Without a sound she fainted.
I caught her before she reached the floor, carried her to a sofa, found cologne and smelling salts, applied them.
“Do you know whose handkerchief it was?” I asked when she was awake and sitting up.
She shook her head from left to right.
“Then why did you take that trouble?”
“It was in his pocket. I didn’t know what else to do with it. I thought the police would ask about it. I didn’t want anything to start them asking questions.”
“Why did you tell the robbery story?”
No answer.
“The insurance?” I suggested.
She jerked up her head, cried defiantly:
“Yes! He had gone through his own money and mine. And then he had to—to do a thing like that. He—”
I interrupted her complaint:
“He left a note, I hope—something that will be evidence.” Evidence that she hadn’t killed him, I meant.
“Yes.” She fumbled in the bosom of her black dress.
“Good,” I said, standing. “The first thing in the morning, take that note down to your lawyer and tell him the whole story.”
I mumbled something sympathetic and made my escape.
Night was coming down when I rang the Gungens’ bell for the second time that day. The pasty-faced maid who opened the door told me Mr. Gungen was at home. She led me upstairs.
Rose Rubury was coming down the stairs. She stopped on the landing to let us pass. I halted in front of her while my guide went on toward the library.
“You’re done, Rose,” I told the girl on the landing. “I’ll give you ten minutes to clear out. No word to anybody. If you don’t like that—you’ll get a chance to see if you like the inside of the can.”
“Well—the idea!”
“The racket’s flopped.” I put a hand into a pocket and showed her one wad of the money I had got at the Mars Hotel. “I’ve just come from visiting Coughing Ben and Bunky.”
That impressed her. She turned and scurried up the stairs.
Bruno Gungen came to the library door, searching for me. He looked curiously from the girl—now running up the steps to the third story—to me. A question was twisting the little man’s lips, but I headed it off with a statement:
“It’s done.”
“Bravo!” he exclaimed as we went into the library. “You hear that, my darling? It is done!”
His darling, sitting by the table, where she had sat the other night, smiled with no expression in her doll’s face, and murmured, “Oh, yes,” with no expression in her words.
I went to the table and emptied my pockets of money.
“Nineteen thousand, one hundred and twenty-six dollars and seventy cents, including the stamps,” I announced. “The other eight hundred and seventy-three dollars and thirty cents is gone.”
“Ah!” Bruno Gungen stroked his spade-shaped black beard with a trembling pink hand and pried into my face with hard bright eyes. “And where did you find it? By all means sit down and tell us the tale. We are famished with eagerness for it, eh, my love?”
His love yawned, “Oh, yes!”
“There isn’t much story,” I said. “To recover the money I had to make a bargain, promising silence. Main was robbed Sunday afternoon. But it happens that we couldn’t convict the robbers if we had them. The only person who could identify them—won’t.”
“But who killed Jeffrey?” The little man was pawing my chest with both pink hands. “Who killed him that night?”
“Suicide. Despair at being robbed under circumstances he couldn’t explain.”
“Preposterous!” My client didn’t like the suicide. “Mrs. Main was awakened by the shot. Suicide would have canceled his insurance—would have left her penniless. She threw the gun and wallet out the window, hid the note he left, and framed the robber story.”
“But the handkerchief!” Gungen screamed. He was all worked up.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” I assured him solemnly, “except that Main—you said he was promiscuous—had probably been fooling with your wife’s maid, and that she—like a lot of maids—helped herself to your wife’s belongings.”
He puffed up his rouged cheeks, and stamped his feet, fairly dancing. His indignation was as funny as the statement that caused it.
“We shall see!” He spun on his heel and ran out of the room, repeating over and over, “We shall see!”
Enid Gungen held a hand out to me. Her doll face was all curves and dimples.
“I thank you,” she whispered.
“I don’t know what for,” I growled, not taking the hand. “I’ve got it jumbled so anything like proof is out of the question. But he can’t help knowing—didn’t I practically tell him?”
“Oh, that!” She put it behind her with a toss of her small head. “I’m quite able to look out for myself so long as he has no definite proof.”
I believed her.
Bruno Gungen came fluttering back into the library, frothing at the mouth, tearing his dyed goatee, raging that Rose Rubury was not to be found in the house.
The next morning Dick Foley told me the maid had joined Weel and Dahl and had left for Portland with them.
FLY PAPER
It was a wandering daughter job.
The Hambletons had been for several generations a wealthy, decently prominent New York family. There was nothing in the Hambleton history to account for Sue, the youngest member of the clan. She grew out of childhood with a kink that made her dislike the polished side of life, like the rough.
The Hambletons tried to make Sue behave, but it was too late for that. She was legally of age. When she finally told them to go to hell and walked out on them there wasn’t much they could do about it. Her father, Major Waldo Hambleton, had given up all the hopes he ever had of salvaging her, but he didn’t want her to run into any trouble that could be avoided. So he came into the Continental Detective Agency’s New York office and asked to have an eye kept on her.
