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

by Frederick Nebel

  “I hear you were up here yesterday, Donny.”

  Donahue sat on the stool, propped his heels on the metal foot-rest and leaned comfortably back against the wall. He nodded.

  “What did Loftman want?” McPard asked, his voice quiet, unhurried.

  “He wanted us to send a messenger East. It wasn’t definite at the time I saw him. He just wanted to make sure we’d have a man on call.”

  “Messenger, what for?”

  “To fly there, get some cash from his wife and fly back here with it.”

  “How much?”

  “He didn’t mention the amount.”

  “What was he doing here?”

  “Search me, Kel.”

  McPard leaned over to look at the polished tips of his pointed black shoes. “Just what were the conditions?”

  “There weren’t any. Everything was tentative. Details were to be given when he decided definitely our man’d fly.”

  “Did he phone again after you saw him?”

  “Nuh-huh.”

  McPard wagged his head. “This looks like a funny one, all right.”

  There was a knock on the door and McPard opened it and a policeman said: “Doc wants to see you a sec, Lieutenant.”

  McPard walked out, leaving the door open, and Donahue, sitting on the stool, frowned down his nose. In a minute Gus Lankford, McPard’s partner, thrust his dark, rawboned face through doorway and said:

  “When’d you get in?”

  “Minute ago.”

  “What you been doing, Donny, getting mixed up in murder?”

  “Me mixed up?”

  Lankford had a loud foghorn laugh. “You’re a one for getting mixed up in things, Donny! Boy, if you ain’t a one I never seen the like…. What, was this here now Loftman hiring a body guard?”

  “The whole agency, Gus.”

  “Red says you was kidding him about a blonde.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s like my wife always says—Hey what’d you think! My new kid began walking last night! Did I tell you?”

  “Great, Gus.”

  “Took four steps and then flat on his kisser!”

  Phalen came up and said over Lankford’s shoulder in a voice that was not apologetic: “They said I was trying to smack you last night, Donny. Sorry. I guess I was stinko.”

  “That’s okey, Red,” Donahue said; and then to Lankford, “What did the coroner’s man say?”

  “Instantaneous!” Lankford boomed, his eyes popping. “A blunt instrument….” He tapped his left temple. “He musta been laying there for two hours. It was the hotel maid found him. She come in with some clean towels and there he was laying in the bedroom.” He added a slab of gum to some already in his mouth and his big, knobby jaw moved from side to side. “Kel says—”

  Kelly McPard called him and Lankford turned and walked across the living-room, a bony scarecrow of a man with deep hollows behind his ears. Kelly McPard addressed him, using small, nimble-fingered gestures.

  Donahue wandered into the living-room as the coroner’s man and the police photographer left. A minute later two precinct detectives came out of the bedroom and headed for the corridor door after the manner of men who knew definitely where they were going. A uniformed sergeant and a couple of patrolmen were still in the bedroom, and Phalen was bent over the radio, dialing it, while the loudspeaker rasped, squawked.

  “Sh, sh,” Kelly McPard said.

  “I was trying to get the Rhythm Twins,” Phalen explained. “They’re friends of mine.”

  Donahue thought he heard a knock on the corridor door. He was nearest, so he stepped into the foyer, opened the door and looked down into the face of the girl. Before she could open her mouth he said:

  “You’d better beat it.”

  “But I just wanted to—”

  “Beat it.” She didn’t know yet. “Later—later.”

  He closed the door in her face and strolled back into the living-room.

  “Was that somebody?” Kelly McPard asked.

  “No.”

  Lankford had gone into the bedroom again.

  “Listen, Donny,” McPard said, smiling persuasively, “you sure that’s all took place between you and Loftman?”

  “That’s all, Kel.”

  McPard nibbled on his lower lip. “The man’s had at least a two and a half hours start. The clerk gave a pretty good description of him and I’ve notified all air lines, train terminals and bus lines. Far as I can figure out, he left his baggage behind—one suitcase.”

