Bertha was waiting in the agency car to take me to my jujitsu lesson. She had an afternoon paper on the seat beside her, and was jumpy.
“Donald, this is one time you can’t get away with it,” she said.
“Can’t get away with what?”
“They’ll catch you.”
“Not until they get some a lead to work on.”
“But sooner or later they’ll catch you. My God, why did you do it?”
“What else could I do? I’d taken the adjoining room. I’d bored a hole in the panel of the door. That connecting door was unlocked on the other side. Win, lose, or draw, I was elected.”
“But why did you go into Ringold’s room?”
“Why not? I was hooked any way — if they caught me.”
“Donald, you’re trying to protect that girl again.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Donald, you simply must give me the facts. My God, suppose the cops should run you in? I’d try to get you out, of course, but what would I have to work on?”
I said, “You can’t drive and talk. Get over and let me take the wheel.”
We made the switch. I said, “Get this straight. Alta Ashbury was being blackmailed. It doesn’t make any difference what for. The person who was blackmailing her was a lawyer named Crumweather — C. Layton Crumweather.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “She must have gone to see Ringold. The description fits and—”
“The description may fit, and she may have gone to see Ringold, but the man who was blackmailing her was Crumweather.”
“How do you know?”
“He was interested in getting some dough for the defence of a client of his — a man who was charged with a crime.”
“Who, lover?”
“I’ve forgotten his name.”
She glared at me.
“Now then,” I went on, “the only way we can handle this thing — to get Alta in the clear and to get me out of it — is to be in a position to put the screws down on Crumweather. He’s a crooked lawyer.”
“They’re all crooked.”
“You’re cock-eyed. About two per cent are crooked — and they’re damned smart. They cover a lot of territory. Some of the honest ones are stupid. The crooked ones can’t afford to be.”
“Stick up for lawyers if you want to, but give me the dope.”
“Crumweather,” I said, “is making a specialty of beating the Blue Sky Law.”
“It can’t be beaten. They’ve tried that before.”
“Any law can be licked,” I said. “I don’t care what it is.”
“Well, you studied it. I didn’t.”
I said, “The Blue Sky Law can be licked. The way Crumweather is licking it is taking old corporations which have forfeited their charters to the state for failure to pay their franchise taxes, reviving those corporations, and letting them engage in an entirely different form of business. In order to do that, he first buys up the stock of defunct corporations. It isn’t every franchise forfeiture that gives him just what he needs. He needs a corporation that had nearly all of its stock issued and which has no corporate liabilities. He buys up the old shares of stock which have become private property in the hands of a bona fide purchaser, then he revives the corporation. He finds out what his clients are going to sell the stock for and gives them the certificates at a price which gives him a ten-per-cent profit on every share that’s sold. He instructs his clients to avoid the appearance of selling generally to the public, but keeps them in the position of making individual private transactions.”
“Well?” she asked.
“We’ll never touch him on the blackmail,” I said. “He’s too slick and too far removed. The only way to hook him is to get him where we can bust him with some of this corporation crooked work. It isn’t going to be easy because he’s plenty smart.”
“How did you find all this out?” Bertha Cool asked, staring at me steadily.
“By spending expense money,” I told her, and that had her stymied.
“How are you and the girl getting along?”
“All right.”
“Is she trusting you?”
“I think so.”
Bertha heaved a sigh of relief. “Then the agency will continue on the job?”
“Probably.”
“Donald, you’re a wonder.”
I took that opportunity to say, “I’ve already approached Crumweather as a prospective client. I thought I could handle the situation that way. I can’t. He’s too wise. He covers his tracks every time he makes a move. There’s only one other way to do it.”
“What’s that?”
“Become an innocent purchaser for value of some of the stock in one of the other corporations he’s promoted.”
“What makes you think it’s Crumweather who’s doing the blackmailing?”
“It has to be. It’s the only way it makes sense. Earlier today I thought it might have been a trap set by the D.A., but it isn’t or they’d have sprung it by this time. Crumweather is representing a client. It’s an important case. A lot of public attention is going to centre on it. It’s a chance for him to make a big grandstand. He could, of course, do it just for the advertising, but Crumweather isn’t built that way. He saw there was an opportunity to bring pressure to bear on Alta Ashbury and make her put up dough. He did it. He got twenty thousand of her money. Something went wrong on the last ten.”
“Donald, I’m going to ask you something. I want you to tell me the absolute truth.”
“What?”
“Did you kill him?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t think you’d do it, Donald. I don’t think there’s a chance in ten thousand, but it looks— Well, you know how it looks. You’re just the type who would fall head over heels for a girl and do something desperate to save her.”
I slowed for a signal light, and managed a yawn.
Bertha shook her head and said, “You’re the coolest customer I ever saw. If you only weighed fifty pounds more, you’d be a gold mine to Bertha.”
