The Bughouse Affair

Quincannon holstered his revolver as he hauled Dodger Brown toward the door. On the way he used his free hand to doff his derby, which had miraculously managed to remain in place, at the fat man.

“Apologies for the interruption, Senator,” he said. “Carry on as you were.”

The last sound he heard before shutting the door behind himself and the Dodger was a mournful quacking cry like that of a ruptured duck.

Eyes followed the two of them back down the hallway, two of the brightest belonging to Lettie Carew, who had climbed puffing to the top of the stairs. When Quincannon assured her in passing that there would no more commotion, she said, “Well, at least there wasn’t any shooting,” sighed heavily, and headed back down to her lair.

In Ming Toy’s room, Quincannon dumped Dodger Brown on the mussed bed and used the handcuffs he carried to circle both thin wrists. The little housebreaker offered no resistance; his vulpine features were now arranged in an expression of painful self-recrimination.

“It’s my own fault,” he said in tones almost as mournful as the state senator’s. “After you near nabbed me the other night, I knew I should’ve staightaway hopped a rattler in the Oakland yards. Gone on the lammas instead of comin’ over here.”

“Aye, and let it be a lesson to you.” Quincannon grinned and added sagely, “The best-laid plans aren’t always the best-planned lays.”

“Murder? Me?” Dodger Brown looked and sounded appalled at the notion. He squirmed on the rumpled bed, his manacled hands clutched together behind his scrawny back. “I never killed nobody in my life. Never! It wasn’t me who broke into the Costain joint and bumped him off. I was here last night, all night-I never left for a minute. Ask Ming Toy, she’ll tell you.”

“I already asked her.”

“Well, then? You know I done the other burglaries, okay, I admit it. But no more after you almost nabbed me at the banker’s. I ain’t been near the Costain place, not even to tab it up.”

“What make of pistol do you carry these days, Dodger?”

“None. I give that up-too dangerous, even unloaded like I always carried mine. Look in my clothes over there, you won’t even find a Barlow knife.”

“We both know that’s because Lettie Carew doesn’t allow customers to bring their weapons upstairs,” Quincannon said. “Will I find one downstairs in the lockbox with your name on it?”

The little burglar opened his mouth to lie again, changed his mind, and sighed instead. “Pocket pistol. Twenty-five caliber. But it’s empty and you won’t find any cartridges for it. I ain’t loaded it once since I bought it and that’s the plain truth.”

“I thought your preference was a larger-caliber weapon. A Forehand and Wadsworth thirty-eight, for instance.”

“Is that what plugged the lawyer? Well, I never owned a piece like that. Never. You can’t put the frame on me for no killing.”

“Clara Wilds,” Quincannon said.

“Huh?” Dodger Brown blinked at the sudden shift of subjects. “What about Clara?”

“Still keeping company with her?”

“No. Not anymore. We busted up awhile back.”

“Why?”

“She was two-timing me.”

“While you remained faithful except for your regular parlor house visits. Who was her new lover?”

“Some no-account named Pope.”

“Her fenceman, Victor Pope?”

“Yeah. How’d you know that?”

“When did you see Clara last?”

“Four, five months ago. Why all these questions about her?”

“She’s dead. Murdered.”

The Dodger’s eyes bulged. “Clara? Bumped off? When? Where?”

“In her rooms yesterday afternoon.”

“Who done it?”

Quincannon cocked an eyebrow.

“Say! You ain’t tryin’ to make out it was me?” Outrage replaced the scruff’s real or feigned shock. The handcuffs rattled again noisily. “I told you, I never carried a loaded weapon and I never shot nobody-”

“Clara wasn’t shot.”

“Then how-?”

“Stabbed with her own hatpin. And her rooms ransacked afterward.”

“Hatpin. Jesus.”

“You knew about her new dodge, I’ll wager.”

“Doin’ the dip? Yeah, she learned the game from old Sal Tatum. She must’ve made a big score and some bastard found out about it and was after the swag.”

Quincannon cocked his eyebrow again.

“Not me! I got plenty from my own scores. Listen, you got to believe me, I never-”

“Scoot around and lie facedown on the bed.”

“… What?”

“You heard me.”

Dodger Brown stared at him for three or four seconds, licked his lips, then twisted and flung himself flat across the bed. He squawked and began struggling when Quincannon caught hold of the collar of his unbuttoned long johns and dragged the top down over his shoulders. “Hey! What’s the idea? What you gonna do?”

“Nothing, if you keep quiet and hold still.”

No gouge or scratch marks had been visible on the yegg’s face and neck; there were none on the upper back, shoulders, or upper arms. Quincannon rolled him over and pulled up first one sleeve, then the other. More unbroken skin. The Dodger made another squawking protest when Quincannon yanked the drawers down over his scrawny flanks long enough to determine that his belly and thighs were likewise free of injury.

The little housebreaker called him several colorful names, which Quincannon chose to ignore. He’d been feeling rather pleased with himself when he snapped the cuffs on Dodger Brown, for it had seemed then that one if not two cases of theft and foul play were nearing their conclusion. Now his mood had soured somewhat. Part of the burglary investigation for Great Western Insurance had been satisfactorily resolved, but as for the rest of it …

Dodger Brown was clearly not guilty of either his former paramour’s murder nor Costain’s. So who the devil was? Clara Wilds’s new paramour or one of her victims? A copycat burglar who had adopted the Dodger’s modus operandi? Two separate cases, or were they somehow intertwined? Two murderers-or one?

Hell and damn! What had seemed a simple and easily resolved matter had turned out to be anything but. It was annoying and frustrating enough, though he hated to admit it, to tie the brain of even the most wily detective into temporary knots.

24

SABINA

Sabina seemed to be spending much of her time lately prowling about residential carriageways. Just one of the many exciting and glamorous aspects of detective work. Another being afternoon tea with a candidate for a mental institution.

The carriageway that bisected the block behind the Costain home was completely deserted. This genteel South Park neighborhood had seemed almost slumbrous as she made her way back to it from the tea shop. None of the few people abroad had paid any attention to her, and no one had been about when she entered the carriageway. Trees and shrubbery flanked the passage, making it unlikely that prying eyes such as those of Clara