I’d walked around to open the car door and help her out. Now I stood there, thinking. “Jed Ringold wasn’t his real name?”
“No.”
“How long had he been going under that name?”
“Two or three months.”
“What was the name before that?”
“Jack Waterbury.”
“Get this,” I said, “because it’s important. What was the name on his driving license?”
“Jack Waterbury.”
“One other thing. When I came in and asked you about gamblers, why did you tell me about Ringold?”
She said, “Honestly, Donald, you had me fooled. You certainly took me in on that one. You didn’t look like a detective. You looked like a—well, a sucker— You know what I mean. Occasionally a man comes in and gets in touch with either Jed or Tom Highland. They’ll have a poker game running.”
“Who’s Tom Highland?”
“He’s a gambler.”
“Connected with the Atlee outfit?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s in the same hotel?”
“Yes, room seven-twenty.”
“Why not look him up? If the papers went upstairs with Ringold and didn’t come down, and Highland is in the hotel, why doesn’t that add up to make an answer?”
“Because it doesn’t. Highland hasn’t them.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Highland wouldn’t dare to hold out. There was a poker game going on in Highland’s room at the time, and they all say Highland never left it.”
“In a killing of that sort, the one who has the most perfect alibi is usually the one who did it.”
“I know, but these weren’t the sort of people who would lie. One of them was a businessman. He’d have a fit if he thought he was being dragged into it as a witness. You were following Alta to the hotel, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“She’d asked you to do it?”
“No. Her dad.”
“How much does he know?”
“Nothing.”
“Well,” she said, “let’s not stand here and talk. Do you want to come up for a while?”
“No. I’ll get you your room and then go raise some money.”
She put her hand in mine to steady herself as she came out of the car. Her hand was cold. I walked into the hotel with her, and said to the night clerk, “This is Evelyn Claxon. She’s my secretary. We’ve been doing some work late at the office. She has no baggage, so I’ll register and pay in advance.”
The clerk gave me a fishy eye.
I said to Esther for his benefit, “You go on up and get to bed, Evelyn. Get a good night’s rest. You won’t need to come to the office in the morning until I telephone you. I’ll make it as late as possible. Perhaps not before nine or nine-thirty.”
The clerk handed me a fountain pen and a registration card. “Three dollars with bath,” he said, and then added,
“single.”
I registered for her and gave him three one-dollar bills. He called the bellboy over and handed him a key. I gave the bellboy a dime, raised my hat, and walked out.
I went as far as the car, stood there for a minute, and then came back. The clerk’s lips tightened when he saw me. I said, “I want to ask you some questions about rates by the month.”
“Yes?”
I said, “It isn’t very satisfactory to me, having my secretary live way out in the sticks where it’s a nuisance getting back and forth. She has a sister who’s working here in town, and the two of them have been talking some of getting a place in town where they could be together. How about a monthly rate?”
“Just the two girls?” he asked.
“Just the two girls.”
“We have something very attractive—some nice rooms we could give them on a permanent basis.”
“A corner room?”
“Well, no, not a corner room. It’d be an inside court room.”
“Sunlight?”
“Yes, sir. Sunlight. Not a great deal— Of course they wouldn’t be here during the day except on Sundays and holidays if they’re working.”
“That’s right.”
The bellboy came back down in the elevator.
“Whenever they get ready to move in, I’ll be glad to talk rates with them,” the clerk said.
“Do you happen to have a floor plan of the hotel so I can look at the rooms and figure on prices? I might have to make some salary adjustment. You see the girls are living at home now.”
He reached under the counter, took out a floor plan of the hotel, and started pointing out rooms. The switchboard buzzed. He moved over to it, and I picked up the floor plan, walked over, and started talking to him while he was taking the call. “How about this suite of rooms on the corner in front? Would that—”
He frowned at me and said, “What was that number again, please?”
He was holding a pencil over a pad. I shifted around so as to get a better light on the floor plan and be where I could watch his pencil as he wrote the number down. I didn’t need to. He repeated it. “Orange nine-six-four-three-two. Just a moment, please.”
He dialed the number on an outside extension, then when he had it on the line, plugged in the line and moved over to me. “What was it you wanted to know?”
“About that suite.”
“That’s rather expensive.”
“Well, you might give me prices on these three.” I checked three rooms. He went over to the desk, looked over a schedule, and wrote the prices on a slip of paper with the room numbers opposite. I folded the paper and put it in my pocket.
