The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 3: 1934-35 Page 26

  Cardigan crossed the room and picked up the telephone, called the local airport. “When can I get a plane for New York?… I know that one left. I missed it. What else can I do about it?… Take a train from here to Cleveland and pick up a Chicago-New York plane there?… When will that get me in New York?… O.K., thanks.”

  He hung up, said: “I’ve got to get a train out of here in an hour to make a late plane at Cleveland for New York. I’ll get in New York for an early breakfast.” He was scowling at Noonan. “And I don’t expect you to get under my feet anymore.”

  “Hell, Cardigan, don’t get sore.”

  “Don’t get sore? After you toss me around and Shell foxes all around me and then these other two guys clout me over the head and I miss a meal and miss the afternoon plane—oh, so I shouldn’t be sore!” He turned to Tanner. “You, mister, get that necklace.”

  Tanner got the necklace out of his desk.

  Cardigan took the package of cigarettes from his pocket, lit one. He tossed the package across to Shell.

  “You should smoke cigars before luncheon, Mr. Shell.”

  AT five next evening Cardigan walked into the bar in East Fifty-fifth Street and the owner said: “I didn’t see you around last night, Jack.”

  “No. I had to shoot out to the midwest and fly back a little package for a client of ours. I got in town about half-past eight this ack emma.” He said to the barman, “Give me a Scotch—straight,” as the owner drifted away.

  “Tough you missed the fights, Mr. Cardigan,” the barman said. “They was the nuts.”

  “I’m going around to the hockey games tonight.”

  The owner came up to Cardigan’s elbow and said: “Listen, Jack, there’s a call in the booth for you.”

  “I’m not here, Lew.”

  “It’s your boss—Hammerhorn. He says it’s important.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  Cardigan picked up his drink, walked to the rear of the bar, stepped into the booth. The receiver was hanging by its cord. He picked it up, yanked it, wrenched it from its moorings. Leaning back, he opened his mouth and poured the Scotch down his throat. He left the booth carrying the receiver by its cord and went back to the bar.

  He said to Lew: “When Mr. Telephone Company comes around, give him this.”

  Lew stared. “Where the devil did you get that!”

  “A strange man wearing dark glasses and a false beard gave it to me.”

  Leave It to Cardigan

  Chapter One

  Blind Date

  THE Viking Inn was not patronized by San Francisco’s hotcha crowd. It was a three-storied brick building with a wide cinder driveway on one side leading to a spacious parking lot in the rear. On Wednesday and Saturday nights there was dancing in the main dining room. On the third floor there were a few private dining rooms, and from the windows of these, on clear nights, you could see the winking harbor lights.

  At eight of a clear, windy night in November Cardigan got out of a cab in front of the Viking—stood waiting for change while the rowdy wind tussled with his shabby old ulster, beat the floppy brim of his hat against the crown. The street was dark here. The Viking’s modest electric sign threw little light.

  An attendant opened the huge, glass-paneled door from within and when Cardigan went on into the lobby there was no one there but the cloakroom girl. She was new and he did not know her. He heaved out of his overcoat, gave it and his battered fedora to the girl and turned away saying: “Any calls for me, I’ll be upstairs in Number Three. Cardigan.”

  She swallowed and her eyes dilated. “Three?” she squeaked.

  He was on his way and did not notice the startled look in her face. “Yeah, Three,” he said over his shoulder. He was in a hurry but he paused momentarily to look into the main dining room, where the orchestra was playing and people were dancing. Then he turned toward the foot of the staircase and climbed upward on thick-carpeted steps, his big hand sliding on the broad, polished banister. As he reached the top of the staircase a waiter almost collided with him. The waiter’s face was pale, harried, and his lower lip trembled. He said: “Excuse, please,” in an excited, preoccupied manner and went rapidly down to the main floor.

