Tough as Nails: The Complete Cases of Donahue From the Pages of Black Mask

by Frederick Nebel

  Donahue hauled out a yellow suitcase and tipped it on the ground. “Take a look at these initials: S. E.”

  “It looks,” drawled Uhl, “as if they got Edgecomb.”

  “He was a fool to have left the hotel!” Donahue snapped.

  They searched the ground around the car, finding nothing of consequence.

  “I’ll telephone Jeff City,” Uhl said, “and check up on these plates. Knoblock, you drive the Lincoln. We’ll go up to Wentzville.”

  Nobody had heard any shooting in Wentzville.

  Uhl came out of a restaurant and said: “It’s Edgecomb’s car all right. I just telephoned.”

  Reems looked out of the Lincoln. “His bags are opened. Doesn’t look as if there was any ransacking.”

  Donahue was looking through the bags too. Every piece of linen was spotlessly clean.

  “His body’ll probably turn up along the road somewhere,” Reems offered.

  Donahue got out of the Lincoln, lit a cigarette and stared transfixed at its red end. A puzzled shadow moved slowly across his forehead, and his lean strong fingers began to tremble, his eyes suddenly became round and hard like brown bright marbles.

  Chapter VI

  At six that evening Uhl called Donahue at his hotel.

  Shadd and his five men had run into trouble in Jefferson City, where they had stopped to put water in the radiator. One of the attendants at the filling station went inside while another was filling the radiator and telephoned the authorities. The county sheriff happened to be only a block or so away and he came down with three deputies and some police.

  They stopped the Cadillac just as it was starting. The driver tried to speed up, but a deputy cracked him with a gun and the car ran into a tree. Shadd and his men piled out dragging two Thompson guns with them, and warning the law officers to clear out. Shadd had one of the Tommy guns.

  A deputy shot him through the thigh and in a minute all the guns were in action. The gangsters were outnumbered. One of the Tommy guns jammed after having put twelve bullets in an officer and another officer emptied his gun at the assassin. The gunfight lasted three minutes, and all six gunmen were killed.

  They had had fifteen hundred dollars among them. However, no black metal box was found. It was natural to assume that they had thrown that away. But there were no papers, either, though there too it was natural to assume that they had destroyed them.

  Since it was likely that they had kept to Route 40 at least as far as the town of Mexico, parties were on the hunt for the discarded body of Stanley Edgecomb. Bus drivers and motorists were asked to keep an eye out also. Circumstances pointed unwaveringly to the fact that Stanley Edgecomb had been attacked in his car, taken in the gangsters’ car, relieved of important documents, then killed and thrown out somewhere between Wentzville and the town of Mexico, or between Mexico and the state capital.

  Uhl concluded: “This case has many strange ramifications, Donahue, and it’s going to take us a while to clear it up. Already there’s a lot of people saying that maybe Edgecomb was not all that he was supposed to be. Kind of insinuating, you know, that he might have had his fingers in a dirty piece of pie. Are you staying in town a while?”

  “Yes. There are a few things I’d like to clean up for my own satisfaction. I’ll be seeing you, Sergeant.”

  He hung up and drained the highball he had started on before Uhl telephoned.

  There was a knock on the door and Donahue let in the hotel’s head porter, a gaunt old man in a blue flannel shirt.

  The head porter said, “No, Mr. Herron didn’t send down any clothes to be laundered while he was here.”

  “You would have handled the clothes whether they went to the hotel laundry or an outside one?”

  “Yes. If they go to an outside one, the man in the receiving room pays the bill when they’re delivered back and then collects from the cashier, who would put it on the guest’s bill.”

  “Thanks,” Donahue said, and dismissed the man with a quarter.

  Then he returned to a collection of train and bus timetables, studied them intently, made a few notations. He telephoned the St. Louis terminal of the Central States Motor Express, spoke briefly and hung up. Then he telephoned Union Station and got a reservation on the 11:55 p.m. train for Kansas City.

  At ten-forty he checked out of the Apollo, carrying his bag. A taxi ran him over to Union Station. It was raining when the Wabash train pulled out at midnight.

  It was raining in Kansas City next morning. Donahue had checked his bag in the station, had eaten there in the chill early morning.

