After he’d gone, I went back to my desk and opened the bottom drawer and reached for the bottle. My throbbing head wasn’t getting any better, and what I needed was the whole pelt of the hound that had bit me the night before.
The bottle had a cork in it. I swore inwardly and reached for my pocket knife. I was in no mood for jockeying with corks, so the process of digging it out, piece by piece, took longer than ordinarily. I finally wound up by pushing the tail end of it down into the bottle, but at least I was to the whiskey.
I reached for my glass, and a voice said lightly, “Rather early for it, isn’t it?”
I shot a startled look upward at her.
She stood there, pouting in a mocking way, and looking somewhat thinner than she had the night before. Her blouse was a simple and severe white, under a darkish blue suit which fitted her lines lovingly. Her narrow, well-bred feet sported patent-leather pumps; above them, her nylons emphasized the long slim ankles, the beautiful calves. She looked very edible.
Pushing the chair back, I came to my feet hurriedly. “Good morning, Mrs. Maddigan,” I blurted. “Come in.”
She smiled at me, her full lips still pouting; she must have practiced that. “I am in, Jeb,” she said.
I held the chair which ten minutes ago had contained her nephew, and sat down. She looked about the cubbyhole I call my office while I returned to my own chair and tried to look businesslike.
“Private detectives don’t seem to do any too well,” she said, wrinkling up her nose distastefully.
“The bigger agencies make out,” I told her. “The smaller ones are like just about any other small business; most of us can’t stand the competition from the larger outfits.” I didn’t offer her a drink, although the bottle stood open there on the desk before us. I figured that she, too, was decent people who wouldn’t be drinking at ten in the morning. I must have guessed right; she didn’t even look at it after that first crack.
She crossed her legs interestingly, but with nonchalance. I was revising some of the opinions I’d had of her the night before — in spite of the hangover, which should have kept such ideas from my head.
She took a cigarette from her bag, put it in her mouth and raised her neatly plucked eyebrows at me. I already had my box of kitchen matches in my hand. I struck one on the side of the box, held the flame momentarily until the sulphur burned away, and then lit up for her.
She blew a heavy cloud of bluish smoke from her mouth, and nodded at the box of overgrown matches. “Cute little lighter you’ve got there.”
I nodded and sat back in my chair again. “The only one I’ve ever found that would always work,” I told her seriously. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Maddigan?”
She made with her pout again. “Sandra.”
“All right. What can I do for you, Sandra?”
She tapped the ash from her cigarette onto the floor; not deliberately. It was just that it never occurred to her to reach out for the ashtray, three feet in front of her. But I still didn’t like it. “Jeb,” she said, letting just a hint of frown touch her forehead, “I want to hire you to investigate the death of Harry Shulman. Can you come over to the apartment this afternoon and discuss it?”
I must have stared at her stupidly at first, but finally I got out, “Why?”
She made with her moue again, but this time her eyes wouldn’t meet mine. “Do I have to tell you why?” she asked.
I looked at her for another long moment. “No,” I said. “No, you don’t, but whatever the reason, the answer is no.”
She didn’t get that. “You mean you won’t take the job?”
I nodded definitely.
She plucked a shred of tobacco off her lip and frowned, more deeply this time. “Well, why?”
I got a shell brier out of the top drawer and drew the pound tin of Raleigh over toward me. I filled it carefully before answering her. I couldn’t get the angle.
“Were you a particularly close friend of Harry Shulman’s?” I began.
She shook her head at me. “I told you I wouldn’t tell why I wanted his death investigated. But, Jeb, a job is a job, isn’t it? What reason could you possibly have for turning down this one? My money should be — ” She broke off and narrowed her eyes at me. “You don’t already have a client?”
