by Jerry eBooks
They marched outside and climbed into the cab Luggan had had wait. The driver grinned at them, thinking of the large round numbers on his meter.
Rick Luggan silently watched the pale street lights flash by as the cab buzzed up deserted Seaside Boulevard. Joe and Al squeezed him from either side, sitting with arms folded over broad chests. Rick could feel the muzzle of his own gun poking his ribs from underneath Joe’s armpit.
He stared stonily at the back of the driver’s neck, thinking. He could turn the wastebasket over to the two thugs and forget the whole thing. He had his five hundred. But Rick Luggan realized he couldn’t step out now. Somewhere, there was an answer to the puzzle and he had to find it. If he handed over Squidy’s wastebasket, he handed over his life—for he knew instinctively that they would kill him on that instant.
“Where we going?” Joe growled. “I want to get this business over with.”
“We’ll go to my office.” Rick leaned forward and gave the driver the Spring Avenue address. He thought he felt the squat gorilla’s shoulder tremble, but maybe it was the cab jolting.
“Why your office?” Joe’s heavy jowls sank. “How come your office is open at two A.M.?”
Rick smiled thinly. “Maybe you’d rather go to a police station.” His voice was cold, hard. “You don’t like my office, do you, Apple-nose? It’s open—it’s always open for business like ours.”
Joe turned threateningly in the seat.
“Don’t call me Apple-nose—” he began.
“Shut up,” Al ordered. Joe’s big companion dug the gun into Luggan’s side. “You too, smart guy.”
The cab pulled up in front of the two story brownstone building housing the detective’s office, and Al stepped down to the curb, followed by the private eye. As his feet hit the sidewalk, Luggan whirled and whipped the cab door closed in Joe’s face. There was a fleeting moment of surprise in Al’s beefy face and he swung his gun around. Luggan caught the blow on an arm. He gritted his teeth and drove his fist hard into Heavyweight’s bruised mouth. Al grunted and sat down on the sidewalk. The detective sped across to the shelter of the building foyer. He ran up the marble steps three at a time and took the corridor in long strides to his office. Inside he got a spare gun from his desk and went to the window. The cab was speeding away, in the direction of the Commander Hotel.
RICK LUGGAN sighed and wiped the sweat from his tanned forehead. He hadn’t thought they’d risk following him into the office, to face an almost certain gun.
Luggan got the wastebasket from his safe and stood it on his desk. He inspected the brown rattan container from every angle, even cut into the material to locate any hidden article, but there was nothing. He examined the bottom to see if it was false, but it was just a thin sheet of metal. The design on the basket claimed his attention. A string of bright colored flower pots containing Holland tulips circled the upper rim of the basket. Below these, around the base, Rick saw a painted seascape, with white sailboats climbing blue waves. He frowned and rubbed his head. Flower pots? The sea? That didn’t ring any bells.
The wound in Luggan’s forehead began to throb. He went to the filing case for his bottle, found it empty and crossed to the closet for a fresh bottle. The detective jerked the light switch upward, and froze in his tracks. Slumped in a corner of the closet, under the shelves, his jaw gaping horribly and the front of his camel’s hair coat soaked with dried blood, was a pinched-face man. It was Horace Squidy!
For the second time that night, Rick Luggan’s senses reeled and his mind refused to believe his eyes. But his amazement was shortlived. He stepped briskly into the closet and bent over the body. The coat was torn where killer slugs had ripped into the man’s chest. Luggan felt the hands, and found them stiff. Four and a half hours, he thought, was time enough for rigor mortis to set in. Rick’s heart pounded as he switched out the light and closed the closet door. Now things began to make sense—the dead didn’t wake. He glanced at the wastebasket, and somewhere in his mind a single bell tolled. He scooped up the basket and raced for the door.
There might still be time!
It seemed to take forever for the cab to cross town. Every red light went against them as Luggan sat tensely on the edge of the rear seat urging the driver on. Slow moving milk trucks got in the way, and at a railroad crossing the cab waited interminably for a freight to pass. The driver wanted to talk, to know why Rick was in such a hurry, and tried to tell him about his kid’s new tricycle. The shamus finally tossed the man a ten dollar bill and angrily ordered him to shut up.
