I felt sure that when he awakened he would need it.
EIGHT
It was past ten o’clock when I returned home to my apartment, but I at once went to the telephone and called Ellen Macintosh. “Darling!” I cried. “I have the pearls.”
I caught the sound of her indrawn breath over the wire. “Oh darling,” she said tensely and excitedly, “and you are not hurt? They did not hurt you, darling? They just took the money and let you go?”
“There were no ‘they,’ darling,” I said proudly. “I still have Mr. Gallemore’s money intact. There was only Henry.”
“Henry!” she cried in a very strange voice. “But I thought—Come over here at once, Walter Gage, and tell me—”
“I have whiskey on my breath, Ellen.”
“Darling! I’m sure you needed it. Come at once.”
So once more I went down to the street and hurried to Carondelet Park and in no time at all was at the Penruddock residence. Ellen came out on the porch to meet me and we talked there quietly in the dark, holding hands, for the house-hold had gone to bed. As simple as I could I told her my story.
“But darling,” she said at last, “how did you know it was Henry? I thought Henry was your friend. And this other voice on the telephone—”
“Henry was my friend,” I said a little sadly, “and that is what destroyed him. As to the voice on the telephone, that was a small matter and easily arranged. Henry was away from me a number of times to arrange it. There was just one small point that gave me thought. After I gave Gandesi my private card with the name of my apartment house scribbled upon it, it was necessary for Henry to communicate to his confederate that we had seen Gandesi and given him my name and address. For of course when I had this foolish, or perhaps not so very foolish idea of visiting some well-known underworld character in order to send a message that we would buy back the pearls, this was Henry’s opportunity to make me think the telephone message came as a result of our talking to Gandesi, and telling him our difficulty. But since the first call came to me at my apartment before Henry had had a chance to inform his confederate of our meeting with Gandesi, it was obvious that a trick had been employed.
“Then I recalled that a car had bumped into us from behind and Henry had gone back to abuse the driver. And of course the bumping was deliberate, and Henry had made the opportunity for it on purpose, and his confederate was in the car. So Henry, while pretending to shout at him, was able to convey the necessary information.”
“But, Walter,” Ellen said, having listened to this explanation a little impatiently, “that is a very small matter. What I really want to know is how you decided that Henry had the pearls at all.”
“But you told me he had them,” I said. “You were quite sure of it. Henry is a very durable character. It would be just like him to hide the pearls somewhere, having no fear of what the police might do to him, and get another position and then after perhaps quite a long time, retrieve the pearls and quietly leave this part of the country.”
Ellen shook her head impatiently in the darkness of the porch. “Walter,” she said sharply, “you are hiding something. You could not have been sure and you would not have hit Henry in that brutal way, unless you had been sure. I know you well enough to know that.”
“Well, darling,” I said modestly, “there was indeed another small indication, one of those foolish trifles which the cleverest men overlook. As you know, I do not use the regular apartment-house telephone, not wishing to be annoyed by solicitors and such people. The phone which I use is a private line and its number is unlisted. But the calls I received from Henry’s confederate came over that phone, and Henry had been in my apartment a great deal, and I had been careful not to give Mr. Gandesi that number, because of course I did not expect anything from Mr. Gandesi, as I was perfectly sure from the beginning that Henry had the pearls, if only I could get him to bring them out of hiding.”
“Oh, darling,” Ellen cried, and threw her arms around me. “How brave you are, and I really think that you are actually clever in your own peculiar way. Do you believe that Henry was in love with me?”
But that was a subject in which I had no interest whatever. I left the pearls in Ellen’s keeping and late as the hour now was I drove at once to the residence of Mr. Lansing Gallemore and told him my story and gave him back his money.
A few months later I was happy to receive a letter postmarked in Honolulu and written on a very inferior brand of paper.
