At the detective bureau we hunted up O’Gar, the detective-sergeant in charge of the Homicide Detail, and a good man to work with.
“This dead man found in the park,” I asked, “know anything about him?”
O’Gar pushed back his village constable’s hat—a big black hat with a floppy brim that belonged in vaudeville—scratched his bullet-head, and scowled at me as if he thought I had a joke up my sleeve.
“Not a damned thing except that he’s dead!” he said at last.
“How’d you like to know who he was last seen with?”
“It wouldn’t hinder me any in finding out who bumped him off, and that’s a fact.”
“How do you like the sound of this?” I asked. “His name was John Boyd and he was living at a hotel down in the next block. The last person he was seen with was a guy who is tied up with Dr. Estep’s first wife. You know—the Dr. Estep whose second wife is the woman you people are trying to prove a murder on. Does that sound interesting?”
“It does,” he said. “Where do we go first?”
“This Ledwich—he’s the fellow who was last seen with Boyd—is going to be a hard bird to shake down. We better try to crack the woman first—the first Mrs. Estep. There’s a chance that Boyd was a pal of hers, and in that case when she finds out that Ledwich rubbed him out, she may open up and spill the works to us.
“On the other hand, if she and Ledwich are stacked up against Boyd together, then we might as well get her safely placed before we tie into him. I don’t want to pull him before night, anyway. I got a date with him, and I want to try to rope him first.”
Bob Teal made for the door.
“I’m going up and keep my eye on him until you’re ready for him,” he called over his shoulder.
“Good,” I said. “Don’t let him get out of town on us. If he tries to blow, have him chucked in the can.”
In the lobby of the Montgomery Hotel, O’Gar and I talked to Dick Foley first. He told us that the woman was still in her room—had had her breakfast sent up. She had received neither letters, telegrams, nor phone calls since we began to watch her.
I got hold of Stacey again.
“We’re going up to talk to this Estep woman, and maybe we’ll take her away with us. Will you send up a maid to find out whether she’s up and dressed yet? We don’t want to announce ourselves ahead of time, and we don’t want to burst in on her while she’s in bed, or only partly dressed.”
He kept us waiting about fifteen minutes, and then told us that Mrs. Estep was up and dressed.
We went up to her room, taking the maid with us.
The maid rapped on the door.
“What is it?” an irritable voice demanded.
“The maid; I want to—”
The key turned on the inside, and an angry Mrs. Estep jerked the door open. O’Gar and I advanced, O’Gar flashing his “buzzer.”
“From headquarters,” he said. “We want to talk to you.”
O’Gar’s foot was where she couldn’t slam the door on us, and we were both walking ahead, so there was nothing for her to do but to retreat into the room, admitting us—which she did with no pretence of graciousness.
We closed the door, and then I threw our big load at her.
“Mrs. Estep, why did Jake Ledwich kill John Boyd?”
The expressions ran over her face like this: Alarm at Ledwich’s name, fear at the word “kill,” but the name John Boyd brought only bewilderment.
“Why did what?” she stammered meaninglessly, to gain time.
“Exactly,” I said. “Why did Jake kill him last night in his flat, and then take him in the park and leave him?”
Another set of expressions: Increased bewilderment until I had almost finished the sentence, and then the sudden understanding of something, followed by the inevitable groping for poise. These things weren’t as plain as billboards, you understand, but they were there to be read by anyone who had ever played poker—either with cards or people.
What I got out of them was that Boyd hadn’t been working with or for her, and that, though she knew Ledwich had killed somebody at some time, it wasn’t Boyd and it wasn’t last night. Who, then? And when? Dr. Estep? Hardly! There wasn’t a chance in the world that—if he had been murdered—anybody except his wife had done it—his second wife. No possible reading of the evidence could bring any other answer.
Who, then, had Ledwich killed before Boyd? Was he a wholesale murderer?
These things were flitting through my head in flashes and odd scraps while Mrs. Estep was saying:
“This is absurd! The idea of your coming up here and—”
She talked for five minutes straight, the words fairly sizzling from between her hard lips; but the words themselves didn’t mean anything. She was talking for time—talking while she tried to hit upon the safest attitude to assume.
And before we could head her off, she had hit upon it—silence!
We got not another word out of her; and that is the only way in the world to beat the grilling game. The average suspect tries to talk himself out of being arrested; and it doesn’t matter how shrewd a man is, or how good a liar, if he’ll talk to you, and you play your cards right, you can hook him—can make him help you convict him. But if he won’t talk you can’t do a thing with him.
And that’s how it was with this woman. She refused to pay any attention to our questions—she wouldn’t speak, nod, grunt, or wave an arm in reply. She gave us a fine assortment of facial expressions, true enough, but we wanted verbal information—and we got none.
We weren’t easily licked, however. Three beautiful hours of it we gave her without rest. We stormed, cajoled, threatened, and at times I think we danced; but it was no go. So in the end we took her away with us. We didn’t have anything on her, but we couldn’t afford to have her running around loose until we nailed Ledwich.
