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

  “Got a new job in mind, Cardigan?”

  “You’ll be out of a job before I will, Dirigo.”

  “Quoth he!” He drawled to the bartender: “Scotch, Chip. Give Cardigan one, too. I want to drink his health.”

  Cardigan said: “Pass it up, Chip.”

  “Tender, eh?” Dirigo drawled. “Don’t like to drink with your betters, eh?”

  “Betters?”

  Dirigo smiled, his eyes drooping.

  Cardigan tilted his jaw, said: “I hear you lay down in a gutter once and a rat got up and walked away.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Another rat came along and lay down beside you, and the first rat saw him and went off and told all the other rats. And the other rats got together and said, ‘We must cast our brother from us. He lay in a gutter with one named Dirigo.’”

  Dirigo colored, and his collar suddenly seemed too tight for him. A muddy look came into his eyes, and his nostrils quivered.

  “And if you don’t like that,” Cardigan said, “say so and ask me to take it back and see if I’ll take it back.”

  “Some day, Irish,” Dirigo grated, “you’ll go too far.”

  “When I do, Wop, it’ll take a couple of good surgeons to fix up that Dago pan of yours.” He looked Dirigo up and down, laughed scornfully, pivoted and went swinging his long legs out of the bar.

  Chapter Four

  Murder by the Clock

  AT nine next morning Cardigan walked into the Fifth Avenue jewel firm of Abbott & Mars. An elegant young man met him at the door, and Cardigan caught a whiff of chypre and said: “Mr. Abbott in?”

  “Who shall I say is calling?”

  “Cardigan of the Cosmos Agency.”

  “A little moment, please—just a little moment.”

  Cardigan grinned to himself, wandered around the shop. In a minute the elegant young man reappeared, beckoned. Cardigan walked to the rear of the store, climbed a short circular staircase to a mezzanine and entered a large, luxurious office.

  “Hello there, Cardigan,” old Abbott said. “I see your agency is being taken for a ride.”

  “So I suppose we’ll lose your account.”

  “Not until you fold up. That what you came about?”

  “No. I finally managed to get Murfree’s effects from the cops, and I’d like you to help me—and keep it secret.” He drew a small wad of tissue paper from his pocket, opened it and laid Murfree’s shattered wrist watch on the desk. “That broke when Murfree fell on the floor, The glass was shattered and the hands fell off. The hands broke too. What I want is this—I want to see if you can tell just when this watch stopped. Can you?”

  “I guess so. We can replace the hands. You see, the hour hand would go on first, and then the minute hand. The hole of the hour hand is a little large, and is not really a hole but a small oblong that will fit only two ways. I mean, if I just put the hand on haphazardly, fitting it over the small bar, it might be twelve. I could lift it off, turn it around, put it on again, and it would be six. But nothing else. It would have to be exactly opposite. The same with the minute hand. It could be placed in only two positions; if placed at a quarter to twelve, or a quarter to any hour, the opposite could be only a quarter after any hour. You see?”

  “I catch on.”

  “I’ll take it down the lab and see if I can fit a couple of hands. I’ll do it personally.”

  “Swell.”

  “You’ll wait?”

  “Yeah, I’ll wait.”

  IT was twenty minutes later when Cardigan left the shop. He stood for a moment on the curb outside, the wind clapping the skirt of his ulster and humming past his hat. He turned at last and headed south, swung west at Thirty-third and wound up at Herald Square. He spent a minute or two cogitating, then went on west past Macy’s, reached Seventh Avenue and entered Penn Station. He made a couple of telephone calls from a booth—one to the office and one to Barney Evans.

  “Beniamino threw the party, Cardigan. And listen, I’ll tell you how I found out. Max Schmeil runs a photographer’s shop on Sixth north of Waverly, and I knew he did all the photography for those joints around there. Listen, Cardigan….”

  Cardigan listened, made a few notes on the margin of a page of the telephone directory, hung up, tore out the page and whistled his way blithely out of the booth. He went downstairs in the terminal, caught a West Side subway train south and got off at the station marked Christopher Street & Sheridan Square. He crossed the Square, went up Grove Street, turned right into Waverly Place, followed it to Sixth Avenue and turned north beneath the elevated structure.

