“Blackmail!” Miss Semple said.
“Persuasion,” Sidney corrected.
Bayview Circle was in a fashionable suburban area, and Number 28 proved to be a modern split-level house complete with car port, breezeway and Chinese elm hedge.
Mrs. Ledley, however, did not appear to be a typical suburban housewife. She was in her early forties, and there was charm as well as intelligence in her features. She was a little hesitant about admitting a stranger to the house, but Sidney insisted that his business was confidential and could not be conducted on the doorstep.
“Very well, do come in,” she said, and led him to the living room.
“Mrs. Ledley,” he said, when they were seated, “I have no desire to cause you any embarrassment. But last May somebody rented a car and then rented a unit at the Midtown Motel, using your driver’s license as identification.”
“My driver’s license?” she said. “How could that be?”
“You were not the person who rented the car?” he asked.
“No! I’ve never rented a car in my life. What are you implying, Mr.—er—Grant? I don’t think I like this.”
“I’m implying nothing, Mrs. Ledley. Would you mind showing me your driver’s license?”
“Not at all,” she said. “Hold on, I’ll get my handbag.” After a brief search, she found the handbag hanging on a doorknob, and from it produced a small leather folder containing a long plastic envelope. In its compartments were various credit cards and insurance papers and the owner’s paper for her car.
But no license.
“Well, that’s the oddest thing,” she said. “It couldn’t have fallen out. I wonder what can have happened to it?”
“When did you last have occasion to look for it?” Sidney asked.
“Oh, I don’t suppose I’ve looked at it since I put it in there last March,” she said.
“And you wouldn’t remember what you were doing in May—around the tenth and eleventh of May?” he asked.
“Heavens, no! We had a holiday in Tobago at Easter. Then in June we went to Ireland. My husband handles diamond drill equipment, and we went to Ireland where there’s some drilling on mining properties, and we were there till September, and when that was finished we bought a Peugeot and toured Europe all through September. But May…”
“You have no idea how or when you lost your license?” he said. “I would suggest that you lost it early in May. Is that possible? Nobody stole your purse in May, did they?”
She looked at him in blank bewilderment. “Is this really important, Mr. Grant?” she said.
“Yes, it is. It may be a matter of life and death.”
“Well, hold on then. I have a diary in which I write down social engagements. It may give me some clue. Wait a minute, will you?”
“Certainly,” Sidney said, and he watched her closely as she left the room.
Was she stalling for time? Had she altered her license and then destroyed it? If so, she was a pretty cool operator. Sidney looked about the room. One split level was much like another to him, but the general arrangements of Mrs. Ledley’s house showed quiet good taste, and her manner had a dignity which did not fit in with sordid affairs at motels.
She returned with a diary and a large brochure on coated stock. “We’re in luck,” she said. “Wednesday, tenth. Mining Awards Dinner. Royal York Hotel. There was a big mining convention on that week, and my husband and I attended several functions. And incidentally, I’ve just remembered a funny thing. Strange how things come back to you, isn’t it?”
“Yes, the human memory is tricky,” he agreed.
“Well, anyway, at these conventions a lot of big companies put in hospitality suites—snake rooms, they call them. You know, a big living room with a bar, and a couple of bedrooms opening off it. And people go pub crawling from room to room, having a good old freeload. Well, after this dinner, Ken and I went to several rooms, and I had quite a scare.”
“Really?”
“Yes. We were in this suite, and I threw my coat and handbag on the bed in the adjoining bedroom—quite a few women left their coats there. Well, when I went to get my coat, I got a start, because there was my handbag lying on top of my coat, and I had left it under my coat, and there was over two hundred dollars in it. I felt such a damn fool! My husband would never let me hear the end of it if I lost all that money so stupidly. Well, I quickly pulled it out and counted it, and it was all there. But do you suppose some woman opened the bag and pinched my license, and I never missed it?”
Sidney looked at her with frank admiration. “That is quite possible,” he said. “The timing is right. You said Wednesday, tenth?”
