“It worked, didn’t it?”
“I ain’t so sure about that,” Osterhauser said, getting slowly to his feet. “I come here to take you over to headquarters.”
Cardigan was sarcastic. “What’d I do now?”
“You put the sarge in the horsepittle—maybe with a busted neck. I gotta take you in.”
Cardigan’s brows knit tightly, and he stared long and hard at Osterhauser, who returned the stare with a cow-like imperturbability. This was bad news for Cardigan. It was bad news, because now the police actually had a case against him. The Cosmos op knew pretty well the limits of bluffing.
“O.K.,” he growled. “Let’s go.”
“It ain’t my fault,” Osterhauser said apologetically. “I gotta do what I’m told. If the sarge ’d on’y lemme handle t’ings sometimes, he wouldn’t be gettin’ busted necks. But he likes to grab the spotlight alla time. ‘Youse just stay back o’ the wheel,’ he tells me. So what? So he gets busted necks. ’At’s why I’m still a thoid-grade detective, account of I never get a chance t’ show how good I am. It’s just like when I was in the prize ring. Those there guys never give me a chance to show how good I was. Alla time, ev’ry fight there, what’d happen—what’d happen? Instead of givin’ me a chance to show how good I was, these guys, alla them, ’d knock me out in the foist round.”
“Ouch,” said Cardigan.
“Whassa matter?”
“Skip it.”
They were heading across the lobby, and Osterhauser tipped his hat to the newsstand girl and said: “Howdja do, Miss Schnurll?”
Outside, Osterhauser looked around, up and down the street, and the doorman said: “Cab, sir?”
“I dunno—nope,” Osterhauser said. “I guess we can walk.”
A big sedan pulled up, chauffeur-driven, and a lean, hawk-nosed man got out and headed for the hotel entrance. He caught sight of Osterhauser and Cardigan, stopped short, then came toward them. Osterhauser touched his hat respectfully.
“Hiyuh, Mr. Cord? Mr. Cord, Mr. Cardigan. I’m takin’ him over to headquarters account of Sergeant Snadeker might have a busted neck.”
Cord looked irritated. “What kind of nonsense is this? Why wasn’t my office notified? I was just on my way to see Mr. Cardigan.”
Beyond Cord, Cardigan caught a glimpse of Babe Hendrix standing on the curb and watching them with an amused smile. Then he heard Cord say: “Let’s go to my office and talk this over.”
THE district attorney was a goose-necked man, sallow-faced, button-eyed, with a small, limp mustache and large ears. He had about him a peculiarly furtive air, and, though his small eyes seemed sharp and penetrating, they never met another’s head-on. His office was in a slate-gray building, on the second floor, and overlooked green lawns and shrubbery. When he took off his Panama hat, his hair was thin and plastered to his bony skull. He had bad teeth.
“First thing,” he said, “I want to see about Snadeker. Where is he?”
“At the police horsepittle,” Osterhauser said respectfully.
“Can’t you say hospital?”
“Sure—horsepittle.”
Cord sighed and picked up the phone. He called the hospital and asked for Mafeking. “This is Eb Cord,” he said. “What about Snadeker?… I see. H’m, that’s bad…. Is, eh?… Oh-oh. What are the chances?… H’m, I see…. O.K., thanks a lot.”
He hung up, paced the office slowly for a moment, stroking his jaw. Then he stopped, turned and looked intently in Cardigan’s direction without meeting Cardigan’s wide-open, frank stare. He said gravely: “Cardigan, Snadeker’s in a bad way, but there is a chance—a good one—that he’ll recover.”
“I’m sorry about him,” Cardigan said. “I certainly didn’t mean to do a thing like that.”
“Oh, you admit that, eh?”
“Of course. When he socked me with his gun, I just struck back by instinct. Doing a thing like that deliberately ’d be about the dumbest thing I could do.”
Cord smiled and rubbed his palms together. “Perhaps, you know, Snadeker was a little hasty in socking you. Snadeker is, at times, a little hasty. Isn’t he, Osterhauser?”
“Yuss,” said Osterhauser, nodding gravely, “account of he has a temper.”
