The Fatal Frails

CHAPTER III

Jules Tremaine pushed a stack of papers from a corner of his high-piled desk and settled himself upon it, a leg swinging negligently and the big body at ease. “Sit there,” he directed, and nodded at a chair that would have placed him between Johnny and the door. He paid no attention at all to Gloria Philips, who had seated herself unobtrusively in the farthest corner.

“I'm doin' fine right here,” Johnny returned equably from where he stood, just inside the door.

Dark, wide-spaced eyes beneath heavy lids examined Johnny carefully. The jet black hair had a thick wave in it, and the smooth, olive features tapered to a square jaw. This man must have broken a thousand hearts, Johnny decided, but he was no pretty-boy. Tremaine's manner, as well as the blunt-fingered, capable-looking hands, contributed to an overall impression of rugged competence.

“Now let's get-” Tremaine checked himself. “Who are you?”

“The name's Killain. Johnny.” He nodded at the redhead in her corner. “Shouldn't we stuff little sister's ears before we begin? I wanted her here to keep her off the phone.”

“You can talk.”

“Suit yourself,” Johnny shrugged. “I got something to sell, Tremaine. It takes a bankroll to buy. Dechant furnished the merchandise. You interested?”

Heavy-lidded eyes, beneath straight black brows, stared unwinkingly into Johnny's. “In the first place, I don't believe you.”

Johnny swept a hand in a leisurely semicircle around the disorder of the shabby office. “You don't look to me like you got enough firepower financially, what I see here,” he said critically. “I need a real money tree. If you can't weigh in heavy enough, it'd be real cozy if you'd steer me to whichever of the others figured to shower down the most. I wouldn't forget it.”

“The others?” Tremaine's tone was sharp.

“Sure. Max, maybe. Jack, or Harry. Madeleine, even. For the right steer I could make you a deal.”

“Send him to Stitt,” the redhead said rapidly in Italian from her corner. “With the trouble over the symbols-”

“Shut up!” Jules Tremaine's hard voice rapped tightly on the heels of hers, but he didn't turn to look at her. “He speaks French. Why not Italian?” The heavy-lidded eyes measured Johnny. “I think he knows nothing. He fishes in troubled waters.”

“Trouble's the word, chum,” Johnny said in his most reasonable tone. “Since we know there's goin' to be some, I'm in favor of makin' a dollar on the prospect. Whose side are you on? The people with the money, or Tremaine's?” He reached behind him for the doorknob at the other's silence. “The hell with it. I don't like doin' business with people who can't make up their mind. I'll go it alone.”

“Jules!” Gloria Philips exclaimed as Johnny opened the door.

“Shut up,” the big man repeated, but not as positively as before. Johnny closed the door from the other side and walked through the outer office. He was surprised that he hadn't been called back by the time the elevator he had summoned stopped at the eighteenth floor. Tremaine either had good nerves or was slow on the uptake. Not that it mattered-there was an easy way to copper the bet.

In the lobby he went straight to the phone booth. He found fourteen Stitts in the directory. One John, who could be Jack, and one Max. Johnny scribbled phone numbers and addresses on the back of a matchbook cover. On second thought, he went back to the directory and tried Stit, with one “t.” Only three, and no Jack, John or Max.

He referred to the directory for the third time, fished a dime from the change in his pocket and dialed the number of the Spandau Watch Co. He listened appreciatively to Gloria Philips' cool voice at the other end of the line. “'Bout time for your coffee break, isn't it, little sister?” he asked her in Italian.

He could hear the perceptible intake of her breath. “I'm sorry I'm late. We've been busy. I'll be right down.”

Nice to find someone with a normal quota of curiosity, Johnny thought. He strolled back to the bank of elevators to wait for her. He had a smile on his face for Gloria Philips when she stepped out into the lobby. She looked at him, a long, speculative look, and then without a word steered him to the coffee-shop door on the left and on through the cafeteria-style aisle.

En route to a corner table behind her, with their coffees on a tray, he noted that her suit-blue, today-enhanced her ripened curves commendably. Even in daylight, the rich auburn hair had a remarkable sheen.

