E. Hoffmann Price's Two-Fisted Detectives Page 2

  “Plenty. But let’s have a drink.” He stepped into the kitchenette. When he returned with a bottle of Old Pirate, Irene was on her feet, eyeing her surroundings. Cragin set the Old Pirate on a coffee table, planted himself in her vacant chair, and before Irene had caught the play, he had drawn her to the overstuffed arm.

  That caught her breath, but she didn’t break away. “Now while you’re pouring us a shot, suppose you tell me all your gripes about Barrett.”

  “I came near marrying him—I practically, well—”

  “Uh-uh,” nodded Cragin. “As they used to say, you sort of gave him all.”

  “Well—all he could stuff in his pockets and check out with,” she admitted. “I had some money, and a friend of his had some oil stock, and—”

  Cragin’s caressing hand appraised two items Barrett obviously hadn’t taken or even damaged.

  “Barrett checked out,” she resumed, “and when I heard he’d come to Frisco, I followed and tried to put Loretta wise, but she wouldn’t listen. She’s always been interested in this psychic stuff, so I got the Swami to break it up by claiming that Loretta’s dead husband objected.

  “And I want you to get the dirt on that greasy Hindu,” Irene concluded. “That’ll snap Loretta out of it. This spirit stuff is worse than Barrett!” Then Cragin’s investigations reached some bits of lace and interrupted the whisky pouring.

  “Don’t!” she protested. She tried to break clear, but slipped and slid from the arm of the chair to his knees. “I’ll spill—”

  But Cragin was making the most of his free hand as he drew her to him with one arm.

  “There’s only one kind of investigation I do for my health,” said Cragin as his hand found a garter clasp in the soft, warm expanse beyond where the hosiery ends. “So how are you going to finance things?”

  “About all I’ve got left,” admitted Irene, “is that oil stock.”

  “Barrett,” said Cragin, “was a sap, and you’re absent-minded!”

  He checked her protests with a kiss that was a concentrated tribute to the evening’s tantalizing display of feminine anatomy. Irene wriggled, got in one sound smack, and then caught the spirit of the occasion. The next wriggle was to get closer, instead of away. Her firm breasts were palpitating, and her breath was coming in short, quick gasps as the hem of her skirt began heading for her hips.

  “Oh, I think you’re perfectly terrible, Cliff,” she sighed. “I came up here for professional advice, and—”

  “This isn’t going to cost any extra,” consoled Cragin.

  “You perfectly impossible creature!” she said. “Is this the way you treat all your clients?”

  “Hell, no! Only the nice-looking ones.”

  Irene shivered and clung to him like a silk bathing suit. Her eyes now gleamed mistily through long lashes, and she was eagerly returning his caresses.

  “Oh, don’t be so impatient,” she finally murmured. “You might at least wait till I take off my hat.”

  Cragin followed her to her feet. She whisked her rakishly slanted yellow straw into a corner. Cragin wondered how anyone could be stupid enough to check out with a bank roll and leave anything like that behind—or like that in front, either, for that matter. Her legs, from her trim ankles to the edges of her turquoise step-ins were modeled in curves that made a Grecian urn look like a kerosene tin.

  “Darling,” she murmured, standing on her tiptoes, and encircling Cragin with her slender arms, “you’ll help me, won’t you?”

  “Any time, any place,” promised Cragin.

  * * * *

  The next morning, as Irene was priming the percolator, Cragin outlined his plan of action.

  “Nothing to it,” he concluded. “The police haven’t got to first base yet, but I’ll keep an eye on your sister and the Swami. I’ll convince her he’s poison. That he’s worse than her dead sweetie.”

  “Barrett got what was coming to him,” repeated Irene, “but if you can hang it on the Hindu—”

  “Then what?” wondered Cragin.

  “And then,” answered Irene with a dazzling smile, “you can try to collect your bill for professional services.”

  But when Cragin set out that evening for the Swami’s temple, he was wondering. Why had the Swami double-crossed Barrett? And why had Irene said nothing about the emeralds that had so prominently figured in the tangle?