“Too bad,” I said.
We drove for a while in silence, then I said, “I’m going to need a secretary and an office. I’ll either hire one or have to borrow Elsie Brand.”
“Donald, are you crazy? I can’t fix you up in an office. That costs money. It costs altogether too much money. You’ll have to find some other way of working your plant, and I can’t let Elsie Brand go, even for half a day.”
I drove along without saying anything, and Bertha got sore. Just before I drove the car into a parking lot in front of the Jap’s gymnasium, she said, “All right, go ahead, but don’t go throwing money away.”
We went up to the gymnasium, and the Jap threw me all over the joint. I think he just practised with me the way a basketball player practises tossing balls through a ring. He gave me a couple of chances to throw him, and I used everything I had, but I could never get him up and slam him down on the canvas the way he did me. He’d always manage to twist himself around in the air, and come down on his feet, grinning.
I was awfully fed up with it. I’d hated it from the start. Bertha said she thought I was getting better. The Jap said I was doing very nicely.
After the shower, I told Bertha to be sure to get me a suite of offices for a week, be sure the name I gave her was on the door, see that the furniture looked all right, and have Elsie Brand on hand to take dictation.
She fumed and sputtered, but finally decided to be a good dog. She promised to ring me up late that evening, and tell me where it was.
Henry Ashbury got hold of me that night before dinner. “How about a cocktail in my den, Lam?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said.
The butler brought us cocktails in a little cubbyhole fixed up with guns hung on the walls, a few shooting trophies, a pipe rack, and a couple of easy-chairs. It was one place in the house where no one was allowed to go without a special invitation from Ashbury, his one hideaway from the continual whine of his wife’s voice.
We sipped the cocktails and talked generalities for a minute, then Ashbury said, “You’re getting along pretty well with Alta.”
“I was supposed to win her confidence, wasn’t I?”
“Yes. You’ve done more than that. She keeps looking at you whenever you’re in the room.”
I took another sip of my cocktail.
He said, “Alta’s first cheque was on the first. The second one was on the tenth. If there was to have been a third one, it would have been on the twentieth. That was yesterday.”
I said, very casually, “Then the fourth one would be due on the thirtieth.”
He looked me over. “Alta was out last night.”
“Yes. She went to a movie.”
“You were out.”
“Yes. I was doing a little work.”
“Did you follow Alta?”
“If you want to know, yes.”
“Where?”
“To the movie.”
He gulped the rest of his cocktail quickly and exhaled a sigh of relief. He picked up the cocktail shaker, refilled my glass, and poured his own full to the brim. “You impress me as being a young man who has sense.”
“Thanks.”
He fidgeted around a minute, and I said, “You don’t need to make any build-up with me. Just go ahead and get it off your chest.”
That seemed to relieve him. He said, “Bernard Carter saw Alta last night.”
“About what time?”
“Shortly after the — well, shortly after the shooting took place.”
“Where was she?”
“Within a block of the hotel where Ringold was killed. She was carrying an envelope in her hand and walking very rapidly.”
“Carter told you?”
“Well, no. He told Mrs. Ashbury, and she told me.”
“Carter didn’t speak to her?”
“No.”
“She didn’t see him?”
“No.”
I said, “Carter is mistaken. I was following her all the time. She put her car in the parking lot near the hotel where Ringold was killed, but she didn’t go to the hotel. She went to a picture show. I followed her.”
“And after the picture show?”
“She wasn’t there very long,” I said. “She came out and went back to the car. And I believe she stopped to mail a letter at a mailbox along the way.”
Ashbury kept looking at me, but didn’t say anything.
I said, “I think she had a date to meet someone at the picture show, and that someone didn’t show up.”
“Could that someone have been Ringold?” he asked.
I let my face show surprise. “What gave you that idea?”
“I don’t know. I was just wondering.”
“Quit wondering, then.”
“But it could have been Ringold?”
“If he didn’t show up, what difference does it make?”
“But it could have been Ringold?”
I said, “Hell, it could have been anybody. I’m telling you she was at a movie.”
He was silent for a minute, and I took advantage of that silence to ask him, “Do you know anything about your stepson’s company — the one of which he’s president... what it’s doing?”
“Some sort of a gold dredging proposition. I understand they have a potential bonanza, but I don’t want to know about it.”
“Who does the actual peddling of the stock?”
He said, “I wish you wouldn’t call it that. It sounds — well, it sounds crooked.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes, I know, but I don’t like it referred to in those terms.”
“All right, fix the terms to suit yourself, then tell me who’s peddling the stuff.”
He looked me over thoughtfully. “At times, Lam,” he said, “that restless disposition of yours makes you say things which border on insolence.”
“I still don’t know who peddles it.”
“Neither do I. They have a crew of salesmen, very highly trained men, I understand.”
