Life—the hunger for life—all at once surged back into my being.
I screamed at the passing boat, and with every iota of my being struggled toward it. Between strokes I tilted up my head and screamed.…
* * * *
When I returned to consciousness for the second time that evening, I was lying on my back on a baggage truck, which was moving. Men and women were crowding around, walking beside the truck, staring at me with curious eyes. I sat up.
“Where are we?” I asked.
A little red-faced man in uniform answered my question.
“Just landing in Sausalito. Lay still. We’ll take you over to the hospital.”
I looked around.
“How long before this boat goes back to San Francisco?”
“Leaves right away.”
I slid off the truck and started back aboard the boat.
“I’m going with it,” I said.
* * * *
Half an hour later, shivering and shaking in my wet clothes, keeping my mouth clamped tight so that my teeth wouldn’t sound like a dice-game, I climbed into a taxi at the Ferry Building and went to my flat.
There, I swallowed half a pint of whisky, rubbed myself with a coarse towel until my skin was sore, and, except for an enormous weariness and a worse headache, I felt almost human again.
I reached O’Gar by phone, asked him to come up to my flat right away, and then called up Charles Gantvoort.
“Have you seen Madden Dexter yet?” I asked him.
“No, but I talked to him over the phone. He called me up as soon as he got in. I asked him to meet me in Mr. Abernathy’s office in the morning, so we could go over that business he transacted for Father.”
“Can you call him up now and tell him that you have been called out of town—will have to leave early in the morning—and that you’d like to run over to his apartment and see him tonight?”
“Why yes, if you wish.”
“Good! Do that. I’ll call for you in a little while and go over to see him with you.”
“What is—”
“I’ll tell you about it when I see you,” I cut him off.
O’Gar arrived as I was finishing dressing.
“So he told you something?” he asked, knowing of my plan to meet Dexter on the train and question him.
“Yes,” I said with sour sarcasm, “but I came near forgetting what it was. I grilled him all the way from Sacramento to Oakland, and couldn’t get a whisper out of him. On the ferry coming over, he introduces me to a man he calls Mr. Smith, and he tells Mr. Smith that I’m a gum-shoe. This, mind you, all happens in the middle of a crowded ferry! Mr. Smith puts a gun in my belly, marches me out on deck, raps me across the back of the head, and dumps me into the bay.”
“You have a lot of fun, don’t you?” O’Gar grinned, and then wrinkled his forehead. “Looks like Smith would be the man we want then—the buddy who turned the Gantvoort trick. But what the hell did he want to give himself away by chucking you overboard for?”
“Too hard for me,” I confessed, while trying to find which of my hats and caps would sit least heavily upon my bruised head. “Dexter knew I was hunting for one of his sister’s former lovers, of course. And he must have thought I knew a whole lot more than I do, or he wouldn’t have made that raw play—tipping my mitt to Smith right in front of me.
“It may be that after Dexter lost his head and made that break on the ferry, Smith figured that I’d be on to him soon, if not right away; and so he’d take a desperate chance on putting me out of the way. But we’ll know all about it in a little while,” I said, as we went down to the waiting taxi and set out for Gantvoort’s.
“You ain’t counting on Smith being in sight, are you?” the detective-sergeant asked.
“No. He’ll be holed up somewhere until he sees how things are going. But Madden Dexter will have to be out in the open to protect himself. He has an alibi, so he’s in the clear so far as the actual killing is concerned. And with me supposed to be dead, the more he stays in the open, the safer he is. But it’s a cinch that he knows what this is all about, though he wasn’t necessarily involved in it. As near as I could see, he didn’t go out on deck with Smith and me tonight. Anyway he’ll be home. And this time he’s going to talk—he’s going to tell his little story!”
* * * *
Charles Gantvoort was standing on his front steps when we reached his house. He climbed into our taxi, and we headed for the Dexters’ apartment. We didn’t have time to answer any of the questions that Gantvoort was firing at us with every turning of the wheels.
“He’s home and expecting you?” I asked him.
“Yes.”
Then we left the taxi and went into the apartment building.
“Mr. Gantvoort to see Mr. Dexter,” he told the Philippine boy at the switchboard.
The boy spoke into the phone.
“Go right up,” he told us.
At the Dexters’ door I stepped past Gantvoort and pressed the button.
Creda Dexter opened the door. Her amber eyes widened and her smile faded as I stepped past her into the apartment.
I walked swiftly down the little hallway and turned into the first room through whose open door a light showed.
And came face to face with Smith!
We were both surprised, but his astonishment was a lot more profound than mine. Neither of us had expected to see the other; but I had known he was still alive, while he had every reason for thinking me at the bottom of the bay.
I took advantage of his greater bewilderment to the extent of two steps toward him before he went into action.
One of his hands swept down.
I threw my right fist at his face—threw it with every ounce of my 180 pounds behind it, re-enforced by the memory of every second I had spent in the water, and every throb of my battered head.
His hand, already darting down for his pistol, came back up too late to fend off my punch.
Something clicked in my hand as it smashed into his face, and my hand went numb.
But he went down—and lay where he fell.