  As Cragin skirted the stone wall along the side of the estate, he noticed a trim little coupe parked near a private entrance. The radiator was still warm. He glanced at the registration certificate on the steering column. It belonged to Loretta Sanford. Irene’s hunch had been good. And presently Cragin was picking his was across the grounds. Having that afternoon studied the blueprints used by the contractor who had erected the building, it would be easy.

  He dropped from an oak down to the roof of the garage. Hanging his shoes about his neck, he leaped to a second floor balcony. From there he could work his way along the cornice to the wing in which the Swami’s private apartments were situated.

  A glow of light was filtering from between the curtains of the window of the Swami’s wing. But just as Cragin cocked one leg over the railing to begin his ticklish course along the cornice, a pistol muzzle prodded his ribs, and a feminine voice tinged with a perceptible foreign accent, icily murmured, “Stick up the hands! Quick, or I weel shoot.”

  Cragin’s hands rose so suddenly that he lost his balance. He landed with a thud, but on the inside of the railing. A low ripple of malicious laughter. A switch clicked as he scrambled to his feet, hands still rigidly elevated. It was tough going, but he made it.

  “Thees way.”

  The pistol prodded him toward a French window. As he entered the scented gloom, reflected in a dresser mirror, Cragin caught an eyeful of his captor. Nilofal, the Kashmiri medium.

  “Dammit, a fellow hasn’t got a chance, with all these psychics around the house. Believe it or not, I’m working for the Swami. You crabbed the game.”

  But that didn’t get across at all.

  “I thought you might be one of those meter readers,” Nilofal remarked, “until I recognized your face. You ’ave something to explain, yes?”

  Nilofal was not wearing her silver brassieres. And the robe that clung to her olive-tinted body was a silken subterfuge. But for the moment her succession of fascinations was wasted.

  Not a chance of snatching that pistol. Breaking and entering is a good play only when you get away with it. The police would begin to wonder at his continued interest in the temple. And with those damned emeralds in his apartment—During that desperate instant Cragin’s eyes covered the exotic room. The cushions of a spacious divan had been compressed by feminine curves. In one corner lay a massive white turban. Near the foot of the divan was a pair of slippers either one of which would have held both of the Kashmiri girl’s tiny feet. And judging from the disarray of other cushions, not definitely imprinted with Nilofal’s entrancing roundnesses, Cragin had interrupted a close tête à tête. No wonder the Kashmiri was in a waspish mood. That gave Cragin a hunch.

  “This is getting rather tiresome,” he grinned. “Why not sit down and wait for the Swami?”

  “Don’t ’ave the impatience,” Nilofal retorted, “He’ll be back any minute.”

  “No he won’t,” asserted Cragin. “He’s going to be busy for some time.”

  “How do you know?” The pistol wavered. Cragin faced about.

  “Loretta Sanford is on the job,” he said, “and unless the Swami is a sap, he’ll be busy with her from now on.”

  “What?” Nilofal’s eyes gleamed wrathfully. The pistol dropped to her side. “Sit down, and tell me how you get that way.”

  The hunch about the man-sized slippers had been good.

  “How do I know?” echoed Cragin. “I might ask you, why the hell you don’t know. That jane is bu
ilt like something hermits dream about, and she’s lousy with dough. Two plus two makes five, does it?”

  Nilofal slid the automatic to the dresser top. Cragin breathed more easily, but as she leaned forward, and the film of chiffon parted, he could hear his heart hammering.

  Nilofal was a succession of rippling, old ivory curves. The view stopped just short of her hips, due to some perverse draping of chiffon, which was lucky for Cragin, as he couldn’t have stood another shock.

  “If you don’t believe me,” he improvised, as he caught her arm, “let’s go and have a look.”

  “So that’s why he broke away so quickly,” the Kashmiri girl murmured. “Well—”

  She was on her feet, but Cragin detained her.

  “Why not wait a few minutes, till there’s something to see?”

  Nilofal smiled oddly, and she eyed Cragin from head to foot. “I still can’t quite decide whether you’re on the level, or whether you’re pulling a fast one.”

  “If I was wrong,” countered Cragin significantly eyeing the slippers at the foot of the divan, “I wouldn’t be so anxious to sit around here to help you get square with the Swami, would I?”