“Exactly,” said Cord, prowling around the office like a cat. “Now, Cardigan, you know as well as I do, from the facts of the case, that Charles Freemont was indubitably a suicide. This Civil Guardian League is composed of lot of sentimental amateurs trying to make the headlines. By working for them, you will only ruin your reputation. I’m a fair man, Cardigan. I can see your side and I can see Snadeker’s. But you must realize that, having hit Snadeker and put him in the hospital in a critical condition, you’re in a tough spot—a very tough spot.”
“O.K., I am. Get out formal charges and let me phone my New York office to arrange about an attorney and bail.”
Cord held up his thin palms. “Please, not so fast. I say, I’m a fair man. I tell you that this Freemont case is done, finished, and you’re trying to create smoke where there’s no fire. I’ll make a bargain, Cardigan. We’ll forget about your trouble with Snadeker, if you’ll pack up and go back to New York.”
Cardigan made a breast stroke with both hands and said: “Nothing doing. Absolutely, nothing doing.”
Cord’s face darkened. He spat: “We’ll toss you behind bars for—”
“O.K., try that”—he stood up—“and watch me bounce right out again.”
Cord snapped his fingers. “O.K., Osterhauser, lock him up.”
“Not before I call New York,” Cardigan said, walking to the desk.
“I’ll let you call New York, when I’m good and ready!” Cord crackled. “Take him out, Osterhauser.”
“Aw, shucks,” said Osterhauser, “let him call—”
“You mind your own business!” Cord cut into him. “Do as I tell you—lock him up.”
Osterhauser looked upset and uncomfortable. “Well, Mr. Cardigan, I guess I gotta—”
The door opened, and Babe Hendrix sauntered in and said cheerfully: “Hello, everybody.”
“Who let you in?” Cord demanded.
“The front office. I told ’em you wanted to see me.”
“Well, I don’t. Get out.”
CARDIGAN walked over to her. “Listen, babe—do something for me, will you? Go out, phone the Cosmos Agency in New York and ask for George Hammerhorn. Tell him these clucks pinched me for smacking their prize stooge, Sergeant Snadeker.”
She grinned. “What’s wrong with socking Snadeker?”
“Get out!” rasped Cord, his mouth taut.
Osterhauser chose to be enlightening, saying gravely: “It’s account of Mr. Cardigan socked the sarge so hard he’s in the horsepittle maybe with a busted neck, who can tell?”
Babe Hendrix’s eyes twinkled. “Two’ll get anybody ten if Snadeker’s in the hospital with any kind of a neck—let alone a busted one. Any takers?” She laughed good-temperedly. “These playboys have been taking you for a ride, Cardigan. It’s a frame-up. I figured it was a pinch, when I saw you in front of the hotel, so I came along to see why.”
“So you’re trying to be smart, eh, sob sister?” Cord sneered. “All right, we’ll go over to the police hospital and prove to you that Snadeker is laid up.”
“Swell,” she said. “And I’ll take along my doctor, representing the Herald, to make it doubly sure that it’s a frame-up.”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind.”
“Oh, no? Then I want to know how it is that only an hour ago I saw Snadeker walking down Main Avenue, large as life, and pretty healthy. I want to know why Osterhauser and you parked a block away from the Eastern Hotel, why you remained in the car, and why, when Osterhauser came out with Cardigan, you pulled up to the hotel entrance and made believe it was an accidental meeting.”
Osterhauser looked a little ill. He said, “Oh, oh, oh,” in a voice that sounded down around his ankles.
Cord’s face looked like a shrivele
d clinker. His lips writhed against his teeth, his fists opening and closing spasmodically.
“It’s kind of warm in here, or maybe it’s account of I’m wearin’ extra-heavy underclothes,” Osterhauser said. “Or maybe it’s account of there ain’t no air-conditionin’. Or maybe—”
“Shut up!” spat Cord.
“Okie-dokie-day,” sighed Osterhauser.
Cardigan’s dark, contemptuous glance ripped Cord from head to foot. He laughed shortly, without humor, and went to the door. Babe Hendrix opened it and they went out together, through the front office and down to the street.
“You break clean, babe,” Cardigan muttered. “I never expected any favors from you. Hey, taxi!”
“Was that a favor?”
