by Unknown
“It’s written on your letterhead—and unsigned,” McGavock snapped. “I suppose the entire town has access to your paper.”
Bradley sighed. “That’s true. Everyone filches from a hotel.” He brightened. “Just think. You’ve only been in town a few hours and already admirers are sending you unsigned letters. You make friends quickly, suh.”
When McGavock was halfway down the corridor, Bradley’s strident voice rattled after him. “Another thing. It almost slipped my mind. You’ve had a charming visitor—Laurel Bennett. She’s dropped in three times within the last hour. Perhaps she wants to sell your employer, Mr. Boggs, the old Fern Springs resort?”
McGavock answered crossly: “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never heard of her. If she comes again, I’m not seeing callers. I’m footsore and weary. I’m hibernating for the night.”
CHAPTER TWO
THE HEAVY LOSER
uther McGavock gazed at his room and flinched. It was about ten feet square. The wallpaper was water-stained in coffeelike splotches; the worn rug was as thin as a bait seine. There was an oval crayon enlargement above a washstand, a crockery bowl and pitcher—and a lumpy iron bed.
The single, grimy window looked directly onto the tin roof of an adjoining shed. Bradley’s finest room was no bridal suite.
McGavock stuck the tobacco tin behind the crayon enlargement. He opened his Gladstone and took out a belly gun, a stubby thirty-eight cut back almost to the cylinder—and a pair of wire clippers. He shoved the pistol under his coat, turned back the mattress and with the wire clippers snipped off a foot of stiff wire from the bedsprings.
The detective took the wire to the door, threw a tight turn around the doorknob, pulled the ends down and threaded them through the eye of the key. He tested the apparatus; it was steady, strong. No outside manipulation could jiggle the bit in the lock; it was tamper-proof.
Cheap hotels with shaky door locks were no new experience to Luther McGavock.
He raised the window, laid the towel from the washstand over the sill. A landmark to help him identify the correct room on his return.
McGavock crawled through the window, groped down the tin roof, lowered himself catlike into the alley. The silence was oppressive, appalling. It was as though the village were quarantined. The detective glanced at the luminous dial of his wristwatch.
It seemed like two in the morning—yet it was scarcely nine-thirty.
Every small southern town has its leading family. The Bennetts assumed this position in Bartonville. McGavock had been aware of their prominence from the moment of his arrival. Everywhere he’d looked he’d seen the name: on the town’s drugstore, the garage, the cotton gin. He could visualize the sort of home Laurel Bennett would be living in—a sleek white mansion with fluted columns and a veranda as big as a parade ground. She would, in other words, be occupying the house he had mistakenly allotted to Malcom Jarrell.
This time he was right. He found the place without much difficulty.
Pretentious, austere, it stood at the mouth of a short avenue of old magnolias. The porch light was on—McGavock was evidently expected.
Malcom Jarrell opened the door to his ring.
McGavock said dreamily: “I imagine a house, prowl around and locate it. I ring the bell and see you standing in the doorway. This case is dopier than a tael of opium. Who is this Laurel Bennett, what’s your tie-in, and what does she want with me?”
The seedy naturalist tilted his monstrous head, stepped back, gestured the detective in. “We need your counsel. Mrs. Bennett is my godchild. She has a problem for you.”
“A problem?” McGavock mocked him. “Now that’s intriguing! A detective is like a doctor, anyone that comes along tries to panhandle a little free medicine. I’m up to my ears right now in a problem. Or haven’t you heard? I’m trying to shoo the executioner away from you. It seems to me—”
Jarrell was crotchety. “Come now, you’re not all that busy! This shouldn’t take twenty minutes. Hear what Laurel has to say. I’m sure that Atherton won’t object.”
The lady of the mansion was just about seventeen years old.
A delicate figurine in black lace with a cameo at her throat, she leaned against the creamy marble mantelpiece and watched McGavock approach. Oil portraits hung high above her head. Antebellum ancestors: eagle-nosed gentlemen—firebrands—and haughty, whale-boned grande dames.
Laurel Bennett was slim, fragilely molded. Her glossy black hair was caught by a pearl bandeau. Her eyes were somber, brooding.
