Floom put in, “About eight months ago, completely.”
Donahue turned to the carpenter. “Pry that panel out, will you?”
The carpenter took a chisel from his kit and pried the panel out. The space it disclosed was empty. Kelly McPard sighed.
“Did that seem to come off easily?” Donahue asked.
“Yes, sir, it did.”
Donahue looked at McPard. “A great deal of money could have been planted in behind that panel, Kel.”
“But in getting the panel back,” Floom said, “they would have had to hammer it. I don’t see any marks on the paint.”
Donahue went into the bedroom and came back with a pillow. “Let’s borrow that hammer,” he said to the carpenter. He then placed one corner of the pillow against the panel and hammered the pillow until the panel was again secure. The hammering had left no mark.
“Think it over, Kel,” he said.
“It listens,” McPard nodded, his voice very soft.
Donahue turned to Floom. “Who has the apartment beneath this?”
“It’s vacant at present.”
“How long?”
“Well, it may seem to be a curious circumstance, but it was vacated at about noon of the day Mr. Bickford was killed. But wait a minute.” He smiled, shook his head. “No connection with this. The occupant just moved to another suite, on the other side of the hotel. She said the main street was becoming too public, too noisy. So we moved her. She’s quite old.”
Donahue eyed McPard quizzically. “Should we, Kel?”
“No harm, I guess.”
Floom took them to the eighth floor, on the north side of the building, and knocked on the door of 816. It was opened by a small, frilly old woman with a high, knotty haircomb.
Floom bowed and said: “Excuse me, Mrs. Telfair, but the police would like to ask you a few questions.”
Her head went back. “Ask me a few questions?”
Kelly McPard’s smooth, smiling voice crept in: “Just a few, madam. It’s in connection with what happened in the apartment above the one you used to occupy. Did you ever hear any hammering there, or a sound like wood being pried apart?”
“I don’t think I did,” she replied indignantly.
“We just thought that perhaps you had your apartment changed because of the noise upstairs.”
“Well; there was noise sometimes, but it wasn’t because of that I moved. No, it certainly wasn’t because of that.”
McPard was gentle of voice and gesture. “Something else, madam?”
Her mouth screwed up, her eyes flashed. “Well, if you must know, yes. My only pleasure in life nowadays is reading. I used to sit by that large window in 445 practically all day long, reading. I’m a very nervous person and I suppose very irritable at times. Well, sir, I became tired of being gaped at.”
“Gaped at?”
“Yes, gaped at. In that cheap hotel across the street. A busybody kept continually using binoculars and I know he trained them on my favorite window.”
“For how long?”
“It must have been for a couple of days. I finally became exasperated and had my apartment changed.”
“Was it a man, madam?”
“I think it was.”
McPard and Donahue looked at each other and then Donahue said: “Do you mind coming down to 445, madam, and pointing out just what window the binoculars were used from?”
“It seems silly, but I don’t mind, I suppose.”
They all went down to 445, and standing at the window, the old woman pointed. “That one.”
“How many windows up and how many from the left?” Donahue asked.
She counted, then said: “Six up and the fourth from the left.”
“It’s practically on a level,” McPard observed, “with the fifth floor of this hotel.”
Donahue nodded. “It’s very much so.”
Chapter XIV
As they walked across the street to the Hotel Malvern, McPard said: “If it’s so, maybe they left around some fingerprints. And if they’re O’Fallon’s and Fauls’ prints, it’s a hundred to one they had something to do with it. And then I can shoot an alarm for them, nation-wide, if I have to. They could be anywhere by this time.”
McPard had with him the card on which O’Fallon and Fauls had registered at the Coronet as Herbert Gearman and P.T. Lancaster, of Dodge City, Iowa. McPard addressed the clerk at the Malvern’s desk:
“I’m from Police Headquarters. Looking at your hotel from the front, what room number on the sixth floor would be the fourth window from the left?”
The clerk turned to a framed plan of the hotel. “That’s a double, number 627.”