At the Hall of Justice we didn’t book her; but simply held her as a material witness, putting her in an office with a matron and one of O’Gar’s men, who were to see what they could do with her while we went after Ledwich. We had had her frisked as soon as she reached the Hall, of course; and, as we expected, she hadn’t a thing of importance on her.
O’Gar and I went back to the Montgomery and gave her room a thorough overhauling—and found nothing.
“Are you sure you know what you’re talking about?” the detective-sergeant asked as we left the hotel. “It’s going to be a pretty joke on somebody if you’re mistaken.”
I let that go by without an answer.
“I’ll meet you at six-thirty,” I said, “and we’ll go up against Ledwich.”
He grunted an approval, and I set out for Vance Richmond’s office.
NINE
The attorney sprang up from his desk as soon as his stenographer admitted me. His face was leaner and grayer than ever; its lines had deepened, and there was a hollowness around his eyes.
“You’ve got to do something!” he cried huskily. “I have just come from the hospital. Mrs. Estep is on the point of death! A day more of this—two days at the most—and she will—”
I interrupted him, and swiftly gave him an account of the day’s happenings, and what I expected, or hoped, to make out of them. But he received the news without brightening, and shook his head hopelessly.
“But don’t you see,” he exclaimed when I had finished, “that that won’t do? I know you can find proof of her innocence in time. I’m not complaining—you’ve done all that could be expected, and more! But all that’s no good! I’ve got to have—well—a miracle, perhaps.
“Suppose that you do finally get the truth out of Ledwich and the first Mrs. Estep or it comes out during their trials for Boyd’s murder? Or that you even get to the bottom of the matter in three or four days? That will be too late! If I can go to
Mrs. Estep and tell her she’s free now, she may pull herself together, and come through. But another day of imprisonment—two days, or perhaps even two hours—and she won’t need anybody to clear her. Death will have done it! I tell you, she’s—”
I left Vance Richmond abruptly again. This lawyer was bound upon getting me worked up; and I like my jobs to be simply jobs—emotions are nuisances during business hours.
TEN
At a quarter to seven that evening, while O’Gar remained down the street, I rang Jacob Ledwich’s bell. As I had stayed with Bob Teal in our apartment the previous night, I was still wearing the clothes in which I had made Ledwich’s acquaintance as Shine Wisher.
Ledwich opened the door.
“Hello, Wisher!” he said without enthusiasm, and led me upstairs.
His flat consisted of four rooms, I found, running the full length and half the breadth of the building, with both front and rear exits. It was furnished with the ordinary none-too-spotless appointments of the typical moderately priced furnished flat—alike the world over.
In his front room we sat down and talked and smoked and sized one another up. He seemed a little nervous. I thought he would have been just as well satisfied if I had forgotten to show up.
“About this job you mentioned?” I asked presently.
“Sorry,” he said, moistening his little lumpy mouth, “but it’s all off.” And then he added, obviously as an afterthought, “For the present, at least.”
I guessed from that that my job was to have taken care of Boyd—but Boyd had been taken care of for good.
He brought out some whisky after a while, and we talked over it for some time, to no purpose whatever. He was trying not to appear too anxious to get rid of me, and I was cautiously feeling him out.
Piecing together things he let fall here and there, I came to the conclusion that he was a former con man who had fallen into an easier game of late years. That was in line, too, with what Porky Grout had told Bob Teal.
I talked about myself with the evasiveness that would have been natural to a crook in my situation; and made one or two carefully planned slips that would lead him to believe that I had been tied up with the ‘Jimmy the Riveter’ hold-up mob, most of whom were doing long hitches at Walla Walla then.
He offered to lend me enough money to tide me over until I could get on my feet again. I told him I didn’t need chicken feed so much as a chance to pick up some real jack.
The evening was going along, and we were getting nowhere.
“Jake,” I said casually—outwardly casual, that is—“you took a big chance putting that guy out of the way like you did last night.”
I meant to stir things up, and I succeeded.
His face went crazy.
A gun came out of his coat.
Firing from my pocket, I shot it out of his hand.
“Now behave!” I ordered.
He sat rubbing his benumbed hand and staring with wide eyes at the smoldering hole in my coat.
Looks like a great stunt, this shooting a gun out of a man’s hand, but it’s a thing that happens now and then. A man who is a fair shot (and that is exactly what I am—no more, no less) naturally and automatically shoots pretty close to the spot upon which his eyes are focused. When a man goes for his gun in front of you, you shoot at him—not at any particular part of him. There isn’t time for that—you shoot at him. However, you are more than likely to be looking at his gun, and in that case it isn’t altogether surprising if your bullet should hit his gun—as mine had done. But it looks impressive.
I beat out the fire around the bullet-hole in my coat, crossed the room to where his revolver had been knocked, and picked it up. I started to eject the bullets from it, but, instead, I snapped it shut again and stuck it in my pocket. Then I returned to my chair, opposite him.
“A man oughtn’t to act like that,” I kidded him; “he’s likely to hurt somebody.”
