The girl spoke with a delightful, clipped British accent, said she was charmed.
The Marquis asked: “How’s Wall Street, Jack?”
“Fine.” The playboy was behind the girl. He put his hand up, spoke around the back of it in a confidential undertone. “Getting better right along. This is my partner’s daughter. He never peeped about her—and bang she arrives from England.” He performed an athletic wink.
The pair got their clothes from the checkroom. Evidently they were not waiting for the elderly man, or thought he had left. They waved good-bye to the Marquis, went out, preceded by the doorman.
Big Johnny growled: “Well, let’s get goin’. That damned Harry! He sees the little babe and right away tries to cook up a story that’ll let him hang around her.”
The Marquis did not move. “Take it easy. We might as well have a look at this Englishman. I suppose it’s the girl’s father.”
“Aw now, Marty—surely you know Harry—”
“We haven’t anything else to do.”
After three minutes of waiting, Big Johnny rasped a thumb across his chin. “Hey—that Al Corcoran angle is kind of funny. I bet I know a canary that could tell me who he’s mobbed up with if—”
The elderly, dignified man in opera hat and black coat was coming down the hall. He was stocky, but trim. His clear skin and face, a dignified mask, looked as though it might have seen much tropical sun.
They followed him with their eyes till he was out the door, then casually moved after him.
They paused at the top of the steps, long enough to see him make an impatient gesture as the doorman tried to hold open a cab door for him. He said, without any trace of accent, English or otherwise, “No thanks. I’ll walk,” and turned away.
They stood at the foot of the steps, watching him walk with leaden feet, eastward, toward Sixth Avenue.
“Where the hell’s he going?” Big Johnny mumbled. “There’s nothing over that way.”
“We might as well see,” the Marquis said. “What can we lose?”
THEY were forty or fifty yards behind the elderly man when he reached the corner of Sixth. He came to a stop, dug out his card again and scanned it in the light from the drug-store windows on the corner. Then he looked up at the elevated tracks that loomed high overhead. He looked slowly both ways, following the tracks with his eyes.
Presently, he turned south, walked slowly, dejectedly.
When they had followed him almost down to the corner of Forty-second, Big Johnny said, “Hey—he’s going to take the elevated,” and they slowed to a stop against the building fronts.
There was nothing wrong with Johnny’s guess. The opera-hatted man turned up the long flight of stairs, climbed slowly. The stairs were open and they could watch him till he reached an elbow bend that turned him—still climbing—into the body of the structure.
The light was faint on the platform high above, but the opera hat was distinctive enough so that they spotted him as he emerged. He stood with his back to the railing, at a point directly above where the elbow of the open stairs stuck out.
The thunder of an approaching train began to shake the tracks.
Big Johnny said: “Well, so what?”
“Nothing, I guess.”
They watched the train as it swept in sight. A few figures started to mill around on the platform above. Queerly, the Marquis was experiencing a sensation of relief. He had, somehow, been infected by the hunch that had worried Derosier. He had half expected the elderly man to disrupt the carefully preserved peace of his district.
As the thundering train shuddered to a grinding stop and the gates slammed open, he said: “Well, whatever he’s going to do, he’s taking it out of the district, thank God. Let’s go.”
They had turned northward again, had taken one step, when the yell burst from Big Johnny. “My God—look!”
The Marquis’ eyes whipped back up to where the top-hatted man had been standing.
He was still there—but he was not alone. He was between two wrestling, struggling figures. He had his back to the rail, and, even as they looked, he screamed hoarsely.
As though they were controlled by strings, the Marquis and Big Johnny swung back, took one step and stopped—helpless, staring.
For an instant, the whirling black blur of bodies above was indistinguishable—and then a white oval suddenly shot over the railing. Shaughnessey screamed again as he was thrown. The two dark blurs that were his assailants dived for the train, Shaughnessey got out one more strangled cry as he hurtled downwards, arms and legs flailing. By a seeming miracle, he dived straight downward at the elbow of the iron stairs, struck there. He seemed to hold the railing for a minute, then slowly slid off. He fell like a sack of meal the remaining thirty feet to the pavement below, slammed down with a horrible thwack and lay still.
