Nightmare Town Page 36

  “About a month ago he began to get jumpy, nervous, even worse than usual. He said he had business worries. Then a couple of days ago I discovered that his pistol was gone from the drawer where it had been kept ever since we came here, and that he was carrying it. I asked him: ‘What’s the idea?’ He said he thought he was being followed, and asked me if I’d seen anybody hanging around the neighborhood as if watching our place. I told him no; I thought he was nutty.

  “Night before last he told me that he was in trouble, and might have to go away, and that he couldn’t take me with him, but would give me enough money to take care of me for a while. He seemed excited, packed his bags so they’d be ready if he needed them in a hurry, and burned up all his photos and a lot of letters and papers. His bags are still in the bedroom, if you want to go through them. When he didn’t come home last night I had a hunch that he had beat it without his bags and without saying a word to me, much less giving me any money—leaving me with only twenty dollars to my name and not even much that I could hock, and with the rent due in four days.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “About eight o’clock last night. He told me he was going down to Mr. Ogburn’s apartment to talk some business over with him, but he didn’t go there. I know that. I ran out of cigarettes—I like Elixir Russians, and I can’t get them uptown here—so I called up Mr. Ogburn’s to ask Herb to bring some home with him when he came, and Mr. Ogburn said he hadn’t been there.”

  “How long have you known Whitacre?” I asked.

  “Couple of years, I guess. I think I met him first at one of the beach resorts.”

  “Has he got any people?”

  “Not that I know of. I don’t know a whole lot about him. Oh, yes! I do know that he served three years in prison in Oregon for forgery. He told me that one night when he was lushed up. He served them under the name of Barber, or Barbee, or something like that. He said he was walking the straight and narrow now.”

  Dean produced a small automatic pistol, fairly new-looking in spite of the mud that clung to it, and handed it to the woman.

  “Ever see that?”

  She nodded her blond head. “Yep! That’s Herb’s or its twin.”

  Dean pocketed the gun again, and we stood up.

  “Where do I stand now?” she asked. “You’re not going to lock me up as a witness or anything, are you?”

  “Not just now,” Dean assured her. “Stick around where we can find you if we want you, and you won’t be bothered. Got any idea which direction Whitacre’d be likely to go in?”

  “No.”

  “We’d like to give the place the once-over. Mind?”

  “Go ahead,” she invited. “Take it apart if you want to. I’m coming all the way with you people.”

  We very nearly did take the place apart, but we found not a thing of value. Whitacre, when he had burned the things that might have given him away, had made a clean job of it.

  “Did he ever have any pictures taken by a professional photographer?” I asked just before we left.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Will you let us know if you hear anything or remember anything else that might help?”

  “Sure,” she said heartily; “sure.”

  Dean and I rode down in the elevator in silence, and walked out into Gough Street.

  “What do you think of all that?” I asked when we were outside.

  “She’s a lil, huh?” He grinned. “I wonder how much she knows. She identified the gun an’ gave us that dope about the forgery sentence up north, but we’d of found out them things anyway. If she was wise she’d tell us everything she knew we’d find out, an’ that would make her other stuff go over stronger. Think she’s dumb or wise?”

  “We won’t guess,” I said. “We’ll slap a shadow on her and cover her mail. I have the number of a taxi she used a couple days ago. We’ll look that up too.”

  At a corner drug store I telephoned the Old Man, asking him to detail a couple of the boys to keep Mae Landis and her apartment under surveillance night and day; also to have the Post Office Department let us know if she got any mail that might have been addressed by Whitacre. I told the Old Man I would see Ogburn and get some specimens of the fugitive’s writing for comparison with the woman’s mail.

  Then Dean and I set about tracing the taxi in which Bob Teal had seen the woman ride away. Half an hour in the taxi company’s office gave us the information that she had been driven to a number on Greenwich Street. We went to the Greenwich Street address.

  It was a ramshackle building, divided into apartments or flats of a dismal and dingy sort. We found the landlady in the basement: a gaunt woman in soiled gray, with a hard, thin-lipped mouth and pale, suspicious eyes. She was rocking vigorously in a creaking chair and sewing on a pair of overalls, while three dirty kids tussled with a mongrel puppy up and down the room.

  Dean showed his badge, and told her that we wanted to speak to her in privacy. She got up to chase the kids and their dog out, and then stood with hands on hips facing us.

  “Well, what do you want?” she demanded sourly.

  “Want to get a line on your tenants,” Dean said. “Tell us about them.”

  “Tell you about them?” She had a voice that would have been harsh enough even if she hadn’t been in such a peevish mood. “What do you think I got to say about ’em? What do you think I am? I’m a woman that minds her own business! Nobody can’t say that I don’t run a respectable—”

  This was getting us nowhere.

  “Who lives in number one?” I asked.

  “The Auds—two old folks and their grandchildren. If you know anything against them, it’s more’n them that has lived with ’em for ten years does!”

  “Who lives in number two?”

  “Mrs. Codman and her boys, Frank and Fred. They been here three years, and—”

  I carried her from apartment to apartment, until finally we reached a second-floor one that didn’t bring quite so harsh an indictment of my stupidity for suspecting its occupants of whatever it was that I suspected them of.

