by Roy Huggins
Chapter Twenty-Eight
THE POLITE KNOCK sounded on the door about ten minutes later. I opened it and waved him in. He was wearing heavy Oregon top coat and a wide cordial smile. He brought the cold, timberline odor of the California night into the room with him.
I took his coat and went to the closet with it while he stood and looked the place over. I had folded the bed into the wall, turned off the little oxygen burner and put Abe Lincoln back. But he still didn't like what he saw. He gave me a sweet, heavy-lidded smile and said, “I'm afraid I brought too much money with me, Mr. Bailey.”
“I doubt it. Sit down.”
He lowered his heavy frame onto the sofa, clasping his hands under his great belly. I took the easy chair and said, “Since you brought up the sordid subject, how much did you bring?”
“Where is she?” he belched.
“Who?”
He blinked heavily a couple of times and said dryly, “Now, let's see. Where were we?”
“I was asking you who you were looking for.”
“Ah yes. Peg Bleeker was the name, wasn't it?”
“It was. It isn't any more.”
He raised his eyebrows and then brought them down and nodded at me. He reached painfully into a pocket and brought out a picture of Mrs. Johnston, the honeymoon picture with the glasses. He showed it to me.
“Where is she, Air. Bailey?”
“First I want something. Who is she, and why is she hiding?”
“And when I tell you that, you can tell me where I'll find her, right now—no strings attached.”
I nodded. Only faintly, but I still nodded.
Keller leaned back and smiled. “All right, Bailey. But first, how did a bright young fellow like you get her all fouled up with Peggy Bleeker?”
I shook my head. “One of us is going to have to start packing this ball, Mr. Keller, or they're going to call time on us. How do you like your coffee?”
The smile broadened. “Cream and sugar. Plenty of sugar.”
From the kitchen I said, “What's her name?”
“Is it really important?”
“It would make it a little easier to talk about her.”
“Let's call her Ellen.”
I put the pot on and went back in and sat down.
“Is that her name?'”
He chuckled. “You're a man after my own heart, Bailey. You like to call a spade a spade.”
“I call it a shovel usually. Ellen will do. Did Ellen have any complexes about the advantages of higher education?”
Keller looked puzzled. I was beginning to smell the coffee now. When the odor got so I could get up and walk on it I would go out and pour some.
Keller stopped looking puzzled. He gazed at me and slow color darkened his face. His eyes gleamed from behind their layers of overhanging fat.
“So she hid out on some college campus, is that it?” His voice was bitter. “I spent over eight thousand dollars trying to find her.... She used to get a jag on now and then and tell me how ignorant and uneducated I and my friends were.... But it never occurred to me. Yes, it was what you called it, a complex.”
I said, “Of course, it was a smart idea in any case. If you can look the part, a big campus is about the best place in the world to hide. Crowded but exclusive—sort of out of this world. That's how Peg Bleeker got in. She and Ellen were friends, weren't they?”
“They hated each other very cordially, Mr. Bailey. But I see your point. They knew each other well.”
“There's your answer then. Ellen had to hide and she wanted to hide on a campus. To do that she had to have a transcript and she wasn't going to use her own—”
“What's a transcript?”
“A record. Something showing you graduated from high school and took the right kind of subjects to get into college.”
“She didn't have one—she never graduated from high school.”
“She wouldn't have used it anyway. But she was pretty sure Peggy Bleeker had never used hers. So she sent for it.”
“Is it as simple as that?”
“Yeah. An Oregon transcript, like most states, hasn't any kind of identification on it. She probably had to copy Peg's signature—but not too carefully. It was as simple as that. That's why I came to you talking about Peg Bleeker and taking pictures of Ellen off your scrap pile.”
Keller nodded again. “That makes me feel better about you, Bailey. I pride myself on my judgment of men. The coffee's ready.”
I brought it in on a tray and we sat and drank for a while and Keller said, “Good coffee,” and I said, “Thanks.” Then he put the cup on his knee and balanced it there and said, simply and without emphasis, “Her full name is Ellen Keller. She's my wife.”
