We went down to Bertha Cool’s office. Bertha Cool got rid of the lawyer, and we went into the private office and sat down. Bertha brought out a bottle of whisky from the lower drawer of her desk. “God, Donald,” she said, “that was a close squeak.”
I nodded.
“That damn lawyer wasn’t worth his salt. Served a couple of papers, and then didn’t know what to do next-like a bum card player who plays all of his aces, and then crawls under the table.”
“How did you happen to get him?” I asked.
“I didn’t get him. For Heaven’s sake give me credit for some sense! I’d never get a boob like that.”
“Ashbury?” I asked.
She poured out two slugs of whisky, then corked the bottle, started to put it away, and said, “Hell, I’m twice as big as you. I need twice as much to keep me going.” She added another two fingers to her glass. “Well,” she said, “here’s how.”
I nodded, and we drank.
“That Ashbury is a good guy,” she said. “He rang me up as soon as the officers loaded you in the car. He figured there was a plane waiting. He told me to get hold of this lawyer, explain what was happening, and go out to the airport armed with the necessary papers, so that we could be on the job.”
“How did you know which airport?” I asked.
“Hell, lover, do I look as dumb as all that? I found out what charter planes were out, what field this flyer had taken off from, and put through a telephone call to the field up north to be notified as soon as he left there; then I rounded up the lawyer, and we all went down. So you got that little blonde in your pocket, too? My God, Donald, how they fall for you is—”
“Be your age, Bertha,” I said. “She didn’t fall for me.”
“Any time you think she didn’t. I’m a woman. I can tell when I see that look in a woman’s eyes.”
I jerked my thumb toward the telephone. “What do you think I’m doing here?”
“Drinking whisky and relaxing,” she said.
“I’m waiting for that phone to ring,” I told her. “The blonde won’t do it until she’s certain no one’s on her trail.”
“You mean it’s business with her?”
“Of course.”
“How much will she want?”
“Probably not money. Something else.”
“I don’t care what she asks for,” Bertha insisted, eyeing her empty whisky glass in thoughtful contemplation. “She’s fallen for you, hard.”
I lit a cigarette and settled back to the cushioned comfort of the chair.
The telephone rang sharply just as Bertha Cool was getting ready to say something. Bertha grabbed the telephone, jerked the receiver off the hook, put it to her ear, said, “Hello,” then, “Who is this calling? All right. He’s sitting here waiting for you.”
She handed me the telephone. I said, “Hello,” and Esther Clarde’s voice said, “You know who this is?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I have to see you.”
“I figured you’d want to.”
“Are you free to leave?”
“Yes.”
“Can I come to your apartment?”
“Better not.”
“You had better not come to mine. Perhaps I can meet you somewhere.”
“Name the place.”
“I’ll be at the corner of Tenth and Central in fifteen minutes. How’ll that be?”
“Okay. Now listen. If I’m being tailed when I leave here, I’ll try and ditch the shadow. If I can’t do it, I’ll take him for a run-round and be back in half an hour. If I don’t meet you at Tenth and Central in fifteen minutes, you ring me here in exactly thirty minutes. Got that?”
“Got it,” she said, and hung up.
I nodded to Bertha Cool.
Bertha said, “Watch your step, lover. You’re in the clear now. After what she said, she can’t ever back up on her testimony, and it wouldn’t do them much good to have the clerk identify you now. The woman who was standing in the door couldn’t see straight up without her glasses. I’ll bet she couldn’t identify me twenty feet away.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Tell that blonde to go jump in the lake. If she’s sucker enough to put all the cards in your hands, go ahead and play them.”
“That’s not the way I play, Bertha.”
“I know it isn’t. You’re too damn soft and sentimental — I don’t mean you should give her the go-by entirely. Get Ashbury to slip her a little piece of change, but don’t go sticking your neck out.”
I got up and put on my hat and coat. “I’m going to take your coupe. You can go home in a taxi. I’ll be seeing you in the morning.”
“Not until then?”
“No.”
“Donald, I’m worried about this. How about coming by my apartment later on?”
“I will,” I said, “if anything turns up.”
She reached in the desk drawer. I could tell from the slope of her shoulder and the rigid angle of her arm that she had her fingers clasped around the neck of the whisky bottle all ready to lift it out as soon as I’d left the office.