I jumped across his body to a door on the opposite side of the room, pulling my gun loose with my left hand.
“Dexter’s somewhere around!” I called over my shoulder to O’Gar, who with Gantvoort and Creda, was coming through the door by which I had entered. “Keep your eyes open!”
I dashed through the four other rooms of the apartment, pulling closet doors open, looking everywhere—and I found nobody.
Then I returned to where Creda Dexter was trying to revive Smith, with the assistance of O’Gar and Gantvoort.
The detective-sergeant looked over his shoulder at me.
“Who do you think this joker is?” he asked.
“My friend Mr. Smith.”
“Gantvoort says he’s Madden Dexter.”
I looked at Charles Gantvoort, who nodded his head.
“This is Madden Dexter,” he said.
We worked upon Dexter for nearly ten minutes before he opened his eyes.
As soon as he sat up we began to shoot questions and accusations at him, hoping to get a confession out of him before he recovered from his shakiness—but he wasn’t that shaky. All we could get out of him was:
“Take me in if you want to. If I’ve got anything to say, I’ll say it to my lawyer and to nobody else.”
Creda Dexter, who had stepped back after her brother came to, and was standing a little way off, watching us, suddenly came forward and caught me by the arm.
“What have you got on him?” she demanded imperatively.
“I wouldn’t want to say,” I countered, “but I don’t mind telling you this much. We’re going to give him a chance in a nice, modern cour
t-room to prove that he didn’t kill Leopold Gantvoort.”
“He was in New York!”
“He was not! He had a friend who went to New York as Madden Dexter and looked after Gantvoort’s business under that name. But if this is the real Madden Dexter, then the closest he got to New York was when he met his friend on the ferry to get from him the papers connected with the B. F. & F. Iron Corporation transaction; and learned that I had stumbled upon the truth about his alibi—even if I didn’t know it myself at the time.”
She jerked around to face her brother.
“Is that on the level?” she asked him.
He sneered at her and went on feeling with the fingers of one hand the spot on his jaw where my fist had landed.
“I’ll say all I’ve got to say to my lawyer,” he repeated.
“You will?” she shot back at him. “Well, I’ll say what I’ve got to say right now!”
She flung around to face me again.
“Madden is not my brother at all! My name is Ives. Madden and I met in St. Louis about four years ago, drifted around together for a year or so, and then came to ’Frisco. He was a con man—still is. He made Mr. Gantvoort’s acquaintance six or seven months ago, and was getting him all ribbed up to unload a fake invention on him. He brought him here a couple of times, and introduced me to him as his sister. We usually posed as brother and sister.
“Then, after Mr. Gantvoort had been here a couple times, Madden decided to change his game. He thought Mr. Gantvoort liked me, and that we could get more money out of him by working a fancy sort of badger-game on him. I was to lead the old man on until I had him wrapped around my finger—until we had him tied up so tight he couldn’t get away—had something on him—something good and strong. Then we were going to shake him down for plenty of money.
“Everything went along fine for a while. He fell for me—fell hard. And finally he asked me to marry him. We had never figured on that. Blackmail was our game. But when he asked me to marry him, I tried to call Madden off. I admit the old man’s money had something to do with it—it influenced me—but I had come to like him a little for himself. He was mighty fine in lots of ways—nicer than anybody I had ever known.
“So I told Madden all about it and suggested that we drop the other plan, and that I marry Gantvoort. I promised to see that Madden was kept supplied with money—I knew I could get whatever I wanted from Mr. Gantvoort. And I was on the level with Madden. I liked Mr. Gantvoort, but Madden had found him and brought him around to me; and so I wasn’t going to run out on Madden. I was willing to do all I could for him.
“But Madden wouldn’t hear of it. He’d have got more money in the long run by doing as I suggested—but he wanted his little handful right away. And to make him more unreasonable, he got one of his jealous streaks. He beat me one night!
“That settled it. I made up my mind to ditch him. I told Mr. Gantvoort that my brother was bitterly opposed to our marrying, and he could see that Madden was carrying a grouch. So he arranged to send Madden to New York on that steel business, to get him out of the way until we were off on our wedding trip. And we thought Madden was completely deceived—but I should have known that he would see through our scheme. We planned to be gone about a year, and by that time I thought Madden would have forgotten me—or I’d be fixed to handle him if he tried to make any trouble.
“As soon as I heard that Mr. Gantvoort had been killed, I had a hunch that Madden had done it. But then it seemed like a certainty that he was in New York the next day, and I thought I had done him an injustice. And I was glad he was out of it. But now—”
She whirled around to her erstwhile confederate.
“Now I hope you swing, you big sap!”
She spun around to me again. No sleek kitten, this, but a furious, spitting cat, with claws and teeth bared.
“What kind of looking fellow was the one who went to New York for him?”
I described the man I had talked to on the train.
“Evan Felter,” she said, after a moment of thought. “He used to work with Madden. You’ll probably find him hiding in Los Angeles. Put the screws on him and he’ll spill all he knows—he’s a weak sister! The chances are he didn’t know what Madden’s game was until it was all over.” She turned. “How do you like that?” she spat at Madden Dexter. “How do you like that for a starter? You messed up my little party, did you? Well, I’m going to spend every minute of my time from now until they pop you off helping them pop you!”
