The Glass Key Page 8

  When quite two minutes had passed Ned Beaumont took his hand away from the seidel and turned his back to Madvig. Nothing changed in Ned Beaumont’s face except that his eyes, when no longer focused on Madvig’s, became hard and cold instead of angrily glaring. He took an unhurried step towards the door.

  Madvig spoke hoarsely from deep down in him. “Ned.”

  Ned Beaumont halted. His face became paler. He did not turn around.

  Madvig said: “You crazy son of a bitch.”

  Then Ned Beaumont turned around, slowly.

  Madvig put out an open hand and pushed Ned Beaumont’s face sidewise, shoving him off balance so he had to put a foot out quickly to that side and put a hand on one of the chairs at the table.

  Madvig said: “I ought to knock hell out of you.”

  Ned Beaumont grinned sheepishly and sat down on the chair he had staggered against. Madvig sat down facing him and knocked on the top of the table with his seidel.

  The bar-tender opened the door and put his head in.

  “More beer,” Madvig said.

  From the bar-room, through the open door, came the sound of men talking and the sound of glasses rattling against glasses and against wood.

  4

  THE DOG HOUSE

  I

  Ned Beaumont, at breakfast in bed, called, “Come in,” and then, when the outer door had opened and closed: “Yes?”

  A low-pitched rasping voice in the living-room asked: “Where are you, Ned?” Before Ned Beaumont could reply the rasping voice’s owner had come to the bedroom-door and was saying: “Pretty soft for you.” He was a sturdy young man with a square-cut sallow face, a wide thick-lipped mouth, from a corner of which a cigarette dangled, and merry dark squinting eyes.

  “ ’Lo, Whisky,” Ned Beaumont said to him. “Treat yourself to a chair.”

  Whisky looked around the room. “Pretty good dump you’ve got here,” he said. He removed the cigarette from his lips and, without turning his head, used the cigarette to point over his shoulder at the living-room behind him. “What’s all the keysters for? Moving out?”

  Ned Beaumont thoroughly chewed and swallowed the scrambled eggs in his mouth before replying: “Thinking of it.”

  Whisky said, “Yes?” while moving towards a chair that faced the bed. He sat down. “Where to?”

  “New York maybe.”

  “What do you mean maybe?”

  Ned Beaumont said: “Well, I’ve got a ducat that reads to there, anyway.”

  Whisky knocked cigarette-ash on the floor and returned the cigarette to the left side of his mouth. He snuffled. “How long you going to be gone?”

  Ned Beaumont held a coffee-cup half-way between the tray and his mouth. He looked thoughtfully over it at the sallow young man. Finally he said, “It’s a one-way ticket,” and drank.

  Whisky squinted at Ned Beaumont now until one of his dark eyes was entirely shut and the other was no more than a thin black gleam. He took the cigarette from his mouth and knocked more ash on the floor. His rasping voice held a persuasive note. “Why don’t you see Shad before you go?” he suggested.

  Ned Beaumont put his cup down and smiled. He said: “Shad and I aren’t good enough friends that his feelings’ll be hurt if I go away without saying good-by.”

  Whisky said: “That ain’t the point.”

  Ned Beaumont moved the tray from his lap to the bedside-table. He turned on his side, propping himself up on an elbow on the pillows. He pulled the bed-clothes higher up over his chest. Then he asked: “What is the point?”

  “The point is you and Shad ought to be able to do business together.”

  Ned Beaumont shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Can’t you be wrong?” Whisky demanded.

  “Sure,” the man in bed confessed. “Once back in 1912 I was. I forget what it was about.”

  Whisky rose to mash his cigarette in one of the dishes on the tray. Standing beside the bed, close to the table, he said: “Why don’t you try it, Ned?”

  Ned Beaumont frowned. “Looks like a waste of time, Whisky. I don’t think Shad and I could get along together.”

  Whisky sucked a tooth noisily. The downward curve of his thick lips gave the noise a scornful cast. “Shad thinks you could,” he said.

  Ned Beaumont opened his eyes. “Yes?” he asked. “He sent you here?”

