The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 1: 1931-32

by Frederick Nebel

  “Hello,” he said into the mouthpiece. “Oh, hello, Mrs. Hartz…. No, nothing particular…. Yes, I could. When?… All right. The northwest corner of the Hotel Case lounge. I’ll walk right over.”

  The thumb of the hand that held the instrument pushed the hook down slowly. Cardigan replaced the receiver and chuckled grimly to himself.

  A self-operated elevator took him down six floors to the lobby of the apartment house. He passed out onto a tiled terrace, strode down broad flags to the sidewalk and turned west on Lindell Boulevard.

  He had gone perhaps a dozen yards when a stocky man stepped from beside one of the trees and fell in step beside him. The stocky man’s right hand was in his pocket and the pocket bulged.

  “Just keep walkin’, sweetheart,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Cardigan’s hands doubled but he kept walking. The hair stood up on the nape of his neck. Two girls and a man passed him going east. They didn’t notice. The stocky man was in step with Cardigan, but a bit to the rear and to the left of him.

  Ten feet further on a lank man stepped from the shadow of a parked sedan.

  The stocky man muttered, “Get in that bus.”

  “Look here—” Cardigan began.

  “Get in, get in,” snarled the lank man, motionless. “You’ve got a date.”

  Cardigan looked down at the stocky man. It was a face he had seen before but for the present he couldn’t place it. He was shoved into the rear of the sedan. He dropped down beside a man in shadow who smoked a cigar. The stocky man got in front beside the motionless chauffeur. The lank man climbed in beside Cardigan.

  The red cigar-end moved. “Oke, Bunt.”

  The gear lever clicked. The big sedan moved away from the curb, swung into west-bound traffic, crossed Kings highway and hummed out along Forest Park.

  “Well,” said the man behind the red cigar end, “we had a long wait, wisenheimer.”

  The stocky man in the front seat turned around.

  “That’s him, Gus. That’s him all right.”

  Cardigan said, “I’ve seen you before.”

  “Honest?” mocked the stocky man. “Have you now?”

  The man behind the red cigar and his lank companion suddenly frisked Cardigan of his gun.

  The lank man grinned.

  “Why don’t you try to get out of this with your police badge?”

  Cardigan started. Then he leaned back.

  “Oh,” he said slowly. “I see.” Then his voice rushed on. “What the hell’s the idea of this party?”

  THE lank man jabbed a gun in his ribs. “The night before that raid at the Ritz you muscled your way in on a fake cop’s shield! You were a scout for that mob! Tom Sherick remembered the shield number. You went home in a taxi. The guy drove you home remembered the address. And you paid your fare. Did a cop ever pay taxi fare? Yah! And we found out there was no such shield number on the cops!”

  The car turned right into Union. Cardigan looked around at the shadowed faces.

  “So help me, I had nothing to do with that.” The stocky man in the front seat was the one who had let him in the Ritz. He remembered now.

  “That was a fast one all right,” the lank man said. “But this is gonna be a faster one.”

  “Ride?” Cardigan asked.

  “What do you think?”

  Cardigan began to perspire.

  “I think,” he said, “you guys are off your nut. O.K., I used a fake badge. But I’m a private dick. I was on a tail. It was the only chance I had of getting in, so I used it.”

  “You think up fast ones, don’t you?” the lank man slurred.

  The man behind the cigar laughed out loud. The man at the wheel giggled. The lank man rasped a harsh chuckle from his throat. The car sped on. It turned left into Delmar, weaved through traffic; past street cars, past traffic cops. While a gun kept pressing into Cardigan’s ribs.

  “Listen,” said Cardigan, “I’m on the up and up. Take me to Sherick. Let me talk to him. I can square myself. I’m getting a raw deal here.”

  “And right in the belly,” the lank man said.

  Cardigan heaved in the seat. The man behind the red cigar-end moved, struck Cardigan across the head with a gun-butt. Cardigan groaned and slumped back in the seat. Through glazed eyes he saw store-windows streak by. He heard the honking of the horns, the shrill blast of traffic whistles.

