Roberta Fenn was on time to the minute. She came out looking trim, tailored, and cool. Her steady, hazel eyes were amused about something, as though there were a joke she might have shared if she’d wanted to.
I motioned to the cab driver who was waiting at the curb, and he jumped out and held the door open for us.
Settled back against the cushions, Roberta flashed me a quick glance and said, “So you’re a detective?”
“Uh huh.”
She said, “I’d always had ideas about detectives.”
“What sort of ideas?”
“Oh, big, powerful men who try to browbeat you, or sinister people in disguises.”
“It’s hardly safe to generalize.”
“You must have an exciting life.”
“I guess I do, if you stop to think of it that way.”
“Don’t you sometimes?”
“What?”
“Stop to think of it that way.”
“Probably not in the way you point out.”
“Why?”
I said, “I don’t think you ever really stop to analyze the sort of life you’re leading unless you’re dissatisfied with it. I like my work. Therefore, I take everything for granted, and don’t contrast my sort of life with other kinds.”
She thought for a long time then, and said, “I guess you’re right.”
“What?”
“About never thinking about your life unless you’re dissatisfied with it. How long have you been a detective?”
“Seems like a long while,” I said.
“Did you start out to be one?”
“No. I started out to be a lawyer.”
“What stopped you? Couldn’t you complete your education?”
“No. I got admitted to the bar.”
“Then what?”
I said, “Some people unadmitted me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I found a hole in the law by which a man could commit a murder and thumb his nose at the authorities.”
“What happened?” she asked, all breathless interest.
I said, “They disbarred me.”
“I know, but what happened after you worked out the way of committing the murder — you know what I mean.”
“I’m not certain that I do.”
“Did someone commit it and get away with it?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’d like to hear it sometime.”
I said, “When they disbarred me, they told me I was crazy, that my scheme wouldn’t hold water, that it was just a pipe dream, but that it showed a dangerous, antisocial type of mind.”
“Then what?”
“Then,” I said, “I went out and proved it to them.”
“Who committed the murder?”
“They thought I did.”
She looked at me abruptly. “Say, are you taking me for a ride?”
“Only in a taxicab.”
Those steady, hazel eyes of hers kept looking right through me. She said, “Darned if I don’t believe you.”
“You might as well. I have nothing to gain by lying.”
“Then what did they say — the people who had told you it was a crazy scheme?”
“Oh, they got committees from the bar association together and started amending the laws to try and plug up the loophole.”
“Did they do it?”
“In a way — as well as they could by state laws. This loophole is in the Constitution. You can’t plug that simply by state laws.”
“Can’t you tell whether it’s plugged or not?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you can’t tell what the Supreme Court’s going to do.”
“Don’t they follow regular rules?”
I said, “They used to be bound by precedents. On those matters, W€ knew what the law was. Now they’re changing those old decisions. That throws the whole list out, because you can’t tell which ones they’ll change and which ones they’ll let stand.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“It may be good, or it may be bad. It’s a condition. We’ve had a shake-up in the law. Eventually these new judges will get the law changed around to suit their ideas. Then lawyers will know pretty generally how to advise clients. In the meantime there’s a lot of guessing... What can you tell me about Mr. Smith?”
She laughed and said, “You do change the subject with disconcerting suddenness, don’t you?”
“Was it disconcerting?” I asked.
“Wasn’t it intended to be?”
“No.”
“What do you want to know about him?”
“Everything you know.”
“That’s very little. I’ll tell you when we get to my apartment.”
We drove for several blocks in silence.
“You look terribly young,” she said.
“I’m not.”
“About twenty-five?”
“Older than that.”
“Not much older.”
I didn’t answer that one.
“You work for someone?”
“I did for a while. Now I have a half interest in the business. Could we talk about something else for a change? New Orleans? Politics? Your love life, perhaps?”
She looked at me searchingly and with no trace of a smile. “What about my love life?”
I said, “I gave you a choice of several subjects to talk about. You didn’t get touchy about any one except your love life. Are you trying to cover up something? And that is what’s known as a counteroffensive.”
She thought that over for a minute. I could see the smile coming back to twitch the corners of her lips. “I guess you’re pretty smart, all right. That was very well done.”
I took a package of cigarettes from my pocket. “Want one?”
She looked at the brand. “Please.”
I jiggled a cigarette halfway out. She took it, tapped it on her thumb, and waited for my light. We lit our cigarettes off the same match. The cab slowed down. She looked out of the window, said, “It’s the next place, over here on the right.”
“Want me to wait?” the cab driver asked as I paid him off.
I looked at Miss Fenn. “Do I?”
She hesitated for just a fraction of a second, then said, “No,” and added hastily, “You can always pick up another one.”
“I can wait ten minutes without putting it on the meter,” the cab driver explained. “It’s fifty cents up here, and it’ll be fifty cents back. If your—”
“No,” Roberta Fenn said firmly.
He touched his cap. I gave him a two-bit tip and followed her across the sidewalk, up a short flight of stairs, watched her open the mailbox, pull out two letters, glance at the return addresses hastily, drop the letters into her purse, and then she was fitting a key to a door.
It was a walk-up. Her apartment was on the second floor. There were two rooms, both small. She indicated a chair, said, “Sit down. I’ll try to find that letter from my friend, asking me to show Mr. Smith around. It may take me a little while.”
She went on through into the bedroom and closed the door.
I settled down in the chair, picked up a magazine, held it open so I could bury myself in it at an instant’s notice, and made a mental survey of the apartment.
She hadn’t been there long. The place hadn’t as yet taken on any of her individuality. There were a few magazines on the table. Her name printed on the back of one showed she was a subscriber. Yet there were no back copies visible in the apartment. I’d have bet money she hadn’t been living there more than six weeks.
