The Urgent Hangman

by Peter Cheyney

Genres: Mystery; Hard-Boiled; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Slim Callaghan had been hired by beautiful Cynthis Meraulton to stop her cousins getting her step-father's money. But when the old man is murdered, the only suspect with no alibi and a giant motive is Cynthis. Slim always played his cases the way they came, but it turned out the Meraulton job had more twists than a hangman's rope. 'Slim Callaghan's quick wit and knowledge of rough and tumble place him in the top ranks of private eyes. What a man!' New York Times Book Review

Release date: January 21, 2014

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 288

Sample

Callaghan turned the corner into Chancery Lane. A gust of cold wind met him, blowing back the flaps of his not-so-clean raincoat, sending the rain through his threadbare
trouser legs.

He was five feet ten and thin. He had sevenpence halfpenny and a heavy smoker’s cough. His arms were a little too long for his height and his face was surprising.

It was the sort of face that you looked at twice in case you’d been mistaken the first time. The eyes were set wide apart over a long, rather thin nose. They were a light turquoise in
colour and seldom blinked. His face was long and his chin pointed. He was clean shaven and women liked the shape of his mouth for reasons best known to themselves.

Except for the face he looked like anybody else looks in London. His clothes were ordinary and decently kept. His shoes were bad and one of them needed mending. Callaghan was not inclined to
consider such trifles. At the moment he was concerned with the matter of the office rent.

The rain had already soaked the brim of his soft black hat and made a damp ridge round his forehead. His thick black tousled hair under the hat was wet.

As he turned the corner a bus, rounding from Holborn, shot a stream of watery mud over his shoes.

He walked along quickly under the lee of the Safe Deposit on the left-hand side of Chancery Lane. He felt in his raincoat pocket for the packet of Player’s, produced it, found it empty,
threw it away. He began to curse, quietly, fluently and methodically. He cursed as if he meant it, getting the full value from each word, finding some satisfaction in thinking of a word that he had
not used before.

Half-way down Chancery Lane he turned into Cursitor Street, walked down it for twenty yards, turned into a passage, then into a doorway. He kicked the street door open and began to climb the
stairs past the second and third floors up to the fourth.

There he halted outside a rather dirty door with a frosted glass top, on which was painted ‘Callaghan. Private Investigations.’ He stopped cursing when he saw that there was a light
in the office.

He put the key back into his left-hand raincoat pocket and kicked the door open. He stepped into a medium-sized outer office.

Standing in front of the typist’s table against the window on the left-hand side was Effie Perkins. She had her back to him and she was patting her red hair into place with long, white,
well-kept fingers. As she turned round Callaghan gave her one of those top-to-bottom looks which took in everything from the four-inch heels to the trim, tight-fitting skirt, then upwards to her
green eyes as they met his.

He looked at his wrist-watch.

‘Why the hell haven’t you gone home?’ he said. ‘I told you not to wait. You’ll get your money on Saturday. Get out. I want to do some thinking.’

She smiled. She managed to convey a certain definite animosity in that smile. It seemed as if Miss Perkins didn’t like Callaghan rather because she liked him a little bit too much.

‘I thought you’d like me to stay on, Slim,’ she said, ‘at any rate until you got back. I got on to Mellins this evening. He says that if the rent isn’t paid by
Saturday you get out. He says that if you try any fast stuff about moving out the furniture he’ll get damned nasty with you. Mellins means business.’

He hung his raincoat on the rack in the outer office and walked over to the door leading to his own room. His shoes squelched.

‘To hell with Mellins,’ he said. His voice was hard and had a peculiar brittle quality, not unpleasant. ‘An’ did you have to stay around to tell me that – or are
you gettin’ a kick out of it? You’re like every other damn skirt. You get an idea into your head, an’ if it looks as if it’s comin’ off you get pleased with yourself,
even if it isn’t goin’ to do you any good. Get out of here, will you, an’ if you want a reference I’ll say that you’re a first-class typist when you’ve got
anything to type, that you’ve got one hundred per cent sex appeal an’ nothin’ to use it on, which is rather gettin’ you down, an’ that you’re tickled silly
because you think that Callaghan Private Investigations is goin’ up the spout. Well, you’re damn wrong. Now go home.’

He went through the door and over to his desk which stood in the centre of the room facing the doorway. He threw his wet hat into the corner, sat down and put his feet up on the desk. He
examined the sole of his left shoe, which was in danger of parting from the upper, with a close attention.

She followed him into the room, stood watching him.

