The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK® Page 3

  “Oh. Mr. MacDowell,” Claire said. “Nan would have called, but she didn’t know where you were staying. She was suddenly called out of town and had to catch a plane.”

  “Oh.” Mac said, and waited blankly.

  “Nan said to tell you she was sorry, and if you’d leave your number, she’d phone you tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m supposed to give you the cocktail she promised.” She stepped back and held the door wide. “Won’t you come in?”

  “Thanks,” Mac said, following her into the living room. It occurred to him that perhaps Nan’s sudden trip was a stroke of luck, for he might never find another opportunity to sound out her apartment mate alone, and on impulse he said:

  “If you haven’t had dinner, maybe you’d substitute for Nan—unless you mind being second choice. I planned to take her to the Blue Penguin.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve already started cooking dinner,” Claire said. “And besides, I’m not dressed for dining out.” Hesitantly she added, “If you like, you may eat here. I always cook three times too much.”

  “I wouldn’t want to put you to any bother.”

  “No bother at all,” she assured him, and her eyes lighted with a shy eagerness that almost startled him, for he did not regard himself as the type of man maidens yearn for. He wrote it off as a symptom of loneliness, which might make her glad of any male company.

  “Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes,” she said, taking it for granted he would stay. “Please mix yourself a drink while you’re waiting. You’ll find everything on the side board.”

  “Thanks, but I’d prefer a bottle of beer, if you have one.” Actually he preferred a cocktail, but Larry MacDowell’s drink had been beer, so now it was Mac’s.

  “In the refrigerator,” she said. “You can drink it at the kitchen table and watch me cook, if you like.”

  “That’s my speed,” Mac grinned at her. “I feel more at home in the kitchen.”

  They ate at the kitchen table, and afterward Mac helped her with the dishes. Accustomed to dining almost exclusively in restaurants, the domesticity of the situation had a curious effect on Mac. He found himself enjoying the evening more than he ever enjoyed the glitter of cafes and night clubs. Under the influence of his obvious enjoyment, Claire’s shyness evaporated. Beneath the shyness Mac found a quiet intelligence and a nice sense of humor.

  By the time the dishes were finished, they had become old friends, and Claire was laughing and chattering like a complete extrovert. Almost automatically their hands clasped together as she led him back into the front room.

  When they sat together on the same sofa where Mac had been caught in the act of kissing Nan, Claire snuggled against his shoulder without a trace of her former shyness and looked up at him in almost open invitation.

  With an effort Mac recalled that his purpose in staying to dinner was not pleasure, but business.

  He made a face at her and asked casually, “How long have you lived here with Nan?”

  “About six months. But I don’t live with her. She lives with me. It was my apartment originally. I met Nan at a party.” She moved away slightly. “Are you very fond of Nan?”

  Mac dropped his arm across her shoulder and drew her back in place. “I barely know her. Seems like a nice girl, though.”

  “Nicer than I?”

  Mac frowned, not being particularly fond of coyness; then turned the frown into a grin. “You’ve got one big advantage over her. You’re here.”

  “Rat!” she said, and started to twist out of his arms.

  He pulled her back and kissed her. And suddenly her arms were about his neck and her lips were pressed against his so fiercely, he was startled. Compared to Nan’s cool lips, Claire’s were like fire. Mac experienced the combined sensation of wrestling with a leopard and holding one finger in a live wall socket.

  When eventually he forcibly, broke the kiss to prevent suffocation, she snuggled against him with her head pressed to his chest and her soft hair tickling his chin.

  “You shouldn’t kiss me like that,” she said in a muffled voice.

  Mac gazed down at her bent head in amazement. “Does seem a waste of time,” he said sarcastically. “I can get the same effect by falling down a flight of stairs.”

  “Who are you, Mac?” she asked in the same muffled voice.

  “MacDowell. Larry MacDowell. Remember?”

  “I mean, what do you do?”

