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

by Frederick Nebel

  “Y-y-yes, sir.”

  “And mail to his hotel.”

  Pat, standing in the other door, said: “You weren’t by any chance steamed up, were you?”

  “Was I!”

  Chapter Five

  The Killing Widow

  A WARM autumn rain fell, more like a mist, making a shimmering halo around street lights. Auto lights drove long beams down wet macadam and rubber tires made a sucking, swishing sound. People scurried like leaves before a fall wind.

  Halfway down a narrow, gloomy street electric bulbs blinked their announcement on and off.

  B

  U

  R

  L

  E

  S

  Q

  U

  E

  The usual crowd hung around the lobby: down-at-the heel clerks, red-faced laborers, very young men and very old, sly-eyed men and self-conscious men.

  Cardigan pushed through, ignored the ticket window, said to the man at the inner entrance: “I want to see Finkleberg.”

  “Way up and—”

  “I know.”

  He climbed two flights of stairs and went down a narrow corridor toward a door marked ‘Manager.’ He knocked and pushed in. A fat, white, flabby-eared man sat reflecting over a cigar.

  “Hello, Barney.”

  “Hello, Cardigan. How’s business?”

  “Jake.”

  “With me it’s lousy. Don’t sit down, the chair’s dusty.”

  Cardigan grinned. “Say, Barney, O.K. if I go backstage tonight?”

  Barney smirked. “I didn’t think you went in for them dames.”

  “I’m funny that way.”

  “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Cardigan said: “What kind of a show is this?”

  “Terrible! Ach, du lieber! The comedians; the gels are like elephants only not so goot; and the only thing worth admission is a couple of ackerbats…. I’ll phone back you’re the King of England!”

  Cardigan went downstairs to the foyer, walked down a side aisle, back of a box and climbed three steps to a narrow door. Backstage the property manager shook hands limply and wandered away mournfully.

  Faded girls stood in groups and chattered. A magician stood alone and aloof like a man in a trance. Two comedians kept calling each other vile names. A singer got temperamental with the orchestra leader and kicked him, and the orchestra leader made a pass at her and was stopped by a blackface. A director appeared and swore violently and the chorus got into formation.

  The show started.

  Then Cardigan saw the girl—tall, slim, muscular. The man with her was not quite as tall, but pale. He was not the man whose picture Cardigan had seen on the handbill. They did their turn about half an hour after the show started. The stage was dark but a spotlight followed them. It was marvelous the way the girl tossed the man about. She had strong arms. The audience cheered and the pair did an encore, took two more bows and then went backstage where they stood with arms folded. They did not mingle with the others. The girl never smiled; she was almost pretty.

  Cardigan hung around till the show was almost over, then slipped out the stage entrance and waited. Ten minutes later the crowd surged out. The lights went out. Then the first of the performers appeared; in a few minutes, the girl. Her partner was with her and the girl did not wear mourning.

  Cardigan followed. A couple of blocks farther on the pair stopped, conversed in low tones. The man turned right and disappeared and the girl kept on. The street was dark and deserted. Cardigan’s legs moved faster, and soon he was close behind the girl, then abreast of her.

  “Keep walking, sister.”

  She looked sidewise, startled.

  “Keep walking. There’s a gun in my pocket.”

  She looked straight ahead and kept walking.

  Cardigan said: “To your hotel, to your room.”

  “What is this?” she breathed hoarsely.

  “Keep walking and keep shut and take the stairway when we reach your hotel. One move and it will be too bad.”

  A block farther on she turned into the lobby of a run-down hotel. Cardigan held her arm and walked very close to her. She kept looking straight ahead and they climbed a staircase together. Climbed four flights and went down a hallway where floorboards creaked. Past a red fire-exit light to a brown door with cracked paint on it.

  The girl took a key from her purse. He watched her hand and saw how white and smooth and strong it looked. She inserted the key in the lock and Cardigan got close behind her.

  “I don’t get you,” she said.

  “You will.”

  She opened the door and there was a light burning in the room. She stamped her foot.

  A man stirred on a bed, blinked open his eyes, muttered: “Huh?”

