The Essential Works of Norbert Davis Read online

  Works of Norbert Davis

  Golgotha Press

  © 2010

  Table of Contents:

  Holocaust House

  The Mouse in the Mountain

  Oh, Murderer Mine

  Sally's In the Alley

  Something for the Sweeper

  Holocaust House

  CHAPTER I.

  WHERE WAS I?

  WHEN DOAN WOKE up he was lying flat on his back on top of a bed with his hat pulled down over his eyes. He lay quite still for some time, listening cautiously, and then he tipped the hat up and looked around. He found to his relief that he was in his own apartment and that it was his bed he was lying on.

  He sat up. He was fully dressed except for the fact that he only wore one shoe. The other one was placed carefully and precisely in the center of his bureau top.

  "It would seem," said Doan to himself, "that I was inebriated last evening when I came home."

  He felt no ill effects at all. He never did. It was an amazing thing and contrary to the laws of science and nature, but he had never had a hangover in his life.

  He was a short, round man with a round pinkly innocent face and impossibly bland blue eyes. He had corn-yellow hair and dimples in his cheeks. At first glance--and at the second and third for that matter--he looked like the epitome of all the suckers that had ever come down the pike. He looked so harmless it was pitiful. It wasn't until you considered him for some time that you began to see that there was something wrong with the picture. He looked just a little too innocent.

  "Carstairs!" he called now. "Oh, Carstairs!"

  Carstairs came in through the bedroom door and stared at him with a sort of wearily resigned disgust. Carstairs was a dog--a fawn-colored Great Dane as big as a yearling calf.

  "Carstairs," said Doan. "I apologize for my regrettable condition last evening."

  Carstairs' expression didn't change in the slightest. Carstairs was a champion, and he had a long and imposing list of very high-class ancestors. He was fond of Doan in a well-bred way, but he had never been able to reconcile himself to having such a low person for a master. Whenever they went out for a stroll together, Carstairs always walked either far behind or ahead, so no one would suspect his relationship with Doan.

  He grunted now and turned and lumbered out of the bedroom in silent dignity. His disapproval didn't bother Doan any. He was used to it. He got up off the bed and began to go through the pockets of his suit.

  He found, as he knew he would, that he had no change at all and that his wallet was empty. He found also in his coat pocket one thing that he had never seen before to his knowledge. It was a metal case--about the length and width of a large cigarette case, but much thicker. It looked like a cigar case, but Doan didn't smoke. It was apparently made out of stainless steel.

  Doan turned it over thoughtfully in his hands, squinting at it in puzzled wonder. He had no slightest idea where it could have come from. It had a little button catch at one side, and he put his thumb over that, meaning to open the case, but he didn't.

  He stood there looking down at the case while a cold little chill traveled up his spine and raised pin-point prickles at the back of his neck. The metal case seemed to grow colder and heavier in his hand. It caught the light and reflected it in bright and dangerous glitters.

  "Well," said Doan in a whisper.

  Doan trusted his instinct just as thoroughly and completely as most people trust their eyesight. His instinct was telling him that the metal case was about the most deadly thing he had ever had in his hands.

  He put the case carefully and gently down in the middle of his bed and stepped back to look at it again. It was more than instinct that was warning him now. It was jumbled, hazy memory somewhere. He knew the case was dangerous without knowing how he knew.

  The telephone rang in the front room, and Doan went in to answer it. Carstairs was sitting in front of the outside door waiting patiently.

  "In a minute," Doan told him, picking up the telephone. He got no chance to say anything more. As soon as he unhooked the receiver a voice started bellowing at him.

  "Doan! Listen to me now, you drunken bum! Don't hang up until I get through talking, do you hear? This is J. S. Toggery, and in case you're too dizzy to remember, I'm your employer! Doan, you tramp! Are you listening to me?"

  Doan instantly assumed a high, squeaky Oriental voice. "Mr.

  Doan not here, please. Mr. Doan go far, far away--maybe Timbuktu, maybe Siam."

  "Doan, you rat! I know it's you talking! You haven't got any servants! Now you listen to me! I've got to see you right away. Doan!"

  "Mr. Doan not here," said Doan. "So sorry, please."

  He hung up the receiver and put the telephone back on its stand. It began to ring again instantly, but he paid no further attention to it. Whistling cheerfully, he went back into the bedroom.

  He washed up, found a clean shirt and another tie and put them on. The telephone kept on ringing with a sort of apoplectic indignation. Doan tried unsuccessfully to shake the wrinkles out of his coat, gave up and put it on the way it was. He rummaged around under the socks in the top drawer of his bureau until he located his .38 Police Positive revolver. He shoved it into his waistband and buttoned his coat and vest to hide it.

  Going over to the bed, he picked up the metal case and put it gently in his coat pocket and then went into the front room again.

  "Okay," he said to Carstairs. "I'm ready to go now."