CHAPTER TWO
Three-Hundred-Grand Guarantee
AS he raced toward the motionless blur on the sidewalk, cold fury swept the Marquis. With elections coming along he couldn’t afford to have a major crime in his district. It was not till he was almost at the body that he had a sudden stabbing thought for the dainty little black-haired girl whom this would strike.
He rapped over his shoulder at Big Johnny: “Get into a phone booth fast and hold that ‘El’ train at the next station.”
Big Johnny flung one glance at the now racing train overhead, threw himself for the corner cigar-store. Before he could dive inside, the Marquis had dropped down beside the motionless Shaughnessey, snatched at his pulse. He yelled at the big shaggy blond detective: “And get an ambulance! He’s still alive!”
Miraculously, the man’s pulse still was beating. The Marquis whipped his pencil flashlight from his inside pocket, sprayed light. The elderly man’s face was scraped raw on one side. His shirt was a mass of blood. One arm was doubled under him in such a way that it had to be broken. One trouser leg hung open and raw, bruised flesh showed underneath. He was abraded horribly all over and blood oozed from a gash in his head. His ruddy face was the color of dough. Yet—he still lived.
The Marquis spotted the crumpled bit of white in his hand, the keycase lying beside it. Working swiftly, he snatched away the crushed, bloodstained card, was standing up, pocketing keycase and card, as the first of the streaming crowd arrived.
A patrolman on post was, fortunately, at the head of the racing mob. The Marquis rapped at him, “Keep the crowd back! He’s alive—ambulance coming,” and backed through the closing swarm of curious.
He spun and hastened to the cigar-store, almost collided with Big Johnny. The blond detective wailed: “The fool didn’t answer his phone—until it was too late. The crowd was already getting off when I got hold of him.”
The Marquis cursed. “You got the ambulance?”
“Yes—it’s on the way. How in God’s name did he stay alive?”
The Marquis was examining the keycase. There were six keys, a celluloid marker asking the finder to return to James Shaughnessey, care of Shaughnessey, Whitelaw & Company, Wall Street.
The crumpled card was typewritten and read—
I said midnight, big shot. My messenger is waiting in the alley outside the kitchen for the dough. Go out and see him—and God help both of you if you hand me another stall. If I’m going to have to sue, neither of you will be around to see it. I guarantee that.
There was no signature.
The Marquis’ eyes were thin, shiny. He bit at Berthold: “Get hold of Asa McGuire and get him here in a prowl car, fast. He’s just over at Times Square.”
When Big Johnny had run in and phoned, come out again, the Marquis clipped orders. “Get hold of one of the other boys and have him catch up with young Jack Whitelaw.”
“Pinch him?”
“Hell, no. Keep him from being murdered. This looks like the same party was after him, too. And get hot on that canary that knows who Al Corcoran is playing with, as soon as you get to the hospital.”
“Hospital?”
> “Yeah. You’re riding the ambulance with Shaughnessey.”
So many sirens were knifing through the side streets by now that it was impossible to tell when Asa McGuire arrived, till the chubby red-headed detective ran over and snatched at the Marquis’ arm.
The Marquis spun, handed him the keycase. “Get down there and see if you can find anything. It looks like Shaughnessey owed somebody money and wouldn’t pay. It may not have anything to do with the firm, but the chances are that it has.”
“Right.”
Two white-coated internes were bending over the prone figure now, while the nightsticks of half a dozen patrolmen kept the crowd back. The Marquis elbowed his way in and asked: “What’s his condition, doc?”
“Hello, Marty. We can’t tell for sure. Concussion of the brain, maybe a fractured skull, arm broken in three places, half his skin scraped off, and maybe internal injuries.”
“Will he live?”
The interne shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t see how he lived this far. Depends on his skull and the internal injuries. Nothing else will kill him.”
“One of my men will ride with you in case he gets conscious.”
“He’s not likely to, but fill your hat.”
