by Lionel White
She looked at me curiously.
“Why don’t you tell him?” she asked.
“Because I think it would be a lot more convincing, coming directly from you,” I said. “You don’t object, do you? And I would suggest that you not tell the Lieutenant
I talked with you. I don’t want him to think that we have been getting together on a story.”
She thought about it for several minutes and then looked up and nodded.
“If that’s the best thing for Charles, why sure,” she said. “When do you want me to call him?”
“As soon as possible.”
She put her coffee cup back in the saucer and stood up.
“O.K. The sooner the better then. I’ll be right back.”
My hunch was right and the telephone was upstairs in her bedroom.
The moment I heard her feet on the stairs, I got up and again crossed the room. It took me a moment or so, but I finally found the photo of Ginny Grant and Jake Harbor. I carefully removed it from the album and put it in my breast pocket, being forced to fold it in order to make it fit. I still had a couple of minutes and I quickly leafed through the remaining pages of the book, but found no other photographs of the man. I was back on the couch when she returned. She was smiling.
“He’ll be here as soon as he can blast his way through traffic,” she said.
“Fine. In that case, I think I should be getting on. It will be better if I am gone when he arrives.”
I stood up and thanked her for the coffee.
“When will Charlie get out?” she asked as she walked me to the door.
“That will depend on how much the lieutenant believes your story,” I said. “But I should imagine pretty quickly.”
THE MERRIWEATHER FILE
“Give him my love when you see him,” she said, brazenly.
Ten minutes later and I was on the Parkway, headed for Manhattan. And for some reason which wasn’t quite clear to me, I was hating Charles Merriweather with all my heart. I was still determined to do my best to free him, but I found it impossible to forgive him for what he had done to his wife.
I felt a sensation almost akin to panic when I thought of Ann. I knew that I was going to have to break the news to her about Charles and how he had spent the early hours of that fatal Monday morning. It wasn’t going to be easy.
I couldn’t believe that Ann had a trace of suspicion when it came to her husband. I thought of the hundreds of times I had seen them together.
The Merriweathers had seemed such an ideal couple. Of course, Charles was away a good deal, but on those occasions when they were together, there had never been arguments, none of the usual small bickerings one sees so frequently among one’s married friends. Charles was a big, cheerful, carefree man, but certainly there had never been anything in his behaviour that would have indicated that he was the type to have some cheap little affair on the side. Frankly, I found it hard to understand how any man, married to Ann Merriweather, could entertain thoughts of another woman.
And yet Charles Merriweather was very obviously having an extracurricular affair. Not only that; he was having an affair that must have been very important to him. It was obvious that he had discussed his wife with Ginny Grant, obvious that he had complained about her. She couldn't have dreamed up that bit about the dead child and Charles’s resentment. I had known that he was almost psychopathic on the subject, but it never occurred to me that he had ever seriously blamed Ann for the child’s death.
Yes, Charles had fooled me—and everyone else, I guess, completely.
And if Charles had so completely pulled the wool over my eyes, was it possible that Ann herself—
But I quickly dismissed the thought. Ann? No, the very idea was preposterous. But still the thought kept nagging me. I remembered the nasty hints that Lieutenant Giddeon had made, the suggestion that Ann might have known the dead man. But that was silly. Someone had known him, that was sure. But that someone was Ginny Grant, Charles Merriweather’s paramour.
That photo which I had stolen from her album. That pose. Yes, she had known him all right. She had known him well.
Suddenly another line of reasoning came to my mind.
She had known him well. Could they have been lovers? Certainly that photograph indicated a type of intimacy which would lead anyone to believe so. And could this man, this criminal named Jake Harbor, have been discarded by Ginny Grant when she took up with Charles? Could he have been consumed by jealousy and approached Charles? And could Charles then, perhaps in defending himself, have killed him?
The police would find out about the relationship between Ginny and Harbor sooner or later. They would put 125
two and two together, just as I was doing. And the result?
The result would be that Charles Merriweather’s alibi, which seemed so solid, would evaporate. The alibi which depended solely on the testimony of his mistress, who very likely had been the mistress at one time of the man he was alleged to have murdered.
Yes, it made sense. It made sense. It made a great deal of sense. But for some reason, I couldn’t buy it. I simply couldn’t believe it. Charles Merriweather may have fooled me, completely pulled the wool over my eyes. But I knew that he was telling the truth about his shocked surprise at finding that dead man in the trunk of his car. He would never in this world have been stupid enough to have allowed that repair-truck driver to force open the locked lid of the trunk in front of a state policeman if he had known what was going to be exposed. He could have made some excuse or other; driven on that flat until he could have gotten to some quiet, off the road spot where he could have privacy and then secretly removed the spare tire without witnesses. He had the key in his pocket.
But speculation was getting me nowhere and I still had my immediate problem to solve. The problem of how to go about telling Ann that her husband had been two-timing her with a cheap little slut.