  Cardigan gave the woman a push in the back and sent her staggering. He covered the man on the bed. The man’s eyes gaped and he rose to his elbows. He was dressed in pants and an athletic undershirt. He was slim but muscles rippled in his arms.

  “What the hell!”

  The woman stood stockstill, white-faced. Not a muscle twitched. She seemed cool as ice.

  Cardigan closed the door.

  The man was wide awake now. “Who’s this?”

  “How should I know?” the woman said tonelessly.

  “I’m bad news,” Cardigan said. “You,” he snapped, as the woman moved, “stay where you are!”

  It was awkward for the man on the bed to rest on his elbows so he lay back again, the head of the bed propping his head forward. His face was white naturally, the skin seemed transparent over the framework and the eyes were large and moist.

  “Now, then,” Cardigan said, dangling manacles. “You, Arline, raise your right hand.” He got behind her, watching the man on the bed, and clipped one of the bracelets on her wrist, he prodded her to the head of the bed and said: “Now stick that arm between two of those vertical bars. O.K. Now you, mister, clamp that empty bracelet to your right wrist.”

  “Say—”

  “Clamp it!”

  Cardigan watched the bracelet enclose the wrist, then made sure that the manacles were locked. He stepped back and regarded the man and the woman. Neither could move from the bed. He went to the door and locked it and pulled down the window shades.

  The man on the bed snarled: “Say—”

  “Shut up.”

  Cardigan crossed to a closet, began tossing out clothes and presently appeared holding a black hat with veil attached and a dress of deep mourning.

  “Bartles, Oldham and Cunarko,” he said significantly and flung the widow’s weeds on a chair. “You have nice strong hands, Arline. Who was Vantura?”

  “My husb—” She stopped and tightened her hueless lips.

  “So—your husband. Once of the team of Arline and Vantura of The Vagabond Road Show. Died—when?”

  The man on the bed said: “What is this, what is this?” in a snarly, petulant voice.

  Cardigan pointed. “And you… Doke?”

  The woman gasped; the man’s face blanched.

  Cardigan said heavily, and yet playfully: “Just before Bartles was murdered a woman in mourning was seen leaving the house where he lived. In the back of his watch police found a picture of you—Arline.”

  “Me!”

  “Little you. In the house where Oldham and Cunarko were found murdered was also found an old handbill showing pictures of you and your late team-mate—and husband. Two and two equals—something. Emeralds. Lifted in Indianapolis two months ago. At the scene of each murder was found a smoked cigarette with lip rouge on it. I’m pleased to meet the killing widow.”

  He put his gun in his pocket, crossed to a bureau and pulled out all the drawers. He rifled clothes, boxes. He ransacked all the clothes he had taken from the closet. He lit into a wardrobe trunk and turned it into a shambles. He opened and searched a valise and two handbags.

  STANDING finally amid the chaos he said: “Maybe you get the idea that I
want those emeralds.”

  The man cried: “You’re crazy! Who are you?”

  “I’m not crazy and I’m a private shamus to you. And I want those emeralds. They were stolen from Bartles. He was murdered. Cunarko and Oldham were murdered because they had a share in the loot. You don’t turn them over and I’ll sic the cops on you. Turn ’em over and I’ll spring one of you but I’ve got to have one to chuck to the cops. Come on—start figuring. You, Arline, did the job but maybe Doke here is a big-hearted guy and will take the rap. Come, Doke, how’s to?”

  “I’ll take no rap! You can go to hell!”

  “No? O.K. Then it’s the jane. Act fast. Come on. Where the hell are those emeralds?”

  The man’s mouth began working.

  He choked: “In the bathroom—buried in a jar of cold cream.”

  Cardigan went around the foot of the bed, into the bathroom. When he reappeared he held six emeralds, smeared with cold cream, in his hand.

  The man cried: “Come on, you! Come on, lemme go now!”