  Cardigan strode up the corridor and took the next stairway, and when he reached the top he saw the door of the service pantry open and a busboy standing just outside it, wrapped in thought. At sight of Cardigan, the boy dropped his eyes, fidgeted and turned back into the pantry. Cardigan started for the front of the corridor and saw another waiter coming toward him. This man seemed also to be deeply preoccupied, his feet moving rapidly, his eyes downcast and fixed on the flashing toes of his shoes. He gave Cardigan a sidelong scared look, then seemed to spurt faster and disappear magically down the staircase.

  Cardigan frowned, shrugged, moved on a matter of a few yards and opened a door on his left. He started into the small, private dining room but stopped with one foot across the threshold.

  “It’s about time you showed up,” complained Sergeant McGovern. He was sitting on the table, a lank, hard-cased man with a dark, bony face and blunt dark eyes. His overcoat was open and his hands were sunk in the pockets of his dark gray trousers. “When a guy don’t want you, Cardigan, you’re sure to be all over him like a rash, and when he does want you, nuts, you’re all other places.”

  Detective August Hunerkopf put in: “Mac means on account of he was trying to get you on the phone over to your apartment. I said to Mac like this: ‘Mac,’ I said, ‘maybe he ain’t to home.’” He was a rolypoly man, fat-cheeked, gentle-eyed. “I said that after Mac tried to get you three or four times.”

  McGovern ignored his assistant and said tartly to Cardigan: “You had a date here for seven thirty, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, sure. I got stuck in a barber shop.”

  “Who’d you have a date here with?”

  CARDIGAN’S brows came together. He looked from McGovern to Hunerkopf, then to a uniformed policeman, then across the room to George Jonsson, the owner of the Viking. Jonsson’s lips were compressed and his blond middle-aged face wore a taut, fixed expression. Then suddenly a small, frail man rose jerkily from behind the table, pulled down the sleeves of his coat, took off his spectacles and slipped them into a vest pocket. The skin on his skull was white, tight and ribbed with veins. He was Peabody, from the medical office.

  He spoke quickly, in a dry crackling voice: “Obviously she was strangled. Her throat held thus—between two powerful hands—the pressure so powerful that, yes, her neck was also broken. Pity. Young, beautiful. Neck very slender. Easy to break. How do you do, Mr. Cardigan. Dear me, I haven’t seen you since the time, you remember, that bank guard had his brains blown out. Very interesting, that case. I do declare—”

  Cardigan took three long strides that carried him past the table. McGovern got off the table, took his hands from his pockets and folded them behind his straight, rigid back.

  The girl lay on the floor, on her back, with her head a little on one side. Her hair was bronze and there was a great deal of it, wave on burnished wave, and not one wave seemed out of place. She was slender and her hands, pale, quiet now, were beautiful.

  McGovern grunted: “Who is she?”

  Cardigan’s face was dark, knotted. Fire moved in the depths of his eyes.

  “I said, who is she?” McGovern growled.

  Cardigan looked at him; through him; beyond him. “I don’t know,” he muttered.

  McGovern’s mouth gaped. George Jonsson started.

  “She said,” Jonsson declared defensively, “that she had an engagement here with you. You phoned yourself for a reservation and asked for this room and a table set for two.”

  “Hear that?” McGovern barked angrily.

  “I heard it,” Cardigan muttered indifferently; and then with a sudden flash of anger: “Keep your pants on. Who do you think you’re yelling at? I made a reservation. O.K., I made one. But I don’t know the girl’s name.”

  McGovern scowled. “That soun
ds just like a story you’d tell. You made a reservation for two for seven thirty. The girl arrives at twenty past, mentions your name to George. Then you show up at eight and tell me to my bare face that you don’t know who she is. That makes sense, I suppose. I suppose that makes sense. If that makes sense, I’m a cigar-store Indian!”

  To this Cardigan paid no attention. He dropped to one knee, leaned on a knee with one elbow, his big hand dangling. Muscles were knotty on his big, heavy face. In his eyes was a fierce struggle, as though he were trying desperately to figure something out and was angered that he could not do so.

  Hunerkopf said: “Mac, I would say like this. Give Cardigan time to think.”