A single cluster of lights burned inside the Commander Hotel lobby as Luggan plunged through the revolving doors and walked briskly up to the desk clerk. He flashed his state shield briefly.
“Detective.” He ripped the word at the astonished bald-headed clerk. “Get Sergeant Clancy on the phone at the Twelfth Precinct Station. Tell him to get the Homicide Squad rolling to Suite 728—and give me a pass key.”
The clerk paled and nodded. He handed Luggan the key, and the private eye raced for the elevators.
“After you let me out at the seventh floor, take this elevator down and keep it down until the police come,” Luggan told the boy. “And if you hear any shooting, find a place to hide.”
The gold and orchid corridor was deserted. Rick bent in front of 728, fitted the key in the lock and swung the door open gently. He stepped inside and set the wastebasket down. Across the room Carla Teresi looked up from a magazine. Her dark eyes widened with surprise.
“You again!” she gasped. “Don’t you have a home?”
Luggan laid a finger across his lips. His feet made no sound on the thick rose-colored rug as he crossed to her side.
“Where’s your boss?” he asked softly.
She nodded silently at the connecting door. Her words were a fierce whisper.
“Listen—I don’t have anything to do with murder.”
The detective quieted her with a gesture. “I know. How about the mugs—they in there, too?”
She nodded again. “Came in ten minutes ago, pretty excited.”
“They’re not nearly as excited as they will be,” Rick grinned thinly, “when the State shoots the juice to them. Get out into the corridor, baby. The cops are on the way.”
Carla rose and left the room. Luggan crossed swiftly to the flower pots arranged along the window, and sat them on the floor. His deft fingers pried at the broad sill, and the board came loose easily. Luggan reached a long arm into the opening and his hand came out with a long metal box. He smiled in quick satisfaction. The wastebasket hadn’t lied. Sea under flower pots. Quickly he opened the box and scanned the papers it contained. His smile broadened.
HE WAS putting the sill back as the connecting door opened.
“Carla,” a rasping voice said, “the boss wants you.”
Luggan reached for his gun.
“Hello, Killer,” Rick clipped, as Joe’s squat figure appeared in the doorway. “Come on out—with your hands up.”
Joe’s close-set eyes darted to the window. He reached for his hip and crowded back. The detective’s automatic leaped in his hand, and through the blue gunsmoke he saw Joe stumble forward to his knees. Swiftly Rick circled the divan, keeping his gun trained on the doorway, and through the narrow opening he saw Al’s heavyweight figure lunging for cover. Luggan fired again, and his bullet tore into a mirror, filling the suite with the tinkle of broken glass.
In the silence following his shot, the eye spoke again.
“The game’s over, Harold Squidy. I’ve found your uncle’s will and his letter telling his fear of you. You’ll never have that money now, Harold. Your uncle hid the will right here in your cousin’s suite, and gave him the wastebasket when he died. You knew that wastebasket contained a clue to the location of the will. Come out alive, cousin killer, if you want to—otherwise, you come out dead!”
Al’s big frame loomed suddenly in the doorway, gun spouting leaden death. The big man rushed the divan, and Luggan had tim
e for only one shot. The heavyweight crashed over a table and his thick arms wrapped themselves around the detective’s chest. Tearing pain ran into Luggan’s lungs as the big man’s arms tightened like hot steel bands. Red spots danced before the private dick’s eyes, and he caught a fleeting glimpse of something white overhead. A vase came crashing down.
Al’s grip relaxed and the cop slipped out from beneath the killer’s limp body. Carla stood over him, red lips compressed grimly, in her hands the broken remnants of the vase.
“Thanks, Baby,” Rick grinned quickly. “That makes us even.”
He walked to the doorway and into the bedroom. Harold Squidy’s roundshouldered figure cowered in a corner behind the bed. Rick jerked the man to his feet and led him out into the living room. He shoved the dome-headed man into a chair.