  Then the store windows were left behind. Sounds of the city petered out. There were occasional houses, then fewer and farther apart. The warm night wind blew against his hot face. Fields began to flow past. The big car droned on complacently, doing fifty-five on an undulating ribbon of cement. It boomed through a small settlement, left that behind in two minutes; swept past fields again and patches of dark woods.

  “What is it?” Cardigan muttered. “A pitch from the St. Charles Bridge?”

  “You’ll see,” the land man said.

  “Listen,” Cardigan urged. “For God’s sake, listen! Give me a break. I tell you—”

  “You can’t tell us anything,” the lank man said.

  The man at the wheel, leaning out, said, “It won’t be long now. Right around that bend.”

  There was a dark forest on the left of the wide bend, and the wind carried a dank smell of marshes.

  “That path’s right up here, ain’t it?” the driver asked.

  “Yeah,” the stocky man said. “I’ll say when.”

  Cardigan said in a thick voice, “For God’s sake—”

  “Lay off!” the lank man snarled; then in a quiet tone, “You and Abe go with him, Louie. We’ll drive on and turn around and pick you up in ten minutes.”

  The car was slowing down. Presently it stopped.

  “Hop out, Louie,” the lank man said.

  “Right,” said the stocky man swinging from the front seat.

  The man with the cigar threw it away and opened the rear door. Louie ran around the back and waited. The lank man prodded Cardigan with his gun and Louie and Abe hauled him out and rushed him across the road, down a path that bored into the dark, matted forest.

  “So it’s lights out,” said Cardigan, bitterly.

  Louie said, “For you, sweetheart.”

  They moved along the edge of a black pool on damp, soggy earth. Cardigan dragged his feet, tussled between the two. But they held him up, saying nothing, hauled him deeper and deeper into the woods.

  Cardigan fell between them, dragging his knees on the wet earth. They could not walk with him that way, and they stopped. Louie cursed and struck Cardigan with his gun.

  “Get up!” he snarled.

  Cardigan hung a dead weight between them, breathed hoarsely, muttered, “If you heels want to give it to me, go ahead!”

  Louie nodded. “Let’s, Abe.”

  “We oughter go in further.”

  They redoubled their efforts, dragged Cardigan on the muddy path. His legs were straight behind him, his hands clawing at the mud.

  Louie cried in a low voice. “Look out, Abe! That’s water! We go left here—ain’t it?”

  Cardigan suddenly heaved his weight and twisted violently between them, breaking from Abe’s grasp. He fell to the right, dragging Louie with him. They shot down the muddy bank, plunged into black water, while Abe clawed for a footing and Louie cried, “Help!” in a frightened voice that a mouthful of water promptly smothered.

  Cardigan kicked out into the black water. He did not see Louie. He did not see Abe. It was black as pitch in those woods.

  Louie cried, “Ugh—don’t shoot, Abe!”

  “Where the hell are you?” Abe snapped.

  “Here—I’m here—gimme a hand—”

  Through the black water swam Cardigan, getting rid of his coat. The voices of Louie and Abe grew fainter. Cardigan swam into gnarled roots. He grasped them, drew himself beneath them, felt his feet touch bottom. He clawed up a muddy bank and burrowed into thickets.

  He did not wait to listen, b
ut stumbled on his way, sometimes on solid ground, sometimes in knee-deep bogs. He fell and rose again and kept putting distance between himself and the two gunmen. He kept on fiercely, blindly, slushing through mud, spitting mud from his lips, choking and hacking and grunting and cursing.

  He did not know it, but an hour passed before he fell headlong on a dry hump of earth. He lay gasping for breath, mud from head to foot, his brain almost bursting from the exertion. Then something inside him snapped and he relaxed with a sigh.

  Gray daylight was breaking when he stumbled out on the state highway. An eastbound produce truck pulled up and gave him a lift.

  The driver looked at him curiously. “You’re messed up a bit, ain’t you, bud?”

  “I was on a wild party,” Cardigan said. “I’d appreciate a butt, brother.”

  Chapter Two

  The Widow Talks

  CARDIGAN ducked into the apartment house through the service entrance and reached his apartment without being seen. Muddy and bruised, he looked a ruin. He scuffled an envelope that had been slid under the door, picked it up and threw it on a console. He went to the bathroom and soaked himself in a hot tub. Dressed, he looked better.