“I see. You don't have to tell me why she's hiding. We can do our business without it.”
“No. No. That's the interesting part, Bailey. Don't deny me the pleasure of telling you about it. You see, a man in my business has a problem of what to do with his money. You can't bank it in the ordinary way—too many people interested in how you got it. Buying on the securities market helps a little but you can't do too much of it. So you end up making a safe place for it yourself. I had a vault that could have held Houdini's ghost. Ellen and I were married for almost four years before I told her how to open that vault. That was over two years ago. Two weeks after she learned how, she opened it and went away. She took—well, enough to make it worth her while. I've been looking for her ever since.... Now, where is she, Mr. Bailey?”
I suddenly wasn't liking what I was doing. It had a nasty, ghoulish touch to it. There was an earthy feel of truth in Keller's story that would be hard to put there if he knew that Ellen Keller lay on a county slab with a broken neck.
But it could be put there and Keller would be the man to do it. He would want to know how much I knew. And I knew enough to make it worth his while to put a little effort into it.
I said, “I want five grand for the information, Mr. Keller.”
He didn't move. We sat and stared at each other with the mild hostility of a couple of strangers who just happen to be riding the same streetcar. Finally his heavy eyes closed and his mouth came up in a smile as sincere as a press agent's handout.
“You have an exaggerated idea of this thing, I'm afraid. She probably has little more than that left.”
“It's just the money you're interested in, then?”
“Naturally. I don't expect to take her back.”
“No hard feelings against her?”
Keller hesitated for a long moment, staring at me blankly, meaninglessly. “None at all,” he said. “Name a reasonable price.”
“I happen to know that she hasn't more than a few dollars to her name.”
He shook his head. “She wouldn't bank it, Mr. Bailey. And she wouldn't throw it away. Never fear. She has sufficient left to pay well for my time—and yours. Let's say about two thousand for your share.” He let me look at his eyes when he said that. He opened them wide and smiled at me. They were black, gleaming, and as sharp and hard as broken glass.
“Five grand,” I said. “I don't want to haggle about it.” I picked up the cups and went into the kitchen. I put them down and stood watching the spots swim in front of my eyes. When I thought I'd waited long enough I went back, found my pipe, emptied it, filled it, lit it, and said, “Yes, or No?”
Keller stood up. He smiled benignly. “Yes,” he said. He squeezed a fat hand into an inside coat pocket and brought out a thick and heavy packet of bills. “I don't think you'll refuse an occasional century note, will you?” He turned around and started dropping them onto the sofa, one at a time, counting slowly. When he got to five thousand he still had half the packet left. He smiled again and tucked what was left into a pocket.
“You're a poor salesman, Mr. Bailey. I thought you'd put a higher price on that tortured integrity of yours.”
I stood and looked at the money. It was green and cool-looking, and I found myself wondering who that was on the hundred-dollar bil
l. I looked closer. Franklin. I said, “I'm selling it cheaper than that. Pick your money up and put it away. It makes me bilious.”
“Welshing?” he rumbled.
“No. You can buy the information in the morning paper for a nickel. The fast talk about money was supposed to tell me things.... Maybe it did.” He was staring at me with a heavy, brooding menace and there were tiny beads of sweat around his eyes. “I don't like to break it to you like this,” I went on, “but she's dead. Murdered. She's at the morgue, down at Temple and Broadway. The name was Johnston.”
I sat down in the easy chair and watched him. His face loosened and he leaned over and began picking up the money. He moved his lips silently, counting it as he put it together. Then he tucked it into a pocket and went into the closet and took his coat off the rack. He stopped in the middle of the room and said, “So you were playing shamus and deciding whether or not to tab me for the job. Is that it?”
“Something like that.”
“How did I come out?”
“It's a hung jury.”
“What was my motive?”
“The ten-cent-terror motive, vengeance, might do. Or maybe you found out where she kept her cache.”
