The Lonesome Badger

17

“Mr. Peel,” said Temple smoothly, “how are you?”

“Lousy,” snapped Peel.

“Still irascible, eh?” Temple shook his head. “All this could have been avoided if you’d played ball with me this morning.”

He crossed to the chair and seated himself, crossed his legs. “Well, shall we get on with it?”

“The man I pointed out to you is Seymour Case,” Peel said sullenly.

“Of course he is,” declared Temple. “But that isn’t the point I want to discuss right now.” He sighed lightly. “Shall we begin at the beginning?”

“What beginning?”

“This morning you said that the girl who called herself Susan Sawyer and her accomplice, one David Corey, shook you down for five hundred dollars. That wasn’t the truth, was it?”

“Who says it wasn’t?”

“Please, Mr. Peel, I trust you won’t be unreasonable. You work for a private detective agency. If you did call on the beautiful Miss Sawyer it wasn’t because of romantic reasons. Was it, Mr. Peel?”

“I’m only an employee,” snapped Peel. “Ask Otis Beagle. He’s the man I work for.”

“A scoundrel, Mr. Peel, an unmitigated scoundrel. You cannot believe a word he says. That’s why I’m asking you.” He hesitated. “I’m asking you nice.”

“I’m not in a nice mood,” Peel said. “Your strong-arm boys robbed me of every nickel I had in the world.”

Temple looked at Willie and Freddie. “Is that true?”

“What’s wrong with that?” demanded Freddie.

“Is it customary?”

“It is,” replied Willie firmly. “And before we go any further, you haven’t paid us yet. We’ve done the job and we want our money.”

Temple shook his head. “I’ll pay you when we get through with the job.”

“We done the job,” said Willie. “We snatched the guy for you and here he is. He’s your responsibility now.”

Temple looked from Willie to Freddie. “I see.” He reached into his breast pocket and took out his wallet. Holding it high he extracted two hundred-dollar bills. He handed one each to Willie and Freddie.

“Okay, mister,” said Willie, “he’s all yours.”

Temple rose in alarm. “You’re not going to leave me here with him alone?”

“The deal was to snatch him for you, that’s all,” said Willie. “Anything else we do is extra.”

“Mannie will hear of this,” Temple said bitterly.

“Mannie’s a businessman,” retorted Freddie. “He said it was a small, easy snatch job, nothing else. That’s what we agreed to do and we done it.”

“But you can’t quit now. I... I don’t carry a revolver. Besides” — Temple frowned — “I... I think I may need you to make him talk.”

“Now, that,” said Willie, “is a horse with other feathers. A snatch job is one thing, rough stuff is another. Fifty bucks extra apiece, and we make him talk. We make him say anything you want him to say.”

“You work too cheap,” cried Peel.

Temple extracted two fifty-dollar bills and paid them out to Willie and Freddie. Freddie promptly slapped Peel with the palm of his hand, not a savage blow, but hard enough to sting.

“Tell the man what he wants to know,” Freddie said.

Willie brushed Freddie aside and hit Peel a hard blow in the stomach with his fist. “Just a sample,” he said.

Peel, gasping in agony, cried, “Ask the questions.”

Temple nodded pleasantly. “That’s better. Now — why did you call on Susan Sawyer in the first place?”

“Beagle’s idea,” Peel said quickly. “He joined the Lonely Hearts Club and answered Susan’s ad in the club paper.”

“I don’t believe that,” said Temple, frowning. “Beagle’s not the type of man who would have to join a Lonely Hearts Club...”

“But he did!” exclaimed Peel.

Temple gestured to the two thugs. Peel leaped back. “Wait a minute,” he cried desperately. “I’ll tell you the whole thing. Beagle joined the club, but not to... to meet women. The agency hadn’t had a client in a month and Beagle... well, Beagle joined the club for that reason. He... he thought he could get a client.”