‘Why don’t you get some sense, Slim?’ she asked softly. ‘You’re finished here and you know it. You’re a fool. You’ve got brains and drive and you get
around. Why don’t you take that job with the Grindell Agency? You’d get a pay envelope every week, anyway.’

‘Like hell I would,’ he said. ‘An’ what’s the big idea of you tryin’ to get me workin’ for that lousy Grindell, eh? Shall I tell you what the idea is?
You’re goin’ to work there, aren’t you? You knew the balloon was goin’ up here weeks ago, an’ you think it ’ud be clever to have me workin’ around there.
An’ what’s the big idea, Perkins? You tell me that. What’s the big idea?’

He sat there with his feet on the desk looking at her waiting. He looked her over carefully. She flushed.

Callaghan grinned.

‘I thought so,’ he said. ‘Still lookin’ for a soul-mate, eh, Effie, with the accent on the soul?’

‘I’d like to hit you,’ she said, ‘you cheap runt. I hate the sight of you. I always have.’

‘Rot,’ said Callaghan. ‘The trouble with you is that you need a little fun an’ games, an’ the boss has always been too busy.’

He took his feet off the desk.

‘Now do some talkin’,’ he said. ‘You didn’t wait here to tell me about Mellins. I knew all that yesterday. Something’s been happenin’ around here. What
is it? Stop thinkin’ about yourself an’ what you’d like to do to me if you had me tied up, an’ say what’s on your mind. After which you can get out an’ stay out.
Do I make myself clear?’

She smiled. She had a nice set of teeth and knew it. Her mouth would have been good, too, except that there was a discontented droop at the corners. But her eyes weren’t smiling. They were
resting on Callaghan, and they were as cold as ice.

She looked at her wrist.

‘It’s eleven-thirty,’ she said primly, ‘and at eleven-fifteen we were supposed to have some business. We were supposed to have a client round here, a woman.
Somebody’s been ringing up for you the whole evening, and by the sound of ’em anybody would think you were really important for once.’

Callaghan put his feet back on the desk and looked at her carefully.

‘So that’s why you’ve been hangin’ around,’ he said. ‘I suppose you wanted to have a look at her. Curiosity’s a shockin’ thing, isn’t
it?’

His voice changed.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘who was it and what did they want?’

She went into the outer office and came back with a telephone pad in her hand.

‘A Mr Willie Meraulton came through at seven-thirty,’ she said. ‘He came through at eight, eight-thirty, eight-fifty and again at eight fifty-nine. He rang again at ten
o’clock and again at ten forty-five. I said that I thought you’d be back before eleven. I said that he could sort of leave a message with me.

‘He seemed very angry and sort of upset. He said that a lady was coming round here to see you. He seemed sort of careful to say that it was a lady.’ She paused for a split second and
looked at him with a smile that was definitely nasty. ‘Her name’s Miss Meraulton. He said she’d tell you all about it when she got here.’

He took his feet off the desk.

‘Who put him on to me?’ he asked.

She tore up the telephone message. The nasty smile was still evident.

‘Fingal put him on to you,’ she said. ‘He said Mr Fingal had mentioned your name to him. So it looks like one of those sort of cases, doesn’t it?’

Callaghan’s nose twitched.

‘An’ supposin’ it is one of those sort of cases, you fool,’ he mimicked. ‘Supposin’ it is? Well, what the hell’s it got to do with you? All
right, well, you’ve said your piece, now go home. I’m gettin’ tired of lookin’ at you.’

She turned on her heel, went to the door and opened it. As she did so the outer office door, immediately opposite, opened. A woman stood in the doorway.

Callaghan, standing upright, looking over Effie Perkins’ shoulder, pursed his lips into a silent whistle.

‘Good-night, Miss Perkins,’ he said. ‘I’ll write you on Saturday.’

He walked past her and out into the outer office, stood looking at the client.

‘You’re Miss Meraulton, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Come in an’ sit down.’

He went back into his own office and put a chair in front of his desk. Then he went behind it and sat down. As the woman came into the office Effie Perkins closed the communicating door.

The girl stood in front of the desk. Callaghan looked at her almost as if she was too good to be believed.

She was tall, slim and supple, but curved in all the right places. She had an air. Her face was dead white and there was a suggestion of blue about the eyes, of tiredness or strain. She wore an
expensive, supremely cut black frock of heavy silk marocain – an evening frock, caught over the shoulders with crossed straps of the same material, each of which bore a diamond fleur de
lys.

Her hair was dead black and her eyes, which regarded Callaghan with a certain steady disinterest, were violet. Her high-heeled black shoes peeped attractively from beneath the edge of her
frock.

