The Continental Op (Novelettes and short stories)

Death and Company

Originally appeared in The Black Mask, November 1930

The Old Man introduced me to the other man in his office — his name was Chappell — and said: “Sit down.”

I sat down.

Chappell was a man of forty-five or so, solidly built and dark-complexioned, but shaky and washed out by worry or grief or fear. His eyes were red-rimmed and their lower lids sagged, as did his lower lip. His hand, when I shook it, had been flabby and damp.

The Old Man picked up a piece of paper from his desk and held it out to me. I took it. It was a letter crudely printed in ink, all capital letters.

I put the letter back on the Old Man’s desk.

He said: “Mrs. Chappell went to a matinée yesterday afternoon. She never returned home. Mr. Chappell received this in the mail this morning.”

“She go alone?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Chappell said. His voice was very tired. “She told me she was going when I left for the office in the morning, but she didn’t say which show she was going to or if she was going with anybody.”

“Who’d she usually go with?”

He shook his head hopelessly. “I can give you the names and addresses of all her closest friends, but I’m afraid that won’t help. When she hadn’t come home late last night I telephoned all of them — everybody I could think of — and none of them had seen her.”

“Any idea who could have done this?” I asked.

Again he shook his head hopelessly.

“Any enemies? Anybody with a grudge against you, or against her? Think, even if it’s an old grudge or seems pretty slight. There’s something like that behind most kidnapings.”

“I know of none,” he said wearily. “I’ve tried to think of anybody I know or ever knew who might have done it, but I can’t.”

“What business are you in?”

He looked puzzled, but replied: “I’ve an advertising agency.”

“How about discharged employees?”

“No, the only one I’ve ever discharged was John Hacker and he has a better job now with one of my competitors and we’re on perfectly good terms.”

I looked at the Old Man. He was listening attentively, but in his usual aloof manner, as if he had no personal interest in the job. I cleared my throat and said to Chappell: “Look here. I want to ask some questions that you’ll probably think — well — brutal, but they’re necessary. Right?”

He winced as if he knew what was coming, but nodded and said: “Right.”

“Has Mrs. Chappell ever stayed away over night before?”

“No, not without my knowing where she was.” His lips jerked a little. “I think I know what you are going to ask. I’d like — I’d rather not hear. I mean I know it’s necessary, but, if I can, I think I’d rather try to tell you without your asking.”

“I’d like that better too,” I agreed. “I hope you don’t think I’m getting any fun out of this.”

“I know,” he said. He took a deep breath and spoke rapidly, hurrying to get it over: “I’ve never had any reason to believe that she went anywhere that she didn’t tell me about or had any friends she didn’t tell me about. Is that” — his voice was pleading — “what you wanted to know?”

“Yes, thanks.” I turned to the Old Man again. The only way to get anything out of him was to ask for it, so I said: “Well?”

He smiled courteously, like a well-satisfied blank wall, and murmured: “You have the essential facts now, I think. What do you advise?”

“Pay the money of course — first,” I replied, and then complained: “It’s a damned shame that’s the only way to handle a kidnaping. These Death and Co. birds are pretty dumb, picking that spot for the pay-off. It would be duck soup to nab them there.” I stopped complaining and asked Chappell: “You can manage the money all right?”

“Yes.”

I addressed the Old Man: “Now about the police?”

Chappell began: “No, not the police! Won’t they—?”

I interrupted him: “We’ve got to tell them, in case something goes wrong and to have them all set for action as soon as Mrs. Chappell is safely home again. We can persuade them to keep their hands off till then.” I asked the Old Man: “Don’t you think so?”

He nodded and reached for his telephone. “I think so. I’ll have Lieutenant Fielding and perhaps someone from the District Attorney’s office come up here and we’ll lay the whole thing before them.”

Fielding and an Assistant District Attorney named McPhee came up. At first they were all for making the Turk-and-Larkin-Street-brick-pile a midnight target for half the San Francisco police force, but we finally persuaded them to listen to reason. We dug up the history of kidnaping from Ross to Parker and waved it in their faces and showed them that the statistics were on our side: more success and less grief had come from paying what was asked and going hunting afterwards than from trying to nail the kidnapers before the kidnaped were released.

At half past eleven o’clock that night Chappell left his house, alone, with five thousand dollars wrapped in a sheet of brown paper in his pocket. At twenty minutes past twelve he returned.

His face was yellowish and wet with perspiration and he was trembling.

“I put it there,” he said difficultly. “I didn’t see anybody.”

I poured out a glass of his whiskey and gave it to him.

He walked the floor most of the night. I dozed in a sofa. Half a dozen times at least I heard him go to the street door to open it and look out. Detective-sergeants Muir and Callahan went to bed. They and I had planted ourselves there to get any information Mrs. Chappell could give us as soon as possible.

She did not come home.

At nine in the morning Callahan was called to the telephone. He came away from it scowling.

“Nobody’s come for the dough yet,” he told us.

