I said, “Officers were out last night—early this morning.”
“Officers?”
“Yes.”
“Why? What happened?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was sleeping through most of it, but it seems that Robert Tindle—that’s the stepson—had a man working with him by the name of Ringold—or did you read the paper?”
“Ringold? Jed Ringold?” she asked, her voice seeming to jump down my throat.
“That’s the one.”
She kept looking at me for a long time, then she said, “Donald, you’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Falling for a woman. Listen, lover, some day that’s going to get you in an awful jam. You’re young and innocent and susceptible. Women are shrewd and designing. You can’t trust them. I don’t mean all women, but I mean the kind of women who try to use you.”
I said, “No one’s trying to use me.”
She said, “I should have known better. I thought it was too damned improbable at the time.”
“What was?”
“That a girl like Alta Ashbury with a lot of money, swell looks, and a lot of men chasing after her would fall for you. It’s the other way around. You’ve fallen for her, and she’s using you as a cover-up. Went to a movie! Movie, my eye! At eleven o’clock at night.”
I didn’t say anything.
She picked up the newspaper and checked through it before she found the address. “Murdered within a couple of blocks of the place where she parked her car—you tailing along behind—officers out at the house at three o’clock in the morning. She knows you’re a detective—and we still have the job.”
Bertha Cool threw back her head and laughed—hard, mirthless laughter.
I said, “I’m going to need three hundred dollars.”
“Well, you can’t have it.”
I shrugged my shoulders, got up, and started for the door.
“Donald, wait.”
I stood at the door looking at her.
“Don’t you understand, Donald? Bertha doesn’t want in be harsh with you, but—”
“Do you,” I asked, “want me to tell you all about it?” She looked at me as though her ears hadn’t been working right, and said, “Of course.”
I said, “Better think it over for twenty-four hours, and then let me know.”
All of a sudden her face twitched. She opened her purse, look a key from it, unlocked the cash drawer, opened an inner compartment with another key, took out six fifty-dollar bills, and gave them to me. “Remember, Donald,” she said, “this is expense money. Don’t squander it.”
I didn’t bother to answer her but walked across the office, folding the fifty-dollar bills. Elsie Brand looked up from the typewriter, saw the roll of fifties, and pursed her lips into a silent whistle, but her fingers didn’t quit hammering away at the keyboard.
Going out to Ashbury’s place in a taxicab, I read the morning newspaper. Ringold had been identified as an ex-convict, a former gambler, and, at the time of his death, had been employed by “an influential corporation.” The officials of the corporation had expressed surprise when they had been told of the man’s record. Although his employment had been in a minor capacity, the corporation had used great care in the selection of its employees, and it was assumed that Ringold’s references had been forged. The officials of the corporation were making a checkup.
Police were completely mystified as to the motive for the laying, and the manner in which the murder had been consummated. Approximately fifteen minutes before the killing, a young man with quiet manners and agreeable personality had asked for a room where he could spend a few hours of undisturbed slumber. Walter Markham, the night clerk at the hotel, was emphatic in his statements that the man had made no effort to get room four-twenty-one, beyond mentioning that he preferred an odd number.
He had been assigned to room four-twenty-one, had gone up, hung a “Please Do Not Disturb” sign on the door, and apparently had immediately proceeded to pry off the molding strip which ran along the edge of the door that communicated with room four-nineteen—the room occupied by Ringold. With the molding off, the man had been able to twist the bolt on one side, and, by use of a chisel, pry back the bolt on the other. The communicating door opened into an alcove formed by one wall of room four-nineteen and the door of the bathroom which went with room four-nineteen. It was assumed that Ringold, hearing some noise at the door, had become suspicious and decided to investigate. He had been shot three times. Death had been instantaneous. The murderer had made no attempt either to leave by the room he had rented or to rob his victim. Apparently, he had pocketed the gun, calmly stepped over the body, walked to the corridor, and stood in the doorway masquerading as a guest who had been aroused by the sound of the shots. No one had seen him leave the hotel.
That the crime had been deliberate and premeditated was indicated by the fact that once ensconced in four twenty-one, the man had bored a hole in the panel of the door so that he could make certain of the identity of his intended victim before opening the door.
Esther Clarde at the cigar stand had remembered that a very personable young man had followed a mysterious woman into the hotel. She described him as being about twenty-seven years of age, with clean-cut, finely chiseled features, an engaging voice, and lots of personality. He was about five feet six in height, and weighed about a hundred and twenty-five pounds.
The clerk, on the other hand, remembered him as being shifty-eyed and nervous in manner, emaciated, and looking like a dope fiend.
I paid off the taxi in front of Ashbury’s house and went in. Mrs. Ashbury was reclining on a divan in the library. The butler said she wanted to see me.
She looked at me with appealing eyes. “Mr. Lam, please don’t go away. I want you to be here in order to protect Robert.”
“From what?” I asked.
