Bedrooms Have Windows

Fourteen

Thirty minutes after I made my getaway from Lowry’s apartment, I was playing tunes on Claire Bushnell’s door-bell.

She let me in.

I said, “I’m back.”

“So I see. You certainly do pop in and out, don’t you?”

“Uh huh? Seen the late newspapers?”

She shook her head.

“Been talking with people?”

Again she shook her head, said, “I’ve been doing my nails.” I said, “Okay, Claire, I’m working for you. You’re putting me up.”

“What do you mean?”

I said, “I have some people looking for me. I don’t want to see them. I want to stay here.”

“For how long?”

“The rest of the day, anyway. Perhaps all night.”

“My God you certainly do move in!”

“Don’t I?”

“You can’t spend the night here.”

“Why not?”

“There are other tenants. It would look bad.”

I said, “It wouldn’t look bad if they didn’t see me.”

She couldn’t think of the answer to that one.

She walked over to the window, stood looking out for a moment, then turned back to face me.

“Donald,” she said, “I know.”

“Know what?”

“I heard the radio.”

I moved, so that I was between her and the door. “So what are you going to do?”

She came towards me, her eyes steady. “You didn’t do it.”

“Thanks.”

“Why do you want to hide, Donald?”

“I want to clear this thing up before they get me. If they catch me, I’ll go in a cell and be held without bail. I can’t do anything from a cell.”

“And if they don’t catch you?”

“I may be able to clear things up.”

“You can’t clear them up here, Donald.”

“I could make a start, and when I had a chance to make a stab at the thing, I could be in a position to move. In a cell I couldn’t move.”

“How do I know that I wouldn’t wake up with a stocking around my neck?”

“You don’t.”

She moved closer to me. Her hands were on my shoulder. “Donald, look at me.”

I met her eyes. She said, “Tell me what happened with that... that other girl.”

I said, “I moved around the house, reconnoitering. I found her in the back bedroom. The blinds weren’t drawn on the windows. The french windows were open. It was a warm night. She was dressing. She saw me. I went in. I think she was a little frightened.”

“Of you?”

“She’d been doing something that she was afraid of. She knew something she didn’t want me to find out.”

“What did she do?”

“She tried the vamp act. I can’t tell, it may have been sincere. Then she told me to go in the other room and sit down and wait for her. I did.”

“And the other room was the sister’s bedroom?”

“That’s right.”

“Why didn’t you wait for the police to come?”

“Because then I’d have gone to jail and wouldn’t have had any chance to clear the thing up.”

“Couldn’t the police have cleared it up?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You understand that running away puts you in a position where you don’t stand any chance.”

“I don’t stand any chance, anyway,” I told her. “I either have to clear the thing up or I’ll get the death penalty as a sex murderer. What’s more, they’ll bring up every unsolved sex murder they’ve had in the last five years and pin them on me as well. They’ll try to write a solution to the whole smear of stuff by making me out a fiend.”

“And you think you can clear it up if you have a chance?”

“There’s a good gambling chance that I can. It’s the chance I have to take. It’s the only one I have.”

“How can you clear it up, Donald?”

I walked over to a chair and sat down. She hesitated a moment, then came over to sit down opposite me. “I like you,” she said. “I’m going to take a chance. That is, I think I’m going to take a chance, but I want you to start talking. I want the facts.”

I said, “I started out with Tom Durham. You wanted me to find out about him. You came to the office with a nice story about the reason you wanted him shadowed. That wasn’t the real story. You wanted him shadowed because Minerva Carlton wanted to find out about him.”

“I told you that.”

“How did Minerva know Durham was seeing your aunt?”

“I don’t know.”

I said, “I don’t think Tom Durham intended to marry your aunt.”

“He’d be foolish if he did.”

“And I don’t think he was trying to sell her any stock.”

“Well, he certainly wanted something.”

I nodded. “I think Tom Durham is a blackmailer. I think Tom Durham is blackmailing your aunt. Now put your mind on that and tell me how he could blackmail her. What he could possibly have on her.”

She frowned and said, “Blackmailing? Aunt Amelia?”

“That’s right.”

She shook her head and said, “Amelia wouldn’t blackmail.”

“Then he was trying to blackmail her.”

“She’d have called the officers.”

“I don’t think so. I think the evidence indicates he must have had something on her, or thought he did.”

“I haven’t the faintest idea what it could have been.”

“Is your aunt at all vulnerable?”

“I don’t see why. She’s not accountable to anyone for her actions.”

“There’s nothing in her past?”

She shook her head.

“How about her dead husband?”

“Nothing there. His memory is nothing to her. He bored her.”

“She got some money from her last husband?”

“To tell the truth, Donald, I don’t know. She’s always been exceptionally secretive about finances. I think there was some money, but I don’t know how much. If there was money, it was mostly insurance.”

“And how did you uncle die?”

“He died very suddenly. Some sort of food poisoning, I think.”

I said, “That may be it.”

“Donald, what are you saying?”

I said, “I’m thinking out loud. I’m exploring the possibilities. How long ago did he die?”

“Three or four years.”

I said, “I think your aunt’s being blackmailed. How long has she had that maid with her?”

“Susie?”

“Yes.”

“Years.”

“Susie was with her when her husband was alive?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And did Susie like the husband?”

“Susie has always been very, very devoted to Aunt Amelia. There’s some sort of strange bond between them.”

“And your Aunt Amelia’s married life wasn’t particularly happy?”

“I’m sure I couldn’t tell you, Donald. I didn’t see too much of her. She irritated me and — well, that’s the way it is. I do know that Aunt Amelia always wanted to be free. She was looking for romance.”

