“That’s very interesting, fella,” Karnehan grunted, his eyes still hanging heavily on Cardigan. “And who did all that?”
“I got an idea that I’ll get around to finding you did it. When I said that Jerry Treadwell was dead, your wife fainted. When she comes to, I’ll ask her things. How much she loved Treadwell, for instance. I’ll tell her he was murdered.”
Bricksy said across the room, “Keep your hands away from your pockets, Cardigan.”
“You know, Cardigan,” Ed Karnehan said, “it all listens swell. Except for one thing. No guy in his right mind would have struck a match with all that gas smell there. The smell must have been enough to knock a man down.”
Cardigan’s eyes shimmered. “No? A guy could be in his right mind and have a cold. A cold in the head. So that he couldn’t smell things. There were twenty-five handkerchiefs came back in Treadwell’s laundry. And in a laundry bag, when I got an electrician over, I found fifteen more—soiled. Treadwell had a cold in the head. He never smelled the gas. Somebody figured on that.”
KARNEHAN’S lower lip drooped, his eyes sagged, a muddy look crept over his face. Hildegarde was white-faced, shaking. Bricksy was smiling thinly, maliciously. The doorbell rang. It rang on and on, insistently.
Hildegarde went striding out of the room and, a minute later, Al Nielsen burst in. He was breathless and his face was torn out of its woodenness by some great emotion. His eyes leaped round the room, saw Karnehan’s wife lying pale and motionless, with her eyes closed, on the divan. He ignored Karnehan. He ignored everybody. A low groan escaped from his lips and he ran across the room and fell on his knees by the divan. He sobbed.
“Damn you, Cardigan, I told you to stay away!” he yelled. “You told her! You told her he was dead! I knew the shock would kill her!”
A grim, curious frown wrinkled Cardigan’s forehead. His voice was low: “She fainted, only. Can’t you see her breathing?” As he said it, Karnehan’s wife stirred, murmured something.
Nielsen gripped her hand. He shook his head slowly from side to side, unbelieving. He grunted, “Thank God!” And then his jaw set and he stood up and glared at Karnehan. He said thickly, doggedly: “I’m going to take her out of here! She never loved me, I know. She loved Treadwell. But I love her. Maybe if I’m kind to her, and I’d be kind—”
“Shut up,” growled Karnehan ominously. “Shut up and get out of here.”
“With her,” Nielsen panted hoarsely. “By cripes, Ed, with her! You’ve kept her here, in this apartment, for six months. For six months she hasn’t been out of it. Your sister guarded her for you and never let her out, never let her see anyone. Treadwell got notes in by bribing the maid. Sometimes he got by with a quick phone call, when your sister was out of the room. You watched. You gloated, damn you! Then the other day your sister caught the maid slipping your wife the four hundred Jerry drew out of the bank. That’s what he phoned her about. Told her to slip out and use the money to get away far. Damn you, Ed, you’ve been crucifying this girl! I’m going to take her out of here!”
Karnehan laughed raucously. “You fool!” And to Bricksy, “Go handle him, Bricksy.”
Bricksy grinned. “Want to get handled, Al?” he said, moving forward, pigeon-toed.
Nielsen came forward to meet him, bare-handed. Bricksy raised his guns a little higher and stopped and broadened his grin. “Come to papa,” he said very quietly.
Cardigan stamped his foot. Bricksy’s small body knotted and he jerked around and, in that split-second, Nielsen leaped for him, swinging his body downward and coming hard into Bricksy’s legs. Both guns went off. One shot drilled the ceiling. The other went through Cardigan’s coat pocket and caught Karnehan in the middle of the chest. For a second, he looked stupefied. Then he put his hands on his stomach and moved them upward. Then all at once he sat down.
“Oh… oh,” moaned Hildegarde.
“Ugh,” grunted Karnehan.
Nielsen and Bricksy were struggling, and Cardigan drew his gun, stepped over, and jammed it in Bricksy’s back. “O.K., freckle-face, drop the artillery.”
“It ain’t fair!” screamed Bricksy.
“That’s just too bad,” Cardigan said, and whacked him over the head.
Bricksy dropped to the floor.
Karnehan rolled over on his side. He mumbled: “O.K., Cardigan, you win. But it was a swell idea.”
“It was a lousy idea!” Bricksy yammered. “You and your ideas, your fancy plans and things! I could have knocked him off easier and got away with it!”
CARDIGAN was on the telephone. “Collianti?… Come over here to Karnehan’s apartment. Bring an ambulance.” He could see Karnehan’s wife sitting up.
Nielsen sat down beside her and said: “Don’t cry now, don’t cry. He had it coming to him.”
“Well, she must have loved him once,” Cardigan said. “You remember what she wrote on the photograph.”
“Never,” Nielsen said. “He made her write that on it, so he could show it around. He made her marry him. She had a brother, who was in a bad jam with the cops and Karnehan bartered with her.”
When Collianti walked in, his dark face turned ashen.
“Hi, Gig,” Karnehan cackled weakly. “They got me. Bricksy threw his guns around wild and a slug caught up with me. Thanks for tearing up that letter and bringing back my cuff link you found that I lost in Treadwell’s apartment.”
Collianti choked, “You rat!”
“Yeah? You had me, Gig. I offered you five hundred bucks to keep your mouth shut. You wanted three grand. I had to pay it. So we’re both rats, now.”
Cardigan said, “How’d Jerry happen to go to his apartment at that time?”
“I sent him,” croaked Karnehan. “I said, ‘Go home, kid. You got a bad cold.’”
It didn’t matter, because Karnehan died as they were putting him on the stretcher.
Cardigan said to Collianti: “I hope you’ll read the papers tomorrow, Gig. Your name’ll be in them. Being in jail, you’ll have a lot of time for reading.”
On the way out, Cardigan took along the Do Not Disturb sign.
Table of Contents
The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 4: 1935-37
Copyright Information
A Couple of Quick Ones
The Dead Die Twice
Death in the Raw
The Curse of Cardigan
Blood in the Dark
The Sign of Murder
Lead Poison
Murder By Mail
Make Mine Murder
Behind the 8-Ball
No Time to Kill
The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 4: 1935-37 Page 41