The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 2: 1933 Read online

  “What’d he say?”

  “First, of course, he told me of a number of things he’d like to do to Detective Dirigo—”

  “Dirigo’s had it in for him—for us—for a long time. What else did he say?”

  “That this would be a swell opportunity for someone to get an injunction against us, close us up, take away your license to operate. But wait. He said to hold everything. Give no newspaper interviews. He said he was sure we’d get clear. He’s over at headquarters now, I guess.”

  Hammerhorn sat down, sighed. “Maybe I should have fired Murfree when Cardigan wanted me to. It would have avoided this, and I suppose Murfree would still be alive. I wonder if he really did lose his head and do it?”

  Pat said: “Of course, Murfree couldn’t let a skirt go by. I wouldn’t be surprised. Still—” She broke off, shrugged, then said: “I’m darned if I know.”

  “If he did it—if he did it”—Hammerhorn held up his hands—“we’re through as an agency. This new Civic Rights Commission will nail us.”

  IT was eleven A.M. when the outer door banged open, heavy feet hit the floor, and Cardigan came plowing into the inner sanctum. His face was wind-reddened, his lop-eared hat rode crazily over one ear, and he was eating an apple.

  Hammerhorn laid down a pen, leaned back, folded his hands on his stomach and said nothing.

  “The news,” said Cardigan in a heavy, jocular tone, “is not the kind you’ll be crazy about.”

  “Autopsy—”

  “Yeah.” Cardigan bit into the word with a grim smile. “It was Murfree’s gun did both jobs. The revelation threw that nice-faced bum Dirigo into a spring dance and gave me a bellyache. But wait,” he said roughly, as Hammerhorn wagged his head, “I got over the bellyache right away.”

  “How about the time of death?”

  “They say both at approximately the same time; at eleven.”

  Hammerhorn’s voice tightened. “That’s bad—bad!”

  “On the face, George, it’s lousy.”

  “We’re in for it, Jack!”

  Cardigan chuckled. “Sure we’re in for it.”

  “It’s no laughing matter.”

  “Listen, George. I haven’t begun to sink my teeth into this thing yet. What the hell—give Dirigo rope. He’s wanted to hang me for a long time and just now he’s foaming at the mouth for pure delight. O.K., let the South Brooklyn punk go ga-ga. I’ve been around, George—and I pinched a pass key to the late Molly Shane’s apartment. I like to let the cops fan a place first. I can always depend on it they take the worthless and overlook the worthwhile.”

  “How about fingerprints?”

  Cardigan, sitting down, shook his head. “They didn’t find any but her’s, Murfree’s, and the maid’s.”

  “Ouch!”

  “Buck up.” Cardigan drew a paper packet from his overcoat pocket, unsnapped a rubber band. “Molly was a poet in her spare time—a pretty awful poet, but still a poet. I snagged her scrapbook. It’s interesting. After each little poem she put a date. Here’s one written two weeks ago.”

  “You’re my light and you’re my darkness,

  Chains of love and chains of darkness,

  The stars, the moon, the restless sea—

  But you, you will be the death of me.”

  “It rhymes,” Hammerhorn said.

  “It’s punk. Get this.”

  “You came out of the night, dark-eyed,

  And though I tried and tried and tried

  To ward you off, you followed me

  Till I was lost, no longer free.”

  Hammerhorn said: “But what does it mean?”

  “She loved him. Swallow this one.”

  “Your clothes, the boutonniere you wear,

  The sheen of your dark midnight hair,

  The pirate’s life you lead, the ice

  And blood of you, and mine the price.”

  “That girl had things on her mind, Jack.”

  “You’re telling me? And just two more lines. Listen—”

  “The blood you’ve taken, here and there,

  Is like the ruby that you wear.”

  Cardigan slapped the scrapbook shut.

  Hammerhorn said: “Did the cops see that?”

