I went over to the Apache Hotel, drifted into the lobby, found a seat, took the letter Helen Framley had given me from my pocket, and looked it over carefully.
It was written on a good quality stationery, but the sheet was an odd size. The top edge held hale irregularities so small as to be almost imperceptible unless you looked for them carefully. The paper spilled a faint trace of scent. I couldn’t tell what kind it was. There was a certain suggestion of cramped angularity about the handwriting.
The letter read:
Dear Helen Framley: I’m grateful for your letter, but it’s no use. I can’t go through with the marriage now. It wouldn’t be fair to him. The thing you suggest is unthinkable. I’m getting out of the picture. Good-by. Corla Burke
I studied the envelope in which the letter had been enclosed. It was a stamped, air-mail envelope. The General Delivery address on the outside was in that same handwriting as the body of the letter. Someone at the post office had crossed this out and written in the street and number of Helen’s apartment.
I put the letter back in the envelope, put it in my pocket, then thought better of it. I took the letter back out of the envelope, put it in my inside coat pocket, put the envelope in the outside pocket on my coat, and walked back to the Sal Sagev Hotel.
Bertha said, “Donald, what the hell have you been doing?”
“Working.”
“You’ve been fighting again. You’re a mess. Here take this clothesbrush. No, tell me first, what did you find?”
“Clues.”
“Well, don’t be so damned reticent. Tell me what happened.”
“I heard this girl was a slot-machine addict. I would either have had to stick around until three or four o’clock in the morning waiting for her to come in, or go out and find her around the slot machines.”
“Well, you don’t need to play slot machines just because you’re waiting.”
“You look conspicuous if you hang around and don’t play ’em.”
“Go ahead and look conspicuous. Who cares? After all, lover, we’re in business for money, not to conform to what Las Vegas, Nevada, thinks the well-dressed detective will wear. Don’t you think for a minute you’re going to put any gambling expenses on the expense account.”
“I won’t.”
“What happened?”
“There was a fight.”
“You don’t need to tell me that. You’ve been leading with your face again.”
“Does it look bad?”
“Terrible.”
I walked over to the full-length mirror. A table had been moved so it was possible to see my reflection clear across the room. On the table, still in its original silver foil wrapper, was Bertha’s second chocolate bar. There was quite a bit of dust on my clothes. My face had a queer lopsided look to it.
Bertha asked, “What was the fight about?”
“The first one was because someone thought I was tampering with the machines.”
“And you fought over that?”
“No. I got arrested.”
“I gathered as much. What happened after that?”
“I saw the girl again. Where’s Whitewell?”
She said, “He’s due here any minute. He got a telegram. His son’s on the way here. He’s waiting for him to come in.”
“From where?”
“Los Angeles.”
“How’s he coming?”
“He’s driving. There’s been some business emergency and Philip’s bringing his father’s right-hand man with him, someone who’s been in business with him for years.”
“Does Philip know what his father’s doing here?”
“I don’t think so, but I think the father’s going to take him into his confidence.”
“You mean he’s going to let him know about us and what we’re here for?”
“I think he is. Donald, isn’t he the nicest man?”
“Uh huh.”
“The most observing. He has wonderful taste.”
“Uh huh.”
“He’s a widower, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was just a mite lonely. Not that he’s thinking of marriage. He values his independence too highly, but he isn’t entirely self-sufficient. He’s something of a child down underneath. All men are. They want to be mothered, particularly when things go wrong.”
“Uh huh.”
“Donald Lam, are you listening to me?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well then, make some contribution to the conversation other than that inane grunting.”
“Don’t you want me to agree with you?”
“When a man’s as nice as Mr. Whitewell, you should be able to add something to what I’m saying.”
“I couldn’t. No one could.”
Her lips were a thin, straight line. “Sometimes, you little devil, I hate the ground you walk on!”
“Aren’t you going to eat your chocolate bar?”
“You may have it.”
“I don’t want it. What’s the matter with it?”
“I don’t know. That other one gave me sort of heartburn. Have you had dinner, lover?”
“No. I’ve been busy.”
“Well, Mr. Whitewell suggested that we should eat together — that is, if you came back. He said,” and she let her mouth soften into the suggestion of a simper, “that he wanted his son to meet me. He seemed particularly anxious.”
“That’s nice.”
Knuckles tapped on the door.
“Open it, lover.”
I opened the door. Whitewell stood on the threshold. Slightly behind him was a boy who was quite obviously his son. There was the same high forehead, long, straight nose, well-shaped mouth. The father’s eyes were keen with a slightly humorous twinkle. The boy’s were the same color, but didn’t have the keenness nor the twinkle. They looked as though the boy might be slogging his way through life without getting much pleasure out of it. Back of the boy was a man in the forties, bald, thick, competent, and built like a grizzly bear.
