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

by Frederick Nebel

  THE room was still a shambles ten minutes later. It was filled with blue-coated policemen. There were an ambulance doctor, another doctor. Knoblock was there.

  Ackerman lay on a stretcher. “We all went mad,” he murmured. “Things happened so fast. There was no time—to talk—explain. I was in—deep. I knew I was in deep. Cardigan was after us. There was no shaking him off—no bargaining with him.”

  “You fool,” Knoblock said, sadly.

  “I know. And it was—pretty bad—knowing he knew something—and not knowing just how much he knew. I took the chance. I sent two men after him. To end—the suspense. They bungled. And then—there was nothing to do—but bargain—and he wouldn’t—he wouldn’t listen—to—anything. Give Ullrich—and Bush—a break.”

  His head fell to one side and one of the doctors said: “That’s all. That’s the end.”

  Knoblock turned a clouded face toward Ullrich. “There’ll be two men we want. He said—two.”

  Ullrich did not smile. His voice was like a ghost’s. “Yes, my dear inspector. I can give you the names.”

  Downstairs, Cardigan was sitting in an ambulance, smoking a cigarette.

  “Should you ask me,” McClintock said, “I wouldn’t hang around here.”

  Cardigan said: “That’s an idea,” and climbed out.

  McClintock hailed a cab, handed Cardigan in and followed.

  “Listen,” Cardigan said, “I don’t need you for a nurse. Go on. Beat it.”

  “Say—I’ll get you a nurse that’ll knock your eye out. Not because I like you, Irish. But because I like your style. You’re the first real, honest-to-cripes opposition I’ve had in years. You’re a pick-me-up after about a ten-year hangover.”

  “Baloney!”

  McClintock laughed raucously. “And how I slice it!”

  Phantom Fingers

  Chapter One

  Mr. Bartles of 303

  PAT SEAWARD was locking the office door from the outside and Cardigan was halfway toward the elevators when the telephone rang. Pat looked after Cardigan, called: “Phone, chief. Should I let it slide?”

  “Yeah, let it slide.”

  “Well, maybe I’d better answer it.”

  “O.K. Answer it.”

  Cardigan stopped and leaned against the wall, his faded fedora battered down over one eye, shaggy gobs of hair sticking out around his ears.

  Pat reappeared. “For you, chief.”

  Cardigan growled: “I thought my day was done,” and went slowly, heavy-footed, toward the office.

  Pat sang, lightly: “When day is done and evening shadows—”

  “All right, brat, all right. Let that slide too.”

  “Arf! Arf!”

  He entered the outer office, swept up the telephone. “Hello…. Yes, this is Cardigan…. Just a minute.” He put the phone on the desk, leaned down, collected pencil and pad. “Spell it, please…. Yeah, I’ve got it…. Uhunh—Westminster.” He looked up at Pat, looked down at the pad again, wrote scattered notes. “Well, it’s five-thirty now…. Well, if it’s important I could…. Uhunh. O.K., then…. I get you. Sure…. Good-by.”

  He depressed the hook with his right hand, hefted the receiver in his left for a moment and then slapped it into the hook. He tore a sheet off the pad, regarded it, regarded Pat quizzically.

  “This is funny,” he said. “A guy named Bartles out in the Western Arms is having a jane call on him at six and wants a private detective out there to sit through the interview. Details—” he stroked his jaw—“when I get there.”

  “So what?”

  “He’s sick a-bed.”

  “Maybe he wants you to hold his hand or something.”

  Cardigan folded the slip of paper, tucked it into a vest pocket, grabbed Pat by the arm and hustled her out. “For two cents I’d slap you down. Get along, you.”

  “But first I must lock the casa, señor.”

  Cardigan went on to the elevators, caught a down-bound car and held it while Pat came skipping down the corridor. Below in the lobby Cardigan said: “If you promise to shut up I’ll drop you at your hotel.”

  “Promise,” she said, with a flash of long eyelashes.

  They rode west on Olive, turned right at Twelfth and stopped in front of the Hotel Andromeda. Cardigan got out, handed out Pat and said: “Dinner at eight and omit the mascara.”

  “Oh, you big, strong silent man!”

  “Scram!”

