Guild nodded. “Sure. Well, who asked you to O.K. Laura Porter?”
“Seven months ago?” Kearny scoffed. “A swell chance I got of remembering! Maybe I didn’t even hear her name then.”
“Maybe you did. Try to remember.”
“No good,” Kearny insisted. “I tried when Elsa first told me about you wanting to see me.”
Guild said: “The other name she gave was Wynant’s. Does that help?”
“No. I don’t know him, don’t know anybody that knows him.”
“Charley Fremont knows him.”
Kearny moved his wide shoulders carelessly. “I didn’t know that,” he said. The waiter came, gave the proprietor a dark quart bottle, put glasses of cracked ice on the table, and began to open bottles of ginger ale.
Elsa Fremont said: “I told you I didn’t think Frank knew anything about any of them.”
“You did,” the dark man said, “and now he’s told me.” He made his face solemnly thoughtful. “I’m glad he didn’t contradict you.”
Elsa stared at him while Kearny put whisky and the waiter ginger ale into the glasses.
The proprietor, patting the stopper into the bottle again, asked: “Is it your idea this fellow Wynant’s still hanging around San Francisco?”
Elsa said in a low, hoarse voice: “I’m scared! He tried to shoot Charley before. Where”—she put a hand on the dark man’s wrist—“where is Charley?”
Before Guild could reply Kearny was saying to her: “It might help if you’d do some singing now and then for all that dough you’re getting.” He watched her walk out on the dance-floor and said to Guild: “The kid’s worried. Think anything happened to Charley? Or did he have reasons to scram?”
“You people should ask me things,” Guild said and drank.
The proprietor picked up his glass. “People can waste a lot of time,” he said reflectively, “once they get the idea that people that don’t know anything do.” He tilted his glass abruptly, emptying most of its contents into his throat, set the glass down, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You sent a friend of mine over a couple of months ago—Deep Ying.”
“I remember,” Guild said. “He was the fattest of the three boo how doy who tried to spread their tong war out to include sticking up a Japanese bank.”
“There was likely a tong angle to it, guns stashed there or something.” The dark man said, “Maybe,” indifferently and drank again.
Kearny said: “His brother’s here now.”
Some of Guild’s indifference went away. “Was he in on the job too?”
The proprietor laughed. “No,” he said, “but you never can tell how close brothers are and I thought you’d like to know.”
The dark man seemed to weigh this statement carefully. Then he said: “In that case maybe you ought to point him out to me.”
“Sure.” Kearny stood up grinning, raised a hand, and sat down.
Elsa Fremont was singing “Kitty From Kansas City.”
A plump Chinese with a round, smooth, merry face came between tables to their table. He was perhaps forty years old, of less than medium stature, and though his gray suit was of good quality it did not fit him. He halted beside Kearny and said: “How you do, Frank.”
The proprietor said: “Mr. Guild, I want you to meet a friend of mine, Deep Kee.”
“I’m your friend, you bet you.” The Chinese, smiling broadly, ducked his head vigorously at both men.
Guild said: “Kearny tells me you’re Deep Ying’s brother.”
“You bet you.” Deep Kee’s eyes twinkled merrily. “I hear about you, Mr. Guild. Number-one detective. You catch ’em my brother. You play trick on ’em. You bet you.”
Guild nodded and said solemnly: “No play trick on ’em, no catch ’em. You bet you.”
The Chinese laughed heartily.
Kearny said: “Sit down and have a drink.”
Deep Kee sat down beaming on Guild, who was lighting a cigarette, while the proprietor brought his bottle from beneath the table.
A woman at the next table, behind Guild, was saying oratorically: “I can always tell when I’m getting swacked because the skin gets tight across my forehead, but it don’t ever do me any good because by that time I’m too swacked to care whether I’m getting swacked or not.”
Elsa Fremont was finishing her song.
Guild asked Deep Kee: “You know Wynant?”
“Please, no.”