Well, pal, that Sunday punch of yours was the money and I did not think you had it in you, altho of course I was not set for it. But it was a pip and made me think of you for a week every time I brushed my teeth. It was too bad I had to scram because you are a sweet guy altho a little on the goofy side and I’d like to be getting plastered with you right now instead of wiping oil valves where I am at which is not where this letter is mailed by several thousand miles. There is just two things I would like you to know and they are both kosher. I did fall hard for that tall blonde and this was the main reason I took my time from, the old lady. Glomming the pearls was just one of those screwy ideas a guy can get when he is dizzy with a dame. It was a crime the way they left them marbles lying around in that bread box and I worked for a Frenchy once in Djibouty and got to know pearls enough to tell them from snowballs. But when it came to the clinch down there in that brush with us two alone and no holds barred I just was too soft to go through with the deal. Tell that blonde you got a loop on I was asking for her.
YRS. as ever,
HENRY EICHELBERGER (Alias)
P.S. What do you know, that punk that did the phone work on you tried to take me for a fifty cut on that C note you tucked in my vest. I had to twist the sucker plenty.
Yrs. H. E. (Alias)
* * *
PICKUP ON NOON STREET
* * *
ONE
The man and the girl walked slowly, close together, past a dim stencil sign that said: Surprise Hotel. The man wore a purple suit, a Panama hat over his shiny, slicked-down hair. He walked splay-footed, soundlessly.
The girl wore a green hat and a short skirt and sheer stockings, four-and-a-half inch French heels. She smelled of Midnight Narcissus.
At the corner the man leaned close, said something in the girl’s ear. She jerked away from him, giggled.
“You gotta buy liquor if you take me home, Smiler.”
“Next time, baby. I’m fresh outa dough.”
The girl’s voice got hard. “Then I tells you goodbye in the next block, handsome.”
“Like hell, baby,” the man answered.
The arc at the intersection threw light on them. They walked across the street far apart. At the other side the man caught the girl’s arm. She twisted away from him.
“Listen, you cheap grifter!” she shrilled. “Keep your paws down, see! Tinhorns are dust to me. Dangle!”
“How much liquor you gotta have, baby?”
“Plenty.”
“Me bein’ on the nut, where do I collect it?”
“You got hands, ain’t you?” the girl sneered. Her voice dropped the shrillness. She leaned close to him again. “Maybe you got a gun, big boy. Got a gun?”
“Yeah. And no shells for it.”
“The goldbricks over on Central don’t know that.”
“Don’t be that way,” the man in the purple suit snarled. Then he snapped his fingers and stiffened. “Wait a minute. I got me a idea.”
He stopped and looked back along the street toward the dim stencil hotel sign. The girl slapped a glove across his chin caressingly. The glove smelled to him of the perfume, Midnight Narcissus.
The man snapped his fingers again, grinned widely in the dim light. “If that drunk is still holed up in Doc’s place—I collect. Wait for me, huh?”
“Maybe, at home. If you ain’t gone too long.”
“Where’s home, baby?”
The girl stared at him. A half-smile moved along her full lips, died at the corners of them. The
breeze picked a sheet of newspaper out of the gutter and tossed it against the man’s leg. He kicked at it savagely.
“Calliope Apartments. Four-B, Two-Forty-Six East Forty-Eight. How soon you be there?”
The man stepped very close to her, reached back and tapped his hip. His voice was low, chilling.
“You wait for me, baby.”
She caught her breath, nodded. “Okey, handsome. I’ll wait.”
The man went back along the cracked sidewalk, across the intersection, along to where the stencil sign hung out over the street. He went through a glass door into a narrow lobby with a row of brown wooden chairs pushed against the plaster wall. There was just space to walk past them to the desk. A bald-headed colored man lounged behind the desk, fingering a large green pin in his tie.
The Negro in the purple suit leaned across the counter and his teeth flashed in a quick, hard smile. He was very young, with a thin, sharp jaw, a narrow bony forehead, the flat brilliant eyes of the gangster. He said softly: “That pug with the husky voice still here? The guy that banked the crap game last night.”
The bald-headed clerk looked at the flies on the ceiling fixture. “Didn’t see him go out, Smiler.”
“Ain’t what I asked you, Doc.”
“Yeah. He still here.”
“Still drunk?”
