“This was or is a hide-out for Whitacre and his woman all right,” Dean said when we were alone. “The only question is whether he intended to lay low here or whether it was just a place where he made preparations for his getaway. I reckon the best thing is to have the captain put a man in here night and day until we turn up Brother Whitacre.”
“That’s safest,” I agreed, and he went to the telephone in the front room to arrange it.
After Dean was through phoning, I called up the Old Man to see if anything new had developed.
“Nothing new,” he told me. “How are you coming along?”
“Nicely. Maybe I’ll have news for you this evening.”
“Did you get those specimens of Whitacre’s writing from Ogburn? Or shall I have someone else take care of it?”
“I’ll get them this evening,” I promised.
I wasted ten minutes trying to reach Ogburn at his office before I looked at my watch and saw that it was after six o’clock. I found his residence listed in the telephone directory, and called him there.
“Have you anything in Whitacre’s writing at home?” I asked. “I want to get a couple of samples—would like to get them this evening, though if necessary I can wait until tomorrow.”
“I think I have some of his letters here. If you come over now I’ll give them to you.”
“Be with you in fifteen minutes,” I told him.
“I’m going down to Ogburn’s,” I told Dean, “to get some of Whitacre’s scribbling while you’re waiting for your man to come from headquarters to take charge of this place. I’ll meet you at the States as soon as you can get away. We’ll eat there, and make our plans for the night.”
“Uh-huh,” he grunted, making himself comfortable in one chair, with his feet on another, as I let myself out.
Ogburn was dressing when I reached his apartment, and had his collar and tie in his hand when he came to the door to let me in.
“I found quite a few of Herb’s letters,” he said as we walked back to his bedroom.
I looked through the fifteen or more letters that lay on a table, selecting the ones I wanted, while Ogburn went on with his dressing.
“How are you progressing?” he asked presently.
“So-so. Heard anything that might help?”
“No, but just a few minutes ago I happened to remember that Herb used to go over to the Mills Building quite frequently. I’ve seen him going in and out often, but never thought anything of it. I don’t know whether it is of any importance or—”
I jumped out of my chair.
“That does it!” I cried. “Can I use your phone?”
“Certainly. It’s in the hallway, near the door.” He looked at me in surprise. “It’s a slot phone; have you a nickel in change?”
“Yes.” I was going through the bedroom door.
“The switch is near the door,” he called after me, “if you want a light. Do you think—”
But I didn’t stop to listen to his questions. I was making for the telephone, searching my pockets for a nickel. And, fumbling hurriedly with the nickel, I muffed it—not entirely by accident, for I had a hunch that I wanted to work out. The nickel rolled away down the carpeted hallway. I switched on the light, recovered the nickel, and called the “Quirks” number. I’m glad I played that hunch.
Dean was still there.
“That joint’s dead.” I sang. “Take the landlady down to headquarters, and grab the Landis woman, too. I’ll meet you there—at headquarters.”
“You mean it?” he rumbled.
“Almost,” I said, and hung up the receiver.
I switched off the hall light and, whistling a little tune to myself, walked back to the room where I had left Ogburn. The door was not quite closed. I walked straight up to it, kicked it open with one foot, and jumped back, hugging the wall.
Two shots—so close together that they were almost one—crashed.
Flat against the wall, I pounded my feet against the floor and wainscot, and let out a medley of shrieks and groans that would have done credit to a carnival wild-man.
A moment later Ogburn appeared in the doorway, a revolver in his hand, his face wolfish. He was determined to kill me. It was my life or his, so—
I slammed my gun down on the sleek, brown top of his head.
When he opened his eyes, two policemen were lifting him into the back of a patrol wagon.
* * * *
I found Dean in the detectives’ assembly-room in the Hall of Justice.
“The landlady identified Mae Landis as Mrs. Quirk,” he said. “Now what?”
“Where is she now?”
“One of the policewomen is holding both of them in the captain’s office.”
“Ogburn is over in the Pawnshop Detail office,” I told him. “Let’s take the landlady in for a look at him.”
Ogburn sat leaning forward, holding his head in his hands’ and staring sullenly at the feet of the uniformed man who guarded him, when we took the gaunt landlady in to see him.
“Ever see him before?” I asked her.
“Yes”—reluctantly—“that’s Mr. Quirk.”
Ogburn didn’t look up, and he paid not the least attention to any of us.
After we had told the landlady that she could go home, Dean led me back to a far corner of the assembly-room, where we could talk without disturbance.
“Now spill it!” he burst out. “How come all the startling developments, as the newspaper boys call ’em?”
“Well, first-off, I knew that the question ‘Who killed Bob Teal?’ could have only one answer. Bob wasn’t a boob! He might possibly have let a man he was trailing lure him behind a row of billboards on a dark night, but he would have gone prepared for trouble. He wouldn’t have died with empty hands, from a gun that was close enough to scorch his coat. The murderer had to be somebody Bob trusted, so it couldn’t be Whitacre. Now Bob was a conscientious sort of lad, and he wouldn’t have stopped shadowing Whitacre to go over and talk with some friend. There was only one man who could have persuaded him to drop Whitacre for a while, and that one man was the one he was working for—Ogburn.
