Nipped in the Bud

by Stuart Palmer

  “You have, have you?” He smiled a rather odd smile. “Would those irons in the fire have anything to do with the bushel basketful of telegrams I found sticking under your hotel door when I went up to your room a little while ago?”

  She brightened. “Well! They did answer!”

  “You can say that again.” Piper took a sheaf of familiar-looking envelopes out of his coat pocket. “I suppose I’ve got to give you the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you’ve got a good explanation for spilling official secrets to half the people in New York, but—”

  “Oscar, surely you didn’t open and read my telegrams!”

  “Surely I did. I thought they might give me a clue as to where you’d disappeared to. But when I read the first one—what in the name of Judas H. Priest did you say to Winston Gault, Sr., to make him wire you this?” He showed her:

  FORWARD IMMEDIATELY FULL OUTLINE OF ANY INFORMATION YOU HAVE OR THINK YOU CAN OBTAIN RELATIVE TO POSSIBLE NEW EVIDENCE ON MY SON’S CASE. SUCH OUTLINE WILL BE TURNED OVER TO MY ATTORNEYS FOR EVALUATION AND IF SATISFACTORY THEY WILL CONTACT YOU ABOUT YOUR REQUEST FOR MONEY.

  “New evidence!” said the inspector bitterly.

  “Oscar, I didn’t exactly say that—”

  “Go on. Read the next. It’s signed ‘Gracie.’ I suppose that’s Sam Bordin’s big blonde office-wife?”

  Miss Withers read:

  MR BORDIN OUT OF TOWN. STRICT ORDERS NOT TO SAY WHERE BUT WHEN YOU SEE HIM TELL HIM TO LEAVE THOSE SENORITAS STRICTLY ALONE.

  “I only wanted Sam Bordin to get in touch with Junior Gault—”

  “Better and better!” snarled Piper in deep bitterness. “The next one is just a notice that according to Western Union in New York, your telegram to Junior Gault couldn’t be delivered.”

  “They wouldn’t let him receive it at the prison? How mean!”

  “Of course they wouldn’t. Besides, he isn’t there.”

  Miss Withers almost fell off the stool. “You mean, the trial is over and he’s already in Sing Sing, all in three days I’ve been away?”

  “No!” He handed her another telegram. “This one’s short and sweet.”

  Attached to a wire remittance form was the message:

  HERE IS $200 RETAINER. BRINGING REST OF MONEY IMMEDIATELY.

  RUTH FAGAN

  “I can explain that, Oscar. If only …”

  “If nothing!” he exploded. “Here’s one I’d like to hear you explain; this is the payoff.” She took the yellow sheet and with trembling fingers read the worst:

  DEEPLY INTERESTED IN TELEVISION POSSIBILITIES DRAMATIC EVENT MENTIONED BY YOU ON PHONE LAST NIGHT. IF YOU CAN ARRANGE OUR EXCLUSIVE COVERAGE ACTUAL SURRENDER KEY WITNESS GAULT CASE TO BE RECORDED ON FILM AND USED ON SOONEST VIDEO NEWS BROADCAST WILL GUARANTEE SUM MENTIONED AND REASONABLE EXPENSES. OUR MR WINGFIELD AND CAMERA CREW LEAVING AT ONCE BY CHARTERED PLANE. CONFIRM YOUR ACCEPTANCE THIS OFFER IMMEDIATELY

  R L WARRENDER VICE PRES WKC-TV

  “Well?” demanded the inspector, much too quietly.

  Miss Withers lifted her coffee cup to her lips, found it empty, and set it down with a nervous little clatter. “But, Oscar, I told you—it will take a lot of money to get the authorities here to deport Ina Kell as an undesirable alien since she actually isn’t a fugitive from justice or anything. And though she’d given me the slip, perhaps unwillingly, I knew that I had her located down in Ensenada, which is only sixty miles from here and no place to go beyond, so I thought it would be nice and helpful if when you arrived—”

  “Helpful! You’re as helpful as a boil on my—my neck.”

  “Ruth Fagan had already once offered me practically a blank check, up to five thousand dollars.”

  “Five grand? Just to reopen the Fagan investigation?”

