“Nothing,” I said, and then after a moment asked, “How much do they want to pay?”
“Who?”
“The people who sold you the stock.”
“How do you know that was the people who sold me the stock. How do you know I bought any stock? What the hell have you been doing? Snooping around in my affairs? Getting into my desk? Have you—”
“Forget it,” I said. “I read you like a book.”
“Yes, you do!”
“And so does everyone else,” I said. “That’s an old racket in the sucker game.”
‘What is?”
“Telling a person you want three minutes and guaranteeing to complete what you have to say in that three minutes. You tell them everything you want to, then keep right on talking. The sucker is so anxious to show you that he can’t be bluffed, he keeps calling the time limit, and doesn’t ask the questions he otherwise would. It’s a nice high-pressure method of selling stock.”
Bertha looked at me, gulped twice, picked up the telephone, dialed a number, and said, “This is Bertha Cool. I’ve thought it over. I’ll take it… . All right, have the money here … I said the money. I don’t want any goddam checks. I want cash.”
She slammed the receiver back on the hook.
“How much did they offer?” I asked.
“None of your business. What have you been doing?”
“Stalling around.”
“What the hell do you mean by stalling? You’re hired to solve a murder and—”
“Get it out of your head,” I interrupted, “that we’re hired to solve a murder. We were hired to get Alta Ashbury out of a jam.”
“Well, she’s in it worse than ever.”
“We’re still hired.”
“Well, get busy and go to work.”
“We’re getting paid by the day, aren’t we?”
“Yes.”
I lit a cigarette.
She glowered at me and said, “Sometimes, Donald, you make me so damn mad I could tear you apart. What the hell did you do to Tokamura Hashita?”
“Nothing. Why?”
“He rang me up and said there wouldn’t be any more lessons.”
I said, “I guess I hurt his feelings.”
“How?”
“I told him that that stuff of his would work all right in a gymnasium, but I knew a couple of men who said that it had been exposed two or three times as not being any good at all in the conditions which confront a man in real life. I told him they said they could draw empty guns if he didn’t know when they were going to do it and make him look like a monkey. I offered to give him fifty dollars—”
“Fifty dollars!” she interrupted with a half-scream, “Whose fifty dollars?”
“Ashbury’s.”
She settled back, somewhat mollified. “What did he do?”
“He took the dough.”
“Then what happened?”
“He was right.”
“Then you’d better continue with the lessons.”
“I think Hashita figures someone slipped something over on him.”
“Donald, how did you know that three-minute gag was a high-pressure stock-selling stunt? I’d never heard of it.”
“How much did they stick you for?”
“They didn’t stick me. I’m going to get twice what I paid—”
“Thanks,” I said.
She just sat there glaring at me. After a while, she said, “Some day I’m going to fire you.”
“You may not have to. Crumweather wants me to go in partnership.”
“Who does?”
“Crumweather, the lawyer.”
Bertha Cool leaned across the desk. “Now listen, lover, you don’t want to get back in that law business. You know what would happen. It would be the same thing all over again. You’d build up a good practice, and something you’d do would irritate those long-haired scissor-bills at the bar association, and you’d be out pounding the pavements again looking for work. You have a nice berth here, and there’s a chance to work up. You can make—”
“About a tenth what I could practicing law.”
“But there’s a future to it, lover, and you couldn’t leave Bertha. You’ve got Bertha so she depends on you.”
I heard voices raised in excited comment in the outer office, then quick steps. The door of the private office jerked open, and Esther Clarde stood in the doorway. One of the secretaries was peering over her shoulder, tugging at her arm in a halfhearted way.
I said, “Come on in, Esther.”
Bertha Cool said, “Indeed she won’t come in. That’s a hell of a way to try to crash my office. She’ll go back and sit down and be announced and—”
“Sit right here,” I said, getting up and indicating the client’s chair.
Esther Clarde came in. Bertha Cool said, “I don’t give a damn who she is, Donald. No one’s going to—”
I closed the door in the new secretary’s face, and said, “What is it, Esther?”
She said, “That lawyer’s trying to get me to double-cross you, and I wanted you to know I won’t do it.”
“Did you tell him you would?”
She shifted her eyes for a moment, said, “Yes,” and then added by way of explanation, “I had to.”
Bertha Cool said, “Now you look here, Donald. You can’t step in and start running things. You can’t invite people in this office—”
“She wants you to go out,” I said to Esther Clarde. Esther Clarde got up. Her eyes were swollen. I could see she’d been crying. “I just wanted you to know, Donald.”
“You called him last night?”
“Who?”
“Crumweather.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He’s been my friend— Oh, it hasn’t been an unselfish friendship, but he’s—”
Bertha Cool interrupted. “Donald, you look at me. We’re going to have this thing out right here and now. It isn’t a question of whether we’re going to talk with this girl. It’s a question of who the hell is running this office. Now you—”
I said to Esther, “She wants us to get out of here. Perhaps we’d better go,” and started for the door.
