Gold Comes in Bricks (7 page)

“I’m glad I’m doing a satisfactory job.”

“I thought you weren’t going to for a while. I thought it would be bungled. Alta’s rather smart, you know.”

“She’s nobody’s fool,” I said, and then, because he expected it, and because he was a cash customer, I added, “A chip off the old block.”

He beamed at me, then his face became worried. He’ said, “I have an idea you know what you’re doing, Lam, but if a ten-thousand-dollar check payable to cash has beer stolen, and if the person who presented it for payment should get into a jam and make certain statements and—”

“Quit worrying about it. Nothing will happen.”

He said significantly, “If you had read the papers, you’d have noticed the witnesses had given a somewhat contradictory description of this mysterious John Smith. The very contradictions of that description are significant to a man who knows human nature. The young woman sketches John Smith in a much more attractive light.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You know, Lam, I’m trusting very much to your discretion in this matter. I’m certainly hoping that you don’t—that you haven’t—that no excess zeal on your part has perhaps laid a foundation for a worse evil than that which you were called in to cure.”

“That
would
be embarrassing, wouldn’t it?”

“Very. You don’t open up much, do you?”

“I prefer to play a lone hand wherever I can.”

He said, “I could have unlimited confidence in you, Donald, my boy, absolutely
unlimited
confidence, if I knew one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Whether your plans had taken into consideration the danger of that ten-thousand-dollar check showing up.”

It was a chance for a grandstand that I couldn’t resist. I said quietly, “Mr. Ashbury, I burned up that ten-thousand-dollar check in your solarium last night. I ground the ashes into powder with my finger tips. You can quit worrying about it.”

He looked at me with his eyes getting bigger and bigger until I thought they were going to push his spectacles off the bridge of his nose, then he grabbed my hand and started pumping it up and down. I made allowances for the four cocktails, but, even so, it was quite a demonstration. “You’re a wonder, my boy, a wonder! This is the last lime I shall ask you anything. You go right ahead from here on and handle things in your own way. That’s marvelous, simply marvelous.”

I said, “Thanks. You know this may cost you money.”

“I don’t give a damn what it costs— No, I don’t exactly mean that, but— Well, you know what I mean.”

I said, “Bertha is unduly economical at times. She’s penny-wise and pound-foolish.”

“She doesn’t need to be. You explain that to her. Tell her that—”

“Telling
her
won’t do any good,” I said. “It’s the way she’s built.”

“Well, what do you want?”

I said, “Has it ever occurred to you I may have to bribe someone?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s a possibility to be taken into consideration.” He didn’t seem particularly happy about it. He said, “Well, of course, if you run into an emergency, the only thing for you to do is to come to me and—”

“And tell you who I’m bribing, how much I’ve got to pay, and why?” I asked.

“Well, yes.”

“Then if anything goes wrong and it’s a trap, you’re the one who’s caught.”

I saw his face change color. He said, “How much do you want?”

I said, “Better give me a thousand dollars. I’ll keep it with me in case I need it. I may come back and ask for more.”

“That’s a lot of money, Donald.”

“It is for a fact,” I said. “How much money have you got?”

He flushed. “I don’t see what that has to do with it.”

“How many daughters have you got?”

“Only one, of course.”

I kept silent while he thought it over. I saw the idea soaking in. He pulled a wallet from his inside pocket and I counted out ten one-hundred-dollar bills. “I see your point, Donald, but remember I’m not a millionaire.”

I said, “A man who has money has an advantage over a man who hasn’t. When he gets in a jam, he can buy his way out. You’d be foolish not to play the trumps you hold in your hand.”

“That’s right,” he said, and then after a moment went on. “Don’t you think, Donald, that you could tell me a few of the details? I’d like to know them.”

I stared at him steadily. “Would you?” I asked.

“Why, why not?”

I said, “The way I play the game, my clients don’t know anything.”

He frowned. “I don’t think I like that.”

“And in a way,” I went on, “the police can never charge them as being accessories.”