Callaghan continued to look. He looked her over from top to toe as if he were entering for a memory test. He went on looking, even although her finely-cut nostrils twitched disdainfully and she
moved slightly as if to show disapproval of being looked at like a prize cow.

He grinned up at her.

‘Well . . .’ he said.

She moved an arm out from the shelter of the short cloak of fox furs that was draped across her left shoulder. There was a handbag in her hand. She opened it, took out an envelope and put it on
the desk. Callaghan looked at it, but remained quite still.

Then she sat down and crossed her knees. Every movement was slow, graceful, yet somehow quite definite. The idea flashed through Callaghan’s mind that here was a skirt who wasn’t
going to stand any damn nonsense from any one. She was in some jam or other, but she wasn’t frightened, or if she were she wasn’t showing it. She had to be in a jam, a certain sort of
jam, a not-so-good jam, or else she wouldn’t be sitting in front of his desk looking at him like he was two-penn’orth of dirt.

His grin, which suited his peculiar face, deepened.

He wondered when she was going to begin to talk and just what her voice would be like. It always took them some time to get started, because the cases that Fingal sent women to see Slim
Callaghan about were usually peculiar cases concerned with young gentlemen who couldn’t be got rid of, who were making themselves a nuisance after they’d served their purpose and who
wanted to try a little blackmailing.

There flashed through his mind swift pictures of half a dozen women who had stood or sat in front of that desk and told the old, old tale:

‘I thought I was fond of him. I trusted him, and now he says he wants two thousand pounds to go to South America and another five hundred to stop the man who saw us at the
wherever-it-was hotel from writing an anonymous letter to my husband.’

Callaghan had heard that tale so often that he thought it ought to be set to music.

But this wasn’t one of those things. It couldn’t be. She wasn’t old enough. They had to be between forty-five and fifty for that sort of thing. This one was about twenty-six,
maybe twenty-eight, possibly younger.

What the hell! Maybe he shouldn’t have sacked Perkins. Effie was good. She’d been with him for five years. She knew his technique. Supposing here was a good case, one in the bag, and
he needed an assistant who was at least as sharp as Effie Perkins.

He smiled at her. The smile – which was as much a part of the business as the telephone – illuminated his face. It said: ‘Madame, Callaghan Investigations are an honest firm.
We may be a bit smart occasionally, but we are a very good firm, and our clients are always safe with us. We never talk. So let go and get it off your chest.’

She said:

‘Do you mind if I smoke?’

He nodded. He knew she would have a voice like that – low and the words very clearly enunciated. She took a thin case out of her handbag and his mouth watered when he saw that they were
Player’s. He wondered if she would offer him one. When he lit a match for her and walked round the desk to light the cigarette she laid the opened case on the desk, indicated that it was at
his disposal. Callaghan took one and was glad of it. He hadn’t smoked for seven hours.

‘Mr Callaghan,’ she said. ‘I will be as brief as possible, because it is more than likely that I am wasting both your time and mine. I have come here only because Willie
Meraulton, to whom I am engaged, insists on it. He believes that I am in some sort of danger. It seems that a Mr Fingal has recommended you as a person who might be of assistance under certain
circumstances.’

Callaghan nodded. This was going to be good!

‘I should tell you,’ she went on, ‘that August Meraulton is my stepfather. Possibly you have heard of him. Most people who know him think that he ought to be in a madhouse. I
feel that way occasionally myself. He is an extremely rich man and can afford to indulge in certain idiosyncrasies such as making the life of everyone around him a misery and generally creating
hell upon earth for such people as are unable to see eye to eye with him.

‘His brother was Charles Meraulton, who died five years ago. He, too, was rich, and he left his money to his five sons – I suppose you would call them my half-cousins. They are
Willie Meraulton – a grand person, whom I am going to marry – Bellamy, Paul, Percival and Jeremy. If you read the papers you will probably know about them. They’ve spent their
money, and they have little interest beyond chasing odd women and drinking too much.

‘Briefly the position is this: My stepfather – who has become even more peculiar since the death of my mother three years ago – does not expect to live very much longer. He has
angina pectoris, an illness which does not go well with his sort of temper. He knows that Bellamy, Paul, Percival and Jeremy are just waiting for him to die, and die quickly, so that they
may have some more money to waste. He knows, too, that they are aware that under his will his estate is to be equally divided between his five nephews and myself.

