The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original)

by Unknown

  “They didn’t move out of town,” he said. “Their furniture is in storage, most of it. A studio couch, two easy chairs, a table and a large double bed—not twin beds, Angel—were trucked over to this address as soon as the van reached the warehouse.” He passed her a slip of paper.

  She peered at it. “Gayland Avenue. That’s an apartment house district. Very snooty.”

  “You know,” Smith said, putting the car in gear, “this is beginning to show signs of promise. Maybe your lovelorn wife was in trouble.”

  ayland Street was in a district of fancy dress shops, delicatessens and Pomeranians, and the figure on the slip of paper was the number of an imposing structure housing a nest of apartments. This time Angel refused to sit in the car while he investigated. She went with him up the gleaming steps into the hallway with its glittering brass mail-boxes, and she looked with him at the long list of names beside the long row of bells.

  Bell number 17 had no name beside it, but Smith pushed it anyway. The studio couch, chairs, table and bed had been delivered to suite 17.

  He pushed again and frowned. “They don’t answer.”

  “I’ve been wondering something,” Angel said.

  “Yes? What?”

  “If you were a young man fresh out of a job, Philip, would you feel able to afford an apartment in this neighborhood?”

  Smith shrugged. “If we wondered at all the queer things people do, we’d wind up in a chuckle college.”

  “I’m serious, Philip.”

  “So am I. They don’t answer.”

  Angel looked annoyed. She walked up two white steps and tried the door and it was locked. She said, “Damn!” and stood there glaring at it. All at once her eyes widened; she turned quickly, beckoned with an outstretched hand and said, “C’m’ere, quick!”

  At her side, Smith peered through the thick clear glass of the door and saw a man backing out of an apartment at the end of the hall. A suitcase lay beside the open door and the man was lugging out another. He closed the door and picked up both pieces of luggage and plodded down the corridor with them, staggering a little because they were heavy and he was a small, thin-legged, bald little lad without much strength.

  Plouffe, by gosh! Plouffe, of all private dicks.

  The little dick kept his head down until he reached the door, and by that time Smith had faded back on one side, Angel on the other. Plouffe put down his burdens, opened the door, held it open with a foot and picked up the suitcases. He squirmed out and the door clicked shut behind him. Then he saw Smith.

  He dropped the suitcases again and said, “Well, my, my! Look who is here!”

  Smith looked at the luggage. It was expensive but old. It was initialed.

  “So you’re demoted to bellhop,” Smith said.

  “Huh?”

  “You make a very handsome bellhop, don’t you, Mr. Plouffe?” said Angel sweetly.

  Nick Plouffe pulled a large moist handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. He frowned, using his whole face, and said sourly: “At least I don’t have to give myself no fancy name like Trouble, Incorporated, to get business.”

  “Of course you don’t,” Angel said.

  “And I ain’t a bellhop, see?”

  “Of course you’re not. You live here.”

  “Me? Live here? Say, are you nuts?”

  “We’re looking,” Angel declared solemnly, “for my aunt Agatha. Apartment eighteen. We have a key to Aunt Agatha’s apartment—she’s in Bermuda, you know—but no key to the door you’re leaning against. Could you let us in, maybe?”

  Nick Plouffe blinked, registering suspicion. It was hard for him to register suspicion, or anything else, because his moist little face was small and V-shaped and not very elastic. He did his best, though, and then grumbled: “Well, all right.”

  He fumbled for a key and unlocked the door.

  “Thank you so much,” Angel cooed. “Come, John.”

  She and John Smith paced down the hall without a backward glance at the suspicious Plouffe, and Smith said dryly, “There, my dear, is a scraping from the lowest stratum of the private detecting profession. Dumb but dangerous. A mouse, but a mean mouse. I met up with him on another case and caught him pretending to be a G-man. He asked me to promise not to tell on him. Did you note the initials on the two suitcases?”

  “I did. M.A.B. and T.L.B.”

  “The Burdicks.”

  “Or a monstrous coincidence, because Plouffe came out of this apartment,” Angel declared, stopping beside a door, “and it happens to be suite 17.”