  “You keep your oar out of it, Augie!” McGovern rasped. “Give him time to think! Yeah, give him time to think up one of his famous bug-house fables!”

  Cardigan stood up, towered, and glared at the irascible sergeant. “Why don’t you try shutting that big trap of yours for a minute? I told you I don’t know the girl. I never saw her before. Do you want me to write it down? Or maybe you can’t read either.”

  “You can skip the cracks,” McGovern grunted hoarsely. “If you didn’t have a date with her, who did you have a date with?”

  Cardigan pointed to the body. “With her.”

  HUNERKOPF frowned studiously and put his head on one side to think this out. McGovern held his arms out, palms up, and looked bleakly around the room. “Somebody’s screwy around here. If it’s me, somebody tell me.”

  Cardigan was getting up steam. “Now hold on; now wait a minute,” his rough voice said, reverberating in the room. “If it all looks screwy to you, it looks just as screwy to me. But get this, all of you—I never saw this girl before and I don’t know her name. I was in my office this afternoon and a girl called up and out of a clear blue sky she said she had some very valuable information for me. I told her to shoot. She said she didn’t care to say anything over the phone. I told her to come to my office. She said that’d be dangerous. Then she said the best thing would be for me to meet her somewhere tonight. Not at my office, not at my flat, and not at her place. I asked her what case the information was connected with. She wouldn’t say. Then I suggested a private dining room at the Viking. That was swell. I told her to hang on and I called George on another phone and asked for Number Three and he said O.K., and then I told the girl it was all set and that if she got here before I did she should go right up to Three. She asked where the Viking was and I gave her the address. Then I asked her name. No go. But whatever the information was, somebody sure figured it would be better left untold.”

  McGovern did not look appeased. If anything, he looked more enraged in a suppressed, red-faced way. “What,” he ground out, “information would you guess she was going to give you?”

  “You know as much about that as I do.”

  McGovern brought his brows together. “You ain’t even interested, I suppose.”

  “To be frank, Mac, I’m not. It’s tough to see a swell-looking dame busted up that way. I’d be a rat if I didn’t think so. But on the other hand, I’m no amateur. I don’t slam around town cracking down on heels because I like it but because I get paid to do it. This girl calls me up, hands me a fast one and I take a Brody and come over here, figuring I might get in the way of some heavy sugar. As it turns out, she’s dead. That lets me out. This job, Mac, is yours. All your own. Wrap it up and take it over to headquarters and go into a huddle with it. That’s what you’re getting paid for.”

  “You listen to me, Cardigan!” McGovern barked. “If you think you can waltz out of this as easy as that you’re nuts!”

  Cardigan’s face darkened. He said: “You’re trying to get in my hair, Mac. I’ve told you the truth. The case is yours. There’s nothing in it for me. I’ve got plenty of work to do without putting my nose into something that sounded screwy as hell in the first place.”

  “I know when a guy is lying,” McGovern snapped, “and you’re lying like a rug, Cardigan!”

  “Please,” George Jonsson pleaded, “not so loud.”

  McGovern spun on him. “I’ll be as loud as I like!” he boomed. “And another thing, Mr. George Jonsson,” he went on darkly, “I think the story you handed me contains a lot of sliced baloney, too. How do I know you’re not mixed up this? This yarn you handed me about some mysterious stranger sounds too pat. It sounds goofy. You been scared stiff ever since I got here. Why the hell are you so scared stiff?”

  Jonsson moistened his lips, his blue eyes level. “Naturally, since I have a big establishment here, I don’t like to have a scandal. I’ve never had one. A thing like this can hurt my trade a lot.”

  “Maybe I’ll hurt it a lot and like it,” McGovern barked.

