It made a swell story for the newspapers. They had it all doped out.
The girl had been standing in front of the mirror, dressing, intent only upon making the best appearance for a date she had that evening. It was a warm night. The french windows were open to the patio and because the bedroom had complete privacy, the girl had neglected to pull the blinds.
A sex maniac, perhaps a Peeping Tom, had been making regular rounds of the neighbourhood. He had looked through the window of the bedroom and saw the half-clad girl in front of the mirror.
He had started across the patio, directly towards the bedroom, but had stepped into the soft loam of a new lawn that had recently been planted. The soil had been thoroughly wet down by the gardener that evening and the man had sunk halfway to his ankles. He had taken a few step, then had turned and retraced his steps to the cement. Then he had walked directly towards the bedroom. The cement retained tracks of the loam-covered feet.
He had tiptoed up the stairs.
The girl had been standing there in her lingerie in front of the mirror, making herself beautiful, planning the clothes she was to wear, putting on face cream, powder and lipstick, fixing her eyebrows and eyelashes.
Suddenly she had become uneasy, conscious of some presence behind her. She had started to turn.
It was too late.
One of her own silk stockings had been thrown over her head and around her throat, twisted tight; a cruel merciless knee had pushed into her back, against her shoulder blades. She had tried to scream but no sound would come. The silk stocking had been twisted tighter, tighter, tighter.
There had been a futile, feeble struggle.
Suffocating, she had tried to flail with her arms and legs, but the cruel knee in her back crushed her to the floor. Sinewy, strong hands twisted the silk stocking tighter and tighter. There had been a few convulsive motions, and then silence.
The silence of death.
And then the murderer had turned her over on her back, had bent over her and had kissed her. The smeared lipstick on her lips told the story of that last kiss.
The kiss of death.
It was a natural for the sob sisters and the tabloids. There were photographs of the woman, photographs of the body in its flimsy underwear sprawled on the floor.
And then the newspapers had gone on from there.
The murderous bandit had gone down to the next room, the bedroom of the sister. He had entered that room, apparently in search of another victim, or perhaps waiting for the younger sister to come to bed.
And while there, he had become engrossed in reading a book.
The literary bandit!
It was a gift for sensational exploitation.
The book was, as it chanced, a favourite of Rosalind Hart, and one which she kept constantly in her room. It was protected from wear by a cellophane cover, and, as it happened, police, knowing that the murderer had handled this book, were able to process it almost immediately upon their arrival at the scene of the crime and had obtained not only a perfect set of fingerprints, but a complete outline of the hand of the man they wanted.
The sister of the murdered woman had stated that, when she entered the door of the bedroom, the man who had been reading the book was wiping his lips with a handkerchief, apparently getting rid of the incriminating lipstick which had come from the lips of the dead girl. The murderer had been so startled by the intrusion of the sister that he had dropped the handkerchief as he jumped to his feet. Police, recovering that handkerchief, had made an analysis of the smears of lipstick which appeared on it, and had proved conclusively that this lipstick came from the murdered woman. There was a laundry mark on the handkerchief which was slightly smudged, so that temporarily the police were not able to trace it, but they hoped to be able to reconstruct that laundry mark and use it as an additional clue.
Reading the papers, I felt as though I were teetering on the brink of a precipice, standing on rotten rock and looking down into a deep canyon.
The memory came back to me of the time, years before, when I’d been taken on a tour through a State’s prison and had been ushered into the execution chamber, shown the square trap of the scaffold, a bit of mechanism which at first glance looked like a part of the floor, but which was precariously balanced so that it only needed the slightest touch of the tripping button to send a heavy trap-door plunging down with that ominous bang that is so hideously familiar to those who have ever witnessed an execution, a reverberating, silence-shattering noise that will for ever after be indelibly impressed upon the mind of the witness — a noise which is synchronized so that the audience watching the execution doesn’t hear the sickening snap of the bone in the neck of the condemned man as he catapults to the end of the rope and the hangman’s knot behind his ear dislocates the cervical vertebra, pulling the spinal cord loose, letting the neck stretch until it is no bigger than a man’s arm, while the rope bites into the quivering flesh.
I felt as though I was standing on one of those insecure square platforms while an executioner slipped a black bag and a rope over my face, tightened it around my neck.
Just as a matter of form I checked the agency parking lot.