  “I’m a C.P.A.,” he said truthfully, though the only accounting work he had done since school was checking books for evidence on FBI cases.

  “What’s your business with Nan?”

  He frowned down at the top of her head. “What business with Nan?”

  Suddenly she straightened and moved a safe two feet away from him. “Why do so many men come to see Nan who don’t seem to be men friends, but appear to have some business arrangements with her? All types men, like that awful Thomas Cougar. Who are they, and what do they want?”

  “How should I know?” Mac evaded. “I just met the girl, and don’t know a thing about her. Maybe they’re business friends.” He paused, as though the thought had just occurred to him. “What is her business, anyway? She must have some kind of income to keep up her half of this place.”

  “When she suggested we share the apartment, she said some money had been left her. She hasn’t any kind of job, and doesn’t do much of anything but move around socially. But lately I’ve gotten the impression these men who call on her have something to do with her income, and that she never inherited any money. I can’t explain it. It’s just a feeling, and it bothers me because I like Nan.” She looked at Mac in sudden suspicion. “Maybe you’re one of them, and know all about it.”

  “You’re imagining things.” Mac said, and reached for her again.

  Feeling he had obtained what little information Claire had, and that further questions might cause her to suspect he was pumping her and make her mention it to Nan, Mac decided to devote the rest of the evening to pleasure. But he discovered he could not dislodge the subject from Claire’s thoughts. Time and again she returned to her suspicion that Mac was one of the men somehow tied to Nan, sometimes bluntly accusing him of it, sometimes cajoling him to tell her what Nan was involved in, and never entirely accepting his protest that he had no idea what she was talking about.

  In the middle of a kiss she would return to the subject, and finally Mac began to wonder—who was the pumper and who the pumpee. Her probing alarmed him for her own safety, for if curiosity led her to the point of questioning Nan, her questions might lead her to the bottom of the river.

  He turned over in his mind the thought of warning her, but discarded it as too dangerous to his own position in case Nan ever learned of the warning. There was nothing to do but persist in his denials, and eventually he succeeded in smothering her questions by keeping her lips occupied.

  When he left the apartment at midnight, his suit was rumpled, his collar covered with lipstick and his head was spinning like a gyroscope. So far out of his mind had Claire D’Arcy succeeded in knocking Homicide, Inc., he almost forgot to bother to check if he was still being tailed.

  It was only when his eyes fell on the door of the room diagonally across from his own and noted it was still ajar that he came back to the present.

  Inwardly he grinned, wondering if the spy beyond the door had noticed the red smear on his collar and would report to Cougar that his throat seemed to be cut.

  * * * *

  At noon the next day the room phone awakened Mac. It was Nan Tracy.

  “I’m sorry about last night,” she said in a tight, unnatural voice.

  “That’s all right. What’s the matter?”

  “Got a business deal on.” She seemed to be under terrific excitement, for her tone was so forced, her voice nearly cracke
d. “If you haven’t had lunch, get some, because you won’t have another opportunity. I’ll pick you up in an hour.”

  “I’ll be waiting in the lobby,” he said quietly.

  So he was to be given an assignment, he thought. Probably, the result of her plane trip last night. He hoped it was a one-man assignment. Managing to fail to murder his designated victim would be easier without a witness.

  But apparently it was a big mission, for Thomas Cougar and another man were with Nan when she arrived. Mac rose from the lobby sofa where he had been waiting when the three entered, and Nan introduced the second man as Arnold Link. He was a squat, broadly powerful man with “gorilla” written all over him.

  Cougar said, “You three wait here a minute,” and his tone made it almost an order.

  Mac stared after him puzzledly as the pale killer crossed to the desk and employed the house phone, which could be used only to phone rooms. In a moment Cougar returned and all of them stood waiting, as though expecting someone to join them.

  “What’s up?” Mac asked tentatively.

  Nan and Cougar stared at him fixedly, as though they had not heard the question.

