E. Hoffmann Price's Two-Fisted Detectives

by E. Hoffmann Price

  Then came the business of checking with cab drivers. It was sheer waste of time, and Cragin knew it; but he had to be doing something. Moreover, in the past, he had stumbled into leads by concentrating on trifles.

  “Guy’s been here a couple days with a northern Negro,” he repeated to himself. “Diggs is from up north.”

  “Well, what of it?” cold logic retorted. “Is Davis Thorne going to go off his chump, and have his valet get a job as a hotel porter and knock off Frosty Burnett, and shoot at you?”

  The answer was no. Positively no. But the secret engagement stuff was dizzy, improbably, fantastic. So he checked until he found the man who had taken Thorne from the airport.

  Odd, too. Why hadn’t Thorne used an airport service car to go to the Delta Apartments, up in the three thousand block on Saint Charles: an apartment hotel.

  When Cragin inquired, he was told that there was no one by the name of Thorne in the building. Cragin went back to the curbing and asked the driver, “What for?” Once more he showed the man a news picture snitched from the public library files. The driver said, “That’s the guy, I really brought him here, I guarantee you I did. His stuff had initials, DJT.”

  Cragin planted himself in the lobby to wait. Whenever he phoned Nedra, Pilar told him that she was busy, perfectly safe, and in a huddle which jammed the sitting room.

  The evening papers were cautious. Advances in Sicily offered excellent reasons for soft-peddling movie murders. Dayles Sinclair was only incidentally mentioned. A rewrite man had busted himself to make the old stuff look up to date. Movie executives were pouring on the pressure. Cragin, however, was uneasy. The very lack of journalese dynamite could prod the mysterious crackpot to pulling something which could not be squashed.

  Though it was well past time to eat, Cragin resolved to stick until he got the bum’s rush: perhaps not much longer, for the man at the desk was giving him pointed glances. The approach of a squad car would not be at all amazing.

  The elevator made its trips.

  At each door clang Cragin leaned clear of a potted palm, and flashed a glance past the pillar of the Moorish arch which secluded the alcove from the lobby.

  Finally he saw a familiar face, and he was envious. Though above draft age, the man had a rugged vitality, a color, an alert, dynamic carriage and stride which few of the selectee-age could equal. Thorne, world-beater, was broad-shouldered, lean-hipped, and springy. No sergeant would ever have had to tell that man to hold his head up, or pull his guts in.

  He had everything, and the dough was just a frill.

  Cragin came from cover. Just then the other elevator clanged open. A Negro the color of a pale tan shoe bounced out. He wore a black suit and black tie. “Mistah Dave—”

  Thorne turned. “Well, Simon?”

  “Y’all wanted on do phone. De outside phone.”

  Cragin might as well have backed down, but he was stubborn. “Mr. Thorne,” he began, “I’d like to speak to you when you’ve taken your call.”

  Mistah Dave appraised Cragin from head to foot, smiled amiably. “I am afraid you are mistaken. The name is Johnston.”

  The clerk headed for Cragin. “I told you we had no Davis Thorne. Now get out of here before I call the police.”

  Cragin got out. Maybe army discipline had done something. At one time he’d have started wrapping potted palms around people.

  But now it was dark, and he could hunt the place where Diggs had hung out. Cragin had his kit of lock picks and gadgets, so he went, not even bothering to eat before prowling.

  The block which he had spotted from Amanda Reeves’ remarks was uncommonly dingy and ill kept, darker than the rest of that ill-favored and decrepit locality. Despite the housing shortage, the block contained more vacancies than occupied places. Only near the corners were there black folks sitting on the stoops. Not more than three or four windows had lights.

  Investigation was now routine. Cragin methodically went from one narrow, cramped hovel to its dark neighbor, skipping only those flanked by lighted shacks. Diggs, though feared by his fellows, undoubtedly must have avoided undue proximity to them.

  Cragin risked tapping at doors: the hollow echo confirmed his guess as to the emptiness beyond. Then, flash jammed against a pane, so as to avoid side-glint, he looked.

