Rex Stout (11 page)

A dozen voices answered him at once. The cop, having trotted across the street, took him by the elbow and observed sarcastically, “A swell friend that was you were looking for. Come along with me.”

“He got away! I’ve got to catch him!”

“We’ll catch one at a time, starting with you. Come along.”

“You damned fool!” The man grimaced, worked his jaw, and grimaced again. “You know me! I’m Quinby Pellett!”

“Yeah? Where’d you get the lip grass?”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” The man took hold of his mustache and gave it a jerk, and it was gone. “Which way did he go, damn it? I have to find him!”

“He’s out in the sagebrush by now.” The cop had released the elbow, but he looked neither sympathetic nor amused. “What’s the idea of the handmade tassel?—Hey, wait a minute, where you going?”

“None of your business! Turn loose of me! I’m going to see Frank Phelan.”

“Okay. Come on, folks, let us by, open up there! I think I’d better go along, Mr. Pellett. If you happened to run across any more friends of yours on the way, you might not make it.”

Quinby Pellett offered no objection as the policeman climbed in beside him on the seat of his dilapidated coupé, parked around the corner on Garfield Street. He got into the channel of the traffic stream and drove with the apparent assumption that he was an ambulance.

“You know, I could give you a ticket anyway, sitting right here,” the cop observed.

Pellett stopped working his jaw long enough to grunt.

They went to the police station, and were informed that the chief was out and might be at the courthouse. Upon Pellett’s refusal to converse with the lieutenant in charge, a phone call to the courthouse got the information that Phelan was there in the sheriff’s office, so
they returned to the coupé and drove to the courthouse, missing fenders by inches on the way. They tramped down the dim basement corridor. The man in the anteroom told them the chief and the sheriff were busy and they would have to wait; then, obviously impressed by Pellett’s violent reaction, used the phone, nodded toward the rear, and told them to go on in.

Bill Tuttle was seated at his desk. Two men who looked like detectives, which was what they were, stood at the opposite side of the desk. Phelan, in a chair not far from Tuttle, frowning at the newcomers as they entered, spoke:

“Hello, Quin. What’s on your mind?”

The cop put in, “First I think I ought to tell you, Chief. He’s been standing all day in front of The Haven, wearing a phony mustache, looking for a friend, he said—”

“Go on and chew the rag while he digs himself a hole,” Pellett said bitterly.

“Spill it, Quin, we’re busy. Who’s digging a hole?”

“A man I tried to collar. By this time he’s to hell and gone for the hills.”

“Not him,” said the cop scornfully. “That bum wouldn’t get more than a mile from a pavement—”

“What bum?”

“The one that socked you. Al Rowley, his name is.”

Pellett gaped. “Do you mean to say you know him?”

“Sure I know him. He’s one of those—”

“Then find him! Get him!”

“That wouldn’t be—”

“Get him, damn it!”

“Keep your shirt on, Quin.” Phelan sounded impatient. “If the boys know him they can get him. Then what do they do with him?”

Pellett went to a chair and sat. “Listen, Frank. I’ll
tell you about it. But first tell them to get that man. Have you ever known me to take a fool hen for a grouse? Tell them to get him.”

Phelan turned. “Who is he, Tom?”

“His name’s Al Rowley,” said the cop. “He came in with that carnival last year, the one that busted, and he’s been hanging around ever since, mostly at one of the joints on Bucket Street. Every once in a while he gets ahold of a buck, I don’t know how, and makes a deposit at The Haven.”

“Do the boys all know him by sight?”

“Sure, he’s one of our most prominent citizens.”

Phelan requested Tuttle’s phone, got it, called the station and asked for the lieutenant in charge. After a few concise but thorough instructions, he hung up and shoved the phone back and turned to Pellett.

“All right, Quin, they’ll get him. Now spill it. What’s he done besides sock you?”

“He stole my niece’s bag from her car yesterday afternoon.”

Bill Tuttle jerked into a stare. Everybody stared. The cop said involuntarily, “Ouch!” Phelan demanded, “This bum—stole her bag? Delia Brand’s bag?”

“Yes.”

“The one with the gun and the cartridges in it?”

“Yes.”

The sheriff broke in, snapping, “How do you know he did?”

“I saw him.”

“You saw him take it?”

