thought you said you didn’t know nothing about him! I thought—”
“You thought! Any time you’d think, Boze, the experience’d give you a brain-clot! Leggo my arm!”
Shadd’s eyes were wild and dangerous. “You know more about this than—”
“Listen, you mud-turtle. I found out where he came from simply by calling the motor-vehicle bureau and finding out if he owned a car.”
Shadd held on. He grated: “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell the police department?”
“Am I your errand boy? No! And, I tell you, sweetheart, leggo that arm or I’ll stand you on your head.”
Shadd snarled: “The kid’s dead. O.K., he’s dead. If you’d had any guts he’d be alive—you’d have taken that shot—”
Shadd said “Ooo!” and closed his eyes tight as Cardigan struck him. Shadd hit the pavement hard, his legs sprawling, his hat flying off and rolling away.
Cardigan got into the cab, slammed shut the door and said: “Head out Washington—quick, before that animated cartoon goes into his dance again.”
THE house on Washington was two-storied, with a dirty yellow brick front, and with ten stone steps leading up to a gloomy vestibule. It looked deserted. There was a s
ingle bell-button inside the lobby and Cardigan punched it, heard a bell ring somewhere far in the house. He flipped the metal cover of a mail-slot in the door. No one came. He rang the bell again, keeping his thumb pressed against the button. The sound of the ringing bell seemed only to accentuate the emptiness of the house. He turned and went down the steps, looked up at the building, noticed a sign in an upper window—For Sale. The name of a real-estate agency was appended.
He walked to the next corner, counting off houses, then turned right, walked half a block, turned right again into an alley that paralleled Washington. Again counting off the houses, he stopped when he came to the rear of the eighth. There was a small back yard, littered; a ramshackle stable. He stepped down into an areaway, peered through a dirty window and saw what looked like a basement kitchen. There were three windows and all were bolted. There was a door. Using one of his master keys, it took him five minutes to get the door open.
The kitchen was bare of furniture and he could tell that the gas stove had not been used for a long time. Dust was thick. He tried a light-switch but no light came on. A closed-in stairway led him to the first floor and he entered another room bare of any furniture. Dust on a mantel was thick and fuzzy. All the rooms on the first floor were empty and he climbed to the second floor and found the rooms there empty also. He scowled, puzzled.
Returning to the first floor, he went to the hall door and saw on the floor beneath the mail-slot half a dozen letters. He picked them up. Each was addressed to the Coast-to-Coast Auto Tourist Society. He tossed them back to the floor. Moving to the rear of the hall, he descended to the basement, let himself out the back door and locked it.
He went around to a telephone booth in a cigar store and called his friend McAlmon at the post office, talked with him for three minutes. Then he took a cab to an address on Locust Street. An automobile salesroom occupied the street-level floor of the five-storied building and there was a side lobby leading to the offices upstairs. From the directory board Cardigan got the location of the real-estate agency and climbed two flights of stairs.
The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 4: 1935-37 Page 28
