Knocked for a Loop

by Craig Rice

  “But dull,” Hammond Estapoole said. He added guilelessly, “I liked him, though.”

  “We will miss him,” Carmena Estapoole said, and the tone of her voice was more eloquent than a speech or a flood of tears would have been.

  Malone nodded and waited patiently.

  After a moment she said, “He was kind, he was generous, he was a thoroughly good, honest, virtuous, exasperating man. And he was tolerant. He was terribly, eternally, maddeningly tolerant.” She ran out of words and paused for breath.

  “In his own family,” Hammond Estapoole put in.

  Malone nodded. “I think I know exactly what you mean. But he wasn’t what I’d call tolerant of graft, or of gambling houses, or of other nefarious establishments.”

  Carmena Estapoole flashed him a smile of mutual understanding. “You do see. He didn’t drink and he didn’t smoke. Hammond and I and the girls do. He not only never acted as though he disapproved, but he made a great point of not disapproving.”

  “He didn’t gamble,” Hammond Estapoole said. “And I do. But Uncle Leonard never said a word.”

  Malone considered remarking that there were other pastimes Hammond engaged in besides gambling, and asking whether or not Leonard Estapoole had known about Tommy Storm.

  Hammond beat him to it by saying with a grin, “I likewise chase women and sometimes even catch them. Or don’t you follow the gossip columns?”

  Carmena and Hammond Estapoole exchanged a long, warm understanding look which gave every indication that most of Hammond’s chasing was devoted to this one woman, and that Carmena not only knew of occasional little side trips but didn’t object too much. Perhaps, in her way, she too was tolerant. Again the little lawyer wondered just when, and in what way, to bring up the subject of Tommy Storm.

  “Uncle Leonard saw to it that I had enough money to spend recklessly and to lose foolishly,” Hammond Estapoole said. “In just the same way that there were cigar and cigarette boxes strewn throughout the house, and an excellent cellar maintained. Which reminds me, Mr. Malone—”

  “It would be very pleasant indeed,” Malone said.

  A few minutes later he sipped his very fine Scotch, wished it were gin with a beer chaser, and said, “I can see how that much tolerance might, in time, become maddening.” Though, he told himself, the recipient of such tolerance would have to be almost incredibly sensitive.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Carmena said, “but that’s exactly the way it was. Maddening. When cocktails were served before dinner, Leonard would refuse very conspicuously. Not just once and for all time, but three hundred and sixty-five times a year. And when other people would accept, there was that look on his face. You could see that he didn’t approve at all, but that he was saying nothing because he was so tolerant.”

  “Or,” Hammond Estapoole said, with a wry grin, “whenever I showed up with a broken pocketbook, five hours late for breakfast, and with a hangover that could be packaged and sold for insecticide, Uncle Leonard would make it very obvious that he noticed everything, and even more obvious that he wasn’t saying one single word.”

  Malone thought of the late Leonard Estapoole as he had occasionally seen him in life, of the lipless mouth, the thin nose that always seemed to be trying to locate a not-too-recently-dead mouse, and the pale, peering eyes. Yes, he could imagine exactly how the solid citizen and sterling character could and would do just that, deliberately make his silent, but tolerant, disapproval not only obvious but downright obnoxious. He was beginning to think it was a miracle that Leonard Estapoole had survived as long as he did, and found himself wondering how a lively girl like Carmena Estapoole could have married him in the first place.

  She startled him by answering his thought. “I suppose you’re thinking that I married him for his money,” Carmena said. “I’ve got to admit it helped. But I wasn’t exactly poor. Alter all, I had been married before.”

  And successfully, Malone remembered. He cleared his throat and said, “Money isn’t everything.”

  “No,” Hammond Estapoole said. “But it quiets the nerves.”

  “It was really for Alberta,” she said. “Leonard was kind to her. Very kind. And I liked the idea of her growing up to be heiress to a real fortune. Not just adequately rich, a real fortune. She’d never have to go through some of the things that I did.”