Agency car number two, the one I had been driving when I ran out of petrol, the one I had abandoned when I stole the other car, was in its accustomed place.
I turned on the ignition and checked the petrol tank. It was full. The attendant didn’t know when it had been parked there, some time during the night. It had been there when he’d opened up.
I didn’t ask any more questions.
I walked into the office, the morning newspaper under my arm, trying to appear nonchalant.
Elsie Brand, my secretary, looked up from her typing with a smile.
“Have a nice week-end?” she asked.
“Fine,” I told her.
“You’re looking mighty pert this morning.”
“Feeling like a million dollars,” I assured her. “You’re looking like a movie star. Bertha in?”
She nodded. “She wants to see you.”
I said, “I’ll be there in case anyone wants me.”
I went on into Bertha’s private office.
Bertha shot me a look from her glittering little eyes, then whirled around in the swivel chair. The chair squeaked in protest as she motioned me to the client’s chair in the corner of the room.
“Kick the door shut, lover.”
I closed the door.
“How are we coming? What have you done about getting a cut of that eighty thousand bucks, Donald?”
I said, “How about the suitcase?”
“Bless your soul,” she said, “the suitcase was easy. You just tell Bertha what you want her to do, and she’ll do it.”
“Where is the suitcase?” I asked.
She pushed the swivel chair back, brought a little suitcase out from under the desk.
“How did you get it?”
“I went to Stanwick Carlton and told him that I was trying to get some sort of a report on the case; that I didn’t think the police theory was the right one; that I thought perhaps the whole thing was a frame-up to cover something else that was bigger.”
“What, for instance?”
“My God, I didn’t tell him,” Bertha said. “I flung glittering generalities around. The poor guy was heart-broken. I let him cry on my shoulder and then poured hooch into him. He already had a start. I told him I wanted the suitcase. He gave it to me and kissed me. My God, lover, the son-of-a-bitch kissed me!”
“But you got the suitcase,” I said, reassuringly.
Bertha wiped the back of her hand across her lips and said, “You’re damn right. I got the suitcase.”
I went over and took a look at it. “Has this been changed at all since…”
“How the hell do I know?” she said. “You know what the police do. I asked Stanwick Carlton if he’d looked in it, and he said no, he couldn’t bear to.”
I opened the suitcase and said, “They’ll have taken the bullet out, of course. See what you make of this, Bertha.”
“What I make of it? It’s just a damn suitcase.”
I said. “We may not have much time to work on this thing. We’ve got to find out something more than the fact that it’s just a suitcase. Why was the bullet fired into it?”
“Because the man who was shooting at the woman missed her and the bullet hit the suitcase.”
I started taking out the folded garments, putting them carefully on Bertha’s desk, stacking them together so that the hole made by the bullet would coincide. I finally used the handle of the pen out of Bertha’s desk set to mark the location of the holes.
A blouse was neatly folded. The bullet hole zig-zagged in through it without matching any of the folds.
I said, “Someone re-folded the blouse.”
“Probably the cops,” Bertha said.
“It’s a neat job of packing,” I pointed out.
“Uh huh, I guess so.”
I said, “Let’s try refolding this blouse so the bullet holes all match up.”
I tried half a dozen different folds. It didn’t match at all.
Bertha became interested.
I said, “How else could we fold this? How would a woman pack it?”
“Hell, I don’t know,” Bertha said. “I usually throw them in and tramp a hundred and sixty-five pounds of pressure on top of them and then close the lid of the suitcase. You know me, lover. I have got past the coy age. I don’t give a damn what I look like, just so I’m clothed.”
I said, “We haven’t got too much time on this thing, Bertha.”
“That’s twice you’ve said that. What the hell has time to do with it?”
I said, “I may have to be gone for a little while.”
“Working on this case?”
I nodded.
“Well, you bring home the bacon,” Bertha said. “You know me, lover, and the way I feel about things. With eighty grand kicking around loose we certainly should be able to chisel in on enough of it to…”
“To pay eighty per cent of it over to the government,” I said.
I knew that was good for a reaction.
Bertha quivered with white fury, sputtered for words.
I put the garments back inside the suitcase, closed it and took it back to my own office.
Elsie Brand looked in as I came in, ceased pounding the typewriter long enough to regard the suitcase curiously. “Going some place?” she asked.