  “Who?”

  “Loftman, Loftman.”

  Donahue brought his lips together and swung his gaze towards the bedroom door.

  Phalen went past saying, “Well, I’ve got to buzz off.” The door slammed behind him.

  Lankford came back into the livingroom planting his feet slowly and heavily, his hands behind his back, his head lowered and a mournful scowl on his face. Then he threw his arms outward, let them flop back to his sides.

  “Well,” he said heavily, impressively, “that’s life: here today, gone tomorrow, and the devil takes the hindermost. They tell me Bickford was a good egg, a hard-working house dick. Tough. I hear he has a wife or a mother or something over in Terre Haute, Indiana. He comes from Terre Haute, Indiana. I was there once, the time I was contradicting Goo-Goo Dorshinsky, for murder. Goo-Goo won four bucks offa me on the ride back, playing poker. I had a awful time with Goo-Goo’s wife the day the State gives him the works. I sits up with her all night account of she wanted to commit suicide. It takes me just eleven hours to talk her out of it. Six years ago. She always sends me a Christmas card.”

  Chapter V

  Miss Laidlaw’s horn-rimmed spectacles were large and her thin, triangular face was small. Her eyes were calm. Her neat, flat haircomb carried out the motif of her prim lips, her chaste dress, her large low-heeled shoes. She was shadowlike and competent.

  “It all sounds very involved, Mr. Donahue,” she said. “I don’t see any reason why the agency should meddle with it. After all, Mr. Loftman didn’t really engage you, and he is not on our files. Therefore, since you asked me, I think you ought to leave well enough alone.”

  He sat in a deep brown study. “It’s clearly a police job,” he said.

  She nodded primly. “Of course. If you don’t think the girl is actually involved, it would be unfair to mention the fact that she was there. I hate the way newspapers like to involve pretty women in these things.”

  “You and me both.” He sat up, leaned on his elbows, frowned down at his big strong hands. “It was just an impulse that made me send her away. Part of the impulse, I guess, was because I didn’t want her to see Loftman all smashed up. At the time, of course, I thought it was Loftman who was dead. I think that was the main part of the impulse.” He picked up a pen, began signing correspondence.

  Miss Laidlaw returned to her office, closing the connecting door. But a minute later she opened it, to say:

  “Mr. Phalen.”

  Donahue was eying a small bronze effigy of Jack Dempsey. “I’m busy.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She closed the door but after a moment opened it again and shrugged. “He says it’s of vital importance.”

  Donahue sat back. “Okey,” he sighed wearily.

  Phalen strolled in wearing a sly, insinuative smile. He shut the door with a backward kick and said, “Was she really a blonde, Donny?”

  “D’you know only one joke, Red?”

  “I mean, was she really?”

  Donahue clasped his hands behind his head. “Go ahead, Red; get it off your chest.”

  Phalen threw a small, neatly folded handkerchief onto the desk and sat down. “Exhibit number what?” he said, with exaggerated complacency.

  Donahue did not remove his hands from behind his head. He glanced casually at the handkerchief, then up at Phalen. He didn’t say anything and his face showed a large lack of interest.

  Phalen gestured languidly. “Pick it up. Look at it.
Go ahead. It won’t bite.”

  Donahue picked it up, looked at it, saw the initials FC on it and then tossed it negligently back to the desk. “Now go on from there, Red.”

  “I think maybe it’s your move now.”

  “Are you going to horse around or are you going to tell me why you came in here?”

  Phalen chuckled dryly. “You know, the funny thing about it was that I thought you really were kidding about some woman. That’s you all over; a guy never knows whether he’s coming, or going with you. Where does the blonde fit in, Donny?”

  “You’re still horsing, Red.”

  Phalen leaned forward and said intimately, “Listen, Donny; you’ve always had me wrong. You could never take a joke. Just because one time I thought it would be a great laugh to purloin some information from your files, why”—he looked astonished—“you’re down on me for life. We could do a lot for each other. I could help you and you could help me.”

