The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 3: 1934-35 Page 11

  He told Clancy McCoy everything. He told of the visit made by the girl and he told what she had said. He mentioned the overnight bag. He told of the entry of the two men, their proposition, the blow on the head, the stolen bag.

  And he ended: “It’s no affair of mine, Clance. To hell with it.”

  “Did the girl come back?”

  “No—and I’m glad she didn’t.”

  Clancy McCoy took from his pocket a slip of green memo paper and held it out across the table. On the paper was written Jacob Claybolt’s name and address.

  “That your writing?” McCoy asked.

  “You ought to know.”

  “I thought it was. I remembered you used to shoot over green memos to headquarters and we had some recent ones and I checked up and it was your handwriting.” He still held the slip out, a vague smile touching his lips.

  Cardigan growled: “Well, what am I supposed to do—read ’em and weep?”

  Clancy McCoy shrugged and replaced the slip of paper in his pocket. Rising, he put on his hat and said: “We found it in Claybolt’s office.”

  “Suppose you did? Why all the horsing around then?”

  “In Claybolt’s hand,” McCoy said, smiling down ruefully at Cardigan. “His dead hand,” the lieutenant added, and went sauntering off.

  Cardigan sat staring after him. Cardigan felt no great personal loss, since of course he’d never been intimate with Claybolt; he’d merely sent clients around to Claybolt because he’d known the man’s capabilities. But none the less the news disturbed him. It also irritated him. He had no wish to become embroiled in this thing, and he could have kicked himself for having sent the girl to Claybolt in the first place.

  He muttered half aloud: “What a guy gets for trying to do a guy a favor.” And then irritably, bending over the sole: “But what the hell—it’s none of my business!”

  HE left the Sea Shell and walked down Powell to Market. He hadn’t been in the office since two that afternoon and he wanted to pick up some memoranda on his way home. The halls were still lighted and several offices were still doing business. As Cardigan went down the corridor toward his office, he saw a man standing back on his heels reading, apparently, the legend on the ground-glass panel of the agency door. Cardigan came up noisily and the man turned and peered at him.

  “Want me?” Cardigan asked, his eyes narrowing.

  “You’re the agency man?”

  “Yeah.”

  The man was slender and of medium height. He was slightly gray at the temples and wore subdued, expensive-looking clothes. There was, Cardigan thought, a harried look in his eyes, a tension round his mouth.

  “Can you give me a little of your time?” the man ventured in a quiet, tense voice.

  “I was on my way home. Can’t it wait till tomorrow?”

  “It—it will take only a few moments. I’m not, you see, a prospective client. I just wanted to ask you a few questions.”

  Cardigan unlocked the door and said, “O.K., go in,” and followed the man into the agency office. The man took out a handkerchief, wiped his face, though he was not perspiring, and looked hurriedly about the office. He had sharp, nervous eyes, a rather mobile mouth that might have indicated a bad temper. But he was, now, very quiet, though uneasy.

  Cardigan, getting together the memoranda he had come for, said casually, “Go ahead, shoot,” while slipping several sheets of paper into a large envelope.

  “My name is Crippen,” the man said, his voice catching. “I’d like to know if a young lady—”

  Cardigan looked up at him with knitted brows. The man paused, swallowed.

  “A young lady,” Cardigan said. “And so what?”

  The man faltered on: “I’m deeply interested in the welfare of a young lady who I’ve reason to believe tried to phone you late today.” He coughed behind his hand; his hand was shaking. He described her briefly.

  “What about her?” Cardigan demanded.

  The harsh sound of his voice may have intimidated the man; for Crippen began to color, and pain and anxiety seemed to mount in his eyes. He said: “You see—as I said—I am deeply interested in her welfare. I am a close—a very close friend. I am trying to locate her.”

  Cardigan glared. “And I’m supposed to know where she is, huh?” He slashed his hand angrily through the air. “Well, I don’t! Try police headquarters. They’ll likely turn her up there. But me”—he shook his head—“I don’t know.”

  The man gasped out: “The police are looking for her?”

  “Yes,” Cardigan snapped. “A guy named Claybolt was knocked off late this afternoon. Murdered.”

