The Oxford Book of American Det (49 page)

I felt my way down the back stairs. There was a glass window in the back door - , with a shade drawn over it. I raised a corner of the shade and peered through the glass. I could see the bulky figure of a man silhouetted against the lights which filtered in from the back yard. He was holding a sawed-off police riot gun in his hands.

I took a flash-light from my pocket and started exploring the kitchen. I found the door to the cellar, and went down. From the floor above came the scrape of chairs, then the noise of feet moving about the house.

There was a little window in the cellar. I scraped cobwebs away and shook off a couple of spiders I could feel crawling on my hand. I worked the catch on the sash and pulled it open. It dropped down on hinges and hung down on the inside. I pushed my bag out, breathed a prayer to Lady Luck, and gave a jump. My elbows caught on the cement. I wiggled and twisted, pulling myself up, and fighting to keep the side of the window from catching on my knees and coming up with me. I scrambled out to the lawn.

No one was watching this side of the house. I picked up my bag, tiptoed across the lawn and pushed my way through a hedge. In the next yard a dog commenced to bark.

I turned back to the sidewalk and started walking fast. I looked back over my shoulder and saw lights coming on in the second story of the Pemberton house.

I walked faster.

From a pay station, I put in a long distance call for old E. B. Jonathan. E. B. didn’t appreciate being called out of his slumber, but I didn’t give him a chance to do any crabbing.

“Your client down here,” I told him, “is having trouble.”

“Well,” he said, “it can keep until morning.”

“No,” I told him, “I don’t think it can.”

“Why can’t it?”

“She’s going to jail.”

“What’s she going to jail for?”

“Taking a couple of pot shots at her husband with a thirty-two automatic.”

“Did she hit him?”

“Dead centre.”

“Where does that leave you?” Jonathan asked.

“As a fugitive from justice, talking from a pay station,” I told him. “The janitor will testify that I was with her when she went up to the place, where the shooting occurred.

The janitor is her dog. He lies down and rolls over when she snaps her fingers. She thinks it’d be nice to make me the goat.”

“You mean by blaming the shooting on you?”

“Exactly.”

“What makes you think so?”

“I’d trust some women a hell of a lot more than you do, and some women a hell of a lot less. This one I trust a lot less.”

“She’s a client,” E. B. said testily. “She wouldn’t do that.”

“I know she’s a client,” I told him. “That may put whitewash all over her as far as you’re concerned, but it doesn’t as far as I’m, concerned. I made her ditch the gun out of her handbag so she wouldn’t be tempted to use it. I got my fingerprints on the gun doing it. When the going gets rough, she’ll think of that, and the janitor in the building will swear to anything she suggests.”

He made clucking noises with his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “I’ll have Boniface drive down there right away,” he said. “Where can Boniface find you?”

“Nowhere,” I said and hung up.

There was an all-night hamburger stand down by the depot. I ordered six hamburgers with plenty of onions and had them put in a bag to take out. I’d noticed there was a rooming-house across from the apartment where Diane Locke lived. I went there.

The landlady grumbled about the lateness of the hour, but I paid two days’ rent in advance and she showed me a front room.

I said to her “I work nights, and will be sleeping daytimes. Please don’t let anyone disturb me.”

I told her I was Peter J. Gibbens from Seattle. She digested this sleepily and ambled away. I found a ‘Do not Disturb’ sign in the room which I hung on the door. I locked the door and went to bed.

About three o’clock in the afternoon, I sneaked out in the hallway for a reconnaissance. There were newspapers on the desk. I picked up one, left a nickel, and went back to the room.

My own picture stared at me from the front page. ‘Peter Wennick, connected with prominent law firm in the metropolis, being sought for questioning by local police in connection with Pemberton murder. ‘ This was in bold, black type. It was quite an account: Mrs. Pemberton had “told all.” She had consulted the law firm in connection with some blackmail letters. The law firm had said I was a “leg man and detective.” I had been sent down to investigate the situation and report on the evidence. She had taken me to the office, where, with a friendly janitor, she had rigged up a dictaphone. I had listened to a conversation between her husband and “the woman in the case.” On the pretext of leaving for the wash-room, I had thrown the night latch on the door of the office so I could return at any time. She had forgotten to put the night latch back on when we left. Therefore, I had left myself an opportunity to return and gain access to the room.

