Beagle Scented Murder

3

A car with red headlights came grinding up the hill, stopped at the curb in front of Joe Peel. He groaned, flipped away his cigarette and started downhill. But he was too late. A uniformed cop sprang out of the police car.

“Here, you!”

Joe Peel stopped. “What’s the trouble?”

“Put up your hands!”

“Now, wait a minute, pal…” Joe began.

The cop whipped out his gun and thrust it at Joe Peel. “Up, I said!”

Joe’s hands shot up. Then the second policeman came out of the police car. “Joe Peel!” he exclaimed.

“Rafferty!”

The first policemen lowered his revolver. “Know him?”

Rafferty showed his teeth in a wicked grin. “I’ll say I do. Remember the Miles Sackheim case?”

“Can’t say I do.”

“It was a couple of years ago. Well, Joe here, was mixed up in it…”

“Don’t let Otis Beagle hear you say that,” Joe Peel said.

Rafferty grunted. “That fat four-flusher. Some day I’ll catch him…” He brightened again. “Maybe this is it; what’re you doing here, Peel?”

“Minding my own business…”

“Don’t gimme that. We got a call from the station…”

“Who turned it in?”

“They didn’t say. But the report was you been loitering around here for the last hour…”

“Half hour.”

“Don’t quibble. What’re you doing here?”

“I was just going home.”

Rafferty caught Peel’s arm in a savage grip. “Do you want to spend the night in the bullpen?”

“Try it and see what’ll happen to you.”

The second policeman put away his revolver and brought out a blackjack. “Okay, Mike?”

Mike Rafferty hesitated, then shook his head. “No… not this time. He works for Otis Beagle.”

“The shamus?”

Rafferty nodded. “Beagle knows a few people. He’s crooked as all hell, but we haven’t been able to pin it on him. Not for keeps.”

“And you never will,” Peel said. Under his breath he added, “Until I put the finger on Otis.” Aloud, “Pleasant evening, isn’t it?”

Rafferty swore. “It was. But you’re not going to hang around here; I can assure you of that.”

“What would I want to hang around here for?” Joe Peel sniffed. “Go knock off some suckers making left turns.” He turned and began walking off.

The two policemen said some things and got back into their car. They made a U turn and followed Peel in low gear, until he turned the comer at the bottom of the street.

To be on the safe side, Joe Peel walked to Cahuenga, three blocks away, then circled back, around blocks, to the Lehigh Apartments. He lost a half hour and had no way of knowing whether Wilbur Jolliffe was still in the building.

He hesitated outside the apartment house, then finally entered. The gloomy lobby had once been fitted out with a desk for regular hotel service, but the service had been abandoned and the lobby was now vacant and poorly lighted. The light was a little brighter, however, over the battery of mailboxes and Peel went over and read the names.

Some of them had Mr. or Mrs. before the names and those he passed over. Some had complete given names, but none was Wilma. He therefore concentrated on the others and finally narrowed it down to two names:

One or the other of the W’s ought to be Wilma. He climbed up the badly carpeted stairs to the third floor and walked down a narrow corridor until he came to #306.

He pressed the door buzzer.

“Who is it?” a gruff female voice demanded from inside the apartment.

Peel made no reply. There was a moment of silence, then the voice inside the apartment called again. Peel still made no reply. The door was whipped open in his face and an enormous woman of about forty glowered down at Peel.

“Well?” she demanded.

“Uh, guess I must have the wrong apartment,” Joe Peel said. “I’m lookin’ for a Miss Smith. Gwendolyn Smith…”

“She ain’t here,” snapped the amazon and slammed the door in Joe’s face.

He whistled softly and climbed the stairs to the fifth floor. He rang the doorbell of apartment 504.

“Who is it?” asked a voice that caused him to brighten. Joe duplicated his strategy from the third floor. He made no reply. A chain rattled inside and the door was opened a couple of inches.

“Yes?”

Peel cleared his throat. “Mr. Jolliffe asked me to call…”

A face appeared in the narrow opening; enough of it to make Joe wonder how Wilbur Jolliffe did it. But the face was impassive — a touch on the hostile side. “Who’s Mr. Jolliffe?”

Not so good.

“Wilbur Jolliffe. You know — Wilbur—”

“Sorry, but I don’t know anyone named Wilbur.” The door started to go shut, but Joe Peel put his foot in the way.

“Maybe he’s giving you a phoney name sister. It’s the old guy I’m talking about. Catch on…”

The pressure of the door eased against Joe’s foot. He drew it back and the door was closed. But the chain inside was taken off and the door pulled opened again. Joe Peel entered the apartment. He took it in quickly — a room about twelve by fourteen with an in-a-door bed; a bathroom and dressing closet opening off the left and on the right a kitchen. But both the bathroom and the kitchen doors were closed.

The girl was about twenty-five, a fairly tall girl with chestnut hair, a pretty good face and a figure — well, the figure was it. She was wearing a dressing gown, which helped matters a lot.

“Nice place you’ve got here,” Joe Peel said.

The girl closed the door. “All right, I’m listening.”