He jumped as though I’d stuck a pin into him. He blinked his eyes four or five times rapidly, and then got to his feet hurriedly. “Very wise, Donald, very wise indeed! Well, I fancy that it’s about time to adjourn. I’m going to be rather busy after this, Donald. I won’t have an opportunity to talk with you. I just want you to know that I’m leaving things in your hands—entirely in your hands.”. He busted up the meeting as quickly as though I’d broken out with smallpox. I had. Legal smallpox.

About eight o’clock that night Bertha Cool telephoned. She’d had an awful time, she said, getting an office of the type I wanted, but she’d finally secured one. It was in the name of Charles E. Fischler, and was at room six-twenty-two in the Commons Building. Elsie Brand would be there at nine o’clock the next morning to open up the office, and she’d have keys.

“I’ll want some business cards printed,” I said.

“That’s all taken care of. Elsie will have some. You’re the head of the Fischler Sales Corporation.”

I said, “Okay,” and started to hang up.

“What’s new?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Keep me posted.”

“I will,” I said, and that time got the receiver on the book before she could think of anything else.

The evening dragged interminably. Alta signaled that she wanted to talk with me, but I figured I knew all she knew. But I didn’t know all Bernard Carter knew, and I wanted to be where he could strike up a conversation that would look sufficiently casual in case he had anything he wanted to say.

He did.

I was knocking balls around in the billiard room when he came in. “Feel like a game?” he asked.

“I’m a rotten player,” I said. “I came down here to get away from the small talk.”

’‘What’s the matter?” he asked. “Something on your mind?”

“So-so,” I said, knocking the cue ball around the table and watching it bounce back from the cushions.

“Have you seen Ashbury?” he asked. “You know, had a chance to talk with him?”

I nodded.

“Nice chap, Ashbury,” Carter went on.

I didn’t say anything.

“Certainly must be nice to be able to keep in first-class physical shape,” Carter went on, looking down at his tight waistcoat. “You move as easily as a fish swimming around in water. I’ve been watching you.”

“Have you?”

“Yes, I have. You know, Lam, I’d like to know you better—have you whip me into shape.”

“It could be done,” I said, knocking the billiard balls around.

He moved over closer. “There’s someone else on whom you’ve made a favorable impression, Lam.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes. Mrs. Ashbury.”

I said, “She told me she’d like to take off a little weight after her blood pressure got back to normal.”

He lowered his voice. “Did it ever strike you there’s something a little strange about the way her blood pressure started to mount and she started to put on weight immediately after she married Ashbury?”

I said, “Lots of women keep on a diet while they’re husband-hunting, and then as soon as they marry, settle back—”

His face grew purple. “That’s not what I meant at all,” he snapped.

I said, “I’m sorry.”

“If you knew Mrs. Ashbury, you’d realize how utterly uncalled for such a statement is, how far it’s removed iron the real facts.”

I didn’t look up from the billiard balls. I said, “You were doing the talking. I thought perhaps that was what you wanted to say, and I’d make it easier for you.”

“That wasn’t what I wanted to say.”

“Why not go ahead and say it, then?”

He said, “All right, I will. I’ve known Mrs. Ashbury for some little time. Before her marriage she was twenty-five pounds lighter, and she looked twenty years younger.”

“High blood pressure can do a lot to a person,” I said.

“Of course it can, but what’s the reason for the blood pressure? Why should her marriage suddenly run her blood pressure up?”

“Why should it?” I asked.

He waited until I glanced up to meet his eyes. He was almost quivering with rage. He said, “The answer is obvious. The persistent, steady hostility of her stepdaughter.”

I put the cue in the rack and said, “Did you want to talk with me about that?”

“Yes.”

“All right, I’m listening.”

He said, “Carlotta—Mrs. Ashbury—is a marvelous woman, charming, magnetic, beautiful. Since her marriage I’ve seen her change.”

“You said all that before.”

His lips were trembling with rage. “And the reason for it all is the hostility of that spoiled brat.”

“Meaning Alta?” I asked.

“Meaning Alta.”

“Didn’t Mrs. Ashbury take that possibility into consideration before the marriage?”

