Richard Deming - Tweak the Devil’s Nose

“You sending me home?” she asked as we pulled away.

“Yeah.”

She looked once through the taxi’s rear window, then, seeming to regain composure, leaned her head against my shoulder.

“Don’t send me home,” she said.

“It’s nearly midnight.”

“Let’s at least ride for a while.”

I shrugged, then said to the driver, “Keep going and swing through Midland Park. And don’t rush.”

We both remained silent as the cab rolled along Park Lane. What she was thinking about, I don’t know, but I was thinking I had wasted an evening. Isobel Jones gradually was taking form in my mind as a woman who grabbed at every passing man she saw. I was relatively certain she had been having some kind of an affair with Willard Knight, for she did not impress me as the type of woman who would go to the defense of a man merely because he was her husband’s partner. And it also seemed certain the character we had just left at the Sheridan was, or had been a man in her life. Possibly, judging from her agitation at seeing him, one she was trying to ditch.

To clinch it, she was making a mild pass at me. Women don’t pass at men with faces like mine unless they are in the habit of instinctively making passes at every man.

We crossed Mason Avenue and moved slowly along the sweepingly curved drives of the park. It was a moonless night, but brilliant starlight barely prevented it from being pitch black.

“Put your arm around me,” she demanded.

I put my arm around her.

She turned up her face and closed her eyes. Her lips pursed expectantly, and I grinned down at her until she finally popped her eyes open. She looked cross when she saw my grin.

“Kiss me,” she said sharply.

I gave her a short, careless kiss, then pushed her erect and removed my arm. “Look me up between murders.”

She watched me uncertainly, chewing her lower lip. “Take me home,” she decided suddenly.

The cabdriver half turned in his seat. “Car without lights following.”

Craning to peer through the rear window, I saw it about a half block back. It kept the same distance while I watched it for two more blocks.

“Want me to lose him?” our driver asked.

“No. Take the lady home.”

The rest of the trip we made in silence. Isobel periodically glanced through the rear window at our shadow, her face nervous and her brow puckered thoughtfully.

As we neared her home, she asked the driver to let her out at the corner.

Getting out first, I held the door for her. Our tail, suddenly switching on his lights, rolled past as though he had no interest in our doings. It was a taxicab.

“That must be your friend, George,” I said to Isobel. “What’s on his mind?”

She shook her head. “I’ve no idea.”

She watched the taxi’s taillight until it disappeared around the next corner, then abruptly said good-bye and nearly ran toward her house. I got in the front seat with the driver and told him the address of my flat.

As we turned into Grand Avenue, the cabdriver said, “Our friend’s with us again.”

“Let him enjoy himself.”

I didn’t even bother to look around. When we reached my flat, the trailing taxi pulled in right behind us, his bumper nearly against ours. As I paid off my driver, I watched from the side of my eyes and saw George Smith step from the other cab. My driver pulled away and I waited for George to make a move. But when he merely glowered from under shaggy brows, I grinned at him and started up the walk toward the apartment-house door.

George caught up just as I reached it. I held the door for him to follow me into the lobby, then faced him, waiting.

His angry eyes burned up and down my frame as though he were calculating his chances. They halted at my jawline, and suddenly he swung.

My knees bent just enough so that his fist skimmed off my hat. A short left jab into his exposed ribs swooshed the air out of him. Then I snapped erect, crashed a right hook to his jaw, and he spun like a top. The second time around he pitched forward and I caught him in my arms. I lowered him gently to a seated position with his back against the wall.

When he returned to this world, I was seated on the lowest steps puffing a cigar. He wagged his head a few times, felt his jaw and focused his eyes at me with difficulty.

“Sleep well?” I asked.

He eyed me with distaste. “I ought to knock your block off.”

I blew smoke at him. “You can keep trying. But you’ll only end up punchy. What’s your grudge?”

Struggling to his feet, he groped for the outer door handle to hold himself up. “Stay away from Isobel,” he said.

“Why?”

He leaned toward me, nearly lost his balance and recovered. “Because I’ll beat your brains out if you go near her again.” His eyes burned with an emotion I suddenly realized was jealousy.

“Why, you’re in love with her, aren’t you?” I asked softly.

“That’s some more of your business,” he snarled, and pushing through the door, was gone.

While I am not a believer in astrology, I have come to the conclusion certain days are more auspicious for professional activity than other days. Wednesday was one of my inauspicious days, when I might as well have stayed in bed.

I did stay in bed till nearly noon, as a matter of fact, but since I usually rise late, there was nothing in this to indicate the day was going to be a complete bust. In a way I feel justified in perennially spending mornings in bed, incidentally, for I often work while others are sleeping. For some reason I have never quite been able to put my finger on, I always find myself doing leg work at midnight when I get on a case.

Any cops working on the same case knock off at five, go home and forget about it until the next morning, when they start off bright and early again. But not night-owl Moon. I have to stay up half the night, with the result it is noon before I can get started again.

When I had showered, shaved and put away some eggs and coffee, I phoned Warren Day at Headquarters.

“I assume you haven’t caught up with Barney Seldon,” I said, “or you’d have been after me to come down and swear out a complaint.”

“Apparently he scooted back across the river before his goon jumped you,” he growled. “I doubt that he’ll come back as long as we hold the goon, but you’d better come down and sign the complaint anyway.”

“How about extradition?”

The inspector snorted. “On an assault charge? With the lawyers he’s got? We’d get hold of him about Christmas.”

“Where’s the goon?” I asked.

“City Hospital. His name’s Percival Sweet, incidentally.”

“It’s what?” I asked incredulously.

“Percival Sweet. And it’s no phony. He had an Illinois permit to carry a gun on him.”

I told him I would be down later to swear out complaints against Barney Seldon and Percival Sweet, and hung up.

The day started to become inauspicious when I arrived at City Hospital. Immediately I got myself wound up to the neck in red tape.

It started when the middle-aged woman in the registrar’s office told me Percival Sweet was in ward sixteen. Then, as I started to walk away, she called after me, “But I don’t think you can see him.”

Coming back, I looked at the sign on the wall over her head, which stated visiting hours were one to two and seven to eight, checked my watch against the wall clock, noting both read two minutes after one, and asked, “Why?”

“Ward sixteen is the prison ward. You have to have permission.”

“From whom?”

She looked uncertain. “Maybe you better see the chief nurse,” she suggested. “Unless you’ve got some kind of legal paper.”