The janitor remembered when we had left. Something like an hour later, he had heard muffled sounds which could have been the two shots which were fired. He thought they had been the sounds of backfire from a truck. He’d been in the basement, reading.

The sounds had apparently come from the alley, but might have been shots echoed back from the walls of an adjoining building. The medical authorities fixed the time of death as being probably half an hour to an hour and a half after we’d left the building.

Mrs. Pemberton had insisted she’d gone home, and that I had immediately gone out.

She didn’t know where. I had returned, to tell her that I had good news for her, but before I could report, police had come to the house to question her in connection with her husband’s death. I had made my escape through a cellar window while police were searching the house.

Arthur H. Bass, Pemberton’s partner, had stated that Pemberton had been very much worried for the past few days, that he had announced it was necessary for him to raise immediate funds and had offered to sell his interest in the partnership business for much less than its value. Bass had reluctantly made a nominal offer, but had advised Pemberton not to accept it, and when Pemberton had refused to consider such a nominal amount, Bass had been jubilant because he didn’t want to lose Pemberton as a partner. He had met Pemberton at Pemberton’s request, to discuss the matter.

The district attorney announced that he had interviewed “the woman in the case.” Inasmuch as she seemed to have been “wronged” by Pemberton, and, inasmuch as a Peeping Tom who had tried to crash the gate of her apartment had caused her to place a call for the police at approximately the time Pemberton must have been killed, the police absolved her of all responsibility.

It seemed that this Peeping Tom, evidently trying to make a mash, had knocked at her door and advised her he had held up the jewellery store downstairs. She had promptly reported to the police, who had visited her apartment, to find her very much undressed, very much excited and shaken, and apparently sincere. Police records of the call showed that the police were actually in her apartment at the time the janitor had heard the sounds of what were undoubtedly the shots which took Pemberton’s life.

Mrs. Pemberton, the news account went on to say, could give no evidence in support of her alibi, but police were inclined to absolve her of blame, concentrating for the moment on a search for Pete Wennick, the leg man for the law firm.

Cedric L. Boniface, a member of the law firm, very much shocked at developments, had made a rush trip to the city and was staying at the Palace Hotel. So far, authorities had not let him talk to Mrs. Pemberton, but they would probably do so at an early hour in the afternoon. Mr. Boniface said he “hoped Mr. Wennick would be able to absolve himself.”

That was that.

Just for the fun of the thing, I turned to the Personals. It’s a habit with me. I always read them in any paper. Under the heading: “Too late to classify,” I came on one which interested me. It read simply: “P. W. Can I help? Call on me for anything. M. D.” Now there was a girl! Old E. B. Jonathan, with his warped, distorted, jaundiced idea of the sex, suspected all women except clients. Clients to him were sacred. I took women as I found them. Mae Devers would stick through thick and thin.

Mrs. Pemberton had paraded around in revealing silks and had called me Sir Galahad when I’d told her to go put on a bathrobe. The minute the going got rough, she’d tossed me to the wolves. The question was whether she either killed her husband while I was in the washroom or had gone back and killed him afterwards and deliberately imported me as the fall guy for the police. If she had, she’d made a damn good job of it.

Supper consisted of a couple of cold hamburgers. About five o’clock, I drew up a chair in front of the window and started watching. The redhead had accused me of being a Peeping Tom and now I was going to be one.

I didn’t see Diane Locke come in or go out, and I didn’t see anyone else I knew. After it got dark, a light came on in Diane’s apartment. I sat there and waited. About nine o’clock I had another hamburger. I got tired of waiting and decided I’d force the play.

I looked up the telephone number of Bass & Pemberton’s office and memorised it. It was Temple 491. I shaved, combed my hair, put on a suit none of my new playmates had seen me wear, crossed the street, climbed the stairs of the apartment house and knocked on the door of apartment 3A.