“The partners don’t sell?”
“No.”
“That’s all I wanted to know.”
“It isn’t all I wanted to know.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Seen the evening paper?”
I shook my head.
“There are some finger-prints in there. They’ve developed a pretty good set from the door and doorknob in that room in the hotel — I thought that the man they’re looking for resembles you somewhat.”
“Lots of people resemble me,” I said. “They’re mostly clerks in dry goods stores.”
He laughed. “If that brain of yours had a body to go with it, you’d be invincible.”
“Is that a compliment or a slam?”
“A compliment.”
“Thanks.”
I finished my cocktail and refused another. Ashbury had two after I quit.
Ashbury said, “You know a man in my position has an opportunity to pick up financial information which might not be available to an ordinary man.”
I accepted one of his cigarettes, and listened for more.
“That’s particularly true in banking circles.”
“Go ahead. What is it?”
“Perhaps you are wondering how I found out about Alta’s ten-thousand-dollar cheques.”
“I was able to make a pretty good guess.”
“You mean through the bank?”
“Yes.”
“Well, not exactly through the bank, but through a friendly official in the bank.”
“Is there any difference?” I asked.
He grinned. “The bank seems to think there is.”
“Go ahead.”
“I got some more information from the bank this afternoon.”
“You mean from the friendly official in the bank, don’t you?”
He chuckled and said, “Yes.”
When he saw I wasn’t going to ask him what it was, he said impressively, “The Atlee Amusement Corporation called up the bank and said a check had been stolen from its cash drawer, that it was a check payable to cash, and signed by Alta Ashbury in an amount of ten thousand dollars. They wanted to be notified if anyone should present that check; said they’d sign a complaint, on a charge of theft.”
“What did the bank tell them?”
“Told them to ring up Alta and have her stop payment on the check.”
“That was a telephone call?”
“Yes.”
“The person at the other end of the line said it was the Atlee Amusement Corporation?”
“Yes.”
“Man’s voice or woman’s?”
“A woman’s. She said she was the book-keeper, and secretary to the manager.”
“Any woman can say that into any telephone. It only costs five cents, and it sounds the same at the receiving end of the line.”
He thought that over, then slowly nodded.
The cocktails began to take effect. He got in an expansive mood. He leaned over and put a fatherly hand on my knee. “Lam, my boy,” he said. “I like you. There’s a certain inherent competency about you which breeds confidence. I think Alta feels the same way.”
“I’m glad I’m doing a satisfactory job.”
“I thought you weren’t going to for a while. I thought it would be bungled. Alta’s rather smart, you know.”
“She’s nobody’s fool,” I said, and then, because he expected it, and because he was a cash customer, I added, “A chip off the old block.”
He beamed at me, then his face became worried. He’ said, “I have an idea you know what you’re doing, Lam, but if a ten-thousand-dollar check payable to cash has beer stolen, and if the person who presented it for payment should get into a jam and make certain statements and—”
“Quit worrying about it. Nothing will happen.”
He said significantly, “If you had read the papers, you’d have noticed that the witnesses had given a somewhat contradictory description of this mysterious John Smith. The very contradictions of that description are significant to a man who knows human nature — the young woman sketches John Smith in a much more attractive light.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You know, Lam, I’m trusting very much to your discretion in this matter. I’m certainly hoping that you don’t — that you haven’t — that no excess zeal on your part has perhaps laid a foundation for a worse evil than that which you were called in to cure.”
“That would be embarrassing, wouldn’t it?”
“Very. You don’t open up much, do you?”
“I prefer to play a lone hand wherever I can.”
He said, “I could have unlimited confidence in you, Donald, my boy, absolutely unlimited confidence, if I knew one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Whether your plans had taken into consideration the danger of that ten-thousand-dollar check showing up.”
It was a chance for a grandstand that I couldn’t resist. I said quietly, “Mr. Ashbury, I burnt up that ten-thousand-dollar check in your solarium last night. I ground the ashes into powder with my finger-tips. You can quit worrying about it.”
He looked at me with his eyes getting bigger and bigger until I thought they were going to push his spectacles off the bridge of his nose, then he grabbed my hand and started pumping it up and down. I made allowances for the four cocktails, but, even so, it was quite a demonstration. “You’re a wonder, my boy, a wonder! This is the last time I shall ask you anything. You go right ahead from here on and handle things in your own way. That’s marvellous, simply marvellous.”
I said, “Thanks. You know this may cost you money.”
“I don’t give a damn what it costs— No, I don’t exactly mean that, but— Well, you know what I mean.”
I said, “Bertha is unduly economical at times. She’s penny-wise and pound-foolish.”
“She doesn’t need to be. You explain that to her. Tell her that—”
“Telling her won’t do any good,” I said. “It’s the way she’s built.”
“Well, what do you want?”
