The Doan and Carstairs Mysteries

by Norbert Davis

  "She liked it fine. She liked it so well she began to get out of hand, and you knew that if Crowley worked much more of his sex appeal, she'd spill something to him. You killed her.

  "Joan Greg was crazy jealous of Crowley, and she gave you the idea by trying it herself. You knew, then, that you could put Leila Adams away and blame it on Joan Greg.

  "You had a master key. You could get into her bedroom. You cut Leila Adams' throat and then went in and planted the knife on Joan Greg and bloodied up her hands. When she woke up she actually didn't know whether or not she had killed the phoney Sheila Alden. As soon as I left you alone with her and Crowley, you told them to beat it. You planned to lay all the blame on them, knowing they'd keep under cover.

  "Jannen was prowling around the place, and you tipped him off and then sent me out, thinking Jannen and his damned wolves would take care of me. You tipped your hand twice then. First by that phoney entrance coming downstairs. Nobody who actually got banged with a chair ever acted so screwy as you did. And then you weren't even interested when I told you there was a girl down cellar. As an actor, you stink. What crackpot notion have you got up your sleeve now?"

  Brill said smoothly: "I've had to alter my plans slightly, Doan, but I don't think it will really matter--certainly not to you. You see, at first all I wanted to do was to force Sheila to give me her power of attorney for a week or so after she got control of the trust fund. If I could have done that, as I planned, I would have made a fortune."

  "Sure. By selling her a few million shares of phoney stock."

  Brill looked contemptuous. "Nothing so crude. Merely by forcing the market up and down by alternately selling and buying the huge blocks of stock she owns in several corporations and being on the right side of the market myself each time.

  "There would have been nothing criminal in that, and no way for her to prove afterward that she hadn't given the power of attorney voluntarily, because it would have been her word against myself, Kokomo and Leila Adams. But due to the way things have happened, I've been forced--not very reluctantly, I must admit--to ask Miss Alden to do me the honor of becoming my wife."

  Sheila Alden spoke for the first time. "No," she said in a small, clear voice.

  Brill paid no attention to her. "You see, Doan? Even if my original plan did go on the rocks, I can still pull things together. I'll have control over Miss Alden's money if she's my wife--you can be sure of that. And more important, she can't testify against me."

  Sheila Alden said: "I am not going to marry you--now or any other time."

  "I think you will," Brill said. "It's really quite essential. Kokomo, will you take Miss Alden into the other room and see if you can--ah--reason with her?"

  CHAPTER XI.

  GOOD BYE NOW

  SHIELA ALDEN DREW in her breath with a little gasp. Kokomo was grinning at her meaningly out of the side of his mouth that wasn't swollen. He came nearer the divan.

  "It's warm in there," Brill said. "She won't need that coat."

  Sheila Alden wrapped the coat tighter around her, clutching the lapels with fingers that were white with strain.

  "No! You can't--"

  "Brill," said Doan.

  He hadn't made any noticeable move, but now he was holding a flat metal case on the palm of his right hand, looking down at it thoughtfully.

  "That's mine!" Brill exclaimed.

  "No," said Doan. "No, Brill. Not yours. It's the one you gave me."

  Silence stretched over the room like a thin black veil, with the crackle of the flames in the hearth coming through it faint and distant.

  "Foolish," Doan said, still staring at the case thoughtfully. "Foolish trying to alibi yourself by carrying one like it and pretending some mysterious Mr. Smith gave it to you and that the cigars in it subsequently blew the janitor to smithereens. There aren't any cigars--explosive or otherwise--in this case. It's packed with explosive."

  "Brill said stiffly: "How--how--"

  "You're a dope," Doan told him. "Don't you know that the bomb squad on any city police force has equipment--black light, X-ray, fluoroscope---so they can look into suspicious packages without opening them? I took this case down to a pal of mine on the Bay City bomb squad. He squinted into it and told me it was a very neat little hand-grenade, so I kept it for a souvenir. Here. Catch it."

  He tossed the case in a spinning, glittering arc. Brill yelled in a choked, horrified voice. He dropped the automatic and grabbed frantically with both hands at the case.

