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

by Frederick Nebel

  Cardigan said to Scholtz: “You let me do the talking.”

  “I’ll let you do it as long as I think you’re doing it right.”

  Cardigan glared at him and then headed for the door. He carried his left hand in his overcoat pocket. The blood had run down the inside of his sleeve and his pocket was sopping. But his right hand was good and he looked a little wild and very mean as he banged open the door and strode in. All kinds of furniture were piled crazily around.

  A small, doughy-faced, pot-bellied little man got up from a roll-top desk and said: “Please it should be to meet you, shentlemens. So what is it I should doing for you, so what?”

  Scholtz said: “We wanna buy a fire engine.”

  “Ho, ha—you wass refaring to dose sign. Shentlemens, dose sign is shast a shoke yet. Pussibly a nize Cheependale table what it is bosting my heart for to sal chip at fur bocks—”

  “Listen to him translate from the Greek,” said Scholtz.

  Cardigan glowered. “Shut up, stupe.” And to the pot-bellied man: “What’s upstairs, buddy?”

  The pot-bellied man sighed. “Unly shonk—lots from shonk it would not pay you for to look at yet.”

  “Well, let’s look at it.”

  The pot-bellied man smiled and caressed the lapel of Cardigan’s coat tenderly. “Shentlemens, I’m resure you dot notting opstairs would making you pot wit’ tan cents cash or credit even.”

  Scholtz, saying, “I think the way he translates is lousy,” suddenly gripped the pot-bellied man by both arms. The latter cringed and seemed to grow two sizes smaller. He began to bleat, “Yi! Yee!” but Scholtz silenced him with a slap in the mouth and said, “Kick off that yodeling.” And to Cardigan, “We’ve got no time to pamper this bird. Should I knock him cold?”

  “No. He might come to. Pile him on that roll-top desk and pull down the roll.”

  Scholtz heaved the pot-bellied man on to the desk, yanked down the roll and locked it. Cardigan came back from having locked the front door. He spotted another door.

  “Let’s try this,” he said, and went to it. It was locked. Beside it was a black push button. “Maybe this is the button. Mae wrote down ‘three rings.’”

  Cardigan pressed the button three times and waited.

  “How’s your arm?” Scholtz asked.

  “Lousy, thanks to you.”

  “I don’t care much. I just want to make sure whether I’ve got an able-bodied man along or a husk.”

  Cardigan’s lip curled. “In the first place, kraut, I’ve got you along—you haven’t got me along. And in the—”

  There was a clicking sound and Cardigan grabbed hold of the knob, pulled the door open. Both strode headlong for a staircase. Scholtz shoved Cardigan out of the way, so he might go up first, but Cardigan beat him to it and began climbing fast. They did not try to muffle their footsteps, for there would have been no point in doing so. When they reached the second-floor corridor they saw that the windows at the front and rear of the hall were tightly boarded.

  THEY climbed to the top floor, found another lighted corridor and heard the low sound of mixed voices. Cardigan spotted a door with a broken doorknob, motioned to Scholtz, and drew his gun. Scholtz drew his too and tried to get by Cardigan. Cardigan blocked him. Scholtz got mad and butted Cardigan out of the way and took two long strides. His left hand closed on the broken knob, he turned it, whipped open the door and jumped into a large room where four men and a woman were sitting or standing around arguing heatedly. They all stopped arguing and one of the men, who was idly spinning a gun, tried to use it. Scholtz fired without a word. Another man had come swiftly through another doorway. He tried to turn and flee but Cardigan, leaping into the room, barked: “Don’t be bashful, son! Get in here!”

  The man whom Scholtz had shot was staggering around like a drunk, his head hanging between his shoulders. Suddenly he fell down and lay motionless. The girl’s hands were pressed to her cheeks, her eyes were wide with horror. She was a slim, sleek article, with black, wavy hair, and she was dressed in smart dark clothes. On a table stood a portable typewriter.

  Cardigan said two words. “Luella Deya.”