“You understand,” he said, “that includes everything— light, heat, maid service, and a complete change of linen once a week, fresh towels every day if desired.”
I thanked him, said good night, and went out. Two blocks down the street, I found a restaurant with a public phone. I went in and looked in the directory under the C’s, found Crumweather, C. Layton, attorney, office Fidelity Building. Down below that was the number of a residence telephone. It was Orange nine-six-four-three-two.
That was all I wanted to know.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
B
ERTHA
C
OOL
, clad in gaudy striped silk pajamas and a robe, was sprawled out in a big easy chair, listening to the radio. She said, “For Christ’s sake, Donald, why don’t you go to bed and get some sleep? And let me get some.”
I said, “I think I’ve found out something.”
“What?”
“I want you to get dressed and come with me.”
She looked at me in contemplative appraisal. “What is it this time?”
I said, “I’m going to put on a show. I may get into an argument with a woman. You know the way women work me. I won’t be tough enough. I want you along for moral support.”
Bertha heaved a tremulous sigh that I could see rippling all the way up from her diaphragm. “At last,” she said, “you’re getting some sense. That’s about the only excuse you could have made that would have dragged me up and out after I’ve got ready for bed. What is it, that blonde?” “I’ll tell you about it after we get started.”
She heaved herself up out of the huge reclining chair and said acidly, “If you’re going to keep on giving the orders, you’d better raise my salary.”
“Let me have the income, and I will.”
She walked past me into the bedroom, the floor boards creaking under her weight as she walked. She flung back over her shoulder, “You’re getting delusions of grandeur,” and slammed the bedroom door.
I switched off the radio, dropped into a chair, stretched my feet out, and tried to relax. I knew there was a tough job ahead.
Bertha’s sitting-room was a clutter of odds and ends, tables, bric-a-brac, books, ash trays, bottles, dirty glasses, matches, magazines, and an assortment of odds and ends piled around in such confusion that I didn’t see how it was ever possible to get things dusted. There was only one clear place in the whole room, and that was where Bertha had her big chair stretched out, a magazine rack on one side, a smoking stand on the other. The radio was within easy reaching distance, and the doors of a little cabinet were open, showing an assortment of bottles.
When Bertha made herself comfortable, she settled down to make a good job of it, and thoroughly relaxed. She didn’t believe in halfway measures in anything that affected her personal comfort and convenience.
Bertha was out in about ten minutes. She crossed over to the humidor, filled up her case with cigarettes, looked at me suspiciously, and slammed closed the doors on the liquor cupboard. “Let’s go,” she said.
We got in her coupé.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Out to Ashbury’s.”
“Who’s the woman?”
“Alta Ashbury.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to get rough. Alta may try to interfere. Mrs. Ashbury’s having perpetual hysterics. Her husband’s announced that he’s through. He’s told her she can go to Reno. She’ll be running a blood pressure, with a doctor at her bedside and a couple of trained nurses in attendance. She figures her husband will probably show up sooner or later to pack some of his things and move out. She’s getting all ready for him when he comes.”
“Nice party you’re getting me into,” Bertha Cool said. “Isn’t it?”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“If the women keep out of things, it’s all right,” I said, “but if they start horning in on the party, I want you to horn ’em out. Alta may try to work a sympathy gag. Mrs. Ashbury may get tough.”
Bertha lit a cigarette. “It isn’t such a good idea quarreling with a customer’s wife.”
“They’re going to get a divorce.”
“You mean he wants one.”
“Yes.”
“That’s a hell of a long way from getting one,” Bertha said, and then added significantly, “when a man has the dough
he’s
got.”
“He can always buy his way out.”
“Through the nose,” Bertha said, and relaxed to enjoy her smoking.
Halfway out there, Bertha ground out her cigarette and looked at me. “Don’t think you’re getting away with all this stuff, Donald. I’d ask you some questions if I weren’t so damned afraid of the answers.” Then she lit another cigarette, and settled back to dogged silence.
We pulled up in front of Ashbury’s residence. There were three cars parked at the curb. Lights were on all over the house. Ashbury had given me a key, but because of Bertha, I rang the bell and waited for the butler to let us in. He was up, all right. He looked at me with mild disapproval, and at Bertha with curiosity.
“Has Mr. Ashbury returned yet?”
“No, sir. Mr. Ashbury is not here.”
“Nor Miss Alta?”
“No, sir.”