  “The Quirks live there.” She merely glowered now, whereas she had had a snippy manner before. “And they’re decent people, if you ask me!”

  “How long have they been here?”

  “Six months or more.”

  “What does he do for a living?”

  “I don’t know.” Sullenly: “Travels, maybe.”

  “How many in the family?”

  “Just him and her, and they’re nice quiet people, too.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “Like an ordinary man. I ain’t a detective, I don’t go ’round snoopin’ into folks’ faces to see what they look like, and prying into their business. I ain’t—”

  “How old a man is he?”

  “Maybe between thirty-five and forty, if he ain’t younger or older.”

  “Large or small?”

  “He ain’t as short as you and he ain’t as tall as this feller with you,” glaring scornfully from my short stoutness to Dean’s big hulk, “and he ain’t as fat as neither of you.”

  “Mustache?”

  “No.”

  “Light hair?”

  “No.” Triumphantly: “Dark.”

  “Dark eyes, too?”

  “I guess so.”

  Dean, standing off to one side, looked over the woman’s shoulder at me. His lips framed the name “Whitacre.”

  “Now how about Mrs. Quirk—what does she look like?” I went on.

  “She’s got light hair, is short and chunky, and maybe under thirty.”

  Dean and I nodded our satisfaction at each other; that sounded like Mae Landis, right enough.

  “Are they home much?” I continued.

  “I don’t know,” the gaunt woman snarled sullenly, and I knew she did know, so I waited, looking at her, and presently she added grudgingly: “I think they’re away a lot, but I ain’t sure.”

  “I know,” I ventu
red, “they are home very seldom, and then only in the daytime—and you know it.”

  She didn’t deny it, so I asked: “Are they in now?”

  “I don’t think so, but they might be.”

  “Let’s take a look at the joint,” I suggested to Dean.

  He nodded and told the woman: “Take us up to their apartment an’ unlock the door for us.”

  “I won’t!” she said with sharp emphasis. “You got no right goin’ into folks’ homes unless you got a search warrant. You got one?”

  “We got nothin’.” Dean grinned at her. “But we can get plenty if you want to put us to the trouble. You run this house; you can go into any of the flats any time you want, an’ you can take us in. Take us up, an’ we’ll lay off you; but if you’re going to put us to a lot of trouble, then you’ll take your chances of bein’ tied up with the Quirks, an’ maybe sharin’ a cell with ’em. Think that over.”

  She thought it over, and then, grumbling and growling with each step, took us up to the Quirks’ apartment. She made sure they weren’t at home, then admitted us.

  The apartment consisted of three rooms, a bath, and a kitchen, furnished in the shabby fashion that the ramshackle exterior of the building had prepared us for. In these rooms we found a few articles of masculine and feminine clothing, toilet accessories, and so on. But the place had none of the marks of a permanent abode: there were no pictures, no cushions, none of the dozens of odds and ends of personal belongings that are usually found in homes. The kitchen had the appearance of long disuse; the interiors of the coffee, tea, spice, and flour containers were clean.

  Two things we found that meant something: a handful of Elixir Russian cigarettes on a table; and a new box of .32 cartridges—ten of which were missing—in a dresser drawer.

  All through our searching the landlady hovered over us, her pale eyes sharp and curious; but now we chased her out, telling her that, law or no law, we were taking charge of the apartment.

  “This was or is a hide-out for Whitacre and his woman all right,” Dean said when we were alone. “The only question is whether he intended to lay low here or whether it was just a place where he made preparations for his getaway. I reckon the best thing is to have the captain put a man in here night and day until we turn up Brother Whitacre.”

  “That’s safest,” I agreed, and he went to the telephone in the front room to arrange it.

  After Dean was through phoning, I called up the Old Man to see if anything new had developed.

  “Nothing new,” he told me. “How are you coming along?”

  “Nicely. Maybe I’ll have news for you this evening.”

  “Did you get those specimens of Whitacre’s writing from Ogburn? Or shall I have someone else take care of it?”

  “I’ll get them this evening,” I promised.

  I wasted ten minutes trying to reach Ogburn at his office before I looked at my watch and saw that it was after six o’clock. I found his residence listed in the telephone directory, and called him there.

  “Have you anything in Whitacre’s writing at home?” I asked. “I want to get a couple of samples—would like to get them this evening, though if necessary I can wait until to-morrow.”

  “I think I have some of his letters here. If you come over now I’ll give them to you.”

  “Be with you in fifteen minutes,” I told him.

  “I’m going down to Ogburn’s,” I told Dean, “to get some of Whitacre’s scribbling while you’re waiting for your man to come from headquarters to take charge of this place. I’ll meet you at the States as soon as you can get away. We’ll eat there, and make our plans for the night.”

  “Uh-huh,” he grunted, making himself comfortable in one chair, with his feet on another, as I let myself out.

  Ogburn was dressing when I reached his apartment, and had his collar and tie in his hand when he came to the door to let me in.

  “I found quite a few of Herb’s letters,” he said as we walked back to his bedroom.