  “I’ll worry along solo, Red.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. You never know. Look, I could have taken this handkerchief right around to Kelly McPard. But did I? No. I wanted to be a right guy. I brought it to you.”

  “Why me?”

  “Now you’re horsing. Over the apartment, while I was fiddling around with the radio trying to get the Rhythm Twins—friends of mine—you went to the door. When you came back in the living-room Kel asked you if anyone had knocked and you said no.”

  Donahue nodded.

  Phalen went on: “I picked up this handkerchief as I left the apartment. It was lying just outside the door. It wouldn’t have been there five minutes before some cops went out and one of them would have seen it and picked it up. It was during that time you went to the door, when Kel thought he heard a knock.” Phalen pointed. “There was a dame out there, Donny. I’ll eat my hat on it!”

  “Eat it.”

  “I haven’t told Kelly anything about it. I haven’t said a word about it.” He laid his hand on the desk, palm upward. “I came here to put my cards on the table. Why be an Airdale?”

  “You came here figuring to get in on the ground floor.”

  “All right; say I did, say I did. I’m still giving you a break. If I was a wrong guy, I’d have run to Kel in the first place.”

  Donahue shook his head. “No you wouldn’t’ve.” He leaned forward. “Kel’s in the dark. You think I’m in the know. Kel couldn’t have given you anything. You think I can. That’s why you came here, Red, like a Greek bearing gifts.”

  “Horsefeathers!”

  “When you’re sober, Red, you make a good show at liking me. When you’re tight, the truth comes out.”

  “Ah, hell, a guy tight’s liable to say anything.”

  “Anything he means, yes.”

  Phalen jumped up and snarled, “Okey, have it your way! But you’ll trade, sweetheart, or”—he scooped up the handkerchief—“I’ll bounce this in Kelly’s lap!”

  Donahue put his hands behind his head again. “I’ve nothing to trade, Red. Just because you pick up a woman’s handkerchief in a hotel corridor, you get ideas.”

  “What a sweet liar you are!” He thrust the handkerchief out at arm’s length. “Do you or don’t you?”

  “I wish I could, Red, but I can’t. I’ve got nothing.”

  Phalen jammed the handkerchief into his pocket and went out like a blast of ill wind.

  After a minute, Miss Laidlaw came to stand primly in the connecting doorway. “You’re too generous, Mr. Donahue, to even let that man inside your door.”

  Donahue’s forehead was wrinkled darkly with thought. “Maybe I should have told him—but it stuck in my throat. I hate that guy, I guess.”

  Chapter VI

  He lived in a two-room apartment on the South Side. There was a small kitchenette and sometimes he made his own breakfast, but not often, and sometimes, when some boys came in to play poker, he made steak sandwiches, late at night. He was lying on the divan at eleven that night, with newspapers strewn about him, when the telephone rang. He got up and went into the bedroom and unhooked the instrument.

  “This is—is me,” she said.

  “What’s the matter now?”

  “I—I’m in a drug-store around the corner. Could I see you a few minutes here?”

  “What’s the matter with my apartment?”

  “Well… all right.”

  “Four-one-four. You run the elevator yourself.”

  He hung up and wandered into the bathroom, where he splashed cold water in his face and ran a comb through his hair. Going to the bedroom again, he put on an old robe. Then he went into the kitchenette, put ice and a jigger of bourbon into a tumbler and sloshed in ginger ale.

  The buzzer sounded and, carrying the drink to the door, he let her in. She had on the black lapin coat again but a different hat. Before he had quite closed the door behind her, she said in a breathless voice:

  “I—I heard the late news bulletins on the radio.”

  He extended his hand towards an armchair. “Sit down.”

  She sat down and then he crossed to the divan and made the newspapers crackle beneath his weight. He let the hand holding the drink hang between his knees and he regarded her curiously but not anxiously. He was patient, and took a few sips at his glass.

