The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 1: 1931-32 Read online

  “I still don’t believe you, Cardigan. I don’t believe a guy would engage you birds, and pay for it, before he gave you a sound steer. It ain’t being done. There’s something crummy about it, and you know there is.”

  Cardigan ate grapes.

  Raush said, “That’s him, Abe; that’s him all the time. Funny. Funny as hell. Maybe he knows who did it and maybe he figures on raking in a couple of grand from the right party for keeping his mouth shut.”

  “Hey, Abe,” Cardigan said, “what’s this crackpot’s name?”

  “Who—Raush?”

  “Maybe that’s what you call him.”

  Raush got up. “I don’t like that, bozo.”

  Cardigan walked to the desk, dumped a handful of seeds, picked up the folded paper and pointed it at Raush. “That dirty crack you made, copper, is going to cost you a pinch. I told you guys the God’s honest. Jacland came in and did just what I said. There was no explanation. He left the check because he knew it would bring prompt action when he needed us.”

  Bone broke in with, “Then you do know something.”

  “Who said so?”

  “You just said Raush’s crack would cost him a pinch.”

  “It will, honeybunch, if I land on the killer’s tail.”

  He swung across the room, yanked open the door.

  “Nuts, Cardigan,” Raush said. “Lots of nuts.”

  Cardigan went right on out, slamming the door. A few minutes later the telephone rang and Bone answered it. “What?” he growled; and then, angrily, “Forget it!” He slammed the receiver into the hook.

  “What’s up?” Raush said.

  “Room service,” Bone growled, “said an order was just left for nuts for you. They wanted to know what kind.”

  SO Giles Jacland was dead…. Dramatic critic extraordinary, raconteur, bachelor. Some said acid dripped from his pen and that he could make or break an actor. Merciless in his criticism, he was rarely satisfied with a performance. And once on the trail of an actor he considered bad, that actor thenceforth had little peace of mind.

  But all that was done. Giles Jacland was dead and the crime lacked an exotic note. No woman’s handkerchief left behind, no scarf, no scent of perfume. A knife had done it. A knife wielded, apparently, by a strong man’s hand. Jacland had dabbled much in women; at fifty-two he had been a gay blade, lean, handsome, conceited, seen here and there at night clubs with a beautiful woman, but never the same one.

  When Cardigan rolled into the agency office Pat Seaward was fixing her mouth with a lipstick and regarding the process in the mirror of a compact vanity case. She looked small, neat, trim in a summer dress of dark blue.

  “Where’s George?” Cardigan said.

  “He just stepped out. For a drink. Every time Lieutenant Bone calls up, the boss has to go out an’ get a drink.” The vanity case snapped shut. “Bone was sore. So the boss is sore at you.”

  “Why me?”

  “Said that since you won two hundred on that Sharkey-Schmelling adagio, there’s no holding you. You walk up on the street and smack perfect strangers. You call nice little police officers names and things. In short, you’re an old meany.”

  He gave her one of his dark, malignant looks—that really meant nothing—and swung across to the iced water cooler. He drew and drank two tall glasses. He said, “You’re another one who’s joined the razzberry bandwagon.”

  She turned and was suddenly sincere. “Gosh, chief, why don’t you cut out riding people? Why get Bone mad?”

  “Listen, duchess, I went into that apartment feeling swell. They asked me some questions. I answered truthfully. Then Abe started getting sarcastic and his busboy, Raush, pulled a crack I didn’t stomach. So—” he slashed his hand down—“to hell with them. I—me—I, Pat, am going to find out who killed our late client. There’s three hundred dollars’ worth of finding out to be done, and this little choir boy is going to do it. Did Bone say I took anything out of that apartment?”

  “No. Now you’re not going to stand there and tell me you walked off with something right under their proboscides!”

  He made a face. “You’ve been going in for deep books again.” He drew a copy of The Press-Call from his pocket. “This, little bluestocking—this.”

  “A newspaper.”

  “Don’t knock me over with those fast comebacks.” He sat on the desk, unfolded the paper, which had been folded four times, and held it up. “Understand,” he said, “when I found this paper, on the desk in Jacland’s living room, it was folded just as I showed it to you. Before who ever had it, folded it, he’d been reading, as you see now, the dramatic page.”