“Robert?”
“Yes, sir. Robert is here. Mrs. Ashbury is very ill. The doctor and two nurses are in attendance. Robert is at her bedside. Her condition is critical.” He looked at Bertha and said, “And if you’ll pardon the suggestion, sir, there are no visitors.”
I said, “That’s all right. We’re waiting for Mr. Ashbury,” and we walked on in.
“Mrs. Cool will wait in my room,” I said. “When Mr. Ashbury comes, tell him that I’m up, and that Mrs. Cool is with me.”
“Mrs. Cool?”
“That’s right,” Bertha said, turning to stick a bulldog jaw out at him. “The name’s Bertha Cool. Which way do we go, Donald?”
I led the way up to my room.
Bertha looked it over and said, “You seem to rate.”
“I do.”
“A nice place, Donald. He must have some dough tied up here.”
“I suppose he has.”
“It must be hell to be rich—not that I wouldn’t mind taking a fling at it. That reminds me, I’ve got some letters to write in connection with a couple of stocks. When’s Elsie coming back?”
“Two or three days,” I said.
“I’ve got two girls up there now,” Bertha said, “and neither one of them is worth a damn.”
“What’s the matter? Can’t they take shorthand?”
“Sure, they can, and they can type, too, but it takes the two of them to do the same amount of work in a day that Elsie did.”
“They’re pretty good girls, then,” I said.
She glowered at me. “Donald, don’t tell me you’re going to start falling for Elsie. My God, but you’re susceptible to women! All a woman has to do is to put her head down on your shoulder and cry, and you start oozing sympathy. I suppose she’s been beefing about what a tough job she has.”
“She hasn’t said anything. I’m the one who did the talking.”
“What did you say?”
“Told her to take it easy up in that new office, and have a rest.”
Bertha made a sound of indignation. It was half sniff and half snort. “Paying a girl,” she said, “to sit around on her fanny and look at her fingernails while I’m slaving my fingers to the bone trying to make both ends meet.” The humor of her remark struck her as soon as she made it, and she added, with a half-smile, “Well, perhaps not clean to the bone— Donald, what the hell did we come here for?”
“Sit tight,” I said. “We’re getting ready to go into action.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Wait here.”
“You’re going some place?”
“Yes, down the hall to look in on Mrs. Ashbury. If you hear her voice raised in an argument, come on down. Otherwise, stay here until the party gets rough.”
“How will I know it’s her voice?”
“You can’t miss it,” I said, and slipped out of the room to tiptoe down the corridor. I tapped gently on the door of Mrs. Ashbury’s room, and opened it a crack.
Mrs. Ashbury was in bed with a wet towel over her forehead. She was breathing heavily, and her eyes were closed, but they popped open when she heard the door. She was expecting Henry Ashbury, and was all ready to put on an act. When she saw who it was, she snapped her lids back down again and made up for any false impression I might have had because of her interest in the door by groaning audibly.
Dr. Parkerdale sat at the bedside, wearing his most professional manner, one hand on her pulse, his face grave. A white-clad nurse stood at the foot of the bed. There were bottles and glasses and medicinal gadgets scattered all over a bedside table. The lights were low. Robert was sitting over by a window. He looked up as I came in, frowned, and raised a finger to his lips.
There was a hush in the room—an air of subdued silence which is usually associated with funerals and deathbeds.
I tiptoed over to Bob. “What’s happened?” I asked.
The doctor glanced sharply at me, then back at his patient.
“Her whole nervous system’s been thrown out of coordination,” Bob said.
As though the whisper carried to the patient on the bed, she started twitching, making little spasmodic motions with her arms and legs, twisting her facial muscles.
The doctor said, “There, there,” in a soothing voice and nodded to the nurse. The nurse glided around the bed, took the cover from a glass, dipped in a spoon, and held a small towel beneath Mrs. Ashbury’s chins while she tilted the spoon.
Mrs. Ashbury blew out bubbles and sputtered drops of liquid up in the air like a miniature fountain, then swallowed, coughed, choked, caught her breath, and lay still.
Bob said to me, “Where’s Henry? Have you seen him? She keeps calling for him. Bernard Carter telephoned he’d tried every one of the clubs and hadn’t found him.”
I said, “Step in my room a minute where we can talk.”
“I don’t know whether I dare to leave her,” he said, glancing solicitously over toward the bed, but getting up at the same time he started speaking.