  When he entered the Central States Motor Express waiting room, he said: “Will Nixon be in soon?”

  “You mean Sam Nixon?”

  “I mean the man who was chauffeur on your through bus from St. Louis yesterday that arrived after dark last night.”

  “He’s out in that bus you see through that door. He’s due to leave in half an hour.”

  Donahue went out through the door. “Mr. Nixon, I’d like to speak with you in private for a minute.”

  “Who, me?”

  “I’m just a private cop on a tail. Come on.”

  They went back of the bus. Donahue said: “You made a stop at Wentzville yesterday, didn’t you?”

  “Sure.”

  “How many passengers did you pick up?”

  “Three. A couple for Mexico and one for here.”

  “The man for here—what did he look like?”

  “Hell, I can’t remember exactly. Fat guy, I think. Glasses. Had a suitcase along. Or maybe he didn’t have glasses.”

  “But,” Donahue said, “he was the only man who got on at Wentzville destined for here.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure of that. What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Donahue said. “I’m trying to find out.”

  He went around to the taxi stand. Three cabs were there. The drivers had not been on duty last night when Nixon’s bus arrived. However, Donahue got the names of those who had been. From the taxi company’s garage he got their telephone numbers. He spent twenty minutes telephoning.

  Then he took a taxi to the Hotel Bretton-Palace. The big lobby was noisy. It was a travelers’ hotel. Donahue went directly to the desk and asked for the house officer. A page took him down a corridor and into an office. A small bald man blinked sky-blue eyes, dismissed the page.

  Donahue sat down and produced identification.

  “Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of you,” the house officer said.

  “I came right in here,” Donahue said, “so I could put my cards on the table. I’m on a quiet little tail. It would be doing me a great favor, if you’d go out, look at the register for last night, and get me a list of names of men who arrived and registered here between six-fifteen and six-forty-five.”

  The house officer blinked. “No rough stuff on the premises.”

  “Nothing like that.”

  “Wait here.”

  Five minutes later the house officer came back into the office holding a memorandum as if reluctant to hand it over. “Remember, no rough stuff.”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “Six men. I didn’t take the women’s names. Six men. I guess they were from that St. Louis bus. Here.”

  Donahue eyed the list closely. Room numbers were beside the names. All the names were strange.

  “Look here,” Donahue said, “do me another favor. Have a girl call these rooms, one by one, and let me listen in on an extension.”

  “I wouldn’t want to get in any trouble,” the house officer demurred, ill at ease.

  “Be a good scout,” Donahue urged. “And you won’t get in any trouble. There’s an unemployment drive on. Get a girl and have her ask these men over the phone if they will contribute. Anything for a stall. Just so I can hear their voices.”

  “Hell, I’d lose my job if the manager—Besides, there’s no jane around here I’d care to trust. You know janes.”

  Donahue shrugged. “All right, the
n: never mind. I’ll make the calls myself and take a chance.”

  He went out into the lobby, entered a booth and began calling the rooms. He said he was on the committee of the new drive to relieve the suffering of homeless men. Could he come up and collect a small donation? He tried to keep his voice in falsetto. Two of the rooms did not answer. One man refused to contribute and bawled Donahue out for calling. Donahue did not make the sixth call. The fifth was sufficient.

  Stepping out of the booth, he saw the house officer leaning against one of the marble pillars at the other end of the lobby. Donahue crossed to him.

  “Please, now,” he said, “don’t master-mind around after me.”

  “Only no rough stuff,” the bald man said, worried.

  Donahue strode to the elevators, went up to the sixth floor. He walked down a red-carpeted corridor, turned sharp right and followed another corridor. He stopped in front of a door marked 645 and knocked.

  A voice said: “Who is there, eh?”

  “Just Donahue.”

  “Donahue!”

  “On the level.”

  Silence.

  Then—“Well, well, this—this is extraordinary, Mr. Donahue!” The door whipped open and Donahue’s recent client bubbled buoyantly on the threshold, saying: “’Pon my word! Well, well, come right in—come right in, Mr. Donahue. It has been something of a travail for me.” He locked the door.

  Donahue moved squinted eyes around the room, said absently: “I suppose it has been. Your Lincoln was riddled all right.”