  “She didn’t quite put it that way. She just wanted to make sure that her husband’s killer didn’t get away with it. She took it for granted Gault was guilty, but I’m sure that she doesn’t care who we pin it on as long as the truth comes out.”

  “The truth is out!” roared the inspector. “Judas priest in a cupcake, can’t you get it through your head for once and for all that this case at least is all cut and dried?”

  Miss Withers stiffened. “There is always the possibility that you cut and dried it too soon. This new evidence …”

  “What new evidence?”

  She told him about Ina Kell’s confession of the other evening; about that possibly all-important five or ten minutes left unaccounted for, when the hallway of the apartment house had been clear for someone to come and go again.

  For all his exasperation, Oscar Piper listened carefully. “But who?” he demanded at last.

  “I don’t know, Oscar. Time and time again I’ve tried to shut my eyes and visualize one of the other suspects in this case coming along that hallway, and it all remains blank.”

  “What suspects?”

  “I don’t know … yet.”

  “Phooey,” he said, inelegantly.

  “And there’s always the chance that Ina is making it all up about going to the bathroom,” went on the schoolteacher wickedly. “Perhaps the girl was peeking and listening from her door all the time. Suppose, after Junior left, she actually caught a glimpse of another person in that hallway, leaving or entering the Fagan apartment? Suppose she kept silent for some reason or other—because she recognized him as someone she knew, or because of fear that she would be the next to die if she opened her mouth, or …”

  “As I said once before, you ought to write soap operas.”

  “But, remember, Oscar, that Ina was oddly reluctant to identify Junior Gault. She still insists that she thinks him innocent, which is unreasonable unless she knows or suspects that someone else is guilty.” Miss Withers shrugged. “It certainly is obvious that Ina knows more than you’ve got out of her, that she somehow holds the key to all this, whether she realizes it or not.”

  “Oh, brother!” interrupted Oscar Piper. “The witness who knows something but doesn’t know she knows it! That went out with the ‘If I Had But Known’ school.”

  Very nettled, Miss Withers said, “Nevertheless, it has happened. Will you grant that, as the only person at or near the scene of the crime—besides the murderer and victim—she represents a very real menace to the former?”

  “Sure, to Junior. If she tells the truth, she’ll convict him.”

  “Will you admit that only the murderer, or someone protecting him, would want her out of the country?”

  “Sure, and that’s just what happened. Junior Gault, his lawyer and his girl cooked up a deal to get Ina Kell down here and keep her here.”

  “I wonder,” said Miss Withers. “You’re probably right. But I wonder. It occurred to me that perhaps Junior wasn’t a party to it at all. Dallas Trempleau could have taken matters in her own hands. And I thought if that by some fantastic coincidence Junior actually wasn’t guilty but just the victim of circumstantial evidence, why, then he might leap at the chance to contribute to my slush fund; he might want Ina brought back to testify. And if he did cooperate, it would be a definite indication of his innocence!”

  The inspector shook his head pityingly. “You must have been smoking these queer cigarettes they have down here.” He paid the check, and they went out to the Avenida, deserted as usual at this hour of the morning.

  “My car’s over this way,” she said meekly. “Oscar, now that I’ve explained, do you see what I meant, even though you may disapprove of my methods? After all, I didn’t really let any cats out of the bag when I sent those wires.”

  “Not much!” he scoffed. “Sealed-lips Hildegarde, they call you.”

  “Because I’d already learned from talking to Wingfield that it was no longer a secret about Ina Kell being down here.”

  With chilly politeness he held the car door open for her. “I suppose you’ve got an explanation for calling in the broadcasting company, too?”

  “That, Oscar, was purely an accident. I had to call Wingfiel
d at his office to ask for Ruth Fagan’s private phone number. I knew he’d have it—there’s something between them, by the way, that will stand looking into.”

  “Is there, now?” Piper almost forgot himself, and smiled.

  “Yes, I feel it in my bones. Anyway, he wouldn’t give me the number, though he said he’d deliver a message. He has a quick mind, that young man. I told him as little as possible, but he’d already read the gossip columns, and I guess he put two and two together. He seemed suddenly very excited, but I had no idea he was going to try to make a Roman holiday out of it for his old television program. That last wire was as much of a surprise to me as it was to you.” She saw that the inspector was still on the sidewalk. “Aren’t you coming, Oscar?”

