Читать книгу Dead Man's Hat - Footner Hulbert - Страница 9

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The touring-car with top down slid noiselessly away from the scene of the crash, and turned the corner. The two or three men who had run up to the spot stared after the car dumbly, and gathered around the inert figures of the taxi-driver and the policeman stretched on the asphalt. Before any other policeman arrived, the touring-car was out of sight.

It sped through the sleeping streets dizzily, turning one corner after another. On the front seat a nonchalant young driver at the wheel, and a girl partly disguised by a man’s hat and overcoat. They had the driver of the truck between them. His head had fallen on the girl’s shoulder. On the back seat two more wary young men with their coat collars turned up and their hat brims pulled down. Between them slumped the figure of Dave Westover. Nobody in the car spoke.

Dave stirred and groaned. The man on his left, watching him with steely eyes from under the hat brim, took a little tin box of surgeon’s tape from his pocket. It was already cut into strips of the desired length. These he clapped over Dave’s eyes and his mouth. His hat was pulled down over his face to hide these decorations. He struggled feebly, but with an arm locked within the arm of the man on either side, he was helpless.

Hearing no sounds of pursuit, the driver slowed down. “Where to?” he muttered.

The man on Dave’s left appeared to be the leader. He was wearing a cinnamon-colored hat. “We got to frisk this guy,” he said. “Take us to Heinie’s, and me and Rudy will do it. You go on and take Fish home to his old woman, and ditch the car somewheres uptown. Then you and Rina go to the Dump and wait until you hear from me.”

“Okay!”

Shortly afterwards they stopped in front of an old high-stoop dwelling in one of the nondescript streets south of Houston. The house had an ostentatious look of emptiness and neglect; paint peeling off the bricks; dirt caked on the windows; blinds pulled down inside; but there were no “To Let” signs hung out.

“Get out and ring,” said the man on Dave’s left to the girl in front. “We’re watching this guy.”

She went to the basement entrance, which was protected outside by a steel gate filling the space under the steps. After a certain delay a half-dressed man appeared behind the gate. At sight of the girl his jaw dropped.

“You can’t come in,” he stammered. “We’re closed. We’ve gone to bed!”

“Tell him it’s Pompey,” growled the man in the cinnamon-colored hat. “No wise guy wants to close his door to Pompey.”

With a shrug of helplessness, the man opened the iron gate. Dave was seized on each side, hustled across the pavement, down a few steps, and into the basement corridor. The iron gate clanged behind him. The girl had gone back to the car, and it drove away. When the proprietor of the house saw Dave’s condition under the lights of the corridor, he was seized with a fresh terror.

“What you going to do with that guy?” he stammered. “I can’t have no trouble here. They’d close me up!”

Pompey cursed him coldly. “We ain’t going to hurt the guy. He’s a friend of ours. Shut your trap and go cook us up some supper.”

The man disappeared. Dave was shoved into the front basement room and released. Pompey switched on lights. The moment his arms were freed, Dave tore away the strips that covered his eyes and mouth. The place was a sort of humble restaurant. Like all such places after closing hours, it had a desolate look. The tablecloths were dirty and a stale smell of cooking hung on the air.

Pompey was standing with his back to the closed door, idly playing with a limber, leather-covered blackjack that was attached to his right wrist by a thong. With the collar of his ulster turned up and his hat pulled down, Dave couldn’t get a good look at him, even under the lights. But he knew from his voice that it was the same man who had followed Paula earlier in the night. From under the cavern of his hat brim his eyes fixed Dave like two points of chilled steel. The pale eyes had an uncanny effect in the yellow face.

“You’re all right if you keep quiet,” said Pompey, with a cruel grin. “We’re friends of yours. If it wasn’t for us they’d be sweating you at Headquarters right now.”

Dave’s strength had returned. “Much obliged,” he said, giving Pompey grin for grin. “For nothing! What do you want of me?”

“We’re going to search you.”

“What for?” said Dave, in surprise. “I’ve got nothing on me but a few dollars in my pants pocket. Take that and let me go.”

Pompey laughed. “A bank clerk’s spending money! You can keep it, fellow!”

“How do you know I work in a bank?” said Dave, staring. “I never saw you before tonight.”

“We got ways of finding out,” said Pompey. “Take off your overcoat and chuck it to my partner.”

In the lighted room it was apparent that the second man had been badly shaken by the events of the night. Pompey had addressed this one as Rudy. His mouth was twisted to one side; his hands were shaking slightly. “Wait a minute,” he muttered.

“What the hell ... !” began Pompey.

“I’m all right,” stammered Rudy, endeavoring to straighten up. “That cop on Third Avenue ... his neck was broke ... I could see it when I pulled him out of the cab! I don’t know about the taxi-driver. That makes three since yesterday. ...”