Nothing happened at once. I dropped to one knee, scooped dried chewing gum out of the hole in the door and looked through. She was coming toward the door. And she had her clothes on.

I straightened as she came to the door, opened it, and asked, “What is it?”

“I’m from the police,” I said in a thin, high, nasal voice this time. “I’m trying to check up on that call you put through to police headquarters last night.”

“Yes?” she asked. She’d never seen me without a mask. “What is it you wanted to know?”

“I’m trying to check your call,” I told her. “If you don’t mind, I’ll come in.” I came in before she had a chance to mind. I walked over to the chair and sat down. She sat down in the other chair.

The chair I was sitting in was warm. “Pardon me,” I said, “was this your chair?”

“No. I was sitting in this one,” she told me.

She looked at me and said, “I’ve seen you before. There’s something vaguely familiar about your face. And I think I’ve heard your voice somewhere.” I grinned across at her and said, “I never contradict a lady, but if I’d ever met you, I’d remember it until I was a hundred and ten.”

She smiled at that and crossed her knees. I looked over at the ashtray. There were two cigarette stubs on it. Both were smouldering. There was only one match in the tray. It was broken in two.

She followed the direction of my eyes, laughed, and pinched out the stubs. “I’m always leaving cigarette stubs burning,” she said. “What was it you wanted?” I slid my hand under the lapel of my coat and loosened the gun. “Miss Locke,” I said,

“you understand that the time element here is important. It’s a question of when you placed that call to the police, as well as when the police got here. We want to check carefully on all those times. Now, in order to do that, I’ve been checking your calls with the telephone company. It seems that you put through a call to Temple 491 very shortly after you called the police. Can you tell me about that call?” She studied her tinted fingernails for a minute, then raised her eyes and said, “Yes, frankly, I can. I called Mr. Pemberton.”

“Why did you call him?”

She said, “I think you’ll understand that I felt very close to Mr. Pemberton in many ways. He had—well, he’d tricked me and betrayed me, but, nevertheless... Oh, I just hated to make trouble for him. I called him to tell him I was sorry.”

“Did you talk with him?” My throat was getting irritated from straining my voice high.

Once more she hesitated, then said, “No, he didn’t answer the telephone.”

“The telephone company has you on a limited call basis,” I said. “They report that the call was completed.”

Once more she studied her fingernails.

“Someone answered the phone,” she said, “but said he was the janitor cleaning up the offices. So I hung up on him.”

That gave me all I wanted to know. I said, and I spoke in my own voice now, “You know, it was a dirty trick they played on you, Diane. I don’t think Bass cared whether you got anything out of it or not. He wanted Pemberton’s interest in the partnership.

In fact he had to have it because he’d been juggling funds. He was the mythical

‘lawyer’ behind you. You’re his woman and he put you up to playing Pemberton for a sucker, hoping Pemberton would be involved enough so he could put into effect that trick clause in the partnership agreement and buy him out for two thousand dollars.

When Pemberton said he was going to have an auditor make a complete analysis of the books for the purpose of finding out what a half interest was worth, Bass went into a panic.”

She went white to her lips, but said nothing.

I went on: “As soon as your ‘burglar’ left and you found you’d lost the letters, you called Bass up and told him what had happened. He was in his private office, waiting for a call, waiting also for Pemberton to come back and accept his offer as a final last resort.

“But Bass was pretty smooth. He probably knew I wasn’t Olive Pemberton’s brother.

He guessed I was a detective. That meant Olive was wise to the Diane business, and he was shrewd enough to figure there might be a dictograph running into Pemberton’s office. He did a little exploring. The door to the adjoining office was unlocked, and he stepped in, looked the plant over, and found the gun. Obviously either Olive or I had left the gun there. It could be traced to one of us. It looked like a set-up. Bass took the gun with him, did the job and returned it.

“Killing Pemberton was his only out. Without the letters, his little blackmail scheme had fallen through. There’d be no money coming in to cover the shortage the audit would turn up. That meant he’d go to prison. Well, he’ll go anyway, and he’ll stay just long enough to be made ready for a pine box.”