  “Dirigo thumbed it and chucked it down. Now wait. The dress she wore last night when she came in was lying across a chair in her bedroom. In the bodice of it I found a few bits of confetti. On the flesh just below her elbow—the part she’d lean on at a table—I saw an imprint—the letters I A M. Ink—the ink of some lettering—as though some card or paper was wet when she leaned on it and the print came off on her arm. This ought to prove that she hadn’t washed yet when she was killed. She probably came home, got undressed—or almost—her underclothes were still on—and then put on a negligé to admit whoever came in. I saw these letters on her arm before the medical man came. In handling her, he must have rubbed them off.”

  “How about the elevator boys at the hotel?”

  “There was a dance in the hotel at the time and a lot of people were going up and down in the elevators. She wasn’t noticed. My contention is that she came home early from wherever she was. In a tantrum maybe. And that whoever she was with, he followed later.”

  “But where does Murfree fit in? The hotel desk said she didn’t call for help. Murfree wouldn’t have been in the halls at the time unless he’d been called. How do you figure him in it?”

  “I can’t yet. If I could, the case might be a snap.”

  THE afternoon papers cut loose with a flock of pictures of Molly Shane, ran stick on stick of highly spiced high-points in the life of the late dancer. There’d been a lot of men in her life, but scandal had not touched her. Dig as the scandal mongers did, they found nothing in her career worth pitching at an I-told-you-so public. The conservative sheets remained conservative, the yellows gagged themselves on adjectives and superlatives, were strong for the murder-and-suicide theory—because it was colorful. One writer hashed up an imaginary playlet of how the crime had happened. News trickled in, and kept trickling, to add to the stated fact that Chris Murfree knew Molly Shane well. The whys and wherefores were traced back five years, at a time when Murfree, working for another agency, had been engaged to guard Molly Shane against the advances of a psychopathic young man who was later jugged on a Westchester attack charge, and was still in the jug. More recently, Murfree had been seen with Molly Shane in the Falstaff and in a number of small, out-of-the-way eating places.

  With no evidence to the contrary, a verdict was handed down that Murfree, in a drunken rage, had tried to attack Molly Shane and being repulsed had shot her to death and then committed suicide. To the rank and file, it was open and shut. This line was particularly significant: “Christopher Murfree, who at the time of his death was a private detective in the employ of the Cosmos Agency—” The Hotel Gascogne, bristling, intended to begin suit for damages against the Cosmos Agency.

  “We’re sunk,” George Hammerhorn said. “You see now the beginning of the end of the Cosmos Agency.”

  “My eye!” said Cardigan.

  At this moment William H. K. Plankett, attorney for the agency, came in with his spats and his walking stick and blew his nose zestfully. He was a one-hundred-and-ten-pound fashion plate, aged fifty, with more brain matter than any one man deserved.

  “Good news,” he said. “The attorney for the Civic Rights Commission apprised me of the fact that your dear old agency is to be ransacked.”

  “Clear that up,” Hammerhorn said.

  “They’re applying for a court order to investigate your files and to cross-examine every man and woman in your employ. Also, of course, they’ll want an injunction to prohibit further operations on your part.”

  “So what?”

  “Send your employes to Capri for the winter and burn the old office down.”

  “Seriously, I mean.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it. I’ll just get an injunction against their injunction and I’ll try
to make them show reason why, because one of your employes committed a crime in no way connected with the agency—why, in consequence thereof, the agency should he submitted to the humiliation of an inquest, and so on, so forth. But don’t go in a funk. Remember, prosperity is just around the corner.” He leaned over, whispered: “And if there happens to be anything in your files, you understand, that might cause a furrowed brow—well, expunge, take out, delete.”

  “There’s nothing in our files I’m afraid of.”

  “Good.” Plankett twirled his stick. “Well, so long, toodle-oo, auf Wiedersehen!” Swishing out, he bumped into Pat Seaward. “Ah, Patricia! How about supper some night?”

  “Make it lunch and I’ll know you’re on the level.”

  “But, Patricia, I am!”

  She smiled good-humoredly. “I know—like an escalator.”

