The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 4: 1935-37

by Frederick Nebel

  There was a telegraph office at the corner of Central Avenue and Tuttle Street. Cardigan went to the man at the desk and said: “I pulled in on the three-ten plane from New York. I was expecting a telegram to meet me at the airport. The name’s J. Cardigan. See if there was a slip-up, will you?”

  The man walked to the rear of the office and did some telephoning. Then he looked through some papers. In a minute he returned to the desk, saying: “There was a message and the boy paged you.”

  “If he did, I didn’t hear him.”

  “You have identification, I suppose?”

  Cardigan slapped down his wallet, flipped it open. The man scanned it, then handed Cardigan a telegram. The message read—

  GREETINGS BIG BOY

  ED

  Cardigan muttered, “H’m,” crumpled the message and thrust it into his pocket. “Just as I thought,” he said. “A gag. Let me have an envelope and a piece of paper, will you?”

  The clerk supplied them and Cardigan wrote—

  Dear Mr. Clayburn,

  There’s been a leak. Run over to 402 Tuttle Street, third floor, number 33.

  J. Cardigan.

  He folded the sheet of paper, slipped it into the envelope, sealed the flap. On the envelope he wrote, Mr. Samuel Clayburn, Editor, The News-Post, City. He said to the clerk: “I want this delivered by special messenger to this man in person. Get that straight—in person. I don’t want anyone else—office boy, secretary—anybody—signing for it. O.K. How much?”

  “Really,” the clerk said, “the News-Post Building is only halfway down the block.”

  Cardigan tossed a dollar bill on the counter. “I know. But I get sick riding in elevators and I can’t hear over the telephone. Change that bill and shoot that letter off.”

  AS HE ducked out of the office he almost ran into a girl and in trying to avoid hitting her he slammed into a small fat man who was carrying an armful of bundles. The fat man sat down on the pavement and the bundles spread themselves over the sidewalk. Cardigan picked the fat man up and, ignoring the abuse the fat man heaped upon him, went about gathering up the bundles, which he piled back into the fat man’s arms.

  “Sorry, buddy,” he said.

  “It’s a wonder you wouldn’t look where you’re going! Why don’t you look where you walk? Do you think you own this sidewalk? You ought to carry collision insurance!” The fat man got a firm grip on his bundles, gave Cardigan a red-faced exasperated look, and trotted off.

  “Clumsy as ever, aren’t you?” said a dry feminine voice.

  Cardigan turned. The girl he had almost knocked down was a lanky blonde dressed in a belted tweed coat and a disklike hat almost innocent of a crown. She fell in step beside him as he started up Tuttle Street.

  “What brings the great maestro to Danbridge?” she asked.

  He said: “The last time I saw you, Mae, you were trying to tell a barman how to mix a side-car in an East Side bar.”

  “I told him, didn’t I? No kidding, Jack—what are you doing in Danbridge.”

  He stopped at the next corner and looked darkly at her. “Listen, Mae, you’re a nice gal except that you ask too many questions.”

  “I asked only one.”

  “I’m here to attend a flower show.”

  “Ha, in November!”

  “Well, you ask questions, you’ve got to expect answers. Now be a good girl and go where you were going.”

  “I was going this way.”

  “You were going up Central Avenue when I missed hitting you.”

  She shrugged, smiled ruefully. “You sure know how to hand a girl the cold shoulder.”

  “I’m busy, Mae, and I like to walk alone.”

  “Tailing some big batter and yegg man?”

  “Well, a client of ours lost his shadow and I’m trying to find it for him. See you soon, Mae.”

  “I’m on the Morning Express and I go to dinner when asked by big Irishmen, even when they’ve got bad manners. Sure,” she said, turning on her heel, “see me soon, by all means.”

  “Yeah,” he said after her, “along about Nineteen Forty or sometime.”

  He strode on, shaking his head. If there was anything worse than a prying newspaperman, it was, he figured, a newspaperwoman. Whatever Mae Riley heard went in one ear and out through her mouth.

  Tuttle Street was fairly crowded and when he reached the entrance to his rooming house he turned and looked back. Mae was not in sight. A lad of about twelve was standing on the curbstone looking up at him and giggling.

  “What’s so funny, son?” the big op said.

