Delphi collected works o.., p.22
Delphi Collected Works of Peter Cheyney Illustrated, page 22
She is almost at the door an’ she spins around.
“Ain’t you got any sense, Lemmy,” she says, “or are you dead from the neck up? The cops are all around us. They’re closing in from the runaway side of the field. They’re down on the road, an’ it’s just a matter of an hour or so before they’ll get us.
“Well, ain’t I entitled to a chance? What has Siegella done for me anyhow? I reckon I hate that punk, an’ I allow that here’s where I give him his, an’ what’s more I’m goin’ to like doin’ it.”
“O.K., sister,” I say, “only mind he don’t see you comin’. Otherwise he might iron you out first an’ what would we do without our little Constance.”
While I am speakin’ there is a grunt from outside the door. The guy who has been standin’ at the window in the corridor has got his. Some cop has registered on this guy’s neck an’ he slides down to the floor in a lump and dies. Connie goes over to him an’ she takes the rod out of his fist an’ she sorta looks wise at me over her shoulder an’ she goes off.
Miranda comes up for some more air.
“Oh, it’s wonderful, Lemmy,” she says. “We’re goin’ to get out of here. I didn’t think we had a chance.....”
“Pipe down, gorgeous,” I say, “an’ don’t start countin’ any chickens yet.”
I walk over to the window an’ standin’ with my back to Miranda I pull the ammunition clip out of the automatic that Connie has just given me. It is empty. There ain’t a shell in it, which just goes to show you what a sweet little four-flushin’ twicer this dame Constance is. I tell you the dame is so screwy that she would make a corkscrew look like a West Point flagpole.
“Listen, Miranda,” I say to this jane, who is still rubbing her wrists, “if you think that you’re outa this jam — come again. You ain’t an’ you might never be. This Connie bit has just handed me out an empty gun an’ I don’t like it, an’ if I know anything of her she’s goin’ to pull a fast one in a minute so watch your step, Miranda, otherwise some guy will probably have you on a catsmeat stand next week.”
After a minute or two we hear Connie comin’ back. She comes in an’ she is very white about the mouth, an’ she is cryin’ like smoke.
“I done it, Lemmy,” she says. “I bumped him. He was in the back room an’ I gave it to him. He fell over the desk sorta lookin’ at me an’ it made me feel like hell. Now come on an’ let’s get outa here!”
She leads the way down the passage, an’ we go through a room at the end an’ down a stairway, an’ we cross the room at the bottom an’ go along some balcony an’ into a sorta loft and from here we drop down into the garage.
Connie is leadin’ the way an’ she has got her handbag under her arm, an’ just when she gets to the doors of the garage I pull the handbag away from her an’ I open it.
“Now, don’t get excited, sweetheart,” I crack, “because upstairs you issued me with a gun that ain’t got any lead, in it an’ when I use a gun I like one that shoots.”
I take the gun she has got in the handbag an’ put the empty automatic in its place. She don’t say nothin’, she just leads the way out of the garage an’ we start to make for the path leadin’ down to the road.
From away over at the right I can hear a lotta shootin’ an’ I reckon that the cops are closin’ in on the house from that side, an’ they are not worryin’ much about this side because they have got plenty people down on the road, an’ they reckon that nobody can make a getaway from this direction.
When we have got about one hundred yards down the track Connie takes a path leadin’ off to the left an’ we go down this for a bit an’ away at the bottom I can see a clearin’ an’ on the other side of it is a roadster standin’ there with the moonlight shinin’ on it.
An’ my nose tells me that a whole lot about this business is screwy so I let Connie go well in advance of me, with Miranda bringing up the rear, an’ I am just waitin’ for something to happen, an’ as we walk into the clearin’ it happens.
Siegella gets up from behind the car where he has been hidin’. He is grinnin’ like a coupla hyenas. He has got a rod in his hand and he don’t seem to be worryin’ about the one I’ve got. I get a sorta sickenin’ feelin’ that there is something wrong about this rod too.
Connie suddenly springs ahead an’ runs round the car to Siegella. I jerk up my gun, an’ she starts laughin’.