Alone, on a corner, the Marquis watched with smoldering eyes as the crowd cleared away behind the clanging ambulance. He spent three minutes in searching debate where to throw his own weight. Big Johnny Berthold, for all his apparent clumsiness, was a shrewd, quick-thinking detective. He could be trusted to handle the hospital end. If his stool-pigeon could divulge the name of Al Corcoran’s current employer, the whole matter might reach a swift conclusion right there. Whoever Johnny picked out could be counted on to take every possible care of Jack Whitelaw. There were no doubt among the Marquis’ twenty-two handpicked, conscienceless men. He could never have kept the world’s greatest thieves’ paradise under control if there had been.
His shrewd analytical mind picked out two more lines to open up. He walked quickly across to the phone booth in the cigar-store and called the radio-room at headquarters.
“I want Al Corcoran for questioning. He’s got an Illinois record a mile long. You can get his description from the picture-gallery. Bear down on it, Mike.”
He called the Alien Bureau and spoke to Inspector Carideo. “A man named Shaughnessey is in business in Wall Street. I think he’s an alien—or was. His firm name is Shaughnessey and Whitelaw—”
“Sure. I know who you mean. I looked him up for Whitelaw, Senior, a year ago, when the youngster was first going in business with him. I’ll have to dig it out of the files.”
“I’ll be over later.”
When he emerged from the cigar-store, two white-wings, surrounded by a sprinkling of morbid loafers, were cleaning the sidewalk where Shaughnessey had lain. The Marquis decided to go down to the old man’s offices in Wall Street. There might be something there to make the picture more clear.
FIFTEEN minutes later, a sleepy elevator operator deposited him on the thirtieth floor of the Security National Bank Building, far above the black, deserted canyon of Wall. He was facing the only lighted door in the darkened hall. Gold-leaf on its ground-glass said: Shaughnessey & Whitelaw—Foreign & Obsolete Securities.
When he knocked, Asa McGuire came to let him into the crisp, modern little honeycomb of blue, walnut, and cream—a suite of half a dozen offices.
“Anything?” the Marquis asked.
“Come here.”
McGuire led him across the waiting-room, through a room with a tremendous flat desk and dozens of telephones, to a walnut door marked: Mr. Shaughnessey. It was a trim, blue-rugged little private office with a flat-topped, paper-littered walnut desk. The drawers of the desk hung open.
McGuire picked a letter from the top of a pile and handed it over. The Marquis read—
Dear Shaughnessey:
This is the last warning. You birds are not going to get away with this. I don’t know why you think you are. As a last resort, I can always go into court—and I can still collect if either or both of you are no longer in our midst. Get it? The deadline is tomorrow midnight. Three hundred and thirteen thousand dollars—cash or certified check—or by God, I’ll take you to pieces.
The initials that signed it were illegible.
The Marquis said: “Get Alonzo of the Wall Street Squad over here as fast as you can.” And, after the chubby redhead had phoned, “What’s this thing all about? Are we into another of these crazy stock-market things?”
“Apparently. As near as I can make it, Shaughnessey pulled a bloomer in a deal. He bought four hundred bonds from a South American firm, sold them to somebody called the Peerless Trading Corporation—with a guarantee. The guarantee was that the firm here would buy back the bonds from this Peerless outfit at any time within a year, at the same price. About a month ago, Peerless started asking them to do it. They—Shaughnessey rather—wouldn’t do it. This Peerless, whoever it is, sounds like he didn’t want to go to court and was trying to scare it out of them.”
“Why wouldn’t they pay?”
They had to wait till the slight little Latin, Alonzo, arrived, for the answer to that question.
AFTER he’d looked over various letters, prowled the bookkeeping department of the firm, Alonzo said: “They wouldn’t pay because they couldn’t pay. There’s apparently about fifty thousand dollars cash in the firm and that’s all.
“They bought those bonds, by wire, from a house called Fay and Fernandez in Buenos Aires. Then sold them to the Peerless outfit. They guaranteed them, as McGuire says. They had no business guaranteeing them. Their guarantee was worth nothing. And this Peerless Trading must be a fool. He should have investigated the guarantee when he made the deal. Whoever he is, he doesn’t know anything about Wall Street.”