“A thin man, tall, used to have whiskers before he cut them off,” Guild went on. “Killed a woman up at Hell Bend.”
The Chinese, smiling, shook his head from side to side.
“Ever been in Hell Bend?”
The smiling Chinese head continued to move from side to side.
Kearny said humorously: “He’s a high-class murderer, Guild. He wouldn’t take a job in the country.”
Deep Kee laughed delightedly.
Elsa Fremont came to the table and sat down. She seemed tired and drank thirstily from her glass.
The Chinese, smiling, bowing, leaving his drink barely tasted, went away. Kearny, looking after him, told Guild: “That’s a good guy to have liking you.”
“Tong gunman?”
“I don’t know. I know him pretty well, but I don’t know that. You know how they are.”
“I don’t know,” Guild said.
A quarrel had started in the other end of the room. Two men were standing cursing each other over a table. Kearny screwed himself around in his chair to stare at them for a moment. Then, grumbling, “Where do these bums think they are?” he got up and went over to them.
Elsa Fremont stared moodily at her glass. Guild watched Kearny go to the table where the two men were cursing, quiet them, and sit down with them.
The woman who had talked about the skin tightening on her forehead was now saying in the same tone: “Character actress—that’s the old stall. She’s just exactly the same kind of character actress I was. She’s doing bits—when she can get them.”
Elsa Fremont, still staring at her glass, whispered: “I’m scared.”
“Of what?” Guild asked as if only moderately interested.
“Of Wynant, of what he might—” She raised her eyes, dark and harried. “Has he done anything to Charley, Mr. Guild?”
“I don’t know.”
She put a tight fist on the table and cried angrily: “Why don’t you do something? Why don’t you find Wynant? Why don’t you find Charley? Haven’t you got any blood, any heart, any guts? Can’t you do anything but sit there like a—” She broke off with a sob. Anger went out of her face and the fingers that had been clenched opened in appeal. “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—But, oh, Mr. Guild, I’m so—” She put her head down and bit her lower lip.
Guild, impassive, said: “That’s all right.”
A man rose drunkenly from a nearby table and came up behind Elsa’s chair. He put a fat hand on her shoulder and said: “There, there, darling.” He said to Guild: “You cannot annoy this girl in this way. You cannot. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, a man of your complexion.” He leaned forward sharply, peering into Guild’s face. “By Jesus, I believe you’re a mulatto.
I really do.”
Elsa, squirming from under the fat drunken hand, flung a “Let me alone” up at the man. Guild said nothing. The fat man looked uncertainly from one to the other of them until a hardly less drunken man, mumbling unintelligible apologies, came and led him away.
Elsa looked humbly at the dark man. “I’m going to tell Frank I’m going,” she said in a small tired voice. “Will you take me home?”
“Sure.”
They rose and moved toward the door. Kearny was standing by the elevator.
“I don’t feel like working to-night, Frank,” the girl told him. “I’m going to knock off.”
“Oke,” he said. “Give yourself a hot drink and some aspirin.” He held his hand out to Guild. “Glad I met you. Drop in any time. Anything I can ever do for you, l
et me know. You going to take the kid home? Swell! Be
X
Elsa Fremont was a dusky figure beside Guild in a taxicab riding west up Nob Hill. Her eyes glittered in a splash of light from a street-lamp. She drew breath in and asked: “You think Charley’s run away, don’t you?”
“It’s likely,” Guild said, “but maybe he’ll be home when we get there.”
“I hope so,” she said earnestly. “I do hope so, but—I’m afraid.”
He looked obliquely at her. “You’ve said that before. Mean you’re afraid something’s happened to him or will happen to you?”
She shivered. “I don’t know. I’m just afraid.” She put a hand in his, asking plaintively: “Aren’t you ever going to catch Wynant?”
“Your hand’s cold,” he said.