  It was a sodden, uncomfortable morning with the clouds massed in darkly somber and menacing rolls in a sky that was a threatening gray from horizon to horizon. The wind came in strong and steady, carrying the fresh tang of winter from the mountains to the west, where the snow caps were beginning to push inquiring white fingers down toward the valleys.

  Doan stood on the wide steps of? his apartment house breathing deeply, staring down the long sweep of the hill ahead of him. Carstairs rooted through the bushes at the side of the building.

  A taxi made a sudden spot of color coming over the crest of the hill and skimming fleetly down the slope past Doan. He put his thumb and forefinger in his mouth and whistled. The taxi's brakes groaned, and then it made a half-circle in the middle of the block and came chugging laboriously back up toward him and stopped at the curb.

  Doan grabbed Carstairs by his studded collar and hauled him out of the bushes.

  "Hey!" the driver said, startled. "What's that?"

  "A dog," said Doan.

  "You ain't thinkin' of riding that in this cab, are you?"

  "Certainly I am." Doan opened the rear door and shoved Carstairs expertly into the back compartment and climbed in after him. Carstairs sat down on the floor, and his pricked ears just brushed the cab's roof.

  The driver turned around to stare with a sort of helpless indignation. "Now listen here. I ain't got no license to haul livestock through the streets. What you want is a freight car. Get that thing out of my cab."

  "You do it," Doan advised.

  Carstairs leered complacently at the driver, revealing glistening fangs about two inches long.

  The driver shuddered. "All right. All right. I sure have plenty of luck--all bad. Where do you want to go?"

  "Out to the end of Third Avenue."

  The driver turned around again. "Listen, there ain't anything at the end of Third Avenue but three abandoned warehouses and a lot of gullies and weeds."

  "Third Avenue," said Doan. "The very end."

  CHAPTER II.

  EXPLODING CIGAR

  THE THREE WAREHOUSES--like three blocked points of a triangle--looked as desolate as the buildings in a war-deserted city. They stared with blank, empty eyes that w
ere broken windows out over the green, waist-high weeds that surrounded them. The city had been designed to grow in this direction, but it hadn't. It had withdrawn instead, leaving only these three battered and deserted reminders of things that might have been.

  "Well," said the taxi driver, "are you satisfied now?"

  Doan got out and slammed the door before Carstairs could follow him. "Just wait here," he instructed.

  "Hey!" the driver said, alarmed. "You mean you're gonna leave this--this giraffe..."

  "I'll only be gone a minute."

  "Oh no, you don't! You come back and take this--"

  Doan walked away. He went around in back of the nearest warehouse and slid down a steep gravel-scarred bank into a gully that snaked its way down toward the flat from the higher ground to the north. He followed along the bottom of the gully, around one sharply angling turn and then another.

  The gully ended here in a deep gash against the side of a weed-matted hill. Doan stopped, looking around and listening. There was no one in sight, and he could hear nothing.

  He cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted: "Hey! Hey! Is there anyone around here?"

  His voice made a flat flutter of echoes, and there was no answer. After waiting a moment he nodded to himself in a satisfied way and took the metal case out of his pocket. Going to the very end of the gully, he placed the case carefully in the center of a deep gash.

  Turning around then, he stepped off about fifty paces back down the gully. He drew the Police Positive from his waistband, cocked it and dropped down on one knee. He aimed carefully, using his left forearm for a rest.

  The metal case made a bright, glistening spot over the sights, and Doan's forefinger took up the slack in the trigger carefully and expertly. The gun jumped a little against the palm of his hand, but he never heard the report.

  It was lost completely in the round, hollow whoom of sound that seemed to travel like a solid ball down the gully and hit his eardrums with a ringing impact. Bits of dirt spattered around his feet, and where the case had been there was a deep round hole gouged in the hillside, with the earth showing yellow and raw around it.

  "Well," said Doan. His voice sounded whispery thin in his own ears. He took out his handkerchief and dabbed at the perspiration that was coldly moist on his forehead. He still stared, fascinated, at the raw hole in the hillside where the case had rested.

  After a moment he drew a deep, relieved breath. He put the Police Positive back in his waistband, turned around and walked back along the gully to the back of the warehouse. He climbed up the steep bank and plowed through the waist-high weeds to the street and the waiting taxi.

  The driver stared with round, scared eyes. "Say, did--did you hear a--a noise a minute ago?"

  "Noise?" said Doan, getting in the back of the cab and shoving Carstairs over to give himself room to sit down. "Noise? Oh, yes. A small one. It might have been an exploding cigar."

  "Cigar," the driver echoed incredulously. "Cigar. Well, maybe I'm crazy. Where do you want to go now?"

  "To a dining car on Turk Street called the Glasgow Limited. Know where it is?"

  "I can find it," the driver said gloomily. "That'll be as far as you're ridin' with me, ain't it--I hope?"