“Cousins,” he said to Carla. “Only this one was left out of his uncle’s will. Too blasted mean. For a while he had me buffaloed. I knew all the time he wasn’t Horace, but couldn’t quite make out the set-up. Now about those knock-out drops, Baby—”
“He told me you were a snoop and he wanted to turn you over to the police.” Carla lit a cigarette nervously. Her smooth cheeks were warm with color and her deep red lips glowed invitingly. “I didn’t know any different,” she added. “Not for a while.”
Rick smiled and his eyes slid over the sweeping curves of her graceful figure. Through the window the rising wail of a siren tore the night.
“Okay, Baby, after we explain to the cops, we’ll have plenty of time for everything.”
HOMICIDE’S THEIR HEADACHE
Carl G. Hodges
CHAPTER I
NO CLIENT—NO BUCKS
It had been raining off and on since noon, and I was down in the dumps anyway. What Marge had told me when I hit Investigations, Inc. at two o’clock only riled me more.
“Sugar,” I grunted at her, “what did old man Dilweg say?”
I put down the collar of my trench coat and tried to shape my sloppy felt into looking like something besides a tired snap-brim. I lit a smoke and parked my six-foot frame on her desk edge.
When I hit the States with my atabrined mug and a duffel full of dough, I tried to buy a dog tag and make it legal for her to fix my eggs and burn my toast every morning but she wouldn’t say “Yes.” She still calls me “Mister” Starch. But it was worth twenty bucks a week just to have her around to look at. She’s got about a million bucks worth of nice things hidden under about twenty-two ounces of clothes. And that little pug nose of hers is strictly out of this world.
Right now I wasn’t thinking too much about wedding marches and her particular style of architecture.
“Mr. Starch,” she told me, “Mr. Dilweg seemed rather perturbed. He said that your services as a private detective weren’t worth two hundred dollars a week and he didn’t intend to pay the bill you sent.”
“He’s crazy,” I said. “He agreed to pay twenty-five bucks a day and expenses. Dilweg had me chasing all over the state trying to locate a guy by the name of Charles Bryce, Junior. I find Bryce doing a landscape job at Dilweg’s own house under the name of Joe Briggs. What kind of a chump does Dilweg think I am? I’ll get my two hundred bucks off him or I’ll twist his head right off the end of his backbone.”
Marge looked at me like she was worrying how long her twenty bucks a week would last.
“Mr. Dilweg was a lawyer before he got to be an oil man and a millionaire,” she reminded. “Maybe you’d better go slow.”
“Millionaires don’t scare me,” I said. “I’m full of Starch. I’ll go visit the old goat and I’ll swipe two C’s out of his wallet before the moths can bite me.”
I slammed the door behind me as I boiled out of the office.
I crossed the street in the slackening rain and stood under the awning of the First National until the two-fifteen Noble Street bus showed up. I stepped off the curb and went ankle deep in water in the gutter before I hit the bus step. I was peeved to start with, and wet socks squishing around in soggy shoes didn’t help my well-known Irish any.
If Elsberry Dilweg had been there then I’d have punched him silly. Just because he owned some oil wells and a couple million bucks he couldn’t make a sap out of me. Not for two hundred bucks, he couldn’t.
By the time the bus reached the outskirts of Springdale and the intersection of the outer drive with 66, the rain had stopped and the sun was trying to break through the clouds. The gutters were running full and the wide expanse of sloping lawn that led up the hill to Dilweg’s twenty-room mansion looked fresh and green.
The old goat had his castle in a square block of ground, with the back of it facing north into raw, uncultivated timberland, separated from it by a high brick wall. I walked along the sidewalk on Noble, taking a gander over the low brick wall that hemmed the front of the estate.
I was heading for the iron gate that straddled a gravel drive that led up the hill to the huge stone house when a shiny black car, with its chromium gleaming, and its spotless glass unmarked by the recent rain, pulled up at the curb ahead of me. A guy in a gray suit and a Homberg hat got out with a leather briefcase.
He was a good-looking guy with a crisp gray mustache over a good-natured mouth. He was about fifty years old and he could have posed for an ad as a successful banker. He was just about my height and weight, but he had good clothes and knew how to wear them.
He had an oval cigarette out and was flicking a pocket lighter. He was getting sparks but no flame. I handed him a paper pack of matches as I came up.