  “Hell, yes,” Whisky said. “You don’t think I’d be here talking like this if he hadn’t.”

  Ned Beaumont narrowed his eyes again and asked: “Why?”

  “Because he thought him and you could do business together.”

  “I mean,” Ned Beaumont explained, “why did he think I’d want to do business with him?”

  Whisky made a disgusted face. “Are you trying to kid me, Ned?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, for the love of Christ, don’t you think everybody in town knows about you and Paul having it out at Pip Carson’s yesterday?”

  Ned Beaumont nodded. “So that’s it,” he said softly, as if to himself.

  “That’s it,” the man with the rasping voice assured him, and “Shad happens to know you fell out over thinking Paul hadn’t ought to’ve had Shad’s joints smeared. So you’re sitting pretty with Shad now if you use your head.”

  Ned Beaumont said thoughtfully: “I don’t know. I’d like to get out of here, get back to the big city.”

  “Use your head,” Whisky rasped. “The big city’ll still be there after election. Stick around. You know Shad’s dough-heavy and’s putting it out in chunks to beat Madvig. Stick around and get yourself a slice of it.”

  “Well,” Ned Beaumont said slowly, “it wouldn’t hurt to talk it over with him.”

  “You’re damned right it wouldn’t,” Whisky said heartily. “Pin your diapers on and we’ll go now.”

  Ned Beaumont said, “Right,” and got out of bed.

  II

  Shad O’Rory rose and bowed. “Glad to see you, Beaumont,” he said. “Drop your hat and coat anywhere.” He did not offer to shake hands.

  Ned Beaumont said, “Good morning,” and began to take off his overcoat.

  Whisky, in the doorway, said: “Well, I’ll be seeing you guys later.”

  O’Rory said, “Yes, do,” and Whisky, drawing the door shut as he backed out, left them.

  Ned Beaumont dropped his overcoat on the arm of a sofa, put his hat on the overcoat, and sat down beside them. He looked without curiosity at O’Rory.

  O’Rory had returned to his chair, a deeply padded squat affair of dull wine and gold. He crossed his knees and put his hands together—tips of fingers and thumbs touching—atop his uppermost knee. He let his finely sculptured head sink down towards his chest so that his grey-blue eyes looked upward under his brows at Ned Beaumont. He said, in his pleasantly modulated Irish voice: “I owe you something for trying to talk Paul out of—”

  “You don’t,” Ned Beaumont said.

  O’Rory asked: “I don’t?”

  “No. I was with him then. What I told him was for his own good. I thought he was making a bad play.”

  O’Rory smiled gently. “And he’ll know it before he’s through,” he said.

  Silence was between them awhile then. O’Rory sat half-buried in his chair smiling at Ned Beaumont. Ned Beaumont sat on the sofa looking, with eyes that gave no indication of what he thought, at O’Rory.

  The silence was broken by O’Rory asking: “How much did Whisky tell you?”

  “Nothing. He said you wanted to see me.”

  “He was right enough as far as he went,” O’Rory said. He took his finger-tips apart and patted the back of one slender hand with the palm of the other. “Is it so that you and Paul have broken for good and all?”

  “I thought you knew it,” Ned Beaumont replied. “I thought that’s why you sent for me.”

  “I heard it,” O’Rory said, “but that’s not always the same thing. What were you thinking you might do now?”

  “There�
��s a ticket for New York in my pocket and my clothes are packed.”

  O’Rory raised a hand and smoothed his sleek white hair. “You came here from New York, didn’t you?”

  “I never told anybody where I came from.”

  O’Rory took his hand from his hair and made a small gesture of protestation. “You don’t think I’m one to give a damn where any man comes from, do you?” he asked.

  Ned Beaumont did not say anything.

  The white-haired man said: “But I do care about where you go and if I have my way as much as I’d like you won’t be going off to New York yet awhile. Did you never happen to think that maybe you could still do yourself a lot of good right here?”

  “No,” Ned Beaumont said, “that is, not till Whisky came.”

  “And what do you think now?”

  “I don’t know anything about it. I’m waiting to hear what you’ve got to say.”