  JONSSON’S mouth grew firm, his blue eyes shimmered. “I guess I wouldn’t put it past you,” he said in a quiet, taut voice. “Ever since the time I refused to let you bring half a dozen people in here for dinner and drinks without you paying for them—”

  “That’s a lie!” yelled McGovern, his face red. “I tell you this thing here don’t figure, it ain’t right. Somebody’s lying and it’s you just as much as Cardigan. Hurt your trade? I’ll hurt it, kid! I’ll have the dump closed by law till I get this crime cleared up! How do you like that?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past you,” Jonsson said quietly, his fists doubling. Then he turned to Cardigan, took a breath, said: “See here, Cardigan. You said you wouldn’t take a case unless there was money in it. All right. I’ll put money in this one. I’ve been in business here for years. If McGovern’s bent on giving my place and me a dirty name just for spite, at least I’ve got a right to hire someone to prove he’s wrong and to kind of clear this case up before it gets too big. I want to hire you—”

  “Now wait a minute!” shouted McGovern. “You can’t—”

  “Lay off,” Cardigan growled. “He can’t? He can’t what? He wants to hire me. O.K. I’m hired. The Cosmos Agency is hired to solve this killing.” He dropped his voice sarcastically: “It’s about the only way it would get solved anyhow.”

  McGovern’s lips curled. “If you’re trying to ride me—”

  “Ride you?” Cardigan growled. “Damn it, you crab all over the place because I refuse to be interested, and then when I do get interested you bust out in a lather of indignation! Go scratch yourself, will you?”

  McGovern said bitterly: “I’d like to bust your kisser for you, wise guy.”

  “Try it sometime, Mac,” Cardigan said drily; and then to Jonsson: “Who found her here, George?”

  “Alex, the steward on this floor. At about half past seven or so—just about five minutes after she came in the room here. Alex just looked in, no reason I guess, or maybe just to see if he could get her something until you showed up.

  “He found her just like she is now, laying the way she is there now. The man, the fellow came in the room with her, he was gone. And he didn’t leave by the door. I know that because all the time Alex was standing by the pantry door on this floor, down the corridor. So the man had to leave by the window. The window was closed when I showed them into the room and it was open when we saw the girl dead here. There’s a fire escape out there and the platform runs along from the front to the rear, just outside the window, and there’s a ladder down to the alleyway where the cars drive in. Alex—”

  “Just a minute, just a minute,” Cardigan broke in. “You’re probably referring to Mac’s ‘mystery man.’ The way I figured, I was to meet the girl alone.”

  George Jonsson nodded. “You see, she met a man. I was escorting her up the lower stairs, just after she came in, and this man he came out of the wash room on the second floor and was coming down the stairs. ‘Why, Dave!’ she said, like that, surprised; like she hadn’t seen him for years. He looked, I don’t know, for a minute, kind of very surprised and maybe a little scared. Anyhow, he looked uneasy—but he was polite, like you’d be when strangers were around. She asked him to come up here a minute, she was expecting somebody—you�
��and he did. And I showed them in the room and left. He had his overcoat on and his hat with him, like he was leaving when we met him. He didn’t eat here. He just spent an hour or so in the bar.”

  “Know him?” Cardigan asked.

  “No. I asked Jimmy—you know, the barman—and Jimmy didn’t.”

  “Was he tight?”

  “No, I’m sure he wasn’t. He must have left by the window. Alex swears not by the door.”

  “He have a car?”

  JONSSON nodded. “When he arrived, Alf, my doorkeeper, saw him park right out front. Alf went out and asked him not to park there, account of the taxis. He showed him where the alley was and the space in back. The fellow then parked in back. Alf says it was a big roadster, a tan one, with all the curtains closed. After Alex found the body here, I ran down and called the police and told Alf what had happened and about the man, whom I described. Then Alex mentioned the roadster. Then he ran around back to see if the roadster was gone. It was gone. The fellow went down by the fire escape. No other way.”

  Cardigan asked: “Do you remember if the fellow called the girl by any name?”

  “I remember that he didn’t mention any name. He seemed, well, confused—like he was embarrassed at seeing her.”

  Cardigan turned to McGovern. “How about her effects? Any handbag?”

  McGovern tapped his overcoat. “I got it.”