The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 3: 1934-35

by Frederick Nebel

  “Then what?”

  “Then they went in a place across the street. I thought they might be detectives.”

  “They might…. Stop here, driver.”

  They got out, crossed the wide street, and went on toward the base of the hill. Pat started up the wooden stairway first and Cardigan followed, his empty left sleeve dangling.

  “Boy,” he said, “I remember this neighborhood!”

  “You ought. A college football team tossed you down this hill.”

  “Well,” he said, “it took a team, anyhow.”

  She sighed. “You’ll never learn, chief. You’ll never learn.”

  They went up and up in the darkness, reached the top, left the wooden walks and started down the paved street. Here it was so steep that steps had been built into the cement. Lights sparkled in the cold air.

  “That’s the house,” Pat said. “Ground floor. Now what?”

  “I don’t think she’d open the door for a man. You go in, knock. She may ask who you are. Say—oh, hell, say you’re from the Visiting Nurses’ Association.”

  “Gee, chief, I hate to trick people. She didn’t look like such a bad person.”

  “What do you work for, a detective agency or a sob sheet?… Where’s the other house?”

  “Right over there.”

  “We’ll have to take a chance.”

  Pat entered the hall door of the house the woman had gone in. She left the hall door open and Cardigan, pressing close to the building, listened. He heard Pat’s knock, then her voice, then another voice, muffled. In a moment the second voice was muffled. Cardigan took a long stride into the hall and saw a tall, black-haired woman standing in an inner doorway talking with Pat. The woman stopped talking, started back into the room. Cardigan went past Pat, through the doorway. Pat followed him in and closed the door.

  Cardigan snapped, “What’s your name?”

  “Hazel—” She stopped short, her eyes springing wide. She cried, “Who are you? Get out!”

  “Tone it down, Hazel,” Cardigan muttered. “This is no public performance.”

  She groaned, “A trick!”

  “Call murder a trick, too.”

  “Murder—”

  “Where’s Pete Jagoe?”

  Hazel fell back, looking terrified. “Pete—”

  “You call him ‘Hon,’ ‘Baby,’ don’t you?”

  “Oh!” she choked.

  “In the newspapers.”

  “Oh, my God, I see it now! Tricked! Trailed!”

  Cardigan looked dangerous. He rapped out, “Call it what you want. See this bum arm? That’s a trick, too. Or maybe you call it the season’s greetings.” He took a long step toward her and she crouched against the wall, her lips shaking. His voice was low, deep in his throat somewhere: “Listen to me, Hazel. I want Jagoe. I was guarding that payroll and but for the luck of the Irish I’d be a prospective tenant for a cemetery.”

  “You’re wrong, wrong! I don’t know—I haven’t—I don’t know anything—”

  “That’s static to me, Hazel. You fell for the wheeze in today’s paper like a ton of bricks. Turn the dial to another program.”

  She started to cry back at him, but suddenly closed her mouth instead. She moved, sat down on a divan, and folded her hands between her knees. It seemed that it was with an effort she kept her mouth closed; her lips were pressed firmly together, her eyes stared fixedly at the floor. She was rather pretty, round about thirty, and the room looked comfortable, it was warm. There was no sound now but Hazel’s breathing. Until Cardigan’s low voice said, “Why were you so anxious he shouldn’t come here?”

  She got up and went to a far corner of the room, standing with her back to Cardigan. He went over and stood behind her. She turned and moved to another corner and he followed her. Then she fled across the room and stood behind a large armchair. Her face was white, her lips taut.

  Cardigan shrugged. “A guy’d think I meant to slap you down. Why play tag?”

  “Get out! Get out!”

  He looked bored. “Strong, silent woman, huh?”

  “Get out!”

  He snapped: “Where’s Jagoe?”

  “I don’t know!” She ran her fingers desperately through her hair. “Leave me alone! Get out!”

  His face darkened. “I told you not to yell. Cut out the noise. What I want to know is,” he said, coming closer, “why you didn’t want your honey bun to come here.”