“Good-night, lover,” she said.
I walked out.
I made a figure eight around a couple of blocks, found out I wasn’t being followed, and started down to Tenth and Central. I spotted Esther Clarde walking along on Central, midway between Eighth and Ninth, but didn’t give her a tumble. I ran around the block twice to make certain she wasn’t being followed. When she got to Tenth and Central, I picked her up.
“Everything all clear?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Was that you in the car that went by a couple of times just now?”
“Yes.”
“I thought it was. I didn’t want to seem interested. No one on my tail, is there?”
“No.”
“What kind of a job did I do for you tonight?”
“Swell.”
“Grateful?”
“Uh-huh.”
“How grateful?”
“What do you want?”
“I thought perhaps you could do something for me.”
“Perhaps I can.”
She said, “I want to get out of here.”
“Out of where?”
“Out of the city. Out of the country. Away.”
“From what?”
“From everything.”
“Why?”
“I’m in a jam.”
“How come?”
“You know, the police. They’ll get after me. Honestly, Donald, I don’t know what made me do what I did tonight. I guess it was because you were so decent to me — I just couldn’t rat on you to the bulls.”
“All right,” I said. “Go home and forget it.”
“No, I can’t. They’ll check up on me.”
“How?”
“With Walter.”
“The night clerk?”
“Yes.”
“What about him?”
“He’ll identify you.”
“Not if you tell him not to.”
“What makes you say that?”
I had been driving aimlessly. Now I pulled in to the kerb, and stopped where I could look at her face while I was talking, “He’s pretty sweet on you.”
“He’s frightfully jealous.”
“You don’t need to tell him the truth. Just tell him that I’m not the man.”
“No, that won’t work. He’d be suspicious — think I had a crush on you or something. It would make him all the worse.”
“How much,” I asked, “do you want?”
“It isn’t a question of money. I want to get out of here. I want to take a plane for South America. I can take care of myself after I get there, but I need some get-away money, and I need somebody to engineer it who’s smart, someone who knows the ropes. You can do it.”
I said, “Try again, Esther.”
Her eyes raised to mine. For a moment there was glittering hatred in them. “You mean that after all I’ve done for you, you won’t do it?”
“No. It isn’t that. Try again telling me why you want to leave.”
“It’s just as I told you.”
“No, it isn’t.”
She was silent for a while, then she said, “It’s not safe for me here.”
“Why?”
“They’ll— I’ll— The same thing that happened to Jed will happen to me.”
“You mean they’ll kill you?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I’m not mentioning any names.”
I said, “I’m not going into it blind.”
“I went into it blind for you.”
“Is it Crumweather?” I asked.
She gave a quick start when I mentioned his name, then shifted her eyes and didn’t look at me for five or ten seconds. She was staring down at the illuminated dials on the dashboard of the car. “All right,” she said after a while. “Let’s say it’s Crumweather.”
“What about him?”
She said, “That business with Alta Ashbury was all planted. They intended to sell her two-thirds of the letters. The other one-third that had all the damaging things in them was to go to Crumweather.”
“What was he going to do with them?”
“He was going to make Alta Ashbury kick through with everything he needed to get Lasster acquitted.”
“You know about him?”
“Of course.”
“And about Alta Ashbury?”
She nodded.
“Go ahead.”
“Crumweather was going to make the last shakedown. The first two payments went to someone else.”
“And Jed Ringold gave her the third batch of letters,” I asked, “and double-crossed everyone?”
“No. That’s the funny part of it. He didn’t. He only gave her an envelope with some hotel stationery in it.”
“Did you know he was going to do that?”
“No. No one knew it. It was a racket Jed thought up for himself. He thought he could pocket the money and get out, but — things just didn’t work that way.”
“Where’s that batch of those letters now?”
“I don’t know. No one knows. Jed played along all right for a while, and then he got ideas of his own. I told him it was dangerous.”
“You were Jed’s woman?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Why, the idea of saying things like that to me!”
“You were, weren’t you?”
She met my eyes, then glanced away and didn’t say anything.
“You were, weren’t you?”
She waited a moment, then said, “Yes,” in a voice that was almost a whisper.
“All right, let’s go on from there. When the officers came up to your apartment tonight and pounded on the door and told you they were officers, and told you to open up, you were frightened stiff, weren’t you?”