I shook my head negatively. “Look,” I told her, “I’ve already been through this once this morning, so I’ll cut it short. In spite of the stories you’ve read, private detectives don’t take homicide cases. Among other reasons, they’re not allowed to mess around in business that is strictly that of the homicide detail. Our friend, Lieutenant Davis, would take a very dim view of my poaching on his preserves. Aside from that, Mr. Davis can and will find the cause for Shulman’s death. It’s doubtful if I could.”
She pouted again. “I don’t have much confidence in the police when it comes to an affair like this.”
I put my elbows on the desk, touched fingertips to fingertips and tried to make my voice judicious. “You should have,” I told her. “Certainly they’re better equipped to work it out than is anyone else.”
She finished her cigarette, dropped it on my floor and neatly crushed it out with the heel of her pump.
“Then there’s no way in which I can persuade you to …”
I shook my head again. “No. You’ve just got the wrong idea of what a private investigator is and what he’s capable of accomplishing, Sandra.”
She stood up, looking at me in rising irritation. She snapped, “You look like quite a bit of a man, but you certainly don’t act like one.”
The door slammed behind her.
I said to myself, Now I wonder what she wanted, really, and went back to the bottle on the desk again. I was having quite a time trying to get around to those eyeopeners.
I was just finishing my first drink when I saw two shadows through the translucent glass. I whipped the bottle and glass off the desk top and into the bottom drawer and came to my feet.
“Oh, my aching back,” I muttered.
“What was that?” James Maddigan asked, entering. Art Roget brought up the rear.
“Good morning,” I told them, striving to keep bitterness from my voice. “Sit down. I know: You want me to investigate Shulman’s death.”
Maddigan’s lips were tight, giving him his characteristic peevish expression. He looked about for a chair in which to lower his bulk before he answered. He settled himself pompously, then said, “Not exactly.”
Roget found a chair too. That grin of his seemed to be gone with the snows of yesteryear. He looked worried now, like Jimmy Stewart that time he was a senator in Washington and discovered some of the boys were nothing but nasty old politicians.
“Well, you’re at least different,” I said.
Maddigan eyed me sharply now. “What was that?”
I hunched my right shoulder. “In the past hour I’ve had two persons up here wanting to hire me to show the police how to do their duty in connection with the Shulman death.”
“Who were they?” He sounded eager, and his right hand went out to stroke his knee.
I shook my head. “Can’t tell. Ethics, or something.”
“Well, then, you accepted?”
I shook my head. “Nope. That’s police business. I keep my nose out of it.”
He relaxed and thought it over for a minute. Finally he said, “Art Roget and I think there is something wrong here.”
“Ummm,” I told him, taking up the pipe again and reaching for my matches. “Murder is always wrong.”
“That’s not what we mean,” Maddigan said uncomfortably. “We don’t think the police are going to find the killer, Mr. Knight.”
I shook out the match I’d just struck, and put my pipe down unlit. “Listen,” I said patiently. “This is the third time I’ve been through this. I’m going to boil it all the way down. The police department is better equipped to find murderers than are private detectives.”
Roget cleared his throat. “When the murd
erer is a human,” he muttered petulantly.
I turned my eyes to him and then back to Maddigan. “Oh, no,” I complained.
Madigan ignored that. He shook a thick finger at me. “Knight,” he said, “when we came up here the other day, none of us believed — really believed — the story we gave you. As we told Lieutenant Davis last night, our hiring your services was a humorous stunt for the convention.”
He waved his right hand deprecatingly. “Oh, I’ll admit some of us fen have had suspicions that aliens were already present here on earth; some of us have even made regular hobbies of investigating such possibilities. Harry Shulman in particular was quite convinced of the presence of aliens from space.”
Art Roget frowned and started to add something, but Maddigan motioned him to silence and went on. “Frankly, I haven’t been one of these. I appreciate fantasy and science fiction, but I don’t become serious over the stories I read. However …”
“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “Without stringing this out too long, are you telling me that you two have come to the conclusion that young Shulman was bumped off by one of our little green friends?”