“Who is in it?”
The clerk referred to the register. “Two gentlemen—Philip Cranston and R. B. Escott, of Milwaukee.”
“When did they register?”
“On the afternoon of the fifth.”
McPard leaned forward and said very quietly: “They’re still here, are they?”
“Of course.”
The lieutenant looked at Donahue. “Now it doesn’t get warm anymore, Donny.”
“Look at the handwriting.”
McPard looked. Donahue looked also. They checked it with the handwriting on the Coronet’s card, and McPard shook his head. “I’m no expert, but I’ll swear it was never made by the same man.”
“Maybe O’Fallon registers sometimes, Fauls others.”
“Now that makes it a little warmer again.” And to the clerk: “Have you any idea what these men look like?”
“No, sir. I see by this record that I checked them in, but I don’t remember what they look like. I work the cashier’s desk too and I’ve noticed that all their meals have been served in the room, and they used a lot of ice and mineral water.”
“Tell room service that when this room rings again, they should say, yes, the stuff will be brought right up. But don’t send it up. Tell me. We’ll sit over there and wait. Come on, Donny.”
An hour and fifteen minutes later the clerk came over to say, “There was a call for cracked ice and a syphon.”
McPard stood up. “Okey, mister; thanks to you.”
Donahue and McPard rode in the elevator to the sixth floor, got off and walked slowly down a narrow corridor.
“Better take out John Rosco,” McPard murmured, “just in case.”
Donahue withdrew a revolver from beneath his left arm and Kelly McPard knocked on the door. They stood side by side, their guns held low, down against their thighs. The door was opened by a tall, yellow-haired man and McPard jammed his gun hard against this man’s stomach and said:
“Raise them, Fauls.”
The yellow-haired man almost fell over backwards, with a sharp inarticulate cry high in the roof of his mouth. A man lying on the bed, with a bandaged foot, whipped a gun from the pocket of a blue silk robe and fired. The bullet whanged into the transom above the door.
Donahue, standing sidewise in the doorway, fired and hit the man in the chest and plastered him back against the pillow. The man set his mouth and tried to swing his gun down but Donahue strode towards him, his own gun leveled, his low voice saying:
“Don’t do it, O’Fallon.”
“Did you get him, Donny?” McPard asked.
“Plenty.”
O’Fallon let his arm and the gun drop to the bed. He groaned, closed his eyes, gritted his teeth.
“I’m sorry, O’Fallon,” Donahue said, “but you should have known better.”
Fauls was breathing noisily, red color high on his cheeks.
Kelly McPard smiled up into his blonde face. “It’s just one of those things, Jess,” he said in his friendly way.
Chapter XV
Miss Laidlaw held up a slip of paper as Donahue came into the office. She said: “Miss Chester phoned about twenty minutes ago and left this number and said she would wait half an hour.”
And Louie said: “Them fingerprints and all are on your desk, Mr. Donahue.”
He was sitting at his desk studying the records of two petty criminals named Michael O’Hara and Dominick Cairoli, alias the Kick-In Kid, when Miss Laidlaw said: “Miss Chester is on the wire.”
He unhooked the receiver. “Your favorite detective,” he said.
“Listen,” her low, anxious voice came over the wire. “I’m calling from the dressing-room in the Fisk Theater. I don’t know what to do. When I stepped into the street from your office building, a man was standing on the curb. I thought he looked curiously at me. Then I noticed he was following me.”
“What’s he look like?”
“Well, red hair—”
“Then what did you do?”
“I went into a department store and fooled around in there for a about half an hour, but when I came out, after I’d walked a while, I saw he was still following me. I didn’t want to go home, because that would have meant perhaps getting Aunt Bethia involved, and she’s a bundle of nerves as it is. So I stopped in a restaurant and frittered away about an hour. But when I went out, well, he was still around. Then I went into the Fisk and spent about two hours and a half watching two very stupid pictures, but when I came out into the lobby, I saw him standing outside. So I went into the dressing-room and phoned you and I’ve been here ever since. What should I do?”