  The girls eyes jumped in their sockets and terror ripped down across her face and pulled her mouth out of shape. A portly man dressed in a black overcoat and a steel-gray fedora chewed slowly on a cigar. His little eyes, set in a red, egg-shaped face, jigged brilliantly on the girl. A lean redhead with a giraffe’s neck and eyes the color of silver watched the girl also. A handsome, swart-skinned man ran a white hand across his black, lacquered hair, cleared his throat.

  “Who knifed Mae Riley?” Scholtz growled.

  The portly man looked pained. He said: “My dear man, who is Mae Riley?”

  Cardigan cut in: “Brother, don’t start that. Mae Riley was here—she was kept here. She was knifed in my apartment. She gave me this address, the number of rings to get in it.”

  The portly man said: “All right, we’ll say she was here—”

  “Sure,” snapped the giraffe-necked redhead, “she was here and she got out. Nobody knifed her.”

  Cardigan said: “Somebody followed her and knifed her.”

  The four men looked at one another, measured one another. Then the portly man happened to look at the girl. The girl’s face was dead white. You could tell that her knees were shaking. She moved woodenly across the room and pressed close against the swart-skinned man with the lacquered black hair. The portly man looked at her back and his lips closed hard, a look of anger crackled in his eyes. The man with the lacquered hair pushed the girl away; he did it deliberately, stony-eyed. She wilted. She looked at the redhead and saw his lips move tightly in an oath. She looked at the fourth man but he looked right back at her with glassy eyes, as though he did not see her. She turned again to the swart-skinned man. She murmured: “Joe… Joe…” and went toward him again.

  He ripped the back of his hand across her face.

  Cardigan said: “Luella Deya.”

  She spun, her breath hauled in. “Yes—Luella Deya!” she screamed hoarsely. “I knifed her! I had to—because she saw me here, she knew who I was! I followed her after she broke out and I saw you take her in that house and I went up and listened at the doors and found the one by hearing your voice. When you ran out, I knocked on the door. I knocked hard. In a few minutes I heard her fumbling at the snap-lock. She opened the door and then fell away. She never saw me. The first time I swung I knocked out the light. Then it was dark. I scrambled after her. I felt the knife go in—and I—I ran out. I came back here. I was afraid to tell them what I’d done.”

  Shaking all over, the girl pointed to a closed door. “Mackworth is in there—bound and gagged and blindfolded! He thinks he’s being held for ransom. Every time he signs his name blindfolded, he thinks it’s a note asking his lawyer to pay. But it’s an editorial. He,” she said, pointing to the portly man, “dictates them and I type them—”

  Scholtz snapped at Cardigan: “Mackworth! What the hell is this about Mackworth? I know the fat guy—he’s Luke Myer, a ward heeler—but—”

  The girl was panting out: “It was his bright idea. He figured that with a few hot editorials in the Post-News all their readers who’d been rooting for the die-hards would swing to the left-wing crowd. And they got me in it.”

  “Who in particular?” asked Cardigan.

  “Never mind who,” she cried. “I spied, I lied, I did everything I could. I—I even knifed Mae Riley. I’ve got no excuse—none at all. I’m ready to go.”

  Cardigan clipped, “Keep ’em covered, Stormy,” and crossed to the door she had pointed out. He opened it and looked in the room beyond. Silas Mackworth lay on a cot, bound, gagged and blindfolded. He was moving, trying to get free.

  Cardigan said: “Take it easy, Mr. Mackworth. You’ll be O.K. in a few shakes. We’re salting these guys pronto.”

  He backed out, closed the door, and swung a look of black contempt at the four men. “By God,” he said, “if any one of you
guys had the guts that this gal has—” He broke off, cursed. He said to the girl: “I want to know who the guy is that got you into this.”

  She bit her lip. “You can skip that. I’m ready to go,” she said. “I’m ready to pay for what I did.”

  Cardigan looked exasperated again. He said to Scholtz: “I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to phone the hospital and see how Mae’s doing. If she’ll live, by cripes, I’m going to let this gal walk out of here!” His arm was paining and the pain was clawing at his whole body. His head felt dizzy. He roared: “I’m going to give her a break because these lice she got mixed up with aren’t giving her a break!”