Maddigan frowned deeply and his jowls quivered protest. “That isn’t exactly the way I would put it, Mr. Knight.” He pounded his knee earnestly four or five times, searching for the way he would put it. “Let us say this: Shortly after being a party to hiring you to investigate the presence of aliens on earth, Harry Shulman was killed under circumstances which seem utterly impossible.”
“All right,” I sighed. “Where do I come in? What did you want?”
Maddigan leaned forward earnestly, resting a heavy hand on the desk edge. “We want you to continue the investigation, Mr. Knight.”
I had felt it coming for several minutes, so I was able to take it without flinching. “No,” I said emphatically.
He was surprised. “But why not?”
“Listen, I’m a private investigator, Maddigan. I don’t mess in homicide cases.”
He shook his heavy face impatiently, his jowls wobbling. “You don’t understand. We are not hiring you to investigate Harry’s murder — if it was murder. We want you to find out whether or not there are aliens from space here on earth.” He shrugged beefy shoulders. “Of course, there might well be a certain degree of overlapping of the two cases.…”
I growled, “A certain amount is good.” But I was thinking it over in spite of myself. Twenty-five bucks a day looked awfully desirable.
Maddigan said, “Let me put it this way. Above your regular rates I shall let you have a bonus of five hundred dollars if you either prove, or disprove — which would be rather difficult, I admit — the presence of such aliens.”
I rubbed my neck savagely. “Well,” I growled finally, “I’ll try it. I still think the two of you are missing some marbles on this; but as I keep saying, it’s your money.”
Maddigan was reaching for his wallet. He said, “Of course, as mentioned, there will be some overlapping of your work with the police investigation of Harry’s demise. I assume that you have enough in the way of connections at headquarters so that you’ll be able to check with them on anything you need?”
“Yeah,” I said, watching him extract bills from a heavy wallet. “Yeah, I know a couple of the boys from army days. I can get anything I need from them.”
He handed me seventy-five dollars. “Another thing,” he asked. “Who were the two persons who wanted to hire you for the case this morning?”
I shook my head. “Sorry, the ethics still apply.”
“But you’re now in our employ.”
“Sorry, gentlemen.”
Maddigan pursed his full lips peevishly. “Very well,” he said stiffly. He rose to his feet. “Of course, as before, you will make complete daily reports on your progress.”
I eyed him suspiciously. “Listen,” I said, “you sure this isn’t going to wind up as a gag for your convention?”
CHAPTER SIX
James Maddigan said steadily, “You are being employed to investigate the possibility of alien life forms being here on earth, nothing else.”
“All right,” I said. “When — and if — Davis drags down the killer of Shulman, that’ll at least be negative evidence. Right now you think the fact that the killing took place is possible evidence in favor of these, uh, aliens, being present?”
He pursed his lips. “Possible evidence. It would seem too much of a coincidence …”
I interrupted with, “Listen, there must have been twenty-five persons there last night. Do you actually believe one of them might be a Martian or a Venusian?”
Art Roget grinned wryly. “It sounds kind of crazy when you come right out with it like that, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said.
Maddigan was frowning in irritation. “Of course it does, but that’s beside the point.”
“All right,” I said. “Would it be possible for me to get a list of those present last night?”
Art Roget said, “I’m the recording secretary of the club. I have a list here.” He was reaching into an inner coat pocket. “It has all the members and their addresses. Of course, they weren’t all at Ross’s last night. Here, I’ll cross out those that weren’t. Then, let’s see, there were several non-members. You, and Mrs. Maddigan, and Ross’s girl friend.”
“Julie Sharp,” I said.
He looked up. “Is that her name? I’ve never really met her.”
I took the list of names from him and went down it. Twenty-four names altogether, including Julie and Sandra.
“One other thing,” I told them. “You mentioned that Harry Shulman was pretty keen on this theory that there are aliens on earth. Now that he’s gone, who on this list would you say knew most about that subject?”