Whitewell said, “Philip, this is Donald Lam. Mr. Lam, my son, Philip Whitewell.”
The tall young man gave me an inclination of the head, extended his hand, gripped mine politely but without fervor. “Very pleased to meet you, I’m sure.”
“Won’t you come in?” I asked.
The father made quite a ceremony of it. “Mrs. Cool,” he said, “may I present my son, Philip. Philip, this is the woman I’ve been telling you about.”
Philip looked at her curiously for a moment before he bowed, and said, “Mrs. Cool, I’m very pleased to meet you. Father has been talking about you a lot.”
The thick man who seemed to have been forgotten, grinned, pushed a hand out to me, and said, “My name’s Endicott.”
“Lam,” I said.
We shook hands. Whitewell whirled, and said, “Oh, pardon me,” and then to Bertha, “And may I present Paul Endicott. He’s been with me for years. The real brains of the business. I only take in the profits and pay the income tax. Paul does the work.”
Endicott grinned, the good-natured grin of a man who is too healthy, big, and powerful to ever let anything bother him.
Bertha beamed all over her face. She actually got up out of her chair to be the perfect hostess, telephoned room service, and had some cocktails sent up.
Whitewell said to me, “I suggested to Mrs. Cool that we might all dine together when I found that my son was coming. Have you been looking the town over?”
“Yes.”
“Find out anything?”
“A little.”
“Get a line on Miss Framley?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t talk with her, did you?”
“Yes.”
He studied me for a minute as though I’d said something he hadn’t expected to hear. Then he said with a little laugh, “I’ve taken Philip entirely into my confidence. Philip knows that Mrs. Cool is running a detective agency, and that I’ve employed her to find what happened to Corla Burke. He knows that you’re working for her, so if you’ve found anything that’s at all significant as a clue, you don’t need to hold it back.”
I took the envelope from my pocket, showed it to young Whitewell, and asked, “Is this her handwriting?”
He took the envelope in eager fingers, stood looking down at it with expression veiled out of his eyes.
“That’s her writing,” he said at length.
Whitewell, Senior, grabbed at the envelope. “You were right, Mrs. Cool,” he said, “the boy’s a fast worker.”
“I told you he was.”
Whitewell ran his fingers down inside the envelope. There was a puzzled look on his face when he failed to find a letter.
“Wasn’t there a letter in this?” he asked.
“I guess so.”
“But that would have been a clue.”
I nodded.
“Where’s that letter now?”
“Miss Framley hasn’t got it.”
“She hasn’t got it!”
“No.”
“What did she do with it?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Did she remember what was in it?”
“I don’t know.”
Bertha Cool said, “ Why don’t you? Weren’t you talking with her?”
“Yes, but her boy friend didn’t like my technique. He used me as a punching-bag.”
“You look it.”
Whitewell said, “We’ll have him arrested.”
“We won’t need to. When he was trying to, put the finishing touches on me, a cop interfered.”
“What happened to the cop?”
“He looks as bad as I do.”
Bertha Cool and Whitewell exchanged glances.
“Well,” Whitewell said, “you can get after Miss Framley now and find out about that letter.”
“Better let things cool down a little.”
Bertha frowned as though something was puzzling her. Then she said, “Donald, go down to your room and get on a clean shirt. Get some of that dust out of your clothes. Do you have another suit with you?”
“No.”
“Well, do the best you can with that.”
Endicott said, “It looks like we’ll have time to get off a few telegrams, Arthur. Philip, you’d better come along, too. Will you excuse us, Mrs. Cool?”
Most of the dirt brushed out of my clothes, but my tie was badly ripped, and my shirt collar crumpled and dirty. I got on a new shirt and tie, held hot towels on my face until I’d got rid of some of the soreness, combed my hair, and went back to Bertha’s room.
When the door had closed she turned to me. “That’s the first time I ever knew you to do that, Donald.”
“What?”
“Show the white feather. Not that Bertha’s blaming you, lover, because she isn’t. But I just can’t understand why you’re not out after that letter.”
I took the letter out of my pocket and handed it to her. “What’s that?”
“Corla’s letter.”
“Where did you get it?”
“From Helen Framley.”
“Then you lied to Whitewell?”
“No. I didn’t tell him I didn’t have it. I said the girl didn’t have it. She didn’t. She’d given it to me.”
Bertha’s little glittering eyes blinked at me. “What’s the idea?”
“Read it.”
Bertha read the letter, looked up, and said, “I don’t get it. Why hold out on our client?”