  Cragin made better progress than he expected. The third of a block of six wrecks had a lock: modern hardware, its bronze quite fresh and new. What moved him to reach for his spatula of spring steel was the fact that this costly latch guarded empty-sounding space. He wheeled the tongue from its socket. In a moment he was in musty darkness.

  Though the odor was stale and ancient, there was an overlay of fresher smells: tobacco, and a curious cosmetic scent, but no trace of the spicy tang of New Orleans food. The house was not wired. The hall, swept clean, reached straight through to the rear, the typical “shotgun” architecture of the poorer quarters.

  The rooms opening from the hall were barren, except for dirt. The kitchen, however, in the very rear, had a sink, a grate, a small table, an unpainted wooden stool, and a bleary mirror. The faucet dripped: water had been turned on for occupancy.

  This fragile fact was better than nothing. Someone had applied for service. There was something to trace.

  Cragin found a roll of paper towels. In the grate were bits of charred paper. The flakes, though small, had the crinkly texture of towels. The cake of soap in the holder at the sink was dry, but not cracked. On each side of the mirror were candles.

  Further scrutiny of the ashes showed that more than paper had been burned.

  There was a blackened metal button, and a sharp-tongued buckle for taking up the slack in the waistband of denim pants; and, finally, a few twisted bits of unconsumed leather.

  With laboratory equipment one could go a long way on this, but Cragin had to content himself with the conclusion that he had found the end of a trail. Finally, the destruction of clothes suggested blood stains.

  The emptiness, however, did not prove that Diggs had left New Orleans. It merely indicated that the man was through “portering” at the Iberville.

  In spite of all logic, Cragin began to think of Simon, Davis Thorne’s man, who occupied servant’s quarters, either in the millionaire’s apartment or else nearby. Probably the former: a northern Negro might balk at the dumps just off Saint Charles Avenue.

  Cragin remembered a scrap of Mose Wilson’s garbled statement: Diggs had been seen entering, but not leaving. The back yard was the usual clutter of weeds and tin cans and rubbish. At the end of the lot was what remained of a fence. There were posts, but no gate. Cragin stepped into an alley whose farther side skirted a high brick wall.

  To the right was a dead-end; he turned left, and, after passing two offsets, emerged in a patio whose one side was lined with one-time slave quarters. Stairways reached up from both right and left to the high balconies.

  Lights glowed in second floor hallways. A radio, muffled by thick walls, whimpered thinly. What had once been a Creole palace had been subdivided into apartments, and with architectural fantasies which undoubtedly made the upper floors an aerial equivalent of Frisco Chinatown’s subterranean mazes.

  Diggs, handy man in this place, could readily double as porter at the Iberville.

  As was the case with some of these ancient houses, the patio entrance had no gates. Cragin stepped from the court into the sixty-foot tunnel through which, years ago, coaches had rolled. He emerged in the shadowy middle of a block on Royal.

  Cragin was sure now that he had learned plenty: but it was a confusion of possibilities. And Cragin was in a race with the United States Army, with rehabilitation, and with a maniac’s murderous fancies.

  CHAPTER X

  Gun Fire

  Back in his room, Cragin got indigestion from the mass of possibilities he had swallowed. He began making time schedules, based on gues
s and probability, covering the movements of Frosty Burnett, Diggs, the trunk, Dayles Sinclair, and Davis Thorne, who might not necessarily have made an unbroken flight from Chicago.

  Cragin, spending some hours in a sweat, always got back to that warning letter and its false note: the supposedly illiterate writer put the apostrophes in “ain’t” and “don’t.” That was a boner. And referring to buried treasure as “property” suggested one who had lands and interests he habitually lumped up under that term.

  He cursed when the phone rang, just as he was within grabbing distance of other intangibles. “All right?”

  It was Nedra. “Cliff, did I awaken you?”

  “I been asleep for days.”

  “Get dressed and come down. Quick.” He was expected to find her in one of her negligee collection, but when he arrived she had everything on, including her make-up. Pilar was not in sight. Nedra had done the job herself. When Cragin saw her fumbling the clasps of her handbag, and noted the twitch of her cheek, he braced himself. “Spill it, honey!”