  Chuckling, he climbed back into the cab, gave a number on Westminster. The cab went up Locust past double-decker busses. At Channing it swung into Lindell and went over the hump past the big Masonic building. The rush of air through the open windows was cold and Cardigan held his hat between his hands and let the wind tousel his shaggy crop of black hair. The cab made a right turn into Vandeventer, caught a green light at McPherson and took the next left into Westminster.

  The Western Arms was not pretentious, but it raised six stories of red brick which the chemical cleaners had recently gone over. It had a green lawn out front and a narrow cement terrace with six wicker armchairs in a row. The lobby was clean, cool and deserted. There was no desk—no elevator.

  Cardigan climbed three flights of stairs, walked toward the front of the building until he came to a door marked 303. This door was made of horizontal blinds and when he opened it there was another, regular door of dark wood. He knocked on this, then turned the knob, opened it.

  “Mr. Bartles.”

  The living room was dark because the blinds were half drawn. Bartles had said over the phone that he should walk right in. Cardigan, having closed the door, said again: “Mr. Bartles.”

  The living room was stuffy. Objects began to make themselves apparent as Cardigan’s eyes became accustomed to the dim room. He went toward a partly open door, but turned back when he saw it led to a bathroom. He espied another door across the room and walked toward it, wearing a wrinkled frown.

  The door was open and Cardigan saw first the foot of a brass bed and next the shape of a body beneath a white coverlet.

  “Mr. Bartles.”

  Westminster was a quiet street and there was no sound of traffic. A clock was ticking in the room. The shades were drawn all the way down. The shape on the bed remained motionless.

  Cardigan took a few steps into the room, moved nearer to the side of the bed. His hand went out and he turned on a small reading lamp that stood on a table beside the bed.

  He muttered: “Oh,” quietly.

  His hand shot in beneath a blue pajama coat, remained there while his eyes regarded a twisted, discolored face. He stood up again and put his fists on his hips. There was a slip of paper lying on the little bed-table. On it had been scrawled hastily the name of his agency, the address, and then across one corner his own name.

  “Um,” he muttered.

  HE did not disturb the paper. His lips felt dry and he moistened them with his tongue. He looked at the alarm clock on the table. It was ten to six.

  There was a green ash tray with the stub of a cigarette resting in one of three niches. Cardigan bent closer. There was a hint of red color on the end of the cigarette that had been between two lips. Rouge….

  Cardigan looked at the clock again. Beside it was a telephone. He picked up the telephone and said: “Police Headquarters.” He glanced around the dim room with thoughtful eyes. “Headquarters?… This is Cardigan, the Cosmos head. Say, there’s a guy dead in apartment 303 at number—Westminster…. Where am I? In the apartment…. Oh, I just walked in. I had a date…. Bartles…. Well, strangulation…. Sure, I’ll stay here.”

  He hung up and put the phone back on the table, gently.

  Bartles was a small man—skinny. Even alive he must have been a dry and twisted clinker of a man, standing perhaps five feet five, weighing perhaps a hundred and ten. His fingers were like bones. His chest was bony. His body didn’t make much of a lump in the big brass bed. Pitiful body, all wasted and bone-ridden.

  “Um,” said Cardigan with a vast, heav
y sigh.

  He turned on more lights. He opened a closet door and looked at clothes hanging there. A black alpaca suit—a tan linen suit—a dark blue suit of serge, of fair but not excellent quality—a soiled shirt hanging on a hook. On the floor of the closet—a suitcase of worn, cracked leather and a smaller handbag—a drab gray overcoat. Marks on the clothing showed where labels had been ripped out. Shoes on the floor—a black pair and a tan pair, both pairs old with soles curving upward.

  Cardigan went back to the bed-table, rapped the sides. He found a small drawer, opened it and found a worn pin-seal wallet. Bills were packed neatly into one of the folds: five hundred and twenty dollars. Otherwise the wallet contained nothing. He returned it to the drawer, bent down to look at a pair of worn slippers.

  Beneath the head of the bed, where wall met floor, he saw an automatic pistol. He reached under and got it. It was a .30 caliber Luger. He smelled the muzzle, put the gun down beside the telephone.

