SSC (1950) Six Deadly Dames (11 page)

Whistling, feeling bright and chipper, he went down the hall and rapped on 804. The door opened and a Negro maid looked out.

“Mr. Herron in?” Donahue said.

“Ah's just cleanin' up, suh. Party checked out o' heah.”

“Checked out?”

“Yassuh.”

“Thank you.”

Donahue retraced his steps down the hall, not whistling, and looking very dark and somber. He swung into his room, closed the door, and stood with feet spread, arms jammed against hips. He nibbled tightly at his lower lip. His eyes became round and hard, staring fixedly at the carpet.

He chopped off a short oath, put on hat and raglan, went downstairs and out into the street. He called the hotel from a cigar store at the corner. Asked for Mr. Herron. Mr. Herron had checked out at seven that morning. Donahue hung up savagely, went out lighting a cigarette, knew that cigarettes didn't agree with him before breakfast, and snapped it away. He entered a lunch-room and ordered tomato juice, poached eggs on toast and coffee. He ate vigorously but with no great appetite. Finished, he roamed the streets, walking swiftly, seemingly with purpose but actually without it. In that manner, he was surprised to find himself at length in front of the Apollo, and entered.

He was striding across the lobby when Uhl rose placidly from a divan and laid down a rumpled copy of the Globe-Democrat.

“Good morning, Donahue,” he said, smiling.

Donahue stopped short, his scalp contracting, a scowl starting on his-forehead. But on second thought he grinned, said: “Oh, hello, Sergeant.”

Uhl was alone, his hat in his hand, his white hair thick and bushy. “I would like to have a few words with you-in your room.”

“Sure thing. Come on.”

When they were in Donahue's room, Uhl seemed oddly embarrassed for a moment, turning his hat round and round in his neat white hands.

“Sit down,” Donahue urged.

“Yes-thanks.”

Uhl sat down and said: “I'm sorry you didn't tell me last night that you were an Interstate operative. I think pretty highly of your agency.”

Donahue started. If Uhl's knowing he was a guest at the Apollo had startled Donahue, this second revelation was a distinct shock. But Donahue appeared to take it like an old campaigner. He even chuckled.

“Take it from me, Sergeant, the only thing I was worrying about last night-or this morning, rather-was getting away with my guts intact. I wouldn't fool you a bit.”

Uhl nodded understandingly, then went on: “I hope your head is better, too.”

“You know things, don't you, Sergeant?”

“Through no fault of mine, Donahue. I suppose you were surprised to find your client gone this morning.”

Donahue sat down suddenly on the bed. “I like you, Uhl.”

“Thank you. Can you spare the time to go out to Edgecomb's house with me to show me where the black box is?”

“A command in the form of a question, eh?”

“Well”-Uhl smiled modestly-“you know how it is.”

Uhl had his own flivver downstairs, which he drove himself. Donahue sat beside him on the way out. When they drew up before the towered house on Lindell Boulevard a policeman came towards them. Uhl told him to stay by the car.

Donahue led the way into the grounds behind the house, through the arbor.

“I always wanted a garden like this,” Uhl remarked dreamily. “But it costs money.”

“I was born in a hotel,” Donahue said.

He reached the shrubbery, no indecision in his movements. He searched for a couple of minutes, his face falling. Finally he stood up and faced Uhl, shrugged and shook his head.

“It's gone.”

Uhl looked suddenly sad. “No, is it?”

“It's gone. I planted it right there, alongside that vine that comes down the wall.”

“Pshaw,” Uhl drawled.

Donahue began thrashing through the shrubbery, inspired by anger more than by a belief that he would find the box. Finally he stopped and came back towards Uhl wearing a brown scowl.

“What's the lowdown, Sergeant?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, how is it you know so much about what happened last night? Did you go out to that place in the country again and make a pinch?”

“No,” Uhl said. “I didn't do anything. Your client called me up this morning. Mr. Edgecomb called me up and explained in detail. He said something had happened that made him leave the hotel abruptly. He called from a West End public booth and told me that I should communicate with him tonight or tomorrow morning at the Rex Hotel, in Kansas City.”

“Why the devil did he do that?”

He explained his hiding incognito in the Apollo and asked me to keep it a secret. He was a lot concerned over you and asked me if I would look you up and go out with you to get the box. He said you would swear that Shadd and his mob had beaten you up, taken the key and gone back to the house to look for certain important papers. I've heard a lot about Edgecomb. He's an honest lawyer. He was supposed to have left by car for Hot Springs some days ago because this mob was out to take his life. And by the way, he left an envelope with the clerk at the Apollo for you. A little gift, I suppose.”

