Compliments of a Fiend Read online

  I took a deep breath and straightened up. I said, “All right, Mr. Blake. Thanks. I'm going now, and you can call the police, if you want to. My name is Ed Hunter if you forgot it since Mr. Starlock introduced me when we came in here. And maybe you can get me a day or two in the jug on a charge of threatening physical violence, even though it's only your word against mine. But if you do, I'll be looking you up, afterwards. On your way home some morning.”

  I went out without looking back at him. If he had a gun in a drawer, he didn't shoot me in the back with it. And I didn't think he'd phone the police.

  Ben Starlock was leaning against the pillar in the lobby, watching the door. I nodded to him and we went outside. He asked, “Get it all? And will there be—repercussions?”

  “I got it, and I don't think so. Wait a minute; I want to write down some names and addresses before I forget them.” I took out my notebook and pencil and put down the information I'd got from the hotel manager.

  I told Starlock the name of the man registered in four-eighteen and asked if it meant anything to him. He shook his head. “He probably hasn't anything to do with it. Am was probably picked off on his way out of our building or on his way into the hotel, before he got to the desk to ask for Mr. Collector.”

  “Picked off how?” I wanted to know. “That isn't easy to do in the Loop.”

  “Someone who knew him could do it. Get him in a car on some pretext or other. Did you find out how long this Richard Bergman has been at the Gresham?”

  “Three days; he registered from Cleveland, no street address.” If he was connected with—with whatever happened, he'd have checked out by now. If he's still there—”

  We were passing a tavern that was still open. I said, “Let's go in here and phone him. That's easy enough to check.”

  We stopped walking. Ben Starlock rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He said, “I don't know whether that's a good idea or not. But let's have a drink anyway. And we can phone the office from here; if there's nothing new there, we can go look up those hotel clerks without having to go back to the office first.”

  We turned back and went into the tavern. I saw a closed-door type of phone booth at the back and asked, “Shall I make the call to the office?”

  Starlock's hand pulled me toward the bar. “Let's think this out first, Ed, about whether we should phone four-eighteen. I don't think we should. If he's there, he's probably okay, but there's just a chance he isn't—that he is tied in with Am's disappearance, but that he's sitting tight. And a phone call at this time of night, even if we play it for a wrong number, might scare him off.”

  “I guess that's right. But what if he skips out anyway during the night and we lose him?”

  The bartender came over to us and Starlock ordered two straight ryes, without asking me what I wanted. But that was all right with me. After the bartender had poured them and walked away, Starlock said, “I don't think he will, Ed. If he was going to skip, he'd have done so early this evening, before Am would be missed. If he's still there now, he'll still be there in the morning. And in the morning I'll put two ops on him—one to tail him around if he leaves the hotel. The other to check up on him from the outside. I'll phone Cleveland, too—the Carson Agency or the Pinkertons— to check up if a guy by that name really lives there, and what makes him tick.”

  I asked, “Have we got two ops free tomorrow?” I asked because I remembered that we'd been pretty busy, and the Starlock Agency isn't a big one; there are only seven regular ops, five besides Uncle Am and myself.

  “Ed,” Starlock said, “we've got every man we've got free, if there's any angle on this business we can put him on. The hell with anything else we've got on hand.”

  “That's swell of you, Ben,” I said.

  “Swell of me, hell. Your uncle's one of the best guys on earth, but I'd throw the whole agency on the deal if anybody working for us got monkeyed with. I'd call in every man we have tonight, if there was anything to go on, but so far there's so damn little that you and I and Jane can handle it. And speaking of Jane— Want another drink before you phone her?”

  “You can order it for me,” I told him. “I'll drink it afterwards.”

  I went back to the phone booth and called the agency. When Jane's voice answered, I said, “This is Ed. Anything doing?”

  “Yes, Ed. Miss Beck just remembered where she heard that Ambrose Collector business; she just came in to tell me about it. She's here; want to talk to her?”

  “Yes.”

  Estelle's voice came on the wire, excited. “It was Karl Dell, Eddie. It was Karl Dell who was talking about the Ambrose Collector!”