“So I lay out five grand to have you tell me where to find her—after I kill her.”
“Yeah. You'd regard that as a pretty shrewd move— and just the right way to find out if I know anything you'd rather I wouldn't.”
Keller pulled on his coat and hulked quietly in the center of the room breathing through his mouth. He patted the place where the money was and said, “What do you know?”
“Nothing worth five or ten grand.”
We breathed at each other for a while longer and Keller turned stiffly and said, “I'm going out that door. Planning any trouble?”
“Not just now, but I'd like my sixty bucks back.”
Keller looked puzzled.
“The money your hood took when he sapped me in Portland. He was supposed to have cleaned me, wasn't he? That was supposed to throw me off....”
Slowly the sad smile crawled over Keller's face. “I shall have to speak to Delmer,” he murmured. “Delmer said you had only twelve dollars on you.” He pushed a fat hand inside the coat and groped for the money.
“How did the blond chick happen on to me?”
The money was out now. “In the usual manner,” he replied. “The bell captain sent her. We didn't know about you then, of course.”
“Like I said, you really work together up there.”
He counted out sixty dollars and dropped it on the sofa. “Organization, Mr. Bailey, organization.” He walked to the door and stepped out and closed it quietly behind him. I could hear him walking away. Not slowly, not quickly, just walking away.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I SAT AND STARED AT the distorted, mirrored wall where the bed was. Sleep. It would be like walking softly among green forests.... My brain throbbed and pounded and floated outward from me and I gripped the chair and went along with it like a character in a junker's dream. But some dissociated part of me was plodding painfully back, step by step, counting and classifying the pieces. And when the inventory was done, I grinned a tight and mirthless grin and nodded approvingly at myself in the warped mirror. I could keep that promise to Quint now. In the morning I could call him and tell him who killed Mrs. Johnston. In the meantime I could go down and put the car away and go to bed.
The car was wet with fog and there was a cold and distant smell of snow in the sharp air that cleared my head. I jumped in and started the motor, turned the windshield switch and waited while the swipes made clear half-moons in the frosty coat of fog.
“What do you intend to do about me?” It was a voice without much fear and without much hope. It came from the deep gloom of the back seat.
I could see her face glowing dimly in the far corner. “I can't see very well. Is that question served with or without the revolver?”
She lunged toward me and gripped the seat top. “Please. I was excited. It wasn't even loaded. What's going to happen to me?”
“Why should anything happen?”
“I saw Keller go in, and waited.” Her voice deepened and she gave a short harsh laugh. “It's been Ellen all the time, hasn't it? You just thought you were looking for Gloria Gay.” She shook her head. “No one was looking for me at all! It's really funny, isn't it? Nobody knew who I was! Now...”
“Take it easy, baby. You're safe. Where's your car?”
She stared at nothing for a long while, then said in the subdued monotone of shock, “Martin went off somewhere this morning in the station wagon. He didn't come back. I came in a cab. He's been upset about the way he balled up the thing with you.”
“That why you didn't keep your date with Barky Northwick?”
She shuddered a little and sucked breath against her teeth. “So you know about that too... Yes. I was being followed—by you probably—and when Martin didn't come back I decided not to try to get there. I thought Barky could help. He was the kind of man who got things done.”
I opened the door and said, “Yeah. Once. Come up front and I'll take you home.” She climbed in and I pulled on the lights and made a U-turn. Lee Martinez was parked up the street a quarter block, under a eucalyptus tree.
I stopped and leaned out the window and said, “Okay, Lee. All's clear.”
He shot me a look of complete disgust, started the motor, and drove off.
Mrs. Cabrillo sat with her milky hands folded in her lap and her head resting against the closed window. She didn't have any comment to make about Lee. We were on the Parkway before I spoke again.
“Does Cabrillo know?”
“No,” she whispered. “I was in Rio more than three years before I met him.” Silence. “I'd taken a Portuguese name, and learned the language and the songs.... I was coming back to America and put Miranda to shame. Hmph. Maybe I should have stayed with it.”