  Max Schmeil’s was a hole in the wall. Out front was a glass box containing pictures of the local swains and belles and of chubby little bambinos, immense Italian housewives, a locally prominent plumber and a late alderman.

  “On the night of the Twenty-second,” Cardigan said, “you went over to Beniamino’s Rome.”

  Max was a young, knotty-haired Jew who wore large, dark-rimmed spectacles. “Sure I went over and took a flashlight picture.”

  “Of a private party Beniamino was throwing.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How many were there?”

  “I don’t remember. But I got a picture here.”

  Cardigan nodded, smiling. “Yeah, that’s what I want to see.”

  Max disappeared into a rear room, came back in a couple of minutes saying, “Yeah, I got several here.” He placed three large glossy prints on the counter. “I took ’em from different angles.”

  Cardigan switched on a light above his head, lifted the photographs. Carefully, shutter-eyed, he scrutinized each picture. He used an index finger to count the number of persons seated at the long banquet table. He tapped the picture he now held and said: “I notice two chairs here, side by side, are empty.”

  “I guess maybe them two didn’t come.”

  “What time did you take these pictures?”

  “Oh, about ten. I know I left here at nine-thirty.”

  “Got a magnifying glass?”

  “Yeah.”

  Cardigan screwed the glass into his eye, peered. “H’m,” he said.

  “What?”

  Cardigan said: “Mind if I borrow one of these?”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “Remember, keep this under your hat.”

  “That’s what Barney Evans said. Sure. Barney gives me lots of breaks—tips me off about hot subjects—accidents or something—and I run off and take the pictures and clean up sometimes selling ’em to the papers hot.”

  Cardigan went out and in a drugstore used a booth phone to call Barney Evans. He said: “Can you get a big sedan?… O.K., get it—now—and meet me in half an hour at Sixth and Waverly…. I’ll tell you when you get here…. Are you drunk?… You would be!”

  He hung up, bought a nickel cigar and strolled down Sixth. He stopped at the corner of Waverly, stood looking down at the photograph of Beniamino’s party. He recognized several faces: a local two-fisted politician; Beniamino grinning; Rigatti in the background; an ex-judge, now considered a potent political gun without portfolio. But mainly Cardigan’s gaze dwelt on the two empty chairs; on the table in front of these chairs two persons had eaten. He saw two wine glasses, half empty; two rumpled napkins; bits of food on two plates.

  PAT SEAWARD was drawing a tumbler of water from the iced cooler in the inner sanctum, and George Hammerhorn was figuring up his bank balance, when a rattle and clatter sounded in the outer office. Miss Myrtle O’Hara, the stenographer, opened the glass-paneled connecting door and then jumped out of the way and Cardigan came in carrying an armchair. Behind him with another came Barney Evans, puffing and groaning. The chairs were heavy, seated and backed with dark red leather.

  Barney planked his down and staggered toward the cooler. “Water! Water!” he cried. He stopped short, staggered around, shook his head. “No! No!… Spirits! Spirits!”

  George Hammerhorn gave him a drink of Scotch, said: “What the hell kind of a
picnic is this?”

  Cardigan said: “Is Engle in?”

  “Back in the lab.”

  “Good.”

  Hammerhorn said: “But what are you doing with those chairs?”

  Barney Evans burst into a fit of laughter and walked round and round the office holding his stomach.

  Cardigan was deadly serious. “We got them upstairs in the Rome—that place Beniamino runs. Nobody there at this hour. I got Barney to drive around with a sedan and then we broke in the joint, got up to this banquet room and snitched these chairs.”

  Barney fell into a chair, still laughing.

  “But why,” George Hammerhorn said, “why the chairs?”

  Cardigan pointed. “Fingerprints. I want to see if Engle can get off some fingerprints. I’ve got it in my nut that Molly Shane and a guy were at Beniamino’s party. I want to see if Molly’s prints are on one of these chairs. I want,” he added, “to see whose prints are on the other.”

  “How do you know these are the chairs?”

  “I’m guessing. They were the only two unoccupied chairs when the picture was taken. A Jew photographer took a flashlight. This,” he said, tossing the photograph to the desk. “The leather back of each chair is tooled differently. You can see the variations in the photograph with a magnifying glass.”