“How? How could he get a client just by joining a club? He’d have to know that someone wanted a detective.”

“No, he wouldn’t. You don’t know Beagle. He... he makes clients. He figured that people who joined outfits like the Lonely Hearts Club had guilty consciences, then he’d begin to work on them — make anonymous phone calls, shadow them and let them see that they were being shadowed. Stuff like that.”

“Hey,” exclaimed Willie, “that’s interesting. This Beagle must be quite a lad.”

“He is,” said Charlton Temple. But he still frowned. “But that still doesn’t explain how he happened to stumble onto Susan Sawyer. There are hundreds of ads in that club paper, Heart Throbs. Unless he wrote to every single advertiser he’d hardly stumble onto Susan’s ad—”

“Have you read her ad?” asked Peel. “ ‘Beautiful girl, worth $50,000, wants to meet exciting man.’ An ad like that was a natural for Beagle. It sounded phony to him and Beagle was looking for a phony.”

“Mmm,” said Temple. “You have something there.” He nodded. “Susan answered his letter and then you went to see her. Why you?”

“That’s the way Beagle operates. He does the scheming and I do the dirty work. I was supposed to soften up Susan and then Beagle would follow through and sell her a bill of goods. Only... well, it didn’t work. I’d hardly got in to see Susan when Dave Corey broke in. He clipped me one and when I came to, well, he was on the floor, dead.”

“His body was found on Mulholland Drive!”

“Sure, after I left, the... the murderer took him out there and dumped him.” Peel looked steadily at Charlton Temple. “Isn’t that what you did?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” cried Temple. “I did not kill him. Would I be here asking you questions if I had?”

“Would you have gone to Beagles office, if you hadn’t?” Peel shot at him. “In fact, how would you ever have heard of Otis Beagle?”

Temple was suddenly disconcerted. “I... I found his name in the phone directory.”

“There are twenty detectives listed in the phone directory. You didn’t pick Beagle by accident...”

“Now, wait a minute,” exclaimed Temple. “I’m asking the questions, not you.”

“All right, I’ll give you the answers. Otis Beagle didn’t get an answer from Susan Sawyer. He got it from Linda Meadows.”

Temple crossed to the cot and seated himself. For a moment he looked steadily at Peel, then he nodded slowly.

“Go ahead.”

“That’s all. Susan Sawyer was using her roommate’s name in her little racket.” He paused. “Or was she?”

“This David Corey,” said Temple. “He had an apartment on the floor above that of the two girls?”

“Sure,” said Peel. “He had to be handy... Isn’t that the way you used to work it?”

Temple smiled thinly. “Something like that. Since you brought up the name of Linda Meadows, what do you know about her?”

“I know she was Susan’s roommate and I know she’s the secretary of Seymour Case, who uses the name of Thaddeus Smallwood.”

“And that’s all you know about her?”

Peel hesitated. “Yeah.”

Temple frowned. “We decided that you would talk freely, didn’t we?”

“I’m talking.”

“But not enough.” Temple looked pointedly at Willie.

Peel said irascibly, “Linda came to the agency. She wanted us to find Susan Sawyer. Said Susan disappeared a week ago and she hadn’t seen her since.”

Temple cocked his head to one side and looked skeptically at Joe Peel. “But you said you’d talked to Susan at the apartment only the day before yesterday.”

“I’m just telling you what Linda said to me. Susan was never missing.”

“Then why should Linda employ your agency — I take it she did that — to find her?”

Peel shrugged. “Clients never tell us the truth. Like you. You handed Beagle a lot of pap, too, about wanting to make restitution to Seymour Case.” He grunted. “What you probably want to do is shake him down all over again.”

“We won’t go into that. You said this Linda Meadows hired you to find Susan. Yet you say Susan was never missing. Why, then, did Linda come to you?”

“I told you she lied to me. I don’t know her real reason.”

“What is her connection with the man who calls himself Smallwood?”