I said, “Has it ever occurred to you I may have to bribe someone?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s a possibility to be taken into consideration.” He didn’t seem particularly happy about it. He said, “Well, of course, if you run into an emergency, the only thing for you to do is to come to me and—”
“And tell you who I’m bribing, how much I’ve got to pay, and why?” I asked.
“Well, yes.”
“Then if anything goes wrong and it’s a trap, you’re the one who’s caught.”
I saw his face change colour. He said, “How much do you want?”
I said, “Better give me a thousand dollars. I’ll keep it with me in case I need it. I may come back and ask for more.”
“That’s a lot of money, Donald.”
“It is for a fact,” I said. “How much money have you got?”
He flushed. “I don’t see what that has to do with it.”
“How many daughters have you got?”
“Only one, of course.”
I kept silent while he thought it over. I saw the idea soaking in. He pulled a wallet from his inside pocket and I counted out ten one-hundred-dollar bills. “I see your point, Donald, but remember I’m not a millionaire.”
I said, “A man who has money has an advantage over a man who hasn’t. When he gets in a jam, he can buy his way out. You’d be foolish not to play the trumps you hold in your hand.”
“That’s right,” he said, and then after a moment went on. “Don’t you think, Donald, that you could tell me a few of the details? I’d like to know them.”
I stared at him steadily. “Would you?” I asked.
“Well, why not?”
I said, “The way I play the game, my clients don’t know anything.”
He frowned. “I don’t think I like that.”
“And in a way,” I went on, “the police can never charge them as being accessories.”
He jumped as though I’d stuck a pin into him. He blinked his eyes four or five times rapidly, and then got to his feet hurriedly. “Very wise, Donald, very wise indeed! Well, I fancy it’s about time to adjourn. I’m going to be rather busy after this, Donald. I won’t have an opportunity to talk with you. I just want you to know that I’m leaving things in your hands — entirely in your hands.”
He busted up the meeting as quickly as though I’d broken out with smallpox. I had. Legal smallpox.
About eight o’clock that night Bertha Cool telephoned. She’d had an awful time, she said, getting an office of the type I wanted, but she’d finally secured one. It was in the name of Charles E. Fischler, and was at room six-twenty-two in the Commons Building. Elsie Brand would be there at nine o’clock the next morning to open up the office, and she’d have keys.
“I’ll want some business cards printed,” I said.
“That’s all taken care of. Elsie will have some. You’re the head of the Fischler Sales Corporation.”
I said, “Okay,” and started to hang up.
“What’s new?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“Keep me posted.”
“I will,” I said, and that time got the receiver on the book before she could think of anything else.
The evening dragged interminably. Alta signalled that she wanted to talk with me, but I figured I knew all she knew. But I didn’t know all Bernard Carter knew, and I wanted to be where he could strike up a conversation that would look sufficiently casual in case he had anything he wanted to say.
He did.
I was knocking balls around in the billiard room when he came in. “Feel like a game?” he asked.
“I’m a rotten player,” I said. “I came down here to get away from the small talk.”
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Something on your mind?”
“So-so,” I said, knocking the cue ball around the table and watching it bounce back from the cushions.
“Have you seen Ashbury?” he asked. “You know, had a chance to talk with him?”
I nodded.
“Nice chap, Ashbury,” Carter went on.
I didn’t say anything.
“Certainly must be nice to be able to keep in first-class physical shape,” Carter went on, looking down at his tight waistcoat. “You move as easily as a fish swimming around in water. I’ve been watching you.”
“Have you?”
“Yes, I have. You know, Lam, I’d like to know you better — have you whip me into shape.”
“It could be done,” I said, knocking the billiard balls around.
He moved closer. “There’s someone else on whom you’ve made a favourable impression, Lam.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes. Mrs. Ashbury.”
I said, “She told me she’d like to take off a little weight after her blood pressure got back to normal.”
He lowered his voice. “Did it ever strike you there’s something a little strange about the way her blood pressure started to mount and she started to put on weight immediately after she married Ashbury?”
I said, “Lots of women keep on a diet while they’re husband-hunting, and then as soon as they marry, settle back—”
His face grew purple. “That’s not what I meant at all,” he snapped.
I said, “I’m sorry.”
“If you knew Mrs. Ashbury, you’d realise how utterly uncalled for such a statement is, how far it’s removed iron the real facts.”
I didn’t look up from the billiard balls. I said, “You were doing the talking. I thought perhaps that was what you wanted to say, and I’d make it easier for you.”
“That wasn’t what I wanted to say.”
“Why not go ahead and say it, then?”
He said, “All right, I will. I’ve known Mrs. Ashbury for some little time. Before her marriage she was twenty-five pounds lighter, and she looked twenty years younger.”
“High blood pressure can do a lot to a person,” I said.