“I can't understand why I feel you're not a fool,” she commented at the table as he unloaded the tray. Her glance ranged over him guardedly. “The way you blundered in upstairs was nothing short of idiotic, but-”

Her eyes at close range were a chameleonlike blue-gray, Johnny decided, and the tiny freckles even more attractive than he had remembered. “No sugar, thanks,” she said. She picked up her cup and sipped at it, her eyes still upon him above the rim. “You could be a fool, I suppose,” she remarked as she set the cup down. “But I think I like you, anyway.” She smiled at him.

Johnny felt his interest rising by the moment. When this girl smiled, the lights dimmed. “What's a looker like you doin' workin' for Tremaine?” he asked her bluntly.

The smile was as cool as the voice. “I could find you a thousand girls-” she glanced at the square-cut watch on her plump wrist-“between now and lunch time who'd love to work for Jules.”

“So he's a doll. You're not moonstruck. You reacted upstairs faster than he did.” He reached across the table to take her wrist in his hand for a better look at the watch, and small diamonds winked in the light. “About fifteen, eighteen hundred,” Johnny estimated. “If these go with the job, I take back what I said.” He released her wrist, although she had made no move to withdraw it. He must be getting old, he decided. He hadn't felt skin like that in years. “You think I should see Stitt?”

“I really don't know you well enough to advise you, Mr. Killain.” Her smile was brilliant.

“Save the candlepower, kid. This is business. An' the name's Johnny. As for not knowin' me, we could fix that. I'd promise to enjoy it.” He studied her a moment. “Why do you figure Dechant killed himself?”

“Don't you mean why did he kill himself just now?” she answered, and moved right on. “Don't underestimate Jules. You'll hear from him, when he's had time to think it over. He'll tell you to go to Madeleine. He hates her. He'd like to see her in trouble.”

“But you hate Stitt,” Johnny suggested. “You'd like to see him in trouble.”

The long-lashed eyelids lowered, then swept upward again in a dazzling display. “Claude told you about customs finding out about the symbols not being re-marked?” she asked.

“First I've heard of it,” Johnny said. “Outside of the crack you made upstairs.”

“It's well for my faith in you that you answered that way,” she continued. “Claude didn't know it himself, being just off the plane. That's why Ernest and I were there, to tell him.” A coral-tinted fingernail tapped idly on her coffee cup. “You're serious about having something to sell?”

“I've got it,” Johnny assured her. “Like to get on the bandwagon? You just aim me at the moneybelt. To nail it down for you a little, I spent some time in Italy some time back. Like Claude Dechant. I won't have any trouble sellin'. I just want the best price. Is Stitt the man?”

“Max doesn't respond to pressure,” she said slowly. This time Johnny thought her smile was rueful. “I speak from experience.”

Johnny lit two cigarettes, handed her one and sneaked a look at his matchbook cover. “Look, I can't sit still. Stitt will be at the warehouse, I suppose.”

“Usually.” Her tone was absent. She picked a shred of tobacco from a full lower lip, the blue-gray eyes still studying him. Abruptly she made up her mind. “Forget what I said about Max. Go after Jack. He'll be there, too, this time of day. Jack's the man with the money.”

“You're telling me this because you love me.”

The beautiful face was serene. “I'm telling you because, if you make it to the payoff window, I'd like to be in line for a share. And Jack has the money.” She made an impatient gesture at Johnny's careful inspection of her. “All right, I dislike Max Stitt. If it was just a question of getting him punched in the nose, I'd cheerfully let you go over there looking for him. If there's real money involved, though, Jack's the man with something to lose.” She smiled. “None of them has the right time for me. If you score, remember the source.”

“You can believe it, little sister.” He was watching her face. “You don't like Jack, either?”

“Jack's a fat slug,” she replied indifferently. “I could learn to like his money with no trouble at all.”

“That's my kind of jazz you're playin' now,” Johnny said approvingly. He leaned in closer over the table. “How about dinner tonight to set up the articles of war?” He eyed the golden haze of freckles on the white skin. “You freckled all over like that, kid?”

