The Big Book of Female Detectives

by The Big Book of Female Detectives (retail) (epub)

  “Certainly,” said the young, affable clerk.

  Cardigan watched him turn and slip the envelope into one of the pigeon holes. He saw that it was numbered 407 and he was on his way toward the elevator bank by the time the clerk faced front again. Entering a waiting car, he was lifted to the fourth floor. His big feet swung down a wide, airy corridor, and he knocked on the door numbered 407.

  Bernice Hull opened it and Cardigan said: “How do you do, Mrs. Hull.”

  “Oh, Mr. Cardigan,” she said brightly, as though she had not seen him a short time before. “Do come in.”

  Cardigan pushed into a large living room and saw Hull standing with his back to a window. He was holding a highball in his hand and he did not seem pleased.

  “Well, so you’re back again. How did you find out I’d moved here?”

  “Just cruised around the hotels and asked the desk clerks.”

  Hull made an angry sound in his throat and strode into the bedroom. Bernice went after him and Cardigan heard her urging him to come back to the living room. He did not come and presently Cardigan strolled over and leaned in the bedroom doorway. Hull was sitting on one of the twin beds, taking a long pull at his drink and looking mutinously over the rim of the glass.

  “I wish,” he said, “you would please stop pestering me. I told you once that I won’t see him and that goes. And the more you go on pestering me, the stubborner I’m going to get. Let him go hang his head somewhere. Let them all hang their heads somewhere. This is one time I can get back at them and, boy, I’m going to get back at them.”

  Cardigan said: “Mr. Hull, give your ears a chance. Personally, I don’t give a hoot how you get back at your uncle, but this is different. You see, I’m in a spot now. Your uncle doesn’t believe I found you. He doesn’t believe I interviewed you. He thinks it was a gag.”

  Hull stood up. “Swell! Have a drink.”

  “Uh-uh,” Cardigan grunted, shaking his head. “You see, Mr. Hull, after you moved from that apartment last evening, your uncle went there, steamed up, I suppose, to see you.”

  Hull laughed gleefully. “Swell! I guess I lighted out just in time. Boy, that’s a good one! Ha-ha!”

  Cardigan was very grave. “No,” he said. “The joke is on me.”

  He explained briefly what had happened.

  Hull squinted intently. “You must be crazy!” he said.

  “I am not crazy. I have to produce you, to satisfy your uncle and the police. I’m in a spot. If I can’t produce you, I’ll be arrested.”

  Bernice gripped her husband’s arm. “You’ll have to go, Hughie! You must go!”

  * * *

  —

  Hull glared at Cardigan. “It’s a trick,” he said angrily. “I don’t believe he was waylaid. I don’t believe it at all. It’s just a trick—to get me to see him. He knows that if he gets me in front of him, I’ll listen to reason—and I’m not going to do that.” He laughed ironically. “You’re pretty smart, Mr. Cardigan, but the gag doesn’t work.” He shook a forefinger violently up and down. “Those people are going to pay for the way they treated me when I was a kid!”

  Cardigan folded his arms, looked very grave. “It’s no gag, Mr. Hull. I’m in a spot, I tell you. Your uncle believes I tricked him and he’s got the cops believing it, too. If it wasn’t for that, I’d not be bothering you. But”—he made a gesture—“get your hat and coat.”

  Hull shook his head. “Don’t you believe it. I know a gag when I see it. My mind’s made up.”

  Cardigan smiled coolly. “You’re going, Mr. Hull.”

  Hull scooped up the telephone, said into the mouthpiece: “Send up the house officer—immediately!” He hung up, smiled. “After all, Mr. Cardigan, you’ve no authority—”

  “Why, you dirty rat! For two cents, I’d—”

  “Oh, please, please,” whimpered Bernice Hull.

  Hull said: “Maybe you’d rather go now, instead of being thrown out.”

  “I’ll go now, bright boy. But I’ll be back.”