Seventeen years old, McGavock thought. He judged her age shrewdly by her lips. He tried to picture her in a middy blouse and Mary Jane pumps. It simply wouldn’t work. The gal might be a child, McGavock decided, but she’s not that kind of a child. She’s wise, hard.
Her manner was impersonal, gracious. “I heard you talking to Mr. Jarrell in the hall,” the girl began. “You seem reluctant to help me. You appear to believe that there will be no remuneration. Let me say that you are going to be paid and paid liberally. Present a reasonable statement to my attorney, Mr. Hal Maldron—”
“The window rapper? The guy with the eroded teeth?” McGavock was venomous. “So you’re the party that had him bail my client. How do you people expect me to get anything done with all this meddling? Jarrell has popped off until—”
Malcom Jarrell said patiently: “You’re balked. Completely confounded. So you’re trying to put the blame for your incompetence on me.”
McGavock barked at the girl: “What is this job you want me to do?”
“You’re a man of experience,” Laurel Bennett said throatily. “I think you’ll be quick to sympathize. Gil, my husband, is middle-aged. Suddenly—for no reason that we can see—he has gone into an orgy of sowing wild oats. Not women, I mean, but drinking and gambling. It’s mortifying, of course—most middle-aged husbands are proud to pay more attention to their young brides. If they’re lucky enough to have a young bride, I mean. But it’s not only embarrassing—it’s critical. He’s jeopardizing our security. He loses enormous sums. We have a joint account—he makes secret withdrawals. It has me half-mad. It can’t go on!”
McGavock asked warily: “How do I come in?”
“He’s out right now. At a place called Chunky’s, a hell-hole down by the riverbank. I’ve been cruising around, I’ve seen his car there. I’ll drive you up and leave you. I want you to get him out and bring him home.”
“Is that supposed to cure him?”
“You could scare him on the way back,” the girl suggested. “Tell him some terrible cases where men drank themselves into disgrace and their pitiful wives starved in the gutter and things like that.”
“O.K.,” McGavock agreed. “Let’s go.” He threw a parting remark at Malcom Jarrell. “Spend the night here. I’ll see you in the morning. I want to ask you about your cotton rat.”
Jarrell answered him amiably. “I’m an early riser. Any time after sun-up.”
hunky’s Place was in the river bottom about five miles out on the old swamp trail. A desolate, poisonous five miles. Snake-infested sloughs, milky with muddy water, thrust fingerlike from the dense second growth along the roadside. The headlights of Laurel Bennett’s car played on a ceaseless tangle of wild grape and willow and water oak. The air was brackish, dank—stagnant.
The girl was silent, intent on holding her swaying car to the boggy trail. McGavock sat beside her and whistled. It was a habit of concentration that he was unable to break. And he always whistled the same thing, the same way. The tune was “The Letter Edged in Black.”
“Cal Bradley,” he remarked, “thinks I’m a sap on the purchase for shooting land. He suggested that you might be anxious to sell me a pleasure resort, a place known as Fern Springs. Fern Springs is a new one on me and I thought I knew them all, from Florida Bay to Puget.”
Laurel smiled stiffly. “It hasn’t functioned since nineteen-ten. Maybe you don’t know it, but the south is studded with old, abandoned resorts—tucked away in wild, unreachable places. Back
at the turn of the century, in the red-spoked carriage days, it was fashionable to summer at some health springs. The fad passed but the old buildings remain. Almost any county south of the Mason-Dixon has a couple. Fern Springs belongs to me, it’s back in the pine country. It’s always belonged to my family and is not for sale. I’d sell my mother’s wedding ring first.”
McGavock said: “I’m not in the market for a wedding ring, but I’ll keep your offer in mind.”
She cursed him. He lay back on the cushions, closed his eyes and listened with real enjoyment.
Laurel Bennett braked her sports car at a bend in the road. “It’s just around the corner. You’d better go the rest of the way on foot.”
“How will I spot him?” McGavock asked.
“They’ll all be drinking,” she said bitterly. “But he’ll be drunk. They’ll all be gambling—but he’ll be losing his shirt.”