“Of course it can, but what’s the reason for the blood pressure? Why should her marriage suddenly run her blood pressure up?”
“Why should it?” I asked.
He waited until I glanced up to meet his eyes. He was almost quivering with rage. He said, “The answer is obvious. The persistent, steady hostility of her stepdaughter.”
I put the cue in the rack and said, “Did you want to talk with me about that?”
“Yes.”
“All right, I’m listening.”
He said, “Carlotta — Mrs. Ashbury — is a marvellous woman, charming, magnetic, beautiful. Since her marriage I’ve seen her change.”
“You said all that before.”
His lips were trembling with rage. “And the reason for it all is the hostility of that spoiled brat.”
“Meaning Alta?” I asked.
“Meaning Alta.”
“Didn’t Mrs. Ashbury take that possibility into consideration before the marriage?”
He said, “At the time of the marriage, Alta had abandoned her father, gone off chasing a good time around the world without caring a snap of her fingers about her dad, but the minute he married Carlotta and she started making him a home, Alta came dashing back and started playing the part of the devoted daughter. Gradually, bit by bit, she’s been poisoning her father’s mind against Mrs. Ashbury. Carlotta is sensitive and—”
“Why tell me all this?” I asked.
“I thought you should know it.”
“Think it’s going to help me to get Henry Ashbury into better physical shape?” I asked.
He said, “It might.”
“Just what did you expect me to do?”
He said, “You and Alta get along pretty well together.”
“So what?”
He said, “I thought it might change Alta’s attitude a bit if she realised that her stepmother wanted to be friendly.”
“Well?”
“You’ve talked with Ashbury?”
“Yes.”
“You still don’t see what I’m driving at?”
“No.”
His eyes bored steadily into mine. “All right,” he said, “if you want it straight from the shoulder. Carlotta — Mrs. Ashbury — needs only to breathe a whisper of what she knows to the police, and Alta would be put into Jed Ringold’s room last night at the time of the murder.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Well,” Carter amended hastily, “just before the time of the murder— Did it ever occur to you that the woman who went up to see Ringold answers Alta’s description, that it wouldn’t take a hell of a lot of detective work to establish the fact that Alta’s car was in a parking station within a couple of blocks of the hotel, and that a witness could be called who would testify that he’d seen Alta hurrying toward the parking lot from the direction of the hotel at just about the time the murder was committed?”
“What,” I asked, “do you want me to do?”
He said, “The next time Alta starts talking about her stepmother you might casually explain to her that Mrs, Ashbury has it in her power to put Alta in a hell of a spot, that she isn’t doing it because Carlotta is a square shooter and loyal to the man she’s married.”
I said, “You seem to take it for granted that Alta’s going to discuss her stepmother with me.”
“I do,” he said, and turned on his heel and started for the door.
“Just a minute,” I said. “If Alta left the hotel before the murder was committed, it doesn’t seem to me she has much to worry about.”
He paused with his hand on the knob of the door. “She was seen on the street,” he said, “just after the murder was committed.”
I stood staring at the door after he’d closed it. Evidently Carter didn’t know just when the murder had been committed, hadn’t noticed the exact time that he’d seen Alta, or else was willing to dress the story up a little bit in order to give Mrs. Ashbury a trump card.
However, there was no use worrying about him. Any time the police got the idea Alta might be mixed up in it, they would have a cinch. The night clerk at the hotel, the girl at the cigar counter, the man at the parking lot, the elevator boy — oh, there were plenty of witnesses. The nice part of it was that those witnesses would have to swear that Alta had left the hotel before the shots were fired, but if Mrs. Ashbury thought she had a fistful of trumps, there was no reason why I shouldn’t let her keep on thinking so until I saw just how she intended to play them.
I got my hat and coat, watched for an opportunity to get out when Alta couldn’t see me and decided to go and take a look at the joints run by the Atlee Amusement Corporation.
They had two restaurants, very swank downstairs, and I didn’t have much trouble getting upstairs. The places were well fitted but small. No one seemed to pay any particular attention to me. I gambled in a small way and just about broke even on roulette. There were a few people in the place. I tried to make some excuse to get to see the manager, but it looked as though I’d have to get rough in order to do it.
Just as I was walking out of the joint, a blonde came in on the arm of a chap in evening clothes who looked like ready money.
I’d seen that hair before. It was Esther Clarde, the girl at the cigar counter of the hotel where Ringold had been bumped off.
I started kicking myself mentally. It was a chance, of course, but a chance I should have foreseen. If she’d known enough about the Atlee Amusement Corporation to answer my questions, there at the hotel, she knew enough to get a commission out of piloting suckers into the joint. I’d set my own trap, baited it, and walked right in.
She looked at me, and I saw her eyes get hard. She said casually, “Oh, hello, there. How’s the luck? Any good?”
