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

  “Listen, Cardigan. I only tried to make peace. I hid Kemmerer out in that Kearny Street place, because once we were pals. And Oakes found out and thought I was double-crossing him. And he wanted to do away with Kemmerer because of what Kemmerer knew. I talked myself blue in the face trying to make peace. And I thought I had made peace—but Oakes was still suspicious; he thought it was a frame, he didn’t trust me. And even Kemmerer—in the end—accused me of— Oh, Cardigan, why didn’t I ever meet a guy like you before?”

  She clung to his wrist for an instant, and then relaxed. He let her down to the floor, stood up, looked around dazedly; and when he looked down at her again her eyes were open—dead eyes now.

  He shook. He blinked his eyes and staggered across Oakes and the oval-faced man and went heavy-footed down the hall. Reaching the door, he felt the cold night air strike his face. There was a police whistle shrilling somewhere.

  He saw a shadow move and whipped out Pat’s gun, gripped it hard. There was uneven breathing—and then the shadow materialized into a man running away. Cardigan did not fire, but lifted his feet, took six long bounds and had the man by the collar.

  There was a short, brisk tussle in the dark—until Cardigan jammed the small automatic into the man’s face. The man gasped.

  So did Cardigan. “Well, I’ll be—Kemmerer!”

  “L-listen now! L-look! I know where there’s forty grand in ice. I—I’ll split with you if you let the San Francisco cops grab me!”

  “Where are you wounded?”

  “I—I ain’t. When I hopped back and fell down—I banged my head on the sidewalk—was knocked out. I just—just— Look now! Forty grand in ice!”

  “Hot ice, Kemmerer. I wouldn’t touch it with a pole.” He heaved the man around. “Walk! Damn you, or I’ll leave you for the cops—dead. Get along!”

  He hustled Kemmerer through the dark, away from the sound of the police whistles; up a dark alley, into a dark street—on and on.

  He walked Kemmerer into an all-night beanery, pushed him into a telephone booth and crowded in beside him. He called Pat, said: “Go downstairs and ring me back at Admiral Four-one-one-one—from a booth.” He hung up, waited, and in three minutes the bell rang and then he said: “O.K. Charter a cabin plane east—right away. I want it ready to take off in an hour. Grab my bag—use your pass key—and meet me at the field…. Did I bring in the bacon? Well, you might call him bacon, Patsy, but I’d call him tripe. They fry tripe in New York!”

  Murder À La Carte

  Chapter One

  The Girl in Room 1205

  THE jangling of the telephone wakened Cardigan at seven, and he turned over, scowled at it, considered the clock, the dim daylight coming through the open window, and remembered that he had told the hotel operator not to ring him before eight. He had mixed drinks the night before, got in late, and his head felt like a balloon—loaded with lead. When his scowling at the phone failed to stop its ringing, he ripped out an oath, grabbed the instrument, hauled it back into bed with him, and growled upward into the mouthpiece.

  “Yowssuh!” He nodded to himself, bared his teeth and droned, “Oh, so it’s you. Maybe you’re on Chinese time or something…. Oh, no; you didn’t wake me up. Go lay an egg!”

  He slammed the receiver into the hook, set the instrument back upon the table and yanked the covers over his head. He had begun to breath normally, and was slipping back to sleep, when the phone jangled again. He sat bolt upright, kicked the covers over the bottom of the bed and grabbed the instrument, yelled into it.

  “Listen, you fat-head! There’s no use ringing me, because I’m not civilized until I’ve had eight hours sleep!… What?… Well, that’s just too bad. Try using your head for a change. I tell you, Sam— Now listen; I don’t give a damn who— Huh?… Who?… Well, why don’t you know?… Oh, you were? You were cockeyed drunk, eh? Suppose Carmicheal found out his ace pitcher was hitting the bottle a week before the World Series?… I should think you would!… Of course, I’ve taken a drink in my day. Last night I took seventeen, but what’s that to you?… Oh, I know, I know. Good old Cardigan, good old horse’s neck Cardigan…. Well, I suppose I may as well, if you’re going to keep this phone hopping all morning…. Soon as I can.”