  The man suddenly became strangely calm. He seemed to grow an inch or two taller and for a moment there was no sound in the office but the ticking of the clock on the wall. Crippen stared fixedly at Cardigan, and his calmness, Cardigan began to think, was made up largely of his being dazed.

  And Cardigan spoke in a dull, angry voice. “I wish you’d go. Scram! All day, all day, first one, then another, then another!” He knuckled the desk, as if to rouse Crippen, and said: “Understand me, I have enough agency business to take care of without monkeying around with a lot of people that crop up, pop off, and tell tall stories. So please take the air, Mr. Crippen.”

  Crippen backed up to the door like a sleep-walker, and suddenly Cardigan shrugged and said: “Hell, old man, I’m sorry if the news hurts that way. I mean about the girl.”

  Crippen suddenly turned, grabbed at the doorknob. With a short cry in his throat, he dashed out. Cardigan could hear his feet racing down the corridor; and Cardigan muttered, “Poor mug.” And then savagely, “But it’s no business of mine!”

  CARDIGAN spent an hour playing billiards, then walked up Powell and took a California Street car. Where it was dark and quiet, he got off, walked half a block, climbed a high stoop and went into the old bow-windowed house where he kept a small apartment. He climbed a narrow staircase, pulling on the dark, shiny banister, and reached the second floor. He saw standing before his door the girl who had left the overnight bag in his office. He went toward her with a dark, up-from-under scowl, jangling keys in his big hand.

  “I—I was just about to give up,” she said in her familiarly breathless voice.

  “What—trying to pick the lock?”

  “Oh, no. I knocked and knocked and knocked.”

  He grunted: “My valet must be out. He’s always out. In fact, I haven’t got a valet.” And then he growled: “Well, what do you want?”

  “May I—have a few words with you? I hate to bother you after hours but—”

  “Look out,” he muttered, elbowing her aside. He unlocked the door, reached in and switched on the lights. “No matter how humble,” he said, and motioned her in.

  She entered and he followed and kicked the door shut with his heel. He walked past her, crossed the small living room and went into the bedroom. He left his hat there, mixed himself a drink in the kitchenette and came back with it into the living room. He stood slack-legged in the center of the floor and said: “I suppose you’ve come for the bag.”

  “Yes—yes,” she cried hopefully, her lovely eyes brightening. “I didn’t want to trouble you but— Well, I was taken a little ill this afternoon and had to rush home and when I telephoned your office I guess it was too late. I looked up your residence in the telephone book and came out. Do you mind?”

  “I mind like hell,” he growled and flopped down into a large, old armchair. “Why can’t I be left alone? My God, a man tries to mind his own business, and then first one, then another—” He waved his glass angrily. “You make me sick!”

  She dropped her pretty eyelashes. “I’m sorry.”

  He got up and took a walk into the bedroom saying, “To hell with that,” and came back again with his head far back, his glass raised to his lips. He lowered the glass, smacked his lips and said simply: “Well, I haven’t got your bag. Maybe you think I brought it home with me?”

  “No. But I thought perhap
s that you’d let me have the key to your office, so that I could get it.”

  “That’s me all over—Good-time Charley.” He banged the glass down on a table. “Your bag’s not at the office!”

  She backed up rapidly and sat down, clasping her hands in her lap. Her lips were open, her eyes very wide, and about her was that strange air of breathlessness.

  She dropped her eyelashes again and said in a humble little voice: “I’m sorry I annoy you. I don’t blame you. I apologize.”

  “Rats,” he growled and went to look at himself in a mirror. And looking at himself, he said to her: “Don’t mind me, sister. I’m just a mug. The swellest private op in the city—or any city—but a mug.” He swiveled and held out his arms, palms upward. “Can you blame me, after a sock on the head that cost me four stitches! I tell you I feel lousy!” He stopped suddenly, bent his brows and said in a low, chopped voice: “Sister, you’re in a tough spot.”

  “I?”

  “Youse, yes.” All the play and the anger had gone out of him and he spoke with his lips drawn inward against his teeth, in a dropped voice. “You pop into my office, clown around with that bag and then you turn up here an Alice in Wonderland. This dumb brain of mine is beginning to work.” He sighted down a leveled arm at her. “You didn’t come to my office about your husband. Why the hell did you come there?”