  Cardigan spun on his heel, strode from the apartment. He stood for a few moments in the lobby, taking quick, irritable puffs at a cigarette. His eyes settled on a pair of large, highly polished black shoes, traveled up a pair of stout legs to a newspaper behind which a man sat. He strolled over and said in a low voice: “Just like an ostrich, Augie.”

  Hunerkopf lowered the newspaper. “Why, if it ain’t Mr. Cardigan! I always said, it’s a small world—”

  “You couldn’t possibly by any chance have tailed me here, could you?”

  “Who, me?” said Hunerkopf, rising and looking very hurt and then saying in an injured tone, “I just like to sit here a lot. I like the atmosphere, kind of. It takes me out of my work.”

  “There’s one thing I like about you, Augie. You’re twice the liar I am. Come on outside.”

  The lumpy detective trailed Cardigan to the sidewalk and they crossed the street and entered a lunch-and-soda fountain.

  “Ah,” said Hunerkopf, rubbing his hands, “I see they got baked apple on the menu. Good for the system. Join me in a baked apple and we’ll—”

  “Wait a minute. For once, Augie, keep your mind off your stomach. You’ll die of too much health, someday. Listen now—”

  “Well, can’t I listen while I eat a baked apple? Then we’ll be killing two stones with one bird.”

  Cardigan sighed. “O. K., Augie—O. K.”

  While Hunerkopf gouged out a tremendous baked apple, Cardigan talked and kept watching the hotel entrance across the street. He wound up by saying: “Will you? You wouldn’t want to see me get tossed in jail, would you?”

  “Well, no. Trouble with jails, Mr. Cardigan—well, I wrote a long letter to a newspaper once, kind of urging all jails to feed their inmates more fruit—”

  “There he comes now. Pay up and—”

  “Gosh, I just remembered I ain’t got nothing smaller than a twenty.”

  “You’re no dummy,” Cardigan said, and paid.

  * * *

  —

  They walked across the street just as Hull and his wife were climbing into a cab. A porter had already stowed their baggage in front. He was about to close the door when Hunerkopf took it away from him, lifted his hat, and said into the cab: “Good day. I’m Hunerkopf from the cops.”

  He climbed in and Cardigan followed, pulling out one of the extra seats. Hunerkopf planted himself between Hull and Bernice. Hull tried to get up, his face white with anger.

  “Sh, Mr. Hull,” Hunerkopf said. And to the driver, “Drive down to Market Street. What’s the number, Mr. Cardigan?”

  Cardigan gave the address of the agency.

  “You can’t do this!” Hull cried.

  “You wouldn’t be nice,” Cardigan said, “so this is my come-back.”

  Hunerkopf tried to make polite conversation with Bernice. “Do you like San Francisco, Mrs. Hull?”

  She was troubled, confused. “Y-yes—of course.”

  “Do you, Mr. Hull?”

  “I tell you, I’m not going!”

  The cab was speeding.

  Hunerkopf patted Hull’s knee. “You should take life a little easy, Mr. Hull, like it was a bowl of cherries. Take my partner, Mr. McGovern. He don’t. And look at him. Dyspepsia half the time.” He drew a package from his pocket. “Have a fig?”

  “To hell with your figs!”

  “You, Mrs. Hull?”

  “N-no, thank you.”

  Hull yelled: “Stop this cab!”

  The driver braked.

  Hunerkopf said: “Driver, you stop where I told you to.”

  It was a short ride and presently the cab pulled up in front of the agency building. They all got out.

  Hull was angry and touchy, and when the
y walked into the office he spun and said: “By God, I’ll have you arrested for this! Why don’t you spend your time finding criminals instead of picking on honest citizens?”

  Hunerkopf held his hat an inch above his head. “We meet again, Miss Seaward.”

  And Cardigan said: “Pat, phone Mr. Strang and tell him to come right over.”

  She telephoned.

  “Now phone McGovern and tell him, too. I’ll show these guys if I’m a bum.”

  Hull began pacing up and down the inner office. His wife sat troubled in a chair, her anxious eyes following him. Hunerkopf spread himself complacently in a chair and chewed on figs. Cardigan leaned by the window and looked down into Market Street. Ten minutes later he said: “Here comes Mr. Strang now.”