  Doan dived for him in a lunging expert tackle. He smashed against Brill's pipe-stem legs. The case was knocked whirling up in the air, and Brill spun around and fell headlong. His head cracked sickeningly against the edge of the hearth, and he stiffened, his whole body quivering, and then was still.

  Doan rolled over and sat up and looked down the thick black barrel of the automatic at Kokomo's scared, sagging face.

  "Hi, Kokomo," Doan said softly.

  Kokomo held both big hands in front of him, fingers spread wide, as though he were trying to push back the expected bullet.

  "Don't," he whispered. "Don't shoot."

  "Oh, I think I will," Doan said.

  Kokomo believed him. He had already had a demonstration of what Doan could and would do. His thick lips opened and shut soundlessly, little sticky threads of saliva glinting at their corners.

  Doan got up. "Turn around, Kokomo."

  Kokomo turned slowly and stiffly, like a mechanical doll that had almost run down. Doan stepped close to him and slammed him on the head with the barrel of the automatic.

  "I'll bet even your cement knob will ache tomorrow after that," Doan said amiably. He winked at Sheila Alden, who was staring with wide unbelieving brown eyes.

  "Weren't scared, were you? They never had a chance. They're amateurs. I'm a professional. That case was really Brill's--not the one he gave me. I picked it out of his pocket last night. Wanted to look at it more closely."

  She continued to stare.

  He went over to the door into the hall and picked up the telephone. It was a French type handset with a long cord attached to it. Stringing out the cord behind him, Doan brought the phone back to the divan and sat down on it beside Sheila Alden. He held the receiver against his ear.

  "The dopes," he said to Sheila. "They didn't even cut the line."

  She turned her head stiffly, little by little, and looked from Brill to Kokomo. "Are they--are they--"

  "Dead?" Doan finished. "Oh, no." He was still listening at the receiver, and now he said:

  "Hello. Hello, operator? Get me the J. S. Toggery residence in Bay City. I don't know the number. I'll hold the line."

  He waited, smiling at Sheila Alden in a speculative way. She had begun to breathe more evenly now, and there was a little color in her cheeks.

  "But--but you did it so easily--so quickly. I mean, it all happened before I knew what--"

  "The hand is quicker than the eye," said Doan. "At least mine was quicker than theirs."

  "I--I've never met anyone like you before."

  "There's only one of us," Doan said.

  The receiver crackled against his ear, and then J. S. Toggery's voice said:

  "What? What? Who's this?"

  "Doan--the forgotten man. How are you, Mr. Toggery? How is Carstairs?"

  "You! That damned ghoulish giraffe! He pulled all my wife's new drapes down! He broke a vase that cost me a hundred and fifty dollars! He crawled under the dinner table and then stood up and dumped the dinner on the floor! I've got him chained in the garage, and let me tell you, Doan, if he pulls just one more trick, I'll get an elephant gun and so help me I'll pulverize him! You hear me?"

  "He's young and exuberant. He probably misses me. You'll have to excuse him. Goodbye now."

  "Wait! Wait, you fool! Are you up at the Alden lodge where you're supposed to be? Is everything all right up there?"

  "Oh, yes. Now it is. There was a kidnapping and a couple of murders and some attempted thefts and a few assaul
ts with intent to kill and such, but I straightened it all out. Get off the line, Toggery. I've got to call the sheriff."

  "Doan!" Toggery screamed. "Doan! What? What did you say? Murders--kidnapping. Doan! Is Miss Alden all right?"

  Doan looked at her. "Yes," he said. "Yes, Toggery. Miss Alden is--quite all right."

  He hung up the receiver on Toggery's violent voice and nodded at Sheila Alden.

  "You know," he said, "you're so very nice that I think I could like you an awful lot even if you didn't have fifty million dollars "

  Sheila Alden's soft lips made a round, pink O of surprise and then moved a little into a faint tremulous smile.

  * * *

  Contents

  THE MOUSE IN THE MOUNTAIN

  By Norbert Davis

  Chapter 1

  WHEN DOAN AND CARSTAIRS CAME down the wide stairway and walked across the pink-tiled floor that was the pride and joy of the Hotel Azteca, the guests in the lobby stopped whatever they were doing to pass the time away and stared open-mouthed. Doan was not such-a-much, but Carstairs usually had this effect on people, and he left a whispering, wondering wake behind him as he stalked across to the glassed side doors and waited with haughty dignity while Doan opened one of the doors. He ambled through it ahead of Doan into the incredibly bright sunlight on the terrace.