Chappell’s drawn face became wide-eyed and open-mouthed with horror. “You had the place watched?” he cried.

“Sure,” Callahan said, “but in an all right way. We just had a couple of men stuck up in an apartment down the block with field-glasses. Nobody could tumble to that.”

Chappell turned to me, horror deepening in his face. “What—?”

The door-bell rang.

Chappell ran to the door and presently came back excitedly tearing a special-delivery-stamped envelope open. Inside was another of the crudely printed letters.

Callahan said: “What the hell?”

Muir growled: “Them ¾ ¾ at the window must be blind.”

I looked at the postmark on the envelope. It was earlier that morning. I asked Chappell: “Well, what are you going to do?”

He swallowed and said: “I’ll give them every cent I’ve got if it will bring Louise home safe.”

At half past eleven o’clock that night Chappell left his house with another five thousand dollars. When he returned the first thing he said was: “The money I took last night is really gone.”

This night was much like the previous one except that he had less hopes of seeing Mrs. Chappell in the morning. Nobody said so, but all of us expected another letter in the morning asking for still another five thousand dollars.

Another special-delivery letter did come, but it read:

Callahan cursed and jumped for the telephone.

I put an arm around Chappell as he swayed, but he shook himself together and turned fiercely on me.

“You’ve killed her!” he cried.

“Hell with that,” Muir barked. “Let’s get going.”

Muir, Chappell, and I went out to Chappell’s car, which had stood two nights in front of the house. Callahan ran out to join us as we were moving away.

The Post Street address was only a ten-minute ride from Chappell’s house the way we did it. It took a couple of more minutes to find the manager of the apartment house and to take her keys away from her. Then we went up and entered apartment 313.

A tall slender woman with curly red hair lay dead on the living-room floor. There was no question of her being dead: she had been dead long enough for discoloration to have got well under way She was lying on her back. The tan flannel bathrobe — apparently a man’s — she had on had fallen open to show pinkish lingerie. She had on stockings and one slipper. The other slipper lay near her.

Her face and throat and what was visible of her body were covered with bruises. Her eyes were wide open and bulging, her tongue out: she had been beaten and then throttled.

More police detectives joined us and some policemen in uniform. We went into our routine.

The manager of the house told us the apartment had been occupied by a man named Harrison M. Rockfield. She described him: about thirty-five years old, six feet tall, blond hair, gray or blue eyes, slender, perhaps a hundred and sixty pounds, very agreeable personality, dressed well. She said he had been living there alone for three months. She knew nothing about his friends, she said, and had not seen Mrs. Chappell before. She had not seen Rockfield for two or three days but had thought nothing of it as she often went a week or so without seeing some tenants.

We found a plentiful supply of clothing in the apartment, some of which the manager positively identified as Rockfield’s. The police department experts found a lot of masculine fingerprints that we hoped were his.

We couldn’t find anybody in adjoining apartments who had heard the racket that must have been made by the murder.

We decided that Mrs. Chappell had probably been killed as soon as she was brought to the apartment — no later than the night of her disappearance, anyhow.

“But why?” Chappell demanded dumbfoundedly.

“Playing safe. You wouldn’t know till after you’d come across. She wasn’t feeble. It would be hard to keep her quiet in a place like this.”

A detective came in with the package of hundred-dollar bills Chappell had placed under the brick-pile the previous night.

I went down to headquarters with Callahan to question the men stationed at a nearby apartment-window to watch the vacant lot. They swore up and down that nobody — “not as much as a rat” — could have approached the brick-pile without being seen by them. Callahan’s answer to that was a bellowed “The Hell they couldn’t — they did!”

I was called to the telephone. Chappell was on the wire. His voice was hoarse.

“The telephone was ringing when I got home,” he said, “and it was him.”

“Who?”

“Death and Co., he said. That’s what he said, and he told me that it was my turn next. That’s all he said. ‘This is Death and Co., and it’s your turn next.’”

“I’ll be right out,” I said. “Wait for me.”

I told Callahan and the others what Chappell had told me.

Callahan scowled. “—,” he said, “I guess we’re up against another of those — damned nuts!”

Chappell was in a bad way when I arrived at his house. He was shivering as if with a chill and his eyes were almost idiotic in their fright.

“It’s — it’s not only that — that I’m afraid,” he tried to explain. “I am — but it’s — I’m not that afraid — but — but with Louise — and — it’s the shock and all. I—”

“I know,” I soothed him. “I know. And you haven’t slept for a couple of days. Who’s your doctor? I’m going to phone him.”

He protested feebly, but finally gave me his doctor’s name.

The telephone rang as I was going towards it. The call was for me, from Callahan.

“We’ve pegged the fingerprints,” he said triumphantly. “They’re Dick Moley’s. Know him?”

“Sure,” I said, “as well as you do.”

Moley was a gambler, gunman, and grifter-in-general with a police record as long as his arm.