“Be your age, Lemmy,” she says. “That gun ain’t loaded either. I thought that you might get clever about the first one an’ pull mine off me so I took the shells out. Well, how d’ya like it?”
“Nice work, Connie,” I say, “but one of these fine days somebody is goin’ to give you yours an’ it won’t feel so good.”
Siegella laughs. He is pointin’ the gun at me, an’ it looks like he is enjoyin’ himself.
“Well, sucker,” he says. “I’m goin’ to give you two the heat an’ then we’re scrammin’ outa here. I reckon that you fell for that little story of Connie’s pretty good, didn’t you! Maybe we’ll get away with it, and maybe we won’t but we’ll make a certainty of you two first. So if you believe in Santa Claus you can get down an’ say a few prayers, Mr. G man, because I’m goin’ to blast you an’ I’m goin’ to give it to you in the guts.”
Miranda has been standin’ behind me, an’ I feel her move. She walks round to my side.
“Just one minute, Mr. Siegella,” she says. “I think that you’re forgettin’ something.” She takes a coupla paces forward so naturally that he don’t do anything an’ then, quick as a knife, she throws her shoe straight at him. While she was standin’ behind me she had been slippin’ it off.
The wop fires, but his aim is deflected an’ he gets me through the top of the shoulder — which is the second one that night. I reckon that there ain’t anything to it but a showdown an’ I go straight for him, an’ I am lucky because the next time he fires the automatic jams which is a very nice thing to happen when some guy is shootin’ at you.
I jump straight for the car an’ out the other side as he is backin’ away. I go straight at him an’ I hit him with my head as I arrive which is an old trick I learned in the Philippines.
The wop is no fool at infightin’ an’ he lets me have it in the stomach with his knee an’ I feel that I have been kicked by a squad of racehorses, but I grab him again, an’ we roll down a bank into a sorta dip beneath.
We do everything we know, an’ the wop is fightin’ like he never fought in his life. I am not feelin’ so very good myself, because my shoulder is givin’ me hell, but I am pullin’ a lot of dirty tricks that I have learned since I have been gettin’ around with the mobs an’ by the time I have got my thumbs in one of his eyes an’ am screwin’ his head round with my leg an’ kickin’ him in the face every time his head jerks back he is not feelin’ so good either.
But I know that I am gettin’ weaker every minute because I can feel that I am bleedin’ from my shoulder an’ this wop is in good condition an’ I reckon that I have gotta pull a fast one on him otherwise it is goin’ to be curtains for Lemmy.
So all of a sudden I go sorta limp, as if I was finished. I let go with my hands, an’ I relax with a grunt, an’ the sucker falls for it. For just a split second he lets go, an’, as he does so, I shoot out my two legs, scissor him an’ throw him flat, then, before he can move, I get a leg lock round his neck an’ after a minute I get a first-class Japanese neck hold on him.
This neck hold is a daisy. It was shown me by some Japanese judo merchant that I once got out of a hole, an’ it’s something like a half Nelson only a durn sight worse, an it hurts good and hard.
By this time I have got him turned over on his face, an’ he strugglin’ and workin’ against my right arm which is under his neck, an’ tryin’ to move my left arm because he knows I am hurt at that shoulder, but I am buttressin’ my left arm with my left leg an’ he can’t do a thing.
He tries to throw me, but I hit him a flat one across the back of the neck with my leg an’ I tighten my grip with my arms.
“Listen, wop,” I tell him, “An’ you ought to listen because you ain’t goin’ to hear any more after this. I’m goin’ to make a certainty of you. I’m goin’ to finish you like the lousy rat you are. Have you got that?”
He groans.
“Listen, Lemmy,” he pants, “I can give you plenty dough. I can make you a big shot. I can—”
I smack him another one across the neck.
“You can’t do a thing,” I told him. “An’ you ain’t never goin’ to anything after today, sweetheart, except push up flowers wherever they stick your bum carcass. But before I give you the works you gotta listen to this.
“For a coupla years an’ some months I been stringin’ along with your lousy friends an’ your cheap mobsters. I just had to do it because that’s the way Uncle Sam’s workin’ these days, an’ I had to like it.