“If I hadn’t known Bob, I might have thought he had hidden behind the billboards to watch Whitacre; but Bob wasn’t an amateur. He knew better than to pull any of that spectacular gumshoe stuff. So there was nothing to it but Ogburn!
“With all that to go on, the rest was duck soup. All the stuff Mae Landis gave us—identifying the gun as Whitacre’s, and giving Ogburn an alibi by saying she had talked to him on the phone at ten o’clock—only convinced me that she and Ogburn were working together. When the landlady described ‘Quirk’ for us, I was fairly certain of it. Her description would fit either Whitacre or Ogburn, but there was no sense to Whitacre’s having the apartment on Greenwich Street, while if Ogburn and the Landis woman were thick, they’d need a meeting-place of some sort. The rest of the box of cartridges there helped some too.
“Then tonight I put on a little act in Ogburn’s apartment, chasing a nickel along the floor and finding traces of dried mud that had escaped the cleaning-up he no doubt gave the carpet and clothes after he came home from walking through the lot in the rain. We’ll let the experts decide whether it could be mud from the lot on which Bob was killed, and the jury can decide whether it is.
“There are a few more odds and ends—like the gun. The Landis woman said Whitacre had had it for more than a year, but in spite of being muddy it looks fairly new to me. We’ll send the serial number to the factory, and find when it was turned out.
“For motive, just now all I’m sure of is the woman, which should be enough. But I think that when Ogburn and Whitacre’s books are audited, and their finances sifted, we’ll find something there. What I’m banking on strong is that Whitacre will come in, now that h
e is cleared of the murder charge.”
And that is exactly what happened.
Next day Herbert Whitacre walked into Police Headquarters at Sacramento and surrendered.
Neither Ogburn nor Mae Landis ever told what they knew, but with Whitacre’s testimony, supported by what we were able to pick up here and there, we went into court when the time came and convinced the jury that the facts were these:
Ogburn and Whitacre had opened their farm-development business as a plain swindle. They had options on a lot of land, and they planned to sell as many shares in their enterprise as possible before the time came to exercise their options. Then they intended packing up their bags and disappearing. Whitacre hadn’t much nerve, and he had a clear remembrance of the three years he had served in prison for forgery; so to bolster his courage, Ogburn had told his partner that he had a friend in the Post Office Department in Washington, D.C., who would tip him off the instant official suspicion was aroused.
The two partners made a neat little pile out of their venture, Ogburn taking charge of the money until the time came for the split-up. Meanwhile, Ogburn and Mae Landis—Whitacre’s supposed wife—had become intimate, and had rented the apartment on Greenwich Street, meeting there afternoons when Whitacre was busy at the office, and when Ogburn was supposed to be out hunting fresh victims. In this apartment Ogburn and the woman had hatched their little scheme, whereby they were to get rid of Whitacre, keep all the loot, and clear Ogburn of criminal complicity in the affairs of Ogburn & Whitacre.
Ogburn had come into the Continental office and told his little tale of his partner’s dishonesty, engaging Bob Teal to shadow him. Then he had told Whitacre that he had received a tip from his friend in Washington that an investigation was about to be made. The two partners planned to leave town on their separate ways the following week. The next night Mae Landis told Whitacre she had seen a man loitering in the neighborhood, apparently watching the building in which they lived. Whitacre—thinking Bob a Post Office inspector—had gone completely to pieces, and it had taken the combined efforts of the woman and his partner—apparently working separately—to keep him from bolting immediately. They persuaded him to stick it out another few days.
On the night of the murder, Ogburn, pretending skepticism of Whitacre’s story about being followed, had met Whitacre for the purpose of learning if he really was being shadowed. They had walked the streets in the rain for an hour. Then Ogburn, convinced, had announced his intention of going back and talking to the supposed Post Office inspector, to see if he could be bribed. Whitacre had refused to accompany his partner, but had agreed to wait for him in a dark doorway.
Ogburn had taken Bob Teal over behind the billboards on some pretext, and had murdered him. Then he had hurried back to his partner, crying: “My God! He grabbed me and I shot him. We’ll have to leave!”
Whitacre, in blind panic, had left San Francisco without stopping for his bags or even notifying Mae Landis. Ogburn was supposed to leave by another route. They were to meet in Oklahoma City ten days later, where Ogburn—after getting the loot out of the Los Angeles banks where he had deposited it under various names—was to give Whitacre his share, and then they were to part for good.
In Sacramento next day Whitacre had read the newspapers, and had understood what had been done to him. He had done all the bookkeeping; all the false entries in Ogburn & Whitacre’s books were in his writing. Mae Landis had revealed his former criminal record, and had fastened the ownership of the gun—really Ogburn’s—upon him. He was framed completely! He hadn’t a chance of clearing himself.
He had known that his story would sound like a far-fetched and flimsy lie; he had a criminal record. For him to have surrendered and told the truth would have been merely to get himself laughed at.
As it turned out, Ogburn went to the gallows, Mae Landis is now serving a fifteen-year sentence, and Whitacre, in return for his testimony and restitution of the loot, was not prosecuted for his share in the land swindle.