  “Indeed it was! By Godfrey, Mr. Donahue, I shall never be the same man again!”

  “I wondered why you took the bus from Wentzville, leaving your car parked down the road, hardly a mile, and with all your baggage in it.”

  “My dear man, wasn’t I attacked? Do you suppose I was going to linger around that spot?”

  “I see you registered here as Baldwin Coombs of Indianapolis.”

  “A very original name, eh? Eh, Mr. Donahue?”

  “You’re a very original man. I’m not. I’m just a plain everyday guy trying to make a living—as honestly as possible. There’s not a hell of a lot of romance attached to my business. I’m no drawing-room cop. One day I’m here—the next day, somewhere else. That’s not romance. It’s damned monotonous. When I take on a client, I expect a break. I expect the truth. If it is the truth, I’m just as liable to risk my neck for the guy as not. I’m a nice guy ordinarily. But when a man two-times on me, I’m a louse—the lousiest kind of a louse you ever ran across. Understand?”

  “Why, yes—of course. But what is the point, eh? Eh, what is the point? After all—”

  Donahue snarled: “After all, you two-timed! You’re not Edgecomb. You never were Edgecomb. That baggage in the Lincoln was not your baggage. It was Edgecomb’s. But you were driving that Lincoln. Edgecomb wasn’t in it. You were never attacked, either. You drove the car in that lane, put the bullets in yourself. You walked the mile to Wentzville and boarded the bus and arrived here between six and six-thirty last night.

  “Shadd and his mob were fogged down in Jeff City. They had nothing on them. The theory was—I didn’t hold it—that Shadd and his men overtook you and mobbed you, chucked your body out somewhere farther on. I began to smell other things when we opened the baggage in the Lincoln. Every stitch was clean. I figured that a man who had made a quick getaway, like yours, would at least have a dirty shirt along, you had plenty, I imagine, because you sent out no laundry in the five days you were at the hotel.”

  The other clapped his hands gently. “Very, very good, Mr. Donahue. As I said once before, you are a man of parts. Indeed, that you are, Mr. Donahue. I should like to hear some more about it. But, please, if I am not Stanley Edgecomb, who am I? By Godfrey, there is a splendid side of the ridiculous to this: having assumed so many aliases, I find it hard to recapture my real name. Droll, don’t you think? Eh?”

  Donahue’s brown face looked hawkish, predatory, keenly alert. “You may think you can song and dance yourself out of this, mister, but you can’t.”

  “Eh?”

  “I’m taking you back to St. Louis.”

  “Of course, Mr. Donahue. I intend going. I shall engage a drawing room for both of us. Let me see—I had a time table—in my overcoat.” He picked a blue overcoat up from a divan, rummaged in the pockets. Then he dropped the coat and turned around holding a small automatic, smiling buoyantly. “You will keep your hands well up, Mr. Donahue.”

  Donahue twisted his lips in a sneer. “This won’t get you anywhere, you——!”

  “Language, Mr. Donahue!”

  Donahue shoved his hip against the telephone and deliberately knocked it to the floor.

  “Pick that up,” the fat man said.

  “Pick it up yourself.”

  “Pick that up. You knocked it down.”

  “Horsefeathers,” Donahue chided. “If you want it picked up, then pick it up. I knocked it down because I wanted it knocked down. You want it picked up. Okey. Pick it up. You better hurry up. Operator may think there’s a murder going on up here.”

  “It’s wedged between the table and the wall. You will have to bend way over to get it.”

  “You mean,” Donahue said, “you will.”

  “I am no longer fooling, Mr. Donahue!”

  Donahue shrugged. “Neither am I. You’re not going to get anywhere with me, mister. You’re not going to threaten me. Oh, no you’re not. You’re not going to shoot me and make a lot of noise with the telephone disconnected. You’re not going to be a jackass like that.”

  “Mr. Donahue, pick up that telephone.”

  Donahue lowered his hands, chafed them together, smiling with utmost self-assurance. He turned and walked to the door, his back to the man and the gun. He unlocked the door.

  “Mr. Donahue!”

  Donahue palmed the knob, about faced, bowed with mock courtesy. “I’ll be waiting for you. And I’d advise you, mister—spare the rod. You’re in bad enough as it is. Besides, I promised the house dick there’d be no rough stuff.”