  The Glasgow Limited was battered and dilapidated, and it sagged forlornly in the middle. Even the tin stack-vent from its cooking range was tilted drunkenly forward. It was fitted in tightly slantwise on the very corner of a lot, and as if to emphasize its down-at-the-heels appearance an enormous, shining office building towered austere and dignified beside it, putting the Glasgow Limited always in the shadow of its imposing presence.

  The taxi stopped at the curb in front of it. This was the city's financial district, and on Sunday it was deserted. A lone street car, clanging its way emptily along looked like a visitor from some other age. The meter on the taxi showed a dollar and fifty cents, and Doan asked the driver:

  "Can you trip that meter up to show two dollars?"

  "No," said the driver. "You think the company's crazy?"

  "You've got some change-over slips, haven't you?"

  "Say!" said the driver indignantly. "Are you accusing me of gypping--"

  "No," said Doan. "But you aren't going to get a tip, so you might as well pull it off a charge slip. Have you got one that shows two dollars?"

  The driver scowled at him for a moment. He tripped the meter and pocketed the slip. Then he took a pad of the same kind of slips from his vest pocket and thumbed through them. He handed Doan one that showed a charge of a dollar and ninety cents.

  "Now blow your horn," Doan instructed. "Lots of times."

  The driver tooted his horn repeatedly. After he had done it about ten times, the door of the Glasgow Limited opened and a man came out and glared at them.

  "Come, come, MacTavish," said Doan. "Bail me out."

  MacTavish came down the steps and across the sidewalk. He was a tall gaunt man with bony stooped shoulders. He was bald, and he had a long draggling red mustache and eyes that were a tired, blood-shot blue. He wore a white jacket that had sleeves too short for him and a stained white apron.

  Doan handed him the meter charge slip. "There's my ransom, MacTavish. Pay the man and put it on my account."

  MacTavish looked sourly at the slip. "I have no doubt that there's collusion and fraud hidden somewhere hereabouts. No doubt at all."

  "Why, no," said Doan. "You can see the charge printed right on the slip. This driver is an honest and upright citizen, and he's been very considerate. I think you ought to give him a big tip."

  "That I will not!" said MacTavish emphatically. "He'll get his fee and no more--not a penny!" He put a ragged dollar bill in the driver's hand and carefully counted out nine dimes on top of it. "There! And it's bare-faced robbery!"

  He glared at the driver, but the driver looked blandly innocent. Doan got out and dragged Carstairs after him.

  "And that ugly beastie!" said MacTavish. "I'll feed him no more, you hear? Account or no account, I'll not have him gobbling my good meat down his ugly gullet!"

  Doan dragged Carstairs across the sidewalk and pushed him up the stairs and into the dining car. MacTavish came in after them, went behind the counter and slammed the flap down emphatically.

  Doan sat down on a stool and said cheerfully: "Good morning, MacTavish, my friend. It's a fine bonny morning full of the smell of heather and mountain dew, isn't it? Fix up a pound of round for Carstairs, and be sure it's none of that watery gruel you feed your unsuspecting customers. Carstairs is particular, and he has a delicate stomach. I'll take ham and eggs and toast and coffee--a double order."

  MacTavish leaned on the counter. "And what'll you pay for it with, may I ask?"

  "Well, it's true that I find myself temporarily short on ready cash, but I have a fine Swiss watch--"

  "No, you haven't," said MacTavish, "because I've got it in the cash register right now."

  "Good," said Doan. "That watch is worth at least fifty--"

  "You lie in your teeth," said MacTavish. "You paid five dollars for it in a pawn shop. I'll have no more to do with such a loafer and a no-good. I've no doubt that if you had your just deserts you'd be in prison this moment. I'll feed you this morning, but this is the last time. The very last time, you hear?"

  "I'm desolated," said Doan. "Hurry up with the ham and eggs, will you, MacTavish? And don't forget Carstairs' ground round."

  MacTavish went to the gas range, grumbling under his breath balefully, and meat made a pleasantly sizzling spatter. Carstairs put his head over the counter and drooled in eager anticipation.

  "MacTavish," said Doan, raising his voice to speak over the sizzle of the meat, "am I correct in assuming I visited your establishment last night?"

  "You are."

  "Was I--ah--slightly intoxicated?"

  "You were blind, stinking, pig-drunk."

  "You have such a pleasant way of putting things," Doan observed. "I was alone, no doubt, bearing up bravely in solitary sadness?" />
  "You were not. You had one of your drunken, bawdy, criminal companions with you."

  MacTavish set a platter of meat on the counter, and Doan put it on top of one of the stools so that Carstairs could get at it more handily. Carstairs gobbled politely, making little grunting sounds of appreciation.

  Doan said casually: "This--ah--friend I had with me. Did you know him?"

  "I never saw him before, and if my luck lasts I'll never see him again. I liked his looks even less than I do yours."

  "You're in rare form this morning, MacTavish. Did you hear me mention my friend's name?"