Art Roget didn’t have to think about it. “Les Zimmer,” he said immediately. “Les is a regular fanatic on extra-terrestrials.”
I checked Zimmer’s name on my list and thought it over for a minute. “Anything else you can think of that might help?” I asked them.
They shook their heads in unconscious unison. I led them to the door and we went through the usual banalities of breaking company.
When they were gone I went back to the desk and sank into my chair. “My roof is probably leaking,” I growled to myself. “Aliens from space, yet.”
I looked down into the bottom drawer sadly. There was my bottle with only one drink out of it, and that dying in me fast. I regarded the fifth thoughtfully but finally gave it up. I went over to the washbowl and got myself a paper towel and wadded it up to improvise as a cork. It’d do well enough as long as the bottle was standing on end. I put the whiskey back into the drawer, closed it, and reached for the phone.
I dialed police headquarters, asked for the homicide bureau and then Herman Cain. I told him who I was, and we growled back and forth cheerfully for a minute before he asked me what I wanted.
“Some dope on the Harry Shulman case, Hermie,” I told him, trying to keep a nonchalant tone in my voice.
He was still for a minute. “You know better than that, Jeb.”
Not that he could see me, but I shook my head earnestly. “It isn’t what you think, Herm. I’ve got a different case, but one that hinges on Shulman’s. Listen, what I want to know is if Davis has lined up anybody for the rap so far.”
He said hesitantly, “No. Not yet.”
“Well, this is what I really need. Has he located a motive for the death?”
Hermie Cain hesitated longer this time. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, Jeb,” there was puzzlement in his voice, “but that’s the funniest thing about this deal. There isn’t any motive. That kid didn’t have an enemy in the world, no money, not even a girl. We can’t dig up anybody who could profit by his being chilled; the Only conceivable angle is that a crackpot killed him. You know all these characters are hot for this screwy science fiction stuff anyway. Mike Quinn — he’s the sergeant working with Davis on this case — thinks one of them might have
slipped his cogs.”
“Wouldn’t be surprised,” I grunted.
“Well, anyway, short of that, there just isn’t any reason why anybody’d want to kill Harry Shulman.”
I thought that over.
Hermie Cain’s voice came back. “You still there, Jeb?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah. Well, thanks, Herm. I’ll be seeing you. We’ll have to get together some night and bend a few elbows. Maybe we can ring Marty Rhuling in on it.”
“Good enough, Jeb. And look, it better not get back to Davis that I’ve been …”
“All right,” I muttered. “So long, Herm.” I hung up.
I stared down at the phone nestled in its cradle. “No motive,” I told myself. I got to my feet and went looking for my hat. “No motive except that he suspected there were aliens here on earth. Men from Mars. Straight out of an Orson Welles deal — or maybe Alley Oop.”
I locked the door behind me, pocketed the key and walked down the steps to the lobby, not wanting to wait for Mike and his tired elevator. On the street, I stood there before the Kroll Building and ran my eyes over the list of names Art Roget had given me. Harry Shulman’s was near the top; he’d been the club’s treasurer. I let the thought trickle through my mind momentarily that that might have had something to do with it, but shrugged it away impatiently. There wouldn’t be enough dough in the treasury of a club no bigger than Scylla to get anybody worked up about it.
I walked slowly to the corner of Marion and West Second and to the cab stand there, and climbed into the Checker at the head of the line. Shulman’s house was within easy distance; I gave the driver the number and on the way tried to work over what I had to go on. I didn’t get very far. I didn’t have anything to work with. The whole situation was crazy.
Being hired to find aliens from space was crazy.
Harry Shulman’s being killed was crazy — there was no motive.
His method of dying was crazy.
Three different parties wanting to hire me to investigate the matter was crazy. Everybody knew I was the lousiest detective in the city, if not in the nation.
By the time I’d got down through half a dozen more things about this case that were crazy, we’d reached the Shulman address and I was climbing out of the cab and paying the driver off.
The Case of the Little Green Men Page 5