He said, “At the time of the marriage, Alta had abandoned her father, gone off chasing a good time around the world without caring a snap of her fingers about her dad, but the minute he married Carlotta and she started making him a home, Alta came dashing back and started playing the part of the devoted daughter. Gradually, bit by bit, she’s been poisoning her father’s mind against Mrs. Ashbury. Carlotta is sensitive and—”

“Why tell
me
all this?” I asked.

“I thought you should know it.”

“Think it’s going to help me get Henry Ashbury in better physical shape?” I asked.

He said, “It might.”

“Just what did you expect me to do?”

He said, “You and Alta get along pretty well together.”

“So what?”

He said, “I thought it might change Alta’s attitude a bit if she realized that her stepmother wanted to be friendly.”

“Well?”

“You’ve talked with Ashbury?”

“Yes.”

“You still don’t see what I’m driving at?”

“No.”

His eyes bored steadily into mine. “All right,” he said, “if you want it straight from the shoulder. Carlotta—Mrs. Ashbury—needs only to breathe a whisper of what she knows to the police, and Alta would be put into Jed Ringold’s room last night at the time of the murder.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Well,” Carter amended hastily, “just before the time of the murder— Did it ever occur to you that the woman who went up to see Ringold answers Alta’s description, that it wouldn’t take a hell of a lot of detective work to establish the fact that Alta’s car was in a parking station within a couple of blocks of the hotel, and that a witness could be called who would testify that he’d seen Alta hurrying toward the parking lot from the direction of the hotel at just about the time the murder was committed?”

“What,” I asked, “do you want
me
to do?”

He said, “The next time Alta starts talking about her stepmother you might casually explain to her that Mrs, Ashbury has it in her power to put Alta in a hell of a spot, that she isn’t doing it because Carlotta is a square shooter and loyal to the man she’s married.”

I said, “You seem to take it for granted that Alta’s going to discuss her stepmother with me.”

“I do,” he said, and turned on his heel and started for the door.

“Just a minute,” I said. “If Alta left the hotel
before
the murder was committed, it doesn’t seem to me she has much to worry about.”

He paused with his hand on the knob of the door. “She was seen on the street,” he said, “just
after
the murder was committed.”

I stood staring at the door after he’d closed it. Evidently Carter didn’t know just when the murder had been committed, hadn’t noticed the
exact
time that he’d seen Alta, or else was willing to dress the story up a little bit in order to give Mrs. Ashbury a trump card.

However, there was no use worrying about him. Any time the police got the idea Alta might be mixed into it, they had a cinch. The night clerk at the hotel, the girl at the cigar counter, the man at the parking lot, the elevator boy— Oh, there were plenty of witnesses. The nice part of it was that those witnesses would have to swear that Alta had left the hotel
before
the shots were fired, but

if Mrs. Ashbury thought she had a fistful of trumps, there was no reason why I shouldn’t let her keep on thinking so until I saw just how she intended to play them.

I got my hat and coat, watched for an opportunity to get out when Alta couldn’t see me and decided to go take a look at the joints run by the Atlee Amusement Corporation.

They had two restaurants, very swank downstairs, and I didn’t have much trouble getting upstairs. The places were well fitted but small. No one seemed to pay any particular attention to me. I gambled in a small way and just about broke even on roulette. There were a few people in the place. I tried to make some excuse to get to see the manager, but it looked as though I’d have to get rough in order to do it.

Just as I was walking out of the joint, a blonde came in on the arm of a chap in evening clothes who looked like ready money.

I’d seen that hair before. It was Esther Clarde, the girl at the cigar counter of the hotel where Ringold had been bumped off.

I started kicking myself mentally. It was a chance, of course, but a chance I should have foreseen. If she’d known enough about the Atlee Amusement Corporation to answer my questions, there at the hotel, she knew enough to get a commission out of piloting suckers into the joint. I’d set my own trap, baited it, and walked right in.

She looked at me, and I saw her eyes get hard. She said casually, “Oh, hello, there. How’s the luck? Any good?”

“Not so good.”

She smiled at her companion and said, “Arthur, I want you to meet Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith, this is Arthur Parker.”