It was past noon when I went to Hale’s apartment. He was out. I had a combined breakfast and lunch at the Bourbon House and tried Hale again.
No dice.
I went down St. Charles Avenue to the apartment house where Roberta had lived and studied the place as carefully as I could while walking by. Then I went back to the hotel and wrote out a typewritten report for the office files, being careful to list all my expenses.
I went back to the apartment at about four. Hale was in.
He was, moreover, in a very jovial mood.
“Come right in, Lam. Come in and sit down. Well, young man, I think I did you a little good. I drummed up another customer for you.”
“That right?”
“Yes. A man was here asking about you. I gave you a very good recommendation, very good indeed.”
“Thanks.”
We sat looking at each other for a while; then he said, “It’s very interesting. I’ve been searching the apartment.”
“For what?”
“For something that might give us some clue.”
“She hasn’t lived here for three years.”
“I know, but I was just looking around on the off chance. You can’t tell when something might be found — letters or something.”
“That’s right.”
“I’ve already found quite an assortment of things, letters that had worked under the papers that were placed on the bottom of the desk drawers, and there in the writing desk a whole lot of correspondence had dropped down in back of the drawer. I haven’t got it all out yet. I put the drawer back when I heard your steps on the stairs. I didn’t know just who it was that was coming.”
He walked over to the desk and pulled out the top drawer.
“Don’t happen to have a pocket flashlight, do you?” he asked.
“No.”
He said, “I’ve been looking down here with a match, but it’s rather dangerous. An end may drop off the match, and set the whole thing afire.”
He struck a match, shielded the flame with his hand for a moment, then pushed his arm down inside the place where the drawer had been. “Take a look down there,” he said.
Back down in the lower part of the desk I could see a litter of papers; then the match flickered out.
“Can’t we get at them by taking the lower drawers out?” I asked.
“No. I’ve tried that. There’s a partition back of the lower drawers. See?”
He pulled out one of the lower drawers. A solid partition was behind it. It left a space some six or eight inches between the back of the drawer and the back of the desk.
Hale said, “You see how it is. The upper drawer was made very deep so it would hold the desk blotter. The lower drawers aren’t as deep by some eight inches. There was that much dead space in the desk.”
I was curious now. “Not one chance in a hundred any of those papers concern the girl we want, but seeing we’ve gone this far, we may as well get them out.”
“How?”
“We’ll take everything out of the desk and stand the thing on its head.”
Hale didn’t say a word, started pulling the drawers out, and then removing things from the pigeonholes in the top of the desk, a bottle of ink, some pens, blotter, a couple of boxes of matches, and a few minor odds and ends which had accumulated as a hold-over from past tenants.
“Ready?” he demanded. I nodded.
We each took hold of an end of the desk and moved it out from the wall.
Hale said, “I may as well confess to you. Lam, that I’m something of a detective myself. I’m interested in human nature, and nothing gives me quite as much pleasure as to be able to pry into the unexpected corners of the human mind. I like to read old correspondence. Came on a trunk full of letters at one time in connection with cleaning up an estate. Most interesting thing I’ve ever seen. Now, just tilt it down on that side. There we are. Easy now. Well, this trunk full of letters belonged to a woman who died at the age of seventy-eight. She’d saved every letter she’d ever received. Letters in there she’d received during her childhood, letters during the time she was being courted. Most interesting collection I’ve ever seen. And they weren’t the repressed sort of letters that you’d expect either. Some of them were dynamite. Now, let’s turn the thing right on over. Say, there’s something heavy in there.”
There was indeed something heavy in the desk. It slid down the back of the desk, hit against the inverted top with a thud, and then lodged there. We’d have to find some other way.
“Pick the desk up and shake it,” I said. “Hold it down this way.”
The desk was heavy. It took us a minute to get it elevated at just the right angle. When we had it sloped right, the heavy object thudded out to the floor. After that, I could hear the rustle of papers sliding out and dropping to the carpet. We couldn’t see what they were while we were holding the desk.
