Complete works of peter.., p.191
Complete Works of Peter Cheyney. Illustrated, page 191
"That's how it looks," I tell him. "But who cares? I can take it."
He grins. "That's swell," he says. "Because it looks like you'll have to."
"Yeah," I say. "An' everybody is gonna cheer. All you guys are goin' to laugh your heads off. Me... I reckon I'm in bad with everybody. Even the dames."
"That Pearl dame don't seem to like you a lot," he says. "An' that dame is a very swell number."
I don't say anything. Why should I? I stop the car an' go up the steps. I don't haveta ring. The door opens right away an' the butler guy is standin' there. I reckon the expression on this bozo's face would be the same if he was bein' trampled on by wild elephants. It would be goddam hard to play poker with this guy.
He says: "Come in, sir. Come in!"
I go inta the hall. Carl is right behind me. 1 am takin' off my coat when Pearl comes outa the passageway inta the hall. She is wearin' a close-fittin' blue velvet house-coat an' a strained expression. She don't look overjoyed at seein' me.
I say: "Well, Pearl, so all's well that ends well...."
"I'm glad you think so," she says. She sounds like the cuttin' edge on a razor. "Would you like some coffee, Mr. Pardoe?"
He says yes. I say I would like some too. I light a cigarette.
"Look, Pearl," I tell her. "What the hell's the good of your bein' steamed up over this? Everything's O.K. now."
She says: "So everything's O.K.!" She sorta mimics my voice. "Isn't that too wonderful? The fact that Gayda has had to kill a man doesn't mean a thing to you. And you're supposed to be in love with her!" She shrugs her shoulders.
"Well, what can I do?" I ask her. "It ain't gonna help if I start doin' backfalls in the hallway, is it or cryin' my eyes out? Where is Gayda?"
"She's in bed," she says. "Naturally she's suffered a terrible shock. But she's asked after you. She wants to see you." She shrugs her shoulders again. "She must be a glutton for punishment," she says.
"I can see I'm in for a lot of trouble," I say. "Is Vaughan here? Does he know about all this?"
"He knows," says Pearl. "We got him on the telephone. He's staying at the Park Hotel. I told him that Gayda was all right. I asked him not to come back until to-morrow. I thought it would be better if he weren't here until Gayda is better. She has enough to put up with without having to hear her father tell you exactly what he thinks about you."
"All right," I tell her. "Just turn off the heat, willya? An' Where's Benzey?"
"He's asleep," she says. She turns away. She moves towards the staircase.
I say: "Just a minute. Pearl. How soon will I be able to talk to Gayda?"
She says: "I really can't see why you are in such a hurry. I hope she's asleep. I suppose you know it's not yet six o'clock."
"O.K.," I tell her. "Well, I'll be around."
She throws me a dirty look. She goes up the staircase.
I cross the hallway an' go inta the library. I throw my cigarette stub away an' light a fresh one.
Carl says: "Where do we go from here, Lemmy? I suppose there isn't very much we can do." He grins. "I suppose you'll be goin' up to see the big boy?"
"I'm in no hurry," I say. "In the meantime you better park here an' relax. Maybe I'll want you later."
I go out inta the hallway, up the staircase. I walk along the corridor. Away towards the other end I can see Pearl comin' out of one of the bedrooms, closin' the door quietly behind her.
I say: "Look, Pearl, maybe you're pretty fed up with me, but there's no need for you to go outa your way to show it like that. Maybe there's an explanation."
"You bet," she says. "You'll always have an explanation. Did any one ever tell you you were very plausible?"
I give her a big grin. "A lotta dames have told me that," I say.
"I expect they have," she says. "But I'm not one who falls for that line."
"Fine," I tell her. "That must be very nice for you. Which bedroom is Benzey usin'?"
She points towards the other end of the corridor.
"The second door on the right," she says, "I suppose you're going to cook up another scheme?"
"What's the use?" I tell her. "It looks to me as if this job's all over."
She says: "Yes, I believe the expression is 'all over bar the shouting'."
"That's right," I tell her. "Maybe we'll have some shoutin' in a minute."
"You're quite right," she says. "There'll be plenty of shouting when Mr. Vaughan gets here in the morning. You'd be wise if you weren't here."
"No soap," I say. "I never run away from guys. Well... I'll be seein' you."