  The lad only giggled some more, then turned on his heel and fled across the street.

  Cardigan went up to his rooms and looked at himself in a mirror. He didn’t see anything that he reasoned was worth laughing about. He muttered: “The brat’s probably screwy. He’ll probably grow up to be one of the city’s prize politicians or”—taking off his overcoat—“a detective-sergeant.”

  Thinking of Mae Riley again, he frowned, shook his head.

  SAMUEL CLAYBURN was a square-shouldered man of a little better than medium height. He had a pair of big, strong hands. His legs were limber, sturdy. He wore a derby and a dark gray overcoat. His face was broad, ruddy, full of small muscles, and his eyes had a look as direct as a slap in the face. When he had walked into the room, Cardigan gave the door a kick and it slammed shut.

  “Sit down, Mr. Clayburn.”

  Clayburn pitched his derby onto a divan and sat down beside it, thrusting his hands deep into his overcoat pockets, hanging one knee over the other. His expression was that of a man who had considered things on the way over and was still considering them.

  Cardigan said: “Drink?”

  “Not now.”

  Cardigan took one himself and leaned against the wall next to the window. “Some smart sweetheart tried to pull a fast one on me but I think I nipped it in the bud. As I was getting off the plane a messenger with a telegram began calling my name. I almost fell for it but there was a little birdie on my shoulder. I gave the messenger the go-by.”

  “Where’s the fast one come in?”

  “Well, when you phoned me over long distance you suggested it’d be a good idea if I traveled here under an alias. I did that. John Baker. That’s what I’m in here as, too. Somebody knew I was traveling under an alias and this same somebody didn’t know what I looked like. So he sent a telegram to J. Cardigan, arriving on the three-ten plane, in the hope that when my name was called I’d ask for the telegram. He must have been in the crowd waiting at the airport. Well, I gave the telegram the go-by. To make sure it was a fluke, I later went around to the telegraph office and got the message. It was a fluke. ‘Greetings, big boy. Ed.’ I don’t know anybody here named Ed.”

  Clayburn sighed, pulled out a cigar, bit off the end of it and put it in his mouth. He didn’t light up. “That was a fast one,” he mused out loud, his face wrinkled with worry. “But you used your head. Why’d you send me that letter by special messenger instead of just phoning or dropping around?”

  “I figured, after I found that the telegram was a gag, that somebody in your office knew I was coming here. This somebody knew I was coming under an alias but he didn’t know what the alias was. But he knew I was coming, he knew what business I’m in, so he told somebody else. You should have made that call over a private wire, or from an outside telephone booth. There’s a heel on your paper somewhere.”

  Clayburn lit his cigar, stared into space and muttered: “M’m, must be.” Then he drew some papers from his inside pocket, laid them on his knee and leaned back. “The reason I got you here, Cardigan, was to see if you could locate my boss, Silas Mackworth, publisher of the News-Post of which, of course, I’m editor.”

  Cardigan said: “That’s a swell beginning. You work for a guy and you don’t know where he is.”

  Clayburn regarded him levelly. “This is serious, Cardigan.”

  Cardigan was bent backward, draining his glass. He crosse
d the room, set the glass down and said: “How serious, Mr. Clayburn?” He opened a packet of salted peanuts and, leaning back against the highboy, began popping them into his mouth.

  CLAYBURN regarded him for another moment, then said: “Very, very serious. Mr. Mackworth’s in the habit of writing our leading daily editorial. It may come from anywhere and by various means—telegraph, cable, special delivery, telephone. Sometimes, of course, he writes it in the office. He’s been writing his paper’s leading editorial for ten years. For the past two years,” Clayburn went on, “he’s been hammering against the left-wing political group which now practically runs this city. During the past six months, due in no small measure to our paper’s efforts—and particularly Mr. Mackworth’s editorials—the die-hards have been growing in strength, with a grand chance of copping municipal leadership at the next election.