  He stood looking abstractedly at the door leading to the living room, then strode toward it and entered the room, looking for a light switch. He heard a scraping sound. In a split second the dim form of a man crowded him and Cardigan felt the hard muzzle of a gun pressing against his stomach.

  An instant later there was a man behind him. Wedged between two guns, Cardigan let his hand slide away from his hip.

  “Git ’em up!” muttered the big man facing Cardigan.

  When Cardigan’s hands rose the man behind him took the gun off his hip and said: “Got his gat.”

  The big man had on a tremendous overcoat, the collar turned up. A floppy hat he wore was yanked down far over his eyes. His face was nothing more than a shadow which emitted harsh, deep-voiced sounds.

  “Now them other things, bo—them other things,” he grated.

  “Them what?” Cardigan said.

  “Ah-r-r!” rasped the man behind, jabbing his gun hard against the small of Cardigan’s back. “Lay off that, lay off that!” The big man menaced: “You hear, bo—you hear!”

  “You birds cripples? Search me.”

  “Arnie,” the big man growled, “frisk him. If he moves I let him have it.”

  CARDIGAN felt small, nervous hands ransack his pockets. He peered hard and tried to make out the features of the man he faced. It was impossible. Darkness had fallen rapidly. The room was quite dark now. Way behind him was the bar of light coming from the bedroom.

  “Remember, Arnie—six o’ them.”

  Arnie gave up. “They ain’t on him. He musta bunked them.”

  The big man muttered in a deep, passionate voice: “Bo, we ain’t foolin’! We want ’em! Six o’ them!”

  “You frisked me, didn’t you?”

  “We frisked you and they wasn’t there! You killed Bartles for them—”

  “If I had them they’d be on me, wouldn’t they?”

  The big man grated: “I ain’t askin’ you for questions, bo! By God, I mean what I say! You got ’em. You gotta have ’em! Six, bo—six. And they don’t take up much room and they’re worth enough as I’d blow your belly out to get ’em. You hear me! I ain’t lettin’ eighty thousand in emeralds git away from us! There’s been too much double-crossin’ goin’ on and— Listen, bo, maybe you ain’t got me right. I’m a killer.”

  The wail of a siren came up from the street. The big man stiffened.

  “What the hell’s that?” he growled.

  The small man cat-footed to a window. “Cops!” he gasped, whirling.

  “Stoppin’ here?”

  “Out front!”

  The big man seemed to bulge in his overcoat. The small man was a shadow scampering to the door.

  “On the lam, ‘Beef’!” he hissed.

  The big man towered, swayed. Suddenly he swore. His gun whipped up, chopped down. It ran against Cardigan’s head. Cardigan muttered: “Unh,” staggered back a step, reached out a hand blindly, felt the wall and held himself up with a great effort.

  The big man followed the small man through the door.

  Cardigan felt his way along the wall, snapped on the light switch. He looked at himself in a mirror, took off his hat, punched out the dent the blow had left, replaced the hat on his head. He saw his gun lying on a divan where the small man had tossed it. He recovered it and put it back in his pocket. He looked at himself again in the mirror. There was no blood. Only a throbbing pain on the top of his head.

  Making a face, he stood with clenched fists and muttered a stream of oaths in a low, vindictive voice. Then he stopped swearing and rolled a thought off his tongue: “Six emeralds… eighty thousand bucks.” Savageness had fled from his eyes and his eyes narrowed and a tightness came to his lips.

  Flying glances hit and stopped on a low, thin-legged desk. He lunged to it, sent fingers probing rapidly into pigeon-holes. Dusty pigeon-holes. Nothing there. He yanked open a drawer and found two pint bottles of Bourbon lying side by side. Nothing else.

  He turned and went lunging into the bathroom, searched the cabinet over the wash-basin. He let out a short oath as pain beat harder through his head. Finally he left the bathroom with long, swift strides, as if he were headed for a definite point. He stopped in the middle of the floor and looked exasperated.

  A small portable gramophone stood on a low end-table by the divan. He went to it, picked it up, shook it. Body and Soul fell off, rolled across the floor. Cardigan put the gramophone down, straightened, listened.

