Tough as Nails: The Complete Cases of Donahue From the Pages of Black Mask (50 page)

He went out and looked at the blackboard again. His watch checked with the electric one above: 9:12. Then the man with the cap was megaphoning: “Blah… from… blah… Columbus… Wheeling… blah… was due at 9:02…blah… Track… blah!”

People got up and moved down the corridor. Donahue tailed along, looking around. His eye lit on a small young man leaning against a stone pillar. There was a sensation of something clicking as the little man’s eyes met his own. Then they dropped, a foot ground out a cigarette and the little man sauntered off, whistling. Donahue tried to catch sight of him a moment later, but was unable.

People were coming up the stairway from the train level below. Donahue watched and saw her but did not immediately go to her. She was very small, with a startled, pretty face. A porter was beside her, holding a bag and asking something. She kept shrugging and peering eagerly at the faces. It was minutes before the crowd went away, and then she stood there alone with the porter drooping beside her. Donahue cast another look around, then went over to her.

“Laura?”

There was a frightened smile. “Yes!”

“He couldn’t meet you. He sent me…. I’ll take that, porter.” He took the bag and gave the porter a quarter. “This way, Laura—”

“But—”

He was pointing: “We have to go to the checkroom first.” He flung a look over either shoulder.

“How is Charlie? Why couldn’t he come?”

“Yes,” he said, making believe he misunderstood. “The checkroom’s upstairs. Have a nice trip?”

“Oh, long. Lonesome.”

“There it is over there.”

He gave the check to the man at the counter and received a small yellow handbag that looked new. Gripping it in his left hand, the girl’s suitcase in his right, he started off.

“Come on. We’ll get a taxi.”

They got one in the tunnel and rode out into Seventh Avenue. Donahue had given the address of his apartment-hotel. He was glad the girl didn’t talk. She sat quietly in a corner. He sat in the other, his arms folded and his face in a hard, brown study. Presently the cab stopped and the hotel doorman let them out. Donahue lugged the bags and they went up to his apartment. He could tell by the way she looked when they entered his rooms that she expected to see Charlie there. She turned on him as he was closing the door.

She said, weakly: “Something—something’s—”

“Ssh!” He skated the bags into one corner and scaled his hat on to a divan. He went on into the bathroom, looked at himself in the mirror and thought: “Of all the saps, Donahue, you’re the berries—with all the trimmings.” He turned, strode out of the bathroom with his coat’s long skirt slapping his calves. He walked straight to the center of the room and stood there grinding the heels of his hands slowly together and regarding the girl with a glazed introspective look.

There was a little cry—“Oh!” And small white fingers suddenly against cheeks from which the color was ebbing.

He took a step and laid a big hand on either of her small rounded shoulders. “He’s dead, Laura.” That was the easiest way—right out with it. He felt the rounded shoulders twitch and he saw her looking up at him with a peculiarly abstracted expression. Then she stepped back and began walking up and down the room, swiftly, quietly, with her eyes fixed on the carpet. Suddenly she dived on to the divan and lay there—still, motionless, without a move, without a quiver.

He grabbed the back of a chair and dragged it across the carpet, planked it down in front of the divan. He sat down and scrutinized the palms of his hands, turning them this way and that.

He said, as if talking aloud to himself: “He asked me to meet you. That bag there: he asked me to give it to you. He said you should go home again. He said he was sorry he couldn’t meet you. He gave me some money to give to you—to get back on, I guess.”

She broke into sobbing and he got up and entered the bathroom and washed his hands. The running water dimmed the sound of her sobbing. He washed his hands over and over again, throwing secret glances at his image in the mirror. After a while he turned to the room and saw her sitting up. Her hat was askew, her face smeared with tears. She sniffled, stared straight ahead of her with blank, wet eyes.

“Where can I see his body?”

“I wouldn’t,” he said.

“I want to.”

“You can’t.”

She looked up at him. “Why?”

“It was his dying wish that you shouldn’t.”

Her tone was dull: “How did it happen?”

“He was shot. I guess it was an accident.” He tossed the wallet to the divan. “His money’s in that and the key to his bag. I’ll get you a room in the hotel. I brought you to this apartment because I thought it’d be easier.”

“Who—who are you?”

“My name’s Donahue. I’m a private detective.”

“You knew Charlie well?”