“Perhaps.”
“Isn’t that a woman’s suitcase?”
I nodded and said, “Come on into the private office for a minute, Elsie.”
She pushed hack from the typewriter, followed me into my private office. I closed the door and said, “Elsie, we have only a few minutes. We’re going to have to work fast. You’re a woman who has gone to an auto camp with her lover. The door has been closed. You’re in the privacy of the auto camp. What would you do?”
She blushed.
I said, “No, no, now get down to earth. You’d start taking off your clothes. What would you do with them?”
“Hang them up, of course.”
I said, “Take a look at this suitcase. You can’t tell much about the way it’s been packed, because things have been changed around, but let’s take a look at the order of the garments. There’s a bullet hole through some of these. Here’re some underthings and some stockings, with a bullet hole through them. Here’re some handkerchiefs. Now, we come to this blouse. It’s a problem. Can you fold it so that the bullet hole matches up after the blouse has been folded? You can see the bullet went through the blouse four or five times.”
“On account of the way it was folded,” she said.
“Fold it back the way it was, then.”
Elsie spread the blouse out on my desk, started folding it, trying to get the bullet hole to line up when the blouse was folded. She couldn’t do it.
Elsie studied the blouse closely, raised the place where the arms joined the blouse to her nostrils, put the blouse down, started folding it again, then shook her head and said, “It wasn’t packed. It had to be folded like this.”
She took it and folded it into a crumpled, disorganized package, then, using the pen-holder from my office pen set, just as I had done in Bertha’s office, worked around until she had the holes all lined up.
“Would a woman have packed it that way?”
She shook her head, and said, “This was a soiled blouse. It had been worn. But still she wouldn’t have packed it so carelessly that…”
“Wait a minute. What do you mean it had been worn?”
“I mean it was soiled. She’d been wearing it.”
I said, “If you were going to keep a rendezvous in a motor court with a man you loved, if you were stepping out on your husband, would you carry soiled clothes along?”
“Certainly not. You mean this bag was all she had?”
“That’s right.”
“What did the man have?”
“Nothing.”
Elsie started looking through the bag, making an inventory.
“Turn your back a minute,” she said. “This is going to be intimate.”
I turned my back, but said over my shoulder, “You don’t need to be so delicate about it. The police have pawed through everything in there.”
“Not with me looking on, they haven’t.”
I walked over to the window and smoked a cigarette.
Elsie said, “Come on back. I think this was the blouse she was wearing at the time — well, you know, at the time she went to the motor court.”
“I think so too, Elsie. I can’t prove it, but I think so.”
“And when she folded it she had to fold it like this,” Elsie said.
I saw the way she had wadded the garment up. The bullet holes were now all in proper line, but the garment was half-folded, half-rolled and compressed into a small space.
I said, “Would you have folded it that way?”
She shook her head.
I said, “Okay, I think I’ve got the answer. Now, look, Elsie, things are going to get tough.”
“How?” she asked.
I said, “They’re going to get plenty tough. I’m out working on a case. It’s such an important case that I’m not even going to let you know where I am. But you remember to tell everyone that I was in this morning. I didn’t seem in any particular hurry and that I went out to work on a case. You…”
The door burst open. Bertha Cool, standing in the doorway, was sputtering with indignation.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Why,” she said, “that damn bank! I’ll pin their ears down. The — why, what the hell do they think they’re doing?”
“What bank?” I asked. “And what’s it all about?”
“That cheque Claire Bushnell gave us. They have the crust to tell me that they’re going to charge my account with it, that they accepted the cheque only on the contingency of a cheque Claire Bushnell had deposited for collection being good.”
“And that cheque wasn’t good?”
“That’s what they say.”
“Who signed the cheque Claire deposited?”
“They won’t tell.”
I said, “All right, Bertha, I’ll handle it.”
Bertha said, “What the hell does that bank think it’s trying to put across?”
I said, “There’s no harm in trying.”
“Well, they tried the wrong person. They’re barking up the wrong tree. I’ll… I’ll… ”
“You have the money, haven’t you?”
“We did have it.”
“Then what happened?”
She said, “They’re trying to get my bank to draw it out of my account, on the theory that the whole thing was handled as a collection. Can you beat that?”
I said, “Where did you deposit the cheque? Did you go to the bank on which it was drawn and cash it?”