“Not all over, Johnny.” Her gaze was level and self-possessed. “I think I'd enjoy having dinner with you.”

“Fine. Pick you up here at five?”

“I'll be looking forward to it.” She stood up, pushing back her chair, smiled at him again and walked away. Johnny sat and watched her walk toward the elevator until she disappeared into it.

A lovely little playmate, he decided. Lovely. And dangerous.

Johnny alighted from the cab in front of the three-story brick building of the Empire Freight Forwarding Corporation. Waiting for the driver to make change, he noticed that the place had the indefinable air of decrepitude even the newest warehouses speedily acquire. He wondered if the redhead had felt it necessary to make a phone call to anyone announcing his imminent arrival. He'd soon know, and the knowledge among other things would set the tone for his dinner date with Miss Gloria Philips.

He strode up a narrow cement walk between ten-foot-high, heavy-duty wire fences laced at the top with projecting strands of ugly-looking barbed wire. Ignoring the door marked office, he moved forty feet down the building to an unmarked one.

The high whine of a motor assailed Johnny's ears at his entrance. A man in a woolen shirt, with a baling hook thrust through his belt, looked down at him inquiringly from the cab of a rubber-tired fork-lift truck stacking crates against a wall. Johnny could see, stenciled on the crates in bold black, the letters CB A1448 on 10, and directly beneath it via Akama Maru, Yokohama, Japan. In the background a series of crashes and bangs added to the dissonant symphony of noise. The volume of sound was unbelievable.

“I'm lookin' for Max.” Johnny had to yell it twice, and even thought the man on the truck must be reading his lips.

“Office, I think,” the man shouted down above the bedlam, and reached for a lever to elevate the crate checked on the lift at Johnny's entrance.

Johnny raised an arm to stay him. “Jack around?”

“Mr. Arends? He was in earlier,” the man roared down powerfully. “If the blue Caddie's still in the parkin' lot, he's around somewheres.”

“Thanks,” Johnny mouthed, not expecting to be heard. He backed to the door. On the floor a crate with three broken slats was marked Amsterdam, Netherlands, and against the other wall a neat pile of heavy-looking boxes were labeled Oberon, Suisse. It figured, Johnny thought as he closed the door. Dechant was an importer. Somebody had to get the stuff over here for him.

The parking lot disclosed the tail fins of a blue Cadillac projecting six feet beyond everything else. Johnny looked at it on his way to the door marked office. He hadn't wanted to ask Gloria Philips a direct question. There were a lot of “Jacks” in the world, perhaps several in this building, but a Jack Arends with a big blue Cadillac looked promising.

Inside, Johnny looked from a mousy receptionist behind a low wooden railing to a man half hidden by an old-fashioned roll-top desk. “I'd like to see Max Stitt, miss,” he told the girl.

“It may take a few moments,” she said pleasantly. “I'll see if I can locate him for you.” She flipped a switch on the intercom on her desk. She tried a station, and another, and another. As her voice continued patiently to page Max Stitt the man behind the desk first raised his head, then pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. He waddled toward Johnny, hand extended. “Never like to keep a potential customer waiting,” he said jovially. “Anything I can do for you until Helen finds Max? I'm Jack Arends,” he added as an afterthought. “Max lets me sign a few papers around here.” He chuckled deeply.

Arends was short and almost grossly fat. He wasn't young, but the overlarge head surmounting the squat body was capped with surprisingly youthful dark hair. His nose and mouth would have been grotesque on a face less strong, Johnny felt. The lips were unattractively thick, but creased in a genial grin. Above the blob of a body his huge head suggested a nervous lion.

“Killain,” Johnny said, taking the hand briefly. “Dechant sent me over.”

Jack Arends' geniality vanished as though it had never been. “Where you gettin' your messages from these days?” he growled.

“Before he did the samurai bit,” Johnny explained. “He said if anything happened I should look up Stitt.”

“Yeah?” The fat man pulled at a pendulous lower lip. “Why?” His shrewd little eyes, embedded in puffy rolls of fat, were warily apprehensive.

“I'll tell that to Stitt. It's not about the symbol markings.”