I got up and moved over to look out of the window, lit a cigarette, paced the floor for a few minutes, then went back and sat down.

“Why do you think my aunt was being blackmailed?”

“Because I think Tom Durham was a blackmailer.”

Claire Bushnell said, “Well, I don’t know as there’s any way that we can find out anything about it. Of course... Well, come to think of it, there was something rather peculiar about my uncle’s death; that is, it was sudden, and Aunt Amelia didn’t seem to have any of the symptoms that he had. I remember she said she had been a little ill, but, to tell you the truth, I didn’t think too much about it.”

I said, “Minerva Carlton was being blackmailed. That is, someone was putting a bite on her. I think it was Tom Durham. I think she also found out that Tom was trying to blackmail your aunt. I think she wanted to find out all she could about Tom, and, because Tom was trying to bleed your aunt white, it gave Minerva a good opening to get a private detective agency to work on the job through you.”

“What makes you think Minerva was being blackmailed?”

I said, “Everything points to it. I…”

The bell rang.

I said, “Let it ring for a while. Try not answering it.”

Whoever was downstairs kept playing a persistent, steady tune on the door-bell.

After a while I said, “Okay, find out who it is. If it’s the police you’ll have to let them in. Can you lie about my being here?”

“Like a trooper,” she said, picking up the cigarette ends I had left in the ash-tray and with the tip of her finger putting little smears of lipstick on the ends.

I laughed, and said, “You must have been caught in that trap before.”

“What trap?”

“Having cigarette ends in an ash-tray that didn’t have lipstick on them.”

“Is that nice?” she asked, pouting.

“No,” I said.

She went over to the speaking tube and whistled down. “Who is it?” she asked.

Bertha Cool’s voice came booming up the speaking tube. “This is Bertha Cool. I want to see you right away!”

Claire Bushnell looked at me questioningly.

I said, “Wait a minute. Tell her you’re... No, that’s all right. Tell her to come up.”

Claire pushed the electric door release. “Now what do you do?” she asked. “Hide?”

I nodded. “I’ll be in the cupboard back of the wall-bed. Tell Bertha you haven’t seen me.”

“Okay,” she said.

I moved over to the door which concealed the wall-bed, pushed it open, stepped inside, and Claire Bushnell pushed the door to. I heard the latch click into place.

A few moments later I heard Bertha Cool’s voice. “Hello, Miss Bushnell.”

“Hello, Mrs. Cool. What brings you here?”

“We’re working on a case for you. Remember?”

“Yes indeed. Do come in and sit down.”

I heard the floor creak with Bertha’s weight moving across it, then she settled herself in a chair with a plunk and said, “Your cheque bounced, dearie.”

“What do you mean?”

“The cheque that you gave us for two hundred dollars. It wasn’t any good. Damn it, I told Donald to tell you. I thought I’d find him here.”

“Why, it must have been good. I had money in the bank.”

“The bank says you didn’t. The bank says a cheque that you had thought was deposited was taken for collection. It was a cheque on an out-of-the-state bank. It was no good, so they debited your account.”

“Well, I like that! That cheque is just as good as gold.”

“Whose cheque was it?” -

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, Mrs. Cool, but I’ll certainly be glad to go to the bank with you.”

I couldn’t see Claire Bushnell’s facial expression, but the tone of her voice was perfect. She was a darned good little actress. Thinking back on the smooth manner in which she’d smeared lipstick on the ends of my cigarette stubs, I began to wonder just how much experience our client had had in the art of deception.

“We want you to make that cheque good,” Bertha said.

“But the cheque is good, Mrs. Cool.”

“The bank says it isn’t.”

“Well, I’ll take that up with the bank.”

“I don’t give a damn who you take it up with or what you have to say,” Bertha said vehemently, “but before I leave, I want something that’ll balance that two-hundred-dollar red-ink entry on our bank account, because I deposited your cheque in good faith.”

“Well, of course I... if the person who gave me the cheque... well... that would leave me in a position where I’d be temporarily financially embarrassed.”

“You will be embarrassed in a lot more ways than that if you don’t meet that cheque,” Bertha Cool said grimly.

“But I’m sorry, Mrs. Cool, I haven’t a thing.”

“The hell you haven’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Be your age, dearie,” Bertha said. “Go to your boy friend and…”

“I haven’t a boy friend.”

“Get one, then.”

“I...I... well, you see, I…”

“You haven’t seen Donald Lam today, have you?”

“No.”

“My God,” Bertha said, “What a mess! The police are spreading it all over the country that he’s guilty of a sex murder. The little stinker!”

“Oh, no!” Claire Bushnell exclaimed.

“That’s right. This girl who was choked to death with her own stocking, lying half-nude on the bedroom floor.”

“Why, Mr. Lam seemed like a — why, I wouldn’t have thought anything like that of him.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Bertha said judicially. “I’ve always been fond of him, all right, but there’s something wrong with him. Women throw themselves at him and he doesn’t go overboard the way he should. Come to think of it — well, looking back on things, I am starting to wonder a little bit.”

“Why, Mrs. Cool! How can you say anything like that about your partner?”

“Damned if I know,” Bertha said. “I’m just talking.”

“Weren’t you working on a lot of cases together?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, couldn’t you tell from the way he acted?”

“Hell’s bells,” Bertha said, “our arrangement was a business partnership. I didn’t sleep with him.”

“That isn’t what I meant,” Claire Bushnell said.

“Well, I thought I’d head you off,” Bertha said, “because that’s what you were going to get around to. So you haven’t seen him?”