“No, don’t be silly. I went to our bank. I had the bank telephone to find out if the cheque was good. They looked it up and said it was, so I deposited it. On the strength of that telephone call, our bank gave us the credit.”
“And then what?”
“Then this morning, when the cheque went over to clear, the account of Claire Bushnell had been debited on account of a cheque which had been deposited by her being no good. Donald, lover, they can’t do this to us.”
I said, “If you sent the cheque in for collection through our bank, they’re absolutely right. They don’t have to pay it, if there aren’t funds enough to cover.”
“But they said it was good over the telephone.”
“So it was, Saturday morning,” I said. “This is Monday. The situation is different now.”
“Damn!” Bertha said. “That’s hell. We’ve already done all the work for the little shyster.”
I said, “I’ll see what I can do. Don’t let anyone know what I’m working on. Don’t dare to tip anyone off to where I can be found. This thing is loaded with dynamite and I’ve got to be very, very careful.”
“I won’t tell anyone a thing,” Bertha promised. “But you got to get hold of that Bushnell girl. She’s got some money somewhere. She has some rings or something she can pawn. She has this rich aunt. Let her go strike the aunt for some money.”
I smiled and said, “You mean, let the aunt pay for having her boy friend shadowed?”
Bertha said, “I don’t give a damn what you have to do, we want that cheque made good. Two hundred dollars. We can’t let that slip through our fingers!”
I said, “I’ve got to do some looking around before I can help us much on this. You tell everyone that I’m working on a routine job and expect to be back any minute.”
“What are you so fidgety about this morning?”
“I’m not fidgety,” I said, “I’m trying to get this thing lined up before…”
“Before what?” Bertha asked.
“Before the police start tracing the course of that bullet through the suitcase.”
She said, “You’re nuts. That other thing is all washed up except in so far as that one question of insurance is concerned. Don’t fall down on that job, Donald. Eighty grand!”
I said, “Keep your mind fixed on that eighty grand. Bertha, it may help. Remember that’s the main thing, that insurance.”
“Well, don’t let it obscure your mind on this two-hundred dollar cheque,” she said. “We don’t want to let these banks start slipping stuff like that over on us, lover. I’m so mad I could put milk and sugar on tenpenny nails and chew ’em up for breakfast food. You handle, lover, but don’t let that bitch use sex on you.”
“No?” I asked, smiling.
“No,” Bertha screamed. “And don’t joke about it, Donald. You know damn well there ain’t two hundred dollars’ worth of sex in the world!”
And Bertha went out, slamming the door behind her.
“Bertha and Claire Bushnell may have different ideas about the value of sex,” I said.
Elsie Brand lowered her eyes. “And you?”
“I’m not an appraiser,” I said.
Elsie’s eyes remained demurely downcast.
After a moment, she said, “Did you read the papers this morning, Mr. Lam?”
I nodded.
“About the murder of the beautiful blonde, the one who was found choked to death with a stocking?”
“Yes, why?”
She said, “You know, I’ve always wondered how in the world people were ever able to find anyone from the descriptions police give.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why?” she said, “the police have given out a description of the man they’re looking for in connection with that murder. You should read it.”
“Why?”
She laughed, and said, “Honestly, it sounds exactly as though they were describing you! My heavens, when I read the thing I thought something about it was vaguely familiar, and wondered if perhaps I knew this murderer, and then I read it again and saw that it was a description that fits you right down to the ground. And that made me laugh. It just shows how completely unreliable these things are.”
“Darned if it doesn’t,” I told her, and started for the door.
“You’ll be back?” she asked.
“Oh, yes, I’ll be back,” I called over my shoulder.
I took a taxi out to a drug-store in the two thousand block on Veronica Way, then walked back to 1624.
I jabbed on the bell-push, giving the code signal that had been successful yesterday.
Claire Bushnell’s voice came down the speaking tube. “Who is it?”
“Lam,” I said.
“Oh... I can’t see you now.”
“Why not?”
“I’m just getting up. I slept late.”
I said, “Put on a robe and let me in. It’s important.”
She hesitated a moment, then buzzed the electric release.
I opened the door and went up.
Claire Bushnell’s door was slightly ajar. I pushed it open and went in.
Her voice called from the bedroom, “Sit down and make yourself at home. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
“Don’t be so damn modest,” I said. “Put on a robe and come out. I want to talk with you.”