Donahue was searching Uhl's face intently. “Edgecomb's got a good reputation here, hasn't he?”

“None better. Why?”

“Well, I was just wondering if he's entirely on the up and up. Take it from me, Sergeant, this is one of the queerest cases I've ever tackled-and I've had a lot in my time.”

Uhl thought for a moment. “The only answer I see, Donahue, is that Shadd's boys came back here again, maybe thinking that you might have planted the box somewhere. One of them might have tailed you to the hotel-”

“They knew where I was staying. Edgecomb-or Herron, as he was down on the books-didn't like that a bit.”

“One of Shadd's men probably tailed you, planted himself in the hall, and maybe listened at the door while you were talking with your client. That's logical, isn't it?”

“I guess it is.” But Donahue was not emphatic. His brown eyes wandered thoughtfully.

Uhl sighed. “Anyhow,” he said, “I guess I have a perfect right to collect Shadd and his boys. You'll testify, won't _ you, Donahue?”

“What else can I do? Edgecomb may be a swell lawyer, but he's certainly afraid of his precious skin.”

“Let's go down to Headquarters,” Uhl said. On the way Donahue stopped at the hotel. The envelope his client had left contained a hundred dollars.

He met the police car in front of Headquarters, on Twelfth Boulevard. Uhl was there, quiet, retiring. Smiddy was at the wheel. There were three other men in plain-clothes: Knoblock, Reems and Brannigan. Donahue squeezed in front beside Uhl and Smiddy. The big Packard, rated at a hundred miles an hour, headed west on Olive Street. The wind hammered the top and the side curtains. They followed Route 40 through the city and kept to it on the outskirts.

“You were out here last summer, weren't you?” Brannigan asked.

“Yes,” said Donahue. “And last winter. Every time I come out here I get in trouble.”

“Don't go too fast now, Burt,” Uhl said. “Time enough when we have to.”

The big car was doing fifty past bare fields. The curtains clapped in the grip of the cold wind, and the men in the rear kept pounding their feet on the floor to keep warm. “Turn off here, Burt,” Uhl said.

Smiddy swung into a crushed gravel road that met the state highway obliquely. The tires ground on the gravel; gravel drummed against the undersides of the mudguards; dust ballooned behind. The road was wide, smooth, and the car passed scattered farmhouses and went through small sleeping towns that looked run down and hopeless.

The road rose slightly, then dipped in a long straight run between sparse timber. It curved beyond, and Uhl pointed to the big weather-beaten farmhouse ahead, on the right, set back fifty yards from the road.

“There may be trouble,” Uhl said. “Burt, drive past and then pull up alongside those woods just beyond.” The big car swished past the house and skidded to a stop in the lee of the woods. Donahue and Uhl got out. The three men sat in the back holding Thompson guns. Uhl leaned in.

“You boys stay here for the time being. Burt, I guess you'd better come with me. Donahue, you stay out of sight. Well, come on, 'Burt.”

Uhl and Smiddy walked slowly across the grubby lawn and climbed three steps to the ramshackle veranda. Uhl knocked. He waited patiently, listening. He said something to Smiddy and Smiddy left the veranda and went around to the rear. Uhl kept knocking at intervals. Smiddy returned shaking his head.

Uhl drew his gun and knocked the panes out of a window. He and Smiddy went in. Five minutes later they came out and returned to the car.

“They're gone,” Uhl said sadly. “But I want you to stay out here, Brannigan, in case they come back. Stay in the woods. If they come back, walk to the nearest town-it's only two miles-and telephone in.”

On the way back to the state highway, which was distant eight miles from the house, Uhl stopped in several towns and asked questions. It was in the third town that he came back to the car smiling quietly.

“A big black Cadillac sedan, coming from the country, stopped at the filling station at ten this morning to load her tank. There were six men in it. One of them tallies with Shadd. They left headed for the state highway, speeding. The man at the filling station remembers the car had Illinois pads, because after he filled the tank he dusted off the rear plate. He doesn't remember the number, though. Ten to one they're flying west right now. Hit the highway, Burt, and go west.”

At the entrance to the St. Charles Bridge across the Missouri River, the ticket agent remembered a similar Cadillac sedan. It had crossed the bridge at about ten-thirty. The Packard crossed the bridge, went through St. Charles, and struck Route 40.

“You can let her out,” Uhl said.

Smiddy jammed his foot down on the throttle and the car roared at eighty miles an hour, its siren screaming at intervals. The men sat motionless while trees and fields whipped past. At the first important crossroads, Uhl called a halt.