  She was panting now, grimacing. She cried, “I—I thought the place was being covered by cops. I—I thought he might try to come here and they’d nab him. I didn’t do anything. I don’t know where he is. Why are you picking on me?”

  “Didn’t he phone?”

  “No. I haven’t got a phone.”

  “You’re pretty soft on this mug, huh?”

  She grimaced. “Please, please don’t bother me. Just leave me alone—alone. I can’t help you. I can’t do anything.”

  Pat said, “Go easy on her, chief. After all—”

  He silenced her with a look. Then he turned to Hazel. “Okay, Hazel. I don’t believe you do know where he is.” He turned and went to the door. “Come on, Pats.”

  Hazel did not move. She stood behind the chair, her face in her hands. She was crying softly.

  Cardigan and Pat passed into the corridor, and Cardigan closed the door.

  “Gee, chief, I feel sorry for her.”

  “Keep it up and you’ll make a namby-pamby out of me, too.”

  “She did what any woman would do. She just tried to warn her man—”

  “All right, all right, chicken. You win. Uncle Cardigan is always in the wrong.”

  He pulled open the hall door and Pat went past him into the street. Closing the door, he followed, took hold of Pat’s arm. Two men stepped from the shadows with guns drawn and held close to their bodies.

  “Quiet does it, friends,” one of them said.

  Cardigan looked over his shoulder. Both men were short, the one thin, the other stocky but not fat. They wore dark overcoats, dark hats. It was the stocky man who had spoken. Now he said:

  “Walk across the street.”

  “Getting on the bandwagon, huh?” Cardigan said.

  “On you. Get going.”

  Cardigan kept a firm grip on Pat’s arm as they strode across the street and reached the opposite sidewalk.

  “Third door,” the stocky man said.

  They walked down the street a matter of several yards.

  “Here,” the stocky man said. “In.”

  “Listen,” said Cardigan. “Let my girlfriend go.”

  The stocky man chided in a low voice, “See any green on me?”

  “We wasn’t born yestiddy,” the thin man croaked.

  “In, in,” the stocky man said.

  CARDIGAN and Pat were hustled into a dim-lit hallway. The place was damp, cold, and there was about it an air of desertion, as though it had been long unused. Cardigan saw that a candle supplied the light in the hall; the candle stood on the lower banister post. The small thin man removed it and carried it to a door at the side. Here he turned, and holding the candle high, backed into a room. He was well-dressed, and a dark silk muffler billowed between the lapels of his smart overcoat. The stocky man followed Cardigan and Pat, covering them with his gun.

  The thin man placed the candle on a bare, scarred table. The blinds had been drawn tight and there was an extra screen rigged up a few feet from the window, obviously to permit not the minutest glimmer of candlelight to be seen from the street. There were a few chairs, a cot with neither mattress nor blanket—nothing but its original spring.

  The stocky man said, “We don’t usually live like this. We just busted in and took possession for a while…. Frisk the big lug, William.”

  “Stick ’em up,” William said.

  Cardigan raised one hand.

  “The other!” William crackled.

  “In a sling. You blind?”

  William took away Cardigan’s gun
.

  The stocky man said, “The lady, too.”

  “Okay, sister,” William said. “How’s tuh?”

  “Why, I have only this little purse.” She drew a small change purse from her pocket.

  William searched her pockets, found nothing.

  “Sit down on the cot,” the stocky man said. “You two, I mean.”

  Pat and Cardigan sat down and Cardigan said, “So this is how you pass the time away, huh?” He looked at the thin man. “Is that a mask you’re wearing?”

  The thin man looked at the stocky man, and the latter said, “Forget it, William. The boy is bright.” He jerked his round hard chin toward the front of the house. “Keep a lookout.”

  William disappeared behind the improvised screen.

  Pat sat white and quiet. She sat very close to Cardigan, close to his bigness, praying in her heart that he would not begin to wisecrack. He leaned back, bracing his shoulders against the wall.

