The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 2: 1933 Page 18

  Cardigan came to, showing first the rolling whites of his eyes. His slumped body did not budge, but gradually his eyes opened, stared, looked from Bogart to the two policemen and then back again.

  He said: “Humph,” without any particular significance.

  “And so you’re Cardigan,” Bogart said, nodding with a tight dark grin. “Cardigan hears all, sees all. That great big Hibernian private detective. The wise guy from the wise town. The big shot in the button-button-who’s-got-the-button game. The fancy—”

  “Thank God,” muttered Cardigan, “I’m among friends.”

  He reached over, scooped the flask of Golden Wedding from the desk and applied its smooth mouth to his own.

  “Hey!” cut in Bogart, grabbing the bottle from him. “That’s for medicinal purposes only!”

  “I sure am full of medicinal purposes… what’s your name?”

  “Bogart, head of the bureau.”

  Cardigan began going through his pockets and Bogart said: “Your papers and cards are on the table.”

  “Thanks,” Cardigan said; but he went on searching, bringing forth a roll of bills which he counted very carefully. “O.K.,” he said, and thrust the roll back into his pocket.

  Patrolman Hensinger said: “Geez, there, Cardigan, we’re sorry we beaned you, but geez; there you was—we didn’t know you—and there was a guy, you know, uniform and all—”

  “What happened to him?” Cardigan asked.

  “Dead,” Bogart said, and seemed disgusted about it; and then fiercely to Cardigan, “Why’d you go with them guys?”

  “Hell, I thought they were cops! Who wouldn’t?”

  “Yeah and when’d you begin to find out they weren’t?”

  Cardigan still lolled, but moved a forefinger slowly. “This guy in the sergeant’s uniform—well, Captain, did you ever see a uniformed flatfoot wearing low patent-leather shoes?”

  “No.”

  “Neither did I. This guy had on black patent-leather shoes. The guy next to him had a nice pink manicure like a wildflower. First off—naturally—they were too nice for cops— No offense, skipper. But you know what I mean. You see?… Too interested. Anyhow, it was the patent-leather gigolo shoes that scared me. I did get scared. So I threw a bellyache. I wanted to get one of these guys—and I faked the sergeant into helping me into the store—”

  “Why’d they want you?”

  This time Cardigan sat up, slapped his knees, rubbed them. “We’re working for the attorney general—you know that. My assistant—Patricia Seaward—has all the dope. She came out here first. I’ve got to see her.”

  Bogart jerked a thumb, said to the patrolmen: “O.K., boys—scram out.”

  They left the office. Bogart took a slug of rye, capped the flask and locked it away in the desk. He yanked over a chair, sat down facing Cardigan, propped a rigid forefinger on Cardigan’s knee.

  “This sergeant was killed—this fake sergeant—was a guy named ‘Silk’ Maloney—a grinning, good-natured chopper that believed in killing a guy with a smile. The bureau had no idea he was in town. Ten to one he brought a mob with him, and I’m going to lay into that mob—”

  “The attorney general said, ‘Cops off.’ He’s not looking for fireworks. He’s looking for evidence. Stay out of it, Bogart.”

  “Boy,” said Bogart with a tight lopsided grin, “there’s been murder done. The attorney general’s got nothing to do with that. That’s up my alley.”

  “So what?”

  “So keep in touch with me. I know enough about you to know that as soon as you hit a burg you put a jinx on whatever mob you’re after. You started already. Maloney’s dead—by a fluke from the gun of a pal. That’s a swell beginning. I don’t give a damn about what evidence you’re after, but we got murder mixed up in it now, and I’m a nice guy to play along with.”

  Cardigan stood up, put hands tenderly to his head. “Anyhow, I like your liquor.”

  “We’re going to knock over a warehouse in a couple of days and I hope to get in a couple of cases of Spey Royal.”

  “Swell.”

  “So what about this?”

  Cardigan picked up his hat. “I’ve got to see the attorney general. I’ve got to see Pat Seaward. I’m in the dark, Bogart. Suppose I song-and-dance you?”