“Give it a shake,” I suggested.
We shook the desk. Hale took his big palm and pounded on the back. “I guess that’s all.”
We righted the desk and looked down at the pile of stuff on the floor. There were old letters, yellowed newspaper clippings, and the heavy object.
Hale and I stood staring at that heavy object.
It was a .38 caliber revolver.
I picked it up and looked at it. Four chambers of the cylinder were loaded. Two of them held exploded cartridges. There were some spots of rust on the gun, but, for the most part, it was in good condition.
Hale said, “Someone must have put that gun in the desk drawer on top of some papers, then as he opened the drawer hurriedly the gun dropped down behind, and—”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Let’s take a look at the way that drawer fits.”
I fitted the drawer into the groove and looked at the space behind it.
“No dice,” I told him. “That gun couldn’t have dropped down behind there accidentally. The space is too small. That gun must have been deliberately dropped down there after someone had taken the drawer out. In other words, that was used, not as a place of storage but as a place of concealment.”
Hale got down on his knees and struck two matches to verify my conclusions; then he said, “You’re right, Lam! You really are a detective! Let’s see what the letters have to say.”
We picked up some of the old letters. They didn’t mean much: some old receipted bills; a pleading, desperate letter from some woman who wanted a man to return and marry her; another letter from some man who wanted to borrow money to tide him him over an emergency and written in the “dear-old-pal” vein.
Hale chuckled. “I like these things,” he said as he finished reading the letter. “Little cross-sections of life. Being perfect strangers to the transaction, we can examine the tone of that letter and see how badly that ‘dear-old-pal’ stuff is overdone. I wouldn’t trust that man as far as I could throw this desk with one hand.”
“Neither would I,” I told him. “I wonder what the newspaper clippings are.”
He pushed those to one side. “Those are meaningless. It’s the letters that count. Here’s one in feminine handwriting. Perhaps it’s another letter from the girl who wanted the man to marry her. I wonder how that came out.”
I picked up the old newspaper clippings, ran idly through them, said suddenly, “Wait a minute, Hale. We’ve struck something here.”
“What?”
“Pay dirt.”
“What do you mean?”
I said, “It may tie up with this thirty-eight caliber revolver.”
Hale dropped the letter he was reading, said excitedly, “How’s that?”
“These clippings have to do with the murder of a man by the name of Craig. Howard Chandler Craig. Twenty-nine years old, unmarried, employed as a book-keeper by the Roxberry Estates. Let’s see. Where was the murder committed? Wait a minute. Here’s a heading. Los Angeles Times, June 11, 1937. ”
Hale said, “Now wouldn’t that be something? Suppose the murderer escaped and came here—” He picked up one of the clippings, started reading through it. It had been folded over a couple of times, and he unfolded it and looked at the photograph just about the time I was reading the details of the account.
When I heard Hale’s quick intake of breath, I knew what caused it.
“Lam!” he said excitedly. “Look here!”
I said, “I’m reading about it in this one.”
“But here’s her photograph.”
I looked at the coarse-meshed reproduction of Roberta Fenn’s picture. Underneath it were the words Roberta Fenn, twenty-one-year-old stenographer, was riding with Howard Craig when holdup occurred.
Hale said excitedly, “Lam, do you know what this means?”
I said; “No.”
He said, “I do.”
“Don’t be too sure you do. I don’t.”
“But it’s as plain as the nose on your face.”
I said, “Let’s study these clippings before we go jumping to any hasty conclusions.”
We read through all of the clippings, exchanging them with each other. Hale finished reading first.
“Well?” he asked when I’d finished.
I said, “Not necessarily.”
“Bosh!” Hale said. “You can see it all as plain as day. She went out with this bookkeeper — probably another case of a girl wanting a man to marry her, and he refused. She got out of the car on some excuse or another, walked around to the driver’s side, shot Craig twice through the left temple, hid the gun, and came in with this story of the masked bandit who had stepped out of the bush and ordered Craig to throw up his hands. He’d done it. The man had gone through his pockets, and then had ordered Roberta Fenn to walk down the road with him.