  “You can’t,” the woman told Cardigan. “Because I have an alibi. I was rehearsing the afternoon Bartles was killed. Thirty people can prove it. Doke killed Bartles and Oldham and Cunarko. He wore my weeds. Bartles trusted me but nobody else, but I didn’t think a hell of a lot of him. He was supposed to have an ‘in’ with a good fence but the guy was out of town. The other guys got the idea he was trying to frame them because he didn’t turn the deal. But he was waiting. Doke here was most impatient of all. Bartles went down with the grippe and got scared and wouldn’t let any of them in. Doke’s a ventriloquist. He telephoned Bartles, imitated my voice and wanted to see Bartles about his grippe. Bartles always had a crush on me but not me on him. Doke knew it. So Bartles fell for it and Doke dressed in my weeds while I was out and went. I’d stopped wearing them three days before that but Bartles didn’t know it. So Doke went and did him in.

  “I threw a fit when I heard of it but Doke promised me fifty-fifty and I was tired of this two-a-day and fell for that. So then he finished off Oldham and Cunarko. I had no hand in it.”

  Cardigan said: “But Bartles made a phone call to me.”

  “That was Doke trying to make it seem more certain that a woman did it. You can’t spring him, mister. And you’re not going to spring me, either. I’ll take it on the button but I can get in the clear. I’ll stay right here. So will Doke—the rat!”

  “Listen, you!” Doke cried to Cardigan. “Lemme go! You gotta lemme go!”

  Cardigan said, bluntly: “I can’t. And if I’m ratting on you it’s the first time I’ve ever ratted on any guy. But I don’t think I’m ratting. You’ll have to fight it out with the court between you—”

  Winded and moaning, Doke relaxed.

  Cardigan went to the telephone and said, when police headquarters answered: “Send a couple of dicks over to the Rice Hotel, room 509…. Cardigan…. The guy that killed Bartles and Cunarko and Oldham.”

  “O God!” Doke moaned.

  “Oh, hell,” the woman said, “shut up!”

  Cardigan made another call. “Hello, Pat…. Cut out yawning…. Baubles and gadgets and things…. Yeah, happy ending. Tell you tomorrow. Goom-by.”

  Murder on the Loose

  Chapter One

  Mystery Blade

  CARDIGAN sat in the depths of the wing-chair, absent-mindedly tinkling cracked ice in a drink composed of Scotch, seltzer and a slice of fresh lime. The twelfth-story room was moderately cooled by a breeze that puffed in from the East River, four blocks away; with it came the sound of an elevated train slamming south on Third Avenue and the lesser but nearer racket of a Lexington Avenue street car.

  Dr. Korn said, “H-m-m… it must have been instantaneous. Yes, I’d say it was instantaneous.”

  Cardigan took a drink.

  Fogel, the house dick, broad as a church door, mashed a handkerchief between sweaty palms and hitched a fat white neck uncomfortably in a hard collar. “Cripes,” he said. “Cripes.”

  “Distressing,” said Ownes, the night manager, rolling his eyes and pressing his palms piously together.

  The man on the floor said nothing. He was dead. Stabbed through the heart.

  Cardigan took another drink, untangled his legs, got up, strode to the little white pantry. Korn and Ownes looked at each other and heard the clear-cut chink of ice against glass, the fizz of a siphon. Cardigan reappeared carrying a fresh drink and saying, “Help yourself, gentlemen. The makings are all in there.” He made a semicircular detour around the body on the floor and resumed his seat in the wing-chair.

  Ownes said righteously, “This is murder, Mr. Cardigan!”

  “Sure. A guy busts into my room and another guy who was already in here or came in afterward gave him the works. What am I supposed to do?”

  Ownes made a hopeless gesture, and Fogel, shoving out his cleft chin, said, “This sure is funny, this is.”

  Cardigan looked at him. “You wouldn’t be making any cracks, would you?”

  Dr. Korn’s interest was purely clinical. “An expert thrust, a very expert thrust—just one.” He held up a finger. “Once.”

  Cardigan was still looking at Fogel. Fogel buttoned his coat, slid his gaze slantwise away from Cardigan, went to a window and regarded the cool spire of the Chrysler Building. Cardigan looked at the folds in the back of his thick white neck and consumed a quarter of the drink.

  There was a rap on the door. Ownes started, turned. Fogel turned from the window, threw Ownes a look and then thumped his flat feet across the carpet and opened the door.