The man she ran off with was Nick Casey, a Philadelphia racketeer who had moved to the big city carrying a Thompson submachine-gun, after a disagreement with his partners. New York wasn’t so good a field as Philadelphia for machine-gun work. The Thompson lay idle for a year or so while Casey made expenses with an automatic.
Three or four months after Sue went to live with Casey he made what looked like a promising connection with the first of the gang that came into New York from Chicago. But the boys from Chi didn’t want Casey; they wanted the machine-gun. So they shot holes in the top of Casey’s head and went away with the gun.
Sue Hambleton buried Casey, had a couple of lonely weeks in which she pawned a ring to eat, and then got a job at a speakeasy run by a Greek named Vassos.
One of Vassos’s customers was Pat McCloor—hard Scotch-Irish-Indian bone and muscle—a black-haired, blue-eyed, swarthy giant who was resting after doing a fifteen-year hitch in Leavenworth Prison for ruining most of the smaller post offices between New Orleans and Omaha. Pat was keeping himself in drinking money while he rested by playing with pedestrians in dark streets.
Pat liked Sue. Vassos liked Sue. Sue liked Pat. Vassos didn’t like that. Jealousy spoiled the Greek’s judgment. He kept the speakeasy door locked one night when Pat wanted to come in. Pat came in, bringing pieces of the door with him. Vassos got his gun out, but couldn’t shake Sue off his arm. He stopped trying when Pat hit him with the part of the door that had the brass knob on it. Pat and Sue went away from Vassos’s together.
Up to that time our New York office had managed to keep in touch with Sue. It was simply a matter of sending a man around every week or so to see that she was still alive, to pick up whatever information he could from her friends and neighbors, without, of course, letting her know. All that had been easy enough, but when she and Pat went away they dropped completely out of sight.
We had enough photographs to go round, and for the next month or so whatever operative had a little
idle time on his hands spent it looking for the missing pair. We didn’t find them. Operatives in other cities, doing the same thing, had the same luck.
Then, nearly a year later, a telegram came to us from the New York office. Decoded, it read:
Major Hambleton today received telegram from daughter in San Francisco quote Please send me thousand dollars care apartment two hundred six number six hundred one Eddis Street stop I will come home if you will let me stop Please tell me if I can come but please please send money anyway unquote Hambleton authorizes payment of money to her immediately stop Detail competent operative to call on her with money and to arrange for her return home stop If possible have man and woman operative accompany her here stop Hambleton wiring her stop Report immediately by wire.
The Old Man gave me the telegram and a check, saying, “You know the situation. You’ll know how to handle it.”
I pretended I agreed with him, went down to the bank, changed the check for a bundle of bills of several sizes and went up to Eddis Street.
The door was opened by a tall, slim man of thirty-something in neat dark clothes. He had dark eyes set in a long pale face. There was some grey in the dark hair brushed flat to his scalp.
“Miss Hambleton,” I said.
“Uh—what about her?” His voice was smooth, but not too smooth to be agreeable.
“I’d like to see her.”
His upper eyelids came down a little and the brows over them came a little closer together. He asked, “Is it—?” and stopped, watching me steadily.
I didn’t say anything. Presently he finished his question :
“Something to do with a telegram?”
“Yeah.”
His long face brightened immediately. He asked, “You’re from her father?”
“Yeah.”
He stepped back and swung the door wide open, saying, “Come in. Major Hambleton’s wire came to her only a few minutes ago. He said someone would call.”
We went through a small passageway into a sunny sitting-room that was cheaply furnished, but neat and clean enough.
“Sit down,” the man said, pointing at a brown rocking-chair.
“You brought the money?”
I said I’d feel more like talking with her there.
“The point is,” he said quite reasonably, “that if you brought the money she doesn’t expect you to hand it over to anybody except her. If you didn’t bring it she doesn’t want to see you. I don’t think her mind can be changed about that. That’s why I asked if you had brought it.”
“I brought it.”
He looked doubtfully at me. I showed him the money I had got from the bank. He jumped up briskly from the sofa.
“I’ll have her here in a minute or two,” he said over his shoulder as his long legs moved him towards the door. At the door he stopped to ask, “Do you know her? Or shall I have her bring means of identifying herself?”
“That would be best,” I told him.
In five minutes he was back with a slender blonde girl of about twenty-three in pale green silk. The looseness of her small mouth and the puffiness around her blue eyes weren’t yet pronounced enough to spoil her prettiness.
I stood up.
“This is Miss Hambleton,” he said.
She gave me a swift glance and then lowered her eyes again, nervously playing with the strap of a handbag she held.
“You can identify yourself?” I asked.
“Sure,” the man said. “Show them to him, Sue.”
She opened the bag, brought out some papers and things, and held them up for me to take.
“Sit down, sit down,” the man said as I took them.
They sat on the sofa. I sat in the rocking-chair again and examined the things she had given me. There were two letters addressed to Sue Hambleton there, her father’s telegram welcoming her home, a couple of receipted bills, a driver’s license, and a savings book that showed a balance of less than ten dollars.
By the time I had finished my examination the girl’s embarrassment was gone. She looked levelly at me, as did the man beside her. I felt in my jacket pocket, found my copy of the photograph New York had sent us at the beginning of the hunt, and looked from it to her.