“No. Have you been in your office, Mrs. Cool?”

“Off and on,” Bertha said. “I had to go out to San Robles on a job there. I kept the radio tuned in on the news broadcast and heard about Donald on the radio. I came back to the office, and everybody had heard it. The girls were having hysterics.”

“What girls?”

“The secretaries,” Bertha said. “That Elsie Brand, the one that’s Donald’s private secretary, was fighting mad. She was white-faced she was so damn indignant. She said that she’d stake her life Donald was absolutely innocent, said she’d buy him a dozen stockings and turn out the lights with him any time.”

Claire Bushnell took advantage of the situation to rub it in on me. She said musingly, “Well, of course, there is something funny. I had a talk with Mr. Lam yesterday. He came in the apartment and caught me rather informally.”

The bell rang again insistently, stridently, and kept on ringing. Claire Bushnell went over to the speaking tube. I heard her say, “Who is it?” then there was a long moment of silence.

“Well, who was it?” Bertha Cool said. “My God, you’re white as a sheet.”

“A man by the name of Sellers,” she said, “Sergeant Sellers, of the police.”

“That’ll be Frank,” Bertha said. “He’s a good egg. He’s on Homicide. I wonder what the hell he’s doing here.”

I sat tight. A few moments later I heard the bang of Sellers’s imperative knuckles on the apartment door, and then Claire went across and opened it. Sellers said, “You’re Claire Bushnell?”

“That’s right.”

“Hello, Frank,” Bertha said.

“Hel-lo, Bertha!” Sellers exclaimed. “I sure hated to do it, Bertha, but that’s the way the chips fell.”

“Well, I don’t blame you,” Bertha said. “If what I heard over the radio is right, I guess the little bastard is caught dead to rights. I guess that’s been the trouble with him all along. One of those over-developed brains. He always did keep to himself, sort of.”

“Never had any normal relations with women?” Sellers asked.

“How the hell would I know?” Bertha demanded truculently. “Women fall all over themselves falling in love with him... Take that little secretary he’s got. She’s nuts over him, and Donald treats her as though she might be his kid sister. Her eyes light up like automobile headlights every time he comes into the room. She follows him all around with those eyes. Donald doesn’t even seem to notice it. But he’s always been nice to her, always tried to give her the breaks. He fought to get her raises in salary and make the work easier for her.”

“Typical symptoms,” Sellers said with all the smug finality of an amateur psychoanalyst. “Hell, I should have smelled it a long time ago.”

“May I ask what you’re talking about?” Claire Bushnell said.

“Her partner, Donald Lam,” Sellers said. “He’s a murderer — sex murder. What do you know about him?”

“Why, I’ve met him,” Claire Bushnell said.

Sellers said, “Hell, let’s quit beating around the bush. Where is he?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” Sellers said. “You’ve got him up here, hiding.”

“Why, what are you talking about?” Claire Bushnell exclaimed indignantly.

“Phooey,” Sellers said. “I knew damn well that as soon as this thing broke Donald would be too smart to come to the office. He’d go some place where he didn’t think anybody would look for him and telephone Bertha to come and join him, so I simply stuck around and shadowed Bertha. When she started out here, I tagged along. I knew damn well she came out here to meet Donald Lam. He’s either here now or else he’s going to come in later and meet Bertha Cool.”

Bertha said, “You’re nuts, Frank, I haven’t talked with Donald. I don’t know where the hell the little runt is.”

“You’re not kidding me a damn bit, Bertha,” Sellers answered. “You may think he’s a murderer or you may not, but you’ve got business together and you sure as hell aren’t going to let him get locked up until you’ve had a chance to find out everything he knows about that case he’s working on, so you can carry on and make some mazuma out of it.”

Bertha said, “It would have been a good idea; if I’d known where to get in touch with him I would have. I came out here because this little lady gave us a two-hundred-dollar cheque that bounced.”

“Yeah, I know,” Sellers said. “I’ll just look around.”

“Look around,” Bertha Cool told him. “If you want to make a bet, I’ll bet you don’t find him, because he isn’t here.”

“What’ll you bet?” Sellers asked.

“Fifty bucks,” Bertha said quickly. “Come on, is it a go?”

I could see that that bothered Sellers. He hesitated for a minute then said, “I’m not betting, but I’m taking a look around, just the same.”

“You can’t search my apartment,” Claire Bushnell said.

“Oh, oh,” Sellers observed. “That’s the pay off.”

“Well, you can’t. You haven’t a warrant and you just can’t come barging in here. How do I know you’re an officer?”

“Bertha knows I’m an officer,” Sellers said. “Why don’t you want me to search the place, sister?”

“Because it’s my place. I don’t like the idea of police barging in here and going through it just any time they happen to feel like it.”

“Still want to bet?” Sellers asked Bertha.

There was a long interval of silence, then Bertha said dubiously, “I’ll bet you ten bucks.”

“Make it twenty-five,” Sellers said.

“No, ten,” Bertha said. “That’s my limit.”

“You’ve come down forty bucks.”

“You’ve changed your tune,” Bertha told him.

“Okay,” Sellers said, “I’ll bet you ten bucks. Get out of my way, sister. What’s behind this door?”

I could hear her struggling with Sellers. Sellers merely laughed.

“Damn you!” she panted. “You can’t do that. You…”

“Out of the way, sister, out of the way,” Sellers said.

The door latch clicked. The door swung open and the wall-bed pushed me out to one side.

“Well, well, well,” Sellers said. “First rattle out of the box. Come on out, Lam.”

I walked out into the room.