  She moved uneasily. “Perhaps I’d better go.”

  “You’re either going to talk or you and me are going to police headquarters,” he said.

  She gagged. “Unh!” she grunted, and grimaced.

  The door whipped silently open and the rotund man, holding a gun in his plump hand, said: “Greetings!”

  Cardigan looked sourly at him, said, “Ah, the big bad wolf again,” and took a long drink.

  Chapter Three

  Fifty Grand

  THE rotund man bobbed merrily into the room and the tall, fatigued-looking young man followed, closed the door and, leaning wearily against the wall, toyed with an automatic pistol. He toyed with it in such a manner, however, that its muzzle did not point at any target but Cardigan.

  The rotund man said: “Take care to keep the weapon pointed levelly at Mr. Cardigan, Cyril.”

  “I guess I know what I’m doing,” Cyril rasped.

  The rotund man turned to the girl. “My dear young lady,” he said in a kind, fatherly voice. “I dislike this more than you can imagine, but that is life; we must do many things which we do not especially care to do. It is the penalty, I suppose, for being born and—”

  “Long-winded old fool,” muttered Cyril.

  The rotund man chuckled good humoredly, and then he said to the girl: “My dear, when you left the bag in Mr. Cardigan’s office, how much was in it?”

  She sat very straight, very white of face, with her hands in her lap. Her attitude implied that she did not intend making any reply. She looked straight into the rotund man’s bubbling, rubicund face. Her eyes seemed now to take on a greenish tinge. Her face looked waxen, nerveless, without a muscle.

  “Have I not made myself clear?” he asked politely, bowing.

  Her face remained the same and her eyes stared straight and expressionless into his eyes and not a muscle in her body moved. The phone rang and Cardigan, leaning against the table on which it stood, grabbed the receiver from the hook. The rotund man barked: “Hang up—instantly!”

  Cardigan slapped the receiver back into the hook and his lips formed a noiseless but potent oath.

  The rotund man looked down at the girl. “My dear, how much was in the bag when you took it to Mr. Cardigan’s office?”

  She suddenly laughed in his face and then was instantly quiet again, her face waxen.

  He took hold of her wrist and twisted it. “This hurts me more than it does you,” he explained, beaming jovially.

  Cardigan snapped, “You louse, cut that out!”

  The girl kept looking into the rotund man’s eyes as he continued to twist her wrist backward and forward. Her jaw grew firmer, her lips setting tightly, and she braced her feet against the floor. He worked harder, setting his own lips in a tight smile. She writhed slowly in the chair, red color suffusing her face but no sound breaking from her lips. And she did not take her eyes off the rotund man. Her eyes watered and looked glassy and muscles on her jaw began to stand. Her heels, as she tried harder to brace them, crunched against the floor. Cyril, apparently not so bored now, began to whistle one of the sentimental airs from the Tales of Hoffmann. The rotund man began to perspire, his face bloating redly. The girl’s face turned from red to a lardlike white and veins stood out on her forehead. Suddenly she went limp and fell backward and her eyes closed, her mouth drooped, her head lolled on one shoulder.

  Cardigan grunted: “By cripes, can she take it!”

  The rotund man stepped back. He was breathing heavily, hoarsely, and sweat rolled down his face. He stared at the girl with a kind of weird and angry delight and Cyril began to look bored and impatient again and Cardigan picked up his empty glass, smashed it on the floor and roared: “You couple of hopped-up lunatics, you!”

  Cyril’s gun steadied and he said: “That’ll be enough out of you.”

  The rotund man said, “Pity, pity,” while looking at the girl and then went into the bathroom, drew a glass of water and, returning with it, threw it into the girl’s face. It did not stir her much and the rotund man clucked his tongue and said: “Women are such frail creatures.” He dried his hands on his handkerchief, turned and looked quaintly at Cardigan. “I thought, Mr. Cardigan, that you did give up that bag rather easily. Yes, sir, I salute you. It was indeed a fast one.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Cardigan said in a loud, angry voice.