  * * *

  —

  Cardigan saw Strang step out of a taxi, pay up, and he saw the taxi start off. Strang started for the building entrance but was accosted by two men. The hair on Cardigan’s nape stiffened. He saw Strang turn and move across the street, the two men flanking him.

  Cardigan spun, yelled: “Come on, Augie! Pat, stay here with them! Augie, snap on it!”

  Cardigan sailed out of the office, plunged down the hallway, down the stairs, out into the street. He caught a glimpse of a sedan whipping away from the opposite curb. He caught a glimpse of Strang in back. Hunerkopf came piling out.

  “Hey!” Cardigan yelled. He raised his gun and took a shot at a tire, but the car was already speeding and he missed.

  Hunerkopf jumped to the footboard of a parked roadster in which a man sat. “Chase that car,” he said.

  “Who are you?”

  Hunerkopf showed his badge.

  The man shook his head. “Not me.” He climbed out. “Try it yourself.”

  “I’ll drive,” Cardigan snapped, jumping in behind the wheel.

  Hunerkopf crashed into the seat beside him. “What?”

  “Strang.”

  “What about him?”

  “Two guys.”

  “Oh.”

  Cardigan swung the car about in the center of the street and opened it up. It was a fast job. Hunerkopf had his gun out. He pushed up the windshield a bit, but the wind forced it shut again. “They’re making a left,” he said.

  Cardigan screeched the tires on the next left, then made a right turn into Mission Street. “They’re heading places,” he said.

  The sedan was doing about sixty, whipping and roaring through scattered traffic on a busy street. Traffic cops blew whistles. Hunerkopf leaned out to wave at the traffic cops. “Hello, Emil!” he yelled. “Hello, Vincent!”

  “Never mind your pals,” Cardigan said. “Keep your eyes on that sedan while I watch the traffic. If we ever hit anything, we’ll land in San Mateo county. This car can step, but they forgot to put brakes on it.”

  “Ain’t that something?”

  “That sedan’s no cripple, either.”

  “They’re cutting through Eleventh.”

  Cardigan followed the sedan through Eleventh, through Division, and out Potrero. “They’re heading for the Bayshore highway,” he yelled.

  In a few minutes they struck the Bayshore road, a fast speedway running south along the tidelands. Cardigan slammed the accelerator pedal against the floorboards. He could do no more. Hunerkopf looked at the speedometer.

  “We’re doing eighty-two. Did you ever have a blow-out?”

  “Why bring that up?”

  “I did, once. It’s a experience, it is—Look, ain’t we sort of gaining, sort of?”

  “Inching.”

  Crash!

  The glass windguard on Cardigan’s side shattered.

  “They like me, Augie—”

  Crash!

  The one on Hunerkopf’s side vanished.

  * * *

  —

  They slid deep into the seats. Another shot drilled the windshield and carried away the rear-view mirror.

  “I always wanted to buy a little farm and retire,” Hunerkopf said.

  A fourth bullet shattered the left cowl light. The roadster was gaining.

  “In five minutes,” Cardigan shouted, “we’ll be on ’em.”

  “Or else, Mr. Cardigan. I’d like to take some pot shots at them tires, but if I blow one that car’ll land over on the S.P. tracks and Mr. Strang—”

  “There goes the other cowl light. Who the hell got me into this?”

  Hunerkopf said: “Here goes.”

  Left-handed, he fired, emptying his gun. In a moment spots of moisture began to sprinkle the windshield.

  “I got it,” Hunerkopf said. “I put holes in their gas tank.” He reloaded his gun.

  Three minutes later the sedan swung from the road onto a large cindered space in front of a gas station. Dust and cinders flew as the wheels were locked. Cardigan braked and slid the roadster into the dust, and cinders peppered the windshield. Two men jumped out of the sedan, knocked over a man standing alongside a touring car, and jumped in.