  Malone could understand that too. He nodded sympathetically and began to wonder if this pleasant but aimless chatter was going to get them anywhere. Obviously, it was up to him to make the first move.

  “I’m sorry I roughed up your chauffeur a while back,” he said suddenly. “But I recognized his voice. And I thought I owed him one for planting Alberta on me.”

  It was a shot in the dark, but he saw by the way their eyes met that it had been a lucky one.

  “Not,” he went on, feeling his way carefully and hopefully, “that I wasn’t pretty sure in my own. mind anyway. The complete lack of publicity about the so-called kidnaping. The fact that neither of you seemed to be particularly upset or excited. And finally, Alberta’s insistence on staying kidnaped.” He smiled at them. “Evidently, she guessed what was going on, and figured she was helping out her mama. But what was your reason?”

  He’d expected to drop a bomb, and it was a total failure. It fell with all the impact and reaction of a feather falling on a carpet. Carmena and Hammond looked at each other. Hammond laughed.

  “I suspected that you’d guessed,” Carmena said. “Oh well, no harm done, is there? What we did—what I did, really—probably isn’t even in the least bit illegal. Or is it?”

  Malone shook his head reassuringly. “But why? And why did you pick on me?”

  “At the risk of ruining what’s starting out as a very beautiful friendship,” Hammond said, twirling his glass, “we picked on you only because we figured it would make the whole thing look authentic. Because of your reputation.”

  “And what about my reputation?” Malone demanded.

  “Be calm,” Hammond Estapoole said. “Nothing’s the matter with it. Except in the eyes of Uncle Leonard. He didn’t seem to approve of your clients or your friends. So, he would naturally assume that you would be, or could be, approached by the kidnapers, to act as their contact man.”

  “And there was another reason,” Carmena said, giving him a smile that turned his metabolism up a notch or two. “We knew we could trust you to handle things properly. What’s more important, I knew I could trust you with Alberta.”

  Malone said, “I suspect you could trust Alberta in a cave of wildcats. Especially if she didn’t like them. But we’re still not getting my question answered. Why kidnap Alberta in the first place?”

  “The papers,” Hammond Estapoole said. “The list of names and addresses and other details of proven gambling establishments. That was to have been the deal.”

  “I know that,” Malone growled. “Everybody seems to have known that. But why were you so anxious to get hold of them?”

  “Frankly,” Hammond said, “because I owed a lot of money. I still owe a lot of money, since I didn’t succeed in getting the list. Much more than I wanted to ask Uncle Leonard for, with all his wonderful tolerance.”

  “I know who you owe it to,” Malone said, nodding. “But don’t let that upset you. As you said, this is the beginning of a very beautiful friendship.” Sometime in the future, the far future, he told himself, he’d have it out with Max Hook for not informing him about this aspect of the situation. “So Max Hook suggested that you get that list, by the well known fair or foul means, and the little matter of the debt would be crossed off the books.”

  “That was it,” Hammond said. “I thought it would be easy. The list, along with a lot of other stuff about graft and payoffs and what-have-you, was all in an ordinary legal-sized Manila envelope. He stuck to it like a piece of Scotch Tape. I didn’t have as much chance of lifting it as I would have had of lifting the Hope diamond. And there would have been considerably more hue and cry over it. To
say nothing of his probably jumping right to the conclusion that I had it.”

  “Leonard,” Carmena Estapoole said, “didn’t altogether approve of Hammond’s friends, either.”

  “And not without cause,” Hammond said. “But anyway, that was the situation.”

  Carmena said, “In all fairness, I was the one who thought of the kidnaping angle. It seemed like a very sound idea. Nobody would be hurt. Hammond would get that list. In time, Leonard would find something else that needed exposing to use up his surplus energy. And Alberta would have the time of her life.”

  “Alberta,” Malone informed her, “told me that she knew just who the kidnaper was, but that she wasn’t going to tell anybody, not ever.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Hammond said, reaching for a fresh cigarette. “Naturally, she’d recognize Tony and Al. That’s the chauffeur and his brother-in-law. But she’s a loyal kid.” Malone agreed that Alberta was all of that and much more. “But suppose that Estapoole hadn’t agreed?”