I walk along to Benzey's bedroom an' stick my head inside the doorway. He is asleep. He's got his hands folded across his stomach, but he's not snorin' not this time. He's makin' a sorta whistlin' noise like some bird in pain. I give him a dig. He opens his eyes an' looks up at me. Then he sits up an' yawns.
He says: "For Pete's sake can't I never get any sleep?"
"Listen, you human dynamo," I tell him. "This is where I want some action outa you. You just get up an' scram. Get outa this house, but make it a nice quiet job, see? Get the early train for London. There's one at six twenty-five. That means to say that you oughta be in town at seven-thirty. Telephone me at eight o'clock. You got that?"
He says he's got it. He says: "What do I haveta do?"
"I'll tell you when you call me," I say. "Now get goin'."
I go downstairs inta the library. Carl is sittin' in one of the big chairs by the fire. He is sound asleep. I flop down in the other one. I close my eyes. In about two minutes I'm asleep too.
II.
IT is eight o'clock when the butler wakes me up. He tells me I'm wanted on the telephone. I go out inta the hallway. I speak to Benzey. I tell him what he is to do an' I keep my voice very nice an' quiet. When I come back I wake Carl up.
"Look, Carl," I tell him. "This is gonna be funny. Just come with me, will ya?"
He says: "What's this?"
I say: "You'll see."
We go inta the hallway an' up the stairs. When I get to the top of the staircase Pearl is comin' outa one of the bedrooms. I walk down the corridor with Carl close behind me. As I go past her she says:
"You're not going to disturb Gayda, are you?"
"Yeah," I tell her. "I'm gonna disturb her plenty."
She says: "Is it necessary?"
"I think so," I say. "Incidentally, Pearl, maybe you'd like to string along too."
She says: "Surely there's nothing that you can have to say to Gayda that's important now. Why don't you let her sleep?"
"I don't feel like it," I say, I walk along the corridor. I knock on Gayda's door. Somebody says: "Come in."
I open the door an' step inta the room. Just over my shoulder I can see Carl, with Pearl behind him.
Gayda is propped up against the pillows. There are dark circles under her eyes. She looks sorta strained an' nervy.
I say: "Well, Gayda, it's too bad you hadta kill Canazzi."
She says in a weak voice: "Oh, Sourpuss... Sourpuss.... It was terrible! I've often wondered what it was like to kill a man." She gives a little sob. "Now I know."
"You didn't know before, did you, pal?" I tell her. "Didn't you know when you killed Clemensky?"
I hear a gasp from Pearl. I turn around. Carl is lookin' at me with his eyes poppin'.
"Ladies an' gentlemen," I say, "let me present you to the heroine in this job Mrs. Cara Travis."
I look at the dame in the bed. All of a sudden she looks a million years old.
She says: "You must be mad!"
"Like hell I am," I tell her. "You know, Cara, I've been wise to you from the start. The first night I came up here lookin' for Travis you made a big mistake. You shouldn't have tried to rub me out."
Pearl says: "But..."
"Pipe down, sweetheart," I tell her.
Gayda says: "Don't take any notice of him. Pearl. I think he's a little mental."
"That's a sweet one from you," I tell her. "Ain't it marvellous," I go on, "the more beautiful they are the worse they are! Look at her three times a killer. She got Travis shot; she killed Clemensky; she puts Schrinkler inta a spot where he's got to get his; then she kills Canazzi."
I grin at her. "That's O.K.," I say. "But what I don't forgive you for, baby, is for thinkin' that I was such a mug that I wasn't wise to you."
She laughs. She's got her nerve back all right. She puts her hands behind her head. She leans back there smilin' at me. She looks sweet.
She says: "You're terribly clever, aren't you, Sourpuss? I've always heard that about you."
"Clever enough for you," I tell her. "Maybe you'd like to hear how clever I am. All right. When I came up here on that first night you had to think quickly, didn't you? Here was somebody lookin' for Travis an' you knew he wasn't Travis. You got scared. You wasn't certain as to whether anybody had an idea as to who you were; whether they knew that Miss Gayda Vaughan was Mrs. Cara Travis the real Travis's wife the woman he wanted to divorce.
