Long Live the Dead (19 page)

“After all,” she said, “I’m not the president of Trouble, Inc. I’m just an underpaid hireling. Don’t expect too much.”

“I can’t see that you’ve done too much.”

“But I haven’t confessed all. Not yet. I’ve been to the morgue,” she said.

That got him. His mouth sagged and he gaped at her.

“The newspaper morgue,” she explained softly, “to check on Dubitsky. Do you know why I did that?”

He said nothing.

“Because,” she went on, “I discovered over at the chemical company that young Mr. Burdick is a graduate of our nice big university here where Dubitsky taught. And when I found that out, I got to thinking about the foreigner who smoked the long black cigarettes, and so I went over to the university and did some snooping. Guess what I found.”

“If you don’t stop beating around the mulberry bush,” Edgerson said, “I’ll fire you!”

“Young Mr. Burdick was a student in some of Dubitsky’s classes.”

“You mean it?”

“It’s the truth. He was an honor student. One of Dubitsky’s pets.”

“I’m not,” Edgerson said, “as busy as I thought. Go ahead.”

“You mean it?”

“Go right ahead. I’ve always been intrigued with Dubitsky. The Christmas ditties can wait.”

“Well,” she said, “I’ve brought you some of the newspaper accounts of Dubitsky’s death.”

“I don’t need them. I know the details by heart.”

“Do you? Lead on, MacDuff.”

“The great Dubitsky,” Edgerson said, “left his bachelor apartment about six-thirty that night, intending to drive to a little camp he owned on Loon Cry Lake, sixty miles north of here. It was a miserable night, and he was alone. He stopped in Midville for gas, and the attendant warned him not to try the Loon Lake road because it was inundated and dangerous, and an electrical storm was coming up over the mountains.

“He went, and was caught in the storm. His car went over a cliff and caught fire, probably struck by lightning before it went over. The charred remains of Dubitsky were identified by a watch and a couple of rings.”

“And I’ll wager my next year’s salary as nonpaid vice president of Trouble, Inc.,” said Angel calmly, “that you believe Professor Dubitsky is still very much alive. Now don’t you, Mr. Smith?”

Edgerson scowled at a tiny image of Santa Claus which sat on his desk. It was a birthday gift from Miss Miggsby. “Now why,” he insisted, “should a self-respecting professor of foreign languages, including the Malaysian, wish to plunge himself into oblivion?”

“What nationality is Dubitsky?” “Darned if I know. German, Czeck, Russian, Polish—he might be most anything.”

“The point is,” she said, “he’s not American. He came to this country six or seven years ago, to take up his duties at the university. No one knows much about him, except that he’s a mental giant. Put two and two together, Philip. Dubitsky. A mysterious accident. The Glickman Chemical Company. Young Burdick. It’s positively sinister; that’s what it is!”

“What,” Edgerson said, “do you propose to do about it?”

“Have a talk with Burdick’s wife. And you’re coming with me. This, Mr. Smith, is the biggest thing that ever fell into the lap of our little organization, or I’m a monkey’s uncle.”

“I think a better move,” Smith declared thoughtfully, “would be to call on Plouffe.”

“Plouffe?”

“The girl might be a bit difficult. Plouffe, on the other hand, would hardly dare to be. I know too much about him. I might still talk about him impersonating himself as a G-man.” He smiled, pushing himself out of his chair. “Trouble, Incorporated, is at work again,” he said.

N
ick Plouffe, when not at his hotel, could generally be found between bottles of beer in his office or between martinis at the Andolf Tap. He was in his office this time, suffering from the heat. A cheap fan sent the hot air surging about the room and Plouffe’s handkerchief was sodden from face-mopping.

He peered suspiciously at his visitors and said: “Well, my, my! Look who is here!”

“You’re surprised,” Smith said.

“I am pop-eyed!”

Smith shut off the fan and eyed the half-empty bottle of beer on the detective’s desk. He sat down without awaiting an invitation. Angel followed suit. Nick Plouffe stood beside the desk, mopped his pleasant, little face again and registered uneasiness.

“So what can I do for you?”

“You’re not going to like this, Nick.”

“I feel it in my bones.”

“What we’d like to know, Nick,” Smith said, “is how you got mixed up in this Burdick business.”

Plouffe sat down. His tie was askew and his striped shirt was open down to the third button, revealing a moist undershirt and a few chest hairs. He said plaintively: “On a hot day like this you should come here to ask questions! What did I ever do to you?”