She pulled her hand away. Her voice was not loud: intensity made it shrill. “Aren’t you ever human?” she demanded. “Are you always like this? Or is it a pose?” She drew herself far back in a corner of the taxicab. “Are you a damned corpse?”
“I don’t know,” the dark man said. He seemed mildly puzzled. “I don’t know what you mean.”
She did not speak again, but sulked in her corner until they reached her house. Guild sat at ease and smoked until the taxicab stopped. Then he got out, saying: “I’ll stop long enough to see if he’s home.”
The girl crossed the sidewalk and unlocked the door while he was paying the chauffeur. She had gone indoors leaving the door open when he mounted the front steps. He followed her in. She had turned on ground-floor lights and was calling upstairs: “Charley!” There was no answer.
She uttered an impatient exclamation and ran upstairs. When she came down again she moved wearily. “He’s not in,” she said. “He hasn’t come.” Guild nodded without apparent disappointment. “I’ll give you a ring when I wake up,” he said, stepping back toward the street door, “or if I get any news of him.”
She said quickly: “Don’t go yet, please, unless you have to. I don’t—I wish you’d stay a little while.”
He said, “Sure,” and they went into the living-room.
When she had taken off her coat she left him for a few minutes, going into the kitchen, returning with Scotch whisky, ice, lemons, glasses, and a siphon of water. They sat on the sofa with drinks in their hands.
Presently, looking inquisitively at him, she said: “I really meant what I said in the cab. Aren’t you actually human? Isn’t there any way anybody can get to you, get to the real inside you? I think you’re the most”—she frowned, selecting words—“most untouchable, unreal person I’ve ever known. Trying to—to really come in contact with you is just like trying to hold a handful of smoke.”
Guild, who had listened attentively, now nodded. “I think I know what you’re trying to say. It’s an advantage when I’m working.”
“I didn’t ask you that,” she protested, moving the glass in her hand impatiently. “I asked you if that’s the way you really are or if you just do it.”
He smiled and shook his head noncommittally.
“That isn’t a smile,” she said. “It’s painted on.” She leaned to him swiftly and kissed him, holding her mouth to his mouth for an appreciable time. When she took her mouth from his her narrow green eyes examined his face carefully. She made a moue. “You’re not even a corpse—you’re a ghost.”
Guild said pleasantly, “I’m working,” and drank from his glass.
Her face flushed. “Do you think I’m trying to make you?” she asked hotly.
He laughed at her. “I’d like it if you were, but I didn’t mean it that way.”
“You wouldn’t like it,” she said. “You’d be scared.”
“Uh-uh,” he explained blandly. “I’m working. It’d make you easier for me to handle.”
Nothing in her face responded to his bantering. She said, with patient earnestness: “If you’d only listen to me and believe me when I tell you I don’t know any more what it’s all about than you do, if that much. You’re just wasting your time when you ought to be finding Wynant. I don’t know anything. Charley doesn’t. We’d both tell you if we did. We’ve both already told you all we know. Why can’t you believe me when I tell you that?”
“Sorry,” Guild said lightly. “It don’t make sense.” He looked at his watch. “It’s after five. I’d better run along.”
She put a hand out to detain him, but instead of speaking she stared thoughtfully at her dangling wrist-scarf and worked her lips together.
Guild lit another cigarette and waited with no appearance of impatience. Presently she shrugged her bare shoulders and said: “It doesn’t make any difference.” She turned her head to look uneasily behind her. “But will you—will you do something for me before you go? Go through the house and see that everything is all right. I’m—I’m nervous, upset.”
“Sure,” he said readily, and then, suggestively: “If you’ve got anything to tell me, the sooner the better for both of us.”
“No, no, there’s nothing,” she said. “I’ve told you everything.”
“All right. Have you got a flashlight?”
She nodded and brought him one from the next room.
When Guild returned to the living-room Elsa Fremont was standing where he had left her. She looked at his face and anxiety went out of her eyes. “It was silly of me,” she said, “but I do thank you.’