Bertha jumped up, her eyes blazing. “Why, you damned little son-of-a-bitch!” she screamed at me. “You’ve cost me ten bucks!”

Frank Sellers threw back his head and roared with laughter. “This is good,” he said. “This really is good.”

“Why, you ungrateful little…” Bertha’s voice choked with emotion.

Claire looked at me helplessly.

I said, “It’s all right, Claire. I’m sorry. I came up the stairs. You must have been out telephoning or something. The door was open. I came in here and waited for you to come back and then the door-bell began to ring. I didn’t know who it was so I slipped in here and pulled the door shut behind me.”

Sellers said, “You must have got here just before Bertha did, then.”

“That’s right,” I said.

Sellers quit laughing. He got up off the sofa, walked over to the door and said, “Show me how you pulled this thing shut after you got in there, Lam.”

I knew I was trapped. There wasn’t any handle on the inside of the door.

Sellers grinned, and said, “That makes it nice. Stick your wrists out, Donald.”

“Wait a minute, Frank. I want to go over this…”

“Stick your wrists out,” he said, his voice suddenly ringing with brutalized authority.

I knew that tone of voice. T knew the gleam in his eyes. I put my wrists out and Sellers snapped on handcuffs, then he searched me for weapons and said, “All right, now sit down. If you have any talking to do, start talking. You’re under arrest. You’re charged with the murder of Lucille Hollister. Anything you say can be used against you. Now talk your damn head off, if you want to.”

I said, “I didn’t kill her.”

“Yeah, I know. You just came in and found her dead and smeared lipstick all over your mouth and then went into the other kid’s bedroom and waited for her. I’d never have thought it of you, Donald. I always knew you were a queer piece of fish, but I never thought you were like that.”

I said, “Let’s go back to the beginning on this thing, Sellers.”

“Oh, nuts,” Sellers said, and then added hastily, “But go ahead. Keep talking.”

I said, “All you’re listening for is for me to say something that will incriminate me. Now, give a guy a break. Get your mind free and clear of all that prejudice. Forget you’re a cop and let’s see what we can make of this.”

“It’s your party,” Sellers said. “Go ahead and serve the refreshments.”

I said, “Let’s go into the history of this thing, Sellers. Lucille Hollister was crazy about her young sister, Rosalind. Rosalind was in love with Stanwick Carlton. Stanwick Carlton’s wife may have done a little playing around. Lucille thought she did, anyway. She wanted to bust up Stanwick’s marriage.”

“Who told you all this?” Sellers asked.

“Lucille.”

“When?”

“Just before she died.”

Sellers’ eyes lit up with the gleam of a hunter finding a fresh trail. “So you admit you were in the bedroom with her just before she died.”

I looked him in the eyes and said, “Yes.”

“Why did you kill her, Donald? Was it a sex murder?”

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “In the first place, I didn’t kill her. In the second place, it wasn’t a sex murder. Someone killed her to keep her from talking.”

“About what?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, what I’m trying to find out.”

“Go ahead,” Sellers said, and then turned to Claire Bushnell. “You heard him admit that he was with her just, before she died.”

Claire Bushnell, white-faced, tense, nodded.

I said, “That accounts for Lucille Hollister. She was trailing Minerva Carlton, but on this trip Minerva Carlton wasn’t playing around.”

“I see,” Sellers said sarcastically. “She went in that auto camp with Dover Fulton because he wanted to teach her how to play tiddlywinks, and she took her blouse off so the sleeves wouldn’t get wrinkled.”

I said, “Minerva Carlton was playing a deep game. She came to Claire Bushnell, here, and gave her a cheque for five hundred dollars and instructions as to what Claire was to do. Claire was to get Bertha Cool to find out about a man who was calling on Claire Bushnell’s aunt.”

Sellers glanced at Claire Bushnell.

She nodded.

Sellers, interested now, said, “Go ahead, Lam. What’s the sketch?”

I said, “I got on the job. I shadowed this man to the Westchester Arms Hotel. He was staying there. He was registered under the name of Tom Durham — now why do you suppose Minerva Carlton wanted him shadowed?”

“Hell, I don’t know,” Sellers said. “I’m not a mind reader.”

I said, “When Lucille Hollister went to the motor court with me, she opened her purse and took out a packet of cigarettes and some matches. She left both cigarettes and matches on the table. The matches had the imprint of the Cabanita Club.”

“So what?” Sellers asked.

“And,” I went on, “when she took out the cigarettes she had evidently forgotten that she had used the cigarette packet as concealment for a little piece of paper. It was a piece that had been torn from the menu of the Cabanita Club, and on it had been written, KOZY DELL SLUMBER COURT.”

“And that was the place where Lucille Hollister steered you?” Sellers asked.

“That’s right.”

“The place where Dover Fulton and Minerva Carlton committed suicide?”

“The place where they were murdered,” I corrected.

Sellers said, “Well, well, the party’s perking up. You mean they were murdered, with the door locked from the inside?”

“That’s right.”

“Keep talking,” Sellers said. “We may have you on two or more counts of murder, just in case we can’t convict you on the first one.”

I said, “The door was locked from the inside, all right, but who knows when it was locked?”

“What are you getting at?”

I said, “There were several shots fired.”

“That’s right. One in the suitcase, one in Dover Fulton, one in Minerva Carlton.”

“That’s four,” I said.

“Four!” Sellers said. “Are you nuts? That’s three.”

“Four.”

Sellers said, “What are you trying to do, start an argument?”

“How many shells were fired out of Dover Fulton’s gun?”

“Three.”

“Only two loaded shells were left.”

“Well, that’s because he usually carried it with an empty space in the cylinder under the hammer. Lots of people do that because it’s safer.”