  Bogart was hard, frank. “Hell, I’ll just get nasty.”

  “Thanks.” Cardigan grinned, shook Bogart’s hand.

  “Don’t mention it. Where you staying?”

  “The Beaumont.”

  “Don’t buy any hooch from the nigger hops. It’s lousy. Call Southern Four-Six and they’ll send over some good stuff. And pay no more than one-fifty for gin, three for whiskey.”

  MILL smoke had darkened the rough gray stone of the Hotel Beaumont. It stood at the foot of Hummel Street, where Exeter Avenue slashed a broad way east and west. Here, at the intersection, a network of street-car rails came together, and the sound of cars slam-banging across the switches made an unending clangor. It was a crowded, noisy root of the city—radio loudspeakers rasping and booming, newsboys hawking, taxis pitching and hurtling in four directions to the accompaniment of rowdy claxons. Everywhere the factory and mill smoke had left its dusky film.

  Cardigan punched his way in through the revolving door, strode across the terra-cotta tiles of the drab, commonplace lobby to the brown varnished desk.

  “I made a reservation,” he said. “My name’s Cardigan.”

  “Oh, yes, Mr. Cardigan.”

  “I lost my baggage.”

  “Three dollars a day—in advance.”

  “I’m with the Cosmos Detective Agency. What room’s Miss Seaward in?”

  “Six-ten.”

  Cardigan was ushered up to 504. Two narrow windows looked across a block of stores. Beyond, one or two tall buildings needled the smoke pall. It was a dull, depressing outlook. He saw a great sign atop a flat-roofed building; the sign said: Diamond Textile Company. Another said: Wyandotte Shirt Company.

  He held his head between his hands for a moment, grimaced. Then he went to the wall telephone, called Pat. Room 610 did not answer. He asked them to page Miss Seaward. A few minutes passed and then he was told that Miss Seaward was not in the hotel.

  Going into the bathroom, he held his head under the cold-water faucet for several minutes. The water felt cool and delicious. He dried his hair. Using a pocket comb, he found that it hurt his head, so he replaced the comb in a vest pocket and did not bother to put his hair in order.

  He went downstairs, out into the street, and climbed in a taxicab. He read off an address from a white card in the palm of his hand, and the taxi jerked off, climbed a steep hill. Five minutes later it stopped in front of a square, unimpressive building that stood directly opposite an equally unimpressive post-office building.

  Inside the lobby, he fanned his eyes across a directory board, entered a worn-out cagelike elevator. It wheezed upward, and the doddering old man that controlled it also wheezed. The third floor corridor was wide, low, dull in color and with dark brown linoleum on a wooden floor. He entered an office by way of a ground-glass-paneled door, and a middle-aged woman looked up from a typewriter.

  “Mr. Atchison. Cardigan’s the name.”

  “Sure thing, Mr. Cardigan. Just a moment.”

  She vanished into another office, reappeared in a moment, beckoning. He strode past her, went into a large, dusky but comfortable office.

  Atchison, the attorney general, was sitting behind a scarred oaken desk. He was a pale-faced old man, with a chiseled forehead, a good jaw, and rimmed nose-glasses from which a narrow black ribbon trailed down across his coat lapel.

  “So you got here all right, Cardigan.”

  “Well, I got here.”

  “Eh?”

  Cardigan took off his hat, bent way over the desk. “See those bumps?”

  “Good Lord! What—”

  Cardigan sat down, spoke straightforwardly for five minutes. Atchison leaned back, made and unmade pyramids of his h
ands, said “Tsk!” and “M-m-m—” and took off his glasses, polished them, replaced them, wagged his head, frowned.

  “And so here I am,” finished Cardigan.

  “Terrible!… But—” Atchison sighed—“I suppose you do consider yourself lucky.”

  “Sure. I might have been taken places.”

  “Seen Miss Seaward yet?”

  Cardigan shook his head. “She wasn’t in.”

  “Splendid operative, Cardigan!”

  “You’re telling me?”