Abruptly, without warning, he reached forward and turned on the dash. Deftly, before she could prevent him, he laid the ten-cent compass on her knee. The needle was as steady as a rock.
The girl flushed angrily, knocked his hand aside. “If you want to take bearings,” she spat, “take them from yourself!”
He gave a raucous, unpleasant laugh. “I’m not taking bearings. This is my electric eye. I’m just making sure that you’re not preparing to put a two-inch roofing nail into the back of my skull when I step out.” He restored the gadget to his pocket.
She caught him by the lapel as he slid through the door. “Watch yourself. They don’t like strangers.”
He bared his teeth. “Neither do I.”
The building, the size of a domestic garage and covered with tar-paper, was a black ulcerous sore in the moonglow. Its windows were caulked to the frame with soggy, mildewed quilts. Not so much as a wavering cobweb of light showed. A moody scene, depraved and threatening. McGavock was familiar with these backwoods gambling dives. They were dynamite.
There were a few clay-caked jalopies in the clearing, and a powerful, gleaming coupe—Gil Bennett’s.
McGavock knew better than to advance and knock. He slowed up at the fringe of the timber, called: “Hello. Hello, in there!” A ritual for strangers and one that had better be observed. The door opened.
A chubby, muscle-bound man with a receding chin stepped out. He was wearing a lemon yellow polo shirt stuck into new overalls and carried an army automatic casually at his side—as though it were a monkey wrench.
McGavock said: “I’m a friend of Cal Bradley’s.” He walked into the patch of light. “I’m a traveling man.”
The chubby man chewed it over in his slow mind. “I guess you’re all right,” he decided. He led McGavock into the hut, closed the tar-paper door.
It was a low, vicious crowd. There were seven men in the room—three sprawled sullenly at a rough-sawed makeshift bar at the back; the remaining four were deadlocked in a game of stud under a hissing gasoline lamp.
Gil Bennett was in the poker game. He was easy to spot. Dressed in a quiet business suit, he was the only man present wearing neither leather boots nor denim. He was a decent-looking guy in his middle fifties. McGavock wondered what devious pressure had cast him into marriage with so young a wife and then perversely, had driven him to such a deadfall as this.
The detective rested his shoulders against a wall joist and watched the game. There were two bottles of red whiskey on the table and the liquor was kept in constant rotation. Bennett’s playmates lolled and simpered and put on a silly show of being skin-tight. The businessman appeared to be cold sober.
When Gil Bennett took the bottle to drink, he grasped the neck with his fist close to the bottle’s mouth. The foxy pup, McGavock thought, he’s tonguing it, cutting off his intake.
“I hate to break this up,” the detective said cheerfully. “But Mr. Bennett’s roast is burning. He has to hustle home.”
There was an ominous silence in the little shack.
Gil Bennett asked: “Did my wife send you?”
McGavock nodded. “That she did.”
The chubby houseman strolled over. “Out!” he ordered hoarsely. He tossed his knobby, dwarfed chin towards the door. “You’re not welcome here.” He grabbed McGavock’s wrist.
McGavock relaxed. He twisted his trapped wrist, caught the stocky man’s forearm in a grip of steel—a double-lock. His opponent stiffened. McGavock stepped straight into him, thrusting his thigh behind the chubby man’s knee. The chubby man went backwards heels over breakfast and McGavock, in close position, hit him three times at the hinge of his jaw. He was out before he struck the floor.
It was touch and go for a split second. Anything could have happened. Then everybody laughed. The show of brutality exhilarated them. A gambler with a Mexican leather-work holster peeping from his shiny blue serge suit got up from the table and shook McGavock’s hand. A downy-faced youth at the bar hauled a mouth harp from his hat and began running off minors. There was an air of general festivity.
n Bennett’s coupe, on the way back to town, McGavock made an astounding discovery. His companion, in spite of all his bottle tonguing, was drunker than a shoat in a silo.
“How long have you been haunting that dump?” the detective asked genially.
Gil Bennett hiccoughed. “About two weeks. And, boy, have I had bad luck! All the time I lose! At first it wasn’t so bad, seven-eight dollars. Now the jinx has really got me. I run as much as twenty bucks in the hole as regular as clockwork.” He shook his head fuzzily. “I try to outslick them but I can’t seem to make any headway—”
“How much have you lost to date?”
