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

by Frederick Nebel

“What did you want with Sherick, Cardigan? You better tell me, because if you don’t I take a squad and go out and find out myself!”

  Cardigan’s lip twitched.

  “You stay away from Sherick, Bush! If you go out there he’ll get the idea I welched. And I’ve never welched on any guy.”

  “You got something on Sherick,” Bush muttered.

  “I haven’t. That’s just another of your weak-minded ideas.”

  “You got something on him and you made him come across about somebody else.” Bush nodded passed Cardigan’s shoulder. “Hello, McKimm.”

  “Hello, Bush.”

  Cardigan looked in the mirror back of the bar and saw the reflected image of a tall, stony-faced man who smoked a cigar. It was the man who had cornered, frightened, Clara Hartz that night at the Ritz. He went to the bar and brooded darkly over a drink.

  Cardigan threw a half-dollar on the bar. He whistled, left the bar, got his hat and went outside. Bush was at his heels. Cardigan opened the door of a waiting taxi and Bush said, “I’ll go with you.”

  Cardigan turned a withering look on him.

  “Not on my money, Bush!” He climbed in and slammed the door. “Broadway,” he said to the driver.

  The cab swung around and got out of the alley. Looking back, Cardigan saw Bush climb in another. Cardigan leaned forward.

  “Here’s a two-dollar bill, kid. Drop me off up the street and then take a ride out to the north end. There’s a tail back here I want to drop.”

  “Jake.”

  Cardigan looked back and saw another cab following.

  “Swing left at the next street,” he said. “Don’t stop. I’ll jump and walk to Broadway. You keep going.”

  “Jake.”

  The cab swung left sharply. Cardigan leaped off and slammed the door. He darted into an alley. He saw the second taxi shoot past, with Bush sitting on the edge of the seat.

  CARDIGAN retraced his steps and entered the Honkytonk. He did not check his hat. He reentered the bar and saw McKimm still standing there, a felt hat yanked down over his eyes, his hands toying with an empty glass. The bar was crowded now with jabbering drunks, and the jazz band pounded. Cardigan ordered a drink and paid for it on the spot. Under his hat-brim he watched McKimm in the mirror back of the bar.

  Five minutes later McKimm threw a couple of bills on the bar, waited for change. Cardigan turned and went into the foyer. The hat-check girl had her back to him. She was talking on the telephone. There was nobody else in the foyer. It was noisy with the sound of the music.

  The swing-door from the bar opened and McKimm came out. Cardigan lifted his coat pocket. McKimm’s eyes narrowed and his lips tightened hard on his cigar. Cardigan nodded toward the exit. McKimm hesitated, stony-faced. Cardigan moved his lips and went closer.

  McKimm turned and went up the stairs. Cardigan crowded him outside.

  There was no taxi.

  “Walk fast,” Cardigan said.

  He drew his gun and pressed it in the small of McKimm’s back.

  “What’s this?” McKimm growled.

  “Get.”

  They walked through the black alley, turned up the cobbled street. Cardigan flattened McKimm against a house-wall, made him raise his hands. He frisked him, took a gun from an armpit holster while his own gun pressed hard into McKimm’s stomach.

  “Now walk again,” Cardigan said. “Put your hands in your pockets and keep them there.”

  “Didn’t I see you with Bush?”

  “Get along, get along.”

  Their footfalls echoed in the quiet dark street. Four blocks further on Cardigan stopped a taxi and crowded McKimm in. Cardigan gave his address to Lindell.

  McKimm started.

  “What the hell’s this?”

  “Shut up.”

  They struck Broadway, turned left into Olive and bowled through the darkened business district, past the Post-Dispatch Building, across Twelfth Boulevard and up the hill. At Channing they left the car tracks, hit Lindell and went over the hump past the University.

  Cardigan spoke to the driver.

  “When you reach the address, a driveway swings through the basement garage. Take it.”

  McKimm sat in stony silence, his breath audible in his nostrils, his lips clamped on his cigar.

  In the basement garage Cardigan backed out, covered McKimm. He thrust a couple of bills into the driver’s hand. He motioned McKimm out and took him up in the service elevator.

  “Listen, who the hell are you?” McKimm muttered.

  “Get out,” Cardigan said at the sixth floor.

  He marched McKimm down the corridor, unlocked the door.

