The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 2: 1933 Page 35

  He wrapped a handkerchief around his hand and searched her purse and the desk, thinking of Hardesty’s check. But he did not find it. However, he found Hardesty’s card, and shoved it into his pocket. He saw an empty glass standing on a tray, and wiped off the glass. Hardesty would have written out the check at the desk, so Cardigan wiped off the desk. Then he went around clearing chair arms, tables, the bed posts, of possible fingerprints. At last he returned to the door, wiped his own prints off the knobs, outside and in, and left, locking the door. Heat throbbed in his chest, and when he reached the lobby he said to the clerk: “I guess she’s not in. I’ll try later.”

  Chapter Two

  Murder À la Carte

  WHEN Cardigan swept into his own hotel room, he found Sam Hardesty on the bed.

  “Hell,” said Hardesty, “I can’t sleep. I can’t—”

  “You won’t now, sweetheart.”

  Hardesty did not miss the hard note in Cardigan’s tone. “What—what—”

  Cardigan took off his hat and whacked it into the nearest chair. “No, you won’t sleep now, Sam, and that’s a fact. Now I want it straight.” He slapped his hands on the bed post, and his big face was dark, tight-drawn, and his dark eyes bit down at Hardesty. “The jane’s dead,” he said suddenly.

  “Dead!”

  “Don’t yell.”

  “But good God!”

  “I know, I know. I know all about that. Lay off the third-act cracks. Tighten up. Keep your pants on and sit quiet. The jane’s dead. That’s a fact. We know about it. And we know that you were so lousy drunk last night that you can’t remember what happened. You think you signed a check, and off I go waltzing to do my stuff—and what do I run in to?”

  Hardesty stood up, suddenly grim. “Listen, if you think I knew she was dead when I sent you there, you’re nuts!”

  Cardigan looked bored, and waved a hand. “Don’t get tough, Sam. I believe you didn’t know she was dead, but still that doesn’t help matters. She’s dead. You were there—drunk or drugged or something—and next morning, tra-la, she’s dead.”

  “My God, I didn’t do it!”

  Cardigan muttered soberly: “How do you know?”

  “How do I know! You know as well as I do that I wouldn’t go around killing people!”

  “You forget, Sam, that for a little while you were blotto. Maybe she teased you. Maybe you were blind-drunk and let her have it. It’s possible. Now hold on—pipe down. We’ll say you didn’t kill her, just for the sake of argument. Still where are you? When the cops land on you, where are you? You can’t remember a thing. You see, you can’t remember a thing. Cram that in your pipe, smoke it, and sit quiet.”

  Hardesty slumped back to the bed, his mouth slack. “I get you, Jack,” he muttered. “I get you.”

  Cardigan went on. “I searched the place. I didn’t find any checks authored by you. I wiped off all the furniture, a glass and the door—for fingerprints. Understand, I used a master key to get in the place. I left and told the clerk I didn’t get an answer and that I’d try later. I thought of calling in the cops, but I wanted to think things over, and talk with you, and I knew the cops would haul me eventually anyhow.”

  “You?”

  “Sure. The clerk will remember I stopped by. Now you and I don’t know if you killed her or not. I believe you were tricked, and the point is, whether you murdered her or not, we’ve got to get you out of it. We can’t even have them suspect you did it. I don’t believe you’d kill anybody, Sam, but the odds are against you—and we’ve got a tough row to hoe.”

  Hardesty got up and tramped the length of the room. “Hell, Jack, if I’d thought I’d be hauling you into a mess like this—”

  “That’s done. I’m in for it. If this thing breaks up your alley, you’re out of the World Series, you’re out of baseball for good. And if you’re out of the Series, that ball team of yours is going to lose two games—and the pennant.”

  “What could I tell my wife? What could I tell Carmicheal? How could I make them understand?”

  Cardigan heaved a dark sigh. “I don’t think you could. Sam, you’re in a spot—a tough one, and no fooling. And I’m in a spot. I’m in a spot because the cops are going to call me in and ask me things and I’m going to have to shadow-box all over the place to keep you out of it.”

  “Nix. I’m not going to drag you in, Jack. By God, I’ll go right over now and make a clean breast of it!”

  Cardigan was sardonic. “A clean breast about what? You’re going over and tell the cops a bed-time story. You can’t remember a thing. What can you tell them?”