  “Wouldn’t Jacland read it?”

  “There was another paper, just like this one, on his desk. Same issue, same everything—except that it had on it a little yellow slip saying: ‘Good Morning! Compliments of the Hotel Saxony.’ The hotel supplies one every morning to its guests. So why should Jacland order another sent up? He didn’t. Even if he had, he wouldn’t have folded it like this. You fold a paper this way only if you’re carrying it on the street, either in your pocket or in your hand. Am I screwy?”

  “No. It reasons.”

  “The guy that killed Jacland came in with this paper. You see this short column here?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you see? Don’t read it, nosy; just tell me what first draws your attention.”

  “The paper’s wrinkled right there, cracked a bit as if—as if—”

  “As if,” he took up, “some guy, while talking heatedly, kept jabbing it right there with his finger.”

  She looked at him. “Yes, chief.”

  HE gushed a great sigh of satisfaction through his teeth. “I’m glad to see I’m not entirely ga-ga. We are going to, in time, make a call on Rosalie Wayne.”

  “Rosalie Way—”

  “Read that column,” he cut in. “The last from the pen of Giles Jacland—aged fifty-two, a town rounder, an intellectual snob, a bum and, to borrow a crack you pull on me sometimes, a cad. Read it—and weep and I’ll bop you.”

  Pat read it aloud.

  “Last night these weary eyes beheld, this tired brain sought to absorb, the warp and woof of a play entitled Sacrilege. Why it was entitled Sacrilege, I do not know; unless perhaps the author, unwittingly, named it appropriately in its relation to the drama and what we like to believe the drama stands for. It was, indeed, a sacrilege—to make myself clearer—to thrust so infantile a potpourri into the laps of a much abused public.

  “Yet more of a sacrilege to the Art of the Drama was the performance of Rosalie Wayne. Garbling her lines, throwing her arms about like a tree in a fall gale, but with less grace, she helped to make ludicrous a play that was already woebegone. Apparently devoid of talent, obviously lacking in subtlety, she tramped, wept, stumbled and clawed her way through three ungainly acts with the questionable agility of an elephant. She—”

  “You get it?” Cardigan broke in.

  Pat looked up and there was color in her face. “It’s cruel!” she cried. “It’s too personal, too unutterably bitter. It’s malicious and horribly uncalled for!”

  “You’ve got the language, kid.”

  “But,” she hastened to say, “this would have no connection with Jacland’s death.”

  He grinned. “No?”

  “Of course not! People—people like Rosalie Wayne—don’t do that sort of thing.”

  He still grinned. “No?”

  “It’s unreasonable. It’s not sense.”

  “Suppose,” he said, “you hang around so you can be on hand to give me the horse laugh when I’m wrong.”

  He took the paper from her, folded it and thrust it into his coat pocket. He said, “I’ll probably need you along—since there’s a jane in it. I called her apartment but she’s not in. The maid said she motored to Greenwich this morning—left at a quarter to nine; about three quarters of an hour after Jacland was bumped off. She’ll be back in time for tonight’s performance at
the Rosemont. Afterwards, she sings one song at the Club Cordova—a kind of torch song. Wear the ice-blue rag that makes you look like a million.”

  She made a mock curtsey. “Yes, O Master.”

  The phone rang and Cardigan made a lazy sweep at it. “Hello…. This is Cardigan talking.” He listened; then his eyes darkened, his mouth crowded the mouthpiece. “Oh, yeah?… Well, listen to me, mister— Hello, hello!” He juggled the hook. “Hello—” He whanged the receiver down. He stood holding the instrument and staring hard into space. Then he rasped out a short, contemptuous laugh and planked the phone down.

  “Bone?” Pat dared to inquire.

  “No. Some guy said, ‘Cardigan, stay off the Jacland murder or you’ll regret it.’ And hung up.”

  She said, “Maybe Bone or Raush got somebody to call up and scare you. You know they hate like the devil to see you reach a case first.”

  He looked at her. “Maybe.” He looked away and added, “Maybe not. Maybe it’s the other side. If it is, there’s only one way they’d know I’m on it. The maid. The maid in Rosalie Wayne’s apartment.” He smacked the paper in his pocket. “This rag is going to cause somebody a headache.”