It took a moment for that to soak in, then Bertha pushed her hands down on the arms of the swivel chair and tried to lift herself out of the chair quickly. “You come back here,” she yelled at me. “I want to know what’s going on in this case. You can’t leave me batting around in the dark. What’s Crumweather trying to do? What’s the double-cross he—”
I opened the door, escorted Esther Clarde through.
“Donald, you little runt, you heard me! You come back here an—”
The closing door cut off the rest of it. I walked across the outer office with Esther, while the two secretaries stared openmouthed. The door of Bertha Cool’s private office jerked open just as I opened the door to the corridor. She knew better than to try to catch up with us. Her big beam and avoirdupois were too much handicap. As we went out, she was still standing in the door of the office.
In the corridor, I said, “Listen, Esther, there’s one thing I have to know. Don’t lie to me. Who gave you those letters?”
“I never saw the letters,” she said, “until after Jed Ringold had them, and I haven’t any idea who gave them to him.”
“Bob Tindle?” I asked.
“I suppose so but I don’t know.”
I stood in front of the elevator shaft and pressed the button. “Did Ringold have any home other than that hotel?”
“No,”
“No other place where he lived?”
“Except with me,” she said.
The door of the agency opened. Bertha Cool came barging out. An elevator showed a red light just as an ascending elevator came to a stop. The door opened. Two men got out. One of them started toward the agency office. The other turned to check up on us. He stopped abruptly and said, “Okay, Bill. Here he is.”
The men came walking over. One of the
m flashed a badge. “Okay, buddy,” he said, “you’re going for a little ride.”
“Who with?” I asked.
“Me.”
“What’s the idea?”
“The D.A. wants to talk with you.”
“I don’t want to talk with anyone. I’m busy.”
The descending elevator came to a halt. The two detectives pushed us on in. Bertha Cool screamed, “Hold that elevator. I want down.”
She came along the corridor, walking as rapidly as she could. The operator held the cage. One of the passengers snickered.
The cage jiggled as Bertha Cool’s weight was added to that of the other passengers. The attendant slid the door shut. Bertha Cool turned around and faced the door. She casually pushed the rest of us back in the cage. She didn’t say a word to me.
We shot straight down to the ground floor. There was a long passageway past the building directories and a cigar stand near the street entrance. Bertha Cool was first out. She started walking down the passageway. I stood to one side for Esther Clarde to get out. The detective on my right said, “Hold the jane there, Bill,” and pushed me out into the passageway. Three other men were standing there. They all closed in. We started walking. I said to the detective, “Wait a minute. What’s the idea?”
He didn’t say anything. A man was sitting on the shoe-shining stand, getting his shoes shined. I didn’t pay any particular attention to him until I heard his voice shrill out in an excited shout. “There he is! That’s the one!” The whole outfit stopped. I looked up. The man who was getting his shoes shined was the night clerk at the hotel where the murder had been committed. He was pointing his finger directly at me.
The detective grinned and said, “Okay, buddy, there’s your line-up, and that’s your identification.” He turned back toward the elevator and said, “Okay, Bill, bring along the skirt.”
Lots of things happened all at once. The grinning detective said to the three men who had been walking along with me, “You boys can leave now. Remember to be available when we call on you.” The other detective brought Esther Clarde out from the elevator. Bertha Cool, without looking back, walked to the telephone booth at the end of the hallway. She squeezed herself in, but wasn’t able to get the door closed. I saw her drop a coin and dial a number. She put her lips up close to the transmitter so people outside couldn’t hear what was being said. The hotel night clerk came hopping down off the shoe-shining stand. One shoe was shined. The other wasn’t. His pants cuffs had been doubled back. He was dancing with excitement. He kept pointing his finger at me and saying, “That’s the one. That’s the fellow. I’d recognize him anywhere.”
He saw Esther and ran toward her. “Look, Esther, there’s the guy. That’s the one. That’s—”
Esther said, “You’re crazy, Walter, that isn’t the man. He looks something like it, but it isn’t the man.”
He looked at her in astonished surprise. “Why, it is too. You can’t mistake him. He’s—”
“He has the same build,” Esther said, “and about the same complexion, but the man who came in the hotel was a little broader, a little heavier, and I think a year or two older.”
The clerk hesitated dubiously, staring at me.
The detective said, “Be your age, guy. She’s been playing around with him and is trying to protect him.”
The clerk’s face went white as a sheet. He said, “That’s not so! Esther, you know that isn’t so! Tell him it’s a lie.”
“It’s a lie,” Esther said.
“Of course it’s a lie. Esther’s running a cigar counter, and she kids them all along, but when it comes to—”
“Bunk,” the detective said. “She’s stringing you along. Why don’t you take a tumble to yourself, sucker? This is the guy that’s beating your time. How the hell do you suppose she got here? She was riding down in the elevator with him. They were headed for her apartment when we picked them up.”
The clerk stared from the detective to Esther, then to me. I saw hatred come in his eyes. He shrilled, “That’s not true about Esther, but this is the man. I’ll swear it’s the man.”