  “Suddenly, three days ago, I received his usual daily editorial, this time by special delivery. Except that when I read it it was very unusual indeed.” Clayburn leaned forward. “After having hammered the left-wing group for the past two years—suddenly, without warning, without any intimation whatever, he attacked in this editorial the die-hards and everything they stand for. Without any reference, you understand, to his former loyalties! Just plain out with it!” He leaned back, a look of shock and bewilderment staring from his eyes. His voice dropped. “I did not publish that editorial. I tried to locate him. He was not home. He was not at his club. He was not at his mountain camp. I couldn’t locate him anywhere. Next day I received another editorial along the same lines. This morning I received a third, hotter than either of the others.” He shook his head. “I refuse to publish any of them. I can’t understand this complete change of policy. I can’t locate him.”

  “Hasn’t he bawled you out yet for not publishing them?”

  Clayburn struck his knee. “I tell you I’ve had no word from him except these editorials! If he called me up and bawled me out, then I’d know—and I’d go ahead and print them. But no word, you understand! Nothing but these damned editorials that would kill any chance the die-hards ever had!” He dropped his shoulders. “He’s long been a dynamic man, full of nerves. I’m afraid his mind’s cracked up and he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

  “Is the writing his?”

  “The signature is. He always writes on a typewriter. It’s his typewriter—a portable. I’ve had the type checked by an expert. His style sounds the same—it was never out of the ordinary. But his political charges and counter-charges are outrageous. They’re libelous. No man in his right mind would write them. They’re so flagrantly false that we’d be sued up to our eyeteeth!”

  Cardigan said: “Any of your reporters been looking for him?”

  “No. In fact, they don’t know. Nobody in the organization knows. I’ve written the leading editorials myself. If the Old Man has cracked up I don’t want it known, I want to get him straightened out again.” He stood up abruptly. “If I can locate him!” he cried. Then suddenly his voice was low, normal; his stare slapped at Cardigan. “That’s why I got you here.”

  “Where were these editorials mailed from?”

  “No return address, of course. They were postmarked at the Terminal Station—that’s down near the railway station.”

  “And you say he was in the habit of hiking around and sending in these editorials from almost any place.”

  Clayburn nodded. “It was nothing at all for him to stay away from the office for three or four days at a time—but the daily editorial always came in. It wasn’t until this morning I actually got panicky about the thing and phoned you.”

  “Did he write or dictate his editorials?”

  “He always wrote them on his own typewriter. He liked it that way.”

  “O.K. Suppose you give me samples of some he wrote before this change and the ones he wrote afterward. Also get me a photograph of him. Give me a list of the addresses where he might be found—the ones you tried to locate him at. Was the paper that these last three were written on the kind he always used?”

  “Yes.”

  “Send the stuff around to me here. John Baker. Better use an outside messenger. If I phone you, I’ll use that name, too. I don’t want it to get around that I’m in town, because I’m known here—the cops especially know me and take a great joy in making my life miserable. How does the Morning Express rate?”

  “Our mortal enemy,” gritted Clayburn. “They’re high on top of the left-wing bandwagon.”

  “Who could have heard you phoning me on long distance?”

  “My secretary Luella Deya, or the switchboard operators.”

  “Say nothing to any of them. Send me their names and addresses and when they’ll be off duty. And give me your home address and phone number.”

  Clayburn nodded. He said: “I hope, of course, that no one recognized you when you arrived.”

  Cardigan laughed roughly. “When the plainclothesmen recognize me they slap me on the back. They’re all right, they’re nice guys, some of them, but a man in the agency business, like me, has a hell of a time combing those babies out of his hair.”

  It was not until Samuel Clayburn had gone that Cardigan remembered how completely Mae Riley had recognized him.

  Chapter Two

  Mae Riley Reveals

  AT nine next morning Cardigan walked a couple of blocks up Tuttle, bought the Morning Express and sloped into a lunchroom. He ordered a double orange juice, three fried eggs with Canadian bacon, hard rolls and a pot of coffee. He went through the meal with great gusto and had shaved his appetite down to the coffee when he came across the item on the third page. The item made him sit up straight; it made him scowl savagely; to his lips it brought a low, bitten-off oath. In the column Mae Riley Reveals he read:

  FAMOUS DETECTIVE VISITS HERE

  Jack Cardigan, chief field operative of the Cosmos Detective Agency, arrived in town recently and is staying at a rooming house in Tuttle Street.

  When questioned as to his reasons for being here, the nationally known private detective refused to comment.