She opened the door a crack. “Who’s being modest?” she demanded. “Hang it, I’m trying to make myself presentable. Don’t you know that a woman looks like hell when she wakes up in the morning?”
“How would I know?” I asked.
“Try taking a correspondence course,” she said, and slammed the bedroom door.
I sat down and waited.
It was fifteen minutes before she came out, and then she was wearing slippers and a fluffy negligee, but her hair had been combed, her face made up and there was carefully shaped lipstick on her mouth.
She said, “You certainly do come at the most inopportune times.”
I looked her over and said, “You’re gilding the lily.”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t need the war paint. You could just tumble out of bed and win a beauty prize.”
“A lot you know about it. How about some coffee?”
“Suits me.”
She opened a door, disclosing a kitchenette that had been built into a closet, just a small gas plate, some shelves, dishes and a pocket-size electric refrigerator. “I can’t give you much else. I don’t eat much for breakfast”
“It’s okay, I’ve had breakfast. I’m just being sociable.”
“What brings you out here so early?”
I said, “That cheque you gave us.”
“The two hundred dollars?”
“Yes.”
“What about it?”
“It bounced.”
She had been pouring coffee into a percolator. Now she whirled round, still holding the coffee can in her hand. “What are you talking about?”
“It bounced.”
“Why, that cheque was as good as gold!”
“There seems to be a slight difference of opinion,” I told her. “The bank seems to think otherwise. Apparently you had deposited a cheque and drawn against it with this cheque you gave us. The cheque you deposited was no good.”
“Donald, that’s absurd! That cheque was perfectly good.”
I said, “Ring up your bank, if you doubt what I’m telling you.”
She slowly put down the coffee can as though in a daze, then said, “Good grief, I’d never thought of that!”
After a while I said, “Bertha Cool’s worked up about it.”
“ She would be.”
“What can you do about it?” I asked.
She studied me thoughtfully. “Nothing, I guess. Not now.”
“You can’t raise any money?”
“Not a cent.”
“You must have some money in the bank.”
“Well, what if I have?”
“And a few things you could hock.”
“Well, I’m not going to.”
“Your dear auntie doesn’t seem as important to you now as she did Saturday, does she?”
“Shut up. Sit down and wait for the coffee.”
“Who was your cheque from?” I asked. “The one that bounced.”
“What do you want to do?” she demanded. “Stay for coffee or get thrown out?”
“Stay for coffee,” I said.
She put water in the percolator, lit the gas plate, brought out an electric toaster, unwrapped a half loaf of bread, opened the little refrigerator and took out a package of Nucoa.
“Seen the paper?” I asked.
“No.”
I handed her the morning paper and said, “You might as well get caught up on the news while the coffee’s percolating.”
She said, “Oh, I’d rather talk with you. I can read the newspaper any time. You’re — you’re interesting and you’re going to try to pry something out of me, aren’t you?”
“I’ve already pried it.”
She opened the newspaper, glanced at the headlines, looked down through the front page, paused briefly on the account of the murder, then turned to the back page, looked at the pictures of the girl lying on the floor of her bedroom, clad in panties and bra.
“How perfectly terrible!” she said.
“What?”
“For a girl to be strangled that way.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Probably some sex maniac,” she said, and shivered. “I hate to think of things like that.”
I took a cigarette case from my pocket. “Want one?”
“Please.”
She took a cigarette, guided my hand with the tips of her fingers as I held the match. Then I lit up one of my own and walked over, to stand looking out of the window.
Abruptly I turned around.
She had opened the paper to the sporting page and was studying the racing news.
I turned back towards the window.
I heard the paper rustle as she folded it. “Like the scenery?” she asked.
“Uh huh.”
“I’m glad you do,” she said. “Some people prefer the animate scenery.”
I said, “You’re a lot more cordial this morning than you were yesterday.”
“Perhaps I like you better.”
“Perhaps.”
“Perhaps I feel better.”
“Perhaps.”
“Perhaps you just imagine I’m nicer.”
“Perhaps.”
“Good heavens,” she said, “won’t you argue with me?”
“No, I’ll leave that to Bertha.”
“All right, I’ll take care of Bertha.”
I said, “You might sing a different tune if Bertha swears out a complaint for you on the ground of giving a cheque for which there were not sufficient funds.”