  Doan halted and drew in a deep breath of air that felt clean and dry and thinly exhilarating. He stared all around him with frank appreciation. He was short and a little on the plump side, and he had a chubby, pink face and a smile as innocent and appealing as a baby's. He looked like a very nice, pleasant sort of person, and on rare occasions he was.

  He was wearing a white suit and a wide-brimmed Panama hat and white crepe-soled shoes.

  "Breathe some of this air, Carstairs," he ordered. "It's wonderful. This is ideal Mexican weather."

  Carstairs yawned in an elaborately bored way. Carstairs was a fawn-colored Great Dane. Standing on four legs, his back came up to Doan's chest. He never did tricks. He considered them beneath him. But had he ever done one that involved standing on his hind feet, his head would have hit a level far above Doan's. Carstairs was so big he could hardly be called a dog. He was a sort of new species.

  A girl came very quickly out of the door behind Doan and said Uh! in a startled gasp when she saw Carstairs looming in front of her.

  Carstairs didn't move out of her way. He turned lazily to stare at her. So did Doan.

  She was a small girl, and she looked slightly underfed. She had very wide, very clear blue eyes. They were nice eyes. Nothing startling, but adequate. Her hair was brown and smooth under a white turban, and she wore a white sports dress and a white jacket and white openwork sandals. She had a clear, smooth skin, and she blushed easily. She was doing it now.

  "I'm sorry," she said breathlessly. "He--he frightened me."

  "He frightens me, too, sometimes." said Doan.

  "What's your name?"

  The girl looked at him uncertainly. "My name? It's Janet Martin."

  "Mine's Doan," said Doan. "I'm a detective."

  "A--a detective?" Janet Martin repeated, fumbling a little over the word. "You don't look like one."

  "Of course not," Doan told her. "I'm in disguise. I'm pretending I'm a tourist."

  "Oh," said Janet, still uncertain. "But--do you go around telling everybody about it?"

  "Certainly," said Doan. "My disguise is so perfect no one would know I was a detective if I didn't tell them, so naturally I do."

  "Oh," said Janet. "I see." She looked at Carstairs. "He's beautiful. I mean, not beautiful but--but magnificent. Does he bite?"

  "Quite often," Doan admitted.

  "May I pet him?"

  Doan looked at Carstairs inquiringly. "May she?"

  Carstairs studied Janet for a moment and then came one step closer to her and lowered his head regally. Janet patted his broad brow.

  "Don't scratch his ears," Doan warned. "He detests that."

  A long brown bus pulled around the curve of the drive and stopped in front of the terrace steps. A little man in a spic-and-span brown uniform popped out, clicked his heels snappily, and said, "The tour of sight-seeing presents itself to those who wish to view the magnificence with educated comments."

  "Oh, you're the one I was looking for," Janet said. "I'm going on the tour to Los Altos. This is the bus that takes me there, isn't it?"

  The little man bowed. "With comfort and speed and also comments."

  "I was afraid I was late. What time do you start?"

  "On schedule," said the little man. "Always on the schedule--we start when it says. I am Bartolome--accent on the last syllable, if you please--chauffeur licensed and guide most qualified, with English guaranteed by the advanced correspondence school, conversational and classic. Do me the honor of presenting me your ticket."

  Janet gave it to him, and he examined it with suspicious care, even turning it over and reading the fine print on the back.

  "In order most perfect," he admitted. "Do me the graciousness of entering and sitting. We will start instantly or when I locate the other passengers."

  "Here's two more," said Doan, handing him two tickets.

  "Ah, yes," said Bartolome, and examined them as carefully as he had Janet's. "Is most fine. But there are the two tickets and of you only one. Where is the other?"

  "There," said Doan, pointing.

  Bartolome looked at Carstairs, turned his head away quickly, and then looked again. "It has a resemblance to a dog," he said slowly and cautiously.

  "Some," said Doan.