“Give, Nick.”

“Give! Do I ask you to hand out professional secrets? Do I come barging into Trouble, Incorporated, and act like I was a partner?”

“You wouldn’t want to be a partner,” Angel said sweetly. “There’s no money in it.”

“Give,” Smith said.

“So why should I?”

“Must we go through all that again? About how unhealthy our local jails are, and how bad the food is? Nick, you surprise me.”

Nick Plouffe slumped lower in his chair. The desk hid most of him but his eyes were little gray bugs just visible over the rim.

“The Burdick girl is a client of mine,” he mumbled.

“How come?”

“You would not be interested. So help me it would bore you, I swear it.”

“I’ll risk it. Go right ahead.”

“Well, it is like this. It is very ordinary. The Burdick girl comes up here and says she sees the name of my agency in the phone book. Then she spills a sob story into my ears, and so help me, Mr. Smith, it is nothing that would interest you. It is like every other sob story you ever heard.”

“I’ll hear it again,” Smith said.

“But it will bore you stiff!”

“The food,” Angel chimed in gently, “is really atrocious, Mr. Plouffe. They feed you bread and mush three times a day, and sometimes the mush is maggoty. If it isn’t, I’m sure Mr. Smith can arrange to have them inject a few maggots, just for your benefit.”

Plouffe mopped his face. “She has a husband, see? And he stays out late at night, and sometimes he doesn’t come home at all. She says to me, he is keeping bad company and will I look into it? So help me that’s the whole story.”

“The bell-hopping was just your own idea, eh?” Smith said.

“Huh?”

“If that’s all there is to it, Plouffe, why’d you move her from a swank apartment house to a frowsy dump of a hotel?”

“She—she couldn’t pay the rent them vultures was asking.”

“Maggots, Plouffe, are apt to make you hellishly sick.”

“Well,” Plouffe muttered, avoiding Smith’s steady gaze, “I had to get some dough out of this business somehow, didn’t I?”

“Meaning what?”

“She pays me to tail her husband. There wouldn’t be no dough in that even if I could locate the husband, which I can’t. So I have to tell the dame something, don’t I? Would you want me to let her down and have her get a wrong idea about the private detective business?”

“The light begins to dawn,” Angel murmured.

Plouffe looked at her gratefully and forced a grin. “Sure. She wanted service, so I gave it to her. There wasn’t no harm in that, was there? All I told her, I checked up on her husband and found out he was mixed up with some tough mobsters, and things looked pretty bad, and her own life could easy be in danger unless she put herself in my care for a few days until I got things straightened out.”

“And she believed you?” Smith asked.

“Sure she believed me.”

“And to make it more realistic, you moved her out of the apartment and obtained a room for her at the Lester.”

“Yeah. Hell, if these dumb dames want adventure, Nick Plouffe sells it to ’em. Why not?”

Smith stood up. “I’m hiring you, Plouffe.”

The gray little eyes grew to twice their normal size. “Huh?”

“You say you tried to locate Burdick and failed. Is that right?”

“Sure I tried.”

“Hard?”

“I done all I could,” Plouffe insisted. “I checked every lead the dame gave me.”

“And you couldn’t find him. Very well, Plouffe, he’s missing. Something has happened to him. And if we’re not careful, something may happen to the girl. Therefore, I’m hiring you to keep an eye on her.”

“Listen,” Plouffe said. “This don’t make sense.”

“It might, later. You’re to watch the girl and keep in touch with me, report to me every move she makes. I’d do it myself, Plouffe, but I’m going to be busy. Very busy. So is Miss Copeland. And our staff at Trouble, Inc., is limited.”

“Say, what’s back of all this?”

“A certain crack someone once made,” Angel replied quickly, flashing a smile, “about twin beds.”

“Huh?”

“You wouldn’t understand, Plouffe. Don’t worry about it. Some day Mr. Smith is going to write a treatise on it. Then you’ll know.”

Smith turned to open the door. “You can get in touch with me, Plouffe, at Trouble, Inc. If I’m not there, Miss Copeland will be. And I’ll expect your first report about an hour from now.”

Outside, Angel said sweetly: “What I like about you, Mr. Smith, is your uncanny faculty for persuading people to work for you—for nothing. Including,” she added, taking his arm, “me.”