"So you pulled a fast one. You made up your mind quickly. You told me that Travis was cock-eyed. You said you'd get the butler to give him some black coffee so as to get him fit to talk to me. You also told me that there was a pistol-shootin' competition goin' on downstairs. In other words, you'd made up your mind what you were gonna do you were alibi-ing yourself before you did it.
"Then you took me out in the moonlight an' played a very pretty little love scene, an' when you went back inta the house you took a shot at me with a gun with a silencer on it. It wasn't a bad shot either. Of course that was an accident, wasn't it? That was one of the cock-eyed guys in the pistol-shootin' competition? That was the first bad break.
"An' you weren't quite certain; you weren't quite certain as to whether I was really Pleyell or who I was. But one thing you did know. If I was Pleyell I was gonna know that the phoney Travis was phoney. So after I'd had a talk with him an' didn't do anything about it, you came to the con clusion I wasn't Pleyell. Then you wondered what the hell I was playin' at. You made up your mind that you'd gotta work fast."
She says: "You're really rather marvellous, Sourpuss. It must be your intelligence that I'm so keen on. I'm still crazy about you."
"I bet you are," I tell her. "You're gonna be even more crazy about me when I'm through."
She says: "Go on, Sourpuss. You're fearfully interesting. Tell me some more about what I did."
"The next idea was to get the phoney Travis outa the way. He'd done his job. An' you'd got Travis's document case. In that case were the Mechanisation plans an' the Travis divorce papers.
"So you asked me to meet you an' go to Chez Clarence to do a little gamblin'. What you wanted to do was to see Clemensky right under my nose Clemensky who was in this job with you Clemensky who was the only guy who knew you were Mrs. Cara Travis. You wanted to get the money from him to pay the stooge Travis off an' get him outa the way. Well, you got it. That was the eight thousand pounds you were supposed to win from Clemensky.
"An' it was tough on that guy Travis. If I hadn't played it the way I did maybe you'd have let him get away with his eight thousand pounds.
"But I was a bit too fast for you. When I went with you to Chez Clarence I telephoned somebody. I telephoned a woman. I told you it was Mrs. Cara Travis an' you didn't feel so good about that, did you? You wondered what the hell I was gettin' some dame to front as Mrs. Cara Travis for. But you soon knew. When I got back to the Chez Clarence bringin' Travis with me, you knew that I'd taken him round to see her; you knew that I was after an identification. Now you were goddam certain that I knew he wasn't Travis.
"Then you got a bit scared, didn't you. You wondered what was gonna happen next. But one thing you was certain of. You were certain that I didn't know you were Cara Travis, which is where you made a big mistake."
She says: "That's another interesting point, Sourpuss. Tell me how did you know supposing that I am Cara Travis?"
"There was a guy chasin' after you for fifteen-sixteen months in the States," I say, "a private detective by the name of Lolly one of the guys who was tryin' to get that divorce evidence on you that your husband wanted. I had a meeting with that guy before Travis sailed for England. He gave me a description of you. After the first night I knew it had to be you. Anyhow, you soon proved it."
"Did I?" she says.
"You did," I go on. "When I brought Travis back to the Chez Clarence you knew he had to be fixed. You thought he might get scared an' talk. So you told Clemensky that he'd gotta be straightened out. While I was talkin' to you in the bar with Carl Pardoe here, Kraul, the man on the door, watched Travis go inta the telephone-box. He went in there an' shot him. An' that was that! I went inta that room two-three minutes later an' found him there."
Gayda gives a little yawn. She says: "So I had Travis killed and then I suppose everything was all right?"
"Not quite," I tell her. "But it was a lot easier for you because he was outa the way."
"Your next trouble was Clemensky. He wasn't feelin' so good. You'd had eight thousand pounds off him to give to Travis an' you'd still got it. An' you had all the papers. Now I reckon Clemensky was a guy who was put over here to look after the money side of this job an' he was beginnin' to get a little bit scared of you. You were sittin' right on top of it. You'd got eight thousand pounds an' you'd got the papers. Clemensky knew you were tough an' clever. So he decides to pull a fast one on you. He wants to have a little talk with you; he wants to make you talk sense. He wants to get back that eight thousand pounds that you didn't give Travis. But more than anything else he wants those Mechanisation papers. Once he's got those he knows you've gotta play ball."