  He flicked his gun from its holster. Nedra jerked halfway out of her chair. “Just in case, just in case,” he said, and replaced the weapon with that easy, unforgotten speed. “Calm down.”

  “I will if you quit acting like a horse opera star!”

  “All right.”

  “Dayles Sinclair—he’s disappeared. Sulked all day, now he’s gone.”

  “Ring for Pilar, I’m going to faint,” he said.

  “Cliff, you fool, this isn’t funny.”

  “Is anything? Let the—take a powder! Maybe he did bump Burnett, though he’d have to be a magician to cover so much ground, even with a colored stooge.”

  “Something’s happened to him. And just one more, anything, to any man in the cast—”

  “Any of your regiment of drooling admirers, huh?”

  “Don’t be nasty!” She turned on the smile, startlingly. “You’re one of them yourself, aren’t you?”

  Cragin made a helpless gesture. “So I am to hunt Sinclair?”

  “Not tonight. Just go with me, we’ll slip out the back way.”

  “Where to?”

  “I want to see Dave Thorne. I’ve got to.”

  When they emerged from the alley and swung toward Royal, Cragin said, “Only cabs in sight are at the entrance. Wait a second—”

  She shook her head. “We’ll walk. They all know me.”

  They crossed the street, and headed uptown. Nedra’s heels made a brisk tick-tack in the silence of lower Saint Charles.

  “Useful as well as beautiful,” he observed.

  “What is?”

  “Your legs.”

  The desk man at the Delta was dozing. So was the elevator boy. Cragin followed Nedra up the thickly carpeted stairs.

  Davis Thorne answered at the first gentle tap. He wore a brocaded smoking jacket and blue leather slippers. “Sure, I’ve met him. So this is Cragin? Have a drink, forget that Johnston business this afternoon.”

  Nedra cut into the introductory exchange: “Cliff’s all solid. You can let your hair down.”

  Thorne made a smoothing gesture over his head. “What remains thereof.” Actually, there was only the suggestion of a thinning spot. “Very well, darling?”

  That last sounded like the amiable touch to a favored secretary, but if Nedra noticed it she had other things on her mind. “Dayles Sinclair has been missing all evening, and no one knows where he was this afternoon. Achille—my manager—and Mr. Erwin, and the rest who just came in from Hollywood—they’re wild.”

  “No detectives?”

  “Grounded at Albuquerque or some place.”

  “Makes me the only available specimen.”

  “What have you learned?” Thorne demanded.

  Cragin told him, but skipped a lot of inside details.

  “That’s getting us nowhere.”

  “That’s right. I’m just the tackling dummy. And bodyguard, it looks like now.”

  “Good!” Thorne applauded. “They usually insist that they’re about to make an arrest. Darling, he’s different.”

  Nedra asked, abruptly, “How much stock have you bought up?”

  Thorne’s mouth tightened. Nedra went on, “I told you Cliff is all right. I’ll send him into the hall if you insist.”

  “Never mind, never mind. But why?”

  “I’m so sure something awful’s happened to Dayles Sinclair that the only thing left is to furnish a counter-sensation. We’ll announce our engagement. If you’ve bought up enough stock.”

  Thorne pondered for a moment, “Enough—well, yes.”

  They did not mention Globe-Colossal by name, but they might as well have. Cragin got the entire background: Nedra, buying company stock ever since stardom had put her in the money, held a heavy block. If she married Thorne, it was a fair guess that he’d control her holdings, at least for voting and manipulating. And the news of glamour teaming up with a man as colorful and powerful as Thorne would do all kinds of things to the market.

  As a first guess, the shares he had not yet caged would zoom way up. Thorne made things pay. The more it zoomed, the more he’d have to pay for complete control. It was just a matter of business, keeping the engagement secret.

  He cut in, “So that’s why Forsythe Burnett was plugged by the columnists as the future Mr. Nedra Dalli?”

  Nedra grimaced. “Yes. I never dreamed—my God, how could I have suspected—that that would—?”

  “Have him shot and packed in a trunk.”

