Up for Grabs

Chapter 14

I called Breckinridge from the airport.

“You’re reporting early,” Breckinridge said. “I take It that you have good news, Lam, that you have everything all settled and that congratulations are in order.”

“Congratulations are a trifle premature,” I said.

“You mean you didn’t settle it?”

“No.”

“What’s the trouble this time?”

I said, “I can’t discuss it in detail over the telephone. I take it this call is going through a switchboard?”

“What difference does that make?”

“It may be monitored.”

“I have no secrets in regard to company business,” Breckinridge said. “You go right ahead and tell me anything you have to tell me.”

I said “If it’s not impertinent, Mr. Breckenridge, who made the initial contact here at the ranch with the person who was to represent the insurance company?”

“That doesn’t enter into it at all,” he said,

“Have you been here at the ranch, personally?”

“I was there personally on a vacation at one time, and I fail to see what that has to do with it.”

I said, “Melvin located some of the people who were there at the ranch at the same time you were. He located one woman in particular who had a small motion-picture camera and took motion pictures of about everything in sight. He has motion pictures of you and one other person.”

There was deep, shocked silence at the other end of the line

“You there?” I asked.

“I’m here,” Breckinridge said.

I said, “Melvin intends to use those pictures as part of his case.”

“Good God!” Breckinridge said.

I said, “This Melvin impresses me as being rather a dangerous antagonist and quite unscrupulous.”

“Unscrupulous is no name for it,” Breckinridge said. “He can’t be bluffing about those pictures, can he, Lam?”

I said, “He showed me part of the roll that he had not all of it.”

“What did it show?”

“Well, that’s something I can’t tell you over the telephone.”

“Where are you now?”

“At the airport.”

“Where’s Bruno, at the ranch?”

“Yes, but Melvin’s moving him out.”

“And where’s Melvin?”

“He’s going to stay at the ranch today and then he’s going to go to his office in Dallas tomorrow.”

“Settle that case!” Breckinridge snapped. “Get in touch with him. Give him anything he wants.”

I said, “We have forty-eight hours’ leeway.”

“All right, you have cashier’s checks. I want you to effect a complete settlement. I want it complete.”

“Meaning you want the motion pictures?”

“At times,” Breckinridge said, “you’re rather astute.”

“All right,” I told him, “I’ll be in Dallas tonight. I’ll clean things up within the forty-eight hours.”

“See that you do, Lam. This is imperative.”

I said, “This nurse, Melita Doon, who was staying here, seems to have left in a hurry. Her mother is supposed to have taken a turn for the worse. I don’t know whether we could find her and perhaps — well, she might give us some information. She might be the weak link in the chain.”

“Weak link, nothing!” Breckinridge said. “I want that case out of the way. Never mind looking for her, just get into Dallas and be prepared to make that settlement... That damned ambulance-chasing, blackmailing—”

“Hold it,” I said. “That isn’t going to help.”

I could hear him take a deep breath at the other end of the telephone, then he said, “Lam, I certainly appreciate the way you’ve handled this. I appreciate very much the way you handled yourself last night. A lot of people don’t realize that when you’re out to get that evidence, you have to get evidence by any means that are available and there are times when you simply have to use female operatives.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Everybody in the business knows that.”

“All right,” Breckinridge said wearily. “I guess we’re stuck for at least a hundred grand. You know what to do, Lam, make a complete settlement.”

“Leave it to me,” I told him.

I hung up the telephone and found there was a plane for Dallas leaving within the next thirty minutes.