  “Get in.”

  He followed McKimm into the apartment, which he had left lighted, and kicked shut the door.

  McKimm turned and looked at him stonily. “Who the hell are you?” he asked again.

  “Pat O’Hara’s partner.”

  McKimm remained stony.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Sit down in the straight-backed chair, honeybunch. We’re going to play school. I’m the teacher and you’re the pupil.”

  McKimm sat down, said, “The floor is yours.”

  Keeping his gun and eyes trained on McKimm, Cardigan fished in a vest pocket, drew out a folded piece of paper.

  “Catch it,” he said.

  He threw and McKimm caught it.

  “Read it,” Cardigan said.

  McKimm unfolded the paper, squinted his eyes. Not a muscle in his face twitched. He looked up with his stony expressionless eyes and said nothing.

  “Now what about it?” Cardigan said.

  “What about what?”

  “In your notes, there, what the hell do you mean by the word ‘obligation,’ McKimm?”

  McKimm looked at the note again, folded it, tossed it to the open secretary.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m in a lousy mood tonight, McKimm, and I don’t want wisecracks for answers. I saw you accost Mrs. Hartz at the Ritz the night before it was raided and you didn’t look pleasant. And she looked scared. I’m on your tail tight as a tick.”

  “And you can go to hell.”

  Cardigan hefted his gun.

  “What was the obligation?”

  “Just what it said. Maybe I should have used ‘debt.’ A little debt. That’s all.”

  “Debt for what?”

  McKimm stood up, his lips still tight on his cigar, barely moving when he spoke.

  “To hell with you!”

  “Sit down!” Cardigan took three steps and punched McKimm in the chest.

  McKimm sat down, his eyes hard as marbles.

  Cardigan backed across the room, got hold of the telephone with one hand. He gave a number. He got a connection and asked for Mrs. Hartz.

  “Hello, Mrs. Hartz. Cardigan. I want you to come over to my apartment immediately…. I’m sorry, but I’m giving orders. You’ll do wise to come over, as fast as you can…. Yes. Thank you.”

  He hung up.

  Visibly McKimm’s lips didn’t move, but they must have, because he was saying, “What the hell kind of a merry-go-round are you on anyway?”

  “I’m reaching for the gold ring.”

  McKimm’s eyes remained round and hard and inscrutable.

  WHEN the brass knocker on the outside of the door sounded, Cardigan did not move. He called, “Mrs. Hartz?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come in.”

  The door opened. Everett was there, pink-cheeked and wavy-haired. The angle of the doorway at first prohibited his seeing McKimm. He saw Cardigan, however, and the gun in Cardigan’s hand.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” he snapped indignantly.

  “I didn’t expect you,” Cardigan said, with a wintry smile.

  “Do you think I would let Mrs. Hartz come to your place alone? Really!”

  Cool and white-faced in her black cloche hat and black wrap, Clara Hartz came in first. S
he saw McKimm. She looked at him with her Oriental eyes, looked away. Everett closed the door. Then he saw McKimm. He seemed to grow an inch, and his white hands doubled. His blue eyes radiated sudden blue fire but he kept his mouth shut.

  Cardigan said, with a touch of bitter sarcasm, “Do I have to go through with introductions?”

  “What do you want?” asked Clara Hartz in her flat voice.

  Cardigan pointed to the secretary. “Read that letter.”

  She crossed the room, picked up the piece of paper McKimm had refolded. She read the lines, shrugged, let the note slip back to the desk. One of her arched eyebrows rose.

  “Well?” she said.

  Everett made an exasperated sound, crossed the room, snatched up the note, read it. He flung a look at McKimm. McKimm was stony-faced, stony-eyed. Everett spun on Cardigan.

  “What in God’s name are you driving at?” he ripped out hotly.

  Cardigan ignored him. “Mrs. Hartz, in what way are you obligated to Mr. McKimm?”

  “That,” she said, “is perhaps my business—and Mr. McKimm’s.”

  “Right now it’s mine too.”

  “On the contrary—”

  “You hear!” Cardigan rasped, his face a dull red. “It’s my business! It’s my business to find out who murdered my partner Pat O’Hara! It’s my business to know what kind of business you had with McKimm!”

  “Look here, Cardigan,” snapped Everett, starting toward him.

  “You keep your oar out of this—and stay back!”