  Hardesty groaned and held his head in his hands.

  Cardigan spoke with a hard calm. “Get back to your hotel and act natural. Leave this to me. You’re not in it yet. McQueston won’t talk because surer than hell they’d close up his club. We’re safe there. And McQueston can shut up the taxi driver that took you and this jane to her apartment. So far, you’re safe. The thing we don’t know about is the check. And we don’t know who the guys are you said you thought were there. They must have been friends of hers. They must have been the guys brought her to the Medallion. So you see what we can bank on, and what we can’t. Who are these guys? What part do they play? If one of them was her boy friend, and she double-crossed him by giving you the boudoir eye, he might have strangled her. But I can’t see it that way because they were all there when you were there…. O.K. Dress and shoot back to your hotel.”

  CARDIGAN saw Hardesty off in a taxi, and then took one to the agency office. Pat Seaward and George Hammerhorn, the chief, were in conference, but Cardigan broke in and said: “Excuse the interruption, but this is important.”

  Hammerhorn said: “Indicating, I suppose, that what Patricia and I are talking about isn’t.”

  “Honest, George. This is hot, red-hot. Listen, both of you.” He slapped his hands on the desk, bracing his arms. “Sam Hardesty is a friend of mine. We grew up together, and he went his way and I went mine, and every now and then we’d run across each other in some city and go on a bender together. Sam could never hold a lot of liquor—”

  “Comparing him with yourself, of course,” Pat put in, smiling sweetly.

  Cardigan inhaled, looked down at her. “You’ll please keep that affected humor to yourself, precious orchid—”

  “Now, now,” George Hammerhorn said. “None of that. Get on with your story.”

  Cardigan did, and gradually Hammerhorn and Pat leaned forward, their interest growing. Cardigan finished and his listeners sat back and Hammerhorn, reaching for a cigar, said: “So what?”

  “So it goes on the records that this Priscilla Ferne called up last night and asked us to send a man up early this morning. The memo was lost, but the man on duty here remembered her first name was Priscilla and that she lived at the Drexel Tower. I went up and talked to the clerk as I’ve explained. Then I couldn’t get an answer from Priscilla’s apartment, so I left, intending to come back later.”

  Pat said, “I never saw a man like you! Always getting into hot water on somebody’s account but your own! Phooey!”

  Hammerhorn was frowning. “Little irregular, Jack.”

  “Of course it is. But I’ve got to be cleared! I can’t drag Sam’s name in it! I’ve got to keep him in the clear too!”

  “How do you know,” Pat said, “he really deserves it? How do you know he didn’t kill her?”

  Cardigan rasped, with gestures: “How do I know! How do I know!” And he leaned forward, asking: “How do I know that you’re really Pat Seaward? Can I prove it? Can I prove that’s your name? No! I only know it because you told me! How do I know Broadway is Broadway? How do—”

  “Oh, dear me, now you’re off again; now I’ve started something. Let’s call it a day.”

  Hammerhorn, broad, placid, fanned himself. “Well, well, children, I’m glad recess is over.”

  Cardigan suddenly hit the desk so hard that a glass cover jumped from an inkwell; and he shouted: “By God, I’ve g
iven the best years of my life to this agency, and if I can’t get help to lend an old pal a hand when he needs it—”

  “Damn it!” roared Hammerhorn. “This is no hall! This is an office! My office!”

  Pat held her ears.

  The phone rang and she pulled it toward her and said: “Yes, this is the Cosmos Agency…. Oh, hello, Lieutenant O’Mara…. Yes, this is Pat Seaward…. Oh, you old naughty mans, you…. I beg your pardon?… Why, yes. That is, we had a call, but the memo was lost, but the clerk remembered the first name and the address, so we sent up Cardigan. He phoned back to say there was no one in, and Mr. Hammerhorn ordered him to try again, later. I’m sure he’ll turn up any minute…. Thank you, Lieutenant O’Mara!”

  Hammerhorn sighed, leaned back, lit his cigar. “Well,” he said, “so I guess it’s in the records.”

  “But,” said Pat, sliding the phone to the middle of the desk, looking up meaningly, “there’s a fox on the case.”