Jack Arends appeared to swell internally. “Who the hell are you? Does every sonofabitch in this town know my business?” He rushed right on without waiting for a reply. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Whatever-your-name-is, I'll bust-” He whirled on short legs at the sound of a closing door to confront an alert-looking, ramrod-straight man walking toward them. “Max!” Jack Arends' voice soared nearly to a screech. “Did you have some kind of a deal going with Dechant? Just because you grew up in the same town with that thief-”

“What the hell are you yapping about, Jack?” A thinly veiled note of contempt edged Max Stitt's hard tone. He was tall and solidly lean, with a pale face and a jutting hawk's nose beneath a pepper-and-salt crewcut. Johnny judged him to be about forty-five. His eyes were almost completely colorless, making them the coldest-looking Johnny had ever seen. Stitt was wearing a short leather jacket with a pushed-back, fleece-lined hood, heavy stagged-top trousers and bronze-toecapped boots.

The fat man waved his hands wildly in the air. “Don't you get gay with me, Max. This guy comes looking for you because Dechant sent him. It's not about the symbol markings, he says. How in the goddam hell does he know about the symbol markings? Are we running ads in the papers? And what were you and Dechant-”

“Will you dry up and blow away, Arends?” Max Stitt cut in. “You make me sick.”

“I make you sick!” The fat man's voice rose shrilly. “Don't you talk like that to me! You may run this business, but I own it, and don't you forget it!”

“Maybe you'd like to try running it yourself?” Stitt's cold eyes shifted from the momentarily silenced Arends to Johnny. “What's your story?”

The question revived Arends. “I already told you his story!” In his anger the fat man bounced up and down on his toes. “If you think I'm holding still for-”

“Shut your mouth, Jack,” Max Stitt said forcefully. “Let's go inside.” He turned and walked to a door in the rear of the office. Johnny followed promptly. He noticed that Jack Arends was more hesitant, although the fat man was still sputtering.

The room beyond the door was small and cold and boxlike, illuminated by a single overhead bulb. The floor was springily latticed for drainage, and higher than the office level they'd just left. It was a storage room, not meat-icebox-cold, but chilly enough.

“Throw that bar over on the door,” Stitt said to Arends as the fat man stepped inside.

“Now look, Max-” Arends began uneasily, but followed instructions. The tall man's strange eyes brushed Arends off as something inconsequential and returned to Johnny. Stitt slid easily from the leather jacket, reached in his hip pocket for a heavy pair of gloves and jerked them on. His movements were briskly efficient.

“Arends is getting as fat in the head as he is in the ass,” he said tonelessly to Johnny. “Claude Dechant never sent you anywhere. Jack doesn't know blackmail when he sees it any more. I'm not going to ask you anything and have you lie to me, friend. In about eight minutes you'll tell me what you know about Claude Dechant, mismarked symbols and anything else I ask you.” He moved away from the wall, and in the harsh glare of the light Johnny appraised the shoulders that were broader than he would have expected and the attitude that was something more than cold-bloodedly professional. Max Stitt looked and sounded like a man who planned to enjoy himself.

“Let-let me out of here!” Jack Arends bleated from behind Johnny. Neither Stitt nor Johnny looked at him. Johnny inched away from the door at his back, still not sure. Stitt's reaction, as well as the man himself, had surprised him.

Stitt made up his mind for him in a hurry. The tall man charged, hopped into the air from the springy flooring like a lumberjack from a birling log and slashed a heavy boot at Johnny's groin. Instinctively Johnny avoided the boot, but not the gloved left hand that thudded solidly into his side. Cat-quick, Max Stitt's right hand ripped at Johnny's jacket and sport shirt, and buttons flew in all directions. The tall man laughed derisively.

“You'll eat those,” Johnny promised him grimly, and waded in. A right hand bruised his forehead, a left stung the back of his neck in a vicious rabbit punch, another left knocked him a step off stride. Max Stitt's hands were lightning fast. In close finally, Johnny barely diverted a jerked-up knee outside his own thigh as he smashed with his left hand at the lithe, hard body. He moved it backward, but the left caught him again, on the bridge of the nose. He grunted, and his eyes watered. The right stung his cheekbone.