“If you don't feel like talking just skip this. But how did you get your line on Mrs. Johnston?”
“Do you have a match?”
I struck a match with my thumb nail, burned my thumb and lit her cigarette for her.
She was a long time answering. “It was some business at U.C.L.A.,” she droned. “I heard the man she was with introducing her as Margaret Bleeker; then I recognized her. The man was a professor out there. I got away before she saw me and sent Martin around to find what it was all about.”
“Uh-huh. And that's how this whole mess got started. She found out about Martin. She left the next day for Mexico and got married. You didn't really have to know why she was using your name.”
“I thought I did at the time. I raised the ante pretty high before the professor came through. When he did, she'd already got married.” She paused for a moment and said, thoughtfully, “How'd he get her married name?”
“She was too smart to disappear without giving it to the Dean's office—as confidential information. That would keep it from going to the Missing Persons' Bureau.”
She dropped her cigarette out the window and folded her hands quietly in her lap. And we drove on in to the big wrought iron gate without saying any more. I opened the gate and drove on up and stopped in the deep shadow at the front of the great dark house. I turned off the motor and the lights, and she took her head away from the window and looked down at her hands.
The night was quiet, with an empty desert silence. Even the breeze probing gently at the tall spruce beside the drive was timid and soundless. This was Pasadena at night.
Mrs. Cabrillo shuddered, as lightly as the trees, and said, “What do you plan to do about me?”
“Nothing. Is there supposed to be something I should do—put in for a spot of blackmail maybe?”
“You can't leave me out of it. They'll question you. Wouldn't it be withholding evidence...?”
I stopped breathing, and the flesh at the back of my neck tried to creep up out of my collar into my hair. I tried to think. Then I knew I was righ
t. I had mentioned a corpse but I hadn't said who it was....
“Evidence of what?” I croaked.
She turned and looked at me questioningly. “Murder, of course—Ellen's.”
Chapter Thirty
I LICKED MY lips and said, “Think fast, precious. How did you know about that?”
Her mouth smiled faintly. “Turn on your radio,” she murmured. “It's on the local news. I listened while I waited for you to get through with Keller. Did Keller do it?”
I got out my pipe and lit the butt of tobacco left in it. “I'm not working on it,” I breathed. “But I thought maybe you did it.”
“Did you?”
“Why not?”
She shuddered again and sat up stiffly, staring at me out of black and empty eyes. She didn't say anything.
I said, “You get panicky. You do things that aren't very smart, like sending Martin to U.C.L.A. to find out why Ellen Keller was using your name. Or sending him around to scare me off when you heard I was hunting for Gloria Gay. Killing her would be one way of laying Gloria's ghost forever...”
“No one would take that seriously.” Her voice trembled and was cold. “You don't believe it yourself... It's too far-fetched.”
“Murder is always far-fetched, baby. But a man called me. He went out of his way to tell me Gloria Gay —not Mrs. Johnston or Margaret Bleeker—was lying dead in Bellona Creek. But, of course, maybe Martin did it all on his own, or your husband—but he doesn't know about you, does he?”
She shook her head slowly. It was a vague, lost gesture that was cut off abruptly as she brought her hands up and pressed them hard against her cheeks. “She... she walked the ramp on Main Street. I can hear them.... He doesn't deserve that. He's proud. Proud of me... She walked the ramp... Maybe I'll make Time. 'Ecdysiast socialite...'!” She sucked in her breath and it seemed to claw at her throat. She stared at me, hysteria welling up, swelling at her eyes. She bit her ringer and there was blood on her lip. Then she turned, teeth chattering, and stumbled out of the car and up into the great dark cave where the door was. I heard it open and then close again with a cold finality.
I drove on around so that I could turn on the broad concrete drive by the garages. I noticed two things. The station wagon was missing and the lights were on in the laboratory. I stopped and got out and went over to the building. The office door was unlocked, the little white room lighted and empty. I knocked on the laboratory door and heard a sound of metal clicking against glass, and the door opened.