I was in New York shortly after one-thirty and I went directly to my office. Nothing demanded my immediate attention and I closed myself in my private compartment after talking for a minute or so with Miss Taylor. I had her give me an outside direct wire and I put in a call for an attorney I have known for several years. A man named 126
Clinton Wells with whom I had gone to school. Wells was a very successful lawyer who handled a good many criminal cases.
He gave me the information I wanted and five minutes later I was able to reach the man whom he suggested. The man’s name was Horace Glitz and he owned the Glitz Investigative Agency. His office was located not ten minutes’ walk from my own and he agreed to see me there at once.
Glitz was a small, frail, elderly man, who looked not at all like a private detective. He wore heavy, black, homed-rimmed glasses, perched halfway down a patrician nose and the thick lenses gave him a peculiarly owlish appearance. His suit was neat, but just a little bit threadbare and his shoes, beautifully shined, were run down at the heels. He had an odd nervous tick on one side of his thin face and he smoked incessantly. His office, which was even smaller than my own, was dingy and the girl who sat at the desk in the reception room was as bored and discouraged looking as the office itself.
If Wells hadn’t recommended him, I would have passed up Glitz after one quick glance at his place.
I told him what Wells had said about him and Glitz nodded rather nervously.
“He spoke highly of you as well, Counselor, when I called him back after you phoned,” he said, indicating a seat and again sitting back in the huge swivel chair from which he had risen when I entered the room.
We both smiled.
“As I explained to Clinton,” I said, “I am involved in a /27
criminal case. It is a little out of my line and I need to have some investigative work done on it.”
“Would you like to tell me about it?”
I nodded. I think I would still have backed out except for Wells’s recommendation. Glitz struck me as totally ineffective.
“Well, I am anxiou
s to find out about a man named Harbor. Jake Harbor. An ex-convict. He was—”
“He was murdered,” Glitz said, interrupting me and I looked at him in utter amazement. He smiled, and added, “I just heard it over the radio.” He nodded his birdlike head to the old-fashioned portable model on a table in one corner of the room. “Yes, it was just announced over the news program. He was the man found in that car the Long Island salesman was driving. Are you representing him?”
“I am,” I said, still a little shaken. My respect for Glitz was going up.
“Well, it looks as though you have your work cut out for you, from what I have read of the case,” Glitz said. “Maybe you’d better tell me all about it.”
“This will have to be kept in the most complete confidence,” I began, but again he interrupted me.
“Listen, Counselor,” he said, waving an almost transparent hand in front of his face as though he were chasing flies, “listen. You can check with Clinton Wells again, or any of several top men in your field for whom I have worked. Anything I handle is confidential. I don’t talk—not even to the police. I don’t do anything illegal, you understand, and I don’t necessarily take a case unless I want to. But under no conditions will I work on a case unless I have all of the details. I won’t work in the dark. You tell me what this is all about. Everything. Then, if I want to, I’ll help you. Otherwise, I won’t. But in any case, anything you ever say in this office goes no further. And whatever I dig up goes only to you. Now you want to tell me all about it?”
And so I told him. Told him everything I knew, right from the time I myself had tuned in on the news broadcast and heard about Charles Merriweather being found with the body of a murdered man in the back of his car as he drove north on his weekly sales trip. I didn’t pull my punches; I told him about Ginny Grant and about my visit to her. When I finished, I took the photograph I had stolen out of my pocket and I put it on his desk.
“And that’s the man—and the girl, Ginny Grant,” I said.
He sat there, still not stirring, with his long thin fingers forming a church steeple. He didn’t more than glance at the photograph.
“Well, either she lied to you or else she knew him under another name,” he said. “Maybe your client also lied.”
“That is one of the things I want you to find out,” I said. “If Merriweather knew this fellow, I want to know about it. I want to know as much as I can about Harbor. Everything there is to know about him. I want to know how well he knew the Grant girl, if he had been seeing her recently. Everything. I also want to know all about the Grant girl. And how long she has known Merriweather.”
He thought for several minutes before speaking.
Suppose I dig up a lot of things you would be better off not knowing?” he said.
1 here is nothing I would be better off not knowing,” I answered. “Merriweather and his wife are not only clients of mine, they are personal friends. I don’t believe that Merriweather had anything to do with this man’s murder.”
“But if it should turn out that something I turn up proves you are wrong?”
“He is still my client,” I said. “However, I feel confident—”
He stood up, interrupting me.
“I have a feeling there is something about this you haven’t told me,” he said.
“Now see here,” I began, annoyed at his attitude, but again he was quick to interrupt me.
“Now, now,” he said. “Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that you are not telling me everything that you think you know. It is just that I have the feeling that you have forgotten something. Have you ever represented the Merriweathers in any matters which involved the police before? Has either of them ever—”
“Certainly not,” I said quickly. “This is the first time—”
And then I myself hesitated. I suddenly remembered something which had completely escaped my mind during the past few hours. I remembered that visit Ann Merriweather had paid my office that first time a couple of weeks ago. That first visit, when she had told me of the attempt on her life.