“So there was one empty chamber, three fired shells, and two full shells in Dover Fulton’s gun.”

“That’s right.”

“Four shells were fired,” I said.

Sellers began to look at me with a certain element of respect. “Of course, Lam,” he said, “you could be right. What do you know about it?”

I said, “I putting two and two together.”

“And making four,” Sellers said, grinning at his own joke.

“And making four,” I told him. “If Dover Fulton had been shooting the gun in a suicide-pact, how could he have fired the shot into the suitcase?”

“He could have shot at the girl and missed her the first shot.”

“Missed her by that wide range? The suitcase was down on the floor.”

“Hell,” Sellers said, “she could have been bending over by the suitcase, just getting ready to put something in it, and he decided he’d surprise her.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “She’s down by the suitcase, on her knees, just getting ready to open it. Dover Fulton shoots at the back of her head. He’s going to catch her by surprise.”

“Well,” Sellers said, “it could have been that way.”

I said, “All right, figure the surprise element. Then what does she do?”

“Well, naturally, she’d jump up.”

“And turn to face him,” I said.

“Well, so what?”

“Then the second shot would have been in the front of her forehead.”

“Not necessarily. She turned to face him, then saw what was happening and started to run.”

“And then he shot her right in the back of the head.”

“That’s right.”

“In other words,” I said, “he misses her slick and clean when she’s down on her knees and he’s standing right close behind her, but when she jumps up and starts to run, he makes a perfect bull’s-eye.”

Sellers scratched his head and said, “Well, hell, I don’t know what happened, but that’s an explanation.”

“It’s an explanation that doesn’t explain,” I said. “I’ll tell you what happened: There were three shots fired in that room. The other person who was in there knew he had to account for three shots. He wasn’t in a position to account for them, so he picked up the gun and the suitcase. He carried both of them off, far enough away so the report wouldn’t be heard. Then he fired a bullet into the suitcase. Then he brought the suitcase back to the cabin, left the suitcase, planted the gun in Dover Fulton’s hand, locked the door from the inside and climbed out of the window.”

“I don’t get you,” Sellers said. “Why did he go to all that trouble? Why did he do all that?”

“Because he had to account for the third bullet. He had to put it in the suitcase.”

“But that makes four bullets, the way you’re talking now,” Sellers said.

“Exactly.”

“And why did he have to shoot a fourth bullet in order to account for the third bullet?”

“Because,” I said, “he was wearing the third bullet.”

Sellers looked at me for four or five seconds, his eyes blinking as he tried to digest the idea. Then he said, “It’s a theory, all right. Nothing but a theory, but it’s a theory.”

I said, “There’s a lot more to it than a theory. Where were the woman’s clothes when you found the bodies?”

“Part of them were on and the rest of them were — let’s see, I guess the rest of them were in the suitcase.”

I said, “That does it. A woman who is undressing in a motor court on a week-end party wouldn’t take off her blouse, roll it up and then jam it in the suitcase. At the time of the shooting, that suitcase was lying open. Her blouse was on the chair by the suitcase. The murderer got in a panic and wadded that blouse into a bundle and jammed it in the suitcase, then closed the suitcase.”

“You seem to know a lot about it,” Sellers said, and then added significantly, “You should. You were there, camped in the motor court at the time.”

Sellers thought that over, then said suddenly, “By gosh, we’re beginning to get somewhere now! I want you folks to remember every word this guy’s saying. He was there at the time. If it was a murder, he did it.”

“I didn’t do it,” I said, “because I’m not wearing that third bullet.”

I said, “Take a look at the photos that show the interior of that room where the bodies were found. Look at the towels hanging on the towel rack.”

“What about them?”

“One bath-towel,” I said, “two hand-towels.”

“Well?”

“Standard equipment is two bath-towels and two hand-towels. What happened to the other bath-towel?”

“Hell, I don’t know,” Sellers said. “It’s not up to us to go around checking linen.”

I said, “The murderer had been wounded, and the murderer wrapped a bath-towel around the wound to stop the bleeding. It probably didn’t bleed too much, but that’s what the bath-towel was used for.”

Sellers said, “It’s a wild theory, Lam. Just a wild, wild theory.”

“Sure, it is, but it’s worth investigating.”

“You’re damn right it’s worth investigating,” Bertha Cool said. “Think of what it does to the insurance company, Frank.”

“How come?” Sellers asked.

“Suicide within a year, the policies don’t pay anything,” Bertha pointed out, greedily. “Death not by suicide, they pay forty thousand dollars; death by accidental means gives them double indemnity or eighty thousand bucks.”

Sellers whistled.

Bertha said, “We’re in on that — that is, I’m in on it.”

“Go ahead,” Sellers said to me, “keep talking, Lam.”

I said, “It wasn’t a love-nest affair at all. Minerva Carlton was being blackmailed. The blackmailer wanted a big shakedown, too much for her to pay. If he didn’t get it, he threatened to go to her husband and spill the beans.”

“If she was being blackmailed, that’s probably the way it was,” Sellers said.

I said, “She decided to slip a fast one over on the blackmailer. She went to Dover Fulton. He had been her former boss. She liked him. She may have been sweet on him at one time, I don’t know. But anyway she went to him, and they agreed to fix things up so that Dover Fulton posed as her husband. The blackmailer had never seen Stanwick Carlton. Fulton posed as Stanwick Carlton, probably said in effect, ‘So what? My wife’s been indiscreet, but I forgive her!’ So they kissed and made up in front of the blackmailer, and Fulton who was posing as Stanwick Carlton, said, ‘Now go jump in the lake!’ ”

“Could be,” Sellers said after thinking it over. “You’d want proof.”