  “Not now. I have business. I have to drop in at the Jefatura, and then go back over to San Diego and pay the usual courtesy call on the police there. I may need them later, for all I know.”

  “Need them, why? Oscar Piper, what have you got up your sleeve?”

  He just looked at her cryptically.

  “Well then, let me drive you over.”

  The inspector hastily declined, with thanks. “Don’t know how long I’ll be,” he hedged. But he finally consented to pick up her marooned luggage at the other hotel and bring it back with him.

  “You’ll be here in time for dinner?”

  “Maybe, if you’re buying. On that expense account of yours—Ruth Fagan’s two hundred bucks.”

  “Wait, Oscar! We’ve got so many things to talk about—how to get Ina to surrender, and what to do about this avalanche of people I seem to have brought unwittingly down around our ears, and …”

  The inspector turned back and eyed her with a cold eye. “The talking part is over,” he said. “I don’t know as this is any of your business, Hildegarde, but it’s no secret. You may as well know that Junior Gault was released yesterday.”

  “What? But—but I didn’t think they ever allowed bail for first-degree homicide. Was the charge reduced?”

  “No, to both questions.”

  “Then the district attorney’s office thinks he’s innocent, after everything—”

  “You don’t know what they think, or what I think. Brace yourself, there’s more coming. I’m not down here to play polite patty-cake with a missing witness. And there won’t be any need to bribe anybody; the local authorities will be tickled pink to cooperate if necessary, though I don’t think it will come to that.”

  “Well, Oscar?” she demanded impatiently. “I’m all ears.”

  The inspector cocked his head and stared at her thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t say that; there’s a good deal of nose showing. But if you must know, I came flying out here to pick up your little friend Ina Kell on a murder rap.” He waved a cheery good-bye and stalked back up the Avenida.

  15

  “Do I contradict myself?

  Very well then I contradict myself.”

  —WALT WHITMAN

  IT WAS JUST AS well that Tijuana’s streets are almost deserted in the forenoon, for on her way back to the hotel Miss Withers’ attention was anywhere but on her driving. To her everything had taken on the quality of a walking nightmare, and in the bright shimmering glare of the summer sunlight objects seemed to shift and change their outlines in a sort of living, moving double exposure.

  No messages at the desk. Upstairs the rooms were full of Talley’s absence, but she put away his tongue-polished dish and his beloved rubber rat. Talley was locked up—and Junior Gault was at liberty. None of it made any immediate sense to her. The world was out of joint. With the best intentions in the world she had alienated her old friend the inspector by sending the innocent messages which had brought almost everyone connected with the Fagan murder heading hellbent toward Tijuana. The monkey wrenches she had flung into the machinery, she wryly admitted to herself, had come home to roost.

  When in doubt, wash your hair—it was an ancient feminine maxim, but a good one. After an hour of intense effort spent in trying to cleanse the reek of the Tijuana jail from her person, the schoolteacher finally sat down at the desk, took out a clean sheet of paper and her fountain pen, and then stopped in midair. Her thoughts, her suspicions, were still nebulous.

  Somewhere she had read that the super-automatic calculating machine at Harvard, the cybernetic robot, produced now and then, instead of the expected answer, only a code word meaning “Insufficient data.”

  If Junior Gault had been set free, then the Fagan case was again wide-open. Nor could the schoolteacher take too seriously the murder warrant for Ina Kell’s arrest.

  Miss Withers found herself idly doodling, drawing doghouses and complicated roses with long thorny stems, involved geometric mazes and bearded snakes and maps of imaginary islands with an X marking the spot where the treasure lay buried. She drew an oversize question mark, and then changed it over into an exclamation point. So much for Ina Kell. The schoolteacher tore up that page and started on another. She wrote down the name Ruth Fagan.

  Some time later there came a diffident, almost apologetic knock at the door. “Come in, Oscar, come in!” she called, much relieved. “It’s about time—”

  But it wasn’t the inspector. A stranger poked his head in the door, an elderly benign-looking stranger with a butternut-colored face and snowy-white hair, his cap held politely in his hand. “La Señorita Hildegarde Weethers?”