“Come right over here.”
“But—”
“Right over here. Let him follow you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Her “All right, then,” was breathless and confused.
She came in about fifteen minutes later and almost instantly she cried, “He did! He followed me to the outside of the building and I think I saw him come in as I started up in the elevator.”
“You look rattled. Sit down and try to be calm.”
“Calm! After I’ve been followed—”
He smiled, made soothing gestures. “Down… and easy; take things a little easy.”
She sat on the very edge of the chair. “But why do you suppose he followed me?”
Donahue pointed to her handbag. “Your initials on that bag are big enough to attract attention.”
“But it’s supposed to be rather smart.”
“I don’t doubt it. But Red saw them as you left this building. He remembered the initials on the handkerchief you dropped in the corridor of the Coronet.”
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear, what’ll I do? What will I do?”
“For one thing,” he said, leaning forward on his elbows, “you can listen to me. I want to tell you that we got the fellows who killed Marcus Rathbun and Bickford.”
“You—what?”
“In the Malvern Hotel. While they lived at the Coronet they ran some pretty high card games and made a lot of money, but they were wise donkeys and buried most of it behind a doorway panel. They were kicked precipitately out of the apartment by Bickford and a metropolitan detective and bounced on to a westbound train. They hadn’t the time to pry open the panel and get their money. It was about thirty thousand dollars.
“They got off at Kansas City and came back here and took a room in the Malvern, across the street from the Coronet. From their window they could watch the apartment from which they’d been thrown out. With binoculars, of course. They used powerful ones. They wanted to become familiar with what the occupant looked like. Then they saw me in there and Fauls recognized me from newspaper photos. He stuck me up in the lavatory at the hockey games and tried to find out why I was in the apartment. Rathbun kept close to the hotel, but finally they saw him get dressed for the street. Fauls with his hat way down, his collar way up, hurried over and parked just inside the Coronet door. Rathbun left, taking his key along.
“Fauls followed Rathbun, who walked rapidly—obviously he was out for the air; for he took to the park. O’Fallon by this time was up ahead of Rathbun. They worked it nicely. On one of the quiet lanes, O’Fallon stopped and bent down to adjust a shoelace. Rathbun came up. O’Fallon stopped him and then Fauls came up. Fauls took Rathbun’s hotel key and O’Fallon said to Rathbun, ‘Now you and I will just continue to walk in the park until my friend rejoins us.’
“Fauls went back to the Coronet, ducked in a side entrance and took the stairway up. He had a chisel and a hammer with him. He pried out the panel in 545, jammed the money into all his pockets and into the lining of his overcoat. He was stepping back into the corridor when Bickford happened along and jumped at him. Fauls ran into the bedroom, with Bickford after him. He turned on Bickford and cracked him with the butt of his gun. Bickford went down. Fauls waited a while, listening. Then, before leaving, he took a look at Bickford. Bickford was dead. Murder.
“Fauls slipped out, walked up the street and stole a car. He drove out to the park and picked up O’Fallon and Rathbun. O’Fallon was as surprised as anyone at the sight of Fauls in a car. Fauls drew him aside and explained what had happened. They were in a jam. They’d intended all along returning the key to Rathbun and letting him go. But now there was murder. Rathbun could describe them to the police.
“It was O’Fallon who got the bright idea, after several hours of riding around, of doing away with Rathbun and making it look like suicide. He was the one who’d clipped an item from a Kansas City newspaper about carbon monoxide poisoning. He had a complete woman’s outfit at the Malvern, and while Fauls waited in the car with Rathbun, several blocks away, O’Fallon went back to the Malvern and dolled up. He rejoined the others and they began driving around, finally working down near the river. Then O’Fallon told Rathbun that they were going to rent a room. Rathbun would do the talking—or else. O’Fallon showed him the gun. So they left Fauls.