“I don’t know. It seems to me there’s something sinister about this. I think Robert’s in danger. I’m his mother. I have a mother’s intuition. You’re a trained wrestler with muscles of steel. They say that you’ve taken the biggest and best of the Japanese jujitsu wrestlers and tossed them around as though they’d been dolls. Please keep your eye on Robert.”
I said, “You can count on me,” and went off to find Alta. I found her in the solarium. She was seated on the chaise lounge. She moved over and made room for me to sit beside her. I said, “All right, tell me.”
She clamped her lips and shook her head.
“What did Ringold have on you?”
“Nothing.”
“I suppose,” I said, “the three ten-thousand-dollar checks were made for a charitable donation. Perhaps he was a collector for the Community Chest.”
I saw the dismay come into her eyes. “The three checks?”
I nodded.
“How did you know?”
“I’m a detective. It’s my business to find out.”
“All right,” she said with a flash of temper, “find out why I paid them, then.”
“I will,” I promised, and started to get up.
She caught my sleeve and pulled me back. “Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Leave me.”
“Come down to earth, then.”
She drew up her feet and hugged her knees, her heels resting on the edge of the cushion. “Donald,” she said, “tell me what you’ve been doing, how you found out about well, you know.”
I shook my head. “You don’t want to know anything about me.”
“Why?”
“It wouldn’t be healthy.”
“Then why do you want to know about me?”
“So I can help you.”
“You’ve done enough already.”
“I haven’t even started yet.”
“Donald, there’s nothing you can do.”
“What did Ringold have on you?”
“Nothing, I tell you.”
I kept my eyes on her. She fidgete
d uneasily. After a while, I said, “Somehow you never impressed me as being the sort who would lie. Somehow I gathered the impression that you hated liars.”
“I do,” she said.
I kept quiet.
“It’s none of your business,” she went on after a while.
I said, “Some day the cops are going to ask me questions. If I know what not to tell them, I won’t give anything away, but if I don’t know what not to tell them, I may say the wrong thing. Then they’ll start in on you.”
She sat silent for several seconds, then she said, “I got in an awful scrape.”
“Tell me about it.”
“It probably isn’t what you think it is.”
“I’m not even thinking.”
She said, “I took a cruise last summer down to the South Seas. There was a man on the boat. I liked him very much, and— Well, you know how it is.”
I said, “Lots of young women have taken cruises to the South Seas, found lots of men whom they liked very much, and still didn’t pay thirty thousand dollars after they got home.”
“This man was married.”
“What did his wife say?”
“I didn’t ever know her. He wrote me. His letters were —they were love letters.”
I said, “I don’t know how much time we have. The more you waste, the less we have left.”
“I wasn’t really in love with him. It was a cruise flirtation. The moonlight got me, I guess.”
“Your first one?”
“Of course not. I’ve taken cruises. That’s why girls sail on cruises. Sometimes you meet a man whom you really love— That is, I suppose you do. Girls have. They’ve married and lived happily ever after.”
“But you haven’t?”
“No.”
“But you played around?”
“Well, you try to show yourself a good time. You can tell after the first two or three days if there’s anyone on hoard for whom you’re apt to care a lot. Usually you find someone who’s attractive enough for a flirtation. But you’re not flirting with him. You’re flirting with romance.”
“This man was married?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s separated from his wife?”
“No. He told me later he was taking a matrimonial vacation while she was taking one of her own.”
“What was hers?”
“I have my doubts about that, too. She was working for a big oil company which had interests in China. She had to go over to wind up the books when they were closing the Shanghai branch.”
“Why the suspicions?”
“The big boss also went over. He was on the same boat. She was sweet on him.”
“Then what?”
She said, “Honestly, Donald, there were some things about him I didn’t like—definitely. And there were other things that appealed to me very much. He enjoyed himself so much. He was—fun.”
“You came back. You still didn’t know he was married.”
“That’s right.”
“He told you he was single?”
“Yes, definitely.”
“Then what?”
“Then he wrote me letters.”
“You answered them?”
“No. I’d found out he was married then.”
“What’s his name?”
“I’m coming to that in a minute.”
“Why not tell me now?”
“No. You’ll have to get the rest of the picture first.”
“Was this man Ringold?”
“Good Lord, no!”
“All right.”
“I wouldn’t answer his letters because I knew he was married, but I liked getting them. They were love letters —I told you that—but they were full of reminiscences about our trip. Some things were so lovely. We sailed into Tahiti late one night—you’d have to see that to realize it—the native dancers waiting around little fires. We could see the red points of light dotting the shore. Then, as the ship came in, we could see the forms of the dancers around the fires. We could hear the drums beating, that peculiar Tap-tap-TAP! Tap-tap-TAP! Tap-tap-TAP! Then they threw more fuel on the fires. Someone turned floodlights down on the quay, and there were these dancers, with nothing on but grass skirts, stamping their bare feet in the rhythm of a dance, then pairing off and facing each other in a sort of hula which became more and more violent. Then, at a signal, they’d all start a running kind of dance around the fires. He reminded me of that—and other things. They were wonderful letters. I saved them and read them over whenever I felt blue. They were so vivid—”
I said, “Sounds like things a magazine would pay money for, but I don’t see why you should pay thirty thousand dollars for letters you didn’t answer.”