  I looked through the fifteen or more letters that lay on a table, selecting the ones I wanted, while Ogburn went on with his dressing.

  “How are you progressing?” he asked presently.

  “So-so. Heard anything that might help?”

  “No, but just a few minutes ago I happened to remember that Herb used to go over to the Mills Building quite frequently. I’ve seen him going in and out often, but never thought anything of it. I don’t know whether it is of any importance or—”

  I jumped out of my chair.

  “That does it!” I cried. “Can I use your phone?”

  “Certainly. It’s in the hallway, near the door.” He looked at me in surprise. “It’s a slot phone; have you a nickel in change?”

  “Yes.” I was going through the bedroom door.

  “The switch is near the door,” he called after me, “if you want a light. Do you think—”

  But I didn’t stop to listen to his questions. I was making for the telephone, searching my pockets for a nickel. And, fumbling hurriedly with the nickel, I muffed it—not entirely by accident, for I had a hunch that I wanted to work out. The nickel rolled away down the carpeted hallway. I switched on the light, recovered the nickel, and called the “Quirks’ ” number. I’m glad I played that hunch.

  Dean was still there.

  “That joint’s dead.” I sang. “Take the landlady down to headquarters, and grab the Landis woman, too. I’ll meet you there—at headquarters.”

  “You mean it?” he rumbled.

  “Almost,” I said, and hung up the receiver.

  I switched off the hall light and, whistling a little tune to myself, walked back to the room where I had left Ogburn. The door was not quite closed. I walked straight up to it, kicked it open with one foot, and jumped back, hugging the wall.

  Two shots—so close together that they were almost one—crashed.

  Flat against the wall, I pounded my feet against the floor and wainscot, and let out a medley of shrieks and groans that would have done credit to a carnival wild-man.

  A moment later Ogburn appeared in the doorway, a revolver in his hand, his face wolfish. He was determined to kill me. It was my life or his, so—

  I slammed my gun down on the sleek, brown top of his head.

  When he opened his eyes, two policemen were lifting him into the back of a patrol wagon.

  —

  I FOUND DEAN in the detectives’ assembly-room in the Hall of Justice.

  “The landlady identified Mae Landis as Mrs. Quirk,” he said. “Now what?”

  “Where is she now?”

  “One of the policewomen is holding both of them in the captain’s office.”

  “Ogburn is over in the Pawnshop Detail office,” I told him. “Let’s take the landlady in for a look at him.”

  Ogburn sat leaning forward, holding his head in his hands and staring sullenly at the feet of the uniformed man who guarded him, when we took the gaunt landlady in to see him.

  “Ever see him before?” I asked her.

  “Yes”—reluctantly—“that’s Mr. Quirk.”

  Ogburn didn’t look up, and he paid not the least attention to any of us.

  After we had told the landlady that she could go home, Dean led me back to a far corner of the assembly-room, where we could talk without disturbance.

  “Now spill it!” he burst out. “How come all the startling developments, as the newspaper boys call ’em?”

  “Well, first-off, I knew that the question ‘Who killed Bob Teal?’ could have only one answer. Bob wasn’t a boob! He might possibly have let a man he was trailing lure him behind a row of billboards on a dark night, but he would have gone prepared for trouble. He wouldn’t have died with empty hands, from a gun that was close enough to scorch his coat. The murderer had to be somebody Bob trusted, so it couldn’t be Whitacre. Now Bob was a conscientious sort of lad, and he wouldn’t have stopped shadowing Whitacre to go over and talk with some friend. There was only one man who
could have persuaded him to drop Whitacre for a while, and that one man was the one he was working for—Ogburn.

  “If I hadn’t known Bob, I might have thought he had hidden behind the billboards to watch Whitacre; but Bob wasn’t an amateur. He knew better than to pull any of that spectacular gumshoe stuff. So there was nothing to it but Ogburn!

  “With all that to go on, the rest was duck soup. All the stuff Mae Landis gave us—identifying the gun as Whitacre’s, and giving Ogburn an alibi by saying she had talked to him on the phone at ten o’clock—only convinced me that she and Ogburn were working together. When the landlady described ‘Quirk’ for us, I was fairly certain of it. Her description would fit either Whitacre or Ogburn, but there was no sense to Whitacre’s having the apartment on Greenwich Street, while if Ogburn and the Landis woman were thick, they’d need a meeting-place of some sort. The rest of the box of cartridges there helped some too.

  “Then to-night I put on a little act in Ogburn’s apartment, chasing a nickel along the floor and finding traces of dried mud that had escaped the cleaning-up he no doubt gave the carpet and clothes after he came home from walking through the lot in the rain. We’ll let the experts decide whether it could be mud from the lot on which Bob was killed, and the jury can decide whether it is.

  “There are a few more odds and ends—like the gun. The Landis woman said Whitacre had had it for more than a year, but in spite of being muddy it looks fairly new to me. We’ll send the serial number to the factory, and find when it was turned out.

  “For motive, just now all I’m sure of is the woman, which should be enough. But I think that when Ogburn and Whitacre’s books are audited, and their finances sifted, we’ll find something there. What I’m banking on strong is that Whitacre will come in, now that he is cleared of the murder charge.”