  I took a deep breath. I said, “Stay there, 'Stelle. We'll be right around. We're only a few blocks away.”

  I hurried back to Ben Starlock; the bartender was just pouring our drinks.

  Chapter 4

  I SAID, “COME ON, BEN,” and pulled at his arm as I went past him. I might as well have pulled at the trunk of a tree as I walked past it; Starlock didn't move an inch and the jerk brought me up short and almost threw me off balance.

  He said, “Don't get excited, Ed. Drink your drink; don't waste it.”

  “But Estelle's remembered.”

  “That's fine. Now relax; we'll leave in sixty seconds, and sixty seconds isn't going to make any difference. Drink your drink and calm down; you get places faster if you don't run, and you're in better shape to do something after you do get there.”

  I picked up my shot of rye and downed it. A little too fast. I choked and almost exploded.

  Starlock said, “You see what I mean.”

  He drank down his own drink neat, and neatly. He said, “If you're ready to walk and not run to the nearest exit, we'll stroll back to the office and talk it over with your friend.”

  I was over choking by then and I had to grin at him. I picked up my chaser and took a few sips on it—slowly. Then I said, “Okay, let's go. And we'll crawl there if you say so.”

  “That's better. Come on, then.”

  Outside, we looked both ways for a cab and there was none in sight and we started walking.

  Starlock asked, “Did you find out what Estelle remembered? Or just that she did remember?”

  “I didn't get the details. But she heard about the Ambrose Collector from a guy named Karl Dell. He rooms where Am and I do; Estelle rooms there, too. He's kind of a nut.”

  “What kind?”

  “Astrology,” I said. “He eats and sleeps it; he'll talk your arm off about it. He wanted to use it tonight to find out what happened to Uncle Am.”

  “Tonight? You were with him tonight?”

  “For twenty minutes or so, around ten o'clock.” I told Starlock about the phone call and the poker game that I hadn't gone to.

  “Know where the poker game is? I mean, is there any chance of finding this guy Dell—after we talk to your friend and get the details—before he gets home from the game?”

  “I don't see how,” I said. “All I know is that it's a few blocks from where we live. But it's after midnight now, and he said he wasn't going to play very late.”

  Starlock said, “That's what they all say. What is he outside of being an astrologer?”

  “Sells insurance for the Harrison Mutual. The kind they call industrial insurance, where they collect a dime or a quarter a week on a regular route.”

  “What's he like personally, Ed?”

  “Fairly nice, when he isn't boring you to death riding his hobby. For short periods, anyway; he's a little too much of an eager beaver to wear very well. He makes friends and influences people. You know the type.”

  “That doesn't completely give me what I want,” Starlock said. “Let's put it this way: Can you picture him having anything to do with Am's disappearance?”

  I thought that over for almost half a block, and even then I didn't stick my neck out too far. I said, “I don't think so. If he's a phony, he's a pretty consistent one and a pretty clever one. I don't think he's crooked—but I do think he's a little screwy.”

  “Screwy enough to collect Ambroses?”

  “I don't think so. Let's see what Estelle has to say. Maybe, even if it was Karl who mentioned that, it'll be a lead in an entirely different direction. Let's hold judgment.”

  Starlock said, “Maybe that's smart,” and we didn't talk any more until we got back to the office.

  Estelle looked much calmer than she'd sounded over the phone. Even so, her eyes were still shining with excitement. She was talking almost before we had the door closed.

  “Eddie, it was about a week ago; I was right on that. Karl took me to a movie that evening—my evening off, Tuesday evening, so it must have been eight days ago. And it was a double feature; one of the pictures was 'Cuban Holiday' and that was the one we wanted to see and we got in just at the start of it. Then the B picture was The Case of Edward Dean.' Have you seen it?”

  “No. Go on.”

  “It wasn't very good. We saw about a fourth or a third of it, and Karl thought it was even worse than I did, and I didn't think much of it. So we left before it was over. But the picture was what led up to his mentioning the Ambrose Collector, so I had to start out with it. The picture—The Case of Edward Dean'—started out with a man, Edward Dean, disappearing. With no motive at all, up as far as we saw in the picture. I mean, he didn't have any reason for disappearing himself; he had everything to lose. And nobody had any reason for kidnapping or killing him.