“What do you call it?… Eastern Hotel, driver.”
“Do I get a lift?” Babe asked, smiling drolly.
“Sure. Get in.”
“You’re not a bad guy, Cardigan. At any rate, you fight clean. By the way, your sock-garter’s hanging.”
Chapter Three
Check and Double-Check
CLIMBING the staircase of the neat, new walk-up, Cardigan heard hot music coming over a radio. He heard laughter, male and female, intershot with conversation. On the second landing, he paused to thrust his head out of the hall window and feel the night breeze blowing across the elms of Winthrop Street. Climbing the next staircase, he fanned himself with his battered old fedora. Alongside a door marked 3-B was a white card which read Mr. & Mrs. John Colby. The music and laughter and conversation were on the other side of this door. He pressed his thumb against a white pushbutton and used his handkerchief to wipe his face and throat.
The door opened wide, and the noise blared in his face. The man who had opened it lost his balance and fell down in the narrow entrance hall. Cardigan stepped in, picked him up and set him down on an upholstered bench.
“Thanks a thousand times—a thousand times, thanks, buddy.” He was a big fellow in his middle twenties—a redhead with a blunt jaw. He was dressed in black trousers and a white Tuxedo jacket, and his tie was undone. “Did you—hic—ring?”
“Yeah.”
“’S what I thought.”
Cardigan went down the length of the narrow entrance hall. As he reached the doorway of the living-room, a girl, with blonde bangs and a high color, banged into him, reeled away, then shouted: “Hey, look, fellas, Joe’s got a false face on! Well, well, that’s Joe—always the one to do something different!”
Cardigan said under his breath, “Brat!” and pushed on into the crowded room. A lanky brunette said: “That’s no false face—it moves. Goody, goody! Another man!”
A husky lad put down his drink, wabbled across the room and said to Cardigan: “Hey, can you fight?”
“Look out, pal. I’m looking for—”
“Listen, that ain’t an answer. Can you fight?”
“Sock him, Gus, for fun,” the lanky brunette said.
Cardigan looked at her. “Be your age, sister. What is it—forty?”
“Why, you big—”
“Hey,” said the hefty kid, grabbing hold of Cardigan’s lapel and jerking it, “can you fight?”
Cardigan straight-armed him into a divan. The others started to gang on Cardigan when a small, trim girl said, “Stop it, you idiots!” and, to Cardigan, “What do you want?”
“I want to see John Colby.”
“I’m Mrs. Colby.” She appeared to be the only one in the room who was sober. “John!” she called.
A slender blond man, with pink cheeks and very white teeth, got up from the arm of a chair in which a plump, pretty girl was sitting.
“What?” he said, annoyed.
Cardigan crossed to him. “My name’s Cardigan. I’m a private detective. I want to talk to you.”
Colby grinned insolently. “What about?”
“Got a room here where we can talk alone?”
“What’s the matter with this room?”
“What do you think’s the matter with it?”
“What’s wrong?” Mrs. Colby said.
“Nothing,” said Cardigan. “I just want to talk to your husband—in another room.”
“Take him in the spare bedroom, John.”
“Mind your own business, Helen,” Colby said. To Cardigan: “If you want to see me, make an appointment. I’m entertaining friends right now.”
“It won’t take long,” Cardigan said, amazed at his own patience.
“Go on, John. Go in the other room with him,” Helen Colby urged. She took hold of his arm. “Come on.”
He wrenched free. “Let me go—and keep quiet!”
She turned to Cardigan. “Will I do? Will you talk to me?”
He started to shake his head, then said: “O.K.”
SHE led him into a small bedroom and closed the door. She passed a hand across her orderly, light-brown hair and said: “What is the matter?” She watched him, expectantly.
“The Civil Guardian League’s hired me to investigate the death of Charles Freemont. I’m supposed to be investigating it. Far as I can make out, you moved here two weeks ago. You lived in a smaller place in—”
“Yes,” she said. “John was made assistant cashier when Charles Freemont died. We felt we could afford better quarters.”
“You know, don’t you, that he has no actual alibi as to where he was at the time Freemont died?”
Her throat tightened but her voice was steady. “The police went through all that.”
