Nightmare Town: Stories (46 page)

A sharp double knock sounded on the door.

Spade’s face brightened. He went to the door and opened it.

A young man came in. He was very dapper, and very well proportioned. He wore a light topcoat and his hands were in its pockets. Just inside the door he stepped to the right, and stood with his back to the wall.

By that time another young man was coming in. He stepped to the left. Though they did not actually look alike, their common dapperness, the similar trimness of their bodies, and their almost identical positions – back to wall, hands in pockets, cold, bright eyes studying the occupants of the room – gave them the appearance of twins.

Then Gene Colyer came in. He nodded at Spade, but paid no attention t© the others in the room, though James said, “Hello, Gene.”

“Anything new?” Colyer asked Spade.

Spade nodded. “It seems this gentleman” – he jerked a thumb at Ferris -“ was -“

“Any place we can talk?”

“There’s a kitchen back here.”

Colyer snapped a “Smear anybody that pops” over his shoulder at the two dapper young men and followed Spade into the kitchen. He sat on the one kitchen chair and stared with unblinking green eyes at Spade while Spade told him what he had learned.

When the private detective had finished, the green-eyed man asked, “Well, what do you make of it?”

Spade looked thoughtfully at the other, “You’ve picked up something. I’d like to know what it is.”

Colyer said, “They found the gun in a stream a quarter of a mile from where they found him. It’s James’s – got the mark on it where it was shot out of his hand once in Vallejo.”

“That’s nice,” Spade said.

“Listen. A kid named Thurston says James comes to him last Wednesday and gets him to tail Haven. Thurston picks him up Thursday afternoon, puts him in at Ferris’s, and phones James. James tells him to take a plant on the place and let him know where Haven goes when he leaves, but some nervous woman in the neighbourhood puts in a ruble about the kid hanging around, and the cops chase him along about ten o’clock.”

Spade pursed his lips and stared thoughtfully at the ceiling.

Colyer’s eyes were expressionless, but sweat made his round face shiny, and his voice was hoarse. “Spade,” he said, “I’m going to turn him in.”

Spade switched his gaze from the ceiling to the protuberant green eyes.

“I’ve never turned in one of my people before,” Colyer said, “but this one goes. Julia’s got to believe I hadn’t anything to do with it if it’s one of my people and I turn him in, hasn’t she?”

Spade nodded slowly. “I think so.”

Colyer suddenly averted his eyes and cleared his throat. When he spoke again it was curtly. “Well, he goes.”

Minera, James, and Conrad were seated when Spade and Colyer came out of the kitchen. Ferris was walking the floor. The two dapper young men had not moved.

Colyer went over to James. “Where’s your gun, Louis?” he asked.

James moved his right hand a few inches toward his left breast, stopped it, and said, “Oh, I didn’t bring it.”

With his gloved hand – open – Colyer struck James on the side of the face, knocking him out of his chair.

James straightened up, mumbling, “I didn’t mean nothing.” He put a hand to the side of his face. “I know I oughtn’t’ve done it, Chief, but when he called up and said he didn’t like to go up against Ferris without something and didn’t have any of his own, I said, ‘All right,’ and sent it over to him.”

Colyer said, “And you sent Thurston over to him, too.”

“We were just kind of interested in seeing if he did go through with it,” James mumbled.

“And you couldn’t’ve gone there yourself, or sent somebody else?”

“After Thurston had stirred up the whole neighbourhood?”

Colyer turned to Spade. “Want us to help you take them in, or want to call the wagon?”

“We’ll do it regular,” Spade said, and went to the wall telephone. When he turned away from it his face was wooden, his eyes dreamy. He made a cigarette, lit it, and said to Colyer, “I’m silly enough to think your Louis has got a lot of right answers in that story of his.”

James took his hand down from his bruised cheek and stared at Spade with astonished eyes.

Colyer growled, “What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing,” Spade said softly, “except I think you’re a little too anxious to slam it on him.” He blew smoke out. “Why, for instance, should he drop his gun there when it had marks on it that people knew?”

Colyer said, “You think he’s got brains.”

“If these boys killed him, knew he was dead, why do they wait till the body’s found and things are stirred up before they go after Ferris again? What’d they turn his pockets inside out for if they hijacked him? That’s a lot of trouble and only done by folks that kill for some other reason and want to make it look like robbery.” He shook his head. “You’re too anxious to slam it on him. Why should they -“

“That’s not the point right now,” Colyer said. “The point is, why do you keep saying I’m too anxious to slam it on him?”

Spade shrugged. “Maybe to clear yourself with Julia as soon as possible and as clear as possible, maybe even to clear yourself with the police, and then you’ve got clients.”

Colyer said, “What?”

Spade made a careless gesture with his cigarette. “Ferris,” he said blandly. “He killed him, of course.”