“That’s right. Here’s the program. Warm-up cocktail party Tuesday evening, and then, for some delegates, the cocktail party continued without interruption until Friday, May twelfth. This dinner was on the Wednesday.”
“The night before your license was used to rent a car,” Sidney said.
“How very strange!” she exclaimed.
“Now then, Mrs. Ledley,” he said, “I’m going to be nasty, just to save time and trouble. The woman who used your license rented a motel room and a car. She appeared in police court as a witness against a young man who stole her handbag. She was seen by lawyers, parking attendants and others. If you are that woman, now is the time to say so, because there are plenty of people who can identify you. And if you are that woman, and if you now tell me so, it will go no further. I will promise you full protection.”
“I am not that woman,” she said, calmly, but with a note of anger. “I have told you I’m not. You may take me to all your witnesses and I will defy them to say I am. I have told you the truth, and nothing but the truth, and I resent your insinuations.”
“Which I withdraw and apologize for. I wouldn’t have bothered you at all if this were not a desperately serious matter. Would you mind letting me have a photograph of you, which I will return in tonight’s mail?”
“So you can check up on me with your witnesses?”
“Yes. So that I can positively eliminate you. And I know that that will happen.”
“All right,” she said, and laughed. “You really don’t think I’m the motel affair type, do you?”
“No,” he said. “And I wonder if I could keep that convention program.”
“Certainly,” she said. “It’s just junk. It has a complete list of the delegates and registered guests and their wives, broken down by occupations—you know, mining engineers, brokers and so on. Only one thing is missing.”
“And what is that?” he asked.
She smiled mischievously. “There is no heading for Call Girls,” she said. “And there seemed to be some of them about. Conventions! Heavens!”
Sidney left with the photograph and the convention program, but an hour later he mailed the photograph back. James Bellwood was prepared to state positively that Mrs. Ledley was not the witness who had claimed that Wes had stolen her handbag.
Which left Sidney Grant with a convention program—and a receipted bill for fuel pump repairs. He had spent sufficient time looking for Mrs. Leduc, and for no return at all. But what, he wondered, would Wes Beattie make of it, if he knew how very thoroughly Mrs. Leduc had vanished? There would be fuel for the imagination of a boy with schizophrenic delusions.
Sidney Grant thought about it. What possible explanation could there be for Mrs. Leduc’s conduct? Miss Semple had a theory. “Either this woman was married to a very rich man, or her boyfriend was a very rich man,” she said. “It was very dangerous for them to meet, which made it all the more exciting. I mean that if her husband was rich and she got caught, he might divorce her with a very poor alimony settlement. So getting this fake driver’s license will be a great help to her on other occasions.”
“And why did she give evidence in the police court?” Sidney said. “Moral indignation?”
“No, I don’t think so, Mr. Grant. The policeman had taken her address and had asked her to show up in cou
rt. She was afraid that if she didn’t show up, there might be a hue and cry after the stolen driver’s license or something like that.”
“Uh huh,” Sidney said. “Something like that. At any rate, she has covered her tracks with complete success.”
Chapter Three
“Mr. Grant, what on earth are you doing with my handbag?” Miss Semple demanded with a note of outrage.
“What handbag?” Sidney asked innocently, tucking his secretary’s purse under his coat.
“Why, my—Mister Grant, who steals my purse steals cash. I’d vastly prefer that you robbed me of my reputation.”
“Look,” Sidney said, “I’m caught with the goods on me. What story should I tell in order to lie out of it?”
“You could say you were a lawyer,” Miss Semple said. “Just doing a little experiment to put yourself in a client’s position.”
“He isn’t a client,” Sidney said, “but otherwise the story is true, and anybody will believe it, especially in the absence of previous convictions for theft. In other words, I could really be stealing this purse, but get away with it. You caught me red-handed. I laughingly explain and hand the purse back. Now this boy Wes Beattie, who stole this purse…”
“Wes Beattie? Not the one who murdered his uncle? Will we be assisting Mr. Baldwin Ogilvy in his defense?” Miss Semple asked, lighting up like a switchboard.