  The latch clicked. Nilofal started, then seized Cragin by the arm, and thrust him behind a wall hanging. He had scarcely reached cover when the Swami entered the room.

  “Awfully sorry, querida,” he apologized in Spanish, “but that stuffy Van Horn woman is here, for a private séance. Crystal-gazing, this time. As soon as I get rid of her, I’ll be back.”

  “Do hurry and get rid of her, Estaban.” Her Spanish completely riddled their Hindu pretentions.

  As the Swami left the apartment, Cragin emerged from cover.

  “Maybe,” he ironically observed, “it is Mrs. Van Horn after all—”

  “I’ll settle that,” snapped Nilofal. “Just wait a minute—”

  The minute of waiting was short, and Cragin made the most of his chance, and unloaded the automatic. He had scarcely pocketed the cartridges when Nilofal returned, and the wrath in her eyes told Cragin that his precautions had been wasted.

  “The dirty liar,” she exclaimed. She seated herself on the edge of the divan and speculatively regarded Cragin. Her smile was blossoming into an invitation. Vengeance would require an accomplice.

  In an instant he was at her side, and had her in his arms. She was supple and fragrant, and the Swami’s abruptly discontinued caresses had left Nilofal ready for anything. Their lips met by common impulse. As her arms closed about him, Cragin knew how Daniel must have felt when Darius booted him into the fiery furnace. And her enraptured murmurings as Cragin’s eager fingers probed the filmy intricacies of her chiffon robe were a short cut to madness.

  Nilofal was simmering from her toenails to her eyebrows. She sighed, wriggled clear of the edge of the divan, and snapped off the lights. And for sometime thereafter, Cragin was learning things he had never even dimly suspected…

  * * * *

  Finally, languidly withdrawing from his embrace, Nilofal said, “Darling, go and see what they are doing. Maybe my conclusions were hasty…but do be careful!”

  The view was good, but not what he had expected. Loretta was fully dressed and unpawed. And then Cragin caught the reason for Nilofal’s wrath: an opened jewel case, brimming with diamond pendants, strands of pearls, pigeon blood rubies, and darkly gleaming black opals.

  “If you don’t believe me, take your choice,” said the Swami. “I didn’t get your emeralds—haven’t I convinced you that anything I have is yours?”

  “But you did quarrel with Forest,” persisted Loretta. “Yesterday afternoon. My sister told me all about it.”

  The Swami’s expression changed at the mention of Loretta’s sister. That might explain Nilofal’s suspicions: mistaking Loretta for Irene. But Forest Barrett and the Swami could not have quarreled at the time Loretta stated: the gyp artist had spent most of that afternoon in conference with Cragin.

  “But he wasn’t here yesterday,” protested the Swami.

  “Anyhow,” interrupted Loretta, “my emeralds disappeared last night. And you had him murdered, so he couldn’t protect me! Oh—”

  “I’ll get them for you, somehow,” promised the Swami. “The spirits will tell me. They know.”

  Before Loretta could voice a protest, the turbaned spiritual advisor had her in his arms. He knew how to handle hysterical clients.

  “By God,” Cragin said to himself as he watched the Hindu deftly alternate murmuring endearments with kisses that cut off Loretta’s gasping protests, “He may be good, but he can’t get away with it.”

  Cragin, however, was wrong. The Swami maneuvered Loretta to a lounge.

  “And you’re sure you’ll get my emeralds?” she dreamily murmured. “They are family heirlooms, and I’d be awfully embarrassed at losing them…”

  The lights blinked out. A sigh in the darkness, a rustle of silk, and a gleam of white flesh… Her arms closed about a dark shape that blotted out all but the sound effects…

  Cragin, returning to Nilofal’s room, wondered whether the wily Hindu really had a hunch as to the theft of Loretta’s emeralds.

  “The dirty rat,” murmured Nilofal as Cragin rejoined her. “But I’m glad now I didn’t start a riot.”

  “In the meanwhile,” suggested Cragin, “he’s piling up a score against you.”

  “He only thinks,” sighed Nilofal. Her lips justified her claim…

  Cragin’s departure, however, was hastened by a trifle that sent chills racing through his veins. His key ring, falling from his pocket, tinkled to the floor. He switched on a light and found his keys. Adhering to one of them was a perceptible trace of soap—or it might be plastic wax that partially filled one of the grooves.

