I was watching her closely for some signal, if she wanted to give one. There was a lot of stuff written between the lines in this little show and I hoped to untangle some of it. The girl gave me a nice, if slightly impatient smile.
“I think you’ll understand if I agree with father. This whole scene is a little insane, isn’t it? Of course I’m all right. I’m quite happy, and will be, even if you are forced to cut your visit short. Do you understand that, or shall I write you a letter to express myself more clearly?”
My face was about the color of a boiled beet. I made funny noises in my throat and felt like a kid who’s being kept after school for throwing spitballs at the teacher. I looked around for a hole to crawl into.
Lion was grinning—quite happily. I kept on staring at the girl because she was wonderful material to stare at. Still, things weren’t on the up and up. Something about her appearance?
There was enough sex appeal packed into that dress she wore, to take my mind off anything else. It didn’t. I knew that she was all tied up inside and ready to bust. Her eyes were devoid of sparkle. She walked stiffly—as though two thirds tight. There was something wooden about her actions and her body.
I wanted to get out of there. I had more than I could handle, in two or three ways. Lester was still hanging around down at the gate, ready to take me apart.
“I get a very clear picture that I’m as welcome as a snow storm in June,” I said, and tried to smile. “Sorry I caused all this trouble, both for you and your father. I’ve been taken in for a sucker, and all I can do is say I’m darned sorry about it—and get out.”
I pretended to work up righteous indignation toward my client.
“I’m telling you, Mr. Lion, some people give me a pain in the neck. If I’d been you last night, and you sneaked into my property, I’d have shot to kill. This client of mine is either nuts or making a fool of me—and that isn’t hard. You’re a good sport for giving me a break I don’t deserve. If the cops took me in, I’d sit in the cooler for a long time for trespassing.”
He took all of it. He was eating out of my hand. All the time I was keeping an eye on Neva. She wasn’t even listening to me.
I said goodbye in a nice humble way and got out of there.
If I had fooled Lion, I didn’t even make an impression on Lester. He was waiting for me at the gate.
“Come back again some time, you bum,” he said. “It will be a pleasure to scatter you around the scenery.”
I didn’t even answer him. I had a lot of important things on my mind. I caught a cab at the corner of Hillside Avenue and Foothill Boulevard. There was a coupe following us when we entered the village of West Hills. Lester was driving it. I got a couple of good looks at his ugly pan. Lester didn’t like to see me go away without finding out where I was headed for. I didn’t blame him much.
“There’s a coupe behind us,” I told the driver. “That coupe thinks it’s smart enough to trail you. I think ten bucks worth that you can leave him in the dust. What do you think?”
The driver didn’t even look around. I saw his head tip up as he took a look through the rear-view mirror. Then we went away from there. He must have learned to drive by following a rattlesnake track. It was wonderful.
* * * *
I stopped at a drug store in West Hills and called the Intellect.
“Look, my traveling friend,” he greeted me, “I’d like to see you once a week or more. I get lonely when you go away and don’t pay an occasional visit to the office. We still do business at the same address.”
“How’s Mrs. Ruth Ford, our rich client?” I asked.
“She’s been here this morning,” he said. “She’s got to have results.”
“Then she’s talking to the wrong man when she looks at you,” I told him. “I got ten bruised and broken fingers, a kiss on the puss from a Great Dane, saw an angel riding in a swan boat and got a slug buried in my hip.”
“You’re drunk,” he snapped. “You get the Hell down…”
“Shut up. I saw Miss Neva Lion. She said she was fine, and would I please go away because I bothered her. She’s nicer than the picture. Aren’t you jealous she didn’t insult you personally like she did me?”
The Intellect was raving by now. I’ll bet he was chewing on the telephone cord. “If you don’t grab a cab and get down here…”
“Again—shut up,” I said. “You’re going to work for half an hour. It will be a strain. Save your strength. Tell Mrs. Ford that she should stay out of sight until I contact her.
“Call police headquarters and get a line on a big, toothy gorilla named Lester, who is employed by Frank Lion as personal watchdog. Find out where Lion got all his knowledge of surgery. These answers should prove very interesting and maybe, puzzling. Don’t try to figure them out. I can’t.”
I hung up. I went out of the booth and sat down at a little table near the back of the store. I called the kid over from the fountain.
“You got any coffee?” I asked. He nodded.
“You take cream and sugar, mister?”
“And spoil the coffee?” I asked.
He went back of the counter and started to pour a cup from a glass coffee maker.
“Don’t put it back on the fire,” I called to him. “Bring all you got over here.”
He came back, a steaming cup in one hand, the coffee-maker in the other. He looked a little worried, but he put the stuff down in front of me. I gave him a buck.
“Keep the change and treat your girl friend,” I said.
I stayed with that pot of coffee until there was just a brown stain in the bottom of the glass.
* * * *
The Intellect was all flushed and excited when I went in. He had spent a busy half-hour and was ready to retire for the day. For the first time, however, he seemed more interested in what was going on than in his own problems. I told him the whole story, and peeled down to show him where Lion had taken the slug out of my hip.