“No, no, no,” Sidney said. “I just got challenged to find a certain woman, the one we’ve been looking for, Mrs. Leduc, and it made me curious. Now suppose this Wes Beattie wanted to steal that purse. Suppose he opened the car door, airily took it out and carried it openly, swinging it. Would the parking lot attendant challenge him?”
“He might,” Miss Semple said. “But the bluff could work.”
“Well, suppose he did challenge him—‘Hey, where are you going with the purse’—the thief could smile and say, ‘Just taking it to its owner in the bar.’ Martin Luther said ‘Sin boldly.’ Excellent advice for thieves. Poor young Beattie floundered around looking for some plausible explanation and just got himself all tied up. By the way, keep this all strictly under your hat with your gorgeous curls, Miss Semple,” Sidney said.
“Is it necessary to tell me that?” Miss Semple said sniffily. “I’ve worked over forty years in law offices.”
“Sorry,” Sidney said. “Well, I’ve still got your purse and I’m walking off with it, sinning boldly. Challenge me.”
“Here, you!” she said. “Where are you going with my purse?”
“Your purse,” Sidney said, looking puzzled. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, have I made a mistake?”
“You most certainly have, young man, and I’ve got a good mind to call the police.”
“Oh dear,” Sidney said. “It must look really awful. I’m sure you think I’m a crook. Would you please just check the contents and assure yourself that I haven’t taken anything?”
“That would work, in all likelihood,” Miss Semple said.
“Wes Beattie was just too stupid to change his ground at the instant when the owner of the handbag appeared,” Sidney said. “He is what is technically called a crazy mixed-up kid. But I still want to talk to Mrs. Leduc and find out why she sent the boy up the river.”
“And have you explored every avenue?” Miss Semple asked.
“Aye, and turned every stone,” he said. “Except one. It can’t possibly get me anything, but damn it, I shall turn it anyway.”
All of which led to a futile visit to Mac’s Garage, where various mechanics laughed coarsely and told Sidney that he needed to see a headshrinker.
“Listen, bud,” one man said, “we might do fifty, sixty little jobs a day. So we should remember fixin’ a fuel pump last May? You must be nuts.”
“But how about R. Phelan? Is he around? He’s the man who receipted this repair bill.”
“Rick Phelan? Are you nuts? You expect to find him here during the hockey season?”
Sidney Grant asked for further enlightenment and learned that Rick Phelan was a hockey player who worked only in the summers at the garage. He was, in fact, the greatest prospective defenseman to come down the pike since the late Bill Barilko, and in order to see him Sidney had to catch him when his team was playing in Toronto. This he managed on a Sunday in February, when he found the hockey player in a hotel room not far from the Maple Leaf Gardens.
“Sorry to bug you on a Sunday morning,” Sidney said. “And the question may sound exceedingly stupid, but…”
“Stupid questions? I answer dozens,” Phelan said. “Fire away.”
“Well, last May you did some repair work on a black Dodge,” Sidney said. “It was a rented car, and you made out a receipt for a dollar fifty which you gave to the driver. The driver was probably a woman, and she may have had a man with her. The specific trouble was in the fuel pump. Now, is there any chance that you might remember anything at all about such a transaction?”
Phelan shook his head and looked at Sidney Grant sadly. “Boy, you are an optimist,” he said. “Now what odds would you offer against me remembering anything about a deal like that?”
“Plenty,” Sidney said.
“Sure. Wouldn’t anyone? But I’m tellin’ you chum, don’t do it! You’d lose. The fact is I remember that black Dodge loud and clear, but I’m not sure I ought to tell you anything about it.”
“Why not?” Sidney asked.
“Because,” Phelan said, “you’re not the first guy to come askin’ me questions about that Dodge. And if you knew what happened to the first guy that come, maybe you wouldn’t be so keen.”
“What happened to the first guy?” Sidney asked, and he could feel an old prickling in his calves and a pounding in his temples as he said it, though he asked his question casually enough.