“You an’ your sort ain’t worth two shakes in hell. You’re lousy and you’re yellow. You’d walk out on your own mother just like you an’ your lady friend Connie have taken a run-out powder on the mob that you’ve left up there in the house. Them guys are rotten too, but they was decent enough to stick to you an’ you ratted on them like you’d rat on anybody.
“An’ you was goin’ to sell the Miranda woman to your pal in the Argentine when you’d got the ransom money, huh? an’ you reckoned that that was funny because you never thought she’d last the life that she’d get out there for a month. She’d have killed herself an’ you was countin’ on that.
“Listen, baby. We know you was the guy who kidnapped that kid in France an’ let her die in a packin’ case after the ransom money had been paid. We know that you was the guy who snatched the two Grotzner girls last year an’ I’m the dick who found them in a vice house in Bakersfield where you sent ’em when you was through with ’em.
“Well, I reckon that there’s some rotten rats in the mobs, but the two worst ones that I know was you an’ Goyaz. I gave Goyaz his. I gave him five. Two for MacFee, an’ two for Gallat — a poor guy that didn’t have enough sense to know that he was alive, an’ one for me an’ I’m goin’ to give you yours.
“You ain’t goin’ to get no chance to get extradition an’ try to pack a jury or frame anybody. You’re through with bribin’ officials because there ain’t goin’ to be no officials except me. I guess I’m the judge, the jury an’ the court, an’ I’m sentencin’ you, Siegella, an’ here it comes!”
I put the leverage on my right arm, an’ I force my left arm down, an’ I press with my leg over the two arms, an’ it works.
His neck snaps like a rotten twig.
I get up an’ I look at him. He is lyin’ all huddled up like the cheap punk that he was.
I climb up the bank an’ at the top I find Miranda who has been chasin’ around trying to find where I have been. Constance has made a getaway, but I am not worryin’ about this dame because I know she will not get far.
My shoulder is aching pretty bad an’ I sit down an’ lean against a tree. Away to my right through the bushes I can hear the cops workin’ up towards the house. The shootin’ is dyin’ down an’ I see Schiedraut drinkin’ applejack out of his flask.
Now this seems a good idea so I send Miranda over to borrow this flask before he has given it the works, an’ I watch her walkin’ between the trees an’ I see that this dame Miranda has got a swell walk — you know what I mean, one of them walks that give you a whole lot of ideas that ain’t in the training manual, an’ I get a big idea that I could go for this Miranda in a big way, an’ I don’t mean maybe, an’ I think that when I get all this business cleaned up may be I will think about this.
An’ what would you have done, anyway?
Poison Ivy (1937)
CONTENTS
I. RUB-OUT FOR ONE
II. ONE FOR WILLIE
III. A SPOT OF HOOEY
IV. ROUGH STUFF
V. RUDY GETS TOUGH
VI. THE BLONDE BABY
VII. MIRABELLE
VIII. THE PROPHET GETS HIS
IX. SHOW-DOWN FOR LEMMY
X. PAUSE FOR EFFECT
XI. COLD BATH FOR ONE
XII. HOT NEWS
XIII. CURTAINS FOR ONE
XIV. RUB-OUT FOR THE BOSS
XV. LATE-NIGHT FINAL
The magazine in which this novel was first serialised
I. RUB-OUT FOR ONE
Telegraph Decoding Room
Office Sub-Assistant Director
Federal Bureau of Investigation,
NEBRASKA.
For Transmission to:
Special Agent Lemuel H. Caution,
Operating, Alliance Area,
NEBRASKA.
From: Director Federal Bureau of Investigation,
United States Department of Justice,
Washington.
Operation 42-7-3-36.
Special Agent Lemuel H. Caution will proceed to New York for the purpose of effecting under-cover contact with Federal Special Agent Myras Duncan, Chicago “G” Division, from whom further instructions will be obtained.
Special Agent Caution will assume the identity of Perry Charles Rice, travelling bond salesman: home town Mason City, Iowa. Contact with Myras Duncan to be made casually at Moksie’s Cafe, Waterfront, New York.
Duncan will have assumed identity of Harvest V. Mellander, rich middle western manufacturer seeking good time in New York. He may be identified by top joint of little finger missing from right hand. Special Agent Caution will prove identity by razor cut scar running from lower wrist across left palm.