  Cardigan called in Engle and said: “Take these two chairs, Pete, and see what kind of prints you get off. Look particularly on the arms, where a person would naturally grab to shift the chair back when getting up. But look all over.”

  Hammerhorn had begun to sweat. “Do you realize this is—is burglary?”

  Cardigan was offhand. “Sure. And don’t you realize that if we twiddle our thumbs the grand old Cosmos Agency is going up the flue?”

  “Faint maid,” Barney said dramatically, “never won fair heart, to quote the Scriptures. I got a swell new hymn—”

  “Please, Barney,” said Pat, “no hymns.” She sighed, looked at Cardigan. “Anyhow, it’s a relief it wasn’t a bar you wanted.”

  AT three that afternoon Pat was holding down the inner sanctum when she heard voices in the outer office. She looked up as Miss Myrtle O’Hara opened the connecting door and began to stutter: “Ah—huh—S-s-s—”

  “That’s O.K., miss,” plainclothes Sergeant Doake said, coming in. Dirigo sauntered after him, and Doake said bluntly: “Where’s your boss, Miss Seaward?”

  “I’m on deck, sergeant.”

  “Well, there was a place busted into down near Sheridan Square this morning and a couple of chairs stolen.”

  Dirigo, rocking on his heels, slurred: “Yeah, and we’re looking for that big Turk Cardigan.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Pat sweetly; “he’s not in.” She added: “Would you like to leave a message?”

  Doake was blunt. “No. We came here looking for the chairs.”

  “How ridiculous!”

  “Can that,” Dirigo said.

  “But why,” Pat said, “would Cardigan steal a couple of chairs?”

  Doake said: “Rigatti, the guy manages the place, seems to think it was Cardigan, and anyhow we’re looking for them here.”

  “So sorry,” Pat sing-songed. “Were they expensive?”

  “This jane’s horsing us,” Dirigo snapped. “Come on; let’s fan the joint.”

  “Wait,” Doake said, holding out his arm; and to Pat: “Suppose you show us around, Miss Seaward.”

  “I tell you it’s absurd, sergeant! Please believe me—”

  Dirigo snarled: “She’s horsing us! Come on!”

  Pat jumped up, her eyes flashing. “You get out of here! There are no chairs here, I told you, and if you want to search this place you know where to get a warrant!”

  Dirigo laughed: “She learned those cracks from Cardigan! Come on, Doake—what the hell!” He started for the other door.

  Pat jumped in his way, and Dirigo, vicious-eyed, struck her down. Doake looked disapprovingly at him but said nothing. Pat jumped up, and as Dirigo swung the door open Pat picked up a glass paper weight and bounced it off his head. Dirigo swung and came at her, but Doake, cool and hard-faced, stopped him.

  Doake muttered: “Cut it, Dirigo!” and shoved him on into the laboratory.

  Engle said: “What’s the row?”

  Doake and Dirigo went through the laboratory, looked in closets, in the photographic dark room. Dirigo swiveled and snapped at Engle: “Where the hell’s those chairs?”

  Engle was innocent-faced. “Chairs?”

  “You heard me! Chairs!”

  Doake said: “Come on, Dirigo. They’re not here…. Come on, I tell you!”

  Dirigo went hotly back into the office, and Pat said: “If I wanted to be real mean, Dirigo, I could tell Cardigan about that pass you made at me—and then inform a hospital of an impending disaster.”

  Doake hustled Dirigo out.

  Pat turned to Engle. “What happened—”

  “I heard them,” Engle said. He turned and pointed to a groundglass window. “I tied the chairs to a rope, hung ’em in the shaftway.”

  Pat fanned herself. “Whew! Did you use your head!”

  Chapter Five

  Roman Holiday

  CARDIGAN came out of the subway kiosk at Christopher Street & Sheridan Square. The wind lifted a sheet of newsprint from the sidewalk and plastered it against his face. He yanked it off, and the wind caught it, kited it away. He cut across the Square, went up Grove Street to West Tenth. He walked on, stretching his long legs, his hands jammed into the pockets of his shaggy ulster, a butt jutting from one side of his mouth and his lop-eared hat crammed low down on his forehead, with brim up like a cowboy’s riding into the wind.

