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

  “She’s a pip. But that husband of hers, he looks to me like the wrong end of an accident.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “Report to Martin Strang and bail out. I should get into this family dog-fight? Ixnay. I did what I was hired to do. I located Husted Hull and called on him and please keep that damned umbrella out of my ear.”

  Chapter Two

  The Law Chisels In

  WHEN Pat walked in the agency office next morning Cardigan was slipping the telephone receiver slowly back into the hook. A deep furrow lay crookedly across his forehead, his brows were bent and there was a sharp, compressed look in his eyes. He set the telephone down more quietly than he was accustomed to doing things and stared intently at it.

  He said, more to himself than to Pat: “I don’t like that.”

  “What’s the matter, chief?” she asked anxiously.

  He made a ball of his fist, laid it on the desk. “Maybe nothing. Maybe—” he rose out of his swivel chair—“lots.”

  “But—”

  He cut in: “The manager of the Hotel Farago just called up—Ben Tremaine. When Martin Strang asked him if he knew of a good, reliable detective agency, Tremaine recommended us.” He pointed to the telephone. “That was Tremaine just called up. He said Strang’s bed hadn’t been slept in last night.”

  “But maybe—”

  Cardigan jabbed her with a dark look. “Maybe what?”

  “Maybe he—well—didn’t feel like sleeping last night.”

  “There was a standing order for breakfast to be brought up to his room each morning at eight. When the waiter came with it this morning, Strang wasn’t there. Under the door there was a bill of fare that is passed around, slipped under the doors, each evening at five thirty.”

  His lips tightened and he scowled steadily across the room and his fist thumped the desk slowly, rhythmically.

  He said: “When we stopped by to see Strang yesterday at four thirty, after that goofy interview with Hull, you remember Strang got sore. Can you blame him? He said he would go around and see Hull himself. I advised him not to. I said Hull would likely take a sock at him. Strang struck me as the kind of guy who wasn’t especially afraid of a sock on the jaw. You saw him. He looked like a guy could handle himself, even though he’s fifty.”

  Pat sat down on the edge of a chair, her eyes wide. “Do you think he went?”

  Cardigan was terse, clipped. “You hang around here till I get back.” He crossed to the clothes-tree, slapped on his misshapen, faded fedora, banged his arms into the sleeves of his shabby, shaggy ulster.

  “Wait,” said Pat.

  She got up and went over and pulled the back of his collar from beneath his coat, plucked off a few stray threads.

  He said, “Thanks, Pats,” and left the office. He walked down to the dim old lobby, reached the street and stood there for a moment, his forehead still wrinkled, a little knot of muscle at either corner of his mouth. The morning was clear, bright with sunlight, windy. The wind tussled with his hat and overcoat and whipped sheets of discarded newspapers crazily in the air, or skated them wildly along the pavement. He saw a cab idling along and hailed it, climbed in.

  FIFTEEN minutes later he got out in front of the familiar four-story building. It was a neat street, sharply graded. He paid the driver and rocked into the lobby, pushed the brass button he had pushed the night before, and waited, nibbling on his lip. He pressed the button again, waited another minute, and when there was no answer he pushed the button marked Janitor. In a few minutes a small, withered little man opened the door.

  Cardigan said: “I can’t seem to raise the Hull apartment.”

  “Maybe they ain’t in.”

  “I think they are. Or I think there’s something wrong.”

  Cardigan showed his identification. “I called on these people last night. Will you come up with me and bring a key?”

  “But—”

  “Why kill time? If you don’t want to let me in, say so, and I’ll ring the police.”

  The man dropped his eyes. “I’ll get a key.”

  He disappeared down the lower hall and when he came back again he was carrying a bunch of keys. Cardigan followed him up two flights of stairs, and the man spent a full minute ringing the apartment bell. Finally, but reluctantly, he inserted a key and opened the door. Cardigan thrust past him, paused in the foyer to listen, heard nothing.

  The man stammered, “Whuh—what makes you think—”

  “Quiet,” Cardigan muttered.