  He hung up, got out of his wrinkled pajamas and went into the bathroom growling, “Damned fool!” He showered as cold as he could take it, groaning, grunting, and gasping meanwhile. He used all the towels in the bathroom to rub himself dry, then dressed, removed bills, change, penknife and watch from the bureau and shoved them into his pockets. He looked at himself in the mirror. He didn’t, he saw, look so swell.

  DOWNSTAIRS in the restaurant, he ordered a full pint of tomato juice and into it he put a tablespoonful of tabasco. It burned its way down like fire. Then he ate wheatcakes, two lamb chops, fried potatoes, three rolls—and drank two cups of black coffee. He felt a little better by the time he reached the lobby, but not yet equal to a cigar. He compromised on a cigarette and set out on foot. Sam Hardesty’s hotel was not far distant, and Cardigan reached it in fifteen minutes, kicked his way through the swing door.

  A green elevator hoisted him to the fifteenth floor, and he went down a corridor long-legged, his tie a little to one side, a few superfluous dents in his fedora, his vest buttoned wrong, and his face not jovial.

  The door of 1510 was opened by a tall, muscular man who held an ice-bag on his head and looked the worse for wear and tear. He grimaced. Cardigan made swearing movements with his lips.

  “Hello, Jack,” Hardesty gulped.

  “Hello yourself. If you think misery loves company, you’re screw-loose.” He strode in, scowling, and went on into the large bedroom while Hardesty closed the door and followed like a man in the first stages of the bends.

  “Hell, Jack, I’m in a tough spot!”

  Cardigan sat down, keeping his hat on, and thrust his hands into his pockets, shot his legs out straight, crossing them at the ankles. Hardesty was drinking Canadian ale as a pick-me-up, and he sat down painfully on a chair, holding the bottle in his right hand, by the neck. He looked worried and pale and sallow; not at all like the famous pitcher and speed king the baseball diamonds had come to know.

  “Jack, I got tangled up last night. I couldn’t think of anyone to call but you, seeing as how we went to school together, played as kids together—”

  “Chuck the album, Sam, and get to the point. You may have a hangover, but I’ve got one myself and it’s a pip.”

  “Well, it’s like this, old sock. I went to a night club, met a jane, took her to her flat and then things happened. And that’s the trouble. I can’t remember what happened. Usually if I get awful tight, I write out a lot of checks.”

  “Did you write any last night?”

  “That’s it! I don’t know! I carry the blanks loose around in my pocket and I can’t remember how many I started out with. Usually I mark down what I write out, but sometimes I forget. Honest, Jack, I haven’t been tight since I was married last year. I’m scared as hell. Marjorie gets the bank statement each month, and if she sees a big withdrawal— Hell, maybe I even wrote a check for everything we have! O-o-o, am I in a spot!” He touched his head, took a long swig at the bottle of ale.

  “So what?” said Cardigan.

  “Look, can’t you do something? You’re a private dick. You know your way around.”

  “Who’s the jane?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where’s she live?”

  “I”—he swallowed—“don’t know.”

  “Oh, I see. You don’t know if you wrote out a check to a jane you don’t know at an address you don’t know. That’s what I call a swell lead for me to start on.”

  “That,” breathed poor Hardesty, “is just about how it stacks up, you might say.”

  “I might say! That’s a good line too.” Cardigan leaned forward, shed his air of sarcasm, got down to business. “Can’t you remember just something of what happened?”

  “Uh-uh. It
was dark and raining and I didn’t remember where we got out. I was pretty tight then, Jack, but it was in her apartment I got blind, and I remember kind of dimlike there were some guys there. I couldn’t tell you what they looked like. Then all’s a blank till I wake up here at five this morning.” His face was working. “I tell you, Jack, something happened. I feel it in my bones. I didn’t mean any harm. I was just lonesome and I danced with the jane and— Listen, if I wrote out a check, Majorie’ll see it. I’ve got to get that check back. If I have to pay, I’ll get cash. I can hock myself to get the cash—”

  “Wait a minute, Sam.” Cardigan was calm now. “Take it easy. Don’t get all steamed up. Let me think…. See here, one thing you must know. What night club was it?”