“Guess so. Hasn’t been out.”
“Three-forty-nine, ain’t it?”
“You been there, ain’t you? What you wanta know for?”
“He cleaned me down to my lucky piece. I gotta make a touch.”
The bald-headed man looked nervous. The Smiler stared softly at the green stone in the man’s tie pin.
“Get rolling, Smiler. Nobody gets bent around here. We ain’t no Central Avenue flop.”
The Smiler said very softly: “He’s my pal, Doc. He’ll lend me twenty. You touch half.”
He put his hand out palm up. The clerk stared at the hand for a long moment. Then he nodded sourly, went behind a ground-glass screen, came back slowly, looking toward the street door.
His hand went out and hovered over the palm. The palm closed over a passkey, dropped inside the cheap purple suit.
The sudden flashing grin on the Smiler’s face had an icy edge to it.
“Careful, Doc—while I’m up above.”
The clerk said: “Step on it. Some of the customers get home early.” He glanced at the green electric clock on the wall. It was seven-fifteen. “And the walls ain’t any too thick,” he added.
The thin youth gave him another flashing grin, nodded, went delicately back along the lobby to the shadowy staircase. There was no elevator in the Surprise Hotel.
At one minute past seven Pete Anglich, narcotic squad undercover man, rolled over on the hard bed and looked at the cheap strap watch on his left wrist. There were heavy shadows under his eyes, a thick dark stubble on his broad chin. He swung his bare feet to the floor and stood up in cheap cotton pajamas, flexed his muscles, stretched, bent over stiff-kneed and touched the floor in front of his toes with a grunt.
He walked across to a chipped bureau, drank from a quart bottle of cheap rye whiskey, grimaced, pushed the cork into the neck of the bottle, and rammed it down hard with the heel of his hand.
“Boy, have I got a hangover,” he grumbled huskily.
He stared at his face in the bureau mirror, at the stubble on his chin, the thick white scar on his throat close to the windpipe. His voice was husky because the bullet that had made the scar had done something to his vocal chords. It was a smooth huskiness, like the voice of a blues singer.
He stripped his pajamas off and stood naked in the middle of the room, his toes fumbling the rough edge of a big rip in the carpet. His body was very broad, and that made him look a little shorter than he was. His shoulders sloped, his nose was a little thick, the skin over his cheekbones looked like leather. He had short, curly, black hair, utterly steady eyes, the small set mouth of a quick thinker.
He went into a dim, dirty bathroom, stepped into the tub and turned the shower on. The water was warmish, but not hot. He stood under it and soaped himself, rubbed his whole body over, kneaded his muscles, rinsed off.
He jerked a dirty towel off the rack and started to rub a glow into his skin.
A faint noise behind the loosely closed bathroom door stopped him. He held his breath, listened, heard the noise again, a creak of boarding, a click, a rustle of cloth. Pete Anglich reached for the door and pulled it open slowly.
The Negro in the purple suit and Panama hat stood beside the bureau, with Pete Anglich’s coat in his hand. On the bureau in front of him were two guns. One of them was Pete Anglich’s old worn Colt. The room door was shut and a key with a tag lay on the carpet near it, as though it had fallen out of the door, or been pushed out from the other side.
The Smiler let the coat fall to the floor and held a wallet in his left hand. His right hand lifted the Colt. He grinned.
“Okey, white boy. Just go on dryin’ yourself off after your shower,” he said.
Pete Anglich toweled himself. He rubbed himself dry, stood naked with the wet towel in his left hand.
The Smiler had the billfold empty on the bureau, was counting the money with his left hand. His right still clutched the Colt.
“Eighty-seven bucks. Nice money. Some of it’s mine from the crap game, but I’m lifting it all, pal. Take it easy. I’m friends with the management here.”
“Gimme a break, Smiler,” Pete Anglich said hoarsely. “That’s every dollar I got in the world. Leave a few bucks, huh?” He made his voice thick, coarse, heavy as though with liquor.
The Smiler gleamed his teeth, shook his narrow head. “Can’t do it, pal. Got me a date and I need the kale.”
