Just one more case, Uncle Sam by W Read online

  Mammoth Detective, May, 1943

  Eddie Fayne would be in uniform in a week—and he had only that week to solve the toughest case of all!

  EDDIE FAYNE let the blue chips drop from scar.

  the long fingers of his right hand and fall in a It was usually white, a thin line which

  steady stream into the hard palm of his left. It made a circular mark against the brown skin.

  was his last case. Cooper had talked him into Only when Fayne was angry did it turn red. It taking it. “You might as well work while you was a danger signal which Cooper had come wait for the army to make up its mind.”

  to observe with care.

  Fayne hadn’t agreed. He was a big

  He’d observed it, and changed his

  man, and he seldom agreed with Cooper. That tone. “As a favor to me then. Her father owns was one reason why he had worked for the fat a factory, you know that, and you know the agency owner for eight years. Cooper didn’t business we get from him. I can’t turn down like people who agreed with him. They might the job and I can’t trust these cowboys I have well agree with someone else as easily.

  to hire nowadays. They’d try and kiss her at

  “You’re a fool,” he said. “You’re too

  the first opportunity.”

  old for the air force and you haven’t the

  “Might do her good,” said Fayne.

  education for a commission. What the hell,

  “This is no time for play, and glamour girls.”

  they’ll stick an M.P. arm band on you and put He didn’t go on. He wasn’t a self-dramatist.

  you to doing the same thing for fifty bucks a He was just a guy, as he put it, with an idea.

  month as I pay you three hundred for.”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” said THE club was no different from a hundred Fayne. He didn’t want to argue about it. He others. The dealer at the roulette table was a didn’t like to argue when he felt deeply about little fat. His stiff shirt and low dress collar something. The scar which the dago wife seemed to be choking him. He said, “Place killer had put upon his left cheek burned redly your bets, gentlemen,” and looked hard at as he talked and Cooper’s eyes were on the Fayne.

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  2

  But Eddie Fayne did not see the look.

  Yes, the scar was even a help. If he had a He was watching the girl without appearing single glass to screw into his eye, he might be to. That was an old trick, and easily learned.

  mistaken for a foreign diplomat. The trouble He’d used it many times, but never on a girl was that most of the foreign diplomats had like this.

  gone home. The ones who remained were

  She sat at the end of the short bar, her watched.

  small face framed in the straight lines which He knew that the girl was watching as

  her long ear drops made. Her hair was dark, he ordered the B and B and carried the small and piled in the rolling curls on the top of her liquor glass to his lips. He wanted her to head which women and beauty operators watch him. That was part of the game. He set seemed to think attractive.

  the glass carefully upon the bar and gave the Fayne had never met a man who attendant a folded note, then he walked around agreed. It occurred to him that the modern the end and into the phone booth.

  woman no longer dressed to please men, she It was a small booth of cream and

  dressed for the effect on other women.

  white, matching the light rugs and the lighter He looked around the room, quiet with

  drapes. The door he carefully did not slide its thick rugs and sound-proofing. This was a shut. He dialed a number.

  gambling crowd, and a gambling crowd was

  “Hello, John? No, she hasn’t showed

  never noisy. They were too intent on the up yet. That’s right. I know, but will she business at hand, too intent on the whirling believe me? After all, she’ll have nothing but ball which might well decide their fortunes.

  my word. You’re certain that she was to wear

  “Place your bets.” Again the dealer

  a black dress? Okay, I’ll try, but it’s risky was looking at him, a faint frown creasing the business. Her father might have her followed.

  cherub-face.

  They still hire detectives, you know.”

  It was no part of Fayne’s job to make

  Apparently the man at the other end of

  himself conspicuous. The clothes were right, the line said something for Fayne told him, a his manner correct, and the formal card which trifle sharply, “Have I ever let you down? I had gained his admittance was concrete proof haven’t, you know that, and I never will.”

  that he belonged.

  He smiled into the dealer’s worried

  HE HUNG up and left the booth, pausing to face and bending forward placed his stack light a cigarette within two feet of where the neatly on seventeen. The number did not come girl sat.

  up. He had not expected that it would.

  She seemed unaware of his presence.

  Strangers did not win hundred dollar bets at She sat there, twisting the stemmed cocktail the Colonial.

  glass in her gloved hand. Not until he had put He shrugged, lighted a cigarette from a

  out the lighter flame and returned it to his monogrammed case and moved away toward

  pocket did she speak, and then without turning the little bar. He looked bored, and well her head.

  groomed, and certain of himself. The hair

  “You’re from John Thorndyke?” He

  above his ears curled a little despite the gave a little start, which he masked at once, plastering of water he had given it. The curl and the blue eyes which he turned on her were had always annoyed him up to now, but it almost black with careful thought. “Why

  managed to show his first grey hairs.

  should you think that?”