  Sitting on the edge of the chair, with her ankles crossed, she was not at ease and her face was flushed from what apparently was a combination of an inner excitement and the cold out-of-doors. It made her look very attractive in a fresh, wholesome way, like frost in the early fall.

  “I understand now,” she said, nodding, looking gravely at him, “what you meant when you chased me away from the apartment door.”

  He was candid: “I thought it was Loftman.”

  She did not understand quite what he meant and her eyebrows lifted.

  “I mean,” he said, “I thought it was Loftman was dead.”

  “Did you send me away because you thought I had something to do with it?”

  “I just did it on an impulse. Besides”—he shrugged—“I didn’t think it would be pleasant, seeing him.”

  She clasped her hands together and a shudder, hardly perceptible, passed over her body. “I’m a little afraid,” she said.

  He looked down into his glass and did not ask why.

  She looked frankly at him. “I mean, I’m afraid of being involved in this. Not that I’m guilty of anything. I just—well—you know…” She inhaled, then let out a little sigh, and then she was thoughtful for a moment, her eyes downcast; but presently she said: “I came to ask if anything had been found out since—” She made a little gesture which indicated “the crime.”

  “I don’t know,” he replied, still looking down into his glass. “The police may have found something, but I’m not in on it.”

  Her eyes lay gravely on him. “Did you tell them about me?”

  He shook his head.

  “I had to see you,” she told him earnestly. “I wanted to know where I stood. I thought you might have told the police. What puzzles me, though, is your apparent total lack of curiosity about all this.”

  He bent his brows and walked up and down the room. “I don’t see why I should get steamed up about it. I don’t want to get mixed up in the case because there’s no reason why I should. I don’t think you’re in any way involved in the criminal angle of it, because if you were, you wouldn’t have popped up outside the apartment door yesterday.”

  “But they insinuate Mr. Loftman is a murderer! I can’t, I can’t believe it!”

  He said: “You can’t blame the police. They find the house dick dead in Loftman’s apartment. They don’t find Loftman. So naturally they draw conclusions. It’s human nature.”

  She stood up. She stood very straight, like an athlete, though you felt she was not athletically inclined. “Tomorrow,” she said, “if nothing turns up, will you work for me?”

  He looked at her.

  “I mean,” she explained, “as a detective. I haven’t
much money but I imagine I can pay you. Will you try to find out where Mr. Loftman is?” And then she asked immediately, “Does a private detective have to reveal everything to the police, if he works for a client?”

  “It’s about like a lawyer and his client. Only we’ve got to use a little more discretion and we like to have faith in the client.”

  “Have you sufficient faith in me?”

  He stood spread-legged, gazing down at the floor. He felt a sharp personal angle creeping into things. He could not help liking the girl, she was so deadly in earnest. And yet more than anything he wished to keep his hands off this case, he wanted to know as little as possible about it, for he felt that somehow, sometime, he might have to tell the police that she was acquainted with Loftman. And he had already burned a couple of bridges.

  “Well, I’m sorry,” she said, in a slightly injured voice, and started towards the door.

  “No. Wait a minute. I was just thinking.” He paused and looked at the back of her head. “Suppose we wait until tomorrow. I guess we can do something about it.”

  She turned and said gravely, “But you’ve got to have faith in me first.”

  “I have,” he said.

  There were male voices in the hall and an instant later a knock on the door. Donahue raised a finger to his lips. He took hold of the girl’s hand and walked her swiftly, silently into the kitchenette, and pointed to a door about two feet square in the lower part of a white cupboard.

  “That’s for service delivery,” he explained. He opened the door, revealing a square compartment whose back was another door. “That one leads to the hall. Wait about a minute, then move that snaplock back and crawl out. Close the door again.”

  She was anxious. “What’s the matter?”

  “Police, I think.”

  He turned, stepped back into the living-room and closed the kitchenette door. They were knocking again. He rumpled his hair and then walked noisily to the corridor door. It was Kelly McPard. Lankford was with him.