Joe Peel seated himself in a armchair. “You’re Wilma Huston and you’ve got a… a friend named Wilbur Jolliffe. Shall we go on from there?”

“Let’s,” said the girl.

“Go ahead.”

“You go ahead.”

“Well, Wilbur’s got a wife. You knew that, didn’t you?”

“Most men have wives.”

“I haven’t,” said Joe Peel.

“Care to leave your phone number?”

“I might do just that — after we get Wilbur’s business straightened out.”

“You’re his guardian, I presume?”

“In a kind of a way.” Joe Peel’s eyes focused upon the left shoulder of the girl’s dressing gown. It had slipped. Joe’s temperature went up two degrees. “What I was going to say, Wilbur’s married. And he ain’t the divorcing kind. Catch on?”

“Can’t say that I do,” replied Wilma Houston. She discovered that her dressing gown had slipped and hitched it up. But it didn’t stay up.

“The point is,” Peel said, “breach of promise suits don’t stand up against married men.”

“Is that a fact?” There was mockery in Wilma’s voice.

Peel frowned. “Yeah, and furthermore, Wilbur’s wife knows he’s a chaser. She bawls the hell out of him every time some dame snitches on him. But what’s a bawling-out worth?”

“You tell me.”

“We usually pay fifty bucks. If the dame wants more, Wilbur takes the bawling-out.”

Wilma nodded thoughtfully and seated herself in an armchair across the room. “All cut and dried, eh?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Old stuff to you.”

“Yep.”

Wilma got to her feet. Her lips were pursed up and she nodded thoughtfully. “Mmmm. Will you excuse me a minute, while I slip on something?”

She headed for the bathroom door. Joe Peel’s eyes clouded, but he decided to play it through. “Go right ahead.”

She went into the bathroom, closing the door carefully behind her. Joe Peel got up instantly, strode to the door and put his ear against it. All he could hear was the rattle of clothes hangers.

He went back to his chair, saw a paper-backed book and picked it up. It was a lurid, old-fashioned dime novel, entitled Malaeska, The Indian Wife of a White Trapper.

Pretty strong reading for Wilma Houston. The bathroom door opened and Wilma came out. She was carrying a black dress on a hanger.

“Excuse me,” she said and headed for the kitchen. She went into the kitchen and closed the door. Joe Peel looked at the bathroom door. She had left it partly open. He swiveled, looked at the kitchen door.

He got up and went to the bathroom door. He pushed it open a few inches more, stuck in his head. The bathroom and dressing closet were empty. He frowned and went back to his chair.

After a moment he opened the paperback dime novel and began reading. He read two pages before Wilma came out of the kitchen. She had the dress on now. It didn’t conceal much, but at least the shoulders stayed up.

“Now, about Wilbur,” she said, “it’s all been very interesting, but I don’t know him.”

Joe Peel sighed wearily. “I thought we’d covered that.”

Wilma looked over her shoulder toward the kitchen. She nodded.

Joe Peel started to turn — and lightning struck him. Actually it was the fist of a very rugged, very angry man, but Joe didn’t know that. He didn’t know anything — for quite a while.

When he regained consciousness he was up on Mulholland Drive.

There was a throbbing lump behind his right ear. His legs were as weak as milk. The lights of Hollywood, in the valley below, were a shimmering mass. Joe Peel picked himself off the ground, staggered to the edge of the road-bed and stood there for three full minutes until strength flowed into his legs. A quick reach into his trousers pocket told that robbery had not been the motive for his slugging. His money was intact. He started walking along the pavement. A few cars passed him, but none stopped to give him a lift. The people who go for drives along Mulholland Drive at night don’t pick up hitchhikers.

After fifteen minutes or so he reached Laurel Canyon and cursed roundly. The man who had knocked him out and dumped him up on the mountain had certainly made it tough for him.

It took Peel almost forty-five minutes to reach Hollywood Boulevard and there, at Schwab’s Drugstore, he discovered that it was twelve-thirty. He had been knocked out around eight-thirty and had recovered consciousness about eleven-thirty. Three and a half hours.

Peel shook his head and stepped into a taxicab at the curb. Ten minutes later he climbed out before his hotel on Ivar. The little lobby was deserted, save for the clerk and Joe Peel would just as soon have missed him. But the watchdog spotted him.

“Oh, Mr. Peel,” he called, “Mr. Hathaway left orders for me to ask you about…”

“The rent.”

The clerk scowled. “That’s right. He said that you were…”

“Skip it, chum. I’m not in the mood, here—” Peel reached into his pocket and brought out a fifty. “Apply this on the account — and give me a receipt for it. The last time I trusted a night clerk he went south with the money and I had to pay it all over again.”

“I beg your pardon!” said the clerk, huffily. He wrote out a receipt. Peel stuffed it in his pocket and climbed the stairs to the second floor.

He unlocked a room that was all of ten by twelve feet in size and contained a bed, a chest of drawers, one chair and a maple table that was supposed to be a desk. It was home.

Peel stripped down to his shorts and climbed into bed. Two minutes later he was asleep.