Necessary funds available local “G” office. Take immediate action.
Read, learn, destroy.
WAS I pleased or was I? I’m tellin’ you that kickin’ around Alliance Nebraska never pleased me any; more especially when I say that I have been rusticatin’ in this dump so that I am already beginnin’ to think I am growing hay in my hair. But I reckon that the ways of the main “G” office is nobody’s business, an’ I have also got an idea at the back of my head that they have kept me kickin’ around this spot all this time so that the bezuzus I started over the Miranda van Zelden case could die down.
It looks to me like they have got something pretty good boilin’ up for me because I reckon if they are pulling Myras Duncan down from Chicago and plantin’ him to contact me in New York, the job is not goin’ to be one for sissies, because I’m tellin’ you that this Duncan is a tough ace “G” man, and that guy has got more medals for cleaning up mobs than you ever heard tell.
I reckon a train is a great spot for thinkin’ things out. All the while I have been in this train I have been sittin’ back letting my mind play around. There is a lot of guys think that being a “G” man is a mug’s business and that’s as maybe; but I’m tellin’ you that if you are a guy like me who likes to see things happen sometimes an’ who falls for contrast, it’s a great business, that is if they don’t get you first, an’ all the time I am wonderin’ just what the lay-out is going to be on this job an’ just what is going to happen to Lemmy Caution before I hand my ticket in and sign off the charge account.
It is eight o’clock when I arrive. I check out of the depot and get along to some hotel near West 23rd Street where they don’t know me, and I register myself as Perry C. Rice, an’ I do a little talking in the reception that would show anybody that I was an egg and butter man who thought New York was a nice place for strangers only a bit big.
After this I give myself a bath an’ I dig myself out a tuxedo, the sorta cut that a guy like this fellow Rice would wear. After which I get around the town a bit, absorb a little bourbon, an’ about ten o’clock at night I jump myself a taxicab and I scram down to Moksie’s on Waterfront.
This Moksie’s is the usual sorta dump. It’s a place I don’t know because I ain’t acquainted with New York any too good, my not havin’ operated around there very much, which looks to me like the reason I have been picked for this job. But it is the usual sorta waterfront dive where you can win yourself any amount of bad hooch an’ anything else you’re looking for including a split skull an’ a free dive in the East River with a flat-iron around your neck.
When I go down the steps a lotta tough guys give me the once over, but they don’t look very surprised so I imagine they have seen guys in tuxedos before. In one corner is a bar an’ behind this bar is a big guy — I hear ’em call him Moksie — an’ I tell him that I am drinking rye straight an’ that he looks as if he would like one too. I am right about this. I then start givin’ him a lotta dope about good times in Mason City where they make bricks an’ beet sugar, an’ by the time that I am finished talking these guys have got a definite idea in their heads that I am such a hick that ferns will start growing outa my ears any moment.
I stick around this dump for about twenty minutes and then some guy comes down. He is middle-sized guy an’ he is round and plump an’ smilin’. He is wearing a good grey suit an’ he has got a big pin in his scarf. His right hand is stuck in the armhole of his waistcoat an’ I see that the top joint is missing from the little finger, so I do some mathematics an’ conclude that this is Myras Duncan, my contact, otherwise Harvest V. Mellander.
He’s got a coupla dames with him an’ it looks to me like he is making a play that they have been showin’ him around the town. They go over to a table an’ they sit down an’ presently some thin feller comes in an’ takes the two janes away.
I just don’t do anything at all. I just stick around.
Pretty soon this Harvest V. Mellander comes prancing up to the bar, an’ believe me he is puttin’ on a very good act that he is good an’ high. He buys himself a four-finger shot of bourbon an’ whilst he is drinkin’ it he looks at me an’ sorta grins.
“Listen, kid,” he says, “I wouldn’t try anything on with you, but ain’t your name Rice an’ ain’t you from Mason City?”
I look at him an’ I tell him yes, an’ say how would he know a thing like that. He tells me that he knows it because he once had a car smash on Main, an’ don’t I remember taking him in for the night.