  ATCHISON leaned forward, made one knuckled ball of both hands. “But she wasn’t entirely successful. You see, Cardigan, our state labor laws are less than nothing. Haphazard, vague, full of loop-holes. This state is far behind the times in that respect. But I know there are sweatshops working in this and other cities, and I know we can get at them if we try hard enough. My idea is that there is a ring behind the ones I have in mind. Trouble is, they don’t own the buildings they use. They’ll take an old loft on a monthly lease, move in machines, set a flock of girls to work and run at high speed till feeling grows strong. Then it’s an easy matter to close up shop, move out the machinery overnight and be set up in another neighborhood, or city, by the next day.

  “This came to me by means of an old dago who could hardly speak English. I gathered that his daughter had worked a whole week in one of these outfits and received, at the end of the week, the sum of fifty cents. For a week’s work! The old man tended gardens at the home of a close friend of mine, and it came to me that way. But when I tried to question the old man I couldn’t get anything out of him. No spik English—y’ know? So I tried his daughter. She wouldn’t talk at all. Three girls have died in charity hospitals in the past month from overwork. We found they had worked in these shops, but we couldn’t find what shop. I engaged your agency when everything else failed. The girls—none of them—will talk!”

  “How did Pat Seaward make out?”

  “She tried to get a job in one. She couldn’t. They must have suspected. She got in later on a faked pass of the Board of Health, tried to quiz some of the girls. They were suspicious of her. They wouldn’t talk. We can close these shops on Board of Health edicts and fire rules, but damn it, they open up elsewhere and run a week or two before we find them out again. And we never find the same man in charge. There’s a powerful combine here, Cardigan, that I propose to smash, one way or another! But I can’t get to the root of it.”

  Cardigan leveled a forefinger, said: “Plain as the nose on your face. Pat probably dug up some information and these heels, disguised as cops, nailed me so we couldn’t make contact. What do you know about Captain Bogart?”

  “Good man, I guess—though a little, you understand, enthusiastic.”

  “Rough, huh?”

  “And inclined to be an anti-climax. A good policeman but no head on him…. Labor bills are before the state legislature now, but what I want is evidence—concrete evidence of fraudulent operators; fly-by-night sweatshop kings that rob, overwork and intimidate illiterate women and girls.”

  Cardigan said, level-eyed: “There’s been a murder pulled, and we’re going to have Bogart in on it. Offhand, I like him. He’s a good cop—nice if you play checkers with him, and nasty if you don’t. But I understand cops. They’re temperamental as chorus girls.”

  Atchison sighed, champed on his lower lip. “I’d hoped to keep the police out of it, but I guess we can’t. Still, you’ll find Bogart decent. Hard to handle, but decent.”

  Cardigan stood up, reached for his hat. “I’ve an idea Pat’ll have things to tell me. I’m in Room Five-o-four at the Beaumont.”

  ENTERING the hotel lobby, he used a desk phone to call Pat’s room. She was not in. He looked at his watch. It was almost four.

  He drummed with his fingers for a while on the desk, then said to the clerk: “Listen. I want a hop with a pass key. I want to get in Miss Seaward’s room.”

  The clerk was practical. “I know, sir, but—”

  Cardigan waved him down. “I know, I know—against the rules. But she should have been in when I arrived. She wasn’t, and she isn’t in now. Or at least she doesn’t answer. She’s one of my operatives. You can come up with me, if you want to.”

  “In that case, I guess—”

  “Swell and thanks.”

  The clerk turned the desk over to an assistant, lifted a pass key from a nail on the side of the letter rack, and marched ahead of Cardigan to the elevator. The clerk was an oldish small man whose face showed that he harbored a keen and quiet sense of responsibility. He led Cardigan down the sixth floor corridor, opened the door of number 610 and stepped aside to let Cardigan enter.

  It was a room not greatly unlike his own, except that—even in so short a time—it had acquired obvious feminine touches. There was, on the bureau, the small German silver frame containing a photograph of Pat’s mother—it went wherever Pat went. Her small blue mules beneath the bed-table. Cosmetics. A new novel with a Do-Not-Disturb sign serving as a bookmark. A box of Egyptian cigarettes.