“I want to telephone ahead,” he said, “and have the news relayed. A black Cadillac sedan, with six men and Illinois plates.”

He telephoned from a pretentious filling station and then came back, told Smiddy to keep to Route 40.

A mile east of Wentzville Donahue suddenly said: “Hey, pull up!”

Smiddy looked across at him.

“Pull up!” Donahue yelled above the beating of the wind.

Smiddy took his foot off the throttle and applied the brakes gradually. The Packard bumped gently on the frozen shoulder alongside the road.

“There was a car parked in a lane back there,” Donahue said. “I think it had bullet holes in the rear.”

“You have eyes, you have,” Uhl said. “Turn around, Burt.”

It was a narrow lane that met the highway at right angles. Bushes grew thickly on either side of it. The Packard swung in and stopped behind an empty Lincoln sedan.

“By-, you're'right!” Reems said.

The men piled out and stopped by the Lincoln. Donahue jabbed six bullet holes with his finger.

“There's baggage inside,” Uhl said. “No glass broken. And I don't see any blood.”

Donahue hauled out a yellow suitcase and tipped it on the ground. “Take a look at these initials: S. E.”

“It looks,” drawled Uhl, “as if they got Edgecomb.”

“He was a fool to have left the hotel!” Donahue snapped.

They searched the ground around the car, finding nothing of consequence.

“I'll telephone Jeff City,” Uhl said, “and check up on these plates. Knoblock, you drive the Lincoln. We'll go up to Wentzville.”

Nobody had heard any shooting in Wentzville.

Uhl came out of a restaurant and said: “It's Edgecomb's car all right. I just telephoned.”

Reems looked out of the Lincoln. “His bags are opened. Doesn't look as if there was any ransacking.”

Donahue was looking through the bags too. Every piece of linen was spotlessly clean.

“His body'll probably turn up along the road somewhere,” Reems offered.

Donahue got out of the Lincoln, lit a cigarette and stared transfixed at its red end. A puzzled shadow moved slowly across his forehead, and his lean strong fingers began to tremble, his eyes suddenly became round and hard like brown bright marbles.

Shadd and his five men had run into trouble in Jefferson City, where they had stopped to put water in the radiator. One of the attendants at the filling station went inside while another was filling the radiator and telephoned the authorities. The county sheriff happened to be only a block or so away and he came down with three deputies and some police.

They stopped the Cadillac just as it was starting. The driver tried to speed up, but a deputy cracked him with a gun and the car ran into a tree. Shadd and his men piled out dragging two Thompson guns with them, and warning the law officers to clear out. Shadd had one of the Tommy guns.

A deputy shot him through the thigh and in a minute all the guns were in action. The gangsters were outnumbered. One of the Tommy guns jammed after having put twelve bullets in an officer and another officer emptied his gun at the assassin. The gunfight lasted three minutes, and all six gunmen were killed.

They had had fifteen hundred dollars among them. However, no black metal box was found. It was natural to assume that they had thrown that away. But there were no papers, either, though there too it was natural to assume that they had destroyed them.

Since it was likely that they had kept to Route 40 at least as far as the town of Mexico, parties were on the hunt for the discarded body of Stanley Edgecomb. Bus drivers and motorists were asked to keep an eye out also. Circumstances pointed unwaveringly to the fact that Stanley Edgecomb had been attacked in his car, taken in the gangsters' car, relieved of important documents, then killed and thrown out somewhere between Wentzville and the town of Mexico, or between Mexico and the State capital.

Uhl concluded: “This case has many strange ramifications, Donahue, and it's going to take us a while to clear it up. Already there's a lot of people saying that maybe Edgecomb was not all that he was supposed to be. Kind of insinuating, you know, that he might have had his fingers in a dirty piece of pie. Are you staying-in town a while?”

“Yes. There are a few things I'd like to clean up for my own satisfaction. I'll be seeing you, Sergeant.”

He hung up and drained the highball he had started on before Uhl telephoned.

There was a knock on the door and Donahue let in the hotel's head porter, a gaunt old man in a blue flannel shirt.

The head porter said “No, Mr. Herron didn't send down any clothes to be laundered while he was here.”

“You would have handled the clothes whether they went to the hotel laundry or an outside one?”

“Yes. If they go to an outside one, the man in the receiving room pays the bill when they're delivered back and then collects from the cashier, who would put it on the guest's bill.”

“Thanks,” Donahue said, and dismissed the man with a quarter.

