Man-Trap

XIV

I think Harlan Jones’s lawyer intended to wait a little pompous about his time being valuable when we intruded on his conference, but one snarl from Warren Day decided him not even to open his mouth. With a definite lead to follow, the inspector became overbearingly dictatorial. He not only cowed the lawyer into submission, he highhandedly ordered Harlan Jones to stay out of his own office while Mrs. Knight was being questioned, apparently to forestall possible eavesdropping through the thin partition.

Denied access to his work sanctum, Harlan decided to leave the office temporarily with his wife and his lawyer. From the ruffled appearances of the two men, I suspect they headed for the nearest bar.

Leaving Fausta in the company of Matilda Graves, we ushered Mrs. Knight into her deceased husband’s office and closed the door. The inspector ensconced himself behind the dead man’s desk, summarily waved the widow into the lone remaining guest chair, and left me standing.

Day suddenly said in silky voice, “Understand you’re planning to leave town, Mrs. Knight.”

“Why yes, after the funeral,” she said finally. “I plan to live with a sister in California. With Willard gone, there is nothing to hold me here.”

The inspector nodded with sinister satisfaction. In the same cat-and-mouse tone, he said, “As I recall your statement, you had no idea at the time why your husband disappeared after the Lancaster murder.”

She looked even more bewildered. “That’s right, Inspector. Of course now I realize it was because he knew he would be suspected of the murder. But I’m sure Willard was innocent.”

“So am I,” Day said agreeably. Abruptly he shot at me, “Moon, tell Mrs. Knight what you just learned.”

“Sure, Inspector. Mrs. Knight, when I first talked to you, and later when you gave a formal statement to the police, you made a great point of your ignorance of your husband’s affairs. As I recall, prior to my visit you had no idea what it was he saw in the newspaper that upset him so much.”

Her husky voice seemed to me to grow an edge of caution. “I thought it probably was something on the market page.”

“It never even occurred to you it might have been the Lancaster killing?”

After a nearly imperceptible pause, she said, “Of course not.”

“That’s odd,” I remarked. “You must have forgotten that only the evening before your husband told you all about his predicament, including his argument with Walter Lancaster.”

Her face continued to look only puzzled, but I was watching her hands, and they suddenly clenched together so tightly, the knuckles turned white. “He didn’t mention Mr. Lancaster. He only...” Abruptly she stopped, then proceeded in a more even tone, “I don’t know why you men think you have to trap me into something or other with trick questions. You couldn’t possibly know what my husband said to me in private.”

“Your husband repeated it, Mrs. Knight. He told the whole story of your domestic squabble to a drinking companion while he was supposed to be at his ‘board meeting’. We have the evidence of the drinking companion.”

For a long time she made no comment. Finally she said in a furious voice, “That woman! You say drinking companion, but loving companion is more like it! He told that skinny red-headed thing!”

“Oh, so you know he was having an affair with Mrs. Jones?”

“Mrs. Prostitute is more like it,” she said hysterically. “Snatching other women’s husbands when she’s got a perfectly good man of her own.” Then she seemed to realize she was reacting exactly as we wished, and sullenly drew her lips into a thin line.

I asked, “If you knew your husband was seeing Mrs. Jones, how does it happen you never compared notes with Mr. Jones? You don’t impress me as a woman who would accept a situation like that without some action.”

“I did try to talk to him about two months ago,” she said in a shaky voice. “But she’s got him so fooled, he’s stark blind. He said women my age sometimes begin imagining things about their husbands, and he was sure when my period of adjustment was over, I’d realize Willard was a good husband. I guess Willard had told him I was beginning to have female trouble, and he thought my suspicions were just part of the sickness. His talking down to me like he was a doctor or something made me so furious, I never mentioned it to him again.”

The inspector cleared his throat as a signal to me he was ready to take over. “We’ve strayed from the original point a little, Mrs. Knight. It’s useless for you to deny your husband told you all about the scrape he was in the evening Lancaster was killed, and you deliberately concealed that fact from the police.”

Her head gave a frightened shake. “Not all, he didn’t tell me. Just that he’d borrowed a lot of money to invest in stock, and one of the other stockholders was going to let it out the next morning that the stock had a false value. He said he was ruined and might even go to jail, but he never told me who the man was who was causing all the trouble. He never mentioned Mr. Lancaster’s name.”

Without belief Day asked, “Then why did you deny knowing anything about your husband’s affairs?”