“Probably it would have been better if he had aimed at your head,” was his interesting comment. “This might give you trouble in your old age.”
Then his eyes narrowed with thought.
“You think Neva Lion is okay?”
“She says she is,” I told him. “Did you find out what I told you to?”
He looked unhappy because I was talking some and telling him very little.
“You didn’t give me much information to go on,” he complained.
I laughed.
“With the brain you’ve got, you don’t need to know much.”
He didn’t know if I was insulting him or giving him a pat on the shoulder blades.
“I called Foggerty at headquarters,” he said.
Foggerty was a good flat-foot with several promotions behind him. He wore some shining stuff on his uniform, but he was still just a cop. He was a good Joe.
“Goon,” I said.
“Foggerty did some work in the files,” he said; “He checked up on the employment agency through which Lion employed this guy, Lester. Lester has a long record. All small theft jobs. He used to work at the Museum when Lion was there. He stole a mummy and they got sore and made him bring it back. I think he could have stolen a lot of stuff that would be more interesting and valuable than a mummy.”
“You’re not paid to think,” I said. “That takes care of Lester. We can have him hauled into the lock-up any time for assault and battery. Maybe we can get him on a murder charge, if he meets me in the dark again.”
The Intellect looked disgusted.
“Lion went through medical college some time ago,” he said. “I found that out in checking back through the registry. He took four years and left there ready to practice surgery. Never hung out his shingle.”
“He’s a milliona
ire,” I reminded him. “Lion doesn’t have to work.”
He had nothing to add to that, so I asked:
“Where’s this client of ours, Mrs. Ford, staying?”
He followed me to the door and talked while we went down the hall toward the elevators.
“She arrived from California and went directly to the Arms Rest Hotel. She’s stayed there ever since. I called her after I talked to you. She’s going to stay put until we contact her.”
I reserved my own opinions until we reached the small but very swanky lounge of the Arms Rest Hotel. It wasn’t a well advertised spot. Not the type of place that you went to unless you had a heavy roll of the green stuff, and heard about the Arms Rest from a friend.
The desk clerk was a small faced, slim figured punk who examined us for bed bugs as he listened to the Intellect make talk. After he had given us the once over, he called Mrs. Ford, and seemed surprised that she thought it would be nice if we came right up.
The Intellect handled all the little details, like giving the floor number to the elevator girl, telling her what a pretty little thing he thought she was, and leading me gently down the hall to room 324.
Ruth Ford had approached middle age, and was trying to stay on the right side of it. She still had a nice figure, not hidden very well under the black lounging pajamas she wore to the door. Her voice was soft, but with an edge on it. She said:
“I’m glad you’ve come. I’m frightened. Something terrible is happening. I detected it in your voice.”
She talked to the Intellect and included me in with an occasional glance.
“This is my partner,” the Intellect pointed me out like something he usually kept in the closet and brought out to show his guests. “He has some questions to ask concerning your sister.”
We all sat down in a cozy circle around a cocktail table. Ruth Ford poured some drinks and made sure that her pajama neckline was loose enough to give us a sneak preview of coming attractions. We passed around some words on the weather, and I tossed a mild bombshell into the witty conversation.
“Too bad you had to leave that fine climate for all this,” I said, indicating that I didn’t like our own weather too well. “I imagine, that even those past weeks of rain on the coast, would have been preferable to our fog.”
Her face turned a trifle red, but she was fast on the draw.
“California,” she said, “offers variety, regardless of the weather.”
Nothing to pin on her at this point. I asked her about Neva and the date on which the girl stopped writing letters to her. I killed ten minutes checking up on facts that I didn’t need or already had. It gave her a chance to be kittenish, and throw her charm around some more where it could be gazed upon and approved. Nice enough, but I hate coy women. We found ourselves at the door, going out. I said:
“Well, thanks a lot, Mrs. Lion”
I caught her with her rough nerve edges exposed. She was badly flustered. The Intellect said:
“Mrs. Ford.” And then to her, “My partner has a way of mixing his names in a hat and drawing out the wrong one.”
I said I was sorry, and we got out. She was shaking a little. It was wonderful, the speed she used in getting that door bolted behind us.
“You’re the clumsiest fool in the business,” the Intellect stormed when we were once away from the hotel.
We hailed a cab and I settled back and closed my eyes. My hip hurt, my fingers were like raw beefsteak and my head ached.
“I didn’t make a mistake, calling her Mrs. Lion.”
The Intellect sucked in his breath sharply and I could feel him stiffen at my side.
“Okay, Sherlock,” he sighed, “suppose you tell me all about this little game of guessing.”
I tried to push my headache out of the way by pressing my fingers against my forehead. It didn’t work.
“It is a guessing, game,” I admitted. “But here’s what I’m guessing. Mrs. Ford and Neva Lion aren’t sisters. Mrs. Lion, alias Ford, is Neva’s mother.”
“And how did you reach this marvelous decision?”
“It’s easy,” I said. “Compare their ages and their appearance.”
“The Ford dame isn’t bad,” the Intellect sighed.