“Of course I was. Anyone would have been under those circumstances.”
“You were in bed?”
She hesitated again, then said, “Yes. I’d just got to sleep.”
“You opened the door and came out into the corridor, and closed the door behind you?”
“Yes.”
“You had your keys with you?”
“Yes, in the pocket of my housecoat.”
I said, “The reason you were so frightened when you heard the police, the reason you didn’t let them go into your apartment and talk there, was because someone was in the apartment. Who was it?”
“No, no! I swear it wasn’t! I’m telling you the honest truth. It wasn’t the law. It was — something else.”
“When do you want to leave?”
“Right now.”
I lit a cigarette and didn’t say anything for quite a while. She was watching me anxiously. “Well?” she asked.
I said, “Okay, sister. I’ll have to get some money. I haven’t enough with me.”
“But you can get it?”
“Of course.”
“From Ashbury?”
“Yes.”
“When can you have it?”
“As soon as Ashbury gets back. He’s up north on a mining deal.”
“He was up with you?”
“Yes.”
“When will he be back?”
“He should be back almost any time. I don’t know whether he’ll drive back or take a plane.”
“Listen, Donald. As soon as he comes back, you arrange to get some money so I can leave. Will you do that for me?”
“I’ll take care of you.”
“But what am I going to do in the meantime?”
I said, “Let’s go to a hotel somewhere and register under an assumed name.”
“How about my clothes?”
“Leave them where they are. Just disappear.”
She thought for a while, and said, “I haven’t a cent with me.”
“I have some money. Enough to cover hotel bills, incidental expenses, and getting some new clothes.”
“Donald, will you do that for me?”
“Yes.”
“Where do we go?”
I said, “I know a little hotel that’s quiet.”
“You’ll take me there? Go there with me?”
“Yes.”
“You know how it is, Donald. A woman alone at this hour of the night without any baggage — well, you come and register with me.”
“As husband and wife?”
“Do you want to?”
I said, “I’ll tell them you’re my secretary, that you had to do a lot of work tonight, and have got to start early in the morning, and I want to get you a room in the hotel. It’ll be all right.”
“They won’t let you stay there with me?”
“Of course not. I’ll take you up to your room, and then come back down. Here’s a hundred. It will take care of you for the time being.”
She took the hundred, thought things over for quite a little while, and then said, “I guess perhaps that’s the best way. Thanks, kid. You’re white. I like you.”
I started the car and drove to the hotel I had in mind — a little place on a side street where a night clerk and an elevator operator ran the whole place after midnight.
Just before we went into the hotel she said, “Donald, if I could get hold of the rest of those letters, I’d be sitting pretty.”
“How do you figure?”
“Crumweather wants them, Alta Ashbury wants them, and the D.A. would pay money to get them so he could build up a case against Lasster.”
“The D.A. can’t pay anything.”
“He could make a bargain.”
“On what?” I asked. “Immunity?”
“Yes, if you want to put it that way.”
“With whom?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Where do you think the letters are?” I asked.
“Honest, Donald,” she said, “I don’t know. Jed walked to the hotel with me. He was a little afraid that something might happen, and he’d get pinched in a blackmail racket. He had been tipped off that Ashbury was going to get a detective to find out what his daughter had been doing with her money.”
“Where did that tip come from?”
“I don’t know, but Jed knew it. I suppose it came from Crumweather. Anyway, Jed didn’t want to have the letters in his possession until the last minute. He walked up to the hotel with me, and I was carrying the letters under my coat. I handed them to him just before I went in behind the cigar counter. I know he had them when he went up in the elevator and— Well, he never came down, that’s all. The murderer must have got them.”
I’d walked around to open the car door and help her out. Now I stood there, thinking. “Jed Ringold wasn’t his real name?”
“No.”
“How long had he been going under that name?”
“Two or three months.”
“What was the name before that?”
“Jack Waterbury.”
“Get this,” I said, “because it’s important. What was the name on his driving license?”
“Jack Waterbury.”
“One other thing. When I came in and asked you about gamblers, why did you tell me about Ringold?”
She said, “Honestly, Donald, you had me fooled. You certainly took me in on that one. You didn’t look like a detective. You looked like a — well, a sucker— You know what I mean. Occasionally a man comes in and gets in touch with either Jed or Tom Highland. They’ll have a poker game running.”
