Beware the Curves

Chapter 8

I woke up about one-thirty and had trouble getting back to sleep. A whole series of events were chasing around in my mind trying to fit themselves into a pattern.

Three or four times I would doze off, only to waken with a start as all of the various ideas started chasing each other around like puppies at play. Finally about two-thirty I slipped into fitful sleep. It was broken by dreams and finally shattered by the ringing of the telephone bell.

I groped for the receiver.

Bertha Cool was on the line. I knew by the tone of her voice that we’d struck pay dirt.

“Donald,” she said in her most cooing voice, but mouthing the words as though each one had been a dollar rung up in the cash register, “Bertha hates to bother you at night, but could you get dressed and hurry to the office?”

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I can’t explain, Donald, but we have a client who is in very great trouble. We—”

I said, “Listen, Bertha, are you dealing with the man who was arrested, with the woman who was with him, or with some lawyer?”

“The second,” she said.

“I’ll be right up. Where are you now?”

“I’m at the office, Donald. It’s the strangest, the weirdest story you ever heard in your life.”

“Mrs. Endicott there with you?”

“Yes,” Bertha said shortly.

“I’ll be up.”

I tumbled out of bed, into a shower, hit the high spots with an electric razor, jumped into clothes and drove through deserted streets to the office building.

The night janitor was accustomed to the crazy goings-on of a detective agency. He grumbled a bit about people who tried to run offices on a twenty-four-hour basis, but took me up.

I latch-keyed the door and went on in to Bertha’s private office.

Bertha was being very maternal to a sad-eyed woman around thirty, who was sitting perfectly still in the chair, but who had been twisting her gloves until they looked like a piece of rope.

Bertha beamed. “This is Mrs. Endicott, Donald.”

“How do you do, Mrs. Endicott,” I said.

She gave me a cold hand and a warm smile.

“Donald,” Bertha said, “this is the damnedest story you ever heard in your life. This is absolutely out of this world. This is— Well, I want Mrs. Endicott to tell you in her own words.”

Mrs. Endicott was a brunette. She had big dark eyes, high cheekbones, smooth complexion, and, aside from a general air of funereal sadness about her, might have been a professional poker player. She’d learned somewhere to keep her emotions under complete control. Her face was as expressionless as the marble slab of a gravestone.

“Do you mind, dear?” Bertha asked.

“Not at all,” Mrs. Endicott said in a low but strong voice. “After all, that’s why we got Mr. Lam up out of bed, and he can’t very well work on a case unless he knows the facts.”

“If you can just give him the highlights,” Bertha said, “I can fill him in later on.”

“Very well,” Mrs. Endicott said and twisted her gloves so tight it seemed the stitching would start ripping.

“This goes back almost seven years,” she said.

I nodded as she paused.

“Just the highspots,” Bertha said, in a voice that was dripping with synthetic sympathy.

“John Ansel and I were in love. We were going to get married. John was working for Karl Carver Endicott.

“Karl sent John Ansel to Brazil. After John got to Brazil, Karl sent him on an expedition up the Amazon. It was a suicide trip. Karl claimed he was looking for oil prospects. There were two men in the party. He offered each of them a twenty-thousand-dollar bonus to make the trip if they completed the mission successfully.

“They were, of course, under no obligations to go, but John wanted that money very badly because that would have enabled us to get married and he could have started a business of his own. That trip was legalized murder. It was carefully designed to be such. I didn’t know it at the time. The expedition didn’t stand one chance in a thousand. The cards were stacked against them, and Karl Carver Endicott made damn certain that the cards were stacked against them.

“After a while Karl came to me with tears in his eyes. He said he had just received word that the entire party had been wiped out. They were, he said, long overdue and he had sent planes out to search. He’d also sent out ground parties. He’d spared no expense.

“It was a terrific shock to me. Karl did his best to comfort me and finally offered me security and an opportunity to patch up my life.”

She stopped talking for a moment and gave her gloves such a vicious twist that the skin over the knuckles went white.

“You married him?” I asked.

“I married him.”

“And then?”

“Later on he fired one of his secretaries. She was the first who told me. I couldn’t believe my ears. But everything fitted in with other facts as I’d come to know them.

“This ex-secretary told me that Karl Endicott had made a very careful examination in order to pick out a locale for a suicide trip. He had sent John Ansel to his death just as surely as though he had stood him up in front of a firing squad.”

“Did you go to your husband and face him with the facts?” I asked.

“There wasn’t time,” she said. “I had the most terrible, the most awful, unexpected, devastating experience. The telephone rang. I answered it. John Ansel was on the line. The other member of the expedition had perished. John had survived absolutely incredible hardships in the jungle, had finally reached civilization, and then had learned that I was married.”

“What did you do?”

She said, “In those days I hadn’t learned to control my emotions. I became completely, utterly hysterical. I told John that I belonged to him, that I always had belonged to him, that I had been tricked into marriage. I told John I must see him. I told him that I was leaving Karl immediately.

“And then I did something that I shouldn’t have done. Then I–I want you to understand, Mr. Lam, that I was hysterical. I... I was suffering from a terrific shock.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I told John over the telephone exactly what the score was. I told him that he had been sent into the jungle on a mission that constituted legalized murder. I told him that Karl wanted him out of the way and that the whole thing had been deliberately planned so that he could trick me.”

“Then what?” I asked.