  Everett cried, “You have no right to question Mrs. Hartz! No right at all!”

  “Mrs. Hartz,” said Cardigan crisply, “answer my question.”

  She sighed. “I suppose I’ll have to. Well”—she drew in a breath—“I owe him an amount—of money. I’ve owed it for a little more than a year. When Mr. McKimm operated the Gold Casino, a gaming place, I played there. Rather steeply. I was foolish. He took my I.O.U.s because he knew Mr. Hartz was quite wealthy. It was unfortunate. I found out that Mr. Hartz was rigidly opposed to gambling. I never had much money to spend. Plenty of charge accounts for legitimate purchases—but no allowance. I shouldn’t have, but gambling is one of my weaknesses. I couldn’t get the money. The debt is still standing. That is all.”

  “How much?” asked Cardigan.

  She let her long-held breath out. “Fifty thousand.”

  “What of it? What of it?” snapped Everett.

  Cardigan ignored him. Cardigan’s face was brown and grim with red burning beneath the brown. He was staring at McKimm. He saw the first flicker of emotion in McKimm’s face. He saw McKimm’s big hands gripping the sides of the chair, saw an unholy glitter growing in McKimm’s eyes.

  “Now I suppose,” came Clara Hartz’s flat, casual voice, “you’ll have something else to give to the scandal sheets.”

  Cardigan’s voice was low, ominous. “That kill’s the thing, Mrs. Hartz—the murder of my partner. I tell you again I’m no scandal-monger—not just for the sake of scandal. But this goes deeper— This goes way down deep. Or I miss my bet. I miss my bet if the killer of Pat O’Hara, Ludwig Hartz and his chauffeur isn’t in this room right now.”

  She looked at him suddenly. She saw the fierce intensity in his eyes. She followed the direction of their burning, implacable stare. Fright leaped into her eyes. She let out a stifled little cry.

  McKimm raised his hand, ripped the dead cigar from his mouth. “Who the hell are you staring at, Cardigan?” he roared.

  For the first time his mouth opened, his lips ripped back across his teeth. A gold eye-tooth flashed at the left corner of his mouth.

  Cardigan flung at him, “I’m staring at you, McKimm! I’m staring at the guy that murdered three men and put a fourth in the hospital!”

  Ignoring Clara and Everett, he took three hard steps across the carpet, his gun trained on McKimm’s chest.

  “Oh, my God!” breathed Clara. “No—no—no!”

  “Max Saul’s living, thank God,” Cardigan said. “And he’ll remember that gold tooth, McKimm. And you’ll remember how the spotlight on Hartz’s car swung around as it swerved. You used this strike as a cover-up. You’re broke. You need the money. You figured to get your debt out of Hartz’s legacy to his wife.”

  “Is this true, is this true?” cried Clara Hartz.

  McKimm heaved to his feet, agony bursting on his face, guilt bare and unadorned in his eyes.

  “Sit down, McKimm!” barked Cardigan.

  McKimm roared, “My God, Everett—”

  A gun boomed.

  Cardigan felt a slam somewhere in the back and he started to pitch forward. Clara Hartz screamed. McKimm jumped and grabbed Cardigan’s gun, ripped it free. He smashed Cardigan in the jaw, sent him reeling backwards and followed him, ripping his own gun from Cardigan’s pocket.

  Everett stood shaking and horror-stricken, a smoking automatic in his hand.

  “Ralph, what have you done?” cried Clara Hartz.

  Cardigan landed in the mohair easy-chair with a bang, his heels flying, his head jerking back, the chair itself tilting backwards, banging against the wall.

  McKimm towered with a gun in either hand. “I’m leaving,” he clipped and backed swiftly to the door.

  Everett shook. “My God, McKimm, don’t leave me!”

  Clara Hartz pressed hands to her cheeks, stared thunderstruck at Everett. “Ralph—Ralph—”

  “Shut up!” Everett screamed at her.

  He shook like a man with palsy and backed up beside McKimm.

  “You’ll—have to take me, McKimm. I just saved—you.”

  Cardigan snarled, “Yellow as I always thought you were! Leaving the woman to take the rap, eh?” His face was ferocious, bitter, his shaggy hair stood on end. Pain burned in his back, but he was a hard party.