  The stocky man moved to the table, picked up a sheet of paper on which there was some writing. Folding this, he tucked it away in his pocket. “I was beginning to write my mother,” he said, “when you showed up over there.” He nodded toward the street. Then he sat down, removed his hat, and rested his gun and the hand that held it on his knee. His hair was thick, coarse but neatly combed, and his skin white, with rosy cheeks. His eyes looked like pale agates and seemed to have no pupils. His hands were plump, big, well-groomed.

  “I suppose,” said Cardigan, “your poor old mother is waiting at the end of the lane, keeping a light in the window for dear Sonny Boy.”

  “My mother’s a wonderful woman. I’d die for her.”

  William croaked from behind the screen. “So’d I for mine, only she died when I was a kid.”

  Cardigan said, “Both you mugs’ll likely die, but not for your mothers.” He sat up straight and scowled at the stocky man. His voice rushed out, hard and caustic, “Cut out the comedy. What’s the idea of dragging us in?”

  “It was my idea,” the stocky man said, his pale eyes dancing. “You want something that we want. Catch on?”

  “Jagoe,” Cardigan said, nodding somberly.

  The stocky man grinned, showing a row of tiny teeth. “You mean—thirty grand.”

  “Same thing.”

  William said through the screen, “Gee, I hate cops, all kindsa cops, it don’t matter.”

  “They’ll be the death of you yet,” Cardigan called out.

  There was a scuffling sound and William jumped from behind the screen, his face screwed up irritably. “I’m gettin’ sick and tired of them cracks. First, am I wearin’ a mask and then—”

  “William,” said the stocky man, raising a hand. “Keep an eye on the dame’s house.”

  William disappeared behind the screen, muttering to himself.

  “William,” said the stocky man, “is a little headstrong, but under it all, a nice boy.”

  “Yanh!” mocked William.

  Somewhere in the old house there was a distinct thump. The stocky man came to his feet as if spring-driven, and his lips and his eyelids came together at the same time. A sly but tense smile fastened on his lips.

  “William,” he called softly, almost affectionately.

  “Hanh?”

  “There is someone in the house.”

  Chapter Three

  The Satchel

  WILLIAM’S face screwed up irritably again, his lower lip quivered, and his eyes, big and bulging now, burned on the door. But the big gun he held was steady as a rock in his small, bony hand. His pale, emaciated face looked sinister above the dark silk muffler he wore.

  The stocky man raised the fat fingers of his left hand very delicately. “Quiet now, William,” he whispered. And to Cardigan and Pat, “Also you, my friends.” The sly smile on his tightened lips never for an instant faded.

  Silence crowded the old house again. William stood rooted to the floor, leaning backward a bit, his left hand in his overcoat pocket, his right holding the big gun low, with the wrist almost touching his hip. The candle guttered, its wan yellow light smearing the room. The stocky man’s eyes were now bright, alert, and his head was slightly on one side, in a listening attitude. His bright eyes danced from William to Cardigan, back and forth, continually.

  He seemed amused when he whispered, “Doubtless some very intimate friends of mine have chosen to muscle in.”

  “What of it?” Cardigan said. “You’re muscling in on Jagoe.”

  “I happened to plan Jagoe’s job for him,” said the stocky man. “Jagoe is a very thankless man. His instincts are not those of a gentleman.”

  “’S what I allus sez!” hissed William. “He ain’t had no upbrungin’.”

  “Shh!”

  Three minutes went by.

  “Maybe it was a rat,” whispered William.

  “Seeking its kind,” observed Cardigan.

  Pat nudged him anxiously.

  The stocky man smiled sweetly but sinisterly at Cardigan.

  After a few minutes William, at a sign from the stocky man, slithered to the door. He opened it quietly a matter of a foot, stood with his gun leveled at the dark opening. Then he opened it a little more. He stood there for two minutes, then shoved his head out. Instantly he was yanked through the doorway.

  The stocky man struck the candle out. A low voice snarled in the hallway; feet rasped on the floor. Cardigan jumped up, pulling Pat with him, and dived with her toward the rear of the room, where he had spotted another door. He yanked this door open and rushed with Pat into a pitch-black room. From his vest pocket he drew a small, flat flashlight, kicked the door shut behind him. The small beam of light probed the darkness and Cardigan heaved against a heavy old bureau, shoved it against the door.