  He pushed on into the corridor, looked in the living room. The shades were drawn and a light was burning. He pulled up the shades. He turned and the small man was in his way. Preoccupied, Cardigan brushed him aside, went down the corridor. The small dining room was empty also. The bedroom was empty. Cardigan’s scowl deepened and he looked in the closets, in the bathroom, the kichenette.

  The small man’s timid voice said: “What’s the matter?”

  Cardigan swiveled. “When these people moved in, did they have much baggage?”

  “Only suitcases, I think.”

  “Well, they’ve scrammed.”

  “But they just paid a month’s rent. Their month ain’t up until—”

  Cardigan left him and made another tour of the rooms. He emptied several waste baskets, examined their contents, but found nothing of importance. He pulled out the divan cushions and the cushions of two armchairs, replaced them and stood for a moment with his fists planted on his hips and one side of his mouth sucked inward.

  Then he said: “Well, that’s that.”

  “That’s—uh—what?” asked the small man.

  Cardigan looked through him, said, “Thanks for letting me in,” and strode out.

  WHEN he blew back into his office, his coat tails flying, Pat turned from the window to say, “Well?”

  Cardigan said: “I went there half expecting to find Martin Strang a corpse. Well, I didn’t.” He scaled his hat across the office and hooked it neatly on a prong of the clothes-tree.

  Pat let out a sigh. “Well, thank the Lord for that.”

  “Don’t be in a hurry to thank the Lord, kid. The Hulls have scrammed, bag and baggage. On the way back here I stopped at the Farago Hotel and had a talk with Ben Tremaine. No sign of Martin Strang yet, and no word from him. Tremaine’s worried.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “There’s only one thing I can do. Call in the cops. If I let this slide and slide, I’ll get in Dutch. Strang’s been away from his hotel all night. It’s as plain as the nose on your face that something’s happened to him. Get me headquarters and ask for McGovern.”

  “Oh, why McGovern, chief? You know you two always bicker.”

  “The hell with that. If I got somebody else, Mac’d horn in anyhow.”

  Pat was reaching for the phone when the outer door opened slowly and Bernice Hull came in. Cardigan put out a hand, said to Pat: “Hold it.”

  In a louder voice he said: “Good morning, Mrs. Hull.”

  She looked very small and pretty in a dark cloth coat with a stand-up fur collar. Her smile was wan, a little rueful, as she came into the inner office. Pat stood with her hand still on the telephone and Cardigan, puzzled, said: “I didn’t expect to see you, Mrs. Hull.”

  She dropped her eyes. “I don’t suppose I should be here, but I came around anyway. I wanted to see you and I thought—well—I thought perhaps I could see Husted’s uncle, too. I forgot what hotel you said he was staying at. But, please,” she went on, “don’t ever tell Husted about it.”

  “Why the sudden fade-away from the apartment?”

  “Well, you see, Mr. Cardigan, Husted was very worked up last evening. After those people left, he stormed up and down and said he was going to move to a hotel. He said he wouldn’t meet his uncle and he said he didn’t want to have him coming around. I tried to quiet him and then I walked around the corner to a store and got some things for dinner. But when I came back, Husted was still work
ed up—and packing. He was determined to move to a hotel, so he wouldn’t be bothered. So”—she shrugged—“what could I do?”

  “And where are you living now?”

  “At the Norman Hotel, in Bush Street.”

  Cardigan looked at Pat and Pat looked at Cardigan.

  Bernice Hull colored a little. “It probably seems foolish, my coming around here, and I know Husted would be angry if he knew it, but—well—I was so embarrassed last night. And I would like to meet his uncle. I do really want Hughie to go back to Denver, but he is stubborn.”

  CARDIGAN sat on his desk, folded his arms and bent a shrewd stare on the young woman. “I’d like you to meet Martin Strang, too. I think you’d like him and I think he’d like you. But I don’t know where he is.”

  Bernice Hull looked quizzically at him. “But I thought you said yesterday—”

  “I said he was stopping at the Hotel Farago. But since last evening he hasn’t been stopping there. He’s disappeared. His baggage is there, but he isn’t.”

  Her eyes grew very round, her manner was more puzzled than ever. “But where could he have gone?”