“Have you,” I asked, “got that letter Whitewell wrote?”
“The one you gave me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Let’s take a look at it.”
Bertha said impatiently, “Let’s do nothing of the sort. Let’s talk about this Burke matter.”
“I think we can find out more about it by looking at Whitewell’s letter.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at the letter,” I said. “It’s written on a fine grade all-rag bond. The watermark is Scribcar Bond. Notice the dimensions of the sheet. Notice the way it’s folded. See what I mean? That sheet of paper is part of a business letterhead. Someone cut off the top of the letterhead with a sharp knife.”
Bertha blinked her eyes. After a moment, she said, “I think I’m beginning to get it, but keep right on telling me.”
“Whitewell didn’t like the idea of his son marrying Corla Burke. He got Corla into his office. He made her some proposition that she accepted. She agreed to get out, but she wanted to save her face. She was to get out under circumstances that would make it appear she might have been forcibly removed, or been running away from something she was afraid of.”
“Then why the letter?” Bertha asked.
“The letter,” I said, “clinches it. It’s the pay-off, so far as we’re concerned. Corla Burke didn’t know any Helen Framley. Helen Framley didn’t know any Corla Burke. But Arthur Whitewell had friends here in Las Vegas. Those friends were in a position to look around and find some girl who would make a good plant. Whitewell had this letter written as a second string to his bow, a safety anchor out to windward.”
“That’s something I don’t get.”
“Remember, he’s Philip’s father. After all, he has Philip’s best interests at heart. That’s why he interfered in the first place.”
“Naturally.”
“A man like that wouldn’t want to see his son suffer unduly. If it was just a blow due to having the woman he loved walk out on him, Philip would get over it. The father knew that. But if Philip got the idea in his head the girl had been kidnaped or was in danger and he was failing her, he’d never get over it. It would be such a long-drawn nervous strain that it would change his entire career. Evidently, that’s what’s happening.”
“Well?”
“And the father was shrewd enough to know that it might happen. Remember, he’s an amateur psychologist. He certainly wouldn’t have overlooked that possibility.”
“I get you now. He couldn’t have pulled this letter out of his sleeve then and said, ‘Look, son, what I’ve found.’ He’d have to have the letter planted some place where a private detective agency could find it.”
“That’s right. That letter shows that Corla Burke left under her own power. He wants us to find that letter, and is willing to pay us for doing it. Then he’ll show it to his son.”
Bertha blinked her eyes and said, “All right, lover, if it’s a run-around, we’ll just play ring-around-the-rosy with him. We’ll run around in circles, draw a per diem for six days, find this letter on the seventh so we can still get a bonus, and teach him not to play us for suckers. Was that your idea, lover?”
“Not exactly.”
“What then?”
“It’s going to work out about that way. If I accuse him of writing the letter and getting rid of Corla Burke, I can never tell whether he did it or didn’t—”
“Donald Lam, what do you think you’re doing? He’s a client. You can’t accuse him of anything.”
I said, “No, but if we hold this back for a little while, he’ll start putting pressure to bear here and there to see that the letter does get delivered into our hands. When he starts moving around, he’s got to get out in the open enough so we can catch him red-handed.”
“Then what?”
I said, “We’d know more about it then.”
“Donald,” she said, “you’re going overboard again. You’re thinking about Corla Burke’s broken heart.”
“I’d like to see her get a square deal. She’s up against a wealthy man who evidently has used some form of blackmail.”
“What did he do?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think she’d have quit for money. I think Whitewell’s the sort who would put her on the wheel and break her a bit at a time, body and soul. He’d torture anyone who got in his way.”
“Donald, how can you say such things? He’s a nice man.”
“He’s nice when he wants to be, but he’s ruthless when it comes to getting what he wants.”
“Aren’t we all?”
I smiled and said, “Some of us are.”
“I suppose that’s a dirty dig.”
I kept quiet.
Bertha said, “Open that suitcase, lover, and look in the zipper compartment. His letter’s in there.”
I got out his letter, held it up to the light. It was Scribcar Bond. I held the two sheets side by, side. Corla Burke’s letter had been written on his stationery. The upper part of the letterhead had been folded over and cut off with a sharp knife.
Bertha Cool said, “Well, fry me for an oyster!”
I folded Corla Burke’s letter and put it in my pocket. “What do we do next, lover?” Bertha asked.
“I want to check up on the Los Angeles end. How long’s Whitewell going to stay here?”
“I think for a day or two.”
“Want to go to Los Angeles with me tonight?”
“No. Bertha’s rather tired, and I like this desert climate. I think it would be better to—”
“There’s a train at nine-twenty,” I said. “I’ll get reservations on it.”