“That was more than Craig would stand tor. He started the motor in his car, threw it into gear, and tried to run the man down, but the chap just managed to get to one side. He shot Craig twice in the head as the momentum of the car carried Craig up even with him.
“No one ever questioned the girl’s story. Craig was considered a gentleman and a martyr. One reason police didn’t question Roberta’s story was that there had been two dozen petting-party holdups in the neighborhood within a period of a few months. On several occasions where the girl had been unusually attractive, the bandit had ordered her to walk down the road with him. There had been two other murders—”
Hale paused dramatically, motioned toward the gun, and said, “Well, there you are! It was murder. She got away with it once — and, by George, she tried getting away with it again. This time she can’t make it stick.”
I said, “Not necessarily. Simply because that’s a thirty-eight caliber gun doesn’t mean it’s the same gun with which Craig was killed.”
“Why are you protecting her?” Hale asked suspiciously.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Perhaps because I don’t want you sticking your neck out.”
“How do you mean?”
I said, “Making positive statements accusing a person of crime is sometimes dangerous, unless you have the information necessary to back them up.”
Hale nodded. “That’s so,” he said. “Of course, there’s nothing to prove that the gun goes with the newspaper clippings.”
I pointed out, “The newspaper clippings could have been placed in that desk drawer, and worked on down through the opening in back. The gun couldn’t. The gun was placed there deliberately.”
Hale said, “Let me think.”
I said, “While you’re thinking, I’d better know exactly why you wanted Roberta Fenn, and who your client IS.”
“No. That doesn’t enter into the picture.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can tell you it doesn’t. What’s more, I’m protecting the confidence of my client.”
“Don’t you think that now he would want me to know more about it?”
“No.”
“It’s a man, isn’t it — your client?”
“You can’t pump me, Lam, and I don’t want you to try. I told you I wanted you to find Roberta Fenn. That was all.”
“Well, I’ve found her.”
“And lost her again.”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
He said, “Find her again.”
“You haven’t known Bertha very long, have you?”
“You mean Mrs. Cool?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
I said, “She’s rather hard-boiled in a business deal.”
“That’s all right. I’m rather hard-boiled myself.”
I said, “You employed the agency to find Roberta Fenn. You offered a bonus in the event she was found within a certain period of time.”
“Well,” he said impatiently, “what’s wrong with that?”
I said, “We found her.”
“But you didn’t keep her found.”
I said, “That’s why I asked you if you’d had much experience with Bertha Cool. My best guess is that she’ll say that all we were employed for was to find her.”
“And that having found her, your employment is completed, and you’re entitled to the bonus?”
“Exactly.”
I waited for him to get mad. He didn’t. He sat there on the floor, staring at the gun and the yellowed newspaper clippings. A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth; then the smile became a chuckle. “Damn it. Lam, she’s right! Here I am, a lawyer, and I stick my neck out on an agreement of that sort.”
He looked up at me.
I didn’t say anything.
He said, “That is the agreement in a nutshell. I remember the way it was worded now.” He laughed outright.
I said, “I thought I’d tell you, that’s all.”
“Well,” he admitted, “that’s one on me. Okay, I’ll hire the firm all over again and arrange for another bonus. I like the way you work. In the meantime, we’d better get in touch with the police about this gun.”
“What are you going to tell them?”
He said, “Don’t worry. Lam. I’m going to tell them the bare facts, that I happened to be looking through ‘the desk because I was interested in it as a piece of furniture. I intended to make the landlady an offer for it. I tilted it up in order to see the bottom, and realized there was something heavy in it. I shook it out, and the gun and these papers came out. Naturally, I don’t want to appear in front of the public as a snoop who was going around reading correspondence that was really no concern of mine.”
I said, “But you do want to get in touch with the police, is that it?”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
I said, “Then the police will know as much about it as you do.”
“Well, why not?”