“I had sufficient funds when I gave the cheque. It isn’t my fault if something happened.”
“Not the way the bank talks. The bank says they only took that cheque you deposited for collection; that you had no right to draw on it until after it had cleared.”
“They didn’t tell me that when I deposited the cheque. They took it in and credited my account in the pass-book. I can show you.”
“Let’s take a look.”
She hesitated a moment, then got up and went into the bedroom.
A moment later she came gliding back, the fluffy negligée swinging around about her. She handed me a small bank-book opened it, and with a tinted fingernail pointed to the last deposit, a simple credit of five hundred dollars, with the initials of the man who made the entry in the book.
I moved the finger back a bit and looked up the page. There were deposits of two hundred and fifty dollars made with regularity, one each month.
She suddenly realized what I was doing, and jerked the book away.
“Alimony,” I said. “I presume you lose it if you get married again.”
Her eyes were flaming. “You’re the nosiest, most impertinent man I ever met!”
“That alimony of yours,” I went on, “is just about enough for a girl to live on if she’s economical. You might try matrimony once more and get a bigger slice of alimony next time.”
She said, “Someday I’m going to slap your face, Donald Lam.”
“Don’t do it,” I told her. “It brings out the primitive in me. I might sock you.”
“The primitive in you,” she said scornfully. “You haven’t any primitive.”
“Still thinking about that ten-dollar bet? If you could get me to make a pass at you, you’d have ten dollars more to your credit for this month.”
Her face showed a change of expression. “I’d forgotten about that bet,” she said, and then added after a moment, “I’m sorry I made it.”
“So am I.”
“Do you,” she asked throatily, “want to call it off, Donald? Just forget about it?”
“No,” I told her, “I need the ten bucks.”
Her face flamed with anger. “Why, you—” and then she laughed and said, “You have a great line, don’t you?”
“No line at all,” I told her. “I’m working.”
“And you never let pleasure interfere with business, I take it.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m not certain that I like people like that.”
I said, “You can throw me out after I’ve had my coffee.”
“I will, at that.”
The coffee started to percolate, and she fed two slices of bread through the toaster. I refused the toast but had two cups of coffee in the intimacy of the little living-room. Her eyes were studying me as she ate.
I said, “I’d like the truth, Claire.”
“I haven’t lied to you.”
“You told me you thought that young man was trying to sell your aunt some stock, or something.”
“I was afraid he might have been.”
“And that you were afraid he might be planning to marry her and cut himself a piece of cake.”
“I was.”
“But you didn’t part with two hundred dollars to find out about him just for that.”
She didn’t say anything.
I said, “Let’s quit beating around the bush, Claire.”
“You’re the one who’s beating around the bush, making all sorts of wild guesses, trying to find out something that happened, torturing your imagination…”
I said, “Look here, Claire, let’s be frank with each other. You perhaps have a chance to inherit some money from your aunt. I don’t think it’s as big a chance as you’ve been leading us to believe, and I doubt very much if there’s as much money there as you told Bertha Cool there was.”
“So what? That’s my business.”
“It’s your business up to a point,” I said. “But when you came into the office, you started talking about having a man shadowed so you could find out who he was. He was a man who was calling on your aunt. You gave quite a story about why it was you wanted him shadowed. It’s a story that doesn’t hang together. Then Bertha made you a figure of two hundred dollars. For a girl in your position that was a lot of money. You didn’t try to bargain, you didn’t try to haggle. You put it right out on the line.
“Now then, it turns out you haven’t as much money in your bank account as you thought you had. There was a five hundred-dollar cheque which you felt certain was deposited on Saturday. That must have been before you went to see Bertha Cool because Bertha Cool rushed your cheque down to the bank before closing hours. Our bank telephoned your bank, and your bank advised that the cheque was good, that it had sufficient funds to deposit at that time.
“The position your bank now takes is that it had taken a cheque for collection and had temporarily credited your account, but that when it found out the cheque was no good it had debited your account with an amount of five hundred dollars, which made your two-hundred-dollar cheque no good.”
“My Lord,” she said, “you keep going over it and going over it. Suppose all that’s true, then what?”