“Your mouth could have shrunk, maybe,” I said, “but how could your nose have got that much longer?”
“If you don’t like my nose,” she said, “how’d you like to go to hell?” Her face had turned red.
“That’s not the point. It’s a pretty nose, but it’s not Sue’s.” I held the photograph out to her. “See for yourself.”
She glared at the photograph and then at the man.
“What a smart guy you are,” she told him.
He was watching me with dark eyes that had a brittle shine to them between narrow-drawn eyelids. He kept on watching me while he spoke to her out of the side of his mouth, crisply:
“Pipe down.”
She piped down. He sat and watched me. I sat and watched him. A clock ticked seconds away behind me. His eyes began shifting their focus from one of my eyes to the other. The girl sighed.
He said in a low voice, “Well?”
I said, “You’re in a hole.”
“What can you make out of it?” he asked casually.
“Conspiracy to defraud.”
The girl jumped up and hit one of his shoulders angrily with the back of a hand, crying:
“What a smart guy you are, to get me in a jam like this. You haven’t even got enough courage to tell this guy to go chase himself.” She spun round to face me, pushing her red face down at me—I was still sitting in the rocker—snarling: “Well, what are you waiting for? Waiting to be kissed good-bye? We don’t owe you anything, do we? We didn’t get any of your money, did we? Outside, then. Take the air. Dangle.”
“Stop it,” I growled. “You’ll bust something.”
The man said, “For God’s sake stop that bawling, Peggy, and give somebody else a chance.” He addressed me: “Well, what do you want?”
“How’d you get into this?” I asked.
He spoke quickly, eagerly. “A fellow I know gave me that stuff and told me about this Sue Hambleton, and her old man having plenty. I thought I’d give it a whirl. Then when her father’s wire came, saying he was sending a man to see her, I ought to have dropped it, but it was too good to let go of without a try. It looked like there still might be a chance, so I got Peggy to do Sue for me.”
“This man gave you the old man’s address?”
“Sure he did.”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know. He was on something really big, and couldn’t fool with this. That’s why he passed it on to me.”
“Big-hearted of him,” I said. “You know Sue Hambleton?”
“No,” emphatically. “I’d never even heard of her.”
“That’s too bad. Conspiracies to defraud don’t mean as much to me as finding Sue. I might have made a deal with you.”
He shook his head again, but his eyes were thoughtful.
The girl had stepped back so she could see both of us as we talked, turning her face, which showed she didn’t like us, from one to the other as we spoke.
I got up on my feet, telling him, “Suit yourself. But if you want to play it that way I’ll have to take you both in.”
He smiled with indrawn lips and stood up.
The girl thrust herself in between us, facing him.
“This is a swell time to be dummying up,” she spat at him. “You’re crazy if you think I’m going to take the fall with you.”
“Shut up,” he said in his throat.
“Shut me up,” she cried.
He tried to, with both hands. I reached over her shoulders and caught one of his wrists, knocked the other hand up.
She slid out from between us and ran around behind me, screaming, “Joe does know her. He got the things from her. She’s at the St. Martin on O’Connell Street—with Pat McCloor.” While I listened to this I had to pull my head
aside to let Joe’s right hook miss me, had got his left arm twisted behind him, had turned my hip to catch his knee, and had got the palm of my left hand under his chin. I was ready to give his chin the Japanese tilt when he stopped wrestling and grunted, “Let me tell it.” He rubbed the wrist I had wrenched, scowling past me at the girl. He called her four unlovely names, the mildest of which was “a dumb twist,” and told her:
“He was bluffing about taking us in. You don’t think old man Hambleton’s hunting for newspaper space, do you?” That wasn’t a bad guess.
He sat on the sofa again, still rubbing his wrist.
I said, “All right, roll it out, one of you.”
“You’ve got it all,” he muttered. “I took that stuff last week when I was visiting Pat, knowing the story and hating to see a promising layout like that go to waste.”
“What’s Pat doing now?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“How long have he and Sue been here?”
“About six months.”
“Who’s he mobbed up with?”
“I don’t know.”
“How’s he fixed?”
“I don’t know.”
Half an hour of this convinced me that I wasn’t going to get much information. I went to the phone in the passageway and called the Agency. The boy on the switchboard told me MacMan was in the operatives’ room. I asked to have him sent up to me, and went back. Joe and Peggy took their heads apart when I came in.
MacMan arrived in less than ten minutes. I let him in and told him:
“This fellow says his name’s Joe Wales, and the girl’s supposed to be Peggy Carroll who lives upstairs. We’ve got them cold for conspiracy to defraud, but I’ve made a deal with them. I’m going out to look at it now. Stay here with them, in this room. Nobody goes in or out, and nobody but you gets to the phone. There’s a fire-escape in front of the window. The window’s locked now. I’d keep it that way. If the deal turns out O.K. we’ll let them go.”
MacMan nodded his hard round head and pulled a chair out between them and the door. I picked up my hat.
Crime Stories Page 73