  THERE was a great amount of activity in the Drexel Tower apartment when Cardigan arrived. Some reporters were there, a police photographer, a man from the D.A.’s office, half a dozen uniformed policemen, Detective “Knucks” Hermann, loud-mouthed, dramatic and dumb. All these men had something to say to one another, and the result was a continuous babble, worse than a debutante party. In a far corner of the room, remote, looking slightly absent-minded, sat Lieutenant Chauncey O’Mara; he sat on the arm of a wing chair, small, slight, debonair, with black hair, a black mustache, a thin bony face with high, red cheekbones and a good-humored mouth.

  “Ah!” roared Knucks Hermann above the general uproar. “As I breathe and live, if it ain’t not Cardigan. Hey, Chauncey; look what the wind blowed in!” He grinned widely, chewed on a great wad of gum.

  “You look well, Knucks,” Cardigan said drily.

  “Yeah? I don’t mind if I do.”

  O’Mara had not moved, though he began swinging his leg idly. “Hello, Cardigan,” he said, his blue eyes twinkling. He nodded to the bedroom. “Looks like a case of beauty and the beast.”

  “What happened?”

  “Take a look. She’s in there.”

  O’Mara rose and sauntered into the bedroom, and Cardigan and Hermann followed. O’Mara closed the door against the babble in the living room, lit an Egyptian cigarette and looked down vacantly at the body.

  Hermann advised: “She was choked.”

  “I see,” Cardigan said. He said no more, determined to let O’Mara take the lead.

  O’Hara did. “I hear the agency sent you up to see her this morning.”

  “If she’s Priscilla Ferne, yes.”

  “She is.”

  “I came in and— You see, the mug down at the office lost the memo with her name on it. She called the agency last night. All I had was her first name and the address. I got the rest from the clerk downstairs. Came up here, knocked for a while and got no answer. Then I went away.”

  “Didn’t suspect anything, huh?”

  “Why should I? I didn’t even know what she wanted. How long’s she been dead?”

  “Helvig says about ten hours. She got it about midnight or one A.M., say. Whoever did it was wise. We noticed everything wiped off—chairs, desk, and so on. She’s been living here a month. A guy from The Herald-Star says her real name’s Mamie Pulofski. She won a beauty contest in Iron City four years ago, got a month on the vaudeville circuit and then vanished. She was a ham actress. She used the Priscilla Ferne on the stage. This guy says she was in a mess in Buffalo a couple of years ago. At a party in her hotel rooms, a guy fell from a window and killed himself. Nothing criminal, of course—just messy. Then about a year ago, he says, she was beaten up by somebody in Boston. In her hotel room. Nobody knew who. She never told. Kind of a girl, I guess, that drove guys nuts. Maybe she was a teaser. The Buffalo jam was a kind of antipasto, the Boston the fish course and this the entrée. Looks as if she ordered it all à la carte, but didn’t wait for the dessert. The dessert’ll be ours—the guy who killed her.”

  “Any leads?”

  “Night clerk said she came in with a fellow last night. He didn’t bother looking much. Just a big guy. He doesn’t remember when or if they left, or what he looked like. It looks a smooth job to me. It looks like a planned job. If a guy went nuts and killed her, he would have run out without bothering to wipe away his fingerprints. There’s nothing—no letter, no marks, nothing. I thought maybe you’d be able to give me a steer.”

  “I’m dead in the dark, Chauncey.”

  O’Mara sighed. “Well, I guess we ship her back to Iron City, if she’s got relatives there. Bum homecoming, huh? I hate to see ’em go young like this, Cardigan—good or bad, I hate to see ’em go young.”

  Chapter Three

  Hardesty Calls His Bank

  SHE did not get much space in the metropolitan newspapers. A small stick on the third page, and no picture; though back in Iron City she doubtless made the headlines. Cardigan walked into the Medallion at the cocktail hour and knew by the look in McQueston’s face that he had come upon the news. McQueston moved his head and Cardigan followed him into a back room and McQueston, with a steely look in his eyes, said: “What the hell kind of horseplay is this?”

  “So you call it horseplay.”

  McQueston looked very elegant in evening clothes, and his thin nose glasses shimmered. “You didn’t say anything about murder this morning.”

  “I didn’t know there was murder, Ben.”

  “I’ve got an idea you’re playing ring-around-the-rosy,” the tall man challenged.