  The counterpane—sand-colored—was smooth, undisturbed.

  Cardigan turned. “Maid been in?”

  “Oh, yes, I imagine so.”

  “Get her, will you?”

  “The maid?”

  “Yeah.” A match flamed off Cardigan’s thumb-nail, rose to the fresh cigarette between his lips. His eyes were narrowed, cruising the room.

  The clerk went out, returned with an old fat woman dressed in a white apron, a white cap.

  Cardigan said: “What time did you make this bed up?”

  “Didn’t make it up today.”

  “Didn’t—”

  “It was made up. I didn’t have to.”

  Cardigan flicked a finger waist high. “O.K. You can go.”

  The maid left and the clerk closed the door, ventured: “Do you think—”

  Cardigan walked away from him, bent and pulled open the drawer of the metal desk that was painted to resemble wood. Papers, letters, lay in orderly rows. Two of the letters were from an admirer in New York who had been trying for over a year to transport Pat from the agency to matrimony, in a big way. Cardigan didn’t read them. Three others were agency letters. The back of a laundry list had been used as a memorandum upon which Cardigan found, in Pat’s neat penscript, a number of names and addresses. After the third name and address on the list she had, apparently later, put down an exclamation mark—in red pencil. Other papers were in the form of bills, notations regarding telephone calls and their rates, and an item “Meet chief on noon plane from N.Y.” That alluded to himself. He pocketed several papers, turned.

  “Keep that room locked,” he said. “If anybody calls by for Miss Seaward—or me—play around and in the meantime, if I’m in the hotel, get in touch with me.”

  “B-but what happened?”

  Cardigan frowned at the floor. “Miss Seaward has disappeared.”

  Chapter Three

  Saltpork Annie

  HE STOOD outside, on the corner where Exeter crossed Hummel, in the smoky winter dusk. Taxis whanged past on a green go-signal, and street cars walloped their way noisily over switches. An exodus of office workers poured from nearby buildings and a traffic cop waved arms violently in conjunction with the traffic signals. When the signals changed, Cardigan strode across to the cop and said: “Where’s Macklin Street?”

  “East End. Number Six trolley.”

  “How far?”

  “About a mile and a half.”

  He turned and was almost run down by a taxi. The taxi had a vacant flag up, and Cardigan climbed in.

  “Macklin Street—Four Forty-one,” he said.

  The taxi jerked into gear, bit into a noisy madhouse of traffic to which Cardigan, sitting on the small of his back, was quite oblivious. Through his mind ran the name of “Saltpork Annie” Bischeff—Number Three on Pat’s list, with the red exclamation point tacked on.

  The taxi followed the street-car rails for about a mile, then swung right
at a fork and snaked violently among a parade of milk and produce trucks on a wide, rowdy street. Soon it turned right again, hummed between dowdy rooming houses, made a left turn into a darker street.

  Brakes squeaked slightly, and the cab stopped. Cardigan climbed out, paid up, and waved the man on. The glass transom of a narrow vestibule door had 441 painted on it, in black. The frame house was narrow, three-storied, and stood in a row of similar dull, depressing houses.

  He climbed four wooden steps, found the vestibule door open, the inner door locked. There were no name plates. There was, he saw, a brass push-button. He pressed it.

  A slatternly Negress, not old, opened the door and stood with a thick lower lip drooping. Her dusky face was expressionless, almost moronic. “Yassuh?”

  “Annie Bischeff,” Cardigan said.

  He saw a maroon carpet on a broad staircase. Maroon carpet, too, padded the main hallway, and there was a threadbare, superficial cleanliness about the place. He pushed into the hallway, and the Negress objected dully.

  “Annie Bischeff,” Cardigan said. “Come on, girlie.”

  “G’wan, man—you cain’t come in here!”

  “I’m in.” He closed the door. “You see, I’m in.”

  The Negress yapped: “Say you cain’t—”

  “Magnolia!”

  The voice came from the top of the staircase.