“One hundred and eighty-three frog skins. Down the old sewer. That’s plenty bucks. Wow!”
McGavock grinned to himself. The case was finally cracking; at last he was getting his teeth into it. “It’s a heap of small change,” he agreed. “But it’s not what breaks up wealthy family life. Mrs. Bennett said your losses were enormous—that was the word she used. I thought it sounded fishy. I couldn’t see how the town big shot, you, owner of the cotton gin, garage, et al., could find any real financial competition among the local bedrock sportsmen. Why then the secret withdrawals?”
Bennett chuckled. “You catch. This gambling business is a ruse. The Bennett Cotton Gin, the Bennett Drugstore—phooey! Everything I own is in partnership with my wife. And I don’t mean matrimonial partnership—I mean business partnership. Hal Maldron looks after her end and the way they whipsaw me is nobody’s business. Every time we get a little money ahead they put it into reserve pools and running expenses and stuff like that. I couldn’t tell you within ten thousand dollars what my present capital is.”
McGavock prodded him. “And?”
“I’ve got plans. They probably seem wacky to you but they’re the best I can do. My wife and I have a joint bank account. That’s my only access to cash. I make big withdrawals, as much as the traffic will stand. I send the money out of town to a city bank. I’ve got it deposited under a different name. I can make a fresh start any time they give me the bum’s rush. All I’m waiting for now is for Laurel and that leechy lawyer of hers to sock me with their divorce—”
“Divorce?” McGavock perked up.
“Sure. I bet they’ve got the papers all filled out.” He went cagy. “What are you pumping me for? Where did you come from, anyway? By golly, you’re a detective working for Hal and Laurel!”
“I’m a detective, all right,” McGavock confirmed. “I might as well admit it. You’re the only one who doesn’t seem to know it. But I’m not working for Hal Maldron. I’m employed by a slave driver in Memphis. I’m here to find out who knocked off Lester Hodges—and, more important, how come?”
That sobered him. “Old Les Hodges has been murdered?” The idea seemed to give him some inner fear. “That’s going to be a blow to Malcom.”
“If so, he’s standing up under it extremely well,” McGavock remarked. “Why should it affect him?”
“They were bosom pals. The town’s
two nuts. Hodges illiterate, Jarrell overeducated.” He said in a strained voice: “Laurel and Hal aren’t mixed up in this, are they?”
“Not so far as I know,” McGavock lied. “Why do you ask?”
Bennett pulled up in front of the court square, idled his engine. “Alcohol’s treacherous. It makes me think I’m smarter than I am. Forget the whole thing. Thanks for your interest—and good-night.”
McGavock produced his compass, handed it to his companion. “Listen to me and listen carefully. Are you sober enough to understand me? Good.” He glared at the drunken man with a fond fierceness. “The slayer of Lester Hodges used a mean weapon. A magnetized hammer, like bill-posters use, only I imagine this was a big baby, like carpenters use. He carried the tack on the hammerhead, followed Hodges down a dark street. At the right moment he reared back and swung. That’s the way it was done.” The detective paused. “I bought this gadget for myself but I’ve decided to hand it over to you. If anyone approaches you with a bulky package, a bundle, something that might conceal a hammer, stall ’em while you make a few careless passes with this compass. If there’s a magnet in the vicinity, the compass needle will whip around and point it out.”
Gil Bennett scoffed. “Why give it to me? I’m in no danger.” He slammed the car door.
McGavock watched him from the street, saw him place the gadget tenderly in his breast pocket. The black coupe whammed off in a screeching of gears.
“He’s afraid,” McGavock said. “He thinks something is after him—and he doesn’t know just what it is!”
McGavock had ordered Malcom Jarrell to spend the night with the Bennetts for a very definite reason. The detective wanted to give the little vine-covered brick cottage a thorough searching—and he wanted a free hand while doing it. One thing had bothered him all evening, the incident that had occurred when he had first visited his client. Jarrell had met him from the inside of the house, at the front door—yet he had closed the door behind him and led the detective not into the house, but around it.