  O’Rory put his hand to his hair again. His blue-grey eyes were friendly and shrewd. He asked: “How long have you been here?”

  “Fifteen months.”

  “And you and Paul have been close as a couple of fingers how long?”

  “Year.”

  O’Rory nodded. “And you ought to know a lot of things about him,” he said.

  “I do.”

  O’Rory said: “You ought to know a lot of things I could use.”

  Ned Beaumont said evenly: “Make your proposition.”

  O’Rory got up from the depths of his chair and went to a door opposite the one through which Ned Beaumont had come. When he opened the door a huge English bulldog waddled in. O’Rory went back to his chair. The dog lay on the rug in front of the wine and gold chair staring with morose eyes up at its master.

  O’Rory said: “One thing I can offer you is a chance to pay Paul back plenty.”

  Ned Beaumont said: “That’s nothing to me.”

  “It is not?”

  “Far as I’m concerned we’re quits.”

  O’Rory raised his head. He asked softly: “And you wouldn’t want to do anything to hurt him?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Ned Beaumont replied a bit irritably. “I don’t mind hurting him, but I can do it any time I want to on my own account and I don’t want you to think you’re giving me anything when you give me a chance to.”

  O’Rory wagged his head up and down, pleasantly. “Suits me,” he said, “so he’s hurt. Why did he bump off young Henry?”

  Ned Beaumont laughed. “Take it easy,” he said. “You haven’t made your proposition yet. That’s a nice pooch. How old is he?”

  “Just about the limit, seven.” O’Rory put out a foot and rubbed the dog’s nose with the tip of it. The dog moved its tail sluggishly. “How does this hit you? After election I’ll stake you to the finest gambling-house this state’s ever seen and let you run it to suit yourself with all the protection you ever heard of.”

  “That’s an if offer,” Ned Beaumont said in a somewhat bored manner, “if you win. Anyhow, I’m not sure I want to stay here after election, or even that long.”

  O’Rory stopped rubbing the dog’s nose with his shoe-tip. He looked up at Ned Beaumont again, smiled dreamily, and asked: “Don’t you think we’re going to win the election?”

  Ned Beaumont smiled. “You won’t bet even money on it.”

  O’Rory, still smiling dreamily, asked another question: “You’re not so God-damned hot for putting in with me, are you, Beaumont?”

  “No.” Ned Beaumont rose and picked up his hat. “It wasn’t any idea of mine.” His voice was casual, his face politely expressionless. “I told Whisky it’d just be wasting time.” He reached for his overcoat.

  The white-haired man said: “Sit down. We can still talk, can’t we? And maybe we’ll get somewhere before we’re through.”

  Ned Beaumont hesitated, moved his shoulders slightly, took off his hat, put it and his overcoat on the sofa, and sat down beside them.

  O’Rory said: “I’ll give you ten grand in cash right now if you’ll come in and ten more election-night if we beat Paul and I’ll keep that house-offer open for you to take or leave.”

  Ned Beaumont pursed his lips and stared gloomily at O’Rory under brows drawn together. “You want me to rat on him, of course,” he said.

  “I want you to go into the Observer with the lowdown on everything you know about him being mixed up in—the sewer-contracts, the how and why of killing Taylor Henry, that Shoemaker junk last winter, the dirt on how he’s running the city.”

  “There’s nothing in the sewer-business now,” Ned Beaumont said, speaking as if his mind was more fully occupied with other thoughts. “He let his profits go to keep from raising a stink.”

  “All right,” O’Rory conceded, blandly confident, “but there is something in the Taylor Henry business.”

  “Yes, we’d have him there,” Ned Beaumont said, frowning, “but I don’t know whether we could use the Shoemaker stuff”—he hesitated—“without making trouble for me.”

  “Hell, we don’t want that,” O’Rory said quickly. “That’s out. What else have we got?”

  “Maybe we can do something with the street-car-franchise extension and with that trouble last year in the County Clerk’s office. We’ll have to do some digging first, though.”

  “It’ll be worth it for both of us,” O’Rory said. “I’ll have Hinkle—he’s the Observer guy—put the stuff in shape. You just give him the dope and let him write it. We can start off with the Taylor Henry thing. That’s something that’s right on tap.”