I said, “I was trying to get proof when you put these on me.” I held out my hands with the handcuffs on them.

“You’re damn right I put them on you,” Sellers said. “You were caught redhanded in a murder.”

“I didn’t kill her.”

“Then you shouldn’t have run away, my lad. You know what happens when you try to make a break for it. You thought you could walk out and get by with it. You didn’t think anyone who had seen you could identify you. But I just happened to play a smart hunch. I remembered the description of the little blonde number you gave me tallied absolutely with the dead girl. I got—”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “It all came over the radio.”

Sellers glared at me. “And I checked up on the book, incidentally, and your fingerprints are all over the cellophane cover.”

“Sure,” I said. “I was out there.”

“That’s the second time he’s admitted it,” Sellers said to Bertha Cool and Claire Bushnell. “Remember it.”

I said, “There’s pretty good reason to believe that whatever the blackmail consisted of, it centered around the Cabanita Club. You know what happens around those places. The playboys go out when they’re on the loose. Occasionally some smart egg with a good memory and an eye for faces sticks around and gets a line on who’s doing the celebrating. If it happens to be a married man from out of town, or someone who lives in the city and is doing a little week-end playing, the blackmailers look them over. Nearly all of those places have blackmailers who hang around, or, I’ll put it another way: Lots of blackmailers drop around to those places and keep looking the crowd over, trying to pick up the licence number on an automobile, or something that’ll mean a little cash. It’s usually a job of slim pickings, but I think that this blackmail centers around the Cabanita outfit. I think that Tom Durham is mixed up in it, and I think that Bob Elgin knows who Tom Durham is and where he can be found.”

“Durham was staying at the Westchester Arms Hotel. He checked out right after the killing. I thought at the time it was because he’d found out I was shadowing him. I think now it was because he knew there’d been a shooting. I’d like to look him over. We might find a .32 bullet parked somewhere in his anatomy.”

Sellers said, “Okay, I’ll keep it in mind and see what can be done.”

I said, “I started prowling around the Cabanita last night. I started getting pictures that had been taken. People didn’t like it. They tried to work me over. I barely squeezed out from under a good beating. I had some pictures and an address. The address was that of the blonde girl who was killed last night. I went out there to check, to find out what was at that address. I found out. Somebody was following me, or else someone knew I was going to be there.”

“That’s what you say,” Sellers said.

“And that,” I told him, “is why I want you to get this thing cleared up. It’s my only chance for my white alley. Let’s go down and talk with Claire Bushnell’s aunt before she has a chance to think up a good story. She was being blackmailed. I think the blackmailer would keep in touch with her, probably by telephone. I don’t think Tom Durham is doing much travelling around today, because I think he’s got a .32 bullet in him somewhere. All you need to do is to stop by Amelia Jasper’s house on the road to headquarters and give her a grilling.”

“Yeah, and lose my badge for it,” Sellers said. “What do you think I am? A sucker that’s going to break in on somebody’s rich aunt and say, ‘Look here, Madam, you’re being blackmailed’?”

I said, “You’re going to let me do that. I wouldn’t ask you to do it. All you need to do is to sit and listen.”

Sellers thought it over, then shook his head and said, “It’s a gag. You’re going to headquarters.”

“By that time the trail will be cold and you’ll never find out anything.”

“I’ve caught me a murderer,” Sellers said, grinning with self-satisfaction. “That’s all right for one day’s work. Come on.”

Bertha said, “For the love of Mike, Frank, give me a break. You’re busting up my partnership and smearing the thing with a lot of publicity that’s going to cost me all kinds of dough. I’m on the trail of an eighty-thousand-dollar insurance job. If what Donald says is right, I stand a chance of throwing the hooks into the insurance company and cleaning up a little gravy.”

Frank Sellers hesitated. At length he said to me, “If you doublecross me on this thing I…”

“Since when did anybody doublecross you?” Bertha demanded.

Sellers looked at me and frowned. “It’s not you, Bertha. It’s this guy. You never know what he’s figuring.”

I held out my manacled wrists, and said sarcastically, “Yeah, it looks like I’m smart.”

Bertha said. “We could give you a cut in case we…”

“Don’t be a fool, Bertha,” I interrupted. “Frank isn’t thinking about money.”

Sellers gave me a grateful look.

I said, “You have an opportunity to straighten up that killing out at the KOZY DELL SLUMBER COURT. You have an opportunity to put a whole bevy of feathers in your cap. You have a chance to break up a blackmailing ring, and you have a chance to show how that Hollister girl was actually killed, why she was killed and who killed her.”

“A lot of people would say I had the answer to that last right here, right now,” Sellers said, but his tone lacked the positive conviction he had shown earlier.

“And,” I went on, “you’ve got a widow out there in San Robles who has two kids. Those kids have got to grow up, they’ve got to go to school. They’ve got to go through college, if they really want to make a dent in the world. It takes education these days, and education takes money. There’s a woman out there who doesn’t know where her next dime is coming from. Now, then, if you could play things my way, and she could have eighty thousand bucks…”

“You’ve made a sale,” Sellers said. “Let’s go.”

We all got up, and I said, “What about the handcuffs?”

“Just let them ride,” Sellers grinned. “Don’t bother about them. You can walk all right if you just keep your hands in front of you and right close to your belt.”

“I could do a lot more good if you would take them off.”

“Good for whom?” he jibed.

“The trouble with you is you have the mind of a cop. Come on, let’s go.”