Johnny lowered his head angrily and bulled toward the toe-dancing Stitt, crowding the tall man cornerward although a ripping punch savaged his right ear. “You'll- carry boot marks-for a month-when I'm finished with you,” Stitt panted as he drove both hands to the body. As though to punctuate the remark, a bronze-capped boot crashed against Johnny's right shin.

Red spots swirled before Johnny's eyes. Heedless of everything, he rushed Stitt to the wall. Furiously he closed down his straining hands on the muscular figure, lifted it and slammed it heavily into the wall three times without releasing his grip. The third time Stitt came off the wall limply, head lolling. Johnny relaxed his hold, and Stitt, by sheer strength, raised himself in Johnny's arms and drove his clasped hands down upon the back of Johnny's neck. Anything less than that twenty-and-a-half inch expanse might not have weathered it. Ragingly, Johnny heaved Stitt aloft and slammed him floorward. He dropped on him heavily and pinned the still struggling man with his weight.

“Now, damn you-” Johnny looked over his shoulder to locate the babbling sounds coming from Jack Arends. “Pick up-those buttons,” he ordered. “All of 'em.” He had to repeat it between harsh breaths before he got through to the white-faced fat man, who scrambled awkwardly over the floor in compliance. “Dump 'em in his mouth when I open it,” Johnny commanded, and pulled on Stitt's nostrils ferociously, until his mouth opened. “Now chew, you bastard,” Johnny told him as Jack Arends backed away, saucer-eyed. “So far I left your face alone, but if you don't chew I'll break your jaw in seventeen places.”

The cold eyes stared up at him an instant, and then Max Stitt chewed. The crunch of the bone buttons was the only sound in the room, except for the heavy breathing. All the fight had finally drained from the man on the floor. Johnny raised his own hands cautiously to his face. The heavy gloves had felt like clubs. His skin neither cut nor bruised easily, but Johnny knew that he bore marks.

He got abruptly to his feet, and Jack Arends scuttled away in alarm. Johnny paid no attention to him. He picked up Stitt's leather jacket and slipped into it. It was far too small in the shoulders, but it covered the torn shirt and missing buttons. Behind him, Max Stitt crawled to a corner, gagging.

His hand on the slung-over bar on the door of the storage room, Johnny looked back at Jack Arends. “The name's Killain. I'm at the Duarte. You got that? I got something to sell. Bring cash when you come.”

The fat man was staring, awe-stricken, at Stitt in the corner. “He'll kill you,” he said nearly in a whisper. “He'll kill you for this.”

Johnny threw over the bar and walked out without a backward glance.

Gus Poulles, Johnny's counterpart on the day shift, handed him two telephones chits when he walked into the hotel. Gus studied Johnny's face. Johnny had stopped off for hurried repairs en route, but he had a lumped-up cheekbone, a scratched ear and a scraped forehead. “What's the other guy look like?” Gus wanted to know. He was a pale-faced, black-haired Greek, whose worldly-wise expression perfectly reflected his bored attitude. He tapped the top chit in Johnny's hand. “If this one looks like the sounds, I'm available for a spare slice off the loaf.”

“If it's who I think it is, I haven't dulled my own knife yet,” Johnny grunted. The top chit invited him to call G. Philips at the Spandau number. “Yeah. I'm not plannin' on makin' it a long campaign, though.” The second chit suggested that he call J. Tremaine, and the number listed was not the Spandau number. Johnny tossed the bits of paper thoughtfully on his palm. “Thanks, Gus,” he said, and headed for the lobby phone booth.

He called Gloria's boss first. “Jules Tremaine,” he said to the high-pitched voice he knew at once was not the redhead's.

“Mr. Tremaine will return your call immediately, sir. Your number, please, Mr.-” the voice inquired rapidly.

“Killain,” Johnny said after a second, and supplied the booth phone number. He waited, puzzled. What kind of a gag was this? He sat there for five minutes, and was just about to dial the Spandau number when the phone rang. He grabbed the receiver. “Yeah?”

“Killain? That matter you mentioned at the office. Why don't you go to see Madeleine Winters?”