S
mith was busy the next day. Visiting the university, he spent two hours investigating the history of Professor Benedetto Dubitsky and another hour on the records of Mrs. Burdick’s Teddy. To his work as president of Trouble, Inc., he applied the same tenacity which had made him president of a prosperous greeting-card concern.

He then visited the Glickman Company’s huge chemical plant and learned that Mr. Theodore Burdick, formerly employed there, had been hired in the first place because of flattering recommendations tendered by the university. It dovetailed nicely. Just what it meant, Smith was not sure.

With Angel, in the tiny office of Trouble, Inc., he had a dinner which consisted of cold lobster and ginger ale, purchased at a delicatessen.

Angel was dressed, Smith thought, more like a devil. She had on a handsome evening dress that gleamed under a brilliant red opera cape. Its tiny hood was made to be drawn over her sleek hair.

“Why the fancy set up?” he asked.

“I thought you were going to buy me a dinner and dance. Instead I get this and a ride, I guess.”

About that time Nick Plouffe, who had been calling every hour to make his report, phoned in again.

Nick Plouffe was excited. “Only two minutes ago,” he wailed, “she give me the slip! I was watchin’ the Lester, see?

Like I been doin’ right along. I’m standin’ there earnin’ the salary you don’t promise me, and all of a sudden she comes out with a couple of guys, and they get into a car.

“This car is parked in front of the Lester ever since around eight o’clock, and there’s a ticket on it. I myself see the cop put the ticket on it. So they get into it, Mrs. Burdick and these two guys, and I pile into a taxi and tail them. And I lose them. On account of the taxi driver is dumb as all get-out, I lose then. Up around Mitchell Street and the Avenue is where I last see them.”

“You get the number of that car?” Smith snapped.

“Yeah, sure. C-3145.”

“Where are you now?”

“In a drug store on Mitchell.”

“Get into your cab,” Smith ordered, “and come over here as fast as you can. You may be needed.” He cradled the phone and gazed solemnly at Angel. “C-3145, Angel. Think you can find out to whom that car is registered?”

“I can try.”

She called her newspaper and four minutes later reported: “The car belongs to Alvin McKenna, 92 Follett Street, vice-president of the Glickman Company. Something?”

Smith, at his desk, wrote the name and address on a pad and stared at them clicking the pencil along his teeth as a small boy would rattle a stick along a picket fence.

“McKenna—the Glickman Company—a ticket for parking,” he mused. “And two men. Not one man, Angel, but two. Dammit, what’s keeping Plouffe?”

There was a knock at the door.Angel opened it and Plouffe entered, out of breath.

“I got here quick like you told me, Mr. Smith.”

“Now let’s have it all, Plouffe. Slowly. Begin with the car. Did you see it pull up?”

“Sure I seen it.”

“Two men in it?”

“Now that’s funny,” Plouffe said. “When the car drove up there was only one guy in it. I was standin’ right there and I couldn’t’ve made no mistake. The guy parks the car in a one-hour space and goes into the Lester.”

“What kind of a car?”

“A Packard coupe.”

“A man as wealthy as McKenna,” Angel declared, “would have more than one car, Mr. Smith.”

“I realize that. Now, Plouffe, how long was that car there?”

“More’n two hours.”

“And when the two men came out, with Mrs. Burdick, there was a ticket on it?”

“That’s right.”

“One of those men was the driver?”

“Yep. One was the guy who parked it there.”

“Did you get a good look at Mrs. Burdick? Did she look scared?”

“Without bein’ no authority on women’s looks, I would say she did. Definitely I would say she was at least uneasy.”

Smith stared into space and drew meaningless circles and triangles on a desk calendar. The Smith brain was hard at work; you could tell by the roadmap of wrinkles that spread away from his eye-corners. He reached suddenly for the phone book, ran a finger down the long line of McKennas and impulsively snatched up the phone. Then slowly replaced it, shaking his head.

“If you want my opinion,” Plouffe ventured timidly, “I’d say—”

“Quiet,” snapped Angel. “He’s thinking.”

“Oh.”

Smith seized the phone, dialed a number. Angel relaxed. “McKenna?” she asked softly. He nodded, waiting for the connection.

“I still think,” Plouffe insisted, “that—”

“Quiet.”

Smith registered impatience while waiting. He looked worried. Finally he slapped the phone down and stood up.

“They don’t answer,” he said curtly. “Let’s go.”

“Out there?” Angel asked.

“Yes! Don’t you see through it? McKenna’s car—first one man, then two—and a deliberate ticket? It’s plain as day!”