  “After we, Karl and I, left we stopped in to have a drink—I don't remember the place, but it was on Randolph in the Loop, I think; I guess that doesn't matter anyway—and the picture had made me a little curious so I asked Karl what he thought had happened to Edward Dean in the picture.”

  Starlock said, “Just a second,” and glanced
at Jane, whose pencil was flying over the lines in her shorthand notebook. “Getting all this, Jane? She's going like a runaway train.”

  Jane smiled up at him. 'Yes, Mr. Starlock. I've got it all anyway; she gave it to me while we were waiting for you to get here. I'm just doing this for a double check, in case she adds anything.” Starlock nodded at Estelle to go ahead.

  She started a sentence back. “I asked Karl what he thought had happened to Edward Dean in the picture and he said, 'Maybe the Edward Collector got him.' I asked him what he was talking about—not knowing yet whether he was kidding or whether I'd miss something in the part of the picture we saw, and he grinned and said, 'Well, there's an Ambrose Collector. Why couldn't there be an Edward Collector too?'

  “By that time I knew—or I thought then—that he was kidding, so I asked, 'Who is the Ambrose Collector?' just like you asked me when I mentioned him early this evening, and Karl said, 'Nobody knows who he is. All anybody knows about him is that he collects people named Ambrose.' And, just like you asked, I asked, 'Why does he?' so Karl said, 'Nobody knows why. He just does.' So I laughed and we got to talking about something else. The other picture, I guess.”

  “And that was all that was said about it?” I asked her.

  “Every word, Eddie. I forgot all about it, until tonight you said Uncle Am hadn't come home yet. And it was only around seven o'clock so that wasn't anything to worry about and you didn't seem worried about it either, so I just said, 'Maybe the Ambrose Collector got him,' without even remembering where I'd heard about it. But I knew, when you asked me afterwards, that I would remember if I kept on trying. And I wasn't leaving here till I did, if it took me a week.”

  Ben Starlock smiled her. He said, “I'm afraid you would have, young lady. You'd have distracted my operatives, sitting in the back room there and looking like a fugitive from the Follies.”

  “But feeling like a fugitive from Information, Please. Oh, Eddie, I felt so awful, feeling that maybe what I knew was important to you, and not being able to remember.”

  “You did a swell job of getting all the details when you did remember, 'Stelle,” I said.

  “And is it important? Does it mean something?”

  I didn't know how to answer that one. I looked at Starlock. I guess he didn't know, either.

  He said, “Maybe it means something, maybe it doesn't. It'd be a hell of a coincidence if both what Karl Dell said and what the guy who got Am called himself over the phone both came out of a clear sky.”

  “Too much of a coincidence for me,” I told him, “I'd rather swallow the fact that Jonah swallowed the whale.”

  Jane said, “It was the whale that swallowed Jonah, Ed.” Jane is a wonderful stenographer, but we sometimes wonder how she finds her way back to the office after lunch every day.

  Starlock sat down on a corner of his desk. He said, “Ed, even if it turns out to be a dud, we've got to follow it. So I think we'd better split forces. You know this Karl Dell; you can handle him. Take Estelle home and talk to Karl; if he isn't home from the poker game, you might as well wait for him. There's nothing else to do except see these two desk clerks from the Gresham. I can do that. Not that I expect to get anything out of them. I don't think Am got as far as the desk of that hotel.”

  “You might find out something about the guy in four-eighteen, Richard Bergman. Maybe they know something about him personally.”

  He nodded. “Maybe. It won't hurt to try. Although if Am didn't get as far as the desk to ask for that room number, then it's odds-on that the Ambrose Collector picked that number out of the air; in which case Bergman doesn't mean anything to us. But we'll let that go till tomorrow, except for what the clerks may know.”

  “All right,” I said. “And we'll keep in touch through Jane. I'll phone in as soon as I've seen Karl Dell, whether what he says mean anything or not. Ready, 'Stelle?”