  He saw, ahead, the yellow blob of light that marked the Rome. He reached the door, pinched his butt between thumb and forefinger and snapped it out into the middle of the street. He dropped down the steps, palmed the door open and towered into the anteroom. The fat girl reached for his hat and coat.

  He shook his head, said, “Uh-uh,” and passed on into the bar. It was a little past six and a cocktail crowd was in the bar. The shakers were going fast, and the troubadour was singing Valencia to a handful of persons in the dining room.

  Cardigan dropped his elbows on the bar. “Side-car,” he told the bartender. He downed the side-car at three gulps, cleared his throat and felt better. He paid for the drink, saw Rigatti standing in the dining-room entry and went toward him.

  “In your office, Rigatti—come on.”

  “So you’re here again.”

  “And you’re going to see a lot of me. Come on. I’ve got the words and I’ve got the music.”

  “Take it outside.”

  Cardigan got close to him, looked darkly down into Rigatti’s muddy eyes. “Dago, I’m here on business. Get in your office.”

  Rigatti shrugged and led the way into the little office, and Cardigan kicked the door shut, unbuttoned his overcoat and dug his hands into his pants pockets.

  He said with deadly calm: “I want to see Beniamino.”

  “You could have asked me that out there.”

  “I want,” said Cardigan, “to see Beniamino in here. Go get him.”

  The door opened and Dirigo came in, closed the door, leaned back against it, said: “I saw that little play.”

  Cardigan jerked a thumb. “You’re not wanted.”

  A waiter opened the door, beckoned to Rigatti: “Just a minute, boss.”

  “I’ll be back,” Rigatti said, and followed the waiter out.

  Cardigan sat on the edge of the desk, dangled a leg. “Dirigo,” he said, “you’re going to get your nose dirtied if you hang around.”

  “I’d like to know who piled in here this morning and h’isted two of Rome’s Spanish chairs. Burglary, you know.”

  “Is that right?… Well, why don’t you find out?”

  “I’m trying now.”

  Cardigan stood up, took his hands out of his pockets and went over to face Dirigo. “Copper, when I see you I see re
d. You’re in my way tonight. I’m a wild Mick on the loose and I’m warning you—take the air before I step on you. You’re breaking your neck to bust me and bust up George’s agency. You’re dirty about it, but that doesn’t surprise me, because you’re dirty anyhow. You hear me—stay the hell out of my way!”

  Dirigo’s eyes were dark, his nostrils twitched. “I’ll break you and the Agency. How do you like that?”

  “I hate it.”

  “Swell!”

  Cardigan hit him. All the accrued hatred and bile came out in the form of a big fist driven, chopped upward. Dirigo said, “O-o-o-o” quietly, and his knees buckled, his eyes rolled and showed the whites as he slumped downward.

  Cardigan picked him up, shook him. Dirigo’s eyes rolled and he cursed, staggered back and forth on his feet. Cardigan held his arm firmly, steadied him. He opened the door. By main strength he guided Dirigo to the bar, piloted him through it to the anteroom, got him out into the street. He opened the door of a waiting taxicab and hoisted Dirigo in. Dirigo slumped back into the seat.

  Cardigan slipped the driver a bill. “Take my friend to Grand Central. He’s plastered and has to make a train.”

  “O.K., chief!” The cab drove off.

  CARDIGAN stood on the curb, brushed his hands together, whistled a few bars and went back into the Rome. He didn’t see Rigatti in the bar or in the dining room. He walked through the dining room, pulled black curtains aside and found himself in a corridor. There was a broad staircase which he mounted, a few steps at a time, listening. He reached the corridor above. Moving from door to door, he listened at each.

  He was halfway down the corridor when he heard a door open and saw Rigatti appear farther down the hallway. Rigatti closed a door and took half a dozen steps before he saw Cardigan. Then he stopped short, his features tightening, freezing. He came on swiftly, his fists clenched, his brows bent in a sudden, furious scowl.

  “Who the hell told you to come up here?” he snarled.

  “Don’t show your teeth at me, Rigatti. Where’s Beniamino?”

  “You get downstairs!”

  “Why should I? And come up again?”