“Willard told me to. I lied about what happened the next morning too, but I had to. When he saw the headline about Mr. Lancaster’s murder, he told me he was the man who had intended to ruin him. He said he could dispose of the bad stock if he had twenty-four hours, and if the police came I should stall them off to give him time. What else could I do? I didn’t want Willard to be ruined and have to go to prison.”

The inspector said dryly, “This is the second plausible story you’ve told, Mrs. Knight. First you knew nothing about your husband’s stock market jam, then when you got caught in the lie, you suddenly know half the details. Just enough to explain the lie, but not enough to make it possible that you killed Walter Lancaster.”

The woman’s eyes widened with a mixture of astonishment and indignation.

But before she could speak, the inspector hammered at her, “I think your husband told you the full story, including the name of the man who was going to ruin him and the information that he was dining at El Patio that night. And after your husband left the house, I think you drove out to El Patio, hid in the bushes and shot Walter Lancaster in order to save your husband from ruin.”

“Why, we don’t even own a car!” Mrs. Knight said indignantly. “Nor a gun either.”

Momentarily the inspector looked disconcerted. Then brushing the objection aside with the remark that cars are easily rented, he drove straight on, ticking each point off on his fingers as he made it.

“First, your motive for killing Lancaster was as great as your husband’s. If Knight crashed financially, you crashed right along with him. Second, you had opportunity while your husband was at his ‘board meeting’. Only your unsupported story puts you home all evening. Third...”

Mrs. Knight’s mannish voice abruptly interrupted him. “I thought the same person who killed Mr. Lancaster killed Willard too. Am I supposed to have saved Willard by murder one day, and killed him the next?”

“Exactly,” the inspector said with relish. Drawing on his vast knowledge of feminine psychology, which totalled zero, he explained. “I imagine you loved your husband, and women are always shooting the men they love. In Homicide we never get a case of a woman shooting some man she doesn’t like. It’s always the guy she loves. You loved Knight enough to kill for him, so naturally you loved him enough to kill him. The age-old motive of jealousy. He was out with Mrs. Jones the night he got it.”

Gently I thrust a thought into the discussion. “How about the attempt on Fausta, Inspector? That was by a man.”

Day turned to glare at me, thought a moment and suddenly looked happy again. “Listen to her voice,” he said. “Imagine it coming over a telephone.”

Thoughtfully I examined the woman, who gradually seemed to be nearing the bursting point. “You mean it could pass for a man’s? Possibly. It’s pretty deep and husky?”

Mrs. Knight reached her bursting point. “I never heard anything so ridiculous in my life!” she half shouted. “Accusing me of killing my own husband, plus a man I didn’t even know! You’d do better out on the street looking for real murderers than trying to scare an innocent woman.”

Both of us merely looked at her until her anger deflated. Then she said in a small voice, “Besides, even if I could imitate a man’s voice over the phone, I couldn’t have passed for a man in a barroom. It was a man who ordered that drink for Miss Moreni.”

The inspector pounced. “How do you know what almost happened to Miss Moreni, Mrs. Knight?”

She looked confused. “It was in the paper.”

Slowly the inspector shook his head.

“On the radio then.”

Again there was a slow headshake. “It was deliberately kept out. Only the waiter’s death was reported.”

Much as it pained me, I was forced to destroy his beautiful dream. “Don Bell had it on his broadcast last night, Inspector. So it’s probably in the morning papers too. I haven’t seen them.”

Apparently neither had the inspector. Pointing his thin nose at me, he let it gradually drain of color.

Just before he burst, I said reasonably, “I didn’t give Bell the item, Inspector. And you’ve still got a pretty good case against Mrs. Knight.”

For a few moments Day did not trust himself to speak. Finally he rose from his chair and said in a strangled voice, “I think we’ll continue this downtown, Mrs. Knight. You are under arrest o-n suspicion of homicide.”

The woman made no objection whatever, but I got the impression this was not a tacit admission of guilt, but simply the result of not knowing what to do about the matter. As the inspector started to lead her out, it occurred to me his logical case might fall apart from lack of proof unless he got a confession.

I stopped him by asking, “Think you’ve got it solved finally, Inspector?”

He swung about to stare at me with suspicion. “Don’t you, Moon?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest idea. It’s a nice logical case, but it does have the weak point Mrs. Knight mentioned. It was a man who ordered that drink for Fausta.”

Irritably he glanced from me to Mrs. Knight, who sullenly waited beside him, then back at me again. “Or a woman in man’s clothes. For that matter, who said it was a man? The only person who saw the poisoner was the waiter, and he’s dead. Also, poison is a woman’s weapon.”

I grinned at him. “That’s an old wives’ tale. At least half the famous poisoners in history were men.”