Pete Anglich took a loose step forward and stopped, grinning sheepishly. The muzzle of his own gun had jerked at him.
The Smiler sidled over to the bottle of rye and lifted it.
“I can use this, too. My baby’s got a throat for liquor. Sure has. What’s in your pants is yours, pal. Fair enough?”
Pete Anglich jumped sideways, about four feet. The Smiler’s face convulsed. The gun jerked around and the bottle of rye slid out of his left hand, slammed down on his foot. He yelped, kicked out savagely, and his toe caught in the torn place in the carpet.
Pete Anglich flipped the wet end of the bathtowel straight at the Smiler’s eyes.
The Smiler reeled and yelled with pain. Then Pete Anglich held the Smiler’s gun wrist in his hard left hand. He twisted up, around. His hand started to slide down over the Smiler’s hand, over the gun. The gun turned inward and touched the Smiler’s side.
A hard knee kicked viciously at Pete Anglich’s abdomen. He gagged, and his finger tightened convulsively on the Smiler’s trigger finger.
The shot was dull, muffled against the purple cloth of the suit. The Smiler’s eyes rolled whitely and his narrow jaw fell slack.
Pete Anglich let him down on the floor and stood panting, bent over, his face greenish. He groped for the fallen bottle of rye, got the cork out, got some of the fiery liquid down his throat.
The greenish look went away from his face. His breathing slowed. He wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.
He felt the Smiler’s pulse. The Smiler didn’t have any pulse. He was dead. Pete Anglich loosened the gun from his hand, went over to the door and glanced out into the hallway. Empty. There Was a passkey in the outside of the lock. He removed it, locked the door from the inside.
He put his underclothes and socks and shoes on, his worn blue serge suit, knotted a black tie around the crumpled shirt collar, went back to the dead man and took a roll of bills from his pocket. He packed a few odds and ends of clothes and toilet articles in a cheap fiber suitcase, stood it by the door.
He pushed a torn scrap of sheet through his revolver barrel with a pencil, replaced the used cartridge, crushed the empty shell with his heel on the bathroom floor and then flushed it down the toilet.
He lo
cked the door from the outside and walked down the stairs to the lobby.
The bald-headed clerk’s eyes jumped at him, then dropped. The skin of his face turned gray. Pete Anglich leaned on the counter and opened his hand to let two keys tinkle on the scarred wood. The clerk stared at the keys, shuddered.
Pete Anglich said in his slow, husky voice: “Hear any funny noises?”
The clerk shook his head, gulped.
“Creep joint, eh?” Pete Anglich said.
The clerk moved his head painfully, twisted his neck in his collar. His bald head winked darkly under the ceiling light.
“Too bad,” Pete Anglich said. “What name did I register under last night?”
“You ain’t registered,” the clerk whispered.
“Maybe I wasn’t here even,” Pete Anglich said softly.
“Never saw you before, mister.”
“You’re not seeing me now. You never will see me—to know me—will you, Doc?”
The clerk moved his neck and tried to smile.
Pete Anglich drew his wallet out and shook three dollar bills from it.
“I’m a guy that likes to pay his way,” he said slowly. “This pays for Room 349—till way in the morning, kind of late. The lad you gave the passkey to looks like a heavy sleeper.” He paused, steadied his cool eyes on the clerk’s face, added thoughtfully: “Unless, of course, he’s got friends who would like to move him out.”
Bubbles showed on the clerk’s lips. He stuttered: “He ain’t—ain’t—”
“Yeah,” Pete Anglich said. “What would you expect?”
He went across to the street door, carrying his suitcase, stepped out under the stencil sign, stood a moment looking toward the hard white glare of Central Avenue.
Then he walked the other way. The street was very dark, very quiet. There were four blocks of frame houses before he came to Noon Street. It was all a Negro quarter.
He met only one person on the way, a brown girl in a green hat, very sheer stockings, and four-and-a-half-inch heels, who smoked a cigarette under a dusty palm tree and stared back toward the Surprise Hotel.