  The roadster’s brakes were bad. Cardigan swerved to miss the sedan but the roadster slammed head-on into the rear of the touring car and pushed the touring car up between two gas pumps. The two men leaped out, spun with drawn guns. The roadster’s windshield was smashed by the gunfire as Cardigan and Hunerkopf fell out. Hunerkopf fired from a kneeling position. The smaller of the two men fell down, his feet kicking up cinders. The other galloped off, with Cardigan after him. Cardigan fired one shot above his head, another at his feet.

  “Dope!” he yelled. “Stop!”

  The big man held up his hands, stopped and turned around, his chest rising and falling rapidly, his breath pumping loudly from his open mouth.

  “Drop the rod behind you,” Cardigan said.

  The man dropped it.

  Cardigan picked it up, kicked the man in the seat of the pants and said: “Now walk back.”

  By this time the small man was standing up.

  Hunerkopf said: “I hardly even hit him.”

  Mr. Strang was walking toward them, his face gray, grim. “By Judas Priest, Mr. Cardigan,” he said, “I was ready to swear you’d got me into another trap!”

  “Yeah? Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Strang. For that lousy fifty bucks you gave me, you’re sure getting service. Climb in the roadster. We’ll lock these bad boys in the rumble and take you back to my office. Your nephew’s there and—frankly—I wouldn’t mind if you popped him in the snout.”

  CHAPTER IV

  Red Hot

  Bernice Hull was crying. She sat in the swivel chair at Cardigan’s desk, her arms on the desk, her face buried in her arms. The sobs that wrenched muffled into her arms also made her shoulders convulse. Pat, grave-faced, stood beside her, patting the convulsive shoulders.

  She said to McGovern: “Every time you walk in here, something happens. You’re like a bull in a China shop.”

  McGovern rubbed his knuckles. “I take a lot of horsing from that boss of yours, Miss Seaward, but I don’t take it from a perfect stranger. If you don’t like it, you can lump it.”

  Hull sat slumped on a chair, a welt on his chin, his head groggy, his eyes a little glazed. McGovern had smacked him.

  McGovern looked reproachfully at Pat. “I walk in here. I find you holding a gun on this bird Hull—”

  “It was for his own good,” she blazed back. “And besides, Cardigan told me to keep him here.”

  McGovern yelled: “He was insolent!”

  “You’re just angry,” Pat said, “because Cardigan proved what he said he would prove. You’re cantankerous—”

  “Young woman!” McGovern roared.

  The outer door opened and Cardigan swung in, his battered hat crushed low on his forehead, his overcoat buttoned wrong, and his ti
e over one shoulder.

  “Hi, gang,” he said.

  Hunerkopf came in next, hauling the two manacled men and looking very placid, fat, and self-satisfied. He raised his hat an inch above his head.

  “Miss Seaward—”

  Cardigan lit a butt. “What’s the matter with Hull?”

  Pat said: “Oh, Mr. McGovern hit him.”

  “Where’s that Mr. Strang?” McGovern barked darkly.

  “Be up in a minute, Mac,” Cardigan said. “All the excitement upset his stomach. Then Augie gave him a fig and that made him worse, so he stopped downstairs in the drug store to get a sedative.”

  “Who are these two guys?”

  “We’ll probably get around to that later. They snatched Mr. Strang right in front downstairs, as he was getting out of a cab. Augie and I shooed after them. They won’t talk, but probably your records at headquarters will.”

  “Oh, they won’t talk!” exploded McGovern. He spun on the smaller of the two men. “Who are you?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Oh, insolent, eh?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why, you little punk, you—”

  “Mac,” said Hunerkopf, raising a hand. “Remember, there’s ladies present. Besides, you always get indigestion when—”

  “Hands up, everybody!” Hull was on his feet, a gun gripped in his hand.

  “Oh, I never knew he had a gun!” Pat cried.

  “I’m going out,” Hull said in a shaky voice. “Get out of my way. Get out of my way!”

  “Hughie!” cried Bernice, horrified.

  “Drop that, you fool!” Cardigan snarled.

  Hull’s face was dead white. “Get out of—”

  “Hughie!”

  Bernice jumped up, her eyes wide and stricken. “Oh, dear God, Hughie, don’t—”