We piled into the lift, rattled down to the ground floor, and then all climbed into Frank Sellers’ police car.

“What’s the address?” Sellers asked.

“226 Korreander,” Claire Bushnell said.

Sellers pushed the car into speed.

I said, “You’ll do better if you don’t use the siren.”

Sellers gave me a withering glance, then devoted his attention to driving.

He slowed the car to a conservative thirty miles an hour before we got to the two hundred block on Korreander, then slid to a stop in front of the white stucco house.

We all piled out and trooped up the stairs to the porch. Sellers rang the bell.

Susie, the loose-jointed maid, came striding deliberately down the hallway. She opened the door, and for a moment I thought she recoiled at the sight of Frank Sellers. Then she let her face petrify in expressionless lines of wooden indifference.

“Hello, Susie,” Claire said. “Is Aunt Amelia in?”

The maid hesitated.

Frank Sellers pulled back his coat, showed his star. “She in?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Come on,” Sellers said, and pushed his way in, without waiting for any announcement to be made.

Susie glowered at him, but stood helplessly where she had been pushed to one side. Just before we got to the living-room her presence of mind reasserted itself and she raised her voice and called in a high, shrill tone, “Oh, Mrs. Jasper! Claire and the police are here to see you.”

Sellers, with one hand gripping my arm, pushed the door open with his left hand and we entered the sitting-room.

Amelia Jasper looked up from her wheel chair and transfixed us with her most winning smile. “How do you do!” she said. “Won’t you all be seated? Hello, Claire, honey. How are you today, dear?”

“Fine, thank you.”

“Well, since I can’t get up you’ll have to act as hostess, Claire. That sciatica again, a flare-up from that horrid automobile accident. I do wish I could do something to get over the pain. I’ve taken aspirin until I’m sick — but do sit down. Pardon me if I seem a little groggy. I’ve taken so much drug.”

Her eyes fluttered half-shut, then she caught herself and raised the lids.

We started to sit down, and then she caught sight of the handcuffs. “Why, Mr. Lam!” she said, and then added, “Surely you’re not... Why…”

Susie Irwin, the maid, finished the sentence from the doorway. “I heard about it on the radio, ma’am. I wasn’t going to say anything. He’s the one that killed that Lucille Hollister last night. You remember you were reading about it in the papers, the stocking murder.”

“Donald Lam killed her!” Amelia Jasper exclaimed, incredulously. “Why, I thought he was so nice. Why... Why... And you bring him here!”

“In order to try and clear up a couple of angles of the case,” Sergeant Sellers apologised.

“Well, I don’t want that man in my house. I don’t want to be near him. I read all about that crime in the newspapers, the horrible, sickening details. I... I’m sorry, but I just…”

“Just a couple of questions, Aunt Amelia,” Claire said. “Just a few things that the police want to clear up. If you can answer the questions quickly, why then they’ll be out that much sooner.”

“Well, I don’t want them here at all,” Amelia Jasper snapped. “And what possible questions could I answer? I saw this man just once when—”

Sergeant Sellers interrupted, “We want to know something about a man by the name of Durham.”

“What about him?” Amelia Jasper demanded truculently.

“We thought that there might be some connection between him and this man, Lam.”

“Well, there certainly isn’t,” Amelia Jasper said. “Mr. Durham is a very nice young man.”

“How long since you’ve seen him?” I asked.

She glared at me and said, “I don’t have to answer your questions.”

I said, “The reason I’m asking is because I think Durham may have been mixed up in some trouble out at the KOZY DELL SLUMBER COURT.”

She tilted her chin in the air, and ignored me.

“And,” I went on, “I think he’s a blackmailer.”

“A blackmailer!” she said scornfully.

“Has he been blackmailing you?” I asked.

She ignored the question.

“Has he?” Sellers asked, bluntly.

“I don’t see why I should answer a lot of questions about my personal affairs in front of a man who is the lowest type of murderer, a man who tried to insinuate himself into this household under the guise of being a writer who was going to help me get satisfaction from the insurance company. Good Heavens, it’s just the biggest wonder that I’m not lying there on the floor with a stocking around my neck!”

“Was Durham trying to blackmail you?” I interrupted. She ignored me.

“Was he?” Sellers asked.

“I don’t know what gave you that idea.”

I said, “If he wasn’t blackmailing you, what did he want? Come on, let’s not stall around. Give a straightforward answer. What was he doing here?”

She said, “We had some business that we were talking over.”

“What sort of business?” I asked.

“A mine,” she said.

“What kind of a mine?”

“A lead mine.”

“Located where?”

“Colorado.”

“Are you sure it was a lead mine?” I asked, and managed a triumphant smile.

That smile bothered her. She thought she’d walked into a trap. “Well,” she said, “there was lead in it, mixed with the gold.”

“Well, which did you intend to make the money out of, the lead or the gold?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t follow it that far. I didn’t go into it that deeply.”

“Then you weren’t interested in making an investment?”

“No.”

“Then, why did you see so much of Durham? Why had he been coming back here? Why...?”

“I’m not going to be cross-examined by you in my own home,” she said. “This is outrageous! Sergeant, I’m going to report you for this.”

Sellers squirmed uncomfortably.

She turned on me, “You’re a horrible beast!” Then she swung back to Sellers and shuddered. “A sweet little girl like that, and at the very moment she was putting her hands up to his cheeks to draw his head down so she could kiss him, and he—”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “How did you know she put her hands up to my cheeks to draw my face down to kiss her?”

“It said so on the radio.”

“No, it didn’t. How do you know? And it wasn’t in the papers either.”

I leaned forward in my chair to hold her eyes.