She said, “Brace yourself, because I’m going to give you a shock.”
I said, “You mean that the letters did something to you that he himself hadn’t been able to do? That you—”.
She colored. “No, no, no! Don’t be a fool.”
“I can’t imagine anything else that would be worth thirty thousand bucks to a young woman who’s as independent as you are.”
“You’ll understand when I tell you.”
“Well, go ahead and tell me.”
“The man’s name,” she said, “was—”
She broke off.
“What’s his name got to do with it?” I asked.
She took a deep breath, and then blurted, “Hampton G. Lasster.”
“That’s a funny name to get romantic about,” I said. “You seem to think it should mean something. What is he, a—” All of a sudden an idea hit me with the force of a blow. I stopped mid-sentence and stared at her. I saw by her eyes that I was right. “Good Lord,” I said, “he’s the man who murdered his wife.”
She nodded.
“Wasn’t there a trial?”
“Not yet. Just a preliminary hearing. He was bound over.”
I grabbed her shoulders, spun her around so I could look down in her eyes. “You didn’t have an affair with this man?”
She shook her head.
“Did he see you after you got back?”
“No.”
“And you didn’t ever write to him?”
“No.”
“What happened to his letters?”
“Those are what I was buying back,” she said.
“How did Ringold get them?”
“Some smart detectives working out of the district attorney’s office figured that what they needed to make a perfect case against Lasster was a motivation—one which would prejudice a jury. They checked back on Lasster just as much as they could. He couldn’t account for his time covering a period of eight weeks during the summer, while his wife was away. The detectives couldn’t find where he’d been.”
“Then, in searching a woodshed, they came on an old trunk which had a steamer label on it. They traced that back and found out about the trip to the South Seas, then got a passenger list, and interviewed passengers. Of course, it was a cinch after that. They found out that Lasster had been definitely interested in me while he was on the cruise.”
“Still,” I said, “if you were reasonably discreet, that didn’t give them anything they could work on—not if he kept his mouth shut.”
“But don’t you understand? It gave them just the lead they wanted. They waited for the right opportunity, managed to break into the house, go through my room in my absence, and— Well, they found the letters. You see what that means. I can swear on a stack of Bibles a mile high that I haven’t written Lasster or seen him since I found out he was married. No one would believe me.”
“How did it happen you bought the letters in three installments?”
She said, “There were three detectives. After they got the evidence, they did a little thinking. They were drawing a low salary from the county. If they turned the letters over to the district attorney, they wouldn’t even get a raise in pay. I was supposed to be a wealthy woman— Of course, they didn’t appear in it th
emselves. They got Ringold to act as intermediary. I don’t know how much Ringold was making out of it, but it was arranged that I’d buy the letters in three installments.”
I pushed my hands down in my pockets, stuck my legs straight out in front of me, crossed my ankles, and stared at my toes, trying to see the picture, not only as she saw it but to get angles that she didn’t know anything about.
Now that she’d started talking, she didn’t want to stop. She said, “You can see what it would mean to a woman like me. The district attorney is crazy to get a conviction in that case. In the first place, they don’t know whether it was an accident and she fell and struck her head, or whether Lasster hit her with something. Then, even if the district attorney can prove that Lasster hit her, Lasster’s lawyer could bring up that Shanghai trip and might be able to make a showing of emotional insanity or whatever it is a lawyer pulls when he’s trying to prejudice a jury by making them think that a woman needed killing anyway.
“Well, the district attorney could put a stop to all that right at the start if he could introduce a lot of stuff about me, make it appear that Lasster was infatuated with me, and wanted to get rid of his wife so that he could marry me. I was wealthy and—well, not exactly ugly. He could put me up in front of the jury in a way that would absolutely crucify me, and if he had those letters, he could rip Lasster to pieces the minute he got on the witness stand and tried to deny it, or he could draw the worst sort of conclusions if Lasster didn’t try to deny it.”
I kept thinking, and didn’t say anything.
She said, “When the detectives first got the letters, they thought Hampton’s lawyer might buy them off, but Hampton hasn’t much money. I think it was the lawyer who suggested they work through Ringold and get the money out of me.”
“Who’s the lawyer?” I asked.
“C. Layton Crumweather,” she said. “He’s the lawyer, incidentally, who does the legal work for Bob’s corporation, and I’ve been terribly afraid that he’d say something, but I guess those lawyers can be trusted to keep their mouths shut.”
“Are you certain Crumweather knows about the letters?” I asked.
“Ringold said he did, and I suppose, of course, that Lasster told him. I guess when a man gets arrested for murder, he tells his lawyer everything, no matter whom it may affect.”
Gold Comes in Bricks Page 6