  Smith glanced back, then, to make certain Plouffe had departed. Satisfied, he knocked. After a moment’s wait he knocked again.

  “They don’t answer.”

  “Perhaps we should tail Mr. Plouffe,” Angel suggested. “Or is it too late?”

  Smith leaned against the door of apartment 17 and scowled at her. Scowled fiercely, because he knew from past experience that Miss Angelina Copeland—she had once been his secretary and had since become both the bane and the beacon of his existence—would talk him out of it unless he were savagely stubborn. “It’s too late,” he said firmly, “for absolutely everything except that drive into the country, that swim, and—”

  “But tomorrow we start in again. Promise?”

  “No!”

  She rolled her eyes at the ceiling and tapped a toe on the tile floor. “No promise, no ride. It’s for your own good, darling. If I didn’t keep jabbing you, you’d turn into a Christmas card, and that would be such a waste of talent.”

  She took his arm. Smith sighed and went with her, muttering under his breath.

  iss Miggsby, who wore large rimless glasses, placed a sheaf of papers on Edgerson’s desk and said, beaming: “We think, Mr. Edgerson, that these are simply delightful!”

  Miss Miggsby had been Edgerson’s private secretary since the departure of Angel. She possessed some of Angel’s brains, none of Angel’s disturbing physical attraction, and was very, very easy on the nerves.

  Edgerson gravely accepted the papers, glanced at them. The door of his private sanctum opened at that moment and he looked up. Looked up and groaned. He could tell by the grim little smile on Angelina’s lips that something had happened.

  Miss Miggsby fled. Angel, radiant in something ultra modern and startlingly yellow, came around the desk and looked over Edgerson’s shoulder.

  “Christmas?” she asked innocently. “Or just happy birthday to my ex-wife?”

  He made sure that the door between Miss Miggsby’s office and his own was closed before he answered. Then he said firmly, “Whatever you’ve found out, it’s no go. I’m busy. I got in this morning with a prize hangover, thanks to your mania for daiquiris last night, and found enough work piled on my desk to keep three men busy for a week.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t you ever work?”

  “Uh-huh. I just finished my column. Look, Philip. I’ve discovered the whereabouts of Margaret Burdick.”

  “I’m not interested.”

  “You’ve got to be. It’s terribly important.” She cleared a space for herself on his desk and sat down, swinging a most attractive leg.

  “First I went over to the Glickman Company where Mr. Burdick—Teddy, that is—used to work. I smiled my prettiest and found out that Teddy wasn’t fired; he quit. He told them he had a better job offered to him in Boston. I deserve credit for that. The Glickman outfit is a big concern. They make chemicals and do a lot of work for the government. It took talent to go in there stone cold and come out with information.”

  “I’m still very busy,” Edgerson muttered.

  “So then,” she continued, “I went over to that little dumpy hotel where your little Plouffe lives. The clerk told me he was in, so I slipped into a phone booth and called him and talked the way you’d expect Margaret Arnold Burdick to talk—after reading that letter she wrote me—and I told Plouffe to come right over because I needed him. And he fell for it.”

  Edgerson
was not sufficiently surprised to show it.

  “He fell for it,” Angel declared, “and when he left the hotel I followed him. He didn’t go far. He went to another grimy little hotel, the Lester, and that, Philip, is where Mrs. Burdick is hiding out.”

  “You saw her?”

  “No, but—”

  “What about her husband? Is he living there, too?”

  “After all,” she said, “I’m not the president of Trouble, Inc. I’m just an underpaid hireling. Don’t expect too much.”

  “I can’t see that you’ve done too much.”

  “But I haven’t confessed all. Not yet. I’ve been to the morgue,” she said.

  That got him. His mouth sagged and he gaped at her.

  “The newspaper morgue,” she explained softly, “to check on Dubitsky. Do you know why I did that?”

  He said nothing.

  “Because,” she went on, “I discovered over at the chemical company that young Mr. Burdick is a graduate of our nice big university here where Dubitsky taught. And when I found that out, I got to thinking about the foreigner who smoked the long black cigarettes, and so I went over to the university and did some snooping. Guess what I found.”