“You saw them together today. Draw your own conclusions.”

“I have. I wondered what yours were.”

“They’re clients. I don’t—”

“They?” Temple said sharply. “They are clients?”

Peel swore under his breath. “Linda hired the agency—”

“You said They!”

Peel shot a quick look at Willie. “A slip of the tongue.”

“No, it wasn’t. There was that business between you and Beagle this morning, when he wanted you to point out Smallwood to me and you didn’t want to. Then he wrote a note to you.” He made a shrewd guess. “Asking you to act as Smallwood’s bodyguard?”

Peel exhaled heavily. “Smallwood hired the agency yesterday. He was afraid someone was going to do something to him.”

“That’s better.” Temple nodded thoughtfully, then suddenly exclaimed, “You said your employer, Beagle, has a penchant for making cases. I take it, then, he told Smallwood about me.”

“No,” Peel said promptly. “I’m sure he didn’t. Beagle’s as honest as the next guy — when he isn’t hard up. But he wasn’t hard up today. He already had a client — two of them, in fact You and Linda.”

Temple was becoming unhappier by the moment He sighed and said, “We keep coming back to Linda Meadows. Has it occurred to you that there are too many coincidences in your story? Linda Meadows’ roommate is advertising in the Lonely Hearts newspaper. Linda Meadows is employed by a member of the Lonely Hearts Club. Linda Meadows’ roommate is working the badger game. Linda Meadows is your client Linda Meadows’ employer is your client.” He stopped. “You’re a private detective? Those coincidences must have occurred to you.”

“They have.”

“And?”

“Linda Meadows is also wearing Susan Sawyer’s mink stole.”

“And Linda Meadows is also my former wife.”

“What? Beagle said you showed him a picture of Susan Sawyer.”

“I was pretty sure if you’d find Susan you’d find Linda and at the moment I didn’t want to reveal my interest in Linda.”

Peel stared at Temple. “You said you hadn’t seen your wife in three years. Then how were you able to get the picture of Susan Sawyer? They’d never even met each other then.”

Temple smiled. “They’ve known each other all their lives. They grew up together in the same small Iowa town. They were living together when I... I married Linda. During the brief period of our married life they were separated, but I was pretty sure they’d get together again.”

“That just proves what I said,” Peel said bitterly, “that you can’t believe a word a client tells you.” He suddenly winced. “Then it was Linda who worked the badger game with you, not Susan.”

“Correct.”

“And Susan?”

Temple shrugged. “I don’t know. She had an odd streak of morality. I may be wrong, she may have gone along with Linda recently, but I have a feeling that she knew nothing about it.”

“Oh, yes, she did!” exclaimed Peel. Then he frowned. “She let me call her Linda, led me along — to a point. Yet...” He paused. “On the other hand, that would account for some things...”

“You think perhaps she just found out what Linda was doing?”

“I’ve got a funny feeling that she was playing it straight with Dave Corey.”

A gleam came into Charleton Temple’s eyes. “I see.” He looked at both Willie and Freddie. “Gentlemen, I have a little proposition to make to you. If you will step out with me a moment...”

“Sure,” said Freddie.

The three men left Peel alone in the little room. But he could hear the murmur of their voices in the main part of the barn and since that was the only exit, he knew that he could not go past them. He looked at the little window. There was a possibility...

He stepped to it, saw that the frame was nailed down to the sill. It could be broken, of course, but that would make noise.

Then Willie and Freddie returned.

“Sorry, laddie,” said Willie. “We just made a new deal. Oh, don’t worry, we ain’t going to knock you off. We’re just going to stay here and keep you company.”

“How long?”

Willie shrugged. “Until.”

“Until when?”

“Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day. Until we get the word. Now, just take it easy and we won’t have no trouble.”

“Of course,” added Freddie, “we don’t mind a certain amount of trouble. We’re gettin’ paid for it and it helps to kill time.”