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

by Frederick Nebel

  “Feitelberg?”

  “No, I’m the clerk.”

  “Where’s Feitelberg?”

  The temporary blind-staggers left Cardigan. Out of the mist came the face of the clerk, clear now in its pale thinness. And the too-large glasses, the black alpaca coat with elbows out, the cuffs ragged.

  “You want to see Mr. Feitelberg?”

  “Of course,” Cardigan said.

  The clerk disappeared behind the counter. When a door in the rear opened, Cardigan heard voices, but they stopped immediately—and then the door closed behind the clerk. But in a moment it opened, and there weren’t any voices.

  The clerk and a small, chubby man came out. The chubby man was bald and very white. There was not a hair on face or head. He had owlish eyes that attempted to be so frank that you got the opposite impression.

  “Yes?”

  “I want to talk to you alone a minute,” Cardigan said.

  “Me?”

  “Mr. Feitelberg.”

  “Who are you, please?”

  “Just now I’m representing the Odegard Indemnity Company.”

  “Come around back.”

  The office behind the store was small, dusty, cluttered, and had another door in the rear. There was an ash tray on the desk with a cigarette still smoldering. Cardigan took out his leather cigarette case.

  “Smoke?”

  “I don’t smoke, thanks,” the chubby man said.

  Cardigan crushed out the smoldering cigarette and Feitelberg made a nervous gesture with his hands. Cardigan saw the gesture, but did not let on. He sat down.

  He said: “You do a good business, don’t you?”

  “Good—yes, sometimes.”

  “High-class trade?”

  Feitelberg shrugged. “I never ask. A man comes in. He buys something or he pawns something, but I never ask.”

  “Or a woman.”

  “Eh?”

  “Or a woman comes in.”

  “Yes, yes, sometimes a woman.”

  Cardigan looked at his hands, said toward the floor: “What was the biggest loan you ever made?”

  Feitelberg knew his rights. He was polite, saying: “That of course is something I am not obliged to give out. Just what do you want here, mister?”

  “I’m looking for the lost Kemmerich pearls—a necklace valued at thirty thousand bucks.”

  IT was a blunt statement, and it sent the chubby man back a few paces. But he straightened against the wall. He laughed, nervously. “That is simple. I can tell you I know nothing about it. It was stolen last week, wasn’t it, was it not? Ah, yes—now I remember. It was in the papers. Yes, I read all about it.” He seemed suddenly cheerful, his owlish eyes sparkling. “It was a big piece in the papers about it—”

  “Know Mrs. Kemmerich?”

  “I have not the pleasure.”

  “What name does the lady go under who spent half an hour in here this morning?”

  “There were a number of ladies in here this morning.”

  “One about ten o’clock.”

  Feitelberg bent his hairless brows studiously. “I do not seem to remember. I mean I do not associate any particular lady with any particular time.”

  Cardigan stood up. “You’re a liar.”

  Feitelberg recoiled against the wall. “I hope I am not going to be insulted in my own place of business.”

  “I said you’re a liar!”

  Feitelberg leveled an arm. “Get out! Get out of my place of business!”

  “Mrs. Kemmerich was in here this morning. She spent half an hour here. Her butler was killed last night. One of our agency men was killed shortly after midnight. There’s a hook-up somewhere.”

  Feitelberg got excited and knocked over a chair. He cried out in astonishment. The door leading to the store opened and the big-spectacled clerk stood there with a gun in his hand. He was young and scrawny but he was also cool.

  “Trouble, Mr. Feitelberg?”

  The chubby man was panicky. He picked up the chair and promptly stumbled over it again. But he reached the phone, and though his chin had the shakes there was a white grimness about it.

  He panted: “Now get out, get out or I call the police! This is my place of business and I will not be insulted in it!”

  The hand of the clerk was very steady and that made the gun he held doubly menacing. Cardigan scowled at it, scowled at the clerk, scowled at Feitelberg. He said nothing. He turned and walked into the store, out into the street.