  He did not finish his coffee. He folded the paper, rose and took his meal check to the cashier’s wicket. He paid his bill. In the street, where a capricious wind was spinning scraps of paper, he stood for a moment buttoning his shabby ulster and staring with hard dark eyes unseeingly into the faces of pedestrians. He strode down Tuttle Street with a wicked warp to his lips and a stiffness in the back of his neck. He turned right into Central Avenue, stretched his legs for four blocks and then turned left into Raymond Street. Halfway down Raymond Street he entered the Express Building and went up to the news room. A gum-chewing youth was sitting at a desk behind a wooden railing.

  Cardigan towered at the railing. “I want to see Miss Mae Riley,” he said.

  “Name?” chewed out the youth.

  “An old friend.”

  “That’s what you say. What’s your name?”

  Cardigan kicked open the gate in the wooden railing and two men in shirtsleeves and green eyeshades stood up from a couple of desks. One said: “What’s on your mind, pal?”

  “Mae Riley.”

  “I didn’t let him in,” the office boy said. “He just—”

  “I know, I know,” the spokesman said; and to Cardigan, “Take it easy, pal. You can’t sail in here like you owned the place.”

  Cardigan snapped: “O.K., buddy. Then get me Mae Riley.”

  “For why?”

  “I want to kiss her.”

  “Well, this ain’t a love nest, so backfire out, pal.”

  Cardigan said: “Maybe I want to knock out her permanent wave. At any rate, I want to see her. Where is she?”

  “She’s not in yet.”

  “How long did it take you to think that up?”

  “One second flat, lard head. Fall on it and slide out.”

  “Ah,” said Cardigan, “on top of being smart, you’re tough.”

  “Yeah, and you don’t rate tenth either way. With a
kisser like yours you couldn’t be smart or you’d have done something about it years ago—committed suicide, for instance. And as for being tough, I never saw a windbag yet you couldn’t puncture.”

  “How is it you manage to keep your feet on the ground?”

  “I miss the point.”

  “With all the wind you could get a job in any man’s army as an observation balloon. What other name do you go by besides horse’s neck?”

  “Scholtz to you and preferably Mister Scholtz.”

  “You go in for low comedy too.”

  “What are you trying to do?”

  “I’m trying to see Mae Riley.”

  Scholtz, who was a hefty broad man with a slab of yellow hair lying atop his green eye-shade, said: “If you don’t take the air, sailor, I’ll bust a typewriter over your head and you’ll need more than a typist to pick the alphabet out of your dandruff.”

  A dozen men had gathered behind Scholtz and one of them said: “Go ahead, Stormy, take him; we’re all behind you.”

  Scholtz said: “You guys mind your business. I can handle this hunk of bad cheese and if I can’t I’ve been a cripple for years without knowing it.”

  A man came striding importantly among the desks shouting: “What is this, a bargain sale? I told you, Vincent,” he yelled at the office boy, “not to let any tramps or salesmen or Armenian rug merchants in this office.” And to Cardigan, “Well, get out, get out! What do you want here anyhow?”

  “Mae Riley.”

  “Oh, you do, do you? Well, how about me? Don’t I want Mae Riley? Haven’t I been trying to get hold of Mae Riley? Isn’t she supposed to he here at nine? And was she here at nine? No! Is she here now? No! And you want Mae Riley! What about me? I’m her boss, I employ her, I pay her. Haven’t I any rights to Mae Riley? Answer me! Who has a better right to Mae Riley between the hours of nine and five, than I have? Have you? No! Who has? Nobody, damn your eyes!”

  Cardigan muttered, “Ga-ga, poor guy!” and turned and swung his big feet out of the office.

  IN the street below he stood on the curb deliberating. In his pocket he had the names of the three switchboard operators and the secretary who had been on duty at the News-Post when Clayburn made the call to the agency. He was not ready, however, to come out in the open, to reveal his identity by questioning any of these four persons. Last night he had learned from Silas Mackworth’s butler that the publisher had left three days before carrying his portable typewriter and a portfolio. Where he had gone the butler did not know. There was nothing unusual, he had said, about Mr. Mackworth’s sudden departures for parts unknown. Mackworth had not, according to the chauffeur and the butler, gone in his limousine. The servants had become used to the great publisher’s eccentric habits.