“And at least half the famous women in history were poisoners,” he snapped back, allowing his opinion of womanhood in general to shade his recollection of history.

I said, “Just remember our agreement, Inspector. Twenty four hours.”

He gave me a sour look, but nodded his head. “It’ll be at least that before we’re ready to lodge a formal charge anyway.” Turning to his prisoner, he said, “Let’s go, lady.”

It occurred to me I had not yet made my promised call to Laurie Davis, and now was as good a time as any. From the barroom booth I called the private number in Carson City Davis had given me, but it was a wasted thirty-five cents. The male secretary who answered sounded surprised when he learned who was calling.

“I thought Mr. Davis was with you,” he said. “He left your number to call in case I needed him.”

Hanging up, I phoned Murdoch, the manager of the apartment house where I live.

“Yes, Mr. Moon,” he told me. “Mr. Davis and a friend are here now. I recognized Mr. Davis from his news pictures and took the liberty of letting them in your apartment to wait. Was that all right.”

“Quite,” I said. “Mind telling Mr. Davis to hang on and I’ll be there in ten minutes?”

Murdoch said he didn’t mind.

Fausta and I found Laurie Davis and Farmer Cole quietly waiting in my front room. Beyond a friendly but formal greeting to Fausta, Laurie Davis paid no attention to her, his mind apparently being strictly on business.

“I had expected to hear from you before now, Mr. Moon,” he started mildly.

I told him I had just called his private number in Carson City, which was how I had learned he was here.

“I’m not used to chasing after the people I hire,” he commented heavily. Still in a mild enough voice: “Have you made any substantial progress?”

“Possibly,” I said. “Warren Day has made an arrest, but I’m not certain he has Lancaster’s killer. It’s Mrs. Knight, Willard Knight’s widow?”

“Oh? And her supposed motive?”

“Knight had been playing the stock market with company funds. Lancaster threatened to make public certain irregularities in a corporation where Knight owned seventy thousand dollars worth of stock. Mrs. Knight knew all about it, and the theory is she bumped Lancaster to save her husband from bankruptcy and prison, then bumped her husband because he was playing another woman.”

In a sleepy sort of way the big man looked pleased with me for some reason. “But you’re not enthusiastic about this theory?”

“I’m not unenthusiastic about it. I’ve still got an open mind. I think it’s quite probable the motive for murdering Lancaster was to prevent his making his knowledge public, but any number of people may have had that motive.”

Laurie’s eyes were almost drooping shut as he asked idly, “What was the name of this precarious corporation?”

As though I had not heard the question, I said, “Knight may have been killed for the same reason your lieutenant governor was, the killer assuming he was the only person aside from Lancaster who knew the corporation was unsound.”

The big man let his eyes open half way. “And who would be the killer with that motive?”

“Whoever was responsible for the corporation’s fix. Maybe a member of the board of directors.”

When no one said anything for a few moments, I added brightly, “You’re on all sorts of corporation boards, aren’t you, Mr. Davis?”

The closest thing to a smile he had yet managed in my presence appeared on Davis’ face. It was not actually a smile, for that would have required too strenuous use of his facial muscles, but it definitely was an expression of amusement. He looked over at Fausta.

“Your friend fully comes up to your recommendation, Fausta. I’m glad I hired him.” Then his eyes swung back to me. “You consider all possible suspects, don’t you, Mr. Moon? Including your own client.”

“The possibility occurred to me,” I admitted. “Though now I’m inclined to scratch you off my list of suspects.”

“Thank you,” he said dryly. “What did you say the name of this corporation was?”

“I didn’t say, Mr. Davis. The reason I’ve scratched you as a suspect is that I’ve figured out why you hired me. And it wasn’t quite the reason you gave.”

He made no comment.

“You didn’t actually fear any political scandal in connection with Lancaster’s death,” I said. “The guy was so honest, there wasn’t a chance in a million he’d been tied up with anything unsavory. You did suspect he might have been killed to shut him up about a financial swindle he’d uncovered, and you weren’t sure just how that swindle might affect your own finances. I’m going to make a guess that Lancaster mentioned his discovery to you, but refused to tell you what company was involved because he knew you’d immediately dump your stock in it. And he was so honest, he refused to let even a close friend have any advantage over the rest of the stockholders. What I don’t understand is why you simply didn’t dump all the stock you owned in the five companies Lancaster had an interest in. One of the five had to be it.”

“Because that would have started a general panic,” Davis said simply. “I had twenty-seven other corporations to consider.”

