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

by Frederick Nebel

  His voice was blunt, pointblank: “Demayo sent you?”

  “You Braddock Young?”

  “I am. Come on, come on—what does Demayo want?”

  “He wants to get out of a jam. He slammed into a jam, got hurt and he’s afraid the cops might take him.”

  “Why didn’t he phone me?”

  “I guess he didn’t want to fix it so that they’d be able to trace a phone call here.”

  Young’s eyes were troubled but his voice was still blunt: “I never saw you before. Who are you?”

  “I knew Demayo in China. I was in on the Portero business. He’s wounded and in a jam. I think some woman, maybe she was from the government—I think she swiped some papers from Demayo’s hotel room. He tried to get her and she shot him and scrammed.”

  Young’s eyes snapped wide open and a quick pallor came into his face. He put his hands behind his back, paced up and down, chewing on his lip, scowling fiercely at the floor. Then he stopped short, snapped: “How badly is he hurt?”

  “Pretty bad. He’s tucked away in a spot I know but we’ve got to get him out of there and to a doctor. He said you’d know a doctor.”

  “The fool!” growled Young. “The damn fool!” He took a breath and his eyes narrowed.

  “If you’ll give me some men and a car we can get him out,” Cardigan said.

  “Yes,” Young snapped. “We’ll have to do that. Come upstairs with me.”

  CARDIGAN followed the man upstairs to a wide hallway, then into a large, square living room in which wall lights glowed. Two men were standing on either side of it, each holding a highball. Both were young. One was husky, blond, with a fat little mouth. The other was short, stocky, with strong-looking legs, a thick chest and dark, coarse hair. Cardigan looked for a third—the sandy-haired man—but did not see him.

  Young snapped petulantly: “Demayo’s in trouble,” and then stopped short. He scowled. “What’s the matter?”

  The husky blond man was gaping. The dark stocky man began to look very sinister; his black eyes began to crackle and his upper lip began to quiver into a wolfish curl. Cardigan took his gun from his pocket and said: “I get it.”

  Braddock Young whirled, stared incredulously at the drawn gun. The other two men did not budge, did not take their eyes from Cardigan.

  “You two guys know me,” Cardigan said. “You’re the guys that hauled off and took a crack at me down in Market Street.”

  Braddock Young looked like a man who was witnessing a terrible catastrophe. He choked: “Who is he?”

  Cardigan said: “Cardigan. Your two gunmen seem to ’ve lost their tongues.”

  “My God!” whispered Braddock Young, a frozen look on his face.

  Cardigan chuckled. “That was a gag about Demayo. Part of it. Demayo is in a jam, but he’s not wounded. I’ve got Demayo tucked away. I’ve got his wife too—Norma Driscoll’s sister. I’ve got you three guys. Now there’s one more guy I need to fill out this little jigsaw puzzle. Tall guy. Young. Sandy mustache, sandy hair. He likes to choke people to death. He’s the whimsical bird that killed Norma Driscoll at the Viking.”

  Young was getting an icy control of himself. “You’re talking rot now!”

  “Am I? Don’t let that idea run away with you. Our agency was given this case a long time ago, but we didn’t get the breaks. I got them now. Some people had an idea this munitions and arms combine was a fairy tale. Norma Driscoll was your contact agent for the Portero rebellion and Demayo’s the one for this new fuss.”

  “Indeed,” said Young coldly, tensely, “a fairy tale.”

  “What are you stalling for? I’ve got Demayo. I’ve got the briefs he was carrying. I’ve read them. You’re in them as Bee Wuy. I can track down the typewriter that was used to make them. I can track down the paper. I can track down the blueprints. All I need now is the sandy-haired guy that knocked off Norma Driscoll. George Jonsson of the Viking will identify him. He’ll get the death penalty but if we wangle a life sentence on condition that he spring the whole story, he’ll spring. Norma Driscoll had valuable information for me. Since she was knocked off, somebody else has to come through, and I’m going to get all the marbles in before I go to town.”

  He kept watching the doorway from the corner of his eye, expecting the fat butler to show up any minute. The two men by the fireplace were watchful, practically standing on their toes, ready to go into action on an instant’s notice. Young was cold, rigid, his mouth a tight, hueless line.