We tiptoed out of the room. I looked back over my shoulder, and saw Mrs. Ashbury open her eyes at the sound of the clicking doorknob.
I piloted Bob down the hallway to my room. He looked surprised when he saw Bertha Cool. I introduced him.
“Mrs. Cool,” he said, as though searching his memory. “Haven’t I heard the name somewhere—” He broke off to look at me.
I said, “B. Cool—Confidential Investigations. This is Bertha Cool herself. I’m Donald Lam, a detective.”
“A detective!” he exclaimed. “I thought you were a jujitsu expert.”
“He is,” Bertha said.
“But what are you doing here?”
“Killing two birds with one stone,” I said. “Training Mr. Ashbury and making an investigation.”
“What’s the investigation?”
I said, “Sit down, Bob.”
He hesitated a moment, then dropped into a chair.
“I just missed meeting you earlier this evening,” I remarked casually.
He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“How long’s your mother been sick?”
“Ever since Ashbury said the things he did to her. By God, I’d like to get my hands on him. Of all the dirty cads, of all the—”
“You didn’t know it until you got home?”
“No.”
“That hasn’t been very long, has it?”
“No. About an hour or so. Why? What made you ask?”
“Because, as I said, I just missed meeting you earlier this evening.”
He raised his eyebrows in a somewhat exaggerated gesture of surprise. “I’m afraid I don’t get you.”
“Up at Esther Clarde’s apartment. It must have given you quite a start when you heard knuckles hammering on the door, and someone said it was the police.”
For a second or two he remained rigidly motionless. There wasn’t so much as the trace of an expression on his face. Even his eyes didn’t move. Then he looked up at me and said, “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
I dropped into a chair, and put my feet up on another chair.
“You were in with Esther Clarde, the blond girl who works at the cigar counter,” I said, “the one who was Jed Ringold’s mistress.”
His lips came together. He looked me straight in the eyes and said, “You’re a liar.”
Bertha Cool stifled a yawn and said casually, “Well, for Christ’s sake, let’s get down to brass tacks.”
I slowly got up from my chair, intending to point my finger at him as I made my direct accusation. He misunderstood what I had in mind. I could see the sudden flash of fear in his eyes as he remembered my reputation as a jujitsu expert. “Now wait a minute, Lam,” he said hastily. “Don’t get hotheaded about this thing. I lost my temper. That was rather a direct statement you made. I won’t say you’re a liar. I’ll just say the statement is untrue. You’re mistaken. Somebody’s been lying to you.”
I followed up my advantage. I let my eyes close to narrowed slits. I said, “I suppose you know I could lift you out of that chair, tie you up like a pretzel, throw you into the garbage, and you wouldn’t get untangled until they lifted you out to put you in the incinerator.”
“Now, take it easy, Lam, take it easy. I didn’t mean it that way.”
Bertha Cool gave a choking cough which sounded almost like Mrs. Ashbury’s reaction to the medicine.
I kept my finger pointed at him. “You,” I said, “were up at Esther Clarde’s apartment tonight. You were there when the cops came up.”
His eyes shifted.
I said, “That business of
three
detectives getting letters out of Alta’s room is the bunk. The homicide squad might have had three detectives, but the D.A.’s office never had three investigators it could put on a job like that, and the thing had already been dumped in the D.A.’s lap by the police. It was up to the D.A. to uncover his own evidence.” Bob looked at me and swallowed twice before he said anything. “Now listen, Lam,” he said, “you’re getting me wrong. I was up there. I went up to get those letters back. I knew what it meant to the kid. Nobody thinks I’m worth a damn around here except Mother, but I’m a pretty decent guy just the same.”
“How did you know about the letters?” I asked.
He twisted in his chair, and didn’t say anything.
I heard a commotion in the hallway, voices raised in protest, someone saying, “You can’t do that,” and then the sound of a scuffle. Mrs. Ashbury, attired in a filmy nightgown and nothing else, jerked the door open. The nurse grabbed at her, and Mrs. Ashbury pushed her away. The doctor trotted along at her side mouthing futile protests. He took hold of her arm and kept saying, “Now, Mrs. Ashbury—now, Mrs. Ashbury—now, Mrs. Ashbury.” The nurse came back for another hold. The doctor glared at her, and said, “No force, nurse. She mustn’t struggle, and she mustn’t get excited.”
Mrs. Ashbury stared at me. “What,” she demanded, “is the meaning of this?”