  “If you don’t stop beating around the mulberry bush,” Edgerson said, “I’ll fire you!”

  “Young Mr. Burdick was a student in some of Dubitsky’s classes.”

  “You mean it?”

  “It’s the truth. He was an honor student. One of Dubitsky’s pets.”

  “I’m not,” Edgerson said, “as busy as I thought. Go ahead.”

  “You mean it?”

  “Go right ahead. I’ve always been intrigued with Dubitsky. The Christmas ditties can wait.”

  “Well,” she said, “I’ve brought you some of the newspaper accounts of Dubitsky’s death.”

  “I don’t need them. I know the details by heart.”

  “Do you? Lead on, Macduff.”

  “The great Dubitsky,” Edgerson said, “left his bachelor apartment about six-thirty that night, intending to drive to a little camp he owned on Loon Cry Lake, sixty miles north of here. It was a miserable night, and he was alone. He stopped in Midville for gas, and the attendant warned him not to try the Loon Lake road because it was inundated and dangerous, and an electrical storm was coming up over the mountains.

  “He went, and was caught in the storm. His car went over a cliff and caught fire, probably struck by lightning before it went over. The charred remains of Dubitsky were identified by a watch and a couple of rings.”

  “And I’ll wager my next year’s salary as nonpaid vice president of Trouble, Inc.,” said Angel calmly, “that you believe Professor Dubitsky is still very much alive. Now don’t you, Mr. Smith?”

  Edgerson scowled at a tiny image of Santa Claus which sat on his desk. It was a birthday gift from Miss Miggsby. “Now why,” he insisted, “should a self-respecting professor of foreign languages, including the Malaysian, wish to plunge himself into oblivion?”

  “What nationality is Dubitsky?”

  “Darned if I know. German, Czech, Russian, Polish—he might be most anything.”

  “The point is,” she said, “he’s not American. He came to this country six or seven years ago, to take up his duties at the university. No one knows much about him, except that he’s a mental giant. Put two and two together, Philip. Dubitsky. A mysterious accident. The Glickman Chemical Company. Young Burdick. It’s positively sinister; that’s what it is!”

  “What,” Edgerson said, “do you propose to do about it?”

  “Have a talk with Burdick’s wife. And you’re coming with me. This, Mr. Smith, is the biggest thing that ever fell into the lap of our little organization, or I’m a monkey’s uncle.”

  “I think a better move,” Smith declared thoughtfully, “would be to call on Plouffe.”

  “Plouffe?”

  “The girl might be a bit difficult. Plouffe, on the other hand, would hardly dare to be. I know too much about him. I might still talk about him impersonating himself as a G-man.” He smiled, pushing himself out of his chair. “Trouble, Incorporated, is at work again,” he said.

  ick Plouffe, when not at his hotel, could generally be found between bottles of beer in his office or between martinis at the Andolf Tap. He was in his office this time, suffering from the heat. A cheap fan sent the hot air surging about the room and Plouffe’s handkerchief was sodden from face-mopping.

  He peered suspiciously at his visitors and said: “Well, my, my! Look who is here!”

  “You’re surprised,” Smith said.

  “I am pop-eyed!”

  Smith shut off the fan and eyed the half-empty bottle of beer on the detective’s desk. He sat down without awaiting an invitation. Angel followed suit. Nick Plouffe stood beside the desk, mopped his pleasant little face again and registered uneasiness.

  “So what can I do for you?”

  “You’re not going to like this, Nick.”

  “I feel it in my bones.”

  “What we’d like to know, Nick,” Smith said, “is how you got mixed up in this Burdick business.”

  Plouffe sat down. His tie was askew and his striped shirt was open down to the third button, revealing a moist undershirt and a few chest hairs. He said plaintively: “On a hot day like this you should come here to ask questions! What did I ever do to you?”

  “Give, Nick.”

  “Give! Do I ask you to hand out professional secrets? Do I come barging into Trouble, Incorporated, and act like I was a partner?”

  “You wouldn’t want to be a partner,” Angel said sweetly. “There’s no money in it.”

  “Give,” Smith said.