  SUDDENLY the short, stocky man barked at Young. “What the hell is all this about munitions and arms and Portero?”

  Young made no reply but the blond burly man muttered: “Button up, dummy!”

  “I don’t care!” complained the stocky man. “This guy is talking all over my head. And don’t tell me to button up, Baum.”

  “So you’re Baum,” Cardigan said to the burly man. “Why did you send that telegram to Demayo on the train?”

  Now it was Baum’s turn to look shocked. “It seems like you been a lot of places at one time, buddy. But nuts to you on that question.”

  “O.K.,” Cardigan said briskly. “And nuts to you and the rest of you. You won’t talk now, so I’ll make the best of it. Not a move out of any of you.” He backed across the room toward the telephone.

  Young cried: “What are you going to do?”

  “What do you think?”

  Baum snapped: “He’s going to call the cops.”

  “Smart boy,” Cardigan said.

  The lights went out. No one in the room had moved. The butler must have thrown a master switch, for even the lights in the corridor went out. Cardigan moved swiftly to the right in the darkness, cocking his gun.

  “I’m going to take this wise guy!” Baum muttered hoarsely.

  “No shooting here!” Young cried.

  “You got a gun?”

  “Yes—but no shooting here!”

  “Sam’s got a gun too,” Baum growled. “The wise guy can’t get to the door. You cover the door, Young. O.K., Cardigan. You’re bottled up at the wrong end of the room. Say uncle.”

  “I could never pronounce the word,” Cardigan said.

  Silence enveloped the room. Until Young said: “You’ve got to listen to reason, Cardigan. We don’t want any shooting here.”

  “I get that too. Not here. You mean you want those two hoods of yours to take me around to some dark alley. Well, I don’t care what you like, Mr. Young. I’ve got that door spotted in my mind and I’m going to start shooting at it.”

  His left hand came in contact with a low, heavy coffee table. He gripped it, lifted it, hefted it. Then he flung it toward where he thought the fireplace was. There was a crash commingled with a hoarse, terrified shout, and gunfire stabbed the darkness near the fireplace. Cardigan lunged ahead in the darkness, making for the door. He missed, crashed into the wall; felt his way swiftly along the wall and thus gained the doorway. He slipped out, groped down the corridor and felt his way to the head of the staircase and then sped down to the entrance hall. It was dark here. He was not trying to get away, he was trying to locate another phone. He bumped into a piece of furniture and sent it crashing to the floor. Rebounding, he fell through a doorway into another darkened room; blundered through the room overturning chairs, and went through a swing door into another room. Here, during an instant’s silence, he heard the drip of water. He felt around, touching various objects. This, he decided, was the kitchen. He lit a match, spinning as he did so, with his gun leveled. But he saw no one. There was a wall telephone at the other side of the room. By the time he reached it his match went out, but he didn’t need a match. He got the receiver off the hook. But a beam of light enveloped him and a taut, quiet voice said: “Put ’em up.”

  Cardigan did not turn. He knew he was caught cold and he raised his hands above his head.

  “Hang up that receiver,” the voice said.

  Cardigan hung it up.

  “Now turn around.”

  CARDIGAN tur
ned around, saw the gleaming eye of a flashlight, a hand holding a gun—nothing more. Abruptly there was a crash in an adjoining room—a chair going down—followed by an oath, then Young’s angry cold voice yelling: “Bekins! Where the hell are you, Bekins?”

  The eye of the flashlight went out. Cardigan ducked and slammed through another swing door into complete darkness. There was another crash, muffled by thick walls. In his haste, Cardigan knocked over more objects, stumbled upon a narrow staircase that he found led upward. It was enclosed on both sides and ended at a closed door. He opened this and could tell by a window that he was in another corridor. The window was familiar. Then he knew that he was in the same upstairs corridor he had been in before. The noise, the banging and stumbling, was down below. And shouts for Bekins. Bekins doubtless was the butler.