  Chapter Three

  Rigatti

  CARDIGAN, stretching his legs up the dark street, hugged the buildings. For the rain was hard, a steady downpour, threshing on the sidewalk, making silver needles around the street lights. Ahead, he saw a white blob of light suspended above a door. Reaching it, he turned and ducked down three stone steps. The door opened as he reached for it. A small man barged out, and Cardigan, stopping short, dipped his head as the small man, also stopping short, looked upward. A half-pint of water was jerked from the hollow in the crown of Cardigan’s hat and flung neatly into the small man’s face.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Cardigan.

  The man spluttered and cursed and bounded up the steps, hailed a cab.

  Inside, a swart fat girl reached for Cardigan’s hat, but he shook his head, went through the anteroom and passed into a bright, prosperous-looking bar. The Rome was supposed to be one of the flashier speaks in the Sheridan Square neighborhood. Three bartenders were on duty, and between twenty and thirty men stood at the bar. Nearby was an elaborate free-lunch counter, and facing the bar was a broad frescoed archway that opened onto a large dining room that tried to look like an Italian Garden, with its fountains, its synthetic trees and vines, and its mandolin-playing troubadour, who from time to time sang from a vine-clad balcony. There was no dancing. Here came the local politicians, the men in the money, some celebrities from Broadway and the Forties. The prices were high, the main reason why Cardigan knew next to nothing about it or its personnel.

  He ordered a rye highball and drank it down before saying to the bartender: “Who’s the manager here?”

  “You wanna see him?”

  “That’s right.”

  The bartender craned his neck. “See that fountain in there? He’s standing in front of it.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Rigatti.”

  Among the slick and well-groomed men, Cardigan stuck out like a sore thumb. His hat, more lop-eared than ever because of the rain, was a disgrace. His ulster looked soggy and it had that pungent smell which genuine wool takes on when wet; and the damp made his thick hair bunch and curl eloquently about his ears and on his nape.

  “Rigatti? My name’s Cardigan and I want to talk to you.”

  Rigatti had a face like a hard-boiled egg that has been shelled; it shone but not with delight.

  “About what?”

  “Your office’ll do, or the washroom.”

  “What’s the matter with right here?”

  “Nothing—except that I want to talk to you alone.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “Ever hear of the Cosmos Agency?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m half of it.”

  RIGATTI jerked his chin and Cardigan followed him along the wall, through a doorway into a small, cluttered office. Rigatti closed the door, looked at his fingernails, said without looking up: “What’s on your mind?”

  “On the night of January Twenty-second, Rigatti, what kind of a party was thrown here?”

  “Here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Your memory’s lousy. You ordered a batch of paper hats, those paper ribbons you toss, some noise-makers, and confetti. You ordered ’em from the Star-Comic Novelty Company for the Twenty-second. They hadn’t arrived by noon, and you or somebody else here telephoned and said you had to have ’em for that night.”

  “Oh, that! Yes, I remember.”

  “So what?”

  “Hell, is this the only place had stuff sent that day?”

  “No. There were twenty-one others, and I’ve been around to seventeen. I just asked you a question.”

  “What was the question? I told you yes and—”

  “I mean, Rigatti, who threw the party?”

  “It was just a kind of celebration on our part.”

  “Public?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Out in your dining room, huh?”

  “Sure.”

  Cardigan laughed. “Come on, Rigatti—lay off that.”

  “Lay off what.”

  “A girl I know was down here on the night of the Twenty-second and there was no public party.”

  Rigatti stood back on his heels, his eyes became dull as they settled on Cardigan’s face. “You know a lot, don’t you?”

  “Not half as much as I’d like to know. Who threw the party?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It was thrown upstairs, wasn’t it, in a private banquet room?”

  “Maybe it was.” Rigatti’s face was cold. He turned. “I got a job to take care of.”

  Cardigan stepped in his way. “So have I.”

  Rigatti’s thick upper lip quivered, tried to curl like a wolf’s, didn’t quite succeed. He said: “You heard me.” He picked up a menu card from the desk, started for the door again.

  Cardigan ripped the card from his hand. “Listen to me, Wop—”

  The door opened and two bull-necked waiters stood there.

  Rigatti said: “Toss him out.”

  “Quit it!” Cardigan snapped. He added: “I’ll walk.”

  “You’re wise,” Rigatti said.