  “H’lo, Fogel,” Lieutenant Bone said.

  “Hello, Abe. Hello, Frank.”

  “Hello, Gus,” Sergeant Raush said.

  Hatchet-faced Abe Bone dropped a dour gaze on the dead man, lifted it to Dr. Korn, moved it to Ownes, moved it on to Cardigan.

  “Oh,” he muttered. “You.”

  Cardigan saluted with his glass. “Skoal.”

  Bone said impersonally, “I thought you were in St. Louis.”

  “I was. For several years. I’m back.”

  “Yeah, I see. How come you’re in this room?”

  “I live here.”

  Bone showed no surprise. “Who’s the stiff?”

  “I don’t know. I walked in my room twenty minutes ago and fell over him. I called the desk downstairs, and Fogel and Mr. Ownes came up and brought Dr. Korn with them.”

  Bone looked at Dr. Korn. “Dead when you got here?”

  “Oh, yes. Quite. Dead for several hours, I’d say.”

  BONE’S slab-cheeked face remained expressionless. He knelt beside the dead man, studied the wound, studied the face. His own expression never changed. His hard, bony hands probed pockets and brought forth odds and ends which he laid on the carpet. He rose suddenly and crossed to Cardigan.

  “When did you come in here?”

  “Eleven-ten.”

  “Did you touch the body?”

  “Felt it—the pulse—that’s all.”

  “Who is the guy?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was your door open or locked when you came in?”

  “Locked. It locks automatically when you go out.”

  “What’s your theory?”

  “A guy was in here or came in while this egg was frisking my room and let him have it.”

  Bone said, “What would this guy or the other guy be after?”

  “Haven’t the slightest idea.”

  “Miss anything?”

  “No. The room’s just as I found it, except that door to the in-a-door bed was open. One or the other of the guys didn’t have time to complete a frisk.”

  “Find a gun?”

  “There’s one under the stiff.”

  Bone drew a handkerchief and pulled the gun out by the barrel. It was a .32 Webley automatic, fully loaded. He wrapped it in his handkerchief and thrust into his pocket. He looked at Cardigan with hard, sour eyes.

  Cardigan drained his glass, rose and
carried it to the little pantry. He reappeared empty-handed and said to Ownes, “Of course I’ll want my room changed.”

  Bone said dismally, “If this guy broke into your room, he must have been after something.”

  “Sure. Most crooks that break into rooms are after something.”

  “Never mind that. There was another guy after something, too.”

  Fogel put in, “So he says.”

  “You keep your oar out of this!” Cardigan snapped.

  “Never mind him,” Bone chopped in. “I’m talking to you.”

  Cardigan looked at Bone. “I’ve told you.”

  “You haven’t told me enough.”

  “Then that’s just too bad, and what do you think you can do about it?”

  Bone was bleak. “I can pinch you—”

  “In a horse’s neck you can. Dr. Korn told you the guy’s been dead several hours. My key was on the rack downstairs. I got it at eleven-ten and came right up.”

  “Two guys were after something,” Bone said. “Each on his lonesome. They crossed, and one of them got rubbed out. One guy might have been on an ordinary break, but not two, Cardigan—not two. What did the one guy get?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What was he after?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What might he have been after?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Fogel said, “Hell, Abe, he’d never tell you, he wouldn’t. I know him, I do.”

  Cardigan said, “Just one more burp out of you, you cheap keyhole artist, and I’ll take a swing at you.”

  “I told you never mind him,” Bone cut in.

  And Cardigan swung on Bone saying, “There’s a dead man. I found him in my room when I came in. I don’t know him. I don’t know what he was after. I notified the desk a couple of minutes after I found him. I got the doctor up. I acted according to law in every respect. So now try using your head instead of your mouth for a change and figure it out for yourself!”

  His expression changeless, Bone said, “I’m figuring it out, Cardigan. I know you. Any time you think you can pull the wool over my eyes—”

  “I’d hold him, Abe,” Fogel suggested. “I’d hold him. I’d make him tell.”

  Cardigan pivoted, took one step and a swing at Fogel. Fogel sat down on the floor, and Bone and Raush jumped and caught hold of Cardigan’s arms.