“Yes.”

“You saw him take it and you didn’t mention anything about it here this morning?”

“Nobody here seemed to give a damn about anything I might say this morning. You were all so sure of
what you had you didn’t want anything more from anybody. Besides, all I could do was describe him, I didn’t know who he was, and what good is a description?”

“So instead of telling us you went and planted yourself—”

“Wait a minute, Bill.” Phelan reached for the phone again, and called the station. In a moment he spoke: “Mac? Frank. That order I just gave you about a bum named Al Rowley. Make it hot. Put every man you can get on it. I want him and no mistake, and quick. And take him good. It may be murder.”

As Phelan hung up, the sheriff barked at Pellett, “Is that the idea? That this bum stole the bag with the gun in it and murdered Jackson?”

“No. He couldn’t have, because I took the bag away from him.”

“You did
what
?”

“I caught him stealing the bag from her car and I took it.”

“What did you do with it?—Wait a minute.” The sheriff included the two detectives and the cop in a look. “You fellows go out front and wait there. The three of you. And keep your traps shut. Understand?”

They said they did, with evident reluctance, and marched out. The sheriff leaned back and sighed heavily.

Phelan said, “Maybe we ought to get this the way it happened. In order. This is quite a—quite a surprise.”

“It’s all of that.” Tuttle fastened his eyes on Pellett and demanded, “What did you do with the bag?”

Pellett shook his head. “I think Frank’s right. You ought to have it in the order it happened. In the first place, my niece came to see me yesterday afternoon—”

“What for?”

“It doesn’t matter what for. It had nothing to do
with killing Dan Jackson, you can be damn sure of that. The fact is, she wanted me to go with her to persuade Jackson not to fire Clara—my other niece. I told her it would be better if we didn’t go together, and that I had an appointment to call on him that afternoon on another matter and would speak to him about it then. Not long after she left my place, I left, to keep my appointment with Jackson. He had phoned that he wanted to consult me about some information he had got hold of regarding the death of my brother-in-law two years ago. While I was looking for a parking space on Halley Street I saw Delia’s car there. I had to park up ahead, and as I walked back I saw a man closing the door of Delia’s car with her bag in his hand. He didn’t look like a man she might have sent for it, so I confronted him and asked him if it was his bag. He said, ‘It’s not yours, is it?’ and I said, ‘No, it belongs to my niece, and so does that car.’ He said, ‘Then do me a favor and take it to her,’ and shoved it into my hand and walked off. He was so damn cool about it I just stared at his back.”

“You didn’t call a cop?”

“With the bag in my hand, what was there to tell a cop?”

“Did anybody see all that? Anyone stop to look at you?”

“Not that I know of.” Pellett was frowning.

“Okay. You’re standing there on the sidewalk holding the bag. Then what?”

“I started for Jackson’s office. I had intended to wait there by my niece’s car until she came out, because I didn’t want to interrupt her talk with Jackson, and I went to the corner and had a glass of beer. That took five minutes, maybe a little more. When I went back her car was still there, and it occurred to me she
might have got through with Jackson and gone somewhere else nearby, so I went to the entrance there alongside The Haven, and went in and climbed the stairs. When I got nearly up, about two or three steps from the top, something hit me on the side of the head. I must have rolled all the way down. When I came to I was there at the bottom landing, and my niece and Jackson were standing there—”

“Company halt!” said Tuttle savagely. “I’ll stop you if I’ve heard it! And the bag was gone? Sure the bag was gone? Sure the bag was gone! And the ones who found you there unconscious were your niece, who is in a cell, and Jackson, who is dead!”

“That’s right.” Pellett raised his hand and rubbed the left side of his jaw, slowly and tenderly. “Look, Sheriff. Don’t figure on getting me sore. I knew what your attitude would be, and that’s why I went there and laid for that man in case he might show up. But while it was my niece and Jackson that found me, because they were in his office and heard me rolling downstairs, Jackson went to The Haven right away, to telephone, and someone from there came back with him. I think he’s the manager or the bouncer, because it was him that came out and spoke to me today. And before they helped me upstairs to Jackson’s office a police sergeant came, Gil Moffett, and a doctor. They decided I had been hit with a piece of ore out of that old bin up there; Jackson found it on the floor near the head of the stairs. I suppose Gil Moffett reported it; anyway, you can ask him. I had a little natural curiosity about who had tried to crack my skull open, and I phoned Gil at his house last night and he said they hadn’t found any tracks.”