  Glancing in the mirror of the back-bar,

  “I heard you on the phone.”

  he had to admit that he looked distinguished.

  “Little girls should not hear things,” he

  Just One More Case, Uncle Sam 3

  said, and started to move on.

  but contempt for this girl. He had come here

  “Unless their name is Ellen Dayton.”

  with nothing but contempt. He knew her for She had turned a little but she was still not what she was, a thrill seeker, a little fool who watching him.

  had gotten herself involved with Thorndyke, He took the leather stool at her side,

  and who had not had sense enough to cut

  but he sat with his back to the bar, his elbows loose when the faker had been exposed.

  upon its edge, so that he could face the room.

  “She should have worn a black dress.”

  SOMETHING was wrong. He sensed it in her.

  Her voice was bitter. “And she It made him think, made him wonder. What shouldn’t have a maid who ruined the only did Thorndyke have that could hold a girl like two black dresses that she owns. Where’s this? The man had been a shrewd operator.

  John, why didn’t he come himself?”

  He’d sold thousands of dollars worth of stock Fayne swung his back deliberately in bogus war plants, but like all criminals he toward her and looked at the attendant. The had made one mistake. He’d lost his head man was at the far end of the bar and Fayne when the postal inspectors walked in. He’d said to the girl, “You talk too much. He shot, and a man was dead, and the law couldn’t come. The town is hot.”

  enforcement machinery of the city was now in

  “Where is he then?”

  gear.
<
br />   “You know,” he said. “Have you got

  Yes, and the man needed money. His

  the money?”

  safety deposit boxes were jammed with his

  “Of course.” There was scorn in her

  illegal gains, but the police were watching voice.

  them. There had been but one place for him to

  “Let me see it.”

  turn. The Dayton girl, the girl with whom he’d She gave him a long, direct, raking

  danced in the night clubs, with whom he’d stare. “Aren’t you forgetting your place?”

  ridden in the park, with whom he’d attended His smile was tinged with bitterness.

  all the fashionable parties.

  “I’m not forgetting that John Thorndyke has to The police had been watching her. So

  be clear of town tonight and that the police had her father, realizing too late the brink on have every exit blocked. It’s my job to get him which his daughter stood. They’d tapped the through, and he can’t go through without phone wire and they got Thorndyke’s call. But money.”

  it did them little good for the man had merely For an instant she hesitated, then she

  said,

  opened the purse and showed him a thick

  “I need money, sweet, real money. If

  sheaf of bills. “Satisfied?”

  you love me, bring it to the place.”

  “Give them to me.”

  They’d tried to sweat Ellen Dayton,

  “No,” she said. “I don’t trust you. You

  but she wouldn’t talk. She denied that she should have recognized me from my knew where Thorndyke was. She denied that newspaper pictures.”

  she had heard from him.

  He had to say something and he told

  It was Cooper who had thought up the

  her, “You look older; it must be the lights. I idea. It was always the fat man who thought thought that it might be you. That’s why I left up ideas that worked when others failed. He’d the door open when I made the call.”

  found a man to fake Thorndyke’s voice.

  “You did it on purpose.”

  They’d called the girl on the phone and told He smiled, and his lips were no longer

  her that something had happened, that

  bitter. He thought that he should have nothing Thorndyke would meet her at the gambling

  Mammoth Detective

  4

  club where they had spent so many hours.

  worry you.”

  She’d been told to wear a black dress, and at

  “It

  doesn’t.”

  the last minute, her maid was instructed to

  “Then we’ll skip the whole thing.”

  ruin her black dresses.

  It must have worked, thought Payne.

  HE TUGGED the brim of his summer felt

  She was here. She wasn’t wearing a black lower above his restless eyes and sunk his dress, and she had the money. If the rest of it chin against the hard edge of his dress collar.

  would work as well . . . He said, “We can’t Subconsciously he was watching the route, leave together. That’s taking too much chance.

  noting that they were going east on Wilshire, Follow me out in five minutes and pick me up that they had crossed Western and were

  around the corner in your car.”

  turning right.

  She didn’t argue, she didn’t even

  He could guess where they were going.

  answer him. She just sat there, motionless as They must be heading for one of the newer he rose and moved leisurely toward the apartments which clustered along the side entrance of the room.

  streets off Ninth.