  “I knew he would,” Carmena said calmly. “He did try to dicker. He offered money. He threatened to go to the police. He threatened to call in the FBI. But in the end, of course, he gave in.”

  “Remarkable,” Malone observed, “that anyone would think so much of a stepchild.”

  “Oh,” Carmena said, “he detested her, quite frankly. Some people do. But he would have done anything for me. And he knew how much Alberta means to me.”

  She didn’t need to enlarge on that. The smile she said it with came all the way from the bottom of her heart.

  Malone thought the whole thing over and said, “I see the routine. You had the chauffeur and his brother-in-law snag Alberta.” He knew there was more to it than that. A blond girl was involved. Probably, a blond girl named Helene. But he’d get to that later. He said, “Then Leonard Estapoole was contacted. How?”

  “We had to be careful,” Hammond Estapoole said. “There were two letters sent to him. The first one enclosed a little snip of Alberta’s hair, so that he’d know that we—the kidnapers, I mean—really had her. The second one simply told him to call and make an appointment with you for ten-thirty last night, to keep the appointment, turn over the envelope to you, and then go home and wait for Alberta to be delivered.”

  “Well,” Malone observed, knocking the ash from his cigar, “he followed the first two instructions to the letter, anyway.” “Malone,” Hammond Estapoole said anxiously, “just what did happen to those papers? Where are they now?”

  “That’s a very interesting question,” Malone said, looking at his cigar end. “I wish that I knew the answer.” It reminded him of a question he himself wanted to ask, but not here and not now. “Go on with the kidnaping details.”

  Hammond Estapoole shrugged his virile shoulders. “Well, later on the child was to be turned over to you, and you were to bring her home to her waiting family. That part of the arrangements went through as planned, too, though a little later than we’d figured. No harm done, though. She was in good hands.”

  “The best,” Malone said, thinking of Ma Blodgett.

  “The rest of the arrangements—” Hammond Estapoole paused just a moment—“they were carried out by telephone.”

  “And who did the telephoning?” Malone asked. “Certainly Leonard Estapoole would have recognized either of your voices.”

  Carmena and Hammond looked at each other. Then Hammond said, “A girl telephoned him.”

  Malone puffed furiously on his cigar and counted to ten. Then he made it twenty. Suddenly all the blood in his body seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere else fast.

  At last he said, very casually, “Tell me. Was it Tommy Storm?”

  This time, it worked. The look they exchanged was a startled one. Malone reflected happily that at least he’d been able to drop one very small bomb, hardly any bigger than a firecracker, but something.

  “How did you know about Tommy Storm?” Hammond Estapoole demanded, his brow wrinkled.

  The little lawyer shrugged his shoulders. “I get around,” he said modestly. “Little birds. I train them.” He grinned at them wickedly. “I have my sources.” He let them worry about that for a minute, too. “And since he wouldn’t have recognized her voice—”

  “But he would have,” Carmena Estapoole said, as though surprised Malone wouldn’t know that. “Naturally he would.”

  Malone didn’t bother to ask why, he just looked it.

  “Tommy Storm,” Hammond Estapoole said, looking with pity at the man who trained little birds to tell him things, “was Uncle Leonard’s private secretary.”

  CHAPTER 11

  It was simply too much, Malone told himself. This was too much, that was too much, everything was too much. For a minute or two he sat there brooding, all but a very small bit of the fight gone out of him. Hammond Estapoole thoughtfully chose that moment to refill Malone’s glass. Carmena Estapoole smiled reassuringly at him.

  Malone choked on his drink, made a fast recovery, and said, “Of course. I didn’t think of that.” Right now he didn’t seem to be thinking of anything. He said, a little lamely, “She’s a wonderful private secretary.”

  “In this case,’ Hammond Estapoole told him, “confidential secretary. Not picked just because of her secretarial ability, nor because of her looks. But because she knew a lot of the people Uncle Leonard was investigating. In a way, he hired her as a sort of private spy.”