I said, “The inference is pretty obvious. The cheque which you thought was good as gold, but which you now realise you can’t collect, wasn’t just an ordinary cheque. It wasn’t just an ordinary business transaction. If you had thought a five hundred-dollar cheque which you had deposited in your account was perfectly good, and then I came to you this morning and told you that it wasn’t good, you would, under ordinary circumstances, insist that you were going to take steps to collect the five hundred dollars and that then you’d make our two-hundred-dollar cheque good. The reason you’re not doing that is because you know that for some reason it has suddenly become hopeless to try and collect that five-hundred dollar cheque.”
“All right, what if that is the case? Lots of times people take cheques and find they’re no good, that they’ve been bilked.”
“You weren’t bilked,” I said. “You took a cheque that was really good as gold, and the reason that it isn’t good now is not because there weren’t any funds to cover it. It’s because the bank has found out that the person who issued that cheque is dead.”
She was raising her coffee cup to her lips as I spoke. Now she lowered it back to the saucer and looked at me wordlessly.
I said, “In other words, the cheque for five hundred dollars was a cheque Minerva Carlton gave you. Minerva Carlton met you that Saturday morning before you went to the agency. Minerva Carlton told you she wanted to find out about this man who was calling on your Aunt Amelia. Minerva Carlton told you she was giving you a cheque for five hundred dollars which you could apply on expenses, that you were to go to our office, give a great story about why you wanted to find out who this man was and all about him, and she gave you that cheque so you’d have money enough to pay expenses.
“Mrs. Carlton knew that she couldn’t go to our office and tell any story that would hang together and wouldn’t arouse suspicion. She knew that you could. The probabilities are that your aunt doesn’t ever intend to give you a cent and you don’t ever expect to get a cent from her. But you fixed up that story so it would sound plausible and would start us working on the case. The two-hundred-dollar cheque that you gave us didn’t mean a damn thing to you because you were going to pass the expenses on to Minerva. Now then, suppose you tell me the rest of it.”
She said scornfully, “You certainly do have a wild imagination, don’t you?”
I said, “You’d better tell me the story; otherwise, I’m going to pass my information on to the police.”
“And what can the police do?” Claire Bushnell asked scornfully.
I said, “The police can serve a subpoena on your bank. They’ll find out all about that five-hundred-dollar cheque, who gave it to you, and then they’ll subpoena you as a witness before the Grand Jury.”
She played with the handle of her coffee cup, her eyes downcast.
I said, “I haven’t got all day to wait.”
She sighed, said. “Give me a cigarette, Donald.”
I gave her a cigarette and held a light to it. She took in a deep pull, blew out the smoke, studied the end of the cigarette thoughtfully as though trying to find some way out of the predicament, then said, “Okay, Donald, you win.”
“Tell me about it.”
She said, “Minerva and I were pretty close friends. We used to play around a lot together, went out on dates. We understood each other perfectly and used to have a lot of fun. Minerva didn’t care too much about the men, but we used to get a lot of kick out of going out and seeing what would develop. We both of us liked adventure.”
“That was while she lived here and was working for Dover Fulton?”
“That’s right. She was his secretary.”
“And then what?”
“And then Minerva went to Colorado. She had some rich relatives there. She met Stanwick Carlton. She thought she could land him. Minerva didn’t care particularly about him as far as falling in love was concerned, but Minerva knew he was a good matrimonial match. She set her cap for him and landed him.”
“And then what?”
She said, “Minerva got tired of being a drab respectable housewife — she was smart enough to know that her days of playing around were all over, but she did like to have someone with whom she could discuss the old days. She used to come and visit me and we’d sit and talk until the small hours, reminiscing and recalling adventures we’d had.
“Then Minerva had a vacation and decided she’d spend it with me at the beach. She wanted to come down to sea level because the altitude in Colorado was getting on her nerves. She came down and visited me and we went to the beach together.”
“And started playing around?”
“Don’t be as dumb as that,” she said. “We did a little flirting, but that was all. Minerva was married. She had everything, social position, money, a good home, servants, everything in the world she needed. I don’t think she was too terribly happy. Minerva liked laughter and action and white lights and she liked to have people make over her. And she liked a lot of variety, but she realized she had to settle down sooner or later. She’d settled down and that was that.”
“But people made passes at you?”
“When?”
“Down there at the beach.”
“You mean at me?”
“No, at both of you.”
“Of course, they did. I never knew a man who didn’t make a pass at me sooner or later.”
“And what did Minerva do?”