“I see,” I said. “You had to know exactly what stock it was that had a phony value, so you could quietly get out from under and let the small stockholders take the rap. It was such a delicate situation, you couldn’t afford even a rumor until you knew for certain why Lancaster had been killed. You gave me a cock-and-bull story about needing twenty-four hours to repair political fences, and hired me to unearth the motive for the killing. If the motive proved to be something other than you suspected, no harm was done. But if it was to shut Lancaster up because of a stock swindle, the public disclosure of which would knock the bottom out of the stock, you wanted a twenty-four-hour jump on everybody else.”

When I stopped speaking, there was silence in the room for several minutes.

Finally Laurie said, “So?”

“So I think it’s a shame a guy as honest as Walter Lancaster should die for nothing. I have an idea he was thinking of the little stockholders when he refused to take advantage of his knowledge to save his own investment or the investments of other large stockholders. People who had their life savings tied up in this corporation. Call me a damn fool idealist if you want, but like Walter, I’m a champion of the little guy. You’re going to learn the name of the shaky corporation when you read it in the newspapers.”

Laurie’s sleepy eyes became bare slits. “You accepted a retainer to carry out specific instructions, Mr. Moon. And there was nothing illegal about what I hired you to do.”

“Nothing illegal,” I admitted. “I’ll give you an argument about your ethics though. Anyway, you’ve got your facts twisted. I accepted a retainer to investigate a case, and you promised an additional thousand dollars if I delivered certain information to you twenty-four hours before the public got it My failure to deliver automatically releases you from your part of the bargain.”

Slowly he moved his head back and forth. “I’m afraid I can’t accept that, Mr. Moon.”

“I’m afraid there’s nothing else you can do, Mr. Davis.”

“Oh, but there is,” he assured me. He glanced at Farmer Cole, then at Fausta and back to me. “I understand Miss Moreni had an attempt made on her life, and you’ve appointed yourself her full time bodyguard. Since you’ve decided I’m not a suspect, would you trust her with me if we went no farther than the apartment manager’s flat?”

I looked at him blankly. “Why?”

“The Farmer wants to talk to you privately. It would be pleasanter for all concerned if Miss Moreni weren’t here.”

Fausta looked from one to the other of us suspiciously. “What is it, Manny?” she asked.

“Mr. Davis wants to find out if Farmer Cole and I actually do have anything in common,” I explained. “Go along with Mr. Davis.”

Laurie escorted her out as courteously as though he were leading her onto a dance floor. At the door he paused to look back at me with no rancor whatever.

“Understand I have no quarrel with your ideals, Mr. Moon. As a matter of fact I admire a man with principles. It’s one of the things which made me back Lancaster for lieutenant governor. But if you insist on tweaking the devil’s nose, you really have no cause for complaint when you find his horns in your stomach.”

“Sure,” I said dryly. “No hard feelings. I’ll ring Murdoch’s flat when I’m ready for you to come after your boy.”

I think he might have let himself laugh, had it not required so much effort. Instead he contented himself with a dry final remark.

“Let the Farmer call me, if you don’t feel like lifting the phone.”

After the door closed, Farmer Cole and I sat examining each other a few moments. Finally the Farmer spoke.

“All the boss wants is the name of that firm,” he said reasonably. “You could save us both trouble.”

“You get paid pretty well?” I asked.

He considered the question. “Pretty well.”

“Then why should I save you trouble? Earn your money.”

Still seated, he contemplated me with an almost vacuous expression on his face. Unexpectedly his hand flashed under his coat. On top of catching me completely by surprise, it was the fastest draw I ever saw, at least twice as fast as I could have managed. My fingers were just dipping past my lapel when I froze them there because I found myself staring at the bore of a forty-five automatic.

“I didn’t expect gunplay,” I said. “Going to shoot the information out of me?”

“The element of surprise is half the battle, son. Bring it out easy, with just your thumb and forefinger. Put it on the floor in front of you.”

In slow motion I complied.

“Now kick it over here.”

I toed the P-38 across to him.

Rising from his chair, he walked to the window in back of him and laid both guns on the sill. “No gunplay,” he said explanatorily. “Just a precaution. I couldn’t have you reaching for a gun, and maybe have to wing you.”

“I see,” I said. “Thoughtful of you.”

“Now the program,” he explained without expression, “is for me to make you want to tell the name of that firm. It’s only fair to tell you I know a million techniques, and you couldn’t stop any of them. You got a last chance to tell me peacefully.”

“Stop calling it a firm,” I said. “It’s a corporation.”

Again he moved with the speed of light, but this time not unexpectedly. He intended it to be unexpected, but I have a prejudice against being caught napping twice in a row.