Colyer’s eyelids quivered, though he did not actually blink.

Spade said, “First, he’s the last person we know of who saw Eli alive, and that’s always a good bet. Second, he’s the only person I talked to before Eli’s body turned up who cared whether they were holding out on me or not. The rest of you just thought I was hunting for a guy who’d gone away. He knew I was hunting for a man he’d killed, so he had to put himself in the clear. He was even afraid to throw that book away, because it had been sent up by the book store and could be traced, and there might be clerks who’d seen the inscription. Third, he was the only one who thought Eli was just a sweet, clean, lovable boy – for the same reasons. Fourth, that story about a blackmailer showing up at three o’clock in the afternoon, making an easy touch for five grand, and then sticking around till midnight is just silly, no matter how good the booze was. Fifth, the story about the paper Eli signed is still worse, though a forged one could be fixed up easy enough. Sixth, he’s got the best reason of anybody we know for wanting Eli dead.”

Colyer nodded slowly, “Still -“

“Still nothing,” Spade said. “Maybe he did the ten-thousand – out – five-thousand-back trick with his bank, but that was easy. Then he got this feebleminded blackmailer in his house, stalled him along until the servant had gone to bed, took the borrowed gun from him, shoved him downstairs into his car, took him for a ride – maybe took him already dead, maybe shot him down there by the bushes – frisked him clean to make identification harder and to make it look like robbery, tossed the gun in the water, and came home -“

He broke off to listen to the sound of a siren in the street. He looked then, for the first time since he had begun to talk, at Ferris.

Ferris’s face was ghastly white, but he held his eyes steady.

Spade said, “I’ve got a hunch, Ferris, that we’re going to find out about that red-lighting job, too. You told me you had your carnival company with a partner for a while when Eli was working for you, and then by yourself. We oughtn’t to have a lot of trouble finding out about your partner – whether he disappeared, or died a natural death, or is still alive.”

Ferris had lost some of his erectness. He wet his lips and said, “I want to see my lawyer. I don’t want to talk till I’ve seen my lawyer.”

Spade said, “It’s all right with me. You’re up against it, but I don’t like blackmailers myself. I think Eli wrote a good epitaph for them in that book back there – ‘Too many have lived.’”

“Mr, Binnett is resting now, sir,” the butler replied hesitantly. “Will you find out when I can see him? It’s important.” Spade cleared his throat. “I’m – uh – just back from Australia, and it’s about some of his properties there.”

The butler turned on his heel while saying, “I’ll see, sir,” and was going up the front stairs before he had finished speaking.

Spade made and lit a cigarette.

The butler came downstairs again. “I’m sorry; he can’t be disturbed now, but Mr. Wallace Binnett – Mr. Timothy’s nephew – will see you.”

Spade said, “Thanks,” and followed the butler upstairs.

Wallace Binnett was a slender, handsome, dark man of about Spade’s age – thirty-eight – who rose smiling from a brocaded chair, said, “How do you do, Mr. Ames?” waved his hand at another chair, and sat down again. “You’re from Australia?”

“Got in this morning.”

“You’re a business associate of Uncle Tim’s?”

Spade smiled and shook his head. “Hardly that, but I’ve some information I think he ought to have – quick.”

Wallace Binnett looked thoughtfully at the floor, then up at Spade. “I’ll do my best to persuade him to see you, Mr. Ames, but, frankly, I don’t know.”

Spade seemed mildly surprised. “Why?”

Binnett shrugged. “He’s peculiar sometimes. Understand, his mind seems perfectly all right, but he has the testiness and eccentricity of an old man in ill health and – well – at times he can be difficult.”

Spade asked slowly: “He’s already refused to see me?”

“Yes.”

Spade rose from his chair. His blond satan’s face was expressionless.

Binnett raised a hand quickly. “Wait, wait,” he said. “I’ll do what I can to make him change his mind. Perhaps if -“ His dark eyes suddenly became wary. “You’re not simply trying to sell him something, are you?”

“No.”

The wary gleam went out of Binnett’s eyes. “Well, then, I think I can -“

A young woman came in crying angrily, “Wally, that old fool has – “ She broke off with a hand to her breast when she saw Spade.

Spade and Binnett had risen together. Binnett said suavely: “Joyce, this is Mr. Ames. My sister-in-law, Joyce Court.”

Spade bowed.

Joyce Court uttered a short, embarrassed laugh and said: “Please excuse my whirlwind entrance.” She was a tall, blue-eyed, dark woman of twenty-four or -five with good shoulders and a strong, slim body. Her features made up in warmth what they lacked in regularity. She wore wide-legged blue satin pyjamas.

Binnett smiled good-naturedly at her and asked: “Now what’s all the excitement?”

Anger darkened her eyes again and she started to speak. Then she looked at Spade and said: “But we shouldn’t bore Mr. Ames with our stupid domestic affairs. If -“ She hesitated.