  “Mrs. Hull, I’d like to know myself.”

  “Oh, how awful, how terrible!” She looked hopelessly from Cardigan to Pat.

  Cardigan’s low voice said: “I was just about to phone the police.”

  Bernice Hull nodded. “But, of course—you’d have to,” she cried, in an anxious voice. “He may have been beaten by robbers and left in some vacant lot. Maybe if I told Husted this—then maybe he’d relent and help you find him.”

  Cardigan smiled. “I don’t think his help would do much good. This is a job for the police. I’d supposed maybe Mr. Strang’d gone to your apartment last evening.”

  “Well, he may have—after we’d gone.”

  Cardigan said: “Best thing for you to do, Mrs. Hull, is go back to your hotel and say nothing. A cop’ll be around before the day’s over, just as a matter of routine. If you tell your husband Mr. Strang’s gone, he’ll want to know when you found it out and when you tell him he may go into another of his Hollywood tempers.”

  She nodded agreement, then said: “I’ll see you later, I hope. I hope I haven’t been a nuisance.” She smiled sweetly at Cardigan, at Pat; and Cardigan saw her to the door.

  When he came back, he said: “What do you think of her now?”

  Pat was definite. “I think she’s a very fine girl and I feel sorry for her with a husband like Husted Hull.”

  Cardigan lit a butt, snapped a jet of smoke from one side of his mouth. “Either she’s God’s most kind and innocent creature or she’s a swell actress.”

  “Oh, nonsense! Are you beginning to doubt her?”

  “She just seems too good to be true but I hope I’m wrong.”

  “Oh, you give me a pain, chief.”

  “Hell, you should be a missionary’s secretary.” He nodded to the telephone. “Get McGovern on the wire.”

  She was reaching for the instrument when the outer office door banged open and Sergeant McGovern, plain clothed with a derby riding cockily over one eyebrow, strode in. Behind him strode Martin Strang, tall, white-faced, in his eyes a cold blue anger. Detective Hunerkopf came last, closing the door, removing his hat and looking very fat and placid and benign. One of McGovern’s hard, keen eyes was narrowed down and there was a tight, sardonic twist to his mouth.

  “Fast one, eh?” he chopped off sarcastically.

  Cardigan hung his thumbs in his lower vest pockets and said to Pat: “Look, the trapeze act is in again.”

  Pat eyed him with a look that was half angry, half pleading. She knew that something had gone awfully wrong and she did not want Cardigan to aggravate McGovern’s already angry mood.

  McGovern came right up to Cardigan and planted an index finger hard against the topmost button of Cardigan’s vest. “You,” said McGovern, “will have to think up some speedy answers, sonny boy.”

  HUNERKOPF was bowing to Pat and holding his hat off, an inch above his head. “It’s always a pleasure kind of to see you, Miss Seaward. I always says to Mac, to Mac I says—”

  “Shut up, August!” McGovern growled.

  Martin Strang remained in the background, his fists clenched at his sides, his lips locked tightly, though words of wrath ached behind them.

  McGovern used his index finger again. “You, Cardigan—”

  “Lay off the prologue,” Cardigan said; he pushed McGovern out of the way and went across the room to face Strang. “What’s the trouble, Mr. Strang?”

  Strang muttered passionately, “You are asking me?”

  “Yeah, I’m asking you.”

  Strang’s eyes burned on Cardigan. “I was always chary of detective agencies. I should have known. But I at least thought that the manager of a reputable hotel, when he recommended you—”

  Cardigan was blunt without being insolent. “Suppose before you go into that, Mr. Strang, you give me an idea about what I’ve done.”

  “Done! You sent me into a trap!”

  “I didn’t send you anywhere.”

  “You told me my nephew and his wife lived in Apartment Thirty-two, third floor, at—at that address—Leeward House.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, sir,” Martin Strang went on thickly, angrily, “I went there last evening, at about six. I knocked. A small, dapper man opened the door and I asked for Husted Hull. He said to step in. I did. When I stepped in, he closed the door. Then he drew a gun on me. A large, thick-set, oldish man joined him. They took me out, put me in a car, blindfolded me and drove me somewhere where they held me prisoner all night.”