  * * * *

  Squat Arnold Link said in a toneless monotone, “You’ll find out when we get there. We do not blab in hotel lobbies.”

  A man who apparently had gotten off one of the elevators suddenly joined the group. Without surprise Mac noted he was the same man he had seen in the lobby with Cougar the night he peered over the banister.

  “Benny Chisholm,” Cougar said briefly, “Mac MacDowell.”

  Benny was a tall, gangling fellow with a large nose and freckles. His wide, yokel-like eyes were blandly innocent, but the effect was spoiled by a mouth which was nothing but a cruel, lipless gash. He nodded without offering his hand.

  My friend across the hall, Mac thought, and glanced at Nan. With a shock he realized she was actually smiling, but her smile did not come up to the promise at which her usual grave expression hinted. It was fixed and brittle, and her eyes glittered as though she were under intense strain.

  The smile made the hair on the back of his neck rise, and something about the flat look with which the three men regarded him warned him of danger. It suddenly occurred to him that he somehow might have been found out, and the gathering might not be a mission at all, but a one-way ride for MacDonald Sprague.

  “I forgot to leave my key at the desk,” he said abruptly, and before anyone else could speak, turned on his heel and walked rapidly across the lobby.

  Tossing his key on the desk, he said to the clerk in a quick but low voice, “Phone room 418 for me and tell Mr. Crowell I can’t meet him for lunch.”

  Instead of immediately returning to the group, he cut diagonally across to the tobacco counter and bought a package of cigarettes. As he paid for them, he saw from the corner of his eye that the clerk was just setting down the phone. Now it was necessary to stall at least a moment in order to allow George Doud time to act on the code message.

  Turning toward the group, he called, “Be right with you,” then deliberately opened the cigarette pack, removed one and lit it at the tobacco counter’s gas lighter.

  All five of them crowded into a long black sedan which was parked in front of the hotel. Squat Arnold Link drove, Nan sat next to him in the front seat, and Mac found himself between the Strangler and the freckled Benny Chisholm.

  “What’s the deal, now that we’re out of the lobby?” Mac asked as they pulled away.

  “It’ll keep a while,” Cougar said shortly. The thick-shouldered chauffeur drove smoothly, obeying all traffic rules in town, and when they left the city, limits, pushed up to a sedate fifty miles an hour and kept it there.

  At the end of the hour, about thirty-five miles from town, the driver said, “Taxi tailing us.”

  Mac started to twist his head rearward, but Cougar said sharply, “Keep your face front.” To Link he said, “Pull over and park.”

  Immediately the sedan slowed, pulled onto the shoulder and stopped. In a few moments a cab went by without slowing.

  “Got butterflies in your stomach, Link?” Cougar asked contemptuously. “Just because a taxi travels the same speed we do, doesn’t mean we’re being tailed.”

  When the sedan pulled away again, the taxi was a quarter of a mile ahead. Link dropped his speed to forty, and soon it could not be seen at all. A mile farther on, they turned to one side on a dirt road.

  Twenty minutes later they turned into a private lane, drove another five-hundred yards and stopped before a large, one-story log hunting cabin. Everyone got out. As they approached the door, Nan linked her left arm through Mac’s right.

  Behind them Cougar said, “Thanks, Nan,” and his gun pressed into Mac’s back. “Now just remove that automatic from under his arm.”

  Mac stood very still as Nan, still holding his right arm, reached under his coat with her free hand and slipped the automatic from its clip holster.

  As she stepped away from him, he said, “This is getting to be a habit. What’s the pitch this time?”

  “Get moving, copper!” Cougar snarled at his back, and emphasized the command by jabbing his spine with the gun muzzle.

  At the word “copper” Mac’s hopes sank. He walked forward stiffly, prodded by the Strangler’s gun, and entered the cabin. Inside Mac found a long beam-ceilinged room running the entire width of the front. It was furnished with rustic furniture and had a fireplace at each end. Directly across from the entrance a drape-covered doorway led to another room in back.