  A moment later Cardigan found the living room, groped across it to where he knew the telephone was located. It began to occur to him that he might have taken on more than he could handle. His enthusiasm following the set-to with Demayo had been too great. Pat was right. Pat was always right. Where the hell was that telephone?

  He got his hands on it as the lights sprang to life again. He whirled, shocked by the sudden glare.

  Baum stood in the doorway. “Drop it, Cardigan!” he snarled, and fired. The bullet smashed into the instrument, glanced away, took the skin off the knuckles of Cardigan’s left hand as the gun in his right hand exploded. The bullet turned Baum quarter way around, brought a twisted look to his face, and his gun went off a second time. Cardigan felt his right hand struck, saw his gun spinning magically away. He dived after it, reaching with his left hand.

  “Stop!” ripped out Baum, his gun exploding a third time, its third bullet furrowing the floor in front of Cardigan’s face.

  Young and the short, stocky man burst into the room and Young snapped: “I told you no shooting here! My God—”

  “Cram it!” snarled Baum. “He asked for it and I had to give it to him and now let’s finish it!”

  “Not here!” screamed Young. “Take him to the waterfront!”

  “To hell with you! Here!”

  Cardigan was on his hands and knees, sweat pouring from his face. Young tried to grapple with Baum. The stocky man kept his gun trained on Cardigan. Baum kept fighting Young again, snarling: “Here, I tell you! Here! I’m going to finish this baby here!” He struck Young out of the way and Young tottered away. Baum squared off, snarling across the room: “You lousy gumshoe! You asked for it and I’m going to take you apart—”

  A gun thundered in the doorway and Baum stiffened, turned around and staggered across the room, walked into the wall like a blind man, fell to the floor.

  Young and the stocky man spun toward the doorway.

  “Back up,” a tense, quiet voice said. “Back up.”

  Cardigan got to his feet, hefting his gun in his bloody left hand. A tall, slender young man came through the doorway. In one hand he held a flashlight, in the other a gun. His clothes were streaked with dirt, he was collarless, and his sandy hair was disheveled. He had a small, sandy mustache.

  “Drop those guns,” he said.

  Young and the stocky man dropped their guns.

  The sandy-haired man said to Cardigan: “I didn’t know who you were downstairs. I thought maybe you were one of this crowd. I know now you’re Cardigan. My name’s Dave Connors.”

  “I’ve been searching high and low for you,” Cardigan said, “but for a reason that now begins to look screwy.”

  “What reason?”

  “I thought you killed Norma Driscoll.”

  DAVE CONNORS laughed drily, bitterly. He pointed to the stocky man. “Ask him who killed Norma Driscoll. Look at his hands. I hadn’t been in that Viking room with Norma five minutes when this chap and Baum stuck their guns through the window from the fire escape and told me to come out. I went. I thought they wanted me, but I didn’t know why. So I went. Baum forced me down the fire escape. At the bottom, I noticed that this other bird wasn’t along. Then I looked up and saw him coming out of the window. Then he came down and they drove me off in my car. Handled me rough before that and popped out a collar button. They brought me here and when Young saw me he said: ‘Well, Mr. Cardigan, we’d like to know just how much you know.’ They thought I was you. It took me a while to convince them, and then they got jumpy. They took me to the basement and tied me up. I got free of the ropes but everything was locked and a little while ago, when the butler came down, I nailed him and took away his flashlight and gun. I don’t know what it’s all about. Norma didn’t say much. Didn’t have time. She just said she had a date there with a detective named Cardigan. These two birds thought I was you, I guess, because I came in the room with her.”

  “Did you know her long?” Cardigan asked.

  “Several years, but I didn’t see her often. She traveled a lot. I—I was going with her sister Nancy, down in Los Angeles, at the time. I don’t live here. I came up a month ago, following Nancy—but she’d gone in a big way for a chap named Demayo. I know Norma was against that. She seemed to know Demayo—from other days.”