‘Two days ago he gave a dinner-party. There were present the five of them, myself and my stepfather. He told them that he had made a new will, that it was typed on a thin piece of copy
paper and that he was carrying it round with him in his watch case. He said that when he died and it was read most of them would hate him more than they did now, but that if, by some chance, he
felt better disposed towards them he’d tear it up and they’d still get their money. Do you understand?’

Callaghan nodded.

‘I suppose that most of ’em have already pawned or mortgaged their expectation under the original will?’ he asked.

‘Exactly,’ she continued. ‘He has therefore created the situation under which the four of them – I do not include Willie, who is nice and who works hard and still has his
original legacy from his father – do not know whether his death will make them rich or bankrupt. If he revokes the new will – the one in his watch-case – or destroys it, then they
may be able to get through. If not, each one of them will face ruin, and, if I know anything of them, possibly something worse.’

Callaghan blew a smoke ring carefully. He was looking out of the window, thinking.

‘Willie is terribly worried,’ she went on. ‘He believes that if any of the four could get August out of the way quickly and quietly they’d do it. But more importantly he
knows that they are aware of my own quarrels with my stepfather. Today he told me that all sorts of weird things are going on, that he was afraid for me.’

Callaghan looked up.

‘Afraid for you?’ he repeated. ‘Why?’

She shrugged her shoulders.

‘Willie says that they’re all half crazy. He says that he has a fearful idea that one of them will do something to August to get that new will and destroy it – or employ
someone else to do it for them. He says that if they do they’ll somehow try to hang it on to me.’

Callaghan grinned.

‘Isn’t that bein’ rather a bit far-fetched?’ he asked. ‘D’you mean that your young man Willie honestly believes that one of this precious quartet is
goin’ to do in the old boy an’ then somehow frame you for the murder?’

She nodded.

‘That is what he means,’ she said.

Callaghan looked at her. He looked at her for a long time.

‘What do you think?’ he asked.

She shrugged again.

‘I don’t know what I think,’ she said in the same cool tone. ‘I’m rather worried and very bored with it all. Today Willie telephoned me that I was to get into touch
with you. Mr Fingal said that you were the sort of man who could “keep up” – those were his words – with Bellamy, Paul, Percival and Jeremy.’

She smiled a little grimly.

‘Willie said that Mr Fingal tells him that they’d have to be very smart to be smarter than Mr Callaghan.’

She looked at him with a sudden gleam of interest in her eyes.

‘That was damn nice of Mr Fingal,’ he said. ‘Maybe he said some other things as well?’

She raised her eyebrows.

‘I believe he said some other things,’ she continued. ‘I believe he said there were one or two police officers would give half a year’s pay to get their hands on you
because you’ve been a little bit more than clever, that you’re rather expert in sailing close to the wind.’

Callaghan grinned.

‘Very nice of him,’ he said.

He got up, stood leaning against the wall behind the desk.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right, I’m takin’ this case. Maybe you’ll tell me who my client is? Is it you or is it your boy friend Willie Meraulton?’

She took another cigarette and lit it with a gold lighter.

‘Does it matter?’ she said.

He grinned.

‘So far as I can see,’ he said, ‘I’m supposed to be a watchdog. My business is to keep a sort of fatherly eye on your halfcousins – the Meraulton quartet. Well,
that’s all right with me, but jobs like that cost money.’

She indicated the square manilla envelope on the desk.

‘There are four one-hundred-pound notes, eight ten-pound notes and twenty one-pound notes in the envelope,’ she said. ‘Willie Meraulton said you were to have that on account of
your services. Mr Fingal told him that you’d want everything you could get.’

Callaghan grinned.

‘Once again Fingal is right,’ he said. ‘I do – an’ don’t you?’ His tone was still pleasant.

She got up. Callaghan was still leaning against the wall.

‘Just one minute, Miss Meraulton,’ he said. ‘Tell me something. Willie – the boy friend – is worried about you. All right. Well, I reckon that if I was your boy
friend I’d worry about you, too. I want to ask you a lot of questions, because even a private detective with a fourth-floor office an’ a reputation that makes Scotland Yard sneeze
sometimes has to know somethin’ about what he’s doin’.’

She moved to the door.

‘Not tonight, Mr Callaghan,’ she said. ‘It’s late, and I have an appointment.’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘You’re the boss. But you might tell me why it was so urgent that you had to see me tonight. Why wouldn’t tomorrow mornin’ do? Or would
you call that a rude question?’

‘I might be busy in the morning, and I do not always explain my reasons for seeing people I employ at hours when I want to see them, Mr Callaghan. And may I ask you a question?
You said that my fiancé was worried about me, and you were good enough to add that . . .