  CLARA’S calm was gone. She was flushed, wide-eyed, gripped with terror and wild bewilderment. She saw McKimm’s gun move upward. She choked and whirled and spread her body and her arms in front of Cardigan.

  “No you won’t!” she panted. “I see now. I see it all. You murdered Ludwig to get that money—through me later. And you, Ralph—oh, how could you! You told him of Ludwig’s movements. You urged me to divorce Ludwig. I wanted to. I didn’t love him. I loved you. But you didn’t want me—without his money. Oh, Ralph—Ralph!” She began sobbing hysterically.

  Everett looked like a lamb shorn. His dignity, his haughty manner, were gone. He shook and looked wild and desperate.

  “I gambled,” she cried. “I was weak. God knows I was weak! And I have no excuse. I’m a fool—a terrible fool!”

  McKimm clipped to Everett, “Come on.”

  McKimm opened the door, stepped into the corridor, looked up and down. Doors closed elsewhere. Voices were excited—then silent.

  Glassy-eyed, Everett backed through the door, confirming his guilt, leaving the woman who had loved him. She sobbed brokenly.

  Cardigan had his hand on it now, on the short-barreled Colt he had planted in the mohair easy-chair before Sherick’s arrival. He whipped it up. The blunt muzzle belched flame. Everett jerked and his eyes popped wide. Then he screamed and fell backward, clutched at his chest.

  McKimm bolted for the staircase.

  Cardigan jumped from the chair, whipped quick words into Clara Hartz’s ear.

  “That door over there hides an in-a-door bed. Get in there. Close the door. Hide behind the bed. Stay there.”

  He ran to the corridor door, looked out. A man in a dressing-gown was standing near the elevator.

  “Get a doctor,” Cardigan said, indicating Everett.

  He started down the staircase. Doors were opening and closing, and far below someone was blowing a police whistle. Cardigan reached the lobby as he saw McKimm bolt through the front door. He went through the door a split-second later and saw McKimm crossing Lindell.

  A small crowd had gathered in front of the apartment house. Some autos had stopped. People were scattering at sight of the men with the
drawn guns. McKimm began running west on Lindell. Cardigan reached the opposite sidewalk and ran after him. Pedestrians ran for shelter. McKimm looked back and fired, missed and crashed the tail light of a parked car.

  Cardigan raised his gun but a darting pedestrian got in the way, yelped with fright, flung himself flat on the sidewalk. Cardigan leaped over him. McKimm turned south into Euclid, stopped, turned and waited for Cardigan to swing around the corner. His gun belched and echoes hammered.

  Cardigan staggered to the curb, kept his feet, fired and saw McKimm reel but keep running. He fired again and saw McKimm swerve drunkenly. He ran after him unsteadily and McKimm turned and his gun blazed and Cardigan stopped and fell down. Half-kneeling, he raised his gun and watched McKimm jolting across the street. He fired and the bullet tumbled McKimm across the curb. But he got up and staggered on.

  Cardigan got up, sweat pouring from him, pain tightening his jaw. He limped across the street. He fell down on the opposite sidewalk and saw McKimm down twenty yards further on. McKimm’s gun boomed. The shot snarled against the pavement near Cardigan’s head. He leaned on his elbow, looked down his gun, fired.

  McKimm whipped over, tried to get up, collapsed. His gun rang as it banged down to the pavement.

  Cardigan toiled to his feet, gritted his teeth, staggered toward Lindell. He drew in great breaths. He made himself walk almost steadily. He looked grim and shaggy and he could feel blood crawling beneath his clothes.

  There was a crowd in front of the apartment house. He pushed through it, and people saw him and exclaimed but nobody tried to stop him. The lobby was jammed. The elevator was in use, so he took the stairway up. People were jabbering in the corridors. He barely noticed them. His feet were like gobs of lead.

  He reached his floor and found a crowd there. He spotted a couple of uniformed cops. He plowed through the crowd and the cops turned and grabbed him roughly.

  “Leggo,” he muttered.

  They tightened on him.

  “You damned flatfeet, leggo!”

  Bush appeared in the doorway.

  “Oh, it’s you, Cardigan!” Bush looked baffled and angry. “Let him go, boys.”

  The cops let go and Cardigan reeled into his apartment. A doctor was bending over Everett.

  “I knew you were up to something tonight!” Bush growled. “Now what the hell did you do?”