  “You don’t bother much with tact,” Thorne snapped.

  “Your realism in business is famous,” Cragin retorted.

  “Blaming it on jealousy is taking a lot for granted!”

  “I’m not so sure it is—” He cut himself short. This was no place to elaborate on the clinch in the Montalban patio. “Well, it makes more sense than voodoo.”

  Cragin rose. “I’m calling it a day. You can drive her home when you’re through talking business.”

  Nedra came up out of her chair, and at the door caught his arm. “Don’t you start sulking, Cliff! I’m leaving now—” She turned back to Thorne and kissed him, and said, “I’ll announce it in the morning.”

  Cragin stepped into the hall. He was fed up with a man who didn’t whoop with glee at a break like that. The big shot was pained by the thought of twenty or thirty thousand outstanding shares he’d now be unable to cage at bargain counter prices.

  Then Nedra was beside him, hand on his arm. “Let’s go, Cliff. Don’t be surly, you might have said good-night.”

  “Oh, I’ll kiss the—if you want!”

  He turned to twist the knob. The latch had clicked, but had not yet engaged.

  Inside a pistol whacked. One-two.

  Thorne yelled. Cragin yanked the door open. He went for his gun. “Flatten out!” he started to shout as Thorne tried to get up, but the blast of the .45 swallowed every other sound. Glass spattered.

  He saw the splinters which had jumped from the sash. His target had been the retracting arm of a man who, crouching on the cornice, had reached in to pop Thorne the instant the callers left the room.

  Cragin skated around the chair which had thrown Thorne. Blasting the assassin from the ledge was just the chore he’d enjoy. A grand plop, five stories to the paving. They’d have to scrape Diggs from the concrete.

  But he did not get his shot. The lights went out, not only in the apartment, but in the corridor. That, and the shooting panicked other tenants. Blackout-bombing—machine-gunning—they had all kinds of guesses, and the darkness was jammed with screeching people.

  The elevator was dead. A short circuit had killed every wire in the house. Cragin thrust Nedra into a corner, slammed the door, and risked his flash.

  “I’m all right,” Thorne said. “The pea shooter didn�
�t knock me down, I stumbled. He’d’ve drilled me dead center, though, if I’d not made a sudden move to go to the door and tell you to act your age. Thanks for the grouch.”

  He chuckled, then swallowed a groan. Nedra broke cover.

  “Dave, you are hurt. He won’t come back! He won’t dare. Cliff, that light Get some towels—do something.”

  She’d begun to sound as if she really liked the guy. As Cragin fumbled in the bathroom, he muttered, “All she’s skipped is tearing hunks from her slip or something to bandage him.”

  By the time the lights went on the cops arrived. A master fuse, on the ground floor, had popped. There were signs of tinkering. As Cragin sized it up, the gunner estimated the probable time of blowing, and had nearly been caught short by having to wait until Thorne was alone: or else, he had planned to bound in and finish his victim under cover of darkness, and had at the last moment jumped the gun, either from jitters or overconfidence.

  But whoever the fellow was, he knew his way around.

  Wide ledges belted the Delta’s exterior, an approach easy enough for a cool-headed man; but when they found a knotted rope anchored in a service room on the floor just above, it was clear that the assassin had taken no chances on a human fly act. He’d probably mingled with the tenants who milled about in the gloom.

  “I’m not going to any damn hospital,” Thorne declared, but they talked him into line.

  Cragin and Nedra went with him in the ambulance. On the way back to the Iberville, Cragin said, “I’m not so sure something happened to Dayles Sinclair. He could’ve gotten wise to Thorne’s incognito about as easy as I did. Overhearing things, putting two and two together. Pilar knew about Thorne, I bet.”

  “Well, of course. But it’s absurd, saying he played up to her and found out.”

  “Honey, playing up to a gal built like Pilar is never absurd. And for a stranger from Spain to tell things to an actor who tells her he knows a director—heck, it’s a pushover!”

  “Well. You do admire Pilar.”

  “She’s dark and gorgeous, and a fellow could do worse. After your encouragement.”