Free Tough as Nails: The Complete Cases of Donahue From the Pages of Black Mask by Frederick Nebel Page B

Place are rare anyhow.
    Donahue crunched stout shoes on freezing slush as he headed west, turned into Sheridan Square. He crossed the Square and went down into dark windy Grove Street. Where a dim yellow light glowed from a door submerged five feet beneath the level of the sidewalk. Donahue turned down the flight of stone steps, passed through the open doorway, turned right against a closed door, opened it, walked ten feet down a narrow corridor, opened another door, and entered a long bar at which stood eight scattered men.
    The slack-faced barman, who was idly picking his teeth, said, “’Lo, Donny.”
    “Bunt,” Donahue said. “Scotch and soda.”
    “How’s the racket?”
    “On the up and up.”
    While the barman was uncorking the Scotch, Donahue walked the length of the bar, entered a telephone booth. The sound of the nickel dropping in the slot was audible outside the booth. Donahue talked for a minute, hung up. Then another nickel made a noise. He talked again, hung up, came out and picked up a pickle from the lunch counter on his way to the bar. He downed the Scotch straight, chased it with soda, rang a half dollar on the bar.
    He said, “Be seeing you, Bunt,” and walked out.
    Returning to Sheridan Square, he went down a West Side subway kiosk, took a northbound local to Fourteenth Street, left the local and caught a northbound express. Ten minutes later he left the express at Seventy-second Street, took a local to Seventy-ninth, got off and climbed the stair-way to Broadway. He walked one block west and turned south into West End Avenue.
    The Avalon-Plaza was a small apartment-hotel better than middle class, just short of swank. Donahue passed a braided doorman, pushed a revolving door around, climbed three marble steps, turned right and climbed three more, and then walked down a narrow quiet foyer. To the corpu-lent complacent man at the desk he said, “Will you tell Miss Tenquist that Mr. Donahue is calling?”
    The man said, “Certainly,” and repeated the names to the switchboard operator. When he turned back to Don-ahue saying, “Yes,” Donahue asked, “What number?” And the man said, “A-455.”
    A small silent elevator whisked Donahue to the fourth floor, and the elevator boy leaned out to point and say, “Down that way, sir, around the bend.”
    There was a brass knocker shaped like a harp on the door marked A-455. Donahue raised it and let it fall back to its brass base.
    The latch clicked and Miss Tenquist looked quizzically at Donahue. She had loose brown hair and wore a blue peignoir casually and becomingly.
    He eyed her steadily with round hard brown eyes and showed his long narrow teeth in a fixed smile.
    Without saying anything, the woman stepped aside and looked around the room vaguely, and while she was doing that Donahue walked into a small but not inexpensive living-room. To the left were two doors. One led to a bath-room; the other to a bedroom.
    When she had closed the door, Donahue, hat in hand, said, “I called you from downtown.”
    “Yes?” She was eying him strangely, uncertainly, and color was creeping into her cheeks.
    He was smiling at her fixedly. “I didn’t tell you over the phone that Crosby’d been murdered.”
    Her small white fingers flew to her mouth but did not succeed in stopping an explosive, “Oh!” that burst from spread lips. Her brown eyes dilated wide with sudden horror. Then the lids wavered, the eyes rolled a bit. Dona-hue took a step toward her, arms outthrust. She backed away, putting the back of her hand against her forehead. She sank to a divan and said breathlessly, “Oh… mur-dered!” tragically.
    “Yes,” Donahue clipped. He went on rapidly in a blunt incisive voice, “He’d been murdered when you got there. He’d been murdered before I got there. He was lying in his bedroom all the time and I didn’t know it.”
    She said, “Oh, oh,” behind teeth that tried to close hard, and a harried look battled in her