  He doubled around the block, scaled a board fence and worked his way into an alley that terminated in a small yard behind the pawnshop. He made his way to the door. Looking down, he saw three cigarette butts on the cement apron in front of the door. One was still smoldering.

  Cardigan began backing away. He returned into the maw of the alley between two brick buildings, found another way to the street without scaling the board fence. There he slowed down, took up a position in the recessed doorway of a store placarded with For Rent signs.

  Ten minutes later he saw a man come down the alley. The man walked rapidly, with head down. He was neatly dressed though his pants looked too tight and he wore patent-leather shoes. He appeared wiry, quick, and there was something definitely hard and sleek about the way the short-brimmed gray fedora was yanked down over one eyebrow.

  The man was Packy Daskas.

  Chapter Three

  P.&O. Punk

  CARDIGAN lined out after him, taking his time, taking it easy. Packy flagged a cab on Seventh Avenue and it headed south. Cardigan caught one and passed a two-dollar bill through the window with brief instructions. At Fourteenth Street the cabs shot west and then south on Hudson Street. The tail wound up at Sheridan Square. Packy stood on the corner of West Fourth and Grove long enough to light a cigarette. Cardigan stood on Christopher near the subway entrance and let Packy get a start.

  Packy went down Grove Street and slipped down into an areaway speak short of Bedford. Cardigan walked as far as Bedford, turned, killed a couple of minutes watching the areaway, then went toward it, down into it and pushed open an iron gate.

  The bar was long with a lot of colored lights behind it. A couple of heavy afternoon drinkers stood at one end of the bar; a looking-glass drinker stood alone in the center hiccuping, and Packy stood at the other end nursing a drink between his hands and looking absorbed in thought. Cardigan went to the opposite end where there wasn’t much light and ordered a gin rickey. A cop came in, got a pint, shoved it under his coat and went out whistling. Between mixing drinks, the barman read an account of a love-nest murder and made clicking, disapproving sounds with his tongue. It looked like a clean, orderly and law-abiding place.

  After a while a man came in, looked around and then went slowly to a place at the bar beside Packy. Their elbows almost touched. Their heads went down, eyes shaded by hat brims, and the barman mixed two drinks. The man who had just come in looked older than Packy. He had a brown face, lined, and a black mustache and broad shoulders. He wore a Homburg and looked like an actor or a gambler or like a good imitation of either. His air was one of faded elegance and he looked dissipated. He also looked haggard and he addressed Packy with a nervous, sidewise twitching of his mouth which he half concealed by a restless hand.

  The two drank up; the older man paid and both went out. Cardigan planked a half-dollar piece on the bar and went out a minute later. He saw them walking toward Sheridan Square and followed them to West Tenth Street. They entered a narrow red brick house and when Cardigan slipped in he heard them walking frontward in the hallway above. Then he heard them mounting a second flight of stairs and he was up on the first landing by the time they reached the second. He heard keys jangling and catfooted up the second flight. His head came level with the hall floor and he saw through the railing that they entered a door at the rear of the hall.

  He went downstairs, into the street and started walking east. He stood on the corner and watched the red brick house. An hour later the two men came out and hea
ded west. When they had disappeared Cardigan strode to the house, entered the hall door and climbed to the second floor.

  It took him three minutes to work his way through the lock. There was dirty chintz on two rear windows of a square, old-fashioned room. In the center stood a large brass bed. There was a cheap bureau. Under the bed was a battered steamer trunk which Cardigan dragged out. It was locked. He went through the bureau drawers and through the single closet, found nothing except indications that only one person occupied the room. It took him ten minutes to get the trunk open.

  He found a couple of Luger automatics. There were cord breeches and boots, flannel shirts, canvas coats, and lots of white duck. In the bottom he found a large photograph of a woman. On the back was inscribed “To my husband, forever. Lily.” He whipped the photograph into better light.

  It was Lily Kemmerich—Lily Kemmerich maybe ten, twelve years before. In the lower right hand corner were the name and address of the photographer—Lundmann, Cape Town.