She became confused. “I don’t know,” she said. “I told you I’d taken so much dope, I…”

“I told you,” Susie Irwin said. “I heard it on the radio.”

“And how did you hear it on the radio?” I said. “Where was the announcer concealed? How did he know how I was kissed?”

“I guess the police made the announcement. I don’t know. Probably they had some witness.”

“That’s right,” Amelia Jasper said. “Susie told me.”

I settled back in the chair, and said, “That does it. I’ve been dumb.”

“What does what?” Sellers said, irritably. “And as far as being dumb is concerned, I’m the one that stuck my head into a noose.”

I said, “Don’t you get it now?”

“Get what?”

I said, “Durham was a blackmailer, all right, but he wasn’t the brains of the outfit, and he wasn’t blackmailing this woman. Get a doctor out here and take a look at that sciatic rheumatism of hers and you’ll find it’s caused by a .32-calibre bullet.”

Amelia Jasper screamed angrily. “Take that man out of here! I demand it.”

“Go on,” I said. “Get a doctor.”

Sellers hesitated a moment, then said, “You’re nuts, Lam. You can’t pull things like that. You’re talking in order to get yourself an out.”

“Don’t be a fool,” I told him. “You can see the whole play now. The sudden flare-up of sciatic rheumatism is due to the fact that the first shot that was fired in the KOZY DELL SLUMBER COURT went into her hip.”

“Sergeant,” Amelia Jasper said, her face a mask of fury, “I demand that you all leave my house immediately. I have stood all the insults I intend to take. Susie, will you go to the telephone and telephone police headquarters in the event…”

“I’m sorry,” Frank Sellers apologised.

He reached over, caught my coat collar and jerked me to my feet. “Come on, Lam. You’ve masterminded me into a helluva situation. On your way. This is what comes of trying to give you and Bertha a break.”

He slammed me around until I started to fall and I unconsciously flung out my hands to catch myself. The steel of the handcuffs bit into my wrist, made me numb with the pain.

Sellers said, “I hope you’ll excuse it, please, Mrs. Jasper. I was just trying to get the case cleared up. This fellow sold me a bill of goods.”

“Open the door for them, Susie,” Mrs. Jasper commanded.

The maid strode down the corridor.

I turned to Sellers, and said, “You damn fool. Can’t you see what happened? She…”

Sellers slapped me across the mouth. “Shut up!”

He started me down the corridor. Claire Bushnell was crying.

Bertha Cool came lumbering along in the rear. Susie stood triumphantly in the doorway, holding it open.

I turned my head and said, pleadingly, “Bertha.”

Sellers slapped the side of my head so hard he almost broke my neck.

But in that brief glimpse I had behind me, I had seen Bertha Cool turning back.

We were half-way to the front door when the scream came from the living-room. Then there was the sound of a chair overturning, the sound of struggle, another scream, and Amelia Jasper was crying for help.

Bertha Cool’s voice said, “That does it. You damn liar. Keep still or I’ll break your neck… Frank, come back here!”

Sellers hesitated for just a moment, then spun me around and pushed me down the corridor at a run.

The wheel-chair had skidded to one side of the room and tilted over to its side. A bloodstained bandage was unwound and lying on the floor. Bertha was calmly sitting on Amelia Jasper’s shoulders, holding one leg in the grip of iron.

Amelia Jasper was kicking with the other leg, screaming and shouting for help.

Sellers shouted, “You can’t do this, Bertha. You can’t do it.”

“The hell I can’t,” Bertha said grimly. “I’ve done it. Look at the bullet hole.”

Sellers grabbed Bertha’s shoulders. “Let her up, Bertha. You can’t do that.”

Bertha said, “I tell you, I’ve done it.”

Sellers grabbed Bertha’s shoulders and tried to move her.

She gave him a push that threw him off balance, and he swung around crazily for a minute, trying to regain it.

In the doorway, Susie Irwin, the maid, stood grimly efficient, holding a blue-steel revolver. “Put your hands up, everybody,” she said.

The grim, sinister purpose of her voice knifed through to everyone’s consciousness.

“That means you, too, Sergeant,” she said. “Get ’em up.”

Sellers turned too quickly, and Susie Irwin pulled the trigger. The room was filled with sound, and Sellers, as one dazed, looked at the blood streaming down from his shattered right hand.

The grim reality of the situation suddenly impressed itself on everyone. Susie Irwin meant business.

Amelia Jasper struggled to her feet.

“Come on Amelia,” Susie said.

Amelia ran, a hobbling, one-sided gait. Quite evidently every step was painful.

Sellers tried reaching for his gun with his left hand. He couldn’t make it. Bertha Cool lumbered to her feet and charged down the corridor like a tank going into battle.

Susie Irwin stopped at the front door, turned, and took deliberate aim.

I stuck out my foot and tripped Bertha Cool. She went down with a bang that shook the house. Susie Irwin pulled the trigger, and the bullet went swishing through the air right where Bertha Cool’s ample chest would have been if I hadn’t tripped her.

The front door banged.

There was the sound of a motor.

Sergeant Sellers yelled at Bertha, “Get my gun out of the holster over on the right, put it in my left hand.”

Claire Bushnell was the one who got his gun out for him. Sellers, holding the gun in his left hand, dashed to the open front door.

He was in time to see the tail end of his police car skidding around the corner.

He stood dazed, angry and swearing. Then he turned to me, “You’re responsible for this. I’ll be the laughing stock of…”

“Shut up,” I told him. “Take these handcuffs off and start broadcasting an alarm. You’re on the verge of promotion and you’re too dumb to realise it.”