She said, “For a while there was an absolute silence, then a click. I couldn’t tell whether the person at the other end had hung up the telephone or whether the connection had been broken. I finally got the operator and told her I’d been cut off. She said my party had hung up.”

“What date was this?” I asked.

“That,” she said bitterly, “was the date my husband met his death.”

“Where was John Ansel when he phoned you?”

“In Los Angeles at the airport.”

“All right. What happened?”

“I can’t explain everything that happened without telling you something about Karl. Karl was ruthless, possessive, cold-blooded and diabolically clever. When Karl wanted something, he wanted it. He wanted me. I think one of the main reasons he wanted me was because, after he had made the first overture, he found that I was not responsive.

“By the time of John’s telephone call, things were getting to a point where I had learned a great deal about Karl’s character, and I think he had gone a long way toward getting over his infatuation, if you want to call it that. After all, being married to an unwilling woman whose heart is elsewhere satisfied Karl’s love of conquest, but that was about all.”

“You faced your husband with what you had learned?”

“I did, Mr. Lam, and I would have given anything if I had only used my head instead of letting my emotions run away with me. However, for months I had been fighting myself, controlling my emotions, keeping myself under wraps. When I blew up, I blew up all over. We had a terrific scene.”

“What did you do?”

“I slapped his face. I–If I had had a weapon I would have killed him.”

“And then you walked out?”

“I walked out.”

“And what happened?”

“John Ansel had been at the airport. There was a helicopter service to Citrus Grove. He took the helicopter, picked up a taxicab and drove directly to Karl’s estate. I learned afterwards what happened.”

“All right. What did happen?”

“John rang the doorbell. Karl answered the bell personally. Karl knew, of course, that John was alive because in my anger I had told him. John hadn’t communicated with the office when he had reached civilization because of certain discoveries that he had encountered on the expedition. Still loyal to Karl’s interests, he had been planning on making a confidential communication to Karl before disclosing that he had survived the jungle expedition and facing the inevitable newspaper inquiries. However, I think that even before I told him, Karl had learned somehow that John had returned.”

“Go on.”

“I think perhaps Karl had been intending to face it out. After all, John couldn’t prove anything, or so Karl thought, but one look at John’s face and Karl knew that John knew and— Well, the John Dittmar Ansel who had been sent to Brazil on that suicide mission was not the John Dittmar Ansel who returned. John had lived in the jungle. He had lived with death at his elbow. He had been part of a constant struggle between life and death.”

“Go on,” I said.

“Karl took one look at John and was shaken. He led the way up to an upstairs office. He told John that he would be with him in a moment and stepped into an adjoining room.

“You have met John, Mr. Lam. I think you’re a good judge of character. There is something psychic about John. He is essentially a gentle soul, but as I say, he had lived in the jungle. He had been through unspeakable hardships, but he had always retained that sensitive, artistic insight.

“John has told me that after a few seconds he knew what Karl had in mind. Karl intended to murder him. He intended to shoot him down and claim that he had shot in self-defense. He intended to work some scheme of planting a revolver by John’s body and perhaps firing a shot from that revolver. He would claim that John had accused him of stealing his sweetheart, of—”

“Never mind the window dressing,” I said. “Just what did John do?”

“John quietly left the room and tiptoed down the stairs. He decided that he would face Karl in court and that he would face him with witnesses so that he would never again give Karl an opportunity to shoot and claim he was acting in self-defense.”

“And what happened?”

“John had just opened the front door and was leaving the house when he heard the revolver shot.”

“John knew that you had left?” I asked.

“He did. That was another of his telepathic or psychic hunches, or whatever you want to call them. He said that the minute he entered the house he knew that I had left. Perhaps it was something in the expression on Karl’s face. Perhaps it was just a feeling.”

“It wasn’t anything that Karl had said?” I asked.

“No. He says not.”

“All right, what did John do?”

“He walked out to the highway. He hitchhiked back to Los Angeles. He read in the papers of Karl’s death, and read about the taxi driver who described him so perfectly that John knew that if anyone knew he was alive he would be accused of Karl’s murder and he wouldn’t stand a ghost of a chance.

“John had every reason in the world to kill Karl, but he— Well, you can see for yourself, Mr. Lam, unless the real murderer of Karl could be found, John didn’t stand a whisper of a chance.”

“So what happened?”

She said, “I knew where John would be. I went to him that night. We discussed matters. It was decided that John would have to keep out of sight until the person who had killed Karl could be brought to justice. That would be easy because everyone thought John was dead. So we started a long nightmare.

“John kept under cover. I did everything I could to solve the murder of my husband. I had to go back and take charge of the estate. I inherited Karl’s money because he hadn’t had time to disinherit me and I never enjoyed anything more than stepping into the fortune Karl had left.”

“But how about the person who murdered Karl Endicott?”

“Cooper Hale murdered Karl Endicott,” she said, “but we can’t prove it. We’re never going to be able to prove it. Cooper Hale is too smart. Hale knew in some way what was taking place. He followed Karl when Karl went upstairs. Remember Karl was getting out a revolver which he intended to plant on John’s body. Karl intended to call Hale in as a witness to show that the shooting had been in self-defense.

“Hale stepped into the room, calmly picked up the revolver, shot Karl through the head, then went back downstairs and telephoned for the police.”

“What was Hale’s motivation?” I asked.

“That I don’t know. I do know this: that my husