“I drove out to Iron Mountain. Climbed down the ravine where I found the wreck. Quite a blaze inside that car. It struck me as not quite right.”
“We’re talking about murder.”
“I’m getting around to it in my own clumsy fashion. That fire inside the coupe didn’t look right. I examined the car, gas tank, vacuum tank, carburetor and feed pipes. All okay Not a pipe torn loose, nor a broken connection. Electric wires okay, and no sign of a short circuit.”
“But the car burned. You can’t get away from that.”
“It burned, Captain, for the simple reason that someone—the actual murderer—threw an incendiary bomb into it. I found a deep hole in the seat cushion, and some glass that held the inflammable liquid, whatever it was.”
“You figure...”
“I don’t figure at all. I examined the highway and found ample evidence that proved the Buick was forced from the road. The marks were plain. This was no accident. It was a deliberately planned murder.”
“And the motive?”
“That’s your job, not mine. I’m pointing out obvious things. You and your men will have to trace them down.”
Captain Jorgens pawed at the wire bristles of his mustache. “I suppose, Simon, that I should be grateful for your pointing out the obvious things as you say. But I am also aware that since you have told me this much, you are several jumps ahead of me on an independent investigation of your own.”
“The captain is partially correct,” said Crole, savoring his drink. “Our paths run parallel. Only you have the responsibility of finding out who murdered James Gillespie.”
“Just like that, eh?”
Crole nodded.
“All right. I’ll take the responsibility, and plow straight ahead. And if you get in my way, you’ll get plowed under. I mean it, Simon. So if your hands are dirty, you’d better start washing up.”
“You don’t even trust me, do you Captain?”
“Why should I? You don’t trust our police department.”
Simon Crole rubbed his bald head. “I trust you, Captain. Also your men. They’re a fine bunch. You know I do. Your main grievance is that you’re peeved because I won’t take you fully into my confidence. My business may be linked with crime, but I’m not.”
“Tell it to somebody else,” snorted Jorgens, reaching for the phone. “Police headquarters,” he snapped.
While he waited for the call to be put through he spoke again, “I’m accepting the responsibility right now. Tomorrow you may be only too willing to accept the cooperation of the police department...”
“Oh hello. Put Sergeant Keeble on the wire. Sergeant, I want you to take a squad car and go out to the spot where the Buick coupe was wrecked on the Iron Mountain grade. Take along Williams and McCarthy. I want pictures of the car’s interior, the seat in particular. Also pictures of the road up near the guard rail where the machine went through. Get moving.
He clicked the receiver to the hook and glared at the agency man. “We’ll see,” he said, grimly, “whether your tip is real or phoney. In the morning I’ll start checking Gillespie through his friends and associates. If it’s murder—and it must be since you say so—I’ll find the guilty man. And I’m sure of plenty of help from the District Attorney’s office.”
He surged abruptly to his feet.
“Have another drink before you go, Captain,” urged Crole, mildly.
“I wouldn’t want to rob. .
“Wait a second. This liquor is priceless. If you don’t want it, say so. I’m not keen about you drinking it up anyways.”
“Shut up and pour me a glass.”
“After we drink this,” said Crole, “I’ll ride downtown as far as my office. Just thought of something that’ll have to be attended to.”
“Get your thinking done tonight, Simon. You may not have a chance tomorrow.”
“Think so?”
Captain Jorgen’s face was set in grim hardness as he shouldered through the door into the hall, but he said nothing.
Crole followed meekly, absorbed apparently, in the building of a cigarette.
Shutting the door carefully and slipping the night latch, Simon Crole snapped on the lights of his office. He looked at his watch. It was two o’clock.
He stood for a minute in the center of his own office while he caught his breath. He never liked the idea of climbing those seven flights of steps during the night, but there was nothing he could do about it. Had he been an ordinary business man and closed up tight at five o’clock, things would have been different.
“What I need,” he mused, “is an office on the ground floor. Well, that wouldn’t be so good either. Now let me see what our private files have to say about James Gillespie.”
He thumbed through the G section. Found Gillespie listed with his business and home address. And that was all he did find. Pursing his lips he turned to the B section in the file.
Here he found without any difficulty the name George Baron. Beneath it was typewritten: “Attorney, spotty reputation, brilliant in court procedure, unscrupulous, unmarried, unethical.” And beneath all this was a penciled memorandum in Etta’s handwriting: “Also unregenerate.”
“Unscrupulous, unethical and unregenerate,” repeated Crole. “But these terms would apply to a great many people in this city. Baron didn’t kill Gillespie. I think he’s too intelligent. But isn’t above hiring somebody else to perform his dirty work.”
He leaned back in the chair and elevated his feet to the desk top. He thought as he sat there of the lunch he had laid out ready to eat in his apartment. Jorgens’ arrival had made him forget his hunger. Now it returned to plague him. He recalled sadly his uneaten food in the coffee shop downstairs. The news of Gillespie’s death had caused him to get up from the table and leave it untouched.
He scowled sourly at a lithograph on the wall depicting Darktown’s Fire Brigade. What a hell of a thing to have to look at. Mumbling, he took out tobacco sack and papers, rolled a cigarette and glanced warily at his trick lighter. He didn’t feel equal to struggling with it, so he used a match.
As the blue smoke curled from his lips and nostrils he thought about Virginia Laird. The thoughts were far from pleasant. That girl knew something. And somebody knew that she knew. If she didn’t appear by tomorrow, Crole knew that he would have to show his hand to Captain Jorgens. And that was one thing he didn’t want to do.
Thinking of Virginia Laird caused him to remember his visit to Gillespie’s office during the afternoon and the piece of cardboard he had tucked away in his pocket.
He turned on a desk lamp and studied it carefully. Something had been written on it with a pencil, then later rubbed out. Opening a desk drawer, the agency man took out a small, but powerful microscope, placed the cardboard on the slide and adjusted the lens.
Then shifting the card till it was at an angle he studied the indentation caused by the pressure of the pencil. Shadows filled the depressions and he was able to make out two words: Henry Brenan.
An examination of the opposite side of the cardboard revealed nothing at all.
“Henry Brenan,” he wondered aloud. “Now who in the hell is he?”
Concentration wrinkles formed between his eyes. He stared into space as if by an effort of the will he would see everything in its proper relation—one with the other. And all he saw was the miserable lithograph of the Darktown’s Fire Brigade.
After a time he yawned, stretched, and thought of his comfortable bed and the cold food on the kitchenette table. He would have gone down to eat in an all-night restaurant, but he didn’t relish the walk back upstairs again. Nor did he feel equal to the exertion of hunting a cab and going home.
He tried thinking again about Henry Brenan. But thinking made him sleepy. Grunting with exasperation over hunger and his general laziness about going home, he got to his feet, blinked, snapped off the light, and went over to the leather couch.
His lips puffed out in a thankful sigh as he stretched out. When they h
ad resumed their former shape he was quite sound asleep, one arm beneath his big shoulders, the other hanging limply over the edge.
As Simon Crole slept, the big rotaries of the city presses ground out their columns of scandal, crime, sports and war scares for readers to wonder at over their breakfast coffee.
And while the presses whirled, a man identified as James Gillespie reposed stiffly on a slab in the city morgue. Ned Anderson lay in a drunken stupor surrounded by a choice selection of interesting but empty bottles. George Baron slumbered in a bed with a silken coverlet. Occasionally the muscles of his suave face twitched as if his dreams were tinted with unpleasantness. In a gambling house, where stakes ran high, Gene Selingo and Ghost Mokund waged a losing fight against house percentages from which they were to emerge in the early morning hours flat broke.
The coastal city, otherwise, was sunk in a deep well of sleep.
VII. SECRET FILE
Simon Crole was awakened by the slamming of a door and a loud yawn. Feet hard-heeled across the floor. Matt Ridley stood beside the leather couch, a cigarette hanging loosely from his lips.
“Geez, boss, did somebody evict you from your apartment?”
“A cigarette, Matt,” said Crole, swinging his feet to the floor. “Thanks.” He struck a match. The smoke poured into his lungs. It felt good. He took several puffs. “What time is it?” he asked.
“Eight o’clock.”
“Pm hungry,” said Crole. “Was up most of the night. Too lazy to go home. Seen the papers?”
“Yeah. The police are all hot and bothered. Seems that Gillespie was murdered. They were out to the wreck last night and...”
“I know,” said Crole. “Had a chin with Jorgens myself last night. We didn’t hit it off very well. Did you bring the paper with you? Lemme see it.”
Matt took a folded tabloid from his pocket. The news Crole looked for was on the first page. He scanned the headlines briefly.
GILLESPIE VICTIM OF FOUL PLAY
What first appeared an accident according to astute police officials, has definitely been proven a murder.
Crole read the rest of the news item and discovered nothing that he didn’t already know. He flung the paper down and got to his feet. Etta was just coming in when he reached her office.
“Morning, precious.” He grinned idiotically, for that was the way he felt.
Etta’s face was rosily pink. She took off an impudent looking hat, fluffed her hair, looked at Crole sharply, and said: “Boss, you look positively terrible—as if you’d been on a long bender.”
“I feel lousy. I slept on the leather couch last night.”
“Try sleeping on one of those steel-mattress cots in the jail,” said Matt. “I slept on one a couple months back. I’ll swear, when I got up my carcass was all marked off with little squares—just like as if I was a waffle.”
Crole grunted and picked up the phone. He called a number, waited, then said: “Herman, they’s a half-starved man in my office name of Simon Crole who needs a stevedore’s breakfast. Send up anything and everything including about a quart of coffee. Bye.”
He swung on his operator. “Matt,” he said. “Go down to the Commodore. Ask for Ned Anderson. Get the address of Virginia Laird from him. But first find out whether he has learned of her whereabouts. She left Gillespie’s office yesterday morning. Now she’s missing. I thought for a time she might be with Gillespie. But I reasoned wrong. If she isn’t home, try and check her movements through cabs near her office building.”
After his operator had left Crole turned to his secretary. “Two long-distance calls, precious, regarding insurance policies on the life of James Gillespie. You’re to find out, if possible, the names and addresses of the beneficiaries. The companies are the Oregon Mutual, at Salem I think, and the Guardian Life in New York City. Put the calls in at once.”
He started away towards his own office, thought of something and came back. “Call Esther, will you, and connect her with my line.”
His former woman operator’s voice came over the wire a couple minutes later. “Good morning, Simon. Please be brief. I’m up to my ears in work.”
“Listen, darling,” purred Crole. “I wish you would move that law office of yours and come over with me. I can rent another room...” He twisted his head as a waiter carrying his breakfast entered. “Smells grand...No, Esther. Not you. My breakfast. It just arrived. Plutocrat me eye. I was working last night and didn’t go home. Yeah, same old blundering Simon. Yeah, I’m on a case. Maybe you read something about it in the newsprints. The Gillespie murder.”
He threw a longing glance at the napkin-covered tray. “You’d appreciate the angles, Esther, no foolin’. Well, here’s what I want you to do.”
“I haven’t got time to do anything,” protested the girl. “I’ve got to be in Judge Barnum’s court at ten o’clock.”
“What I want,” said Crole, unperturbed, “is this. Gillespie sold a house out in Los Gatos canyon. I want the name of the purchaser, how much he paid, whether in cash or check. I also want to know if the buyer is living in the house at the present time. If he isn’t, then where the hell is he living. You’ve got friends in the tax assessor’s office, and you can trace the payment through the mortgage company that handled the escrow. I wouldn’t ask you to do this for me if I could avoid it. But I don’t want my name to appear in the investigation.”
“You’ve got a knack Simon,” complained the girl over the wire, “of getting your own way. I’ll take care of this for you, but understand, under no conditions will I enter this case as an operator.”