Then he returned to a collection of train and bus timetables, studied them intently, made a few notations. He telephoned the St. Louis terminal of the Central States Motor Express, spoke briefly and hung up. Then he telephoned Union Station and got a reservation on the 11:55 p.m. train for Kansas City.

At ten-forty he checked out of the Apollo, carrying his bag. A taxi ran him over to Union Station. It was raining when the Wabash train pulled out at midnight.

It was raining in Kansas City next morning. Donahue had checked his bag in the station, had gotten there in the chill early morning.

When he entered the Central States Motor Express waiting room, he said: “Will Nixon be in soon?”

“You mean Sam Nixon?”

“I mean the man who was chauffeur on your through bus from St. Louis yesterday that arrived after dark last night.”

“He's out in that bus you see through that door. He's due to leave in half an hour.”

Donahue went out through the door. “Mr. Nixon, I'd like to speak with you in private for a minute.”

“Who, me?”

“I'm just a private cop on a tail. Come on.”

They went back of the bus. Donahue said: “You made a stop at Wentzville yesterday, didn't you?”

“Sure.”

“How many passengers did you pick up?”

“Three. A couple for Mexico and one for here.”

“The man for here-what did he look like?”

“Hell, I can't remember exactly. Fat guy, I think. Glasses.

Had a suitcase along. Or maybe he didn't have glasses.”

“But,” Donahue said, “he was the only man who got on at Wentzville destined for here.”

“Yeah, I'm sure of that. What's the matter?”

“I don't know yet,” Donahue said. “I'm trying to find out.”

He went around to the taxi stand. Three cabs were there. The drivers had not been on duty last night when Nixon's bus arrived. However, Donahue got the names of those who had been. From the taxi company's garage he got their telephone numbers. He spent twenty minutes telephoning.

Then he took a taxi to the Hotel Bretton-Palace. The big lobby was noisy. It was a travelers' hotel. Donahue went directly to the desk and asked for the house officer. A page took him down a corridor and into an office. A small bald man blinked sky-blue eyes, dismissed the page.

Donahue sat down and produced identification.

“Oh, yeah, I've heard of you,” the house officer said.

“I came right in here,” Donahue said, “so I could put my cards on the table. I'm on a quiet little tail. It would be doing me a great favor, if you'd go out, look at the register for last night, and get me a list of names of men who arrived and registered here between six-fifteen and six-forty-five.”

The house officer blinked. “No rough stuff on the premises.”

“Nothing like that.”

“Wait here.”

Five minutes later the house officer came back into the office holding a memorandum as if reluctant to hand it over. “Remember, no rough stuff.”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Six men. I didn't take the women's names. Six men. I guess they were from that St. Louis bus. Here.”

Donahue eyed the list closely. Room numbers were beside the names. All the names were strange.

“Look here,” Donahue said, “do me another favor. Have a girl call these rooms, one by one, and let me listen in on an extension.”

“I wouldn't want to get in any trouble,” the house officer demurred, ill at ease.

“Be a good scout,” Donahue urged. “And you won't get in any trouble. There's an unemployment drive on. Get a girl and have her ask these men over the phone if they will contribute. Anything for a stall. Just so I can hear their voices.”

'“Hell, I'd lose my job if the manager-Besides, there's no jane around here I'd care to trust. You know janes.”

Donahue shrugged. “All right, then: never mind. I'll make the calls myself and take a chance.”

He went out into the lobby, entered a booth and began calling the rooms. He said he was on the committee of the new drive to relieve the suffering of homeless men. Could he come up and collect a small donation? He tried to keep his voice in falsetto. Two of the rooms did not answer. One man refused to contribute and bawled Donahue out for calling. Donahue did not make the sixth call. The fifth was sufficient.

Stepping out of the booth, he saw the house officer leaning against one of the marble pillars at the other end of the lobby. Donahue crossed to him.

“Please, now,” he said, “don't mastermind around after me.”

“Only no rough stuff,” the bald man said, worried.

Donahue strode to the elevators, went up to the sixth floor. He walked down a red-carpeted corridor, turned sharp right and followed another corridor. He stopped in front of a door marked 645 and knocked.

A voice said: “Who is there, eh?”

“Just Donahue.”

“Donahue!”

“On the level.”

Silence.

Then-“Well, well, this-this is extraordinary, Mr. Donahue!” The door whipped open and Donahue's recent client bubbled buoyantly on the threshold, saying: “'Pon my word! Well, well, come right in-come right in, Mr. Donahue. It has been something of a travail for me.” He locked the door.

Donahue moved squinted eyes around the room, said absently: “I suppose it has been. Your Lincoln was riddled all right.”

“Indeed it was! By Godfrey, Mr. Donahue, I shall never be the same man again!”

“I wondered why you took the bus from Wentzville, leaving your car parked down the road, hardly a mile, and with all your baggage in it.”

“My dear man, wasn't I attacked? Do you suppose I was going to linger around that spot?”

“I see you registered here as Baldwin Coombs of Indianapolis.”

“A very original name, eh? Eh, Mr. Donahue?”

“You're a very original man. I'm not. I'm just a plain everyday guy trying to make a living-as honestly as possible. There's not a hell of a lot of romance attached to my business. I'm no drawing-room cop. One day I'm here-the next day, somewhere else. That's not romance. It's damned monotonous. When I take on a client, I expect a break. I expect the truth. If it is the truth, I'm just as liable to risk my neck for the guy as not. I'm a nice guy ordinarily. But when a man two-times on me, I'm a louse-the lousiest kind of a louse you ever ran across. Understand?”

“Why, yes-of course. But what is the point, eh? Eh, what is the point? After all-”

Donahue snarled: “After all, you two-timed! You're not Edgecomb. You never were Edgecomb. That baggage in the Lincoln was not your baggage. It was Edgecomb's. But you were driving that Lincoln. Edgecomb wasn't in it. You were never attacked, either. You drove the car in that lane, put the bullets in yourself. You walked the mile to Wentzville and boarded the bus and arrived here between six and six-, thirty last night.

“Shadd and his mob were fogged down in Jeff City. They had nothing on them. The theory was-I didn't hold it-that Shadd and his men overtook you and mobbed you, chucked your body out somewhere farther on. I began to smell other things when we opened the baggage in the Lincoln. Every stitch was clean. I figured that a man who had made a quick getaway, like yours, would at least have a dirty shirt along, you had plenty, I imagine, because you sent out no laundry in the five days you were at the hotel.”

The other clapped his hands gently. “Very, very good, Mr. Donahue. As I said once before, you are a man of parts. Indeed, that you are, Mr. Donahue. I should like to hear some more about it. But, please, if I am not Stanley Edgecomb, who am I? By Godfrey, there is a splendid side of the ridiculous to this: having assumed so many aliases, I find it hard to recapture my real name. Droll, don't you think? Eh?”

Donahue's brown face looked hawkish, predatory, keenly alert. “You may think you can song and dance yourself out of this, mister, but you can't.”

“Eh?”

“I'm taking you back to St. Louis.”

“Of course, Mr. Donahue. I intend going. I shall engage a drawing room for both of us. Let me see-I had a timetable-in my overcoat.” He picked a blue overcoat up from a divan, rummaged in the pockets. Then he dropped the coat and turned around holding a small automatic, smiling buoyantly. “You will keep your hands well up, Mr. Donahue.”

Donahue twisted his lips in a sneer. “This won't get you anywhere, you-!”

“Language, Mr. Donahue!”

Donahue shoved his hip against the telephone and deliberately knocked it to the floor.

“Pick that up,” the fat man said.

“Pick it up yourself.”

“Pick that up. You knocked it down.”

“Horsefeathers,” Donahue chided. “If you want it picked up, then pick it up. I knocked it down because I wanted it knocked down. You want it picked up. Okey. Pick it up. You better hurry up. Operator may think there's a murder going on up here.”

“It's wedged between the table and the wall. You will have to bend way over to get it.”

“You mean,” Donahue said,
“you
will.”

“I am no longer fooling, Mr. Donahue!”

Donahue shrugged. “Neither am I. You're not going to get anywhere with me, mister. You're not going to threaten me. Oh, no you're not. You're not going to shoot me and make a lot of noise with the telephone disconnected. You're not going to be a jackass like that.”

“Mr. Donahue, pick up that telephone.”

Donahue lowered his hands, chafed them together, smiling with utmost self-assurance. He turned and walked to the door, his back to the man and the gun. He unlocked the door.

“Mr. Donahue!”

Donahue palmed the knob, about faced, bowed with mock courtesy. “I'll be waiting for you. And I'd advise you, mister-spare the rod. You're in bad enough as it is. Besides, I promised the house dick there'd be no rough stuff.”

The fat man stood like a man petrified, staring wide-eyed through his horn-rimmed glasses. For a brief moment he looked oafish, stripped of guile; looked like a man trying hard to believe what his eyes and ears transmitted to his brain; and believing it, in spite of himself, and still incredulous of his own intelligence.

Donahue, eyeing him levelly, turned the knob, opened the door behind him.

The glaze left the fat man's eyes; it was like windows thrown suddenly upward.