I said, “I don’t know anything about why you want Roberta Fenn or who wants her, but I suppose there’s a reason.”
He said, “Businessmen don’t pay out good money to find people just to ask them to subscribe to a magazine.”
I said, “Perhaps you don’t realize what I’m leading up to.”
“Go ahead. Lead up to it.”
“Let’s suppose a businessman wants to find Roberta. He undoubtedly wants her to do something, or wants her to tell him something, or wants to find out something. Here’s a thirty-eight caliber gun and some old newspaper clippings. You take those to the police, and you’ll never find Roberta Fenn and get a chance to talk with her. That thing will be headlined all over the country. Right now the police think Roberta may have been a second victim, or they think she may have been frightened away. There’s some speculation as to whether she might be the one who shot Nostrander, but she’s not what you’d really call hot. Once you take this to the police, the police will reopen that old murder case. Then the California authorities will go crazy looking for her. You’ll have both Louisiana and California police on her trail. You’ll have her picture published in every newspaper in the country. You’ll have posters made, and distributed in every post office, and mailed to every police officer in the land. Roberta will read all that stuff. She’ll duck for cover. What sort of chance do you think we have of finding her ahead of the police of two states?”
“When we do catch up with her she’ll be in a cell. If you want her to do something, being in a cell might cramp her style.”
He regarded me steadily for several seconds, his eyes batting every few seconds.
Abruptly he pushed the gun toward me. “All right, Lam, you take it.”
“Not me. I’m simply a detective employed to find Roberta Fenn for a client whose identity I don’t know. You’re the big shot who’s determining policies.”
“Then,” he said, “as an attorney in good standing, I would have no choice but to go to the police.”
I got up from the floor and brushed my trousers. “Okay,” I said, “I just wanted you to understand the situation.”
I was halfway to the door before he called me back.
“Perhaps I should give the matter a little further consideration. Lam.”
I didn’t say anything.
He went on: “You know it’s rather a serious matter to accuse a person of crime. I — er — I’ll think it over.”
I still didn’t say anything.
“After all,” he went on, “I’m assuming that this is the gun with which that crime in California was committed. That is pure inference on my part. I think it would be wise to make an investigation in greater detail. We really haven’t anything to report to the police right now. We merely have found some newspaper clippings and a revolver concealed in an old desk. Thousands of people keep revolvers, and newspaper clippings are not necessarily significant.”
“Done it?” I asked.
“Done what?”
“Convinced yourself that it’s all right for you to do the thing you want to do.”
“Hang it, Lam, I’m not doing that. I’m merely weighing the pros and cons.”
“When you get them weighed, let me know,” I told him, and turned once more toward the door.
This time he called me back before I had taken more than three steps.
“Lam.”
I turned. “What is it this time?”
Hale was through beating around the bush. “Forget about this,” he said. “We won’t tell the police anything about it.”
“What are you going to do with the gun?”
“Put it back in that desk just where we found it.”
“Then what?”
“Later on, if it becomes necessary, we can discover it again.”
I said, “You’re the doctor.”
He nodded and beamed at me. “The more I see of you. Lam, the more I appreciate you. Now I’d like to have you do something for me.”
“What?”
“I understand the police have a witness who can fix the exact time Nostrander was murdered. One who heard the shots. A young woman, I believe.”
“Yes.”
“I wonder if it would be possible for you to arrange to have me meet her. Not in the capacity of a person seeking information, but merely casually.”
I said, “It’s all fixed. Be waiting out in front of the Jack-O’-Lantern Club about nine o’clock tonight. I’ve already paved the way.”
“Well, well, that’s efficiency! You seem to anticipate my every thought, Lam. You really do.”
I said, “Nine o’clock tonight in front of the Jack-O’-Lantern,” and went out.
I looked at my watch. It was two hours earlier in California. I sent a wire to the agency: Howard Chandler Craig murdered June 6, 1937. Possibility of connection with case here. Get all details. In particular find out about habits and love life of victim.