After a minute, the Marquis said: “Is it crooked?”
“No—just dumb. This Shaughnessey and Whitelaw must be babes in the wood to pull one like this. They’ve made themselves liable—there’s no possible question about that—for upwards of three hundred thousand dollars. They’ve got just under fifty thousand with which to meet it. They’ll have to go bankrupt.”
“There’s no way they could go back and pry the money out of this Fay and Fernandez in Buenos Aires?”
“Don’t be stupid. Fay and Fernandez didn’t guarantee anything. Shaughnessey wired them a bid for the bonds—San Pedro Match 8s of 41—and they accepted it. A perfectly ordinary transaction. It was Shaughnessey and Whitelaw who took it on themselves to guarantee the bonds—probably overanxious to make the eleven-thousand profit. Besides, from this letter, Fay and Fernandez are no longer even in business down there.”
The Marquis began to pace up and down.
After a minute he said: “A couple of sheep, trying to buck Wall Street. They wind up owing three hundred thousand and no way to pay. The party they owe it to doesn’t know beans about Wall Street either, and doesn’t believe they can’t pay. Is that right?”
“In a nutshell.”
One of the phones in the outer office rang. Asa McGuire jumped off the desk and went out to try and locate it.
The Marquis asked the Wall Street expert: “How would you find out who was behind this Peerless Trading Company?”
“Various ways. I’ll handle it for you—though it may take quite a little while.”
“Make it as fast as you can.”
Asa McGuire came back in. “For you, Marty. It’s Johnny, at the hospital.”
THE Marquis went quickly out to the phone on the little information desk in the waiting-room, picked up the instrument. Then a startled look came into his eyes and he laid it down softly. He turned back to the office he had just left and told Asa McGuire in an undertone: “Get on one of those other phones, Ace, and trace this call. Johnny doesn’t know I’m here—doesn’t know where I am. Nobody knows where I am.”
McGuire whistled, dived for one of the myriad phones in the trading-room.
The Marquis walked back out to th
e waiting-room and answered: “Hello.”
“Marty? This is Johnny.”
“Yeah, Johnny. Did he spill any more?”
The voice was a little surprised. “What? Who?”
“Shaughnessey. Did he babble any more about this Peerless Trading Corp….”
There was a sudden catch of breath. The phone was hung up in his ear.
He walked back in and looked questioningly at Asa.
The red-head’s face was worried, irritated as he shook his head. “Couldn’t get action. Hey—who the hell do you suppose it was?”
The Marquis’ eyes were thin, swift thought running behind them. After another minute, he said: “Maybe we can find out.”
He picked up a phone and called Carideo at the Alien Bureau. “Did you locate that stuff on Shaughnessey for me, Joe?”
“Yeah. I can give you a carbon copy of the report.”
“Will you send somebody down to the front door with it? I’ll be passing by there in a few minutes and I’m kind of moving fast.” He hung up.
“When we ride down in the elevator,” he told McGuire, “you stand behind the operator and don’t come out when I do. Let me get ahead of you a little, then you join the parade.”
“Parade? You mean—Good night! Is someone tailing you?”
“I can’t think of any other way anybody would know where I am.”
McGuire whistled.
The gloomy Alonzo, still huddled over the books and papers on the desk, said: “This is a mess. There’ll be hell to pay. It ought to be reported to the Securities Commission right away.”
“Go ahead and report it,” the Marquis said. “And leave word for me at McCreagh’s theater-ticket agency if you get a line on who is behind that Peerless. It may break a murder, so do what you can.”
“Yeah. O.K.”
As they rode down, the Marquis told the elevator operator what he was to do, and said to McGuire: “I don’t know why anybody would tail me, except to make sure that I’m keeping clear of something they don’t want me in. It’s a weak guess, but I can’t think of anything else. If it was the killer, he might have made a wild guess, but God knows why he’d call me. It’s a good bet that somebody’s watching me. If we can nab him, I’ll give him a course of sprouts that’ll make an oyster talk.
The Complete Cases of the Marquis of Broadway, Volume 1 Page 31