Callahan was saying cheerfully: “That’s going to mean a fight when we find him, because you know how tough that — is. And he’ll laugh while he’s being tough.”

“I know,” I said.

I told Chappell what Callahan had told me. Rage came into his face and voice when he heard the name of the man accused of killing his wife.

“Ever hear of him?” I asked.

He shook his head and went on cursing Moley in a choked, husky voice.

I said: “Stop that. That’s no good. I know where to find Moley.”

His eyes opened wide. “Where?” he gasped.

“Want to go with me?”

“Do I?” he shouted. Weariness and sickness had dropped from him.

“Get your hat,” I said, “and we’ll go.”

He ran upstairs for his hat and down with it.

He had a lot of questions as we went out and got into his car. I answered most of them with: “Wait, you’ll see.”

But in the car he went suddenly limp and slid down in his seat.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I can’t,” he mumbled. “I’ve got to — help me into the house — the doctor.”

“Right,” I said, and practically carried him into the house.

I spread him on a sofa, had a maid bring him water, and called his doctor’s number. The doctor was not in.

When I asked him if there was any other particular doctor he wanted he said weakly: “No, I’m all right. Go after that — that man.”

“All right,” I said.

I went outside, got a taxicab, and sat in it.

Twenty minutes later a man went up Chappell’s front steps and rang the bell. The man was Dick Moley, alias Harrison M. Rockfield.

He took me by surprise. I had been expecting Chappell to come out, not anyone to go in. He had vanished indoors and the door was shut by the time I got there.

I rang the bell savagely.

A heavy pistol roared inside, twice.

I smashed the glass out of the door with my gun and put my left hand in, feeling for the latch.

The heavy pistol roared again and a bullet hurled splinters of glass into my cheek, but I found the latch and worked it.

I kicked the door back and fired once straight ahead at random. Something moved in the dark hallway then and without waiting to see what it was I fired again, and when something fell I fired at the sound.

A voice said: “Cut it out. That’s enough. I’ve lost my gun.”

It wasn’t Chappell’s voice. I was disappointed.

Near the foot of the stairs I found a light-switch and turned it on. Dick Moley was sitting on the floor at the other end of the hallway holding one leg.

“That damned fool maid got scared and locked this door,” he complained, “or I’d’ve made it out back.”

I went nearer and picked up his gun. “Get you anywhere but the leg?” I asked.

“No. I’d’ve been all right if I hadn’t dropped the gun when it upset me.”

“You’ve got a lot of ifs,” I said. “I’ll give you another one. You’ve got nothing to worry about but that bullet-hole if you didn’t kill Chappell.”

He laughed. “If he’s not dead he must feel funny with those two .44s in his head.”

“That was — damned dumb of you,” I growled.

He didn’t believe me. He said: “It was the best job I ever pulled.”

“Yeah? Well, suppose I told you that I was only waiting for another move of his to pinch him for killing his wife?”

He opened his eyes at that.

“Yeah,” I said, “and you have to walk in and mess things up. I hope to — they hang you for it.” I knelt down beside him and began to slit his pants-leg with my pocket-knife.

“What’d you do? Go in hiding after you found her dead in your rooms because you knew a guy with your record would be out of luck, and then lose your head when you saw in the extras this afternoon what kind of a job he’d put up on you?”

“Yes,” he said slowly, “though I’m not sure I lost my head. I’ve got a hunch I came pretty near giving the rat what he deserved.”

“That’s a swell hunch,” I told him. “We were ready to grab him. The whole thing had looked phoney. Nobody had come for the money the first night, but it wasn’t there the next day, so he said. Well, we only had his word for it that he had actually put it there and hadn’t found it the next night. The next night, after he had been told the place was watched he left the money there, and then he wrote the note saying Death & Company knew he’d gone to the police. That wasn’t public news, either. And then her being killed before anybody knew she was kidnaped. And then tying it to you when it was too dizzy — no, you are dizzy, or you wouldn’t have pulled this one. Anyhow we had enough to figure he was wrong, and if you’d let him alone we’d have pulled him, put it in the papers, and waited for you to come forth and give us what we needed to clear you and swing him.” I was twisting my necktie around his leg above the bullet-hole. “But that’s too sensible for you. How long you been playing around with her?”

“A couple of months,” he said, “only I wasn’t playing. I meant it.”

“How’d he happen to catch her there alone?”

He shook his head. “He must’ve followed her there that afternoon when she was supposed to be going to the theater. Maybe he waited outside until he saw me go out. I had to go downtown, but I wasn’t gone an hour. She was already cold when I came back.” He frowned. “I don’t think she’d’ve answered the doorbell, though maybe — or maybe he’d had a duplicate made of the key she had.”

Some policemen came in: the frightened maid had had sense enough to use the telephone.

“Do you think he planned it that way from the beginning?” Moley asked.

I didn’t. I thought he had killed his wife in a jealous rage and later thought of the Death and Co. business.