  He went back into the bedroom, took his handkerchief and unscrewed the brass knobs on the bed-posts. He shook the knobs and listened and then screwed them back on. The pain throbbed harder again and he closed his eyes and winced and when the pain lessened he cursed and tramped back into the living room.

  His eye dropped on the record that had rolled off the gramophone. He picked it up and carried it back to the end-table. He looked round and round the room intently, looked for something he might have overlooked.

  “Six emeralds,” he muttered. “Eighty thousand bucks.”

  He dropped to the divan, stretched out his legs, lit a cigarette. He heard the clatter of heels coming up the stairway. The door opened and a man stood there.

  “Hello, Cardigan.”

  “Hello, Fitz.”

  Chapter Two

  Green Ice

  SOME uniformed cops remained in the hall. Some came into the apartment and looked around. Lieutenant Fitz, plainclothes, followed Cardigan’s gesture and went into the bedroom. Dumpy Sergeant Conkey made eyes at Cardigan, grinned, made mysterious gestures with pudgy hands. He grinned eternally. He looked over his shoulder at Cardigan as he followed Fitz into the bedroom. His moon face beamed like an idiot’s.

  “Hey, Cardigan.” That was Fitz—lantern-jawed, lean-boned, somber-eyed.

  Cardigan went across the room and leaned in the connecting doorway.

  “When’d you find him?” Fitz rapped impersonally.

  “Ten to six.”

  “How come?”

  “When I was leaving the office the phone rang and this guy asked me to come right out. Said a jane was calling on him and he wanted me here. Said he’d explain when I got here. I thought I might pick up twenty-five bucks—and it was on my way home.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Bartles. He’d told me to walk right in. He said he was sick in bed. So I walked in. Found him—this way. The gun there was lying on the floor, so don’t throw a fit if you find my print on it. I picked it up. It hadn’t been fired recently. There’s a wallet in the table drawer containing five hundred and twenty bucks.”

  “Couldn’t you leave things alone?” Fitz snapped.

  “You know how it is.”

  Fitz took out the wallet, counted the money. He examined the gun. It was fully loaded. Fitz looked at the dead man. He chewed on his lip and his eyes scowled. Conkey pried into the closet, tossed out the clothes. The coroner’s man came in and made a superficial examination while carrying on a spirited conversation with Fitz about the stock market.

&nbs
p; A cop marched a baffled-looking man into the bedroom and the man almost took a header when he saw the body.

  Fitz scowled. “Who’re you?”

  “He’s the manager or something here,” the cop said.

  Fitz pointed. “This guy’s dead. He was choked to death between five-thirty and ten to six. How long’s he lived here?”

  “Only—a week. He paid a month in advance.”

  “Know anything about him?”

  “No, sir. I didn’t see him from the day he took it.”

  “Took what?”

  “Why—the—this apartment.”

  Fitz settled on his heels, tossed off shortly: “Get in anybody living in apartments around and above and below this one. And you come back too.”

  Conkey was happily tearing apart the clothing on the floor.

  Fitz jabbed Cardigan with a frank stare. “Are you sure this guy didn’t tell you anything else?”

  “Sure.”

  Fitz dropped his voice, dropped a glance toward the body. “Happen to know him?”

  “Never saw him before.”

  “Why do you suppose he wanted you here?”

  Cardigan shrugged. “You’ve got me, Fitz. I guess he was afraid of the dame.”

  “He didn’t give her name?”

  “No.”

  Conkey said cheerfully, “No labels in these duds, Fitz. There was though, once.” He got up and went over and looked down at the twisted face. “Nope. I don’t know him, either. Hey, here’s a watch under his pillow.”

  He held up a big gold watch by a chain. He pried open the back of it and something fell out and fluttered to the floor. Conkey bent down and retrieved the picture of a girl. Patiently it had been sheared down, rounded to fit the back of the watch.

  “Not bad-looking,” Conkey said. “Huh, Fitz?” He held it up and Fitz scowled at it.

  CARDIGAN went into the room and looked innocently over Fitz’s shoulder. Fitz glanced around at him.

  “What makes you interested, Cardigan?”

  “Conkey said she was good-looking.”

  Conkey said, beaming: “That picture ain’t been in there long. It’s new. You can see it’s new.” His mouth was wide open, grinning. His big pop-eyes sparkled.