  The sounds of fighting grew in the hallway.

  “Oh, chief!” Pat cried in a whisper.

  “Shh!” He listened, then muttered, “They’re in the room now.”

  He pulled her toward another door, opened it as he switched off the flashlight.

  “It’s the hall,” he whispered. And then, “If I only had a gun!”

  She said rapidly, “When we came into the hall before—you remember it was pretty dim. My handbag was under my arm. They didn’t see me do it, but I laid it on the radiator near the hall door and—”

  “Come on.”

  Close together, they pressed up the hallway. The fighting was going on in the front room. Wood was splintering. There were short, low cries, snarls, oaths. Cardigan stretched his legs, making Pat hurry on her toes. He found the wall, followed it to the front, passing the open door of the room where the men struggled. He found the radiator. Groping, he found Pat’s bag. He opened it and thrust his hand inside; his hand closed on the small Webley automatic. Next moment they were in the street.

  “Whew!” breathed Pat, with relief.

  Cardigan’s low voice snapped, “You go down the hill—go home to the hotel.”

  “But chief—”

  “Papa’s talking to you, precious.”

  “Chief, I’m not going to leave you here alone!”

  “Pat, for two cents I’d fan you!”

  “I won’t go! Your poor arm and all—”

  “You hear me? Scram!”

  “No!”

  “Yes!”

  “No!”

  He sighed. “You’re like all dames. You make me sick.”

  “Am I? Do I? Very well. I resign. I’ll take the first train out in the morning!”

  She turned and started off. He moved to stop her, but held himself in check. He thought he would rather have her resign than get tangled up in what he expected to happen tonight. He watched her small, trim figure go down the hill, saw it fade away in the darkness. It made him feel kind of low, for Pat had been his aide a long time. But he didn’t want her to get hurt tonight. He knew William and the stocky man were dangerous birds.

  He crept back to the house, listened at the hall door. The sounds of fighting were still going on, but
he did not go in. He looked at the house across the way and knew that there lay one of his main objectives. These men were watching for Jagoe to come to the woman. He himself felt that Jagoe might come—that Jagoe might have seen the fake item in the newspaper and that that alone might prompt him, even against his better judgment, to come to the woman. He went up the hill, keeping close to the house walls. Then he crossed the street and came down on the other sidewalk; reached the front of Hazel’s house, and crept into the hallway.

  Here, he thought, he could hide, lay in wait for Jagoe if Jagoe should come tonight. The stairwell was roomy, dark, and he crouched there. His arm began to pain him now. It was all this activity, he supposed.

  After a little while he heard voices; they were muffled and indistinct, and at first he thought they were overhead, then somewhere behind him. He stepped from the well and listened intently. When he moved toward the rear of the hall, the sound of the voices faded. He went forward along the wall, and the sound grew. He came at last to Hazel’s door and knew they were here. Hazel—and a man.

  He pressed his ear to the panel. He could catch only broken bits of conversation:

  “…did the other day… went down…”

  “…and how could they know… the coppers don’t… been laying low and…”

  “Why did you? I asked, begged… you said… how many times… and you promised….” That was Hazel. “…so a plane to Tijuana… for four hundred…”

  There was silence then and Cardigan forgot the pain in his arm, the nausea that was swelling about him.

  And then Hazel, “Go… go now! I tell you they’re hanging around!…”

  There was a low male muttering, and then a long silence. Then suddenly a lock clicked, the door was opened by Hazel. Cardigan jammed the Webley against her and barked, “Out of the way! Up, Jagoe!”

  Jagoe was a big, dark, and handsome man. His left arm encircled Hazel’s throat suddenly, he pressed her back against him and whipped backward across the room, drawing his gun.

  “As you are, Cardigan!”

  Cardigan, with one foot across the threshold, jammed to a halt. Jagoe, using the woman as a shield, had his back against the opposite wall. Cardigan’s big face became very sullen, his shaggy brows came darkly together, and his lip curled wolfishly.