  The portly man’s jaw thrust out. “Like hell you will! She’s in it and she’ll stay in it with the rest of us! She did the knifing! And if you let her go, I’ll tell!”

  The swart-skinned young man had been biting his lip for some minutes. He suddenly ripped out: “Luke, don’t be a rat! Let her go! You know as well as I do that Mae Riley never saw her. You know as well as I do, damn my guts, that she wasn’t here when Mae Riley broke out. She must have been down in the street when Mae beat it. She knew Mae knew who I was. She followed Mae and did it to clear me. I’m the heel that got her into this and you’re the baby that got me into it—so lay off, Luke!”

  The girl sobbed: “Oh, Joe… Joe!”

  Cardigan felt fever smoking throughout his body. He said: “Stormy, you go out and phone. If she lives and they say she will live, come back pronto. Wait a minute. All you guys, and you too, sister, stand against that wall and keep your hands up. Stormy, tip that light so that it glares in their eyes.”

  THE green-shaded lamp on the table was tipped and the men and the girl blinked against its glare. Cardigan crossed to the other, the dark side of the room, and sat down in a Morris chair. He said in a slow, heavy, savage voice: “Now we’re not going to talk, see? I’m not going to say a word. I’m just going to sit here while Scholtz goes out and phones and the first guy that so much as lowers one finger I’m going to drill him.”

  They could not possibly have seen him in the shadows, for the light flooded their eyes, shut off from them the other half of the room.

  “O.K., Stormy,” he said. “Make it snappy.”

  Scholtz went out. He drummed his heels down to the main floor, entered the store and let himself out by the front door. He ran four blocks to the nearest drug store, crowded into a phone booth and called the Central Emergency Hospital. He learned that Mae Riley was conscious and that the wound was only superficial; there was no chance at all of her not recovering. He called police headquarters and told them to send around the wagon. Then he raced back to the store, and by the time he began climbing the stairs fifteen minutes had elapsed from the time he had gone out.

  He barged into the room and said: “O.K. She’s O.K. Beat it, sister. But there’s some guy here has to take the rap for that knifing.”

  “I’m the guy,” said Joe.

  The girl whimpered: “Joe….”

  “Beat it, Luella.”

  She went slowly to the door.

  Scholtz said: “Snap on it. The cops’ll be here any minute.”

  She went out and closed the door and Scholtz, covering the four men, said out of the side of his mouth to Cardigan: “All right, big-hearted, I hope you’re satisfied.”

  There was no reply.

  The four men looked at one another, their hands still aloft.

  Scholtz squinted at them. He muttered, “Not a move!” as he went to the table and righted the green-shaded lamp.

  Cardigan still sat in the Morris chair. One leg was crossed over the other and his gun rested on his knee. But he was not looking at anybody. His head lay back and his eyes were shut. You could see the sogginess of his left coat sleeve. He was unconscious.

  The portly man burst out: “By cripes, he’s out! He must have been out for— We could have taken the guy and cleared out!”

  There were police sirens in the street.

  Joe chuckled dryly. “The guy expected he’d pass out, that’s why he didn’t go to phone. That’s why he pulled all that hocus-pocus about the light business. All because he wanted to see a gal get a break.”

  “He’s fat-headed that way,” admitted Scholtz, but there was a note of admiration in his tone.

  The Sign of Murder

  Chapter One

  On the Heels of the Rain

  CARDIGAN woke up with a bell ringing in his ears. His bedroom light was on and there was a book on his chest and he knew that he had fallen asleep reading again. He heaved away the covers and reached for the phone, realized it wasn’t the phone ringing, and with a yawn and an absent-minded oath, climbed out of bed, his wrinkled cotton pajamas twisted around his big body. He tramped on bare feet into his living-room, punched the button that would open the hall door downstairs and weaved back into the bedroom for robe and slippers. The alarm clock on the bed-table said one A.M. He went into the living-room yanking tight the cord of his robe and pushed out into the corridor to see who was coming up. He could hear rain on a skylight.