“Not so good.”
She smiled at her companion and said, “Arthur, I want you to meet Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith, this is Arthur Parker.”
We shook hands. I told him I was pleased to meet him.
“You’re not getting ready to go, Mr. Smith?”
“As a matter of fact, I was.”
“Well, you’re not going to leave just as I come in. You usually bring me luck, and somehow I feel you’re going to bring me lots of it tonight.”
I thought I could complicate the situation by making Parker jealous. I looked at him and said, “Mr. Parker looks like a very capable mascot.”
She said, “He’s my escort. You’re my mascot. Come on over here to the tables.”
“Really, I’m a bit tired and—”
Her eyes bored steadily into mine. The light caught her hair, and it looked more than ever like that piece of hangman’s hemp that I’d seen years ago. “I’m not going to let you get away,” she said, laughing with her red lips, “even if I have to call the cops.”
There was no laughter in her eyes.
I smiled and said, “Well, after all, that’s really up to Mr. Parker. I never like to horn in.”
“Oh, it’s all right by him,” she said. “Parker understands that you’re connected with the establishment.”
“Oh,” Parker said, as though that explained a lot, and instantly began to smile. “Do come along, Smith, and bring us luck.”
I strolled over to the roulette table with her.
She started playing with silver dollars — and losing. Parker didn’t seem inclined to stake her. When she’d lost her money, she pouted a little, and he finally got five dollars in twenty-five-cent chips and let her play those.
When he had moved around nearer the foot of the table, and she had edged closer to me, she suddenly turned and again let her eyes bore into mine. “Slip me two hundred dollars under the table,” she ordered.
I gave her the stony stare.
“Come on, come on,” she said in a fast undertone. “Don’t act dumb, and don’t stall. Either come through, or else.”
I managed a yawn.
She could have cried she was so disappointed. She slammed the chips down on the board and lost them. When they were gone, I slipped a dollar into her palm. “That’s the extent of my donation, kid,” I said, “and it’s lucky. Play it on the double O.”
She put it on the double O and won straight up.
“Let it ride,” I said.
“You’re crazy.”
I shrugged my shoulders, and she raked down all but five dollars of her winnings.
I’ll never know what made me say that about the double O. I was skating on thin ice, sticking my neck out. It was just a crazy hunch I had, but one of those things a man gets sometimes when he feels hot all over, as though he had clairvoyant powers. I was absolutely certain that it was going to come double O again. Don’t ask me how I knew. I just knew. That was all.
The ball rattled around the wheel and finally came to rest in one of the pockets.
I heard Esther Clarde gasp, and looked over just to make certain where the ball had stopped.
It was in number seven.
“You see,” she said, “you’d have made me lose.”
I laughed. “You’re still playing on velvet.”
She said, “Well, maybe the seven will repeat,” and played it for two bucks. It repeated. After that, I quit feeling lucky, and stuck around. Esther ran her roll up to about five hundred bucks, and then cashed in.
There was a brunette hanging around the tables, a slinky girl with snake hips, nice bare shoulders, and eyes that were filled with romance like a dark, warm night on a tropical beach. She and the blonde knew each other, and after Esther had cashed in I saw them swapping signals. Later they were whispering together.
Shortly afterward the brunette started making a play for Arthur Parker, and it was a play. She was asking his advice, getting her bare shoulder within an inch of his lips as she leaned across him to place a bet at the far end of the board, looking up at him with a smile.
I took a look at the expression on Parker’s face and knew I was stuck with the blonde.
“All right,” I said to Esther Clarde, “you win. Where do we go?”
“I’ll sneak out to the cloakroom first,” she said. “I’ll be waiting. Don’t try any funny stuff. In case you’re interested, there isn’t any back way out.”
“Why should I want to get away from a good-looking girl like you?”
She laughed, and then after a moment said softly, “Well, why should you?”
I stuck around long enough to put a few bets on the roulette table. I couldn’t lay off the double O. I never even got a smell. Parker was all wrapped up with the brunette. Once he gave a guilty start and started looking around. I heard the brunette say something about the cloak-room, then slip a bare arm around his shoulder and whisper in his ear.
He laughed.
I went out to the cloakroom. Esther Clarde was waiting for me. “Got a car?” she asked. “Or do we ride in taxis?”
“Taxis,” I said.
“All right, let’s go.”
“Any particular place?”
“I think I’ll go to your apartment.”
“I’d rather go to yours.”
She looked at me for a minute, then shrugged her shoulders and said, “Why not?”
“Your friend, Mr. Parker, won’t show up, will he?”
“My friend, Mr. Parker,” she said grimly, “is taken care of for the evening, thank you.”