I walk over to the table by the side of the bed an' stub out my cigarette. Pardoe is leanin' against the mantelpiece. There is a little grin about his mouth. I reckon Carl is comin' to the conclusion that I'm not such a mug after all. Pearl is standin' at the bottom of the bed. She is lookin' at Gayda. She looks scared. She looks as if she is sayin' something nasty. Well, maybe she is.
"The trouble with all you guys is always the same," I say. "You don't trust each other. I know that. All you saps have been workin' for me all the way along." I grin at her. "Only I wasn't mug enough to let you know it.
"Now we come to the next mug Schrinkler. Schrinkler's over here workin' with Clemensky because Clemensky wants a tough egg around an' Schrinkler is certainly that. But I'm already on to Schrinkler an' he is supposed to be playin' in with me. Clemensky fixes with Schrinkler to kidnap you. They were goin' to hold you until such time as you coughed up those papers. But what you didn't know was that Schrinkler wised me up about that kidnappin' business an' I put Carl Pardoe in to take care of you. But I coulda saved myself the trouble because you knew all about it. Schrinkler not only double-crossed me; he double-crossed Clemensky. He told you all about it. Schrinkler was workin' in with you. An' why not. He was that sorta guy!
"You told him you'd got the papers an' he looked on you as bein' the head man in this job. He was lookin' after himself.
"So now you gotta fix Clemensky. When I took you back to your hotel in Knightsbridge that night you knew goddam well there was goin' to be a message for you sayin' your father was ill. You knew all about it. You knew you were supposed to go back to Mallows on that train. You knew you were goin' to be taken off that train an' taken to some dump of Clemensky's. Schrinkler had told you the whole thing.
"So what did you do? Or maybe you'd like to tell me?"
She say in a soft voice: "No, Sourpuss, I'd hate to. I'd hate to interrupt this little fairy story. You tell me."
"All right," I say. "I'll tell you. After I'd left you at your hotel you nipped out an' you got down to the Chez Clarence. You had a key. You knew you'd find Clemensky there. He was there all right. He was in his office waitin' to be phoned by Schrinkler to say the snatch was O.K.
"An' was he surprised!
"Well, you shot Clemensky. Then you thought you'd be really clever. You'd got Travis's document case with you. You took Clemensky's key off him. You went round to his apartment. You planted Travis's document case with the divorce papers in it in Clemensky's apartment. I found 'em there. That was supposed to prove something to me. That was supposed to prove to me that Clemensky had the papers; that he'd taken the Mechanisation papers outa the case an' left the other stuff there because he wasn't worryin' about it. Maybe you remember me tellin' you about that. You thought I'd fallen for that, didn't you, sweetheart?
"Then you scrammed back to your hotel. You telephoned through to me at the Regency an' told me the story about Vaughan bein' ill an' that you were catchin' that train back. You had to go through with that kidnap plot because you didn't know then that Carl Pardoe who you thought was Capelli was workin' in with me, an' also you didn't want him an' Schrinkler to know you had bumped Clemensky.
"Well, you got outa that business all right an' came back to Mallows.
"All right. So now Clemensky's dead an' you've still got the papers an' Travis is dead, so he can't talk. You're not worryin' about Kraul. Anyhow, he can't do any harm because he don't know a thing. He was just a stooge. He don't know you've got anything to do with this business. An' now Clemensky is outa the way. Clemensky was the only one who knew who you were. But now you've got a new partner in this game. You've got Schrinkler. You're wonderin' how you can fix Schrinkler.
"Well, you get a big idea. You put it up to Schrinkler an' bein' a mug he falls for it. The idea is that he kidnaps you. He kidnaps you to hold you as a hostage while he gets away. Now this is clever because by this time Schrinkler is gettin' a little bit scared of this business. He wants to get out of it. This way he gets out. All he wants is jack. He don't give a damn about those Mechanisation papers. In fact he's rather scared of them. They look too hot for him. So you tell him you've got it all fixed. He's to write you a letter tellin' you he's Clansing, an' you, bein' a brave adventurous sorta girl, are goin' to fall for it just to help me.
"Then you go off with Canazzi another mug an' Schrinkler rings me up an' gives me a proposition, the idea bein' that I give him a passport to get outa this country an' a twenty-five grand cheque, an' the mug thinks I'm so keen on gettin' those Mechanisation papers back that I'll do it.