  THE girl woke up and stared dully at the rotund man. He turned a worried, grieved expression on her. “I’m sorry, my dear. I did not know you were ill.”

  She jumped up and raced toward the door and Cyril hit her on the jaw and said, “Don’t be a dope.” She careened backward and fell to the floor and lay there panting hoarsely.

  The rotund man leaned over, brushed her hair and said in a tender voice: “How much was in the bag, my dear?”

  She croaked: “I’ll not tell!”

  He playfully punched her back of the ear and her body convulsed on the floor. Cardigan swept an empty Perrier bottle off the table and bounced it off the rotund man’s head. The rotund man did a few ludicrous side steps and then plumped into the armchair.

  “My word!” he murmured in a dazed voice.

  “I’ll shoot you!” Cyril cried at Cardigan.

  Cardigan growled: “I don’t doubt it. The jane means nothing to me but just the same you mugs are not going to slap her around here all night! Who in cripes’ name do you think you are?”

  The rotund man got to his feet, shook his head and said: “By George, Mr. Cardigan, I salute you! Your connivance with the young lady was of course a shrewd matter of business and I don’t blame you a bit, I certainly do not blame you a bit, sir. But I may say that I’m a most tenacious person and fifty thousand or so is, after all, fifty thousand.”

  Cardigan scowled. “Fifty thousand what?”

  “Dollars, Mr. Cardigan. Dollars.”

  Cardigan dropped his eyes to the inert form of the girl on the floor. His forehead was wrinkled with a mixture of anger and confusion.

  “Of course,” bubbled the rotund man, “you have the money. Ah-ah!” he smiled, raising a finger, wagging it. “Don’t try to josh me, Mr. Cardigan. You were deft, very deft, in removing the money from the bag and replacing the money with newspapers. I am an ardent reader of newspapers, but they were old and I found them of little interest. Mr. Cardigan, I hate to press you, but, really, Cyril and I want the money.”

  Cardigan threw up his arms. “You’re screw-loose! If I had fifty grand I’d go down the South Seas and buy me an island—just to keep away from lugs like you and your nutty friend over there. I tell you I haven’t got it! I never saw it!
I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Cyril took a step forward, his gun rising. “I’d like very much to kill you,” he said in his listless thin voice.

  The rotund man looked dazzlingly at Cardigan. “We are very much in earnest, Mr. Cardigan. We actually, sir, want the money and we want it right away. That is a fact—a fact indeed, sir.”

  Cardigan grunted: “I haven’t got it.”

  The girl turned over and said in a tired, clattered voice: “Give it to them. They’ll kill you. Doubtless they’ll kill me too.”

  Cardigan stared down wide-eyed at her. “So now you’re beginning.” Then he looked at the others and hot, dark anger rushed to his eyes. “You’re all nuts! I never saw the money.”

  “Let me,” Cyril urged his companion. “Let me shoot him. Just once, Myron.”

  “One a day is not enough for you, I guess,” Cardigan said.

  Myron said: “Beg pardon?”

  “I was talking to that long drink of water over there. Or, don’t errors count?”

  “I don’t understand,” the rotund man said.

  “Claybolt, I mean. The private dick you guys knocked off late this afternoon in his office in Bush Street.”

  The rotund man made a round mouth of surprise and turned his wide eyes on Cyril.

  “What I thought, what I thought, Myron,” Cyril said petulantly. “I told you so, Myron.”

  The rotund man swung back to face Cardigan. “By gad, sir, I am glad you said that. Pardon us, but we must be going.” He bowed to the girl, who was now sitting up on the floor. “Clever of you, my dear. Mighty clever. Used two agencies to throw us off. Madam, I salute you!”

  “You and your blamed saluting,” complained Cyril. “Come on, come on.”

  They backed out, closed the door.

  The girl stood up and began rearranging her hair, her chin lowered.

  “I’ll mix you a drink,” Cardigan said.

  HE went into the kitchenette, cracked some ice and mixed a stiff one. When he came swinging back into the living room the girl was not there. He looked in the bedroom. The bathroom door was open. She was not in the apartment. She had fled.