  The fat man stood like a man petrified, staring wide-eyed through his horn-rimmed glasses. For a brief moment he looked oafish, stripped of guile; looked like a man trying hard to believe what his eyes and ears transmitted to his brain; and believing it, in spite of himself, and still incredulous of his own intelligence.

  Donahue, eying him levelly, turned the knob, opened the door behind him.

  The glaze left the fat man’s eyes; it was like windows thrown suddenly upward.

  “Remember: spare the rod,” Donahue said.

  The fat man emitted a groan. His gun drooped. The actor had disintegrated; the man was present now, humble, flushing, fearful, prey to encroaching terror.

  “Will you step to one side, Donahue?”

  Donahue ducked, half-whirled.

  Sergeant Uhl stood in the doorway, placid and sad, holding a big gun in his hand. Back of him stood the house officer.

  “It was funny about that phone,” Uhl said, smiling.

  Donahue growled: “How the hell did you get here?”

  “Oh, I’ve been behind you since the time you left St. Louis. I thought you might get in trouble. Is that Mr. Edgecomb?”

  “That,” said Donahue, “is liable to be anybody.”

  Uhl sighed. “Yes, Silkhat Willems always was known for inventing swell aliases.”

  “Is that his name?”

  “It was the name he started with.”

  “Hell,” Donahue said, “this isn’t even funny any more.”

  “No. I never found anything humorous about murder.”

  Donahue looked at him. “Who’s been murdered now?”

  “Stanley Edgecomb was murdered,” Uhl said, drawing out manacles. “Quite a few days ago.”

  Chapter VII

  Police headquarters, St. Louis….

  Donahue sat on a desk, dangling one leg, when Uhl opened the door and came in wearily. It was after midnight, and the sergeant, not
a young man, looked pale and haggard—but still placid.

  “It’s all over now—practically,” he said.

  He let himself slowly down into a swivel-chair, drew out an old briar, began stuffing it. His gentle eyes had a faraway look.

  “So he came through,” Donahue muttered.

  Uhl nodded. “Yes, he came through. He murdered Edgecomb.”

  Donahue got off the desk, paced up and down with long angry strides; stopped, flung up a fist, “And I was working for that guy!” He brought the fist swishing down. “I knew it, Uhl. By——I sensed everything was not on the up and up! But I had to go along with him. He was smooth. Uhl—he was smooth. I was a gofor. He pulled the wool all over my eyes.”

  “Silkhat Willems has always been a smooth crook. It was his first murder. But the stakes were big. He must have thought it was worth the chance. But think of it: almost a hundred thousand dollars.”

  Donahue laughed mirthlessly. “And he had me believing they were important legal papers, notes, data.”

  “Whereas,” Uhl smiled, “they were emeralds. Edgecomb picked them up for a song a year ago, in Siam. Willems has been an international card sharp and con man for years. He was in Siam at the time and made a note of the sale. He came here to get the emeralds. He laid pretty careful plans. He struck up an acquaintanceship with Shadd in the Lido, a gambling house in the country, and got Shadd to throw in with him. He then called on Edgecomb. He had a lot of front, you know, and it was easy for him to pose as a globe trotter. He said he was on his way to California. He remarked about the sale in Siam, and Edgecomb was fool enough to show him the emeralds. Conditions being what they are and have been for a year, Edgecomb was holding the emeralds till better times would warrant a better price. He wasn’t feeling well, and spoke of going to Hot Springs. Willems so planned their meetings that nobody ever saw them together.

  “Shadd was to get the emeralds, and there was to be a fifty-fifty split. Remember, Willems had never killed a man before. But then Shadd and Willems got into an argument. Willems wanted to break. He was finding Shadd a hard man to boss. But Shadd wouldn’t have anything of it.

  “Willems got desperate. He worked himself into getting a ride from Edgecomb as far as Hot Springs. Edgecomb picked him up in the car. Willems wanted those emeralds. He knew they were in the house. He attacked Edgecomb in the car, choked him senseless, threw his body in the river, weighted with stones, came back in the car himself, put it in a garage, became Mr. Herron at the Apollo.