  The car she drove was big and

  He’d better watch his business. It was

  expensive, and she handled it with practiced getting close, and one little slip could well fix ease. She swung to the curb and he was at her everything. But he couldn’t keep his mind on side in a moment. “Drive around a few the business at hand. He kept thinking about blocks,” he told her, “just in case.”

  the girl at his side.

  She obeyed silently, and Fayne

  He swore silently to himself. “Don’t be

  watched the rear view mirror. You could a sap,” he told himself. “This glamour addict never tell about the police. They had agreed to isn’t for you, and she isn’t for anyone like cooperate, to let Fayne handle this, not to trail you. You’ve known a lot of women, and

  the girl, but there was always the possibility of they’re all alike. No sense, anything for a some smart young lieutenant jumping the thrill, letting their emotions rule their head and traces and trying something on his own.

  then caving in when the payoff came.”

  They weren’t followed, and Fayne

  But this girl didn’t seem to be caving.

  sighed with relief. “Drive to the place.”

  She was playing it straight, sticking to She said, “Where?”

  Thorndyke until the last. He could have

  He turned and gave her a slow, steady,

  admired her for it, if Thorndyke was worth the appraising look. “Sister, what goes on? You’re effort. He wasn’t. His name was Harris and he supposed to show up in black, and instead you had a wife in Chicago. There might be other appear in a creation of angel fur as if you were wives that the record didn’t show.

  headed for Mrs. Astor’s ball. Now you ask me The whole thing had been a dead end

  where. I’m beginning to wonder.”

  for any woman, long before Thorndyke

  Her eyes were on the street. “Sorry, I

  squeezed the trigger that killed the postal thought it strange that you didn’t give me the inspector. No, it wouldn’t work, and Fayne address. I was being careful too.”

  felt bad. He hadn’t expected to feel anything.

  “Stop it,” he said. “When a woman

  A man couldn’t stay in this racket and have thinks, the world goes haywire.”

  feelings, and he’d never been troubled by

  “Your opinion of women isn’t very

  them before.

  high, mister.”

  Maybe it was because this was his last

  “The name is Eddie, and the opinion is

  case. That was probably it. A private citizen earned, but I don’t see why my opinion should allowed his emotions to become involved, and

  Just One More Case, Uncle Sam 5

  that was what he was doing now. He was

  to take as many down with him as he could.

  feeling sorry for the girl.

  There would be only one chance. If

  He knew that she was going to feel

  Thorndyke did not talk. The cops would not terrible when she realized the part she had ask too many questions if the man were dead unwittingly played in Thorndyke’s capture. It when they arrived. Cooper had said as much would probably break her. She wouldn’t get in the office, half an hour before Fayne had over it for a long, long time.

  started for the gambling club.

  When Cooper had first suggested the

  “If Thorndyke didn’t talk,” the fat man

  idea Fayne hadn’t given the girl any thought.

  had turned his bright little eyes on Fayne’s If she was as shallow as he supposed, she’d face. “If he didn’t talk, there might be a bonus.

  forget Thorndyke in a couple of months.

  And remember, Eddie. You’re fighting for a But that had been before he’d met her.

  girl’s life, a girl’s honor.”

  Now it was different. This girl had something

  “Nuts,” Fayne had said. “You’ve been

  in her that didn’t forget, that he sensed would reading stories, Cooper. That kind of a girl remain constant for a long time.

  will have herself in another jam two weeks She’d be hurt, badly, and the from now. I should spoil my record, just to
knowledge that she was better off because of keep her name out of headlines.”

  the hurt would not make it easier for her to He’d meant what he’d said. The record

  stand. For an instant Fayne toyed with the idea that he spoke of was something that he

  of letting her get away from the apartment, cherished. He’d never killed a man, and he’d then calling the cops and having them close in.

  brought in some bad ones.

  But he had doubts now. Thorndyke

  THE girl might never know that it was she would be no loss, and if he were dead, the who had led the officers to Thorndyke’s place.

  girl’s name need never appear. He considered But he could not afford to do that, even for it, knowing that he was a fool. But once the her. She might drop a remark about his thought had come, it wouldn’t go away. As if presence outside. She probably would, and to emphasize it, the weight of his flat gun Thorndyke would be gone. No, things must seemed to press down above his heart.

  take their course. His orders were to get the The car stopped and the girl looked at

  man himself, to let the girl go on her way, and him. “Here we are.” She waited for Fayne to hope that her name would not be dragged into make the move, but he knew better than to the mess.

  step into that trap. There were five apartments, It was a vague hope, and one without

  close together, three on one side, two on the much chance of accomplishment, but it was other, and the street was parked full on both the trade the police had made in return for sides.

  Edward Dayton’s help.

  Thorndyke’s place might be in any one