“There was hard feeling between your husband and Freemont, wasn’t there?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes. Freemont once suggested to the board of directors that John ought to be fired.”
“I know.”
“That wasn’t kind!” she flashed.
“Maybe it wasn’t. But the records show that there was nothing underhanded about the way Freemont did it. He told your husband a number of times that he intended to do it. Then he did it. He did it because he felt your husband was incompetent and driving away business with his insolence to depositors.”
She dropped her eyes, grimaced. “John’s no angel, but”—she looked up at him—“he had nothing to do with Freemont’s death. Freemont was a troublemaker. Ask anybody. Ask Mr. Radcliffe, the cashier.”
“It’s all the way you look at it. If he made trouble for people because he wanted the bank run right, that oughtn’t to be held against him.”
She dropped her eyes again.
The door opened, and Colby said: “I still don’t think you’ve got any right to be here and I—”
“John!” said Helen Colby.
He ignored her. “So get out,” he said to Cardigan. “If you don’t, I’ll call a policeman.”
“You’re a pretty fresh guy, Mr. Colby,” Cardigan said.
“I’m a citizen, with certain rights which I don’t feel ought to be trespassed on. Get out.”
“On top of being fresh, you’re not bright.”
“Get out.”
“Oh, John—stop!” cried Helen Colby.
“Take it easy, Mrs. Colby,” Cardigan told her. “He’s tight, and I can always find him.” He spun his hat on his finger and moved to the door. “Think about that alibi, mister. Get over one bad impression—that the police solved the death of Charles Freemont.”
Colby sneered as he moved out of the doorway.
Cardigan headed long-legged across the living-room but the hefty lad reeled into his path and said: “Listen, can you fight?”
“Brother,” said Cardigan, “I can.”
“That’s all I wanted to know because I never fight guys that can fight.”
“I do,” said the redhead who had let Cardigan in, and lunged from the doorway.
Cardigan stepped aside, and the redhead measured his length on the floor.
“Well, well,” said the girl with blonde bangs, “that’s Joe—always the one to do something different.”
Cardigan banged out and drummed his heels down the stairs.
>
HIS roadster was parked out front, at the curb, and in it Babe Hendrix was waiting. The cigarette she was smoking made a bright eye in the darkness. Cardigan got in behind the wheel, and Babe said: “That was quick.”
“Drunken party. The guy’s a wet smack but he don’t fold up easy. How do I get to the other address?”
“Turn right at the next traffic light. You know, it’s hard to believe,” she went on, snapping her cigarette butt into the wind, “that guys—for instance, like Cord and Snadeker—actually are interested in carrying out their jobs. It’s all right for a person to pull a boner, but those birds not only pull boners but see red when anybody tries to call their hand. On top of that, to take all the humor out of the joke, the city pays Cord ten thousand a year. Now, turn left at the next corner, right at the next, and straight on out…. And Snadeker’s thirty-eight hundred a year is just a gift.”
“’Atta girl—get indignant.”
“I am indignant—when mugs like that knock down good salaries for clowning around with justice, while a lot of reporters, with twice their courage and ten times their brains, are out of work or knocking down just enough to get along on…. Pull up in front of that place with the two lights out front. That’s it—see it?”
“Yeah.”
Cardigan braked against the curb, got out, walked between two brick posts with lights on top, and entered the lobby of a six-storied apartment house. The elevator was an automatic, and Cardigan, getting in, closed the door and pressed the button numbered 5. The elevator rose slowly and stopped at the fifth floor. He got out and strode down the corridor to a gray door numbered 505.
Radcliffe, the bank cashier, was a medium-tall man with a square, solid face, straight eyebrows, and straight lips. He took a half-smoked cigar from his mouth and said: “Well?”
“I’m Cardigan, a private detective—”
“Oh, yes,” Radcliffe said, without interest. “I heard something about the Civil Guardian League— Come in.”
Cardigan entered a rectangular living-room, and Radcliffe closed the door, tapped a yawn, said, “I just dozed off, reading,” and rubbed his eyes. He walked solidly on strong legs across the room and swept a jumble of newspapers off the divan. “Sit down.”
The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 4: 1935-37 Page 32