“What O’Fallon wanted was a room with a coal stove in it. They looked in three places and finally found one in the fourth. Then O’Fallon told Rathbun that he would not be harmed. He was to be detained for a couple of days and would then be released. He must have been pretty reassuring, which he meant to be. Because after a while Rathbun, who probably was fagged out from the nervous excitement, fell asleep on the bed.
“Fauls swiped his wallet and burned it in the stove. Then he put some coal on the fire, pulled the stove pipe from the chimney and stuffed up the hole with newspapers. He left the room, after unlatching the rear window, and for three hours waited in a stairwell on the floor below. Then he went out, around back, climbed the fire-escape and opened the rear window. He waited there for ten minutes. Rathbun did not move. Finally O’Fallon climbed in and saw he was dead.
“He replaced the key in the inside of the door, went back out the window, closed it and climbed down the fire-escape. He had on high-heeled shoes and he was almost to the bottom when he fell, turned his ankle. He walked several blocks, limping, and got into a taxi and returned to the Malvern. By the time he reached the room he could hardly walk. Fauls had discarded the stolen car half a mile from the hotel. Well, the ankle got worse and worse. O’Fallon could not stand on it. They couldn’t get away. But they didn’t worry much, because they figured they had done a smooth job. They had. They’d never have been caught if I hadn’t started to make up a fairy tale that turned, before long, into a true story that even I began to believe. It just goes to show what the forces of necessity will sometimes lead to.”
Miss Laidlaw stood in the connecting doorway. “He’s in again,” she said hopelessly.
Fern Chester, her eyes transfixed on Donahue, said: “It’s awful, it’s terrible,” in a low, cluttered voice.
And then she looked up and saw Red Phalen standing in the doorway, a small, sly smile on his lips. “In again, out again, in again,” he said laughing softly.
Fern Chester sat breathless, staring straight ahead.
“Sing your song, Red,” Donahue said, leaning back comfortably. “Though I know the words and music by heart.”
Phalen sauntered up to the desk, smiling insinuatively down at the girl. “If the young lady wears ‘FC’
on her handbag, she likely wears it on her handkerchiefs. Catch on, Donny?”
Donahue put his hands behind his head. “Red, would you like to lose your job?”
“I’d love to, Handsome.”
“Would like to get tossed in the jug?”
“Just cur-razy to!”
“The thing is, Red, I’m not kidding. Take a look at those two sheets of paper.”
“These?
“Those.”
Phalen picked up the two sheets of paper and lounged back on his heels with an exaggerated air of nonchalance. He considered the fingerprints and the petty criminal records of two youths named Michael O’Hara and Dominick Cairoli. Presently he did not appear so nonchalant. His eyes lifted towards Donahue as he let the two sheets of paper slide from his fingers. His lips twitched a little while the rest of his face grew dull.
Donahue said cheerfully: “I can pick those punks up in a minute, Red. It’s up to you.”
Phalen’s mouth went over to one side. “Fast, aren’t you?” he croaked.
Donahue laughed. “Or maybe you’re slow. Why, you cheap little sensation-hunting fathead, you’ve been scooped by every legman in town. While you were shadowing a will-o’-the-wisp practically all afternoon, history’s been made. Roll your hoop over to Headquarters and they’ll tell you who killed Bickford and Rathbun—and why.”
Despite himself, Phalen began to look a little ill.
Donahue roared with laughter.
Phalen turned on his heel, his face and neck crimson. He rushed out of the office, a blind, dizzy look in his eyes.
Fern Chester had not yet relaxed. “What does it mean?” she asked in a tense whisper.
“It means a little deal that’s not on the records. He sent two bums around to crash my files and I nailed them. Instead of arresting them, I turned them loose. It just means that he’ll never ring in that handkerchief gag again, because if he does, I’ll ring in the two bums and Red will lose his job and land in jail. It’s just the way we play house sometimes.”
She relaxed at last, and a tired but warm smile came to her face. “How good, how so very good you’ve been to me. I don’t see why.”
Tough as Nails: The Complete Cases of Donahue From the Pages of Black Mask Page 59