ZIGZAGS OF TREACHERY
ONE
All know about Dr. Estep’s death,” I said, “is the stuff in the papers.” Vance Richmond’s lean gray face took on an expression of distaste.
“The newspapers aren’t always either thorough or accurate. I’ll give you the salient points as I know them; though I suppose you’ll want to go over the ground for yourself, and get your information first-hand.”
I nodded, and the attorney went on, shaping each word precisely with his thin lips before giving it sound.
“Dr. Estep came to San Francisco in 1898 or 1899—a young man of twenty-five, just through qualifying for his license. He opened an office here, and, as you probably know, became in time a rather excellent surgeon. He married two or three years after he came here. There were no children. He and his wife seem to have been a bit happier together than the average.
“Of his life before coming to San Francisco, nothing is known. He told his wife briefly that he had been born and raised in Parkersburg, W. Va., but that his home life had been so unpleasant that he was trying to forget it, and that he did not like to talk—or even think—about it. Bear that in mind.
“Two weeks ago—on the third of the month—a woman came to his office, in the afternoon. His office was in his residence on Pine Street. Lucy Coe, who was Dr. Estep’s nurse and assistant, showed the woman into his office, and then went back to her own desk in the reception room.
“She didn’t hear anything the doctor said to the woman, but through the closed door she heard the woman’s voice now and then—a high and anguished voice, apparently pleading. Most of the words were lost upon the nurse, but she heard one coherent sentence. ‘Please! Please!’ she heard the woman cry. ‘Don’t turn me away!’ The woman was with Dr. Estep for about fifteen minutes, and left sobbing into a handkerchief. Dr. Estep said nothing about the caller either to his nurse or to his wife, who didn’t learn of it until after his death.
“The next day, toward evening, while the nurse was putting on her hat and coat preparatory to leaving for home, Dr. Estep came out of his office, with his hat on and a letter in his hand. The nurse saw that his face was pale—‘white as my uniform,’ she says—and he walked with the care of one who takes pains to keep from staggering.
“She asked him if he was ill. ‘Oh, it’s nothing!’ he told her. ‘I’ll be all right in a very few minutes.’ Then he went on out. The nurse left the house just behind him, and saw him drop the letter he had carried into the mailbox on the corner, after which he returned to the house.
“Mrs. Estep, coming downstairs ten minutes later—it couldn’t have been any later than that—heard, just as she reached the first floor, the sound of a shot from her husband’s office. She rushed into it, meeting nobody. Her husband stood by his desk, swaying, with a hole in his right temple and a smoking revolver in his hand. Just as she reached him and put her arms around him, he fell across the desk—dead.”
“Anybody else—any of the servants, for instance—able to say that Mrs. Estep didn’t go to the office until after the shot?” I asked.
The attorney shook his head sharply.
“No, damn it! That’s where the rub comes in!”
His voice, after this one flare of feeling, resumed its level, incisive tone, and he went on with his tale.
“The next day’s papers had accounts of Dr. Estep’s death, and late that morning the woman who had called upon him the day before his death came to the house. She is Dr. Estep’s first wife—which is to say, his legal wife! There seems to be no reason—not the slightest—for doubting it, as much as I’d like to. They were married in Philadelphia in 1896. She has a certified copy of the marriage record. I had the matter investigated in Philadelphia, and it’s a certain fact that Dr. Estep and this woman—Edna Fife was her maiden name—were really married.
“She says that Estep, after living
with her in Philadelphia for two years, deserted her. That would have been in 1898, or just before he came to San Francisco. She has sufficient proof of her identity—that she really is the Edna Fife who married him; and my agents in the East found positive proof that Estep had practiced for two years in Philadelphia.
“And here is another point. I told you that Estep had said he was born and raised in Parkersburg. I had inquiries made there, but found nothing to show that he had ever lived there, and found ample evidence to show that he had never lived at the address he had given his wife. There is, then, nothing for us to believe except that his talk of an unhappy early life was a ruse to ward off embarrassing questions.”
“Did you do anything toward finding out whether the doctor and his first wife had ever been divorced?” I asked.
“I’m having that taken care of now, but I hardly expect to learn that they had. That would be too crude. To get on with my story: This woman—the first Mrs. Estep—said that she had just recently learned her husband’s whereabouts, and had come to see him in an attempt to effect a reconciliation. When she called upon him the afternoon before his death, he asked for a little time to make up his mind what he should do. He promised to give her his decision in two days. My personal opinion, after talking to the woman several times, is that she had learned that he had accumulated some money, and that her interest was more in getting the money than in getting him. But that, of course, is neither here nor there.
“At first the authorities accepted the natural explanation of the doctor’s death—suicide. But after the first wife’s appearance, the second wife—my client—was arrested and charged with murder.
“The police theory is that after his first wife’s visit, Dr. Estep told his second wife the whole story; and that she, brooding over the knowledge that he had deceived her, that she was not his wife at all, finally worked herself up into a rage, went to the office after his nurse had left for the day, and shot him with the revolver that she knew he always kept in his desk.
The Dashiell Hammett Megapack: 20 Classic Stories Page 31