His little mouth curled up at me.
“An elbow, huh?” putting all the contempt he could in his voice; and somehow any synonym for detective seems able to hold a lot of contempt.
I might have tried to talk myself back into the Wisher role. It could have been done, but I doubted that it would be worth it; so I nodded my confession.
His brain was working now, and the passion left his face, while he sat rubbing his right hand, and his little mouth and eyes began to screw themselves up calculatingly.
I kept quiet, waiting to see what the outcome of his thinking would be. I knew he was trying to figure out just what my place in this game was. Since, to his knowledge, I had come into it no later than the previous evening, then the Boyd murder hadn’t brought me in. That would leave the Estep affair—unless he was tied up in a lot of other crooked stuff that I didn’t know anything about.
“You’re not a city dick, are you?” he asked finally, and his voice was on the verge of friendliness now: the voice of one who wants to persuade you of something, or sell you something.
The truth, I thought, wouldn’t hurt.
“No,” I said, “I’m with the Continental.”
He hitched his chair a little closer to the muzzle of my automatic.
“What are you after, then? Where do you come in on it?”
I tried the truth again.
“The second Mrs. Estep. She didn’t kill her husband.”
“You’re trying to dig up enough dope to spring her?”
“Yes.”
I waved him back as he tried to hitch his chair still nearer.
“How do you expect to do it?” he asked, his voice going lower and more confidential with each word.
I took still another flier at the truth.
“He wrote a letter before he died.”
“Well?”
But I called a halt for the time.
“Just that,” I said.
He leaned back in his chair, and his eyes and mouth grew small in thought again.
“What’s your interest in the man who died last night?” he asked slowly.
“It’s something on you,” I said, truthfully again. “It doesn’t do the second Mrs. Estep any direct good, maybe; but you and the first wife are stacked up together against her. Anything, therefore, that hurts you two will help her, somehow. I admit I’m wandering around in the dark; but I’m going ahead wherever I see a point of light—and I’ll come through to daylight in the end. Nailing you for Boyd’s murder is one point of light.”
He leaned forward suddenly, his eyes and mouth popping open as far as they would go.
“You’ll come out all right,” he said very softly, “if you use a little judgment.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Do you think,” he asked, still very softly, “that you can nail me for Boyd’s murder—that you can convict me of murder?”
“I do.”
But I wasn’t any too sure. In the first place, though we were morally certain of it, neither Bob Teal nor I could swear that the man who had got in the machine with Ledwich was John Boyd.
We knew it was, of course, but the point is that it had been too dark for us to see his face. And, again, in the dark, we had thought him alive; it wasn’t until later that we knew he had been dead when he came down the steps.
Little things, those, but a private detective on the witness stand—unless he is absolutely sure of every detail—has an unpleasant and ineffectual time of it.
“I do,” I repeated, thinking these things over, “and I’m satisfied to go to the bat with what I’ve got on you and what I can collect between now and the time you and your accomplice go to trial.”
“Accomplice?” he said, not very surprised. “That would be Edna. I suppose you’ve already grabbed her?”
“Ye
s.”
He laughed.
“You’ll have one sweet time getting anything out of her. In the first place, she doesn’t know much, and in the second—well, I suppose you’ve tried, and have found out what a helpful sort she is! So don’t try the old gag of pretending that she has talked!”
“I’m not pretending anything.”
Silence between us for a few seconds, and then—
“I’m going to make you a proposition,” he said. “You can take it or leave it. The note Dr. Estep wrote before he died was to me, and it is positive proof that he committed suicide. Give me a chance to get away—just a chance—a half-hour start—and I’ll give you my word of honor to send you the letter.”
“I know I can trust you,” I said sarcastically.
“I’ll trust you, then!” he shot back at me. “I’ll turn the note over to you if you’ll give me your word that I’m to have half an hour’s start.”
“For what?” I demanded. “Why shouldn’t I take both you and the note?”
“If you can get them! But do I look like the kind of sap who would leave the note where it would be found? Do you think it’s here in the room maybe?”
I didn’t, but neither did I think that because he had hidden it, it couldn’t be found.
“I can’t think of any reason why I should bargain with you,” I told him. “I’ve got you cold, and that’s enough.”
“If I can show you that your only chance of freeing the second Mrs. Estep is through my voluntary assistance, will you bargain with me?”
“Maybe—I’ll listen to your persuasion, anyway.”
“All right,” he said, “I’m going to come clean with you. But most of the things I’m going to tell you can’t be proven in court without my help; and if you turn my offer down I’ll have plenty of evidence to convince the jury that these things are all false, that I never said them, and that you are trying to frame me.”
That part was plausible enough. I’ve testified before juries all the way from the city of Washington to the state of Washington, and I’ve never seen one yet that wasn’t anxious to believe that a private detective is a double-crossing specialist who goes around with a cold deck in one pocket, a complete forger’s outfit in another, and who counts that day lost in which he railroads no innocent to the hoosegow.
The Dashiell Hammett Megapack: 20 Classic Stories Page 34