“Well, there is something else,” I said. “Although it wasn’t actually a police matter. A couple of weeks ago, Ann Merriweather—”
And I told him then what had taken place and how Ann felt that someone had wanted to kill her. I told it to him in detail, just as she had told it to me.
I also told him of our visit to the house on that night when someone had struck Ann down as she entered the game room.
“You say the police refused to believe anyone was in the house and think she fell in the dark?”
“That’s right,” I said. “But I was there—I know better. I heard the car leave from the drive in front. I’m sure that Mrs. Merriweather was struck down by an intruder.”
“It could have happened that way, of course,” he said. “But there is nothing to indicate that any real attempt was being made to injure her. After all, she wasn’t hit hard. In any case, you tell me no report on the first incident was made to the police?”
“None,” I said, and I explained why. Explained that she had insisted I tell neither the police nor her husband.
“An unusual woman,” he said, when I had finished. “Shows a lot of character. Well, anyway, I myself can’t see any particular connection between the two events. But it might be an idea, while we are investigating this thing, to look into that matter also. Don’t you think it might be a good idea to take this Lieutenant Giddeon into your confidence about it, now that this other thing has broken? After all, they are pretty good themselves at making inquiries. Probably a lot better than I am. At least they carry a lot more weight and have a lot more manpower to work with.”
“I would have to have permission from my client first,” I said. “I shall see her this afternoon after I leave here.”
“By the way,” he said, “you didn’t tell me where Mrs. Merriweather is.”
“So I didn’t.”
“Well, it isn’t really necessary that I know,” he said. “Just so that you know, Counselor.”
“I know,” I said.
“Good. Then I’ll get to work. By the way, my fee runs fifty dollars a day and expenses. Anything unusual in the way of expenses, I let you know and О. K. Otherwise, a fifty-dollar bill, meals and the usual transportation. That all right?”
I was a bit startled at the cost but after a second’s hesitancy I nodded and agreed. There was nothing much else I could do. I needed this man; I especially needed him if he was as good as Clinton Wells said that he was.
“Then I’ll get on it. We’ll start with this Harbor hoodlum first. I should have something by tonight. Where can I get hold of you if I have to? ”
I gave him my office and my home telephone numbers.
Leaving the building, I called a cab and gave the driver the name and address of the hotel where I had told Ann Merriweather to hide out.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I called her from the house telephone down in the lobby and she asked me to wait for a few minutes and then come up to her room. It gave me an odd feeling, taking that elevator and going up the four floors to meet her. I felt a little like a conspirator, but there was another sensation also. I had never before visited a woman in a hotel room and I had a feeling of doing something slightly immoral. I almost expected to be questioned by a hotel detective, if the place had one, which I rather doubted.
She obviously had been lying down, for when she came to the door she had the look of a woman who had made a hurried toilet, brushed back her hair and put on fresh make-up. Her eyes were tired and I knew that she couldn’t have had much sleep. But she was smiling bravely and the minute she opened the door to let me in, she was filled with questions. She wanted to know at once what Charles had said, how soon he would be released and what the police had found out.
She had a late afternoon paper and I could see that she had read the last reports on the case. I suggested we send down for drinks. I figured that what I was going to have to tell her wou
ld go over a lot better if she were fortified.
“But I want to know right now, Howard,” she said. “What is happening; what has been done?”
“A lot has happened, Ann,” I said. “As you know, the police have identified the man. They are still holding Charles, but there is a very good chance we’ll have him out by tomorrow. I have a great many things to tell you, but right now I’m not going to say a thing until we h-^ve a drink and relax. Have you had anything to eat today?”
“I had a salad sent up this noon, but I’m not the slightest bit hungry. Go ahead and order, though, but you’d better make mine a dry sherry. I don’t think I could take anything stronger just yet.”
“You had better order them,” I said, indicating the phone on the desk. “A man’s voice—”
She smiled.
“You really are awfully proper, Howard,” she said and laughed. “All right, what will you have, a Scotch and soda? ”
“A double,” I told her.
I waited until room service had delivered the drinks and then I started.
“To begin with, Ann,” I said, “I am going to have to tell you something that will come as a terrible shock. I want you to prepare yourself.”
She looked up, alarmed.
“A shock? Dear God, don’t tell me that Charles—”
“Now Ann, don’t start worrying,” I said. “I told you, I expect to be able to get Charles’s release by the morning.”
“Then the police have found—”
Once more I raised my hand and stopped her.
“Please let me tell it,” I said. I waited a moment, as her eyes watched me curiously.
“Before I begin,” I said, “there is one thing I want to ask you again. Can you possibly tell me what time Charles returned Sunday night, or that is to say, early Monday morning? ”
She shook her head.
“I’ve already explained, Howard,” she said. “Charles went out early in the evening. I took the sleeping pills and went to bed. I didn’t wake up until after six o’clock, Monday morning, when Charles, who was already up and dressed, shook me by the shoulder to get me up so that he could say goodby. I slept like a dead woman. I don’t know when Charles came in. I have no idea. I just assume that it was sometime after midnight.”