  Malone could see that clearly enough. But instead of making other things more understandable, it only muddled them a little more. He said, trying to feel his way back to safe ground, “Wasn’t that—” and then stopped again.

  “I’ll finish it for you,” Hammond Estapoole said, smiling. “Wasn’t that why I was hanging around her? Yes, it was. First I figured she might be a line on getting that envelope away from Uncle Leonard. Then I realized—we realized—she’d be a lot of help to us in the kidnaping. Phony kidnaping,” he corrected. “You did guess right, Malone. Tommy Storm was the telephone negotiator. But her story was that she didn’t know the other parties. And Uncle Leonard believed her.”

  “It helped,” Carmena Estapoole said, “that Leonard was convinced she had what they call—underworld connections.”

  As she probably does, Malone thought. He let his cigar go out, thinking hard. Tommy, then, had known about the fake kidnaping. She had carried on the telephoned negotiations that had resulted in Leonard Estapoole’s finally agreeing to turn over the envelope of explosive information in return for the safe return of Alberta Commanday.

  But that would hardly have been enough to send her out to West Madison Street in what must have been, to her, the very small hours of the morning.

  “Tommy didn’t tell me a thing,” he reassured them. “It was really a guess on my part. I knew you’d been seen out and around with her a little, and hers was the first name that came into my head.” Which, he told himself, was as close to the truth as he needed to get.

  “Now tell me,” he said at last, “how many people knew that Leonard Estapoole was going to meet me in my office at ten-thirty last night?”

  The pair looked unhappy. “That’s just it. Nobody did. Except we three—and Leonard. And the letter impressed on him that it had to be a very secret meeting or the whole deal was off.”

  “Tony and Al?” Malone asked.

  “Neither of them,” Hammond said. “They just did their part and didn’t ask any questions. They knew that you were going to be the contact—but they didn’t have any idea where or when.”

  Malone said, “There was a pretty solid rumor going the rounds that while nothing had been said to the police, the kidnaping had taken place, and that Leonard Estapoole was going to pay off, and that I was to be the contact.”

  “Tommy Storm didn’t start that rumor,” Hammond Estapoole said. “I did. That was to lend authenticity in case Uncle Leonard had any doubts. We knew it would get to him.” He grinned wryly. “And I thought it would reassure Max Hook, too.” His face sobered. “Bu
t nothing was ever said about when or where the meeting was going to take place.”

  “Not even Tommy Storm?” Malone asked, trying his best to sound very unconcerned.

  Hammond Estapoole shook his head. “Nobody knew until about six o’clock last night. That was when he came home and found the letter telling him to call you and make the appointment. Carmena and I knew, of course, because we’d written the letter. But he didn’t know until he got it, and you didn’t know until he called you.” He added, “There simply wasn’t any way for Tommy Storm—or anybody—to know.”

  Malone looked very thoughtfully at his dead cigar. “Which leaves the two of you in a very difficult position.”

  “Why difficult?” Carmena asked, frowning. “The police found the man who murdered Leonard. And he’s confessed.”

  “The police,” Malone said, “have been known to be wrong. And confessions have been known to be successfully repudiated.”

  Hammond said, “But surely—” and stopped.

  Carmena said, “But I didn’t. Hammond didn’t. We didn’t.” She paused, took out another cigarette, fitted it into the slender ivory holder and lighted it, all very slowly and deliberately.

  “All right, Malone,” she said at last. “You do deserve to know this much. If this hadn’t happened, there would have been a divorce. And after a decent interval, Hammond and I would have been married. But this did happen.” She paused again, swept that aside with a gesture and said, “We’ll still be married.” Then she added, “Again, after a decent interval, of course.”

  “Of course,” Malone echoed hollowly.

  “Hammond is a gambler,” she said, stating a known fact and not as though she were defending him. “But then, so am I. Only we gamble on different things, that’s all. And as far as his women chasing is concerned, you must realize that that was purely window dressing for the sake of appearances.” She smiled at him winsomely.