Spade bowed again. “Sure,” he said, “certainly.”

“I won’t be a minute,” Binnett promised, and left the room with her.

Spade went to open the doorway through which they had vanished and, standing just inside, listened. Their footsteps became inaudible. Nothing else could be heard. Spade was standing there – his yellow-gray eyes dreamy – when he heard the scream. It was a woman’s scream, high and shrill with terror. Spade was through the doorway when he heard the shot, It was a pistol shot, magnified, reverberated by walls and ceilings.

Twenty feet from the doorway Spade found a staircase, and went up it three steps at a time. He turned to the left. Halfway down the hallway a woman lay on her back on the floor.

Wallace Binnett knelt beside her, fondling one of her hands desperately, crying in a low, beseeching voice: “Darling, Molly, darling!”

Joyce Court stood behind him and wrung her hands while tears streaked her cheeks.

The woman on the floor resembled Joyce Court but was older, and her face had a hardness the younger one’s had not.

“She’s dead, she’s been killed,” Wallace Binnett said incredulously, raising his white face toward Spade. When Binnett moved his head Spade could see the round hole in the woman’s tan dress over her heart and the dark stain which was rapidly spreading below it.

Spade touched Joyce Court’s arm. “Police, emergency hospital – phone,” he said. As she ran toward the stairs he addressed Wallace Binnett: “Who did -“

A voice groaned feebly behind Spade.

He turned swiftly. Through an open doorway he could see an old man in white pyjamas lying sprawled across a rumpled bed. His head, a shoulder, an arm dangled over the edge of the bed. His other hand held his throat tightly. He groaned again and his eyelids twitched, but did not open.

Spade lifted the old man’s head and shoulders and put them up on the pillows. The old man groaned again and took his hand from his throat. His throat was red with half a dozen bruises. He was a gaunt man with a seamed face that probably exaggerated his age.

A glass of water was on a table beside the bed. Spade put water on the old man’s face and, when the old man’s eyes twitched again, leaned down and growled softly: “Who did it?”

The twitching eyelids went up far enough to show a narrow strip of bloodshot gray eyes. The old man spoke painfully, putting a hand to his throat again: “A man – he -“ He coughed.

Spade made an impatient grimace. His lips almost touched the old man’s ear. “Where’d he go?” His voice was urgent.

A gaunt hand moved weakly to indicate the rear of the house and fell back on the bed.

The butler and two frightened female servants had joined Wallace Binnett beside the dead woman in the hallway.

“Who did it?” Spade asked them.

They stared at him blankly.

“Somebody look after the old man,” he growled, and went down the hallway.

At the end of the hallway was a rear staircase. He descended two flights and went through a pantry into the kitchen. He saw nobody. The kitchen door was shut but, when he tried it, not locked. He crossed a narrow back yard to a gate that was shut, not locked. He opened the gate. There was nobody in the narrow alley behind it.

He sighed, shut the gate, and returned to the house.

Spade sat comfortably slack in a deep leather chair in a room that ran across the front second story of Wallace Binnett’s house. There were shelves of books and the lights were on. The window showed outer darkness weakly diluted by a distant street lamp. Facing Spade, Detective-Sergeant Polhaus – a big, carelessly shaven, florid man in dark clothes that needed pressing – was sprawled in another leather chair; Lieutenant Dundy – smaller, compactly built, square-faced – stood with legs apart, head thrust a little forward, in the centre of the room.

Spade was saying: “… and the doctor would only let me talk to the old man a couple of minutes. We can try it again when he’s rested a little, but it doesn’t look like he knows much. He was catching a nap and he woke up with somebody’s hands on his throat dragging him around the bed. The best he got was a one-eyed look at the fellow choking him. A big fellow, he says, with a soft hat pulled down over his eyes, dark, needing a shave. Sounds like Tom.” Spade nodded at Polhaus.

The detective-sergeant chuckled, but Dundy said, “Go on,” curtly.

Spade grinned and went on: “He’s pretty far gone when he hears Mrs. Binnett scream at the door. The hands go away from his throat and he hears the shot and just before passing out he gets a flash of the big fellow heading for the rear of the house and Mrs. Binnett tumbling down on the hall floor. He says he never saw the big fellow before.”

“What size gun was it?” Dundy asked.

“Thirty-eight. Well, nobody in the house is much more help. Wallace and his sister-in-law, Joyce, were in her room, so they say, and didn’t see anything but the dead woman when they ran out, though they think they heard something that could’ve been somebody running downstairs – the back stairs.