  Pat sighed. “Heartache, maybe.” And she didn’t sound happy.

  He said sharply, “Listen. You go up to Rosalie Wayne’s apartment. Pass yourself off as a sob-sister from a daily tab. Get a load of the apartment and the maid. Especially the maid.”

  She said, “I’ve a feeling I’m not going to like this.”

  He was lighting a cigarette. “Don’t be a sap. You work here, don’t you? Scram.”

  Chapter Two

  Nice Knife Work

  THE Petremont Plaza was an apartment house, tall, thin, white, off Park Avenue. Pat entered the dim, deftly lit lobby and was aware of quiet elegance. A black-and-chrome elevator lifted her noiselessly to the twelfth floor and she walked down a wide corridor on soft, plum-colored carpet. There was an ebony knocker on the door marked 1212. She used it.

  A little plump woman in a black dress and an Eton collar opened the door. She wore old-fashioned spectacles and had a small, quaint face, a friendly but hesitant smile. Pat’s heart sank, but she had a job to do.

  “I’m Ann Walters from The Daily Flash. Could I have a few words with you?”

  “Come right in, miss; come right in.”

  Friendly, Pat was sure; gray and dainty in an old halftone way.

  “You’re Miss Wayne’s maid?”

  “Yes, kind of.”

  The door was shut and the maid was indicating a chair. Pat sat down and the old woman took a chair nearby and let her hands lie in her lap.

  “Well, Mrs.—”

  “It’s ‘Miss,’ please; Miss Leadley.”

  “How long have you been Miss Wayne’s maid?”

  “Many years.”

  It was tough going, but Pat went on. “Miss Wayne’s a good actress, don’t you think?”

  “Yes.” Her chin went up. “One of the best. And a good girl, miss. A very good girl.”

  “I like her myself. Some don’t.”

  A shadow fell across the quaint old face. “Yes—some don’t.”

  “Who, for instance?”

  Miss Leadley looked up, startled. Then she said, “Oh, it doesn’t matter, does it?”

  Pat was quick: “I understand our great dramatic critic Giles Jacland—”

  A hostile light shone in the old eyes. “Yes! But he will not—” She stopped short, flushed; went on, flustered. “He will not get anywhere with his bitterness.”

  “Why do you suppose he’s so bitter?”

  Miss Leadley sat back. “Miss, what is it you want to know?”

  “I want to get an inside slant on Miss Wayne’s life. I want to write a piece about her—from a human angle.” She felt her face was going to flush any minute. “The human, heart-to-heart angle. I want to—”

  A sharp sound, as if something had been knocked over, stopped her short. She swung around but there was no one else in the room. When she turned back, Miss Leadley had risen and was staring across the room. Pat followed her gaze toward a closed door. She stood up.

  “There’s someone in your apartment,” she said.

  “No—no, I think not.”

  “I heard something—in that room.”

  “It couldn’t be.”

  Pat said, “You’d better call the superintendent. There have been apartment robberies in this neighborhood lately—”

  “I—it must have been our imagination.”

  A door closed.

  Pat went across the room swiftly, opened the connecting door and looked into a bedroom. On the farther side was a door, parallel with the one through which she had entered the apartment. She heard a sharp intake of breath behind her; turned and saw the maid, white-faced, with hands clenched. She looked into the bedroom again, then entered, stopped after she had taken a few steps and looked around.

  The maid’s exhaled breath was accompanied by, “See, we must have imagined it.”

  THE room was empty. The maid was peaceful, smiling again, but the white look ebbed slowly from her face. Pat felt she had played the fool. She shrugged and was turning away when she caught sight of a small, brocaded footstool—overturned. Her glance darted from it to the closed door. She sniffed. She smelled, she was sure, the odor of smoke—heavy, strong, the kind that a cigar leaves behind.

  But she said nothing. She laughed. “I guess I was mistaken. You see, I’m used to living alone—and I’m kind of scary of prowlers.”

  The old woman beamed. “Yes, I know how it is…. Perhaps, Miss Walters, you’d better call again—when Miss Wayne is at home. Walters is the name, isn’t it?”