The detective grinned at me. “How about it, buddy? You the guy?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, now, ain’t that too bad? Must be a case of mistaken identity. Do you want to help the officers clear it up?”
“Of course.”
“Then we’ll go over to the hotel and look around.”
I said, “No we won’t. We’ll talk things over right here, or else we’ll go see the D.A.”
“Oh, no, buddy. You’re going to the hotel.”
“What do you expect to find there?”
“Oh, we can sort of look around. We’d like to try the blade of your knife and see whether it fits into that little hole in the door.”
I shook my head. “If you’re going to try and pin anything on me, I’m going to see a lawyer.”
“Now listen, buddy, if you’re guilty, that’s all right. You just go ahead and sit tight. Don’t say anything and get a lawyer, but if you’re innocent and don’t want to have this thing pinned on you, you’d better help us clear it up.”
“I’m willing to help you clear it up, but I’m not going to be dragged around the streets.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Out to Ashbury’s house,” I said.
“Why?”
“I have some work to do out there. That’s where my clothes are.”
I saw a crafty look on the detective’s face. “That’s fine,” he said. “We’ll get a taxi and go out to Ashbury’s.”
“How about the car you came in?” I asked.
“Well,” he said, “that’ll be sort of crowded.”
He walked back to Esther Clarde and said, “All right, sister, you’re at the parting of the ways. Either identify this guy or get hooked as an accessory. Which do you want to do?”
“He isn’t the one.”
“We know he’s the man. You’re standing right at the forks of the road. Pick your bed, because you’re going to have to lie in it.”
Bertha Cool, who had walked toward the elevators and paused to listen in on the conversation, said, “Isn’t that intimidating a witness?”
The detective looked up at her, an angry flush coming to his face. “Move on,” he said. “This is police business.” He flipped back the lapel of his coat to show her his star.
Bertha Cool said, “Phooey. That piece of tin doesn’t mean a damn thing to me. If I understand what I’ve heard correctly, you’re telling this girl that if she commits perjury, nothing will happen to her, that if she tells the truth, you’re going to hook her for being an accessory after the fact.”
“Go jump in the lake,” the detective said irritably.
“Find one big enough and I will,” Bertha cooed. Esther Clarde remained quietly positive. “He isn’t the man.”
Markham, the night clerk, said, “You know he’s the man, Esther. What are you trying to do? Why should you protect him? What’s he to you?”
“A total stranger,” she said. “I never saw him before in my life, and neither did you.”
The detective who had charge of me said, “Bill, take them out to Ashbury’s place. We’ll go in a cab. I want to keep this girl and Lam apart, and you’d better keep her from talking to that night clerk.”
“Let her talk her head off,” the other detective said, “She’s just building up a case against herself.”
Esther said to the night clerk, “If you’d had a good look at him, Walter, you’d know he isn’t the same one. You didn’t see him as well as I did. You—”
“You heard what I said,” the detective remarked. “Well, what the hell am I going to do? Am I—”
The detective who had me grabbed Markham by the arm. “You come along with us,” he said.
Markham came walking along, his pants flapping around his ankles where the cuffs had been rolled up.
We went in a taxi. The others followed in the police c
ar, clearing the way for the cab with the siren. I never did know how Bertha got there, but she managed to keep right along with the procession. When we pulled up in front of Ashbury’s house and got out, the detective looked at her, and said, “You again. Where do you think you’re getting in on this party? Beat it.”
Bertha said, “It happens this young man is working for me, and I’ve telephoned a lawyer who’ll be here in about ten minutes. Mr. Ashbury wants to see me, and if you try to keep me out of this house, you’ll have a damage suit on your hands.”
“We don’t want any lawyers,” the detective said. “All we need is to get things straightened out. Lam can make a frank statement, and that’s all there’ll be to it.”
Bertha snorted.
The detectives held a whispered conference, then we all went in.
“Is Miss Ashbury home?” one of the detectives asked the butler.
“Yes, sir.”
“Get hold of her. Get her here right away.”
“Yes, sir. Who shall I say is calling?”
The detective pulled back his coat. “The law,” he said. The butler took it on the double quick.
I heard Alta’s feet on the stairs—quick, light steps.
Alta paused on about the fourth step where she could see into the room. No one needed to blueprint the situation for her. She stood there staring with eyes that were a little wider and a little rounder than usual, then she came forward with her chin up. “Why, Donald, what is this?”
“A personally escorted tour,” I said.
The detective who seemed to be in charge pushed forward and said, “You’re Alta Ashbury?”
“Yes.”
“You hired this man to get some letters for you, didn’t you?”
“I did nothing of the sort.”
“What’s he doing here?”
“Giving my father physical culture lessons.”
“Bunk.”
She drew herself up, and there was something about her that put the detectives on the defensive. “This is my father’s house,” she said. “I don’t think he’s invited you to call, and I’m certain I haven’t.”
Bill said, “How about taking his fingerprints, sergeant?”
Gold Comes in Bricks Page 21