“I never saw him before. I just saw him when he was dying.”

“And—and you did this—for him—for me? You did this for strangers?”

He frowned and turned away. He was glad she didn’t rave and carry on hysterically. She wasn’t that kind. All her emotion remained inside, locked up, torturing her. You could see that much in the stunned white face, tell it by the dull, listless monotony of her words. Then she was feeling at her throat.

“Do you—you mind if I stay here till I can get a train?”

He shivered. He wanted to get her into another room, out of sight; he wanted to get her out of the city as soon as possible. He had done enough. He didn’t want to have a strange girl on his hands.

She was saying: “I hate to ask it. I—I’m not that kind of a girl, you understand. But—but I’m afraid to stay alone. I’m just—afraid. Coming like this—from a small town—I’ve never, been in a big city. And I’m afraid to be alone. I’m ashamed to ask you, but…” She moved her shoulders wearily and then covered her face with her hands.

“Okey,” he said after a while. “Sure. Stay here. I never thought of that.” He nodded. “Bedroom’s in there.”

He picked up her suitcase and Charlie’s bag and carried them into the bedroom. He frowned and muttered, to himself, but when he reappeared in the living-room these manifestations of his ill-humor were absent. She was standing, a small, lone, pitiful spectacle.

“In there,” he said.

She smiled wistfully. “You’re so good, Mr. Donahue—so good.” She dragged her feet past him and entered the bedroom, closing the door quietly.

He crammed a pipe and lit up, took to pacing with slow, long strides, his face wrapped in thought. A few moments later he heard a sharp outcry. His nape bristled, his eyes narrowed and he whipped to the connecting door, flung it open.

She was on her knees, shaking, her eyes wide. She looked up at him and grimaced and pointed downward. He crossed the room and looked down into Charlie’s open bag.

It was crammed with money—hundreds, thousands of dollars.

The connecting door was closed—locked. He had heard the girl turn the key quietly on the bedroom side. It amused him more than anything else. There was a single in-a-door bed in the living-room, if he wanted to use it later. But the divan would do. He was interested in neither, though, at the moment. Coming out of the little pantry that contained nothing more than an icebox and a sink, he tried the Scotch highball while heading for a mohair easy chair. Dropping into the chair, the dim glow of the floor lamp behind made his smooth black hair shine but kept his face mostly in shadow.

Fourteen thousand five hundred dollars. He looked at the connecting door: the money was behind that door. He drew on his pipe and heard, far away, the thresh of a southbound Elevated train.

Charlie Stromson was his name. It was like this: He’d known her in Revelation, Ohio, six or seven years ago. She was the cashier in the Center Square General Store. Charlie worked in the Sportsman’s Exchange, the game and fish store; he was a wizard at repairing guns and fly rods and mounting fish or birds. Then he got it into his head that there was gold in South America. They became engaged, and he went off to find a fortune.

He wrote her three months later from New York, that he was leaving for South America to get their fortune. That was the last she heard of him for three years. Then there was a letter from Montevideo. He’d made his fortune and he named a date when she was to meet him in New York. She sent a letter care of the General Post Office, New York, saying she would meet him on the appointed date. She’d shown Donahue the letter post-marked at Montevideo. It told of hardships in the jungle, of privation, months and years away from any civilized town.

Donahue muttered: “Um,” and took a long drink. The sound of a knock on the corridor door made him lower the glass slowly and stare. He had removed his shirt—his suspenders looped around his hips—and was in worn leather slippers. He got up, went to the secretary, put the drink down and picked up his gun. He crossed to the door.

“Who’s there?”

“It’s Kelly, Donny.”

Donahue thrust his gun into his hip pocket. He threw a look at the closed bedroom door, then turned the key in the one before which he stood and opened it

McPard looked neat in his blue overcoat and soft gray hat. His shoes shone. His cheeks were pinked up by the wind outside and his smile bloomed whimsically in his cherubic face. He wandered in, cast his smiling, twinkling eyes around the room. Donahue closed the door and stood for half a moment eying McPard’s back.

“Park, Kelly…. Drink?”

“No, thanks.” McPard sat down on a straight-backed chair, drew a white linen handkerchief from his pocket, unfolded it and blew his nose quietly. “That guy who was bumped off, Donny….” He patted his nose gently, put away the handkerchief.