  Ivy Bourke came up, soaked from head to foot, and Cardigan, scratching his touseled head, said with scowling curiosity: “Swell night for puddle jumping.” Otherwise, he seemed lazily to take things for granted; though a visit from Ivy Bourke at this hour, or any other hour, was far from usual.

  “I saw your light,” she said, “or I wouldn’t have—”

  “Yeah. I was reading.” He followed her into the living-room and heeled the door shut. “Lady, are you soaked! I better give you a drink.”

  “No, Jack. Listen—”

  “Not until you have a shot.”

  He swung into the pantry, poured out a jigger of rye and carried it back into the living-room.

  “Mix it,” she said, grimacing.

  “Nix. What do you think I buy good rye for, to spoil it with water? Here. Chuck it down.”

  “Well….” She took it straight, making a face and shaking her head from side to side.

  HE didn’t stare expectantly at her but went around the room looking for a cigarette. He knew just how she looked—very white and with a touch of strain on her small, triangular face. There was rain on her checks and chin and her lips looked blue with the cold. He knew she was shivering and he could hear the drops of wet falling from her clothing.

  “Jack.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Will you—will you lend me five dollars?”

  “Sure.”

  He crossed the room and entered a closet, searching in the pockets of a suit he had hung up before going to bed. The phone rang and he called out: “Catch that, Ivy. It may be the office.”

  She went into the bedroom, picked up the instrument and said: “Hello?… Hello, hello?…”

  “Who is it?” Cardigan yelled, coming out of the closet.

  “I don’t know. There’s no one on, Jack.”

  “Hang up, then.”

  She hung up and as she came into the living-room he said: “No kidding, Ivy, this is a hell of a night for you to be slamming around New York. What’s the answer?”

  Her lips tightened and her eyes shot swiftly from left to right.

  He shrugged and handed her the five-dollar bill. “O.K., forget I mentioned it,” he chuckled roughly.

  “I—” she began.

  “Huh?”

  “Well, I was up to George and Helen Shepard’s and I had just enough to get home on and then when I did get home I didn’t have my key along. I had the one to the hall door but not the one to our apartment.”

  “Wasn’t Steve with you?”

  She dropped her voice and looked away. “No.”

  “Wasn’t he home?”

  “No.”

  “Well, why didn’t you wake up the janitor?”

  “Oh, he’s a cranky old man. I would have if I hadn’t found you up. And you were pretty near, only five blocks, so— Well, I’ll spend the night at a hotel. Thanks a million, Jack. I’ll give it back to you tomorrow.
”

  “No hurry, Ivy,” he said, going with her to the door. And then, “Wait about two minutes. I’ll get dressed and take you to the hotel.”

  She turned, her smile tired. “No, Jack. Don’t.”

  “Nuts. It’ll take only—”

  She put a palm against his chest, shook her head. “I’ll be there in five minutes. Thanks again.”

  He watched her go down the stairway, then turned and went back into his apartment scowling darkly. Ivy used to be a stenographer in the Cosmos Agency office up until the time she married Steve Bourke, two years ago. When she married Bourke her father washed his hands of her. Bourke’s reputation was no good at all, it never had been any good. He had never held a newspaper job longer than three months at a time and when he had been kicked off every sheet in the city—the last about a year after he married Ivy—he had gone to work for Gus Poteska, who ran a string of bars and restaurants in the Forties and Fifties. He still worked for Poteska, as far as Cardigan knew, handling the outfit’s publicity and still getting as plastered as ever. Cardigan had lugged him home once or twice, not because he liked Bourke, but for Ivy’s sake. But Bourke had an idea that Cardigan was on the make for Ivy and after one scene Cardigan never spoke to him again. Ivy had got a rotten deal but Cardigan had never heard her complain. She was always sure that she could straighten Steve out.

  The rain was still beating against the windows when Cardigan climbed back into bed. He turned out the bedlight, then turned it on again, picked up the telephone and called his office. He recognized the night man’s voice and said: “ ’D you ring me, Oscar? This is Jack.”

  “When?”

  “Oh, ten minutes ago.”

  “Nope.”