“Strung them along, kidded them a little bit. We had escorts. We had swimming companions, and we had one fellow who was completely gaga over us, that is, he was over Minerva, but it didn’t do him any good.”
I said, “Minerva had her picture taken with her head lying on his bare chest.”
“How do you know that?”
I said, “I saw the picture.”
“Donald Lam, did you steal those films? I’ll bet you did. I looked all around for them and couldn’t think where I’d put them. I… why, you…”
I said, “Of course I picked up the films. You were holding out on me.”
“I don’t like that.”
“That’s all over with. Let’s keep on the main subject. Did Stanwick Carlton suspect what was going on on that beach vacation?”
“I tell you, nothing was going on. We strung a couple of saps along and that was that.”
“And was one of them Tom Durham?”
“I never saw this man you say was Tom Durham in my life except the one time when I was there at Aunt Amelia’s place and he came in and, as I told you, Aunt Amelia didn’t introduce him.”
“Then why should Minerva want him shadowed?”
“She didn’t want him shadowed. She wanted to find out just who he was and just what his relationship with Aunt Amelia was.”
“How did she know he knew your Aunt Amelia?”
“I don’t know a thing in the world about it, Donald, honestly I don’t. Minerva Carlton came to me Saturday morning. She’s been in touch with me two or three times while she was here. On Saturday morning she seemed a little triumphant, as though she’d had something that was bothering her, but was getting the better of it. She was all excited. She gave me a cheque for five hundred dollars and told me that she wanted me to go to your office and get you to find out who a man was and all about him, but that he mustn’t know he was being investigated. She said that he knew Aunt Amelia, and that was the first I knew of him. After she’d described him, I knew that he was the man I’d seen there at Aunt Amelia’s.”
“And you don’t know what he wanted with your Aunt Amelia?”
“Heavens, no. Minerva said he’d be there at four.”
“You don’t know whether he was trying to sell her stock or trying to marry her, or…”
“I don’t know. He may have been a life insurance salesman for all I know. I handed you a song and dance so that you could go to work, and in case anything happened there wouldn’t be any trail that would lead back to Minerva. She was desperately anxious about that. She said that if anything happened and the thing was botched up in any way, she must have it so that the lead could only go back as far as me. It must never be traced to her.”
I said, “And all this time, Minerva was holding out on you.”
“What do you mean?”
“She was having a big love affair with Dover Fulton and she never let you know about it.”
She said, “Donald, that’s the thing I can’t understand. I’m almost certain Minerva would have told me if... well, if there’d been anything like that. She didn’t need to hold out on me. She knew that. I simply can’t understand that business with Dover Fulton.”
“Where were you Saturday night about ten o’clock?” I asked.
“I was... I was out.”
“Girl friend?”
“None of your business.”
“Boy friend?”
“Go jump in the lake.”
“I hope you can prove an alibi,” I said.
“An alibi? What do you mean?”
“That’s the time the murder was committed.”
“What murder? What are you talking about? That murder was committed last night.”
“You mean the stocking murder.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t.”
“What do you mean, you don’t?”
I said, “I’m talking about the murder of Minerva Carlton.”
“Did you expect me to show a lot of surprise?” she asked.
“No.”
“I know definitely that it wasn’t a suicide,” she said. “Minerva wasn’t that type. Minerva wouldn’t kill herself and I don’t think Dover Fulton meant anything at all to her emotionally. I know she admired and respected him, but I happen to know that beyond the usual kidding that takes place in an office, Dover Fulton never so much as made a try for her while she was working for him.”
“Was Dover madly in love with her?”
“That’s the part I can’t understand. I don’t think he was. Minerva and I were very close. I don’t think she’d have held out on me on anything.”
“You mean you knew her that well?”
“Of course.”
I said, “In case anyone should be looking for me, I’ve been here and gone.”
“Someone going to be looking for you, Donald?”
“Perhaps.”
“Your office?”
“Probably.”
“What is your partner going to do about that cheque I gave you?”
“Probably take it out of your hide.”
“Donald, I’ve explained now. You can see it isn’t my fault.”
I said, “If you could find any possible explanation that would talk Bertha Cool out of two hundred bucks you’d be able to talk the explosion of an atomic bomb into a hiccup.”
And having left that thought in her mind I went out to wrestle with troubles of my own.