“I don't know her address,” Johnny replied truthfully. Score one for the redhead, he thought. She called this one right on the nose.

“2-0-4 East 66th. You knew that she's the widow of Dechant's former partner, whose sudden death two years ago was extensively investigated?”

“I know she's still walkin' around,” Johnny answered.

“Nothing could be proven. She's a clever, ruthless woman.”

“Am I supposed to be pullin' chestnuts out of the fire for you because you don't like her?” Johnny asked in simulated doubt. “'Course, if you tell me she's got no inexpensive sins-”

“There is nothing about Madeleine Winters that is inexpensive,” Jules Tremaine said positively. “Ah-Killain. I'd like to talk to you. Privately. Not at the hotel. The attention you've drawn to yourself, you've probably got more people watching you than the Surete has agents.”

“You name it,” Johnny suggested.

“My place, I guess,” Tremaine said after a second. “Tonight. Latish, though. About midnight?”

“Suits me,” Johnny agreed. “I'm a night bird. Where's your roost?”

“At the unfashionable Hotel Alden,” Tremaine said drily.

“I'll see you,” Johnny told him, and hung up. He dialed the Spandau number as quickly as he could get a dime out. There was something he wanted to know. “Your boss around, little sister?”

“Johnny? He just rushed out of here when his answering service called him. I thought it might be you he was calling back.”

Johnny ignored the implied question. “He doesn't trust his little secretary?”

“He trusts Jules Tremaine.” Her tone changed. “What happened over at Empire?”

“If you know somethin' happened, you should know what it was,” Johnny pointed out.

“I only caught snatches. Jack called, nearly in hysterics. I heard your name.”

“Arends hysterics easy. Where'd you learn French and Italian?”

“I went to school in Switzerland. You learned French in the South, didn't you? I could hear that soft Provencal accent.”

“Marseilles.”

“I thought so. Mine is the accent du nord. Jules' is Parisien. Although his English is Britishy. Did you know he speaks seven languages?” Her tone changed again. “Stop distracting me. What happened?”

“You could call Max Stitt,” Johnny suggested.

“I'm not speaking to Max Stitt.”

“Then it wouldn't break you all up to hear that he ran into a little hard luck?”

“The only thing that would break me all up is that I wasn't there to see it.” Gloria Philips made no effort to disguise the malice in her tone, or the impatience. “What happened?”

“Well, he come waltzin' out of the chute with his front hoofs in the air before I got to say a word. At his age he should be a little more careful of the matches he makes for himself.”

“Max Stitt has never had to be careful. He has a reputation for hospitalizing people.”

“What's he so sudden about?”

“He enjoys it,” the girl said flatly. “He has an appetite for violence. I can't believe you beat him. Everyone's afraid of him.”

“Until he run into the hard luck he was way ahead on the score card. He can go.”

“It must have been quite a load of hard luck. Madeleine called me twenty minutes after Jack called Jules, which means that he'd called her, too. She wants to meet you.”

“She a buddy of yours?” Johnny asked cautiously.

Gloria Philips' laugh was brittle. “She doesn't even know I'm alive, until she wants something. Right now she wants to meet you. Her Majesty has commanded. I'm to arrange it.”

“What kind of a string's she got on you?”

“She owns stock in Spandau.”

“How's she think you're goin' to be able to do it?”

“My girlish charm. She knows I met you at the hotel when we found Claude.” She does, does she, Johnny thought. What a nice, tight little community of interests this was turning out to be. “I thought the best way to handle it would be to have her meet us when you pick me up for dinner,” Gloria continued. “If you don't mind. We can stop off for a drink at her place. She can afford it better than you can.”

“Suits me, if it does you,” Johnny said with pretended indifference. “She'll meet us at your place?”

“Not in the office. She won't come within a mile of Jules, if she can help it. He hates her, and she's deathly afraid of him, although she won't admit it. I'll see you at five?”

“You will, little sister. You will indeed.” Johnny replaced the receiver pensively.

The slowly widening ripples from the stone cast into the pool, he thought. The slowly widening ripples…

He left the phone booth and hurried upstairs to change.