  Ned Beaumont brushed his mustache with a thumb-nail and murmured: “Maybe.”

  Shad O’Rory laughed. “You mean we ought to start off first with the ten thousand dollars?” he asked. “There’s something in that.” He got up and crossed the room to the door he had opened for the dog. He opened it and went out, shutting it behind him. The dog did not get up from in front of the wine and gold chair.

  Ned Beaumont lit a cigar. The dog turned his head and watched him.

  O’Rory came back with a thick sheaf of green hundred-dollar bills held together by a band of brown paper on which was written in blue ink: $10,000. He thumped the sheaf down on the hand not holding it and said: “Hinkle’s out there now. I told him to come in.”

  Ned Beaumont frowned. “I ought to have a little time to straighten it out in my mind.”

  “Give it to Hinkle any way it comes to you. He’ll put it in shape.”

  Ned Beaumont nodded. He blew cigar-smoke out and said: “Yes, I can do that.”

  O’Rory held out the sheaf of paper money.

  Saying, “Thanks,” Ned Beaumont took it and put it in his inside coat-pocket. It made a bulge there in the breast of his coat over his flat chest.

  Shad O’Rory said, “The thanks go both ways,” and went back to his chair.

  Ned Beaumont took the cigar out of his mouth. “Here’s something I want to tell you while I think of it,” he said. “Framing Walt Ivans for the West killing won’t bother Paul as much as leaving it as is.”

  O’Rory looked curiously at Ned Beaumont for a moment before asking: “Why?”

  “Paul’s not going to let him have the Club alibi.”

  “You mean he’s going to give the boys orders to forget Ivans was there?”

  “Yes.”

  O’Rory made a clucking noise with his tongue, asked: “How’d he get the idea I was going to play tricks on Ivans?”

  “Oh, we figured it out.”

  O’Rory smiled. “You mean you did,” he said. “Paul’s not that shifty.”

  Ned Beaumont made a modest grimace and asked: “What kind of job did you put up on him?”

  O’Rory chuckled. “We sent the clown over to Braywood to buy the guns that were used.” His grey-blue eyes suddenly became hard and sharp. Then amusement came back into them and he said: “Oh, well, none of that’s big stuff now, now that Paul’s hell-bent on making a row of it. But that’s what started him picking on me, isn’t it?”
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  “Yes,” Ned Beaumont told him, “though it was likely to come sooner or later anyhow. Paul thinks he gave you your start here and you ought to stay under his wing and not grow big enough to buck him.”

  O’Rory smiled gently. “And I’m the boy that’ll make him sorry he ever gave me that start,” he promised. “He can—”

  A door opened and a man came in. He was a young man in baggy grey clothes. His ears and nose were very large. His indefinitely brown hair needed trimming and his rather grimy face was too deeply lined for his years.

  “Come in, Hinkle,” O’Rory said. “This is Beaumont. He’ll give you the dope. Let me see it when you’ve shaped it up and we’ll get the first shot in tomorrow’s paper.”

  Hinkle smiled with bad teeth and muttered something unintelligibly polite to Ned Beaumont.

  Ned Beaumont stood up saying: “Fine. We’ll go over to my place now and get to work on it.”

  O’Rory shook his head. “It’ll be better here,” he said.

  Ned Beaumont, picking up hat and overcoat, smiled and said: “Sorry, but I’m expecting some phone-calls and things. Get your hat, Hinkle.”

  Hinkle, looking frightened, stood still and dumb.

  O’Rory said: “You’ll have to stay here, Beaumont. We can’t afford to have anything happen to you. Here you’ll have plenty of protection.”

  Ned Beaumont smiled his nicest smile. “If it’s the money you’re worried about”—he put his hand inside his coat and brought it out holding the money—“you can hang on to it till I’ve turned in the stuff.”

  “I’m not worried about anything,” O’Rory said calmly. “But you’re in a tough spot if Paul gets the news you’ve come over to me and I don’t want to take any chances on having you knocked off.”