  He went to the console for a cigarette, lit up and then picked up the letter he had dropped there. It was apartment house stationery. A note was inside.

  A Mr. Bush of police headquarters called at 10:30 and left word you should come right down.

  Adams.

  That was the night porter.

  Cardigan scowled thoughtfully and took a drag at his butt on the way across to the telephone. He rang headquarters.

  “Bush. Give me Bush if he’s there…. Hello, Bush. Cardigan. I… What!… Sweet cripes!… I’ll be right down.”

  He dived into a coat, grabbed a hat and went downstairs. He taxied to Twelfth and Clark. Bush, leaning over a flat-topped desk, looked sidewise over his right shoulder as he barged in. “Oh, you,” he said.

  “What the hell, Bush?”

  Bush shuffled four lead slugs in the palm of his hand, then threw them dicelike on the desk and snapped thumb against fore-finger. He was a short, compact bald man. His tie was unloosed. He looked haggard from long hours.

  Cardigan picked up one of the four slugs, turned it round and round, then dropped it back among the others. His wide mouth was tight, his heavy brows bent over his staring dark eyes.

  Bush sighed. “Them guys sure meant business this time.”

  “How—how is Max Saul?”

  “Was unconscious the last I seen him—three this morning.”

  Cardigan made a fist, looked at it narrow-eyed.

  “And poor old Hartz—”

  “Back of his nut all smashed in. Three times in the back of the nut. Saul took one. Brunner, the chauffeur, got one through the heart and the car smashed. They were coming home from Hamburg Hall. It happened on South Grand, near Longfellow. Why the hell couldn’t you get down here before this?”

  “I had a date.”

  “All night?”

  Cardigan’s lip curled.

  “Keep your wisecracks under your jaw, Bush.”

  “Don’t get hot.”

  “I suppose you’re blaming this on Brodski too.”

  “Quit the razzberry. I’m going to bust this case, Cardigan. Hartz threatened to chuck every striker out of a job. In hard times like this that’s a wild statement. Look here, Cardigan.” He got up and shoved his pug nose almost against Cardigan’s chin. “Ever since the O’Hara kill you’ve been giving me the razz. What the hell have you got on your mind?”

  Cardigan turned and walked to the door.

  “What hospital is Max Saul in?”

  “You listen to me, Cardigan.” Bush tramped after him, faced him again. “You get this. You’ve been jazzing around ever since O’Hara got bumped off. You’ve been acting superior and horse-laughing me every chance you got. And I don’t like it. I’ve got more law in my little finger than you have in both hands, and if you slop around here much longer I’ll fix you so you get shoved out of the city.”

  “What hospital—”

  “You’re just a wisecracking Mick that thinks the bureau’s made up of a lot of hicks. I’m just as clever as you are, kid, and I’m backed up by authority. Last night Hartz and his chauffeur were rubbed out and your partner’s in the hospital. It’s damned funny that you shouldn’t have been with Hartz on the two times he was fired at.”

  Cardigan darkened.

  “We worked in shifts, fat-head. On alternate nights.”

  “That’s funny, ain’t it?”

  “It’d be funnier if I pushed you in the mouth.”

  Bush glowered.

  “You stay the hell out of here, Cardigan. I’ll handle this case—in my way.”

  “O’Hara was murdered, Bush. Don’t forget that Pat was the best friend I ever had. I’ll get the guy that did it. I’ll get him, Bush, and I’ll give you the pinch—and make you like it.”

  A wily light came into Bush’s eyes. His tone changed.

  “Be a good guy, Cardigan. You’ve got something up your sleeve. What the hell is it? Remember, it pays to stand in good with the bureau.”

  “I stand in good with the bureau. I don’t stand in good with you. And look at me weep over that.”

  “Be smart, be smart!”

  “Nuts for you,” Cardigan said, and went out.

  At the desk downstairs he found what hospital Saul had been sent to. He taxied out, a tight feeling in his throat. Trouble was piling on his head. First O’Hara. Then Hartz and the chauffeur. And Max in the hospital.

  Saul’s face was pale; dark circles were under his eyes. Cardigan sat down on a chair beside the bed, laid his big brown hand on Saul’s, pressed it once.