“Who’s Tom Highland?”
“He’s a gambler.”
“Connected with the Atlee outfit?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s in the same hotel?”
“Yes, room seven-twenty.”
“Why not look him up? If the papers went upstairs with Ringold and didn’t come down, and Highland is in the hotel, why doesn’t that add up to make an answer?”
“Because it doesn’t. Highland hasn’t got them.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Highland wouldn’t dare to hold out. There was a poker game going on in Highland’s room at the time, and they all say Highland never left it.”
“In a killing of that sort, the one who has the most perfect alibi is usually the one who did it.”
“I know, but these weren’t the sort of people who would lie. One of them was a business man. He’d have a fit if he thought he was being dragged into it as a witness. You were following Alta to the hotel, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“She asked you to do it?”
“No. Her dad.”
“How much does he know?”
“Nothing.”
“Well,” she said, “let’s don’t stand here and talk. Do you want to come up for a while?”
“No. I’ll get you your room and then go and raise some money.”
She put her hand in mine to steady herself as she came out of the car. Her hand was cold. I walked into the hotel with her, and said to the night clerk, “This is Evelyn Claxon. She’s my secretary. We’ve been doing some work late at the office. She had no baggage, so I’ll register and pay in advance.”
The clerk gave me a fishy eye.
I said to Esther for his benefit, “You go up and get to bed, Evelyn. Get a good night’s rest. You won’t need to come to the office in the morning until I telephone you. I’ll make it as late as possible. Perhaps not before nine or nine-thirty.”
The clerk handed me a fountain pen and a registration card. “Three dollars with bath,” he said, and then added, “single.”
I registered for her and gave him three one-dollar bills. He called the bellboy over and handed him a key. I gave the bellboy a dime, raised my hat, and walked out.
I went as far as the car, stood there for a minute, and then came back. The clerk’s lips tightened when he saw me. I said, “I want to ask you some questions about rates by the month.”
“Yes?”
I said, “It isn’t very satisfactory to me, having my secretary live way out in the sticks where it’s a nuisance getting back and forth. She has a sister who’s working here in town, and the two of them have been talking about getting a place in town where they could be together. How about a monthly rate?”
“Just the two girls?” he asked.
“Just the two girls.”
“We have something very attractive — some nice rooms we could give them on a permanent basis.”
“A corner room?”
“Well, no, not a corner room. It’d be an inside court room.”
“Sunlight?”
“Yes, sir. Sunlight. Not a great deal — of course they wouldn’t be here during the day except on Sundays and holidays if they’re working.”
“That’s right.”
The bellboy came back down in the elevator.
“Whenever they get ready to move in, I’ll be glad to talk rates with them,” the clerk said.
“Do you happen to have a floor plan of the hotel so that I can look at the rooms and figure on prices? I might have to make some salary adjustment. You see the girls are living at home now.”
He reached under the counter, took out a floor plan of the hotel, and started pointing out rooms. The switchboard buzzed. He moved over to it, and I picked up the floor plan, walked over, and started talking to him while he was taking the call. “How about this suite of rooms on the corner in front? Would that—”
He frowned at me and said, “What was that number again, please?”
He was holding a pencil over a pad. I shifted around so as to get a better light on the floor plan and be where I could watch his pencil as he wrote the number down. I didn’t need to. He repeated it. “Orange nine-six-four-three-two. Just a moment, please.”
He dialed the number on an outside extension, then when he had it on the line, plugged in the line and moved over to me. “What was it you wanted to know?”
“About that suite.”
“That’s rather expensive.”
“Well, you might give me prices on these three.” I checked three rooms. He went over to the desk, looked over a schedule, and wrote the prices on a slip of paper with the room numbers opposite. I folded the paper and put it in my pocket.
“You understand,” he said, “that includes everything: light, heat, maid service, and a complete change of linen once a week, fresh towels every day if desired.”
I thanked him, said good night, and went out. Two blocks down the street, I found a restaurant with a public phone. I went in and looked in the directory under the C’s, found Crumweather, C. Layton, attorney, office Fidelity Building. Down below that was the number of a residence telephone. It was Orange nine-six-four-three-two.
That was all I wanted to know.