  Braddock Young said in a dull, hopeless voice: “She did know Demayo—from other days. The idiot, I told him not to make a play for the young sister—but he knew it all. Demayo was down in Shanghai before the Portero business and Norma met him and fell in love with him. So much so that she acted as liaison officer for our combine. She got deeper and deeper and then Demayo chucked her over. She kept her mouth shut about all this business until he made a play for her sister. I told him it was dangerous. He bribed the telephone operator at Norma’s hotel to keep him posted on the calls she made. So he found out when she telephoned you. He knew the Viking, knew where Room Three was located. There was only one thing to do. He told Baum to do it. Baum got Sam and they went to that fire escape. I,” he added brokenly, “had to sanction it. Nothing else to do. Norma knew too much. We were all entangled in this combine. Get the police. I’m ready. I’m glad it’s over.”

  A bell rang.

  “It’s the doorbell,” said Young.

  Cardigan said: “You keep them covered, Dave,” and went downstairs, both hands dripping blood, but his left hand still holding the revolver.

  When he opened the door he saw Hunerkopf standing there. The rolypoly detective was eating a very large apple. He saw Cardigan’s bloody hands and said:

  “Oh, my, oh, my! Miss Seaward phoned over to headquarters and gave us a tip we should come over and keep you from getting all smashed up. I had to come alone on account of Mac had an awful attack of indigestion on account of he was so mad at you. Tsk, tsk, look at your hands. I guess it is like this: I’m too late.”

  “No, Augie, you’re not. You’re just in time to pick up the pieces. Put ’em together and they spell murder. We’ve got the guys that knocked off that girl at the Viking.”

  “Good. I always say to Mac like this. Leave it to Cardigan. Yes, sir, Mr. Cardigan. Have an apple? Or I got some plums too.”

  CARDIGAN was sitting in his office next day, his hands bandaged, when Pat came in and said:

  “Oh, chief, they’re together again!”

  “Who?”

  “Dave Connors and Nancy. Poor Nancy—after Demayo struck her that way, and when she came to, she couldn’t believe what happened. And then later when she found out Demayo and those others had planned her sister’s death—chief, it was awful, the way the poor girl was broken. And then Dave Connors came around. He’s loved her since she was a kid. And then good old Mr. Hunerkopf came around, kind as he always is, with a large basket of assorted fruit. He tried to be so kind and was so intent on being kind that he hardly realized he was eating up all the fruit he’d brought Nancy. But the papers are full of how you crashed this big case!”

  The door banged open and McGovern came in, his heels drumming, a deep scowl on his face, his hand thrust forward.

  “Cardigan, I got to shake your hand. It was pretty work.”

  Cardigan held up his
bandaged hands. “You would think of it at a time like this. No can do, Mac.”

  McGovern turned to Pat, barked: “O.K. Can I shake your hand?”

  “Love to, Mr. McGovern. I’m awfully glad to see you and Mr. Cardigan on good terms again.”

  “Don’t mention it,” McGovern said. “Too bad, though, he didn’t ring me in on it. I could have showed him how to handle it right.”

  “Showed who?” Cardigan bristled.

  “You!”

  “Why, you poor excuse for a cop—”

  “Yeah!” barked McGovern. “I would have taken those guys—”

  Pat held her ears. “Oh, Lord, they’re off again,” she moaned. “Oh, dear; oh, Lord!”

  Hell on Wheels

  Chapter One

  Red-Hot Reception

  THE 9:50 from New York, Boston bound, rolled smartly into Bridgeboro on time, coming up the wide bend with its headlight bursting through the cold, foggy drizzle. The long station platform rumbled sullenly. Air lines rasped and whispered up and down the long line of wet, glistening cars.

  Cardigan got down out of the smoker, lugged his Gladstone across the platform and punched open a heavy swing door that led into the large, gloomy waiting room. He swung past the news counter, cut across between two rows of high-backed benches toward a bank of three telephone booths. All three booths were occupied. He paced up and down before them for the space of a minute, saw no indication that any one of them was about to be vacated, and then, with a glare and a low growl, banged out of the waiting room and took a short, dim-lit corridor to the street.

  The station was at the worn-down heel of the city. Opposite it, the Station Hotel lay in a well of shadows and was dimly lit by a spotty glass sign bearing its name. It was four-storied, hemmed in on one side by a wholesale grain-and-feed house; on the other, by a dusky rooming house with a pool parlor on the ground floor.