  Hardesty nodded. “Yes, I remember that. It was the Club Medallion; it’s up in East Fifty—”

  “I know where it is. They charge a buck and a half for a cocktail you can get in the Forties for four bits, and you get charged ten percent extra because the waiters, all of them South Brooklyn dagoes, say ‘Merci, monsieur,’ instead of plain ‘Thank you’…. D’ you remember anybody there?”

  “A tall guy, with silky gray hair. He got me to write an autograph on a menu—”

  “McQueston. He runs the scatter. He collects autographs. Usually keeps a stiff eye on his place. Well”—Cardigan stood up—“pull out of the hangover and for crying out loud lay off the booze. You’ve got a couple of World Series games to pitch and I,” he added sententiously, “have bet a couple of centuries on any game you pitch.”

  “Honest, Jack, it was the first time I fell off the wagon since I was married. I’d go nuts if Marjorie thought—if I hurt Marjorie. And if Carmicheal finds me like this—”

  “Listen,” Cardigan cut in slowly. “Take this key. Go down to my place and sleep it off and you’ll be O.K. by tonight.” He chuckled. “Hell, you look funny, Sam.”

  “Funny? If you knew how I felt….”

  Cardigan was on his way to the door, saying: “By the way, do you remember her name?”

  “I—I think it was Priscilla.”

  “I suppose she wore curls and old lace and lisped and supported a rheumatic mother in Hoboken who had to take in floors to scrub.” Cardigan laughed raucously, rasped out, “Mammy!” and left the room.

  He left the hotel by a side door.

  BEN McQUESTON was eating breakfast at a card table in his living room overlooking Central Park. He was an unusually tall man with a pink-cheeked pale face, aluminum-colored hair, neatly parted, and fragile nose glasses. His small, neat mustache matched his hair. He looked very dignified, almost like a minister; and his apartment had a rarified atmosphere, with its books, its framed autographs and its good paintings.

  McQueston never showed surprise. “Oh, hello, Cardigan. Haven’t seen you around the Medallion in ages. Well, I guess you weren’t around. That’s what I thought. Have an egg.”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “I suppose you came up to look at my collection of autographs.”

  “I didn’t think so. Lovely day, isn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t like it even if it was nice.”

  “M-m-m! Indigestion, huh?”

  Cardigan flopped down in the divan, slapped his hat on his knee. “You run a nice joint, Ben. You soak a guy four times what anything’s worth, but that’s O.K. Your liquor’s pretty bum, but they forget that when the girls come out in tights and the lights go low and somebody hauls off with a torch song. So it’s pretty funny when a guy walks in, has himself a good time and is dragged home by a pick-up.”

  McQueston blinked brightly. “Go on.”

  “I am looking for an autograph, Ben. An autograph on a check.”

  “I’m still interested.”

  Cardigan leaned forward. “Sam Hardesty was in your place last night.”

  “The baseball player? Sure. I got his autograph, Jack, but not on a check.”

  “I’m talking about the jane who took him out of your place.”

  McQueston put knife and fork neatly together on his plate and dabbed at his lips with a napkin. He kept his small blue eyes intently on Cardigan, compressed his lips and reached for a cigarette.

  He said: “If you’re intimating that I’ve a flock of chiselers in my scatter, you’re off your trolley, boy. I charge like hell for everything I sell, and I get people who can pay out, but outside of that any guy’s as safe in my place as he is in church.” He lit up, tilted back his fine head, and eyed Cardigan levelly. “Come down to brass tacks, Jack, or politely pick up your hat and take a walk.”

  Cardigan grinned. “I’m looking for the jane took Hardesty home last night.”

  “I’m sorry, Jack. When I got his autograph, he was alone.”

  “I don’t give a damn what he was when you got his autograph. A jane took him home. He got liquor somewhere after he left your place and it was hopped up. He was pretty tight when he left the Medallion, too, because he doesn’t remember the address the jane took him to. He thinks he signed a check, and if he did, then there’s chislers running loose in your place and if you don’t want headquarters to get wind of it, stop looking down your damned nose at me and talk sense!”