  “So why should I?”

  “Must we go through all that again? About how unhealthy our local jails are, and how bad the food is? Nick, you surprise me.”

  Nick Plouffe slumped lower in his chair. The desk hid most of him but his eyes were little gray bugs just visible over the rim.

  “The Burdick girl is a client of mine,” he mumbled.

  “How come?”

  “You would not be interested. So help me it would bore you, I swear it.”

  “I’ll risk it. Go right ahead.”

  “Well, it is like this. It is very ordinary. The Burdick girl comes up here and says she sees the name of my agency in the phone book. Then she spills a sob story into my ears, and so help me, Mr. Smith, it is nothing that would interest you. It is like every other sob story you ever heard.”

  “I’ll hear it again,” Smith said.

  “But it will bore you stiff!”

  “The food,” Angel chimed in gently, “is really atrocious, Mr. Plouffe. They feed you bread and mush three times a day, and sometimes the mush is maggoty. If it isn’t, I’m sure Mr. Smith can arrange to have them inject a few maggots, just for your benefit.”

  Plouffe mopped his face. “She has a husband, see? And he stays out late at night, and sometimes he doesn’t come home at all. She says to me, he is keeping bad company and will I look into it? So help me that’s the whole story.”

  “The bell-hopping was just your own idea, eh?” Smith said.

  “Huh?”

  “If that’s all there is to it, Plouffe, why’d you move her from a swank apartment house to a frowsy dump of a hotel?”

  “She—she couldn’t pay the rent them vultures was asking.”

  “Maggots, Plouffe, are apt to make you hellishly sick.”

  “Well,” Plouffe muttered, avoiding Smith’s steady gaze, “I had to get some dough out of this business somehow, didn’t I?”

  “Meaning what?”

  “She pays me to tail her husband. There wouldn’t be no dough in that even if I could locate the husband, which I can’t. So I have to tell the dame something, don’t I? Would you want me to let her down and have her get a wrong idea about the private detective business?”

  “The light begins to dawn,” Angel murmured.

  Plouffe looked at her gratefully and forced a grin
. “Sure. She wanted service, so I gave it to her. There wasn’t no harm in that, was there? All I told her, I checked up on her husband and found out he was mixed up with some tough mobsters, and things looked pretty bad, and her own life could easily be in danger unless she put herself in my care for a few days until I got things straightened out.”

  “And she believed you?” Smith asked.

  “Sure she believed me.”

  “And to make it more realistic, you moved her out of the apartment and obtained a room for her at the Lester.”

  “Yeah. Hell, if these dumb dames want adventure, Nick Plouffe sells it to ’em. Why not?”

  Smith stood up. “I’m hiring you, Plouffe.”

  The gray little eyes grew to twice their normal size. “Huh?”

  “You say you tried to locate Burdick and failed. Is that right?”

  “Sure I tried.”

  “Hard?”

  “I done all I could,” Plouffe insisted. “I checked every lead the dame gave me.”

  “And you couldn’t find him. Very well, Plouffe, he’s missing. Something has happened to him. And if we’re not careful, something may happen to the girl. Therefore, I’m hiring you to keep an eye on her.”

  “Listen,” Plouffe said. “This don’t make sense.”

  “It might, later. You’re to watch the girl and keep in touch with me, report to me every move she makes. I’d do it myself, Plouffe, but I’m going to be busy. Very busy. So is Miss Copeland. And our staff at Trouble, Inc., is limited.”

  “Say, what’s back of all this?”

  “A certain crack someone once made,” Angel replied quickly, flashing a smile, “about twin beds.”

  “Huh?”

  “You wouldn’t understand, Plouffe. Don’t worry about it. Someday Mr. Smith is going to write a treatise on it. Then you’ll know.”

  Smith turned to open the door. “You can get in touch with me, Plouffe, at Trouble, Inc. If I’m not there, Miss Copeland will be. And I’ll expect your first report about an hour from now.”

  Outside, Angel said sweetly: “What I like about you, Mr. Smith, is your uncanny faculty for persuading people to work for you—for nothing. Including,” she added, taking his arm, “me.”