Ричард Деминг - The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

“Is your real name Eaton or Horton?” Ross asked.

“Horton. What do you want?”

“Just some conversation. You walked out of my club just before my bookkeeper was gunned down last night. You either did it yourself or saw it done. I dropped by to find out which.”

Horton gazed at the gambler expressionlessly for a long time before saying, “You guys didn’t say anything to the cops about my being at the club, did you?”

“What makes you sure of that?”

“The boss checked up. On you, I mean, not with the cops. You wouldn’t spill to the cops because you like to wash your own laundry.”

Ross gave him a bright smile. “Since you know how I operate, we can save a lot of explanation. I imagine you deny gunning Stoneman yourself.”

The sunburned man’s lips formed a cynical grin. “You imagine right, mister. Isn’t that a sort of dumb question?”

“Because you d give the same answer even if you had killed him? I don’t think so. As I said before, either you killed him or saw it done. You walked out too closely ahead of the shooting to be more than yards from the entrance when it happened. Since you claim you didn’t kill the man, you must have seen who did. All you have to do to convince me you’re innocent is give me a description of the real killer.”

The bodyguard snorted. “I don’t know a thing, mister. I was gone before the shooting started.”

Ross shook his head. “I don’t think you understand,” he said patiently. “You had to see the shooting if you didn’t do it yourself. If you can’t describe the killer, I’ll have to assume you’re it. I don’t think you’d like that.”

Horton’s face abruptly lost all expression. “Is that a threat?”

“Of course,” Ross said easily. “Were you people under the impression you could walk into town and start bumping off my employees without risking a hearse ride back to Chicago?”

After staring at Ross in astonishment, the bodyguard emitted a deliberately humorless laugh. “Who you think you’re talking to, buster? We know all about you. You’re an independent. You’ve got no backing from Bix Lawson, and Bix wouldn’t lift a hand to help you out of a jam. Matter of fact, I think he’d be pleased to see you go down. You better scram out of here before I get mad. And don’t come back.”

He started to pull the door open as Ross punched out his cigarette and came to his feet. With a resigned expression on his face, Sam Black folded hands in his lap and leaned back comfortably.

Walking over to the door, Ross pushed it shut again with one hand and casually gave Horton a backhand slap with the other.

With a grunt of anger the bodyguard lashed out with a left hook. Easily the gambler deflected it with his right palm, whooshed the air from the man by sinking his left into his stomach, then grabbed him by the hair and jerked his head downward at the same time he brought up a knee. When the gambler flung him back to smash against the wall, blood spurted from both Horton’s nostrils.

Without giving the man time to recover, Ross grabbed his necktie with one hand, put the other behind his head and hurled him halfway across the room to crash headfirst into an easy chair. When Horton fumbled at his armpit and groggily tried to scramble back to his feet, Ross’s open palm caught him full across the mouth, knocking him back to a seated position. The man made no further attempt to reach for a gun.

Fastidiously the gambler wiped his bloodied palm on the bodyguard’s shoulder. “Now how about that description?”

Horton glared up at him with hate, his jaws clenched. Unemotionally the gambler slapped him twice more, full swings which jolted the sunburned man’s head first one way and then the other, spattering droplets of blood in either direction.

Ross waited inquiringly for a moment, when the man still showed no inclination to speak, cocked his right fist and reached for a handhold in his hair.

“Hold it,” the bodyguard said thickly. “It was a woman.”

Ross let his hands drop to his sides. “Know her?”

Horton shook his head, his expression enraged but wary. Ross waited while he pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and sopped up some of the blood flowing from his nose.

“It was dark out and I only glanced at her once,” Horton mumbled through the handkerchief. “I don’t even remember if she was a blonde or brunette. She was maybe in her late twenties, not bad looking, but I couldn’t give any more description than that if you beat me all night. She was double-parked in a blue sedan. A Ford, I think, though maybe not. All these new cars look alike to me. My car was at the curb right behind her. I got in, waited for her to move so I could drive out, and then this guy came out of the club. She leaned over to the right-hand window, let him have it and drove away. I scrammed after her.”

“Catch the license?”

The man shook his head. “I didn’t want any part of it.”

“Now,” Ross said, “we come to the jackpot question. What were you doing at the club last night?”

“Just looking for a good time.”

Ross shook his head. “You were hunting for someone. Who?”

Horton looked up at him and Ross let his china-blue eyes grow opaque.

The bodyguard estimated his chance of getting away with sticking to the story that he had merely been out for a good time, decided he didn’t have any.

“Benny Stoneman,” he said sullenly.

“Oh? Why?”

“Don’t you read the papers? The boss is in line for an income-tax rap. Stoneman used to be his bookkeeper. Big John wanted me to talk to him to make sure he said the right things if he was ever called to testify. He didn’t want to look him up personally, because if the Feds ever got wind of a contact between him and Benny, they’d probably yammer about coercion. You know how it is.”

“No, I don’t,” Ross said. “I pay my income tax. So why didn’t you just ask for Benny?”

“Because if the Feds ever checked to see it he’d been got to, it would look bad if they turned up that somebody from the organization had been inquiring around for him. Big John told me to make it look like an accidental meeting.”

After consideration Ross decided the story was logical. Though Horton hadn’t mentioned it, obviously a death threat would have accompanied the instructions to the bookkeeper to “say the right things,” and just as obviously Big John Quinnel wouldn’t want anyone other than Stoneman to know there had been a contact.

“I guess that’s all for the moment,” the gambler decided. “If I think of any more questions, I’ll be back.”

As it was now near the dinner hour, Ross dropped Sam Black off at the club to attend to business, and made his next call alone.

Seven thirty-four East Stoyle was a neat one-story frame cottage in a middle-class residential district. A woman of about twenty-eight came to the door.

She was a brunette, dark and torrid-looking in a skin-tight black dress which no one could have guessed was supposed to signify mourning, for it outlined every curve of her finely-developed body. A rather full lower lip, an attractive but slightly flat nose and dark eyes which seemed to slant a trifle upward gave her a slight oriental flavor.

Ross was startled when he saw her, but it didn’t show in his face. Now he knew why the woman he had seen with Quinnel had looked vaguely familiar. Benny Stoneman had once showed him his wife’s picture.

“Mrs. Stoneman?” Ross asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m Clancy Ross.”

“Oh,” she said. “Come in.”

She led him into a small but well-furnished front room and asked him to sit. After a standard expression of sympathy from Ross and an equally standard expression of thanks from the woman, she examined him with bright interest.