It was about five minutes later that she emerged triumphantly from the bedroom. “It took me a little while,” she said, “but I have it — only it doesn’t give the room number. I thought it did. It gives the name of the building.”
I took out my notebook and fountain pen.
She unfolded the letter. From where I sat, it looked like a woman’s handwriting. She said, “Archibald C. Smith is in — oh, shucks!”
“What’s the matter?”
She said, “His office building isn’t given here. I thought it was. I’ll have to look it up in my address book. I thought it was in the letter. I remember now, he gave me his address just before he left, and I wrote it down in my address book. Just a minute.”
She took the letter with her, re-entered the bedroom, and popped out a second or two later turning the pages of a small, leather-covered address book. She dropped the letter on the table.
“Yes. Here it is. Archibald Collington Smith, Lake-view Building, Michigan Boulevard, Chicago.”
“Room number in there?”
“No. That’s where I was confused. I knew I didn’t have the number, just the building.”
“You said he was in business there?”
“Yes. That’s an office building. I haven’t his home address.”
“What did you say his business was?”
“Insurance.”
“Oh, yes. I wonder if your friend might be able to tell me something about him.” I motioned toward the letter.
She laughed, and I knew she’d been baiting a trap. “I presume she could, but if you’re really looking for Mr. Smith to close an estate, I imagine Mr. Smith can tell you all you need to know about Mr. Smith.”
I said, “Doubtless he could,” and then added, “That’s one of the troubles we sometimes encounter, particularly when we’re dealing with a name as common as Smith. You know, a man will try to make it appear he’s the person you’re after, hoping he can get the money. That’s why we always like to investigate as many different angles as possible before we approach him directly.”
Her eyes were smiling at me, and then suddenly she was laughing. “That was a splendid recovery, but you must take me for an awful simp.”
“What now?”
She said, “It’s the first time I ever heard of anyone trying to find a missing heir by that sort of an approach. Usually, some lawyer says, ‘Now before we can close up the estate, we have to find an Archibald C. Smith who was the son of Frank Whoosis who died in nineteen hundred and umpty. The last we heard of Smith was that he was in Chicago, running a haberdashery store.’ So then the detectives start looking, and one of them comes to me, and says, ‘Pardon me. Miss, but do you happen to know a Mr. Smith who is in Chicago running a haberdashery store?’ And I say, ‘No, but I know a Mr. Smith who’s in Chicago in the insurance business. What does the man you want look like?’ And the detective says, ‘Good Heavens, I don’t know. All I’m looking for is a name.’ ”
“So what?” I asked her.
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
“You mean that this is unusual?”
“Yes. Very.”
I smiled and said, “Isn’t it?”
There was exasperation on her face. She was getting ready to let me have a verbal broadside when knuckles sounded on the door. She let her attention swing from me to the door, regarding it with a puzzled frown.
The knuckles sounded again.
She got up and walked over to the door, flung it open.
A man’s voice, sharp-edged with eagerness, said, “I told you you couldn’t run out on me! But you had to try it, didn’t you? Well, sweetheart, I—”
I wasn’t looking toward the door right then, but when his voice ran out of words, I knew he’d been pushing his way into the room as he talked, and had advanced just far enough to get a glimpse of me sitting there in the chair.
I turned my head casually.
I recognized him almost instantly. It was the man who had responded to all the horn-blowing at Jack O’Leary’s Bar around three-thirty that morning.
Roberta Fenn whirled, glanced at me, then said in a low voice to her visitor, “Come outside for a minute where we can talk.”
She half pushed him out into the hallway, and pulled the door behind her so that it was almost shut.
I had only a few seconds. I knew I must make every move count.
I raised myself gently from my chair so as not to make any noise. My hand snaked out and grabbed the letter which Roberta had left on the top of the table.
The envelope bore the return address: Edna Cutler, 935 Turpitz Building, Little Rock, Ark.
I gave the letter a quick once-over. It read:
Dear Roberta: A few days after you receive this, you’ll have a call from Archibald C. Smith of Chicago. I’ve given him your name. For business reasons, I wish you’d be particularly nice to him and make his stay in New Orleans as pleasant as possible. Show him around the Quarter and take him to some of the famous restaurants. I can assure you it will be bread on the waters, because—
I heard the door opening from the corridor, heard a man’s voice saying, “All right then, that’s a promise! Don’t forget, now.”
I tossed the letter back to the table and was putting a match to my cigarette when Roberta Fenn came back.
She smiled at me, said, “Well, let’s see. Where were we?”
“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “Just talking.”
She said, “You’re a detective. Tell me how that man could have got through the street-entrance door without ringing my apartment.”
“That’s easy.”
“How?”
“He could have rung one of the other apartments, got a signal to come in, and then gone up. Or he could have picked the lock on the lower door. The locks on those street doors don’t amount to much. They’re made so that the key to any apartment will open them. Why would he want to get in without giving you a ring?”
She laughed, a nervous, high-pitched little laugh, and said, “Don’t ask me why men want to do the things they do. Well, I guess I’ve told you everything I know about Archibald Smith.”
I took the hint, got to my feet, and said, “Thanks a lot.”
“You’re — you’re here in town?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
I headed off any further questions by saying abruptly, “I suppose I’ve interfered with your evening. I hope I haven’t made you late—”
“Don’t mention it. You haven’t interfered at all. Thank you.”
She stood at the doorway and watched me down the flight of stairs. I went out through the outer door, looked up and down the street, sized up the cars that were parked near by, but couldn’t see the tall chap who had busted in on Roberta Fenn.
I had plenty of opportunity to look around, too. It was ten minutes before I was able to pick up a cab which was running empty back toward town. The cab driver assured me I was lucky. Cabs, he said, didn’t do much cruising around in that part of town.