  Was there sly mockery in her tone as she said that name?

  Pat felt uncomfortable. “I’d hoped,” she said, “I would find her home. Thank you, Miss Leadley.”

  Red color did not flood her face until she was in the corridor. She waited a full minute before ringing for the elevator. In the lobby, she got beneath one of the lights and resorted to her vanity case. Snapping it shut, she went out into the street and walked west. She did not see a man step down from a doorway opposite and stare after her. She boarded a bus at Fifth Avenue and rode downtown as far as Forty-second Street. She got off, crossed the curb and spotted Cardigan in front of one of the library lions. He was always big in a crowd—big and a little shaggy.

  “Well, Pat?” He searched her face with a dark scowl.

  When she held her head level her eyes always rested on the knot of his tie. “I didn’t find much, chief. The maid’s an old woman—a dear, sweet old thing—”

  “Did I send you up there to bring me a sob-story?”

  Her eyes flashed up at him. He passed a hand across his mouth and made a face. “Sorry, kitten.” But he didn’t smile. “Well?” he said.

  “She’s been with Rosalie Wayne for many years.”

  “That means she’s a good maid. Go on.”

  It came hard. “I think she suspected me.”

  “Why?”

  “Well—I heard a noise in the other room behind a closed door and….” She related it briefly, ending with, “I guess I kind of fumbled it.”

  He stared west at a southbound elevated train. “The maid, then—she knows Jacland’s dead. It’s not in the papers yet, but she knows it. That’s swell. See any pictures of Jacland?”

  “No.”

  He caught hold of her arm. “Come on, kid. You did well. Could you stand an Old Fashion?”

  She blew her nose quietly. “To be frank, I think I need one. Maybe two.”

  “You’re going soft on me.”

  “I know,” she said. “I’m a wash-out.”

  He chided roughly. “Yeah. Yes, you are.”

  THE Club Cordova was in East Fifty-seventh Street. You entered straight from the sidewalk beneath a dark-green marquee and a flunky in dark-green livery opened the big door and didn’t bow as you passed in. The checkroom girl was small, dark, and she could s
mile, throw backchat, without looking you in the eye. Antonio, a Brooklyn dago with a marcel, met you in the foyer and did the gladhanding. He was a nice fellow who had found waiting on tables in a chop house beneath his ability. White, happy-faced, he treated names and nobodies alike.

  “I have not seen you since—when, Mr. Cardigan?”

  “Riddle me right away,” Cardigan chaffed, and hooked his black fedora on the checkroom girl’s hand. No matter how evening clothes smoothed down his bulk, his hair remained loose, shaggy, untamed, and the whiteness of his shirt front made his face look browner, bigger, in its rough masculine way. “This is Miss Seaward, Tony…. Pat, this is Antonio. A table for two, Tony, on the edge of the dance floor. We’ll be in later…. Before me, Pat.”

  “Ah,” said Antonio, “I will give you the royal box.”

  “Yeah. I heard that crack in Paris once. Look out for the copyright law, kid.”

  He piloted Pat into the bar. It was small, intimate, with few mirrors and lots of shiny woodwork, dark and impressive and paneled. There were high stools in front of the bar and the bartender, in a white jacket, vestlike but for the sleeves, was quiet, efficient and, carrying out the mode of the new era, properly self-effacing. It was exactly 11:00 P.M. and few people had come in.

  Pat climbed onto a stool and Cardigan stood and said, “Name your weakness.”

  “You know it.”

  “Two Old Fashions,” he told the bartender; and to Pat, sotto voce, “With the dress, Patrick, I myself could fall for you.”

  “Pouf!”

  “Think—think of all the women who are mad about me?”

  “That wouldn’t call for much extended thought.”

  He sighed. “O.K. Maybe we’d better drink instead. Here’s to you, duchess.”

  “Is it true that you once pulled stroke for Princeton?”

  “What have you got against Princeton?”

  She said, suddenly, “Oh-oh.”

  “Huh?”

  “Father Bone, entering.”

  Abe Bone came up to the bar. “That cab you were in, Cardigan, should have been pinched for speeding.”

  “Hello, Abe. Have a drink. Did you tie Raush outside?”