  Cardigan repacked the trunk, relocked it. But he did not replace the photograph of Lily Kemmerich. He had to fold it to get it into his inside coat pocket. He searched the room again, replacing meanwhile everything as he had found it. Then he stood in the center of the room, his back to the foot of the bed, and looked around.

  Finally, satisfied, he moved toward the door, but before his hand settled on the knob a light knock on the oaken panel stopped him in his tracks. His shaggy brows bent—all his body went into quick, steel tension. Pivoting quietly, he went to the rear windows. There was no fire-escape, no way out. He swung around and then moved so that he would not be in silhouette and at the same time his hand slid beneath his left lapel, came out gripping a flat black automatic.

  HE saw the knob turn. Saw the door open, slowly at first, then more rapidly. And because the room was dim due to the thick, dirty chintz on the windows, Lily Kemmerich did not see him at first. He lowered his gun. He saw she was alone, plainly dressed in something dark blue and tailored with an oval-shaped hat of dark straw quite concealing her blonde hair.

  Then she said, “Oh!” in a soft, strangled whisper.

  “Quiet,” his low voice warned.

  “You!”

  “Quiet!”

  She swayed once, a little forward. He crossed the room, closed the door and stood with his back to it. She was a tall woman, but Cardigan dwarfed her. The top of his hat was on a level with the top of the door. His face was brown, lined heavily, almost malignant now because, perhaps, he was thinking of poor Fogarty who had been killed only half a block up the street.

  Sarcasm touched his words— “From the swank east side to the dumps of the west side, Mrs. Kemmerich. This is not so sweet and lovely.”

  She moved backward, not smoothly, but with wooden-kneed steps, until she touched the brass rail of the bed. She leaned against this, and in the dimness her pale face was beautiful, almost exotic.

  He growled: “Why did you come here?”

  Her lips opened, but a visible pounding in her throat seemed to gag her. She made a short, inarticulate sound, and then suddenly tears made bright-shining pools of her eyes.

  “Oh,” she murmured. “Oh, God.”

  “Talk to me. Not God.”

  “Oh, please—please!” she sobbed. She staggered sidewise.

  He took a quick step. He was Irish, with the quick moods, good or bad, of the Irish.

  This time he said: “Take it easy, Mrs. Kemmerich. Steady does it. For crying out loud, don’t pass out.”

  She sat down on the edge of the bed and stared white-faced at the soiled chintz curtains. Her lips quivered and there were little sounds fighting one another in her throat.

  Cardigan growled: “Say something.”

  “What shall I say?”

  “Who lives here?”

  “A man.”

  He chided with—“Honest?”

  “Don’t—don’t ridicule me.”

  “What did you come here for?”

  “I can’t tell you.” She said it desperately, her hands clenched, her jaw firm.

  “What were you doing at Sol Feitelberg’s this morning?”

  She was on her feet. The move was so abrupt and accompanied such a look of terror that the momentum carried her to the wall and she flattened against it, her eyes wide.

  “No—no!” she cried.

  His voice hardened. “A man of mine was killed in this street early this morning. He was following a man named Packy Daskas. Packy Daskas was in this room a short while ago with a man you know—the man who lives here, the man you came in to see. Our man was murdered because he was too close to something. He was murdered by either Daskas or the man you came to see. Where are the pearls?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You lie. It was a frame-up on the insurance company. You pretended they were stolen so that you’d get dough from the insurance company and also dough from a fence. Those pearls were turned over to Feitelberg.”

  She shook her head, cried passionately, “No—no! You’re wrong! Oh God, you’re so, so wrong! Please—” She straightened and started for the door. “Let me go! Please let me out of here!”

  “It was all arranged. Those pearls were turned over to Packy Daskas. You unhooked them yourself and in the crowd you moved so that it would be easy for him to receive them. Get back!”

  He gripped her by both arms and his big, scowling face was close to hers. “Remember,” he gritted, “that an old friend of mine was killed. Remember that.”