He put the flashlight on the table and felt for his cigarettes. “Why’d you ask me to look?”
She smiled in embarrassment and murmured: “It was a silly notion.”
“Why’d you bring me home with you?” he asked.
She stared at him with eyes in which fear was awakening. “Wh-what do you mean? Is there—?”
He nodded.
“What is it?” she cried. “What did you find?”
He said: “I found something wrong down in the cellar.”
Her hand went to her mouth.
“Your brother,” he said.
She screamed: “What?”
“Dead.”
The hand over her mouth muffled her voice: “K-killed?”
He nodded. “Suicide, from the looks of it. The gun could be the one the girl was killed with. The—” He broke off and caught her arm as she tried to run past him toward the door. “Wait. There’s plenty of time for you to look at him. I want to talk to you.”
She stood motionless, staring at him with open, blank eyes.
He said: “And I want you to talk to me.”
She did not show she had heard him.
He said: “Your brother did kill Columbia Forrest, didn’t he?”
Her eyes held their blank stare. Her lips barely moved. “You fool, you fool,” she muttered in a tired, flat voice.
He was still holding her arm. He ran the tip of his tongue over his lips and asked in a low, persuasive tone: “How do you know he didn’t?”
She began to tremble. “He couldn’t’ve,” she cried. Life had come back to her voice and face now. “He couldn’t’ve.”
“Why?”
She jerked her arm out of his hand and thrust her face up toward his. “He couldn’t’ve, you idiot. He wasn’t there. You can find out where he was easily enough. You’d’ve found out long before this if you’d had any brains. He was at a meeting of the Boxing Commission that afternoon, seeing about a permit or something for Sammy. They’ll tell you that. They’ll have a record of it.”
The dark man did not seem surprised. His blue eyes were meditative under brows drawn a little together. “He didn’t kill her, but he committed suicide,” he said slowly and with an air of listening to himself say it. “That don’t make sense too.”
TWO SHARP KNIVES
On my way home from the regular Wednesday night poker game at Ben Kamsley’s I stopped at the railroad station to see the 2:11 come in—what we called putting the town to bed—and as soon as this fellow stepped down from the smoking-car I recognized him. There was no mistaking his face, the pale eyes with lower li
ds that were as straight as if they had been drawn with a ruler, the noticeably flat-tipped bony nose, the deep cleft in his chin, the slightly hollow grayish cheeks. He was tall and thin and very neatly dressed in a dark suit, long dark overcoat, and derby hat, and carried a black Gladstone bag. He looked a few years older than the forty he was supposed to be. He went past me toward the street steps.
When I turned around to follow him I saw Wally Shane coming out of the waiting-room. I caught Wally’s eye and nodded at the man carrying the black bag. Wally examined him carefully as he went by. I could not see whether the man noticed the examination. By the time I came up to Wally the man was going down the steps to the street.
Wally rubbed his lips together and his blue eyes were bright and hard. “Look,” he said out of the side of his mouth, “that’s a ringer for the guy we got—”
“That’s the guy,” I said, and we went down the steps behind him.
Our man started toward one of the taxicabs at the curb, then saw the lights of the Deerwood Hotel two blocks away, shook his head at the taxi driver, and went up the street afoot.
“What do we do?” Wally asked. “See what he’s—?”
“It’s nothing to us. We take him. Get my car. It’s at the corner of the alley.”
I gave Wally the few minutes he needed to get the car and then closed in. “Hello, Furman,” I said when I was just behind the tall man.
His face jerked around to me. “How do you—” He halted. “I don’t believe I—” He looked up and down the street. We had the block to ourselves.
“You’re Lester Furman, aren’t you?” I asked.
He said, “Yes,” quickly.
“Philadelphia?”
He peered at me in the light that was none too strong where we stood. “Yes.”
“I’m Scott Anderson,” I said. “Chief of police here. I—”
His bag thudded down on the pavement. “What’s happened to her?” he asked hoarsely.
Crime Stories Page 99