  She was. We went down together and all took the same cab, since one of the addresses I'd given Starlock was on Division just west of Dearborn and he could take that one first and drop us off en route.

  I was glad to see a crack of light under Mrs. Brady's door. I knocked and asked her if there had been any phone calls for either me or Uncle Am.

  She shook her head. “Is something wrong, Ed?” She asked.

  “I don't know,” I told her. “Do you happen to know if Karl is home yet?”

  “No, I don't, Ed. I've had my radio going most of the time, and even when I have it turned down soft like that, I don't hear people coming and going.”

  “You would have heard the phone ring, though, wouldn't you?”

  “Oh, yes. I can always hear the phone. I'm sure there weren't any calls for you or your uncle while you were out. There was only one call, and that was for Chester.”

  “Is he home?”

  “Yes, but he's probably asleep by now. The call was an hour ago and he came down in a bathrobe over his pajamas to answer it.”

  I thanked her and Estelle and I went on up to the second floor. There wasn't a crack of light under any door. We knocked on Karl Dell's door and there wasn't any answer.

  I said to Estelle, “I wish I knew whether he's a light or heavy sleeper. I hate to wake up the whole house by knocking loud.”

  “Let's try our keys, Eddie. Maybe one of them will open it.”

  It sounded like a good idea; the locks on all the rooms are ordinary ones and the keys are practically skeleton keys. I tried mine first and it wouldn't work, but Estelle's did. I reached in and turned on the light. The room was empty; the bed made. Just the same, I didn't take any chances of his being there but not wanting to see us. I looked in the closet and even under the bed.

  But Karl wasn't home, hiding or otherwise, so I turned out the light and locked the door again.

  I went into our room to look around and to be sure Uncle Am hadn't been there. It would have been wonderful to find him in the bed, asleep. Even dead drunk, out like a light; not that I'd ever seen him that way. Uncle Am does his share of drinking, but he knows how to handle it. I've never seen him past the cheerful stage.

  But he wasn't in our room, drunk or sober, dead or alive. And the note I'd left for him was still there.

  Estelle was still in the doorway. She said, “Shall we wait in here, Eddie? If we leave the door ajar, we can hear anyone on the stair.”

  “Don't you want to go to bed?” I asked her.

  She lowered her eyes in mock modesty. “Why, Eddie,” she said. “This is so sudden.”

  It would have been funny any other time. Or intriguing. But I gave her a quick grin and let it go at that. I said, “If you want to wait till Karl comes home, okay, sit down and relax. I'm going to phone Jane and keep her posted.”

  I went downstairs and phoned the office. Ben Starlock, Jane said, hadn't phoned in yet. I told her Karl Dell wasn't home and that I was waiting for him. I told her I wouldn't phone again until I'd talk to him, but that if anything important came up meanwhile, she should phone me.

  She said, “I've finished phoning hospitals, Ed. He isn't at any of them.”

  “That's good,” I said, and then wondered if it was. If he was in a hospital, injured anywhere short of fatally, at least I'd know.

  I went back upstairs. Estelle was lying back in the overstuffed chair, her eyes closed. But they opened and asked a question as I came in.

  “Nothing yet,” I told her. “Starlock hasn't phoned in; he's barely had time to get to the first guy he was going to see. Are you sure you're not tired, Estelle?”

  “Of course not. What time is it?”

  “Not quite one o'clock.”

  “Why'd I be tired then? I'd still be working for another half hour if I was at the restaurant. And I never get to sleep before three or so. And I sleep till almost noon. Besides—well, I just couldn't sleep tonight anyway.”

  I sat down on the arm of the chair; she leaned her head against me and I reached across it and patted her shoulder.

  She said, “I am tired, though, Eddie. Not sleepy, but tired. I hated being a waitress.”

  “Hated?”

  “Yes, I quit tonight. Sam wouldn't let me off when I asked him. Oh, I suppose if I'd gone to a lot of trouble to explain how important it was and had argued him into it, but— Well, I guess I wanted an excuse to quit anyway.”