“That’s because in old age, your tastes are dulled. Now listen. I’ll talk. Then you tell me what you think. Mrs. Ford rushes to us and wants to learn why her sister hasn’t written to her for a month or three. She comes all the way from California on that one lead. Does it make sense?”
“It might. Women are funny.”
My temper was getting bad.
“It didn’t happen,” I snapped. “It didn’t, because Mrs. Lion wasn’t in California. She was scared to death when she suspected that I knew her secret. When I called her Mrs. Lion, she went to pieces. It showed through the veneer of sex she was parading around. Now, how did I guess? It’s evident. She’s registered in a small, exclusive hotel which doesn’t even advertise. How would a stranger, fresh from the railroad station, find the Arms Rest Hotel? The answer is, they wouldn’t. She’s about Frank Lion’s age. She has the same general appearance as Neva, but she’s old enough to be the girl’s mother, and she is. Something pretty bad is happening out there at 124 Foothill Boulevard. Something that frightened her out of the house.”
“But listen,” the Intellect protested. “Why did she come to us? She knew we would find this out. She knew we’d label her a phony.”
“Did she? I’m not sure. You didn’t suspect it. No, I think Mrs. Lion picked out a small, unimportant outfit. We sure fit that classification. She doesn’t dare to set the cops on her husband. She doesn’t want any part of it. Why should she worry if we find out who sheds, after she has done the thing she wanted to do all along.”
The Intellect looked dazed.
“And just what was she trying to do?”
“Quite simple,” I told him, but I didn’t think it was simple at all. It was a complicated mess, and I wasn’t even sure that I knew much about it—yet. “She knows that all is not sweet and sane in her home. She wants to start trouble and get out herself without hurting her neck or her reputation. She doesn’t care who gets killed, as long as it isn’t her. She picks out a small agency and sets us on the track. Now, all she has to do is wait for us to uncover trouble and get a good taste of it. Then the cops will step in and clean up everything so that she can have the whole thing settled without involving herself.”
We had reached the office. The Intellect paid our cab fare and we raced for the only comfortable chair in the office. He won. His legs are longer. He chewed on a cigar butt which he had hidden in an empty file drawer. He thought for about ten minutes, and then said bitterly:
“Okay, suppose you’re right? What do we do now?”
“I’d drop the whole thing if I did what my better sense tells me to.”
He moaned about that for a while.
I had been paid. I had certain obligations. I like to hear him worry out these things in a pathetic voice. I found a cigarette that had crept through a hole in my coat pocket and folded itself into the lining. It wasn’t in bad shape. I lighted it.
“I might drop it,” I said. “I might make you go to work and make an honest living. I didn’t say I was going to.”
He looked as hopeful as a bird dog on a day old scent.
“I got some pet hates for Lester and Frank Lion,” I said. “They’re running things about their way, out there in that little private world. I think some day I’ll hit Lester with something. Something heavy with rough edges.”
I stood up.
He looked happy again. I was afraid he would try to give me a pep talk.
“I’m leaving,” I said.
“Where can I get in touch with you?”
The telephone broke into the script at
that point, and the Intellect always on the trail of easy money, made a dash for it. He carried on an intelligent conversation for some time. He used one word. It was, “No,” used over and over in various octaves.
When he hung up, he had a hurt, bewildered look on his face. I didn’t have to guess. Someone had yanked a bank account out from under his eyes.
“She’s dead,” he said. It didn’t tell me much.
“Sure, she is,” I said. “She deserved it. She’s been dead for years from the neck down. Who is she?”
“Mrs. Ford—I mean—Mrs. Lion. Oh, what the hell. Everything is turned upside down. She was strangled right after we left. The manager called her about a new lamp. He tried to get her five times. The desk clerk hadn’t seen her go out. They went up.”
He gulped.
“Foggerty’s over there now. The desk clerk said we were up to see her this afternoon. He knew who I was. Foggerty says get the hell over there right away.”
The whole thing didn’t shock me much. The dame had been playing with the atom. It busted over her head. I don’t like murder very well, but I no longer scream at the mention of the word. I said:
“You see Foggerty. I got other troubles.”
He grabbed his hat and tried to push me out the door.
“You’re in this as deep as I am,” he said.
I played coy.
“Not me, boss. I got a date with a little blonde out at West Hills. It’s urgent. If the murders are started, that little chicken might be next in line.” We parted, not exactly on the best of terms. I’ll bet he cussed me all the way to the hotel. I wouldn’t know. I acquired another pair of brass knuckles, an automatic and some ideas.
The ideas weren’t so clever. Mine aren’t.
I walked right across the street as though I belonged there. I started ringing the bell on the spike-topped gate. I had it all figured out. If I couldn’t sneak into the house, I’d go in the front door.
I waited until Lester came tripping lightly down the drive from the gatehouses. Then I put my thumb on the bell again and left it there. It was a loud bell. It got on his nerves. He came toward me with a haze of sulphur smoke around his head. He knew a lot of naughty words.
The Walt Whitman MEGAPACK ™ Page 19