  She looked cold white. Her broken voice said: “You’re stronger than I am. You can break my arms—do anything. But I had nothing to do with killing your friend.”

  “Then tell me what you know.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You will!”

  “I can’t! I can’t! Let—let me go!”

  SHE tussled with him. She heaved and squirmed and he stood rock-still on his feet, holding her with both hands until she should become exhausted. But suddenly she went limp and with a little, hopeless cry she slumped. He let her down to the floor and saw how white her face was. He grimaced. He looked angry and chagrined and bewildered and for a moment he did nothing but stand there and look down at her.

  Then he bent down, lifted her in his arms and moved toward the bed. The door opened and a voice said: “All right, lay her down and then watch your hands.”

  He did not drop her. He looked over his shoulder and saw the haggard man kick the door shut. There was a gun in his hand. Cardigan laid Lily Kemmerich on the bed, straightened and turned to face the man.

  “Watch those hands, you!”

  “You watch ’em,” Cardigan muttered.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “What the hell do you think?”

  “I wouldn’t get fresh, funny face.”

  “Nuts for you.”

  “And pretty soon a load of lead in the belly for you. How do you like that?”

  “No more than my friend Fogarty did.”

  The man was running sweat. He looked at the bed and snapped, “She brought you here, huhn?”

  “I find my own way about.”

  “That’s crap. Nobody knew about this but Lily. She brought you here, the two-timing slob.”

  “She never looked like a slob to me. Was she out of her mind when she married you?”

  “Oh, she told you that, too!” His mustache twitched and his dark eyes burned across the room. “Well, it isn’t going to do you any good. She married me when I was in the jack. When I traveled the ocean liners and the P. & O. boats taking suckers for a ride on the spotted pasteboards. The first jam I got in she lammed on me, the bum. I was a big shot in those days—”

  “I don’t give a damn what you were. Right now you’re a small-time punk. Get down to business. If you’ll let me, I’ll put some water in her face.”

  “To hell with her! Don’t you move or I’ll let you have it!”

  Cardigan grunted. He slid a glance down at the unconscio
us woman and a shadow passed across his face as though suddenly he regretted having been so harsh with her.

  “Just stand there,” the man said, as he flung a quick glance at his strap watch.

  Fifteen minutes later the door opened and Packy Daskas came in. He stopped, took a few drags at a cigarette while running quick eyes over the scene.

  He clipped: “What’s this—a rehearsal?”

  “It’s her,” the haggard man said, “and another one of those private dicks. She came here with him to fan the place.”

  Packy had better nerves than the other. He relaxed, tossed his butt to the floor and stamped it out. “This ain’t the berries,” he said. “Something’s got to be done about it.” He was flippant, cold as an icicle.

  The haggard man’s voice shook. “How about that other thing?”

  Packy glared at him. “Clean. Do I have to keep telling you all the time?” He took off his hat and ran a hand over his lacquered dark hair, nodded toward Cardigan and spoke to the haggard man in a matter of fact tone. “This egg knows too much. It’s no good. Something’s got to be done about it. When it gets dark.”

  “And her too?”

  “Sure.”

  Cardigan said: “She came here alone. I came here first, you saps. I crashed the place and after a while she came in. There’s no hook-up.”

  Lily came to, turned her head from side to side. Finally her eyes settled on the haggard man and she said, weakly, “Harry.”

  “To hell with you!” the haggard man said.

  “Harry. I—please—”

  “To hell with you!”

  Chapter Four

  The Crimson Necklace

  MAYBE it was the sight of Lily, so beautiful, that gushed fresh rage through Harry’s body. He talked as if things had been pent up for a long time—while Packy Daskas stood slim and cold, his gun now in his hand and leveled toward Cardigan. Harry struck the brass rail of the bed with his fists, and his lips became wet and red with frenzy.

  “Lammed on me,” he cried, “when I got in that jam in Algiers! Bailed out! Left me flat! And now you come here with this dick to my room! And what did you find? Nothing!”