  "It is a dog!" Bartolome exclaimed. "A dog of the most incredible monstrousness! A veritable nightmare of a dog!"

  "Be careful," Doan warned. "He insults easily."

  Bartolome looked at the tickets and then at Carstairs. "One of this is for him?"

  "Yes."

  "No," said Bartolome.

  "Yes," said Doan.

  "Of a positively not, senor."

  Carstairs sprawled himself out on the warm tiles and closed his eyes sleepily. Arguments offended his sense of the fitness of things, so he ignored them.

  Bartolome stared narrowly at Doan. "The ticket of the sight-seeing magnificence is not sold for dogs."

  "This one was."

  "Dogs do not ride in the luxury of the bus that precedes itself to Los Altos."

  "This one does."

  "No!" Bartolome shouted suddenly. "Not, not, not! It is the outrage most emphatic! Wait!" He darted through the glassed door into the lobby.

  "I'm sorry," Janet told Doan.

  "Why?" he asked, surprised.

  "Because you can't take your dog to Los Altos"

  "I can," said Doan. "And I'm going to. We always have little difficulties like this when we go places. It's a routine we go through."

  A fat man wearing a magnificently tailored white suit and a painful smile came out on the terrace ahead of Bartolome. Bartolome pointed at Carstairs and said dramatically, "There is that which is not to go! Never!"

  The fat man said: "I am so sorry. It is not permitted for dogs to ride on the bus."

  Doan held up the two tickets and pointed eloquently first to himself and then to Carstairs.

  The fat man shook his head. "I'm so sorry, sir, but that ticket does not cover a dog."

  "It's made out in his name," said Doan.

  The fat man shrugged. "But, you see, when your reservations at the hotel and your tickets for this trip were ordered we did not know that one was for a dog. The dog can stay at the hotel--yes. But he cannot ride on the bus."

  Doan nodded casually. "All right. He stays here, then. But you'd better chain him up. He's going to get mad if I go away and leave him."

  "Mad?" the fat man repeated doubtfully, looking at Carstairs.

  Carstairs didn't open his eyes, but he lifted his upper lip and revealed glistening fangs that were as long as a man's little finger. He growled in a low, deep rumble.

  The fat man backed up a step. "
Is he dangerous?"

  "Definitely," said Doan. "But delicate, too. He will attack anyone who tries to feed him, except me. And if he doesn't eat, he'll die. If he dies, I'll sue you for an enormous sum of money."

  The fat man closed his eyes and sighed. "He rides in the bus," he said wearily to Bartolome.

  "What?" Bartolome shouted, outraged.

  "He rides!" the fat man snarled. "Do you hear me, or shall I repeat myself with a slap in the face?"

  "I hear," said Bartolome glumly. He waited until the fat man had strutted back through the door into the lobby and then added: "You obese offspring of incredibly corrupt parents." He turned to Doan and made shooing motions. "Kindly persuade yourselves inside."

  A woman opened the glass door and put her head out and shouted deafeningly: "Mortimer!" Instantly she pulled her head in again and slammed the door.

  The echoes of her shout hung quivering in the still air, and Carstairs raised his head and waggled his pricked ears uncomfortably.

  The door opened and a man put his head out and yelled: "Mortimer!" He waited while the echoes died, eyeing the people on the terrace accusingly. "You seen him?"

  "I don't recall it," Doan told him.

  The man said: "I'll kill that little devil one of these days. Mortimer! Come here, damn you!" He got no results, and he sighed drearily and came out on the terrace. He was squat and solid-looking, and he had a red, heavy-jowled face. His clothes were new, and his shoes squeaked. "My name is Henshaw--Wilbur M. Henshaw."

  "Mine's Doan. This is Miss Janet Martin."

  "Pleased," said Henshaw. "You sure you haven't seen Mortimer? He's my kid. He looks something like Charlie McCarthy."

  "How will that do?" Doan asked, pointing at a feather duster that was poked up over the balcony railing.

  "Mortimer, you little stinker!" Henshaw shouted. "Come out from behind that chicken!"

  The feather duster waggled coyly, and a wizened, freckled, incredibly evil face slid up into sight and peered at them gimlet-eyed through a tangle of bright red hair.