She gave the address of her apartment to the cab-driver. It took about ten minutes to get there. It was her apartment, all right. Her name was on the bell marker, and she used her key and went up... Well, after all, as she’d said, why not? I knew where she worked. I could have found out all about her. The newspapers had carried her picture and an interview with her describing the man who had asked her the questions about Ringold. She had nothing to fear from me.
On the other hand, I was in it, right up to my necktie.
It wasn’t a bad apartment. One look told me she didn’t keep it from the profits she made out of running the cigar stand at a second-rate hotel.
She slipped off her coat, told me to sit down, brought out cigarettes, asked me if I wanted some Scotch, and sat down on the sofa beside me. We lit cigarettes, and she sidled over to lean against me. I could see the gleam of light on her neck and shoulders, the seductive look in her blue eyes; and the hair that was like raveled hemp brushed against my cheek. “You and I,” she said, “are going to be good friends.”
“Yes?”
“Yes,” she said, “because the girl who went up to see Jed Ringold — the one you were following — was Alta Ashbury.”
And then she snuggled up against me affectionately.
“Who,” I asked, with a perfectly blank face, “is Alta Ashbury?”
“The woman you were following.”
I shook my head, and said, “My business was with Ringold.”
She twisted around so that she could keep looking at my face. Then she said slowly, “Well, it doesn’t make any difference in one way. It’s information that I can’t use myself — directly. I’d rather work with you than with anyone else I know,” and then added with a little laugh, “because I can keep you straight.”
“That isn’t telling me who Alta Ashbury is. Was she his woman?”
I could see the blonde thinking things over, trying to decide how much to tell me.
“Was she?” I insisted.
She tried a counteroffensive. “What did you want with Ringold?”
“I wanted to see him on a business matter.”
“What?”
“Somebody had told me that he could tell me how to beat the Blue Sky Act. I’m a promoter. I had something I wanted to promote.”
“So you went in to see him?”
“Not me. I got the adjoining room.”
“And bored a hole in the door?”
“Yes.”
“And looked and listened?”
“Yes.”
“What did you see?”
I shook my head.
She got mad then. “Listen,” she said, “you’re either the damnedest fool I’ve ever seen, or the coolest. How did you know I wouldn’t call the cops when you didn’t slip me that two hundred under the table?”
“I didn’t.”
“You’d better get along with me. Do you know what’d happen if I took down that telephone receiver and called the cops? For God’s sake, be your age and snap out of it.”
I tried to blow a smoke ring.
She got to her feet and started toward the telephone. Her lips were clamped tightly, and her eyes were full of fire.
“Go ahead and call them,” I said. “I was getting ready to call them myself.”
“Yes, you were.”
I said, “Of course, I was. Don’t you get the idea?”
“What do you mean?”
“I was sitting in that adjoining room with my eye glued to the hole in the door,” I said. “The murderer had picked the lock about half an hour before I went in. He’d pried the molding loose, fixed the lock, gone back into the room, put the moulding back into place, waited for a propitious moment, then unlocked the door, stepped into the little alcove, and went into the bathroom.”
“That’s what you say.”
“You forget one thing, sister.”
“What’s that?”
“I saw the murderer. I’m the only one who did. I know who it was — Ringold had a talk with the girl. He gave her some papers. She gave him a check. He put it in his right-hand coat pocket. After she went out, he started for the bathroom. I didn’t know this other person was in the bathroom, but I’d found the communicating door was unlocked on my side, and I’d locked it when I bored the hole. The murderer knew Ringold was going to come to the bathroom, and tried to slip back into four-twenty-one. The door was locked. I was in there. The person on the other side of the door was trapped.”
“What did you do?” she asked, barely breathing.
“I was a damned fool,” I said. “I should have taken up the telephone, called the lobby, and told them to block the exit, and telephone for the cops. I was rattled. I didn’t think of it. I twisted the bolt on the communicating door and jerked it open. I followed the murderer out as far as the corridor. I stood in the doorway and looked up and down the corridor. Then I went over to the elevator and got off at the second floor. When the squawk started, I went out.”
“A sweet story,” she said, and then after a moment’s thought added, “By God, it is a sweet story — but you’ll never make the cops believe it.”
I smiled patronisingly at her. “You forget,” I said, “that I saw the murderer.”
Her reaction was as fast as though someone had shot an electric current into the seat of the chair. “Who was it?” she asked.
I laughed at her and blew another smoke ring. Or tried to.
She crossed the room and sat down. She crossed her knees, held the left knee in interlaced fingers. The thing didn’t make sense to her, and she didn’t know what to do about it. She’d look at me, then down at the toe of her shoe. The skirt of her evening gown got in her way. She started to pull it up, then got up, walked into the bedroom, and took it off. She didn’t close the bedroom door. After a minute or two she came out wearing a black velveteen housecoat. She came over again and sat down beside me. “Well,” she said. “I don’t know as it changes the situation a hell of a lot. I need someone to handle the Ashbury angle. You look like a good guy. I don’t know what there is about you that makes me trust you — sight unseen, so to speak. Who are you, anyway? What’s your name?”