  “How’s it, kid?”

  “I feel—you know—sort of lousy.”

  “Yeah.”

  They looked at each other.

  Cardigan said, “I feel rotten about this, Max.”

  “Don’t be a goof. I’ll get over it. Let me feel rotten. It happened so fast. Six shots—and then we swerved. The car passed so close we almost scraped mudguards. We had both spotlights on. One of them swung around when we swerved. I saw a guy’s face in the other car, Jack. It wasn’t six feet away. He was grinning. A gold tooth flashed.”

  Cardigan looked at his hands. He didn’t want to tell Saul about the ride. The nurse came in and told him he couldn’t stay any longer.

  “Let me know if you want anything, Max?” Cardigan said.

  HE went downtown and spent three-quarters of an hour eating breakfast and reading the morning paper. Then he walked to his office in Olive Street and found Miss Gilligan, his secretary, sorting mail. She was a pop-eyed, gum-chewing girl with no looks but a great amount of vitality.

  “My God!” she said. “The papers! Did you see—”

  “Like a nice girl, get the boss on long distance.”

  He spoke with Hammerhorn in New York.

  “Well, since you read it in the papers there I don’t have to explain…. Max ought to pull through, the doctor said, but he’ll be on his back for weeks…. Where was I? On a date…. Now don’t ask foolish questions, George…. What?” He scowled at the instrument, then growled. “You’re the second guy today made a crack like that. I was with Hartz night before last. Last night was Max’s night…. Well, you get this, George. I don’t have to take talk like that from you. Make another pass like that and you and your job can go to hell. Despite which I’ll get the guy that killed my pal O’Hara…. I’m not getting hot-headed, but don’t you think you can handle the St. Louis end better than I can, pull your pants out of that plush chair and come out…. Oh, well, all right, all right…. Sure, George. Good-by.”

  He banged the receiver into the hook and shoved away the mail Miss Gilligan had placed on his desk. He was sore. He had to admit that it looked crummy, his having been off the scene on the two occasions of murder. The ride still simmered in his brain, but he had no intention of reporting it to the
police. He handled his own troubles. Besides, bigger things weighed him down. Hartz was dead. Max was out of commission. The papers were roaring with headlines.

  He called a county telephone number.

  “Is this you, Mr. Sherick?… Well, my name is Cardigan, the St. Louis head of the Cosmos Detective Agency. I’m the guy your sweet young things took for a ride last night. I’m back in town and O.K. Use your head, Sherick. If I wasn’t a swell guy I’d turn you up. Only take a dose of something to clear your brain, look up my reputation and think over what a boner you pulled. And thank your stars I’m a swell guy. Good-by.”

  He hung up, felt a little better, took his hat and went out. He taxied to Longfellow Boulevard and Clara Hartz’s house.

  Mrs. Schmidt let him in. She had been long with the Hartz menage, as housekeeper. She steered him into the large Teutonic living room. She tried to say something but began crying instead and went out.

  In a few minutes Clara Hartz came downstairs. She wore a black jacket over black pajamas. Her face was pale, angular, with a strange cool beauty. Cardigan didn’t move from the shadows of the living room. His low voice said, “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Hartz.”

  She lifted her chin and lowered it again without saying anything.

  Cardigan went on. “I’m sorry I didn’t show up last night.”

  “I waited two hours.”

  “You said over the telephone it was important.”

  She remained statuesque—cool, remote. “It was—about the Ritz the other night. I was worried. I wanted to ask you not to tell Ludwig. Or anybody. The suspense—knowing you knew—and your not saying anything—”

  He crossed suddenly to her, his big brown jaw grim.

  “Who do you think murdered your husband?”

  She had greenish eyes, large—slightly Oriental, cool as ice.

  “I wish I knew,” she said in her flat voice.

  “Do you think the strike caused it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Cardigan’s gray eyes glittered. Beside her smooth cool beauty he looked immense, shaggy, threatening. But her eyes never wavered.

  “Remember,” he muttered, “my friend Pat O’Hara was murdered first. That hits me deep and way down. I’m going to get the murderer—even if I have to cause a lot of heartache.”