Donahue drew his eyes away from the bedroom door. “Yeah?” He walked across to the secretary and scooped up his drink and carried it on to the divan. “Yeah, Kelly?”

“Hell, now, Donny”—he made a palliating gesture with his hands—“why not give me the straight of it?”

“I did, Kelly.”

“I know, I know. Straight as a crooked list I don’t say you had anything to do with his death, Donny; you know I wouldn’t say a nasty thing like that.”

“I know; you wouldn’t like to hurt my feelings.”

McPard grinned. “Exactly!” He leaned back, crossed his legs. “It didn’t take us long to place him. I didn’t expect much, but anyhow I wandered through Rogues’ Gallery and—sure—there was his mug—there it was.”

Donahue snapped a look at the bedroom door. “I don’t believe it, Kelly.”

“So his mug led to his record. He did a three-year stretch.”

Donahue stood up, growled: “That’s something you thought up!”

McPard chuckled absently. “Yeah, I thought you’d say that. But it’s no go, Donny. I guess you weren’t so hot as a bodyguard.”

“Bodyguard?”

McPard stood up and regarded Donahue affectionately. “Come, now, Donny—don’t try to kid me. I just want the truth. When did this mug hire you, where did he live, and who bumped him off—and where,” he added, smiling whimsically, “was the dough bunked?”

“You know so much about this, Kelly: tell me.”

“There was around twenty thousand involved. This mug blew into New York from the wide open spaces about three and a half years ago. He got tangled up in the wrong end of town. One night this egg and two pals walked into a gambling joint uptown and collected twenty thousand bucks in a handbag they swiped from the joint’s office. In the mix-up one of the customers got shot and spent a month in the hospital. One of this egg’s pals did the shooting. They scrammed out with the dough, this egg hauling the bag. Cops were bearing down. The two pals got big-hearted and told the egg to take the bag and beat it—they’d meet later.

“Well, he beat it. He waited in their hide-out for a week, but they didn’t show up; they were waiting for the tail to cool and besides a couple of dicks were working that street and the pals were afraid. The egg finally leaves the hideout. We pick him up two weeks later on a loitering charge, not knowing who he is—and then he’s identified by the guy who was shot. But he won’t squeal on his pals—no names, nothing. And he swears he doesn’t know where the money is. He gets three years. He comes out six weeks ago and tonight he’s bumped off. He was afraid of that, I guess, so he hired a private dick.”

Donahue shot back: “The only reason a guy like that would hire a private dick would be so he wouldn’t have to pack a rod himself. Well, this guy packed a rod. You saw it. And besides, since when have I been so hard up that I’d rent out to a heel?”

“You mightn’t have known.”

“I didn’t know what he was. I picked him out of the gutter down near Sheridan Square. He was plastered. He couldn’t stand up so I thought the best way to get rid of him would be to shove him in a subway train. Well, I walked him a couple of blocks and then he got the taxi idea. I didn’t want to go with him, but you know how drunks are—and, anyhow, I was headed uptown and it meant a free ride. I never saw him before in my life. I didn’t know his name.”

McPard seemed politely bored. “Anyhow, Donny—anyhow, what I came here for in the first place was to tell you that Inspector Overhill wouldn’t take my word for it that you were on the up and up. So you better put a shirt on.”

“Listen, Kelly—”

McPard shrugged. “What’s the use? Overhill wants to see you. I’ll wait.” He added: “Meantime, if I were you, kid, I’d think it over. This Charlie Stromson left some dough. Overhill’s very eager about knowing where. Besides, when a guy hires another for a bodyguard he usually tells the bodyguard the names of the guys that are after him and what they look like.”

Donahue swung around, glowering: “I told you—”

“That’s right, that’s right. You told me you weren’t hired. Tsk, tsk! I keep forgetting.” His eyes danced with a wily blue twinkle. “I’m waiting.”

Donahue cursed him, put on a shirt and tie. His eyes darted to the bedroom door. No sound there. McPard had not even noticed the door.

“Okey,” Donahue said, swinging the overcoat over his arm.

They went down in the elevator. Going across the lobby, McPard pulled out a packet of cigarettes, took one, said: “Have one, Donny?”

Donahue took one and McPard struck a match and they lit up from it. Outride, they climbed into a taxi. It turned left into a side-street, then down Park Avenue, which lower became Fourth.