  When he reached the center of the room, Mac stopped and looked inquiringly over his shoulder. Cougar had paused just inside the door, and Nan stood with the two other men at the side, as though all three were merely interested observers.

  “All right, copper,” Cougar said. “Start explaining who you are.”

  Mac looked at Nan. “I thought you gave the orders around here. How come Ugly is tossing his weight around now?”

  Cougar’s face darkened, but before he could speak, Nan said viciously, “Thomas is the fair-haired boy now. He brought the teacher an apple and got promoted to honor student.” Her answer was to Mac’s question, but she spoke directly to Cougar and the vicious tone was meant for him.

  So there actually was someone higher than Nan in the organization, Mac thought. Hoping to create a diversion, he asked, “Got demoted, did you, Nan? What was the apple?”

  Nan’s eyes swung at him. “You were. Smarty-pants Thomas phoned Dude Emory again and asked more detailed questions. When he found out Larry MacDowell had a cheek scar, he went running to teacher instead of to me, and got marked A for effort.”

  “Is that all the fuss is about?” Mac asked indifferently. “Ever hear of plastic surgery?”

  “Sure,” Cougar said. “I thought of that, which is why I asked the color of his eyes. Explain how you changed your eyes from blue to brown, and We’ll let you go.”

  “Shoe polish,” Mac said seriously.

  Benny Chisholm said, “What we waiting for? Let’s get this over with.”

  “The boss wants her to do it personal,” Cougar said, nodding at Nan. “To sort of make up for her boner.”

  He slipped a second gun, a vest pocket automatic, from his coat pocket and held it butt first toward Nan.

  “Take him in there,” he said, pointing his own gun toward the drape-covered door.

  Nan’s eyes brightened, almost as though she were glad of the opportunity to kill. “All right, Mac, darling,” she said. “Forward march.”

  Tickles of cold sweat ran down Mac’s sides beneath his shirt, but he managed to keep both his expression and his tone mocking. “Murder gets to be habit forming, doesn’t it, Nan? You’re becoming almost the official executioner for Homicide, Incorporated.”

  “What do you me
an by that?” she said suspiciously.

  “I won’t be the first suspected cop you killed, will I? About the fourth now, isn’t it?”

  Cougar emitted a single hoarse guffaw, which was half laugh and half snarl.

  Nan’s eyes burned at the Strangler and she spat, “Don’t throw so much weight around that you get in the boss’ hair. You don’t know how close you have come to the river before, when you got over-ambitious.”

  His pale features lost what little color they had, and he seemed to shrink within himself. Nan tossed her head in: triumph at having at least temporarily put him in his place, then jabbed her little gun at Mac.

  “I said move. Or do you want it right here?”

  Abruptly Mac turned toward the doorway and pushed through the drapes, Nan following with the gun almost touching his back. The second room proved to be sleeping quarters and contained nothing but two double bunks, two heavy dressers and what seemed to be a closet, for at one side of the room was a second drape-covered door.

  “Turn around,” Nan commanded in a loud voice.

  Slowly Mac turned to face her, his body tensed against the expected jolt of a bullet. Nan’s face was dead white and her eyes held a gleam of unnatural excitement.

  In a voice so low he could barely hear it, she said, “I haven’t time to explain, but take this gun and go out shooting.”

  Mac’s jaw hung wide as she suddenly reversed the pistol and thrust the butt into his palm.

  “Now hit me,” she said tensely. “Quick, so I’ll have an out! Make it look like you got the gun by force.

  But Mac merely stared at her. “Quick!” she said fiercely. “Hit me! Hard!”

  Recovering his mental balance, he clenched his left fist, slowly and almost reluctantly raised it chest high, then suddenly lashed out and caught Nan square on the chin. Her eyes crossed and she dropped flat on her back.

  The drapes parted as Cougar pushed through, his revolver half-raised. Centering the little automatic on the Strangler’s vest, Mac squeezed the trigger and stepped back.