  Cardigan flung him a dark look, shouldered between the two waiters and made his way to the bar. He did not stop. He went through the anteroom, opened the door, climbed the steps and lunged through the rain into a taxicab parked at the curb.

  “Drive east,” he said.

  He sat back, wiped the rain from his face, and then suddenly found that he still had the menu card he had ripped from Rigatti’s hands. Switching on the cab’s dome light, he squinted at the card, at the printing at the top.

  Beniamino’s

  THE ROME

  He squinted hard, and a dark, intense light came into his eyes. He thought back. Molly Shane’s arm just below the elbow. He looked down again at the card—BenIAMino’s….

  CARDIGAN got out of the cab in Grove Street, where street lights are few and far between, ducked across the sidewalk, down six stone steps into a black well of an areaway. The iron gate was ajar, and he pushed open the heavy wooden door beyond, tramped down a wide, uncarpeted corridor and took a swing door into a high-ceilinged, old-fashioned bar.

  “Rye highball, Chip,” he said.

  “Swell weather out, huh?”

  “For ducks.”

  “Paper says fair tomorrow and I see a guy of yours up and pulled himself off a crime of passion.”

  “You don’t want to believe everything you hear in the papers, Chip.”

  “Me-ow!” sighed a voice nearby.

  Cardigan turned and saw Barney Evans, of The Daily Call, with his face in a glass of beer.

  Cardigan smiled grimly, dagger-eyed. “There’s a howling example of what I mean.”

  “Anyhow,” belched Evans, “I’m good to my mother. And I lead blind old men across crowded streets. I also sing hymns. Want me to sing a hymn?”

  “Listen, lug,” Cardigan said, grabbing his arm. “Come over here a minute.”

  He piloted the rubber-kneed reporter to a booth at the far end of the bar and shoved him down onto one of the bench
es. He took the bench opposite, and the table was between them. Evans promptly got the hiccups. Cardigan went to the bar and came back with a glass of water. He made Evans stand up, told him to bend way over and drink from the opposite side of the glass. Evans did this and his hiccups vanished.

  He sat down, grimacing. “Water’s bad for the system.”

  “Now, listen, Barney. You’re a lousy souse-pot, but I like you, and there’s a break that maybe we can split two ways.”

  “I don’t bet on the horses anymore. The horses I follow always follow other horses.”

  “Shut up and give your ears a chance. Listen. You know the Rome, don’t you?”

  “Oughta. Wasn’t I tossed out once for singing hymns?”

  “And you know Rigatti?”

  “Yes. A nice guy. Nice, I mean—like a snake in the grass. He doesn’t like hymns.”

  “Listen, Barney. Listen, now. On the night of the Twenty-second—”

  “Where was I? Why, playing checkers with my mother.”

  Cardigan groaned. He drummed on the table, bent a dark exasperated stare on Evans, and finally snapped: “Will you listen!”

  “Pro-proceed.”

  Cardigan leaned way over the table. “On the night of the Twenty-second there was a hi-de-ho party thrown at Beniamino’s Rome. Upstairs. Private. You hear?”

  “Party…. Twenty-second…. Rome.”

  “Good! Now… do you know who threw it?”

  “Lemme see. M’m. Um. No. Nope, I don’t.”

  “Any way you can find out?”

  “Ha! Trying to put me on my mettle, eh? Ha!”

  “Talk sense! Can you find out?”

  “I can check up. Uh—listen, write it down, will you? Here, write it on this hunk of paper. Write, ‘Who threw party at Rome night of Twenty-second?’ That’s so I won’t forget, in case I get drunk.”

  “In case you get drunk! You’re plastered now!”

  “Phooey! That’s just an optical illusion of yours.”

  Cardigan wrote as Evans directed, and when he looked up the reporter was sound asleep. Cardigan did not rouse him. He slipped the note in Barney’s vest pocket—the pocket containing his watch, so that it would not be overlooked.

  He walked back to the bar and set down his glass as Dirigo came in. Dirigo’s face warped in a sly, amused smile, and he came the last few steps lightly on the balls of his feet, put his tongue archly in his cheek.