* * * *
And she did, too—with her assistance, it was no trick at all to gather up the rest of the evidence we needed to hang him. And I don’t believe her enjoyment of her three-quarters of a million dollars is spoiled a bit by any qualms over what she did to Madden. She’s a very respectable woman now, and glad to be free of the con man.
WHO KILLED BOB TEAL?
“Teal was killed last night.”
The Old Man—the Continental Detective Agency’s San Francisco manager—spoke without looking at me. His voice was as mild as his smile, and gave no indication of the turmoil that was seething in his mind.
If I kept quiet, waiting for the Old Man to go on, it wasn’t because the news didn’t mean anything to me. I had been fond of Bob Teal—we all had. He had come to the Agency fresh from college two years before; and if ever a man had the makings of a crack detective in him, this slender, broad-shouldered lad had. Two years is little enough time in which to pick up the first principles of sleuthing, but Bob Teal, with his quick eye, cool nerve, balanced head, and whole-hearted interest in the work, was already well along the way to expertness. I had an almost fatherly interest in him, since I had given him most of his early training.
The Old Man didn’t look at me as he went on. He was talking to the open window at his elbow.
“He was shot with a thirty-two, twice, through the heart. He was shot behind a row of signboards on the vacant lot on the northwest corner of Hyde and Eddy Streets, at about ten last night. His body was found by a patrolman a little after eleven. The gun was found about fifteen feet away. I have seen him and I have gone over the ground myself. The rain last night wiped out any leads the ground may have held, but from the condition of Teal’s clothing and the position in which he was found, I would say that there was no struggle, and that he was shot where he was found, and not carried there afterward. He was lying behind the signboards, about thirty feet from the sidewalk, and his hands were empty. The gun was held close enough to him to singe the breast of his coat. Apparently no one either saw or heard the shooting. The rain and wind would have kept pedestrians off the street, and would have deadened the reports of a thirty-two, which are not especially loud, anyway.”
The Old Man’s pencil began to tap the desk, its gentle clicking setting my nerves on edge. Presently it stopped, and the Old Man went on:
“Teal was shadowing a Herbert Whitacre—had been shadowing him for three days. Whitacre is one of the partners in the firm Ogburn and Whitacre, farm-development engineers. They have options on a large area of land in several of the new irrigation districts. Ogburn handles the sales end, while Whitacre looks after the rest of the business, including the bookkeeping.
“Last week, Ogburn discovered that his partner had been making false entries. The books show certain payments made on the land, and Ogburn learned that these payments had not been made. He estimates that the amount of Whitacre’s thefts may be anywhere from one hundred fifty to two hundred fifty thousand dollars. He came in to see me three days ago and told me all this, and wanted to have Whitacre shadowed in an endeavor to learn what he has done with the stolen money. Their firm is still a partnership, and a partner cannot be prosecuted for stealing from the partnership, of course. Thus, Ogburn could not have his partner arrested, but he hoped to find the money, and then recover it through civil action. Also he was afraid that Whitacre might di
sappear.
“I sent Teal out to shadow Whitacre, who supposedly didn’t know that his partner suspected him. Now I am sending you out to find Whitacre. I’m determined to find him and convict him if I have to let all regular business go and put every man I have on this job for a year. You can get Teal’s reports from the clerks. Keep in touch with me.”
All that, from the Old Man, was more than an ordinary man’s oath written in blood.
In the clerical office I got the two reports Bob had turned in. There was none for the last day, of course, as he would not have written that until after he had quit work for the night. The first of these two reports had already been copied and a copy sent to Ogburn; a typist was working on the other now.
In his reports Bob had described Whitacre as a man of about thirty-seven, with brown hair and eyes, a nervous manner, a smooth-shaven, medium-complexioned face, and rather small feet. He was about five feet eight inches tall, weighed about a hundred and fifty pounds, and dressed fashionably, though quietly. He lived with his wife in an apartment on Gough Street. They had no children. Ogburn had given Bob a description of Mrs. Whitacre: a short, plump, blond woman of something less than thirty.
Those who remember this affair will know that the city, the detective agency, and the people involved all had names different from the ones I have given them. But they will know also that I have kept the facts true. Names of some sort are essential to clearness, and when the use of the real names might cause embarrassment, or pain even, pseudonyms are the most satisfactory alternative.
In shadowing Whitacre, Bob had learned nothing that seemed to be of any value in finding the stolen money. Whitacre had gone about his usual business, apparently, and Bob had seen him do nothing downright suspicious. But Whitacre had seemed nervous, had often stopped to look around, obviously suspecting that he was being shadowed without being sure of it. On several occasions Bob had had to drop him to avoid being recognized. On one of these occasions, while waiting in the vicinity of Whitacre’s residence for him to return, Bob had seen Mrs. Whitacre—or a woman who fit the description Ogburn had given—leave in a taxicab. Bob had not tried to follow her, but he made a memorandum of the taxi’s license number.
The Dashiell Hammett Megapack: 20 Classic Stories Page 29