I shook my head.
“Listen, you, you’re not going to get out of here until you give me your name, and I mean your name. I’m going to see your driving licence, your identification cards, take your finger-prints — or I’m going over to your apartment, find out where you live, and all about you. So get that straight.”
I pointed to the door. “When I get damn good and ready, I’m going to walk right out of that door.”
“I’ll rat on you.”
“And where will that leave you with your swell shake down with Alta Ashurst?”
“Ashbury,” she said.
“All right, have it your own way.”
She said, “What’s your real moniker?”
“John Smith.”
“You’re a liar.”
I laughed.
She tried a little wheedling. “All right, John.” She twisted around, drew up her knees, and slid over across my lap so she was lying on one elbow, looking alluringly up into my face.
“Listen, John, you’ve got sense. You and I could team up and make something out of this.”
I didn’t look at her eyes. The colour of her hair kept fascinating me.
“Are you in or not?”
“If it’s blackmail, I’m out. That’s out of my line.”
“Phooey,” she said. “I’m going to let you in on the ground floor. Then you and I are going to make some dough.”
“Just what have you got on Alta Ashbury?”
When she opened her mouth, I suddenly put my hand over it. “No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
She stared at me. “What’s eating you?”
“I’m on the other side of the fence,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Listen, sweetheart, I can’t do it. I’m not that much of a heel. You’re not kidding me a damn bit. You were in on the whole play. Jed Ringold got those checks from Alta Ashbury. He turned them over to you to take up here to the Atlee Amusement Corporation. You gave the boys here a slice, had a little stick to your fingers, turned the rest of it back to Ringold, and Ringold passed it on to the higher ups — or the lower downs whichever you want to call them.
“Now, I’m going to tell you something. You’re done, finished, all washed up. Make a move against Alta Ashbury, and you’ll be on the inside looking out.”
She straightened up and sat looking at me. “Well, of all the damn nuts,” she said.
“All right, sister, I’ve told you.”
“You sure as hell have — you big boob.”
I said, “I’ll have another one of your cigarettes if you don’t mind.”
She gave me the cigarette case and said, “Well, strike me down. If that ain’t something — I guess I’m going nuts. I see you go into a hotel, the cops start looking for you, I run into you, I ditch a date, bring you up here, and spill my guts to you without finding out who the hell you are or anything about it... I suppose you’re a private dick working for Alta Ashbury — no, you’d be more apt to be hired by the old man.”
I lit the cigarette.
“But what’s the idea of being such a dope? Why didn’t you let me go ahead turning myself inside out, pretend you were going to work with me, pump me for information, and then throw the hooks into me?”
I looked at her and said, “Kid, I’ll be damned if I know,” and it was the truth.
She said, “You could still be the one who bumped Jed Ringold.”
“I could be.”
“I could put you in a spot on that.”
“Think so?”
“I know so.”
I said, “There’s the telephone.”
Her eyes narrowed. She said, “And then you could drag me into it, show perhaps that my motives weren’t so pure, and — oh, hell, what’s the use?”
“What do we do next?” I asked.
“We have a damn good stiff drink. When I think of what you could have done to me and didn’t— Dammit, I just can’t figure you. You aren’t dumb. You’re smarter than greased chain lightning. You figured the play and called the signals, and then when I was rushing into the trap, you turned me back. Well, we live and learn. What do you want in your Scotch? Soda or water?”
“Got any Scotch?” I asked.
“Some.”
I said, “I’ve got an expense account.”
“Well now, ain’t that something!”
“Got a dealer who can deliver this hour of the night?”
“I’ll say I have.”
“All right,” I said, “call him. Tell him to send up half a case of Scotch.”
“Listen, you aren’t kidding me?”
I shook my head, opened my wallet, pulled out a fifty-dollar bill, and casually tossed it over to the table. “That’s what my boss would call squandering money.”
She ordered the Scotch, hung up the phone, and said, “May as well drink up mine while we’re waiting for that to come.”
She poured out stiff drinks. There was soda in the icebox. She said, “Don’t let me get drunk, John.”
“Why not?”
“I’ll get on a crying jag. It’s been a long time since anyone gave me a fair break... What makes me sore is that you didn’t give it to me because I’m me, but because you’re you. You’re just made goofy. There’s something about you that can’t— Kiss me.”
I kissed her.
“To hell with that stuff,” she said. “Really kiss me.”
Fifteen minutes later, the kid came up with the half case of Scotch.
I showed up at Ashbury’s place about two o’clock in the morning. I still couldn’t get that girl’s hair out of my mind. I thought of that strand of the hangman’s rope every time I thought of the way the light glinted along those blond tresses.