  Someone had taken an impression to make a duplicate key to his apartment!

  Cragin devised a plausible reason to break away from the vengeful beauty. He was now certain that Nilofal and the Swami, having observed his stealthy approach, had staged an act to pave the way for a raid on his rooms. Loretta’s presence had helped make it more convincing.

  When he reached the street, Loretta’s coupe was no longer there.

  “No wonder she was a push-over,” he wrathfully muttered. “And no wonder the Hindu was so sure he could get Loretta’s emeralds. Figuring out I turned the trick was simple. No telling what Irene might have spilled, wrangling with him!”

  He cursed wrathfully, jabbed the starter, and headed for his apartment.

  As Cragin strode down the thickly carpeted hall, he heard a woman cry out in dismay. The scream came from his apartment. Half a dozen long strides carried him around the angle. He kicked the door open. Swami Ramakrishna, trying to throttle Irene’s screams, and duck her clawing fingers, was having his hands full.

  “Break!” growled Cragin. He edged into the skirmish with a sizzling right that cleared Irene’s head and hit the Hindu like a baseball bat tearing the stitches out of the horsehide. The Swami pitched end over end into a corner, but took Irene with him. Though badly shaken, the Hindu regained his feet, and came up with a slender stiletto. Cragin flung himself aside, but felt the blade rake his ribs.

  He pivoted, snatching the armed wrist, and ploughed him with a sledgehammer smack that put the Swami in communion with the spirits. As the Hindu slumped to the carpet, Cragin turned toward Irene. She was picking herself up out of the corner, breathless, frightened, but relieved. But as she pulled her skirts down, she suddenly cried out, and clutched at her breast.

  “Did he knife you?” demanded Cragin, catching her by the arm.

  And then something tinkled about her ankles. An emerald pendant! It had slipped from its hiding place, and on down before she could stop it. Cragin landed on the jewels with a power dive. “How the hell did you get in?” he demanded, pocketing the loot.

  “I wadded up an envelope and jammed
it into the lock socket, last night,” she confessed. “So the latch wouldn’t engage.”

  And then the Swami showed signs of returning to consciousness. Cragin booted him to his feet.

  “Do you want to forget those emeralds, or do you want to take a long rap for breaking and entering?

  “You thought you were pretty slick getting a duplicate key, but your lady friend wasn’t quite psychic enough! And your trying to harpoon me with a stiletto—Hell! That makes it an attempt to commit murder. To say nothing of what Miss Fenwick already knows about you.”

  The emphasis on the stiletto changed the Swami’s color. Two witnesses would land the police on him like a pile driver. He headed for the door.

  As they saw him appear on the sidewalk, Cragin turned to Irene.

  “And now let’s get down to who killed Forest Barrett.”

  “Why—the Swami—haven’t you some proof?”

  Cragin smiled grimly. “You killed Barrett, and put me on the Swami’s trail to deflect suspicion from you by getting him on the pan.”

  Irene’s eyes widened, and her color receded.

  “Nothing to it,” he relentlessly accused. “You knew all about the emeralds. And the only way you could know was to have seen me take them. And to have seen Barrett stabbed. You were hiding behind the drapes, and you gave him the works.

  “The Swami pulled a stiletto on me. He’d have used a similar weapon on Barrett, instead of a heavy dagger that couldn’t quickly be jerked out of the wound. A man might, but you didn’t have time or strength. And Ramakrishna wouldn’t have been dumb enough to use a weapon of his own.

  “Finally, you told your sister that Barrett and the Swami had quarreled yesterday afternoon. You didn’t know that Barrett was up here at that time.”

  Irene sank into a chair.

  “Barrett and the Swami were quarreling just before the séance,” she said. “They agreed to have the spirits consent to the match provided the Swami got Loretta’s emeralds. Neither of them knew I was listening in. And when I knew that the Swami was double-crossing me, and thought of how Barrett had swindled me—Oh, call the police—do anything you want—I did it. I came up here to get Loretta’s emeralds. To use them against the Hindu.”