“The butler -his name’s Jarboe – was in here when he heard the scream and shot, so he says. Irene Kelly, the maid, was down on the ground floor, so she says. The cook, Margaret Finn, was in her room – third floor back – and didn’t even hear anything, so she says. She’s deaf as a post, so everybody else says. The back door and gate were unlocked, but are supposed to be kept locked, so everybody says. Nobody says they were in or around the kitchen or yard at the time.” Spade spread his hands in a gesture of finality. “That’s the crop.”

Dundy shook his head. “Not exactly,” he said. “How come you were here?”

Spade’s face brightened. “Maybe my client killed her,” he said. “He’s Wallace’s cousin, Ira Binnett. Know him?”

Dundy shook his head. His blue eyes were hard and suspicious.

“He’s a San Francisco lawyer,” Spade said, “respectable and all that. A couple of days ago he came to me with a story about his uncle Timothy, a miserly old skinflint, lousy with money and pretty well broken up by hard living. He was the black sheep of the family. None of them had heard of him for years. But six or eight months ago he showed up in pretty bad shape every way except financially – he seems to have taken a lot of money out of Australia – wanting to spend his last days with his only living relatives, his nephews Wallace and Ira.

“That was all right with them. Only living relatives’ meant ‘only heirs’ in their language. But by and by the nephews began to think it was better to be an heir than to be one of a couple of heirs – twice as good, in fact – and started fiddling for the inside track with the old man. At least, that’s what Ira told me about Wallace, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Wallace would say the same thing about Ira, though Wallace seems to be the harder up of the two. Anyhow, the nephews fell out, and then Uncle Tim, who had been staying at Ira’s, came over here. That was a couple of months ago, and Ira hasn’t seen Uncle Tim since, and hasn’t been able to get in touch with him by phone or mail.

“That’s what he wanted a private detective about. He didn’t think Uncle Tim would come to any harm here – oh, no, he went to a lot of trouble to make that clear – but he thought maybe undue pressure was being brought to bear on the old boy, or he was being hornswoggled somehow, and at least being told lies about his loving nephew Ira. He wanted to know what was what. I waited until today, when a boat from Australia docked, and came up here as a Mr. Ames with some important information for Uncle Tim about his properties down there. All I wanted was fifteen minutes alone with him.” Spade frowned thoughtfully. “Well, I didn’t get them. Wallace told me the old man refused to see me. I don’t know.”

Suspicion had deepened in Dundy’s cold blue eyes. “And where is this Ira Binnett now?” he asked.

Spade’s yellow-gray eyes were as guileless as his voice. “I wish I knew. I phoned his house and office and left word for him to come right over, but I’m afraid -“

Knuckles knocked sharply twice on the other side of the room’s one door. The three men in the room turned to face the door.

Dundy called, “Come in.”

The door was opened by a sunburned blond policeman whose left hand held the right wrist of a plump man of forty or forty-five in well-fitting gray clothes. The policeman pushed the plump man into the room. “Found him monkeying with the kitchen door,” he said.

Spade looked up and said: “Ah!” His tone expressed satisfaction. “Mr. Ira Binnett, Lieutenant Dundy, Sergeant Polhaus.”

Ira Binnett said rapidly: “Mr. Spade, will you tell this man that -“

Dundy addressed the policeman: “All right. Good work. You can leave him.”

The policeman moved a hand vaguely toward his cap and went away.

Dundy glowered at Ira Binnett and demanded, “Well?”

Binnett looked from Dundy to Spade. “Has something -“

Spade said: “Better tell him why you were at the back door instead of the front.”

Ira Binnett suddenly blushed. He cleared his throat in embarrassment. He said: “I – uh – I should explain. It wasn’t my fault, of course, but when Jarboe – he’s the butler – phoned me that Uncle Tim wanted to see me he told me he’d leave the kitchen door unlocked, so Wallace wouldn’t have to know I’d -“

“What’d he want to see you about?” Dundy asked.

“I don’t know. He didn’t say. He said it was very important.”

“Didn’t you get my message?” Spade asked.

Ira Binnett’s eyes widened. “No. What was it? Has anything happened? What is -“

Spade was moving toward the door. “Go ahead,” he said to Dundy. “I’ll be right back.”

He shut the door carefully behind him and went up to the third floor.

The butler Jarboe was on his knees at Timothy Binnett’s door with an eye to the keyhole. On the floor beside him was a tray holding an egg in an egg-cup, toast, a pot of coffee, china, silver, and a napkin.

Spade said: “Your toast’s going to get cold.”

Jarboe, scrambling to his feet, almost upsetting the coffeepot in his haste, his face red and sheepish, stammered: “I – er – beg your pardon, sir. I wanted to make sure Mr. Timothy was awake before I took this in.” He picked up the tray. “I didn’t want to disturb his rest if -“

Spade, who had reached the door, said, “Sure, sure,” and bent over to put his eye to the keyhole. When he straightened up he said in a mildly complaining tone: “You can’t see the bed – only a chair and part of the window.”