“What happened to him?” Phelan said. “He got murdered. That’s what happened to him. No kidding, either.”
“Murdered?”
“Yeah. You probably read it in the papers. This guy Edgar Beattie—his cousin or something bashed his skull in. That was the guy that come askin’ about the Dodge.”
“And you think there was some connection?” Sidney asked.
Phelan laughed. “Hell, no,” he said. “Although for a few days it gave me a funny feeling, until they caught this nephew. It kind of made me wonder.”
“Tell me about it,” Sidney said. “Tell me every detail. This is very, very interesting indeed.” He felt faint and giddy, and he had to help himself to a glass of water.
“You mean that? Every detail?” Phelan said. “I don’t want to be called L.P. Phelan, but if you really want it I can give you the full treatment.”
“I want the full treatment,” Sidney said.
“Okay, okay, just like this Mr. Beattie,” he said. “And then maybe you’ll tell me what this is all about. Anyway, see, this Mr. Beattie came along and just like you he wanted to know about the Dodge. That was early in September. So I told him sorry, you know, what routine job did you do last May? Well, he was a very pleasant guy. He said sure, he understood that it wasn’t likely, but he asked me would I think about it. He also handed me ten bucks, which I didn’t like to take. But he said, ‘Go on, buy your wife a fur coat.’ He said I should get a couple of jugs or a few cases of beer and just think about dames and Dodges and fuel pumps. He said something might come back to me, and he really wanted to get a line on this dame.
“Well, like I said, I hated to take his ten bucks, and I didn’t take it very seriously. But then one night I was lying half asleep and something flickered. I remembered making out a receipt. An experienced man can always spot a rented car, so I just automatically made the receipt out. I tried to hand it to the fellow in the car, but he brushed it off and said, ‘Just gimme my change.’ The dame sort of gave me the eye and reached out and took the receipt and stuck it in her handbag. Well, I thought about that, and then it all started to come back, just like watching a television show. So I phoned this Edgar Beattie and he was tickled pink.”
<
br /> “What all did you tell him?” Sidney asked.
“Well he wanted every detail you could think of, so I told him the whole thing. Like I was servicing this Olds convertible, a very flashy car belonging to a very flashy guy. A guy called ‘Bunny,’ who used to come in quite a lot, and always wanted to gas about hockey. He was the sort of guy who tries to make out he was once a pretty hot-shot hockey player, and this was strictly from the horse. You can guess which end. For instance, he told me he was on New York Rangers trading list, and if it hadn’t been for the war he’d have been in the N.H.L. All that jazz. Well, you know, I’d string him along and ask him did he play for Marlies or St. Mikes maybe, but all he ever played for was his high school team. This all leads up to it, so don’t get impatient.”
“I’m not,” Sidney said. “Just keep right on going.”
“Well, anyway, while I was putting new wiper blades on the Olds, this black Dodge pulled in, hopping like a bunny. So, just kidding like, I said, ‘Go on, Bunny, see if you can hop like that,’ and I offered to bet him five that it was fuel pump trouble. He wouldn’t take me. Then this dame, very nicely upholstered, got out of the Dodge and came over, while the guy with her just sat there. She said please could I fix her car in a hurry, and I told her I knew what was wrong and it wouldn’t take long. So she went and sat in the car, and I went over to the air pump to check the tires on the Olds, and then this guy from the Dodge came over, steaming mad, and wanted to know how goddamn long I expected him to wait. I told him just till I finished with the customer I was working on, and I told him to keep his shirt on. He was one of these handsome guys with a kind of ugly expression, and he was just turning around when Bunny jumped out of his car and yelled, ‘Hi!’ The other guy swung round, and Bunny went up to him holding out both hands and saying, ‘Well, well, well, long time no see,’ and all that stuff. But the guy from the Dodge gave him the fishy eye and said, ‘Hi, Bunny,’ and walked off. You know, cold as a Polar bear’s nose.
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