  “Yes, yes. If it’s another telegram just put it there on the table; I’m very busy.” She felt in her handbag for a quarter. But instead of taking the coin, the old man placed a thickly folded document in her hand, bowed, and then withdrew. His departure disclosed that there had been still another man behind him, more or less supervising the proceedings; none other than Lic. Ramón Julio Guzman y Villalobos, who was looking very pleased with himself.

  “It is not a telegram, Miss Withers,” said the lawyer.

  “So I see,” she murmured, trying to make some sense of the involved legal Spanish, of the interminable list of names which came before the contra. But a summons was a summons in any language. “Are you mixed up in this farce?” she demanded acidly.

  “I have the honor to represent the plaintiffs in the action,” Guzman corrected her gravely. “The eleven gentlemen who had the great misfortune the other evening at the track to lose their wagers and their potential winnings because of the overt act of your dog.”

  She extended the paper to him. “Go serve it on the dog, then.”

  The lawyer looked shocked, as if she had moved a pawn sideways in chess. “This is a most serious matter, Miss Withers. You will find that our juries do not take lightly a grave offense by a foreigner against our citizens.” He shook his head gravely. “However, it might be worse. My clients are reasonable people. It is sometimes possible to settle these affairs privately, out of court….”

  She nodded. “For dollars, a great many American dollars?”

  “Yes, senorita. But not too many. My clients can show their wasted pari-mutuel tickets, and the total—”

  “Good day, Mr. Guzman.”

  He hesitated, then bowed calmly. “Think it over, señorita. You know where to reach me.” The door closed ever so gently behind him.

  Miss Withers stalked up and down the room, growing angrier at every step. If only Oscar Piper had been here, to tell the lawyer what his precious clients could do with their pari-mutuel tickets!

  But first things first. Finally subsiding after a fashion, she sat herself down at the desk again. After surveying what she had already written, she made a new start under the name Arthur Wingfield … and was lost in deep thought and more doodles when another knock came at her door. Again she brightened, and cried, “Come in, Oscar.”

  But the watched pot never boils. It was only Vito, looking small, worried and unhappy. Apologies and explanations, in a potpourri of two languages with perhaps a touch of some Indio dialect, poured from his lips. The boy blamed himself for everything. If he had only taken Talley walking on one of the side streets ins
tead of straight down the Avenida last night—

  “Heavens, child, it’s not your fault.”

  He brightened a little. “You got out okay, then?”

  “I got out, in a manner of speaking.” Miss Withers absently tried to scratch her left shoulderblade. “But at the moment Talley’s prospects are not so good.” She told her young aide about the lawsuit, and even showed him the summons.

  “Is not good,” Vito said solemnly.

  “Is not—I mean, it certainly is not. Someone is obviously laboring under the delusion that I am both gullible and wealthy.”

  The boy’s eyes widened. “But you are not reech, then? You spend much money.”

  “It is nearly all spent.” She sighed. “Vito, it might be interesting to discover just who is trying so hard to put a spoke in my wheel. Do you happen to recognize any of the names of the plaintiffs on this summons? Are there any cousins of yours among them?”

  Vito studied the list again and shook his head. “No, lady. Lowlifes, probably.”

  “Lowlifes most certainly. But you might still make a few discreet inquiries.”

  “Sure!” said the boy proudly. But then as she reached for her handbag he shook his head. “This one is on the house,” he announced.

  After the boy had taken himself off, Miss Withers sat down at the desk again and with pen in hand tried to regain the thread of her scattered thoughts. If her suspicions were correct, Oscar Piper was well on the way to the greatest mistake of his professional career. But how at this late hour could she be expected to draw rabbits out of hats—even her own incredible hats? After a little while she wrote down the name Thallie Gordon. But she wrote nothing much after it, and finally in spite of herself went back to doodling again. One of the doodles was an engagement ring without any diamond, and another vaguely resembled an eagle with a simpering feminine face, perched high atop a dead pine tree.

  Any murder case, she knew, could be broken by only asking the right questions at the right time of the right person. Offhand she could think of three or four—she began to make a list of those.