“You must have got that thing from your old maid sister for Christmas,” I said. “They never work.”
He smiled, and it was nice. “The sister or the lighter?” He lit his smoke and blew it out his aristocratic nostrils. “Thanks,” he said. “Going my way?”
We turned in at the iron gate and walked up the gravel road, wet and white in the brightening sun.
“Yeah,” I said, “I got a target for today. I’m going to lay down the law for old man Dilweg. He owes me two hundred bucks.”
He laughed and his white teeth were nice, too. “I know just what you mean.” He put out his hand, friendly. “Roberts is my name—Carson W. Roberts. Mr. Dilweg doesn’t owe me anything. In fact, he has been most generous to one of my pet projects.”
I had the guy labeled then. “I’ve heard of you. You’re director of some welfare project down in East St. Louis. Handicap Haven, Incorporated, or something like that. My name is Starch—Bill Starch. Private detective.”
His eyes turned on me with interest, like he’d never seen a detective before in his life.
“Why on earth would Mr. Dilweg hire a detective?”
He was fishing, but I didn’t run with the bait. When I take on a client I keep my trap shut about that client’s business. I had a feeling that my profession was a shock to Roberts. I guess I just didn’t fit in with his idea of a private dick.
We didn’t say any more, and in a few moments we were standing in front of the big white door on Dilweg’s sprawling veranda. Roberts lifted the brass knocker—made like an oil well derrick—and let it drop. I could hear the sound echo in the corridor.
We turned to look down over the hill to the west, where a little knot of men was gathered under a weeping willow tree with a lot of props around it.
“Mr. Dilweg likes weeping willows,” Roberts volunteered. “He hired a landscape expert named Briggs to dig up that monster in his home town of East St. Louis and haul it forty miles to replant it here. He had to get a special permit from the State Highway Department so they could haul it here over Sixty-six. That shows he loves trees.”
I grunted. “That shows,” I said, “it’s nice to have a couple million bucks.” I was getting impatient. “Slug that knocker again, pal, or we’ll grow beards before Richard opens the door.”
He took hold of the knocker and the pressure swung the door open a little—the latch hadn’t caught. Roberts pushed it open and went inside.
“
Come on,” he said. “It’s all right.”
I followed him inside and down a hall, about knee-deep in Oriental rugs.
Roberts called, “Elkins!” and then “Mrs. Franner!”
His yell wasn’t loud, but his voice was the carrying kind.
Nobody answered the call. The house was quiet.
Roberts looked at me. “Funny both Elkins and Mrs. Franner are not downstairs.” He added, in explanation, “Elkins is a kind of butler-handyman. Mrs. Franner is a sort of housekeeper.”
He walked through an arched doorway into a paneled room that was undoubtedly a study. Then he stopped. He turned back suddenly. His eyes stared wildly. His mouth gaped open. He made a lot of funny noises deep down in his throat.
I saw IT, too.
I bumped past Roberts in a hurry, and moved over the big Chinese rug, fast. I knelt in front of the desk. But there wasn’t any need for haste.
Elsberry Dilweg was as dead as he would ever be. His featherweight five-foot frame, in rough gray tweeds, was lying face-up on the floor. His eyes were as prominent as white buttons on black shoes. His gray hair, what there was of it, made dead ear muffs on each side of his bald head.
Both his hands were gripped in agony around the handles of a pair of long, slender paper shears buried in his heart. There wasn’t much blood; only a quiet seepage marked his vest.
I got up. “I saw my share of dead Nips on Guadal,” I said. “They hadn’t been dead long. Dilweg ain’t, either. We better take a gander around the joint. You take the upstairs. I’ll take the downstairs.”
Roberts’ mouth was still hanging open. He had nothing but fear on that classic mug. He was frightened silly.
“Snap out of it, bub,” I said. “The killer might still be in the house.”
He pointed woodenly at the wall behind the desk. I turned to look. An oil painting had been moved sideward in the paneled wall and the door of a small safe yawned open. I jumped across Dilweg’s body and stuck my hand in the safe. It was empty.
“That don’t prove anything,” I said. “There’s a lot of papers on Dilweg’s desk. Maybe he took the stuff out himself.”