  McGovern horned in, “Now the fast answers, Cardigan.”

  Cardigan said to Strang: “When did they let you go?”

  “Let me go! They didn’t let me go. I worked free of my bonds in the dark and when, this morning, one of them came in with a flashlight to look at me, I knocked him over and ran out. I went directly to the police, who returned with me to the house, but no one was there by that time.”

  “Make ’em fast, old sock!” McGovern chuckled.

  Cardigan swiveled. “Fat-head, what are you trying to do—say I planted a couple of mugs there to kidnap Mr. Strang?”

  “Suppose I said I wouldn’t be surprised?”

  “I’d say you were actually as thick as you look.”

  McGovern’s bony dark face grew darker. “Watch your tongue, sonny boy!”

  “Watch yours!” Cardigan ripped back at him. “You’re hired by this city to do police work and not to plagiarize the funny papers.”

  “Now, now, Mr. Cardigan,” Hunerkopf said placidly, “don’t let us get all hot and bothered.”

  “You stay out of this!” McGovern barked.

  Hunerkopf sighed and leaned back dolefully in a chair.

  “But why,” said Pat, “must everyone get angry?”

  “And you stay out of it, too,” Cardigan told her.

  Martin Strang said: “I didn’t come here to listen to a lot of bickering. I came to procure results.”

  Pat laughed ironically. “You certainly had a headstart when you brought Mr. McGovern along.”

  “Young lady,” said McGovern, glaring at her, “I don’t have to stand any lip from you!”

  She flared: “And you don’t have to come in here with your atrociously bad manners, Mr. Know-it-all!”

  “Ha, ha, ha,” chortled Hunerkopf, wagging his big head.

  “August!” McGovern thundered. “You wait for me outside!”

  Hunerkopf left the office, sighing, wagging his head.

  McGOVERN’S hard, steely gaze swept back to Cardigan and he said in a low, tight voice: “Now, we’ll get down to business.”

  “Business with you meaning that you’re going to stand there and steam off, and after it goes on a while I’m going to get sore and take a poke at you.”

  “Why,” demanded McGovern, “did you tell Mr. Strang his nephew was there when he wasn’t?”

>   “I told Mr. Strang his nephew was there because, you dope, he was there.”

  “Why wasn’t he there when Mr. Strang went there?”

  “I guess he didn’t want to be bothered, so he up and moved.”

  “Why,” McGovern drove on, “did two mugs turn up there and take Mr. Strang and make him a prisoner?”

  “Now we’re both in virgin territory, Mac. I don’t know. I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  Strang said in a loud, accusing voice: “You were the only one in this city who knew I was a wealthy man. You made up that story about finding my nephew. You so worded your report that I would go to that address myself determined to talk with my nephew. You were smart enough not to urge me to go.”

  “You should write, Mr. Strang. Your imagination’s the nuts.”

  “You will please keep your insolence to yourself.”

  “Oh, I’m supposed to stand here and take a lot of crap from you and hang my head. Is that it? I didn’t ask you for that job. You came to me and I located your nephew and you paid me fifty bucks.”

  “And you laid that trap!”

  Cardigan held out his fist toward Pat. “Hold this, Pats, before it reverts to type.”

  McGovern jumped in front of him, grabbed his arm. “I can take care of that part of it,” he growled darkly.

  Cardigan’s eyes were beginning to look windy. He gave one vicious wrench of his body, without moving his feet. McGovern stopped against the wall, making a picture of Jack Johnson rattle. McGovern started for his blackjack. Cardigan laid his hand on a rectangular slab of glass, six inches long, two inches thick, which he used for a paperweight.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” said Martin Strang, not afraid, merely irritated.

  Cardigan and McGovern eyed each other stonily for half a minute, and then they relaxed.

  Cardigan said to Strang: “I’ll get your nephew. If I have to drag him bodily, I’ll get him and bring him to you and show you that I did find him, I did talk with him.”

  “Like hell you will!” McGovern barked.

  “But that seems fair enough,” Strang said.

  McGovern towered. “Mr. Strang, you don’t know this potato the way I know him.”