Tuttle asked with a scowl, “Was it your theory that
someone trailed you up and beaned you when you got to the top?”

“I didn’t have any theory. But he couldn’t have trailed me up and then got a piece of ore from that bin. He must have been already up there.”

“Yeah, I was expecting that. It was somebody already up there and so it was Jackson. Huh?”

“It couldn’t have been. My niece was in his office with him at the time I was hit.”

“That’s too bad. And the minute you came to, you looked around for the bag and it was gone.”

“No, I didn’t. I was groggy. After they got me up to Jackson’s office Gil Moffett helped me go through my pockets to see if anything was gone, but all I had that amounted to anything was my wallet with about sixty dollars in it and my driver’s license, and that was there, so I told Gil nothing had been taken. I was still dazed. Then a little later, when I was talking with Jackson, I remembered about the bag, and Jackson and I went to look for it, and it wasn’t there. We looked upstairs and down. It was gone.”

“Had Moffett and the doctor left before you missed the bag?”

“Yes, and my niece too. We were alone.”

“Did you see anybody or hear anything before you got hit?”

“Not a damn thing. It’s dark up there in that hall.”

The sheriff leaned back and gazed at him a while. Then he turned to the chief of police, still scowling. “How do you like it, Frank? Got any suggestions?”

Phelan slowly and reflectively shook his head. “I don’t know, Bill. We might go into details a little more.”

“Go ahead.”

Phelan did so. He wasn’t aggressively skeptical, as the sheriff had been, but he wanted to know; that was his tone as he questioned Quinby Pellett. He was painstaking; he covered, thoroughly, everything that happened up to the time that Pellett and Jackson had searched for the bag, but he found no discrepancy, and the only new fact he got was that Pellett thought it possible that the murder of Jackson was connected with the murder two years previously of Charlie Brand. Pellett could support that surmise only by saying that Jackson had summoned him to the office for the purpose of discussing a new angle on the Charlie Brand murder, and had shown him a piece of paper alleged to have been found in the cabin in the Silverside Hills where Brand had been killed; and since Jackson had been killed a few hours later, it seemed likely that there might be a connection. Asked what was on the piece of paper, Pellett couldn’t say; his head had been so befuddled from the blow he had got that they had postponed the rest of the discussion until the next day and, after the futile search for the bag, he had gone home. It was while they were on that that the phone rang, and Tuttle, after answering it, handed it across to Phelan.

The chief took it. “Yes, Mac? No! Good work! Where? Remind me to buy you a drink. No, let that go. Send them on over here with him and step on it.”

He hung up, looking pleased with himself. “Pretty good gang I’ve got, Bill. They’ve picked up Al Rowley.”

“Ha, they’ve got him!”

“They have, you know, Quin. Over on Bucket Street. They ought to be here in five minutes.”

“I’ll handle him,” Tuttle announced.

“You will like hell. My boys got him.”

“This is my office, Frank.”

“And a damn smelly office it is, Bill. This is my meat.”

“I’ll handle him. I’ll take him first.”

“Not if my voice holds out you won’t. And if you start trying, I’ll march him right back out and over to the station. It was me Pellett came to in the first place, wasn’t it? Didn’t he come here only because I was here?”

That argument, with ramifications, was still in progress when the arrival of the disputed booty was announced and Tuttle ordered that it be ushered in, including escort.

Quinby Pellett stood up and Phelan told him roughly, “Sit down, Quin. Your knees are shaky. And behave yourself.”

The escort, entering, proved to be two plain-clothes men and two in uniform. The booty, flanked on both sides, was, unmistakably, the friend Pellett had been looking for. He looked surly, somewhat scared, and a little bellicose.

“Sit him down,” Phelan ordered, and he was instructed into a chair. “Is that the man, Quin?”

“That’s him,” Pellett declared, without removing his eyes from the booty.

The sheriff barked, “Is your name Al Rowley?”

The chief of police jumped up and started for the door, calling, “Bring him along, boys, back to the station!”

The escort looked bewildered. The sheriff yelled, “Hey, you damn fool! All right, all right!”