  “Pack up that idea and put it in mothballs. All you have to do, Ben, is keep your mouth shut, keep Otto’s mouth shut, and all the other guys who work for you. And that taxi driver.”

  “I’ve talked to him.”

  “Swell.”

  McQueston compressed his lips. “But I’m not playing fiddle to any murder. What I did is only temporary, until—”

  Cardigan darkened, snapped: “Until what?”

  McQueston colored, thinned down his eyes.

  And Cardigan went on, deeply: “This guy Hardesty is an old friend of mine. He was tricked, trapped—he was made somebody’s fall-guy, and he hasn’t got a leg to stand on—except mine. Now that jane picked him up in your place. It all started here, and if you start shooting off your mouth to the wrong people, I can make a mountain out of that mole-hill. Hardesty is up against it and so am I, and this jane was a tramp. How do I know Hardesty didn’t get knock-out drops here?”

  “Damn you—”

  “O.K. Damn me. But if you want to keep this joint swanky, if you want to stay on the lee side of the law and keep your name out of the papers—play ball. This is no affair of yours, and it is an affair of mine. You’re a nice guy, Ben, but sometimes you start acting like the preacher you look like. Keep your nose out of it. Keep Otto and the rest and the taxi driver dumb. I don’t know how this thing will break yet. So far, Hardesty is in the clear—but there were three other guys in it, and I can’t figure them or how they’ll move.”

  McQueston, keeping his lips tight, stared at the floor. Then he said, “O.K.”

  “I knew you’d listen to reason, Ben.”

  “I just hate to get tangled up.”

  “Come on, I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “I’ll buy you one.”

  NEXT morning Cardigan was on his way down to breakfast when the ringing of his phone stopped him in the doorway. He went back and grabbed it, spoke for a moment, hung up, and then went out, his brows bent. He did not stop for breakfast, but boarded a cab outside his hotel and drove north, to Central Park. Fifteen minutes later he walked in on McQueston, and McQueston, sitting at the card table and smoking a cigarette, said: “See this morning’s paper?”

  “No.”

  “Look at this. Second page.”

  Cardigan took the newspaper and said: “What?”

  “Third column.”

  “This picture?… Oh, I see. Casey Smith. What about it?”<
br />
  “Read it.”

  Cardigan sat down and read that at eleven the previous night Casey Smith, the gambler, was found dead in West Forty-eighth Street, with two bullets in him. It had occurred near Fifth Avenue. No one had seen the shooting. Patrolman Kopf had heard the shots, come upon the body five minutes later.

  “So what?” Cardigan said.

  “Louie called up and said Casey Smith was one of the three guys that came in with the dame the other night.” He stood up. “This is getting close, Cardigan! Too damn close for comfort!”

  Cardigan’s thoughts began spinning. “Hold everything, Ben. Keep your shirt on. This is a hot lead!”

  “Hot lead hell! I’ve got an idea I’m headed for a jam and—”

  “Ben,” Cardigan said, spreading his arms, “you wouldn’t let me down, would you?”

  McQueston made an exasperated sound. “You’re a damned nuisance, Jack—that’s what you are!”

  Cardigan tossed the paper to the table, said, “I’ll be seeing you, pal,” and stretched his legs out of the apartment.

  HE found Chauncey O’Mara, Knucks Hermann, and two other men in an office at police headquarters. He said: “I didn’t think you were busy, Chauncey. I just dropped in to see if you’d picked up anything.”

  Hermann said: “Didja read about how Casey Smith up and got himself a one-way ticket to parts unknown?”

  “Oh, that. Yeah, I saw it in the paper.”

  “These guys,” went on Hermann, “was his pals, as you might say. Wasn’t they, Chauncey?”

  O’Mara seemed satisfied with his nails. “Cardigan, this is Tom Spinack and Carl Bounds. Boys, this is Cardigan, a private dick.”

  “Yeah,” blurted Hermann, grinning widly. “This is the gazabo that was almost on that Priscilla Ferne job, only she was all choked up by the time he got there.”

  Mr. Spinack and Mr. Bounds laid blank, ancient eyes on Cardigan, and both nodded politely. They were fairly young men, about forty, but their eyes were ancient—eyes that had no connection whatever with their thoughts. Mr. Spinack was a swart, chubby man, with a moon face, and Mr. Bounds was tall, hatchet-faced, with a ramrod nape and a beaked nose.