“You’re lovely Esther. I wish I was younger. I believe I could learn to care for you in a rather—big way.”
“Tell it to Etta, you big idiot. The only person you could care for in a really big way, and do, is Simon Crole.”
“Mad?”
“Don’t be silly big boy. Bye.”
“Bye darling. Be seeing you.” He hung up, sighed pleasantly, and reached toward the napkin covering the tray. As he did so he heard the hall door open, then the sound of men’s voices. The signal beneath his desk buzzed warningly as Etta pressed her knee against a button below her own desk.
He took down the receiver. ‘Two gentlemen from the District Attorney’s office to see you,” said Etta.
Simon Crole grinned crookedly, removed his extended hand from the vicinity of the napkin-covered tray, swore explosively and said: “Send them in.”
The two men came in, plainclothes men with broad shoulders, set, rigid faces, their attitudes uncompromising. Crole recognized Daniels and scowled his displeasure.
“All right, Crole,” said Daniels. “Get on your hat. The D.A. wants to see you—at once.”
“He does, hey What about?”
“I guess you know all right. Come on. Don’t keep us here all morning. We’ve got other things to do besides hang around a private dick’s office.”
“I haven’t had my breakfast.”
“Neither has the D.A.”
“Is this a pinch?”
“It will be if you try to put up an argument. Subpoenas are easy to make out. We can take you now with us and have the paper filled out when we get there. Now, do you come, or do we have to get nasty?”
“You guys are always nasty,” said Crole, rising. Stopping at Etta’s desk on the way out he said: “District Attorney Minifie has something on his mind that requires my presence. So don’t worry while Simon is away. I’ll get rid of these two big apes in half an hour.”
Etta’s eyes grew large. “Apes, did you say?”
“Nerts to you, sister,” leered Daniels.
“Apes is what I said,” repeated Crole, thinly. He opened the door to the hall.
“Wise guy, eh?” sneered Daniels, grimly. “And hard-shelled. You may think you’re pretty good, Crole, but before Minifie finishes putting you through a course of sprouts, you’ll wish you had walked in a straight line. He’s been damned easy on you and your methods in the past, but he’s got yo
u on ice this time.”
Crole had the last word as they waited for the elevator. “When I leave Minifie’s office, Daniels, he’ll bow me out and apologize for having made an inexcusable error. Mull that over for what comfort you can get out of it.”
District Attorney Minifie was an upright, courageous servant of the people. His was a tough job. Between politics, reform groups and crime, he was constantly being enfiladed by the verbal barrages of the press. He was a tireless prosecuting attorney, and what small private life he had was spotlessly correct. He lacked only—the saving grace of humor.
There were dark rings under his eyes, and a sag to his chin from overwork and lack of sleep. He was cross and petulant, and the sight of Simon Crole did little to restore him to an amiable frame of mind.
“Morning, Mr. District Attorney,” grinned Crole. “Mind sending the escort away? They get on my nerves. A telephone call would have accomplished the same thing.”
“Sit down, Crole,” said the district attorney, wearily. He waved his men from the room.
“Now,” he resumed, turning tired eyes on the agency man. “I’m afraid you’ve slipped badly, Crole, this time. Captain Jorgens discovered last night that James Gillespie was murdered. Between our different offices we’ve been carrying on an investigation. You were interested in Gillespie—obscure reasons of your own most likely.”
“Very obscure.”
“What we lack, Crole, is a reasonable motive for Gillespie being murdered. We believe you know the motive. As a matter of cold fact, Crole, we have every reason to believe that your office is mixed up in this killing.”
Crole found something interesting in the palm of his hand that apparently needed looking at. While examining it he said: “The fact that you immediately suspect me of being linked with this crime, Minifie, is quite usual in your office and does not interest me. What does interest me, however,” he went on, looking the prosecutor squarely in the eyes, “is the method you used to arrive at a wrong conclusion.”
The Man who was Murdered Twice Page 7