  McQueston puffed. He did not take his eyes off Cardigan, and for a long moment he made no reply. Then he rose, went across the room to a telephone saying, “Chiselers, eh? I’ll call my headwaiter.” He put through a call.

  A moment later he said: “Louie?… This is Ben. Listen. Hardesty—you know, the baseball player—was in last night. You remember?… He came in alone, didn’t he?… O.K. Who’d he leave with?… Do you know her name?… Did she come in alone?… Who’d she come in with?… Three guys, eh? Well, what about the guys?… Don’t know, eh? Well, it’s a hell of a fine state of affairs when you don’t know who’s coming in these nights!… Shut up! Call Otto. See if he put them in a cab and if he got the address. If he didn’t, see if he remembers who drove the cab…. Never mind. You heard me. Do what I say and call me back.”

  He slammed the receiver back into the prong, swiveled. There was higher color in his cheeks, and he said: “Chiselers, eh? Not while I know anything about it!”

  Ten minutes later the telephone rang and McQueston grabbed it, talked for several minutes and then hung up. “O.K.,” he said, turning. “We don’t know who the jane is, but Otto, the doorman, remembers Hardesty and remembers putting him and a jane in a taxi. The driver asked Otto where he should take ’em and Otto stuck his head in back and asked them and the jane said the Drexel Tower. That’s in West Sixty-fifth Street…. Now look here, Cardigan. I’m sore. I’m going to fire Louie. My joint’s always been on the up and up—”

  Cardigan rose. “I know, Ben. That’s why I came around.”

  McQueston took off his glasses, blinked his eyes. “I don’t want this to get in the papers.”

  Cardigan was on his way to the door. “It won’t.”

  HE went downstairs, walked out into the street and climbed into a taxicab. It took him up Fifth Avenue, through the Park by way of a transverse, and westward through Sixty-fifth Street to the Drexel Tower. The building was tall, narrow, white, with a short glass marquee. The lobby was rectangular, with a small desk at one end, and behind the desk a very young man with a dazzling haircomb.

  “How do you do,” said the clerk, without looking up.

  “How do you do,” said Cardigan, disapproving of the haircomb.

  He laid his identification on the desk and lit a cigarette while the clerk perused it with lifted eyebrows.

  Then Cardigan said: “This is kind of funny. Last night a woman resident here called up the agency and asked to have a man sent up this morning. The clerk who took the message lost the memo, and all he could remember was that the address was this and the first name of the woman was Priscilla. So I don’t know her full name, but I don’t think you’d have a flock of residents here all named Priscilla.”

  “We have one,” said the clerk, quietly.

  “I’d thank you to tell me her w
hole name and her apartment. It’d look bad for the agency if I fell down. The guy was dumb to lose the memo, but we all make mistakes.”

  “There is a Pricilla Ferne in Twelve-o-five,” the clerk said. “Shall I ring?”

  “No. She told us to come right up.”

  He thanked the clerk and swung his long legs across the lobby, entered a small elevator and was hoisted noiselessly to the twelfth floor. He got out and slapped his big feet down the corridor, shooting out his shaggy head to read the door numbers as he went past. He came at last to 1205, listened with an ear pressed to the panel, and hearing no sound, worked the brass knocker. He waited, tapping his foot, and then knocked again; and when no reply came, he took out a bunch of skeleton keys, and the fifth try gained him admittance to a large, opulent apartment. He went from the foyer into the large living room, noticed that the shades were three quarters down. Listening, he moved across the living room and reached the bedroom doorway. His scalp tightened.

  A girl lay on the floor beside the bed. She wore sheer blue silk pajamas, and bronze hair streamed out on the rug. The light was bad, so he pulled up one of the window shades, and now he saw that her face was discolored, but not so much so that he could not be certain of her beauty. She was, he saw, very beautiful. And she was also dead. Strangled….

  He drew down the shade again, shaking. He thought of Sam Hardesty, who could not remember what had happened, and a thin chill knifed through the flush that had welled up in him. His own breathing, thick and heavy now, was the only sound in the room. He turned on a light and bent to study her face closely, and then he switched the light off and returned to the living room.