Pompey silenced him with an oath. “You better take a vacation,” he added, sneering.

“I’m okay ... okay ...” stuttered the other man. Turning his back to them, he made a rapid pass from his pocket to his face. He threw his head back. A small white paper fluttered to the floor.

“Coke!” said Pompey, contemptuously.

“I don’t have to have it,” stuttered Rudy.

“That’s what they all say!”

When Rudy turned around he had got a grip on himself. Throwing aside his overcoat and hat, he caught the coat that Dave tossed him, and went over it with nimble fingers to make sure nothing had been slipped between cloth and lining. He was a young fellow of the black-haired Irish type, handsome but for his ghastly pallor, and turned out with an elegance that showed up strangely in the squalid eating-place. Gray suit tailored and pressed to a nicety; pearl Fedora; spats; mirror-polished shoes.

Rudy’s small trim hands explored the rest of Dave’s clothes; suit coat, vest, trousers, shirt. Dave studied him at close range. A small man, but very trimly made. Scarcely more than a boy, his strained, paper-white face suggested that the experience of several lives had been crowded into his few years. In his gray scarf he wore a big emerald carved in the likeness of a beetle, and showing the gleam unmistakably of the real fire.

“You’re wasting your time,” said Dave.

“Yeah?” answered Pompey. “We’ll know that when we get through.”

Not until Rudy had reached Dave’s skin were they satisfied that he spoke the truth. Pompey was scowling and biting his nails.

“Where’s the guy’s hat?” he asked, suddenly.

“Whose hat?” returned Dave, staring.

“The stiff’s.”

“Oh!” Dave grinned slightly. “The cop had it.”

“What!”

“The cop in the taxi with me. They took it off me and gave it to him to take to Headquarters. He had it stuffed inside his coat.”

“What were you doing with it?”

“I couldn’t keep it on the dead man’s head, so I crushed it flat and stuck it inside my vest, meaning to lose it somewhere.”

Pompey showed his teeth. “Was there anything inside it?” he snarled.

“Inside it?” repeated Dave, with an innocent stare.

“Inside the band! Inside the band!”

“Gee!” said Dave. “Maybe there was. I never thought of looking.”

“Maybe the girl found it?”

Dave shook his head in an unconcerned way.

“How do you know she didn’t?”

“She told me everything that happened. She would have told me that.”

Pompey broke into a low, furious cursing. “The cop had it!” he muttered. “And we had the cop in our hands!”

Dave demurely buttoned up his coat. The white-faced Rudy laughed jeeringly. “How about it, Pompey? Who slipped up this time?”

Pompey cursed him down and made for the door. “I got to see about this,” he said. “You take care of this guy.”

“What’ll I do with him?” asked Rudy, indifferently.

Pompey returned into the room a step, and bored into Dave with his steel points of eyes. He hesitated. It was obvious that Dave’s fate was hanging in the balance. Dave kept his head up and faced him out, but he grew a little white about the lips. His hands were empty.

Pompey fired an unexpected question at him. “What for did you wait outside the girl’s house tonight when she went in?”

“She didn’t want the doorman to see me. She went up in the elevator and I took the stairs.”

“And nobody saw you?”

“Nobody.”

“How about when you brought the stiff out?”

“Nobody saw me. I carried it down the stairs. The lobby was empty.”

Pompey smiled. “That’s a damn lucky break for you, fellow.... Known that girl long?”

“Never spoke to her before tonight.”

“Anybody know you were going there?”

“No. I went to bed with my room-mate, and got up after he went to sleep. I can get back into bed before he wakes. I’ve got a perfect alibi.”

A hard smile cracked in Pompey’s stony face. “You’re good!” he said, jeeringly. He turned to Rudy. “All right. Let the guy go.... But take off his bracelet,” he added, pointing to the handcuff that still clung around Dave’s right wrist.

Dave slowly relaxed, and the warm color came back in his face. Pompey was not quite through with him. “Look, fellow, I’m telling you!” he said, with dangerous softness. “You ain’t done nothing against us. And as long as you keep out of the hands of the police we’ll never trouble you. This business is finished for you. You can go ahead and marry the girl.”

He paused, and his voice hardened. “But if the police nab you again, we’ll never let you come to trial, see? We got our private reasons for not wanting it. And we got ways of getting you though they stick you in a cell behind three steel doors. Hear me? It’s up to you.”

“I’m not going to let the police take me,” said Dave.

“All right. Just one thing more....” Pompey’s voice became smooth and pregnant with meaning. “If you happen to find a paper lying around the girl’s flat that don’t concern you, I advise you to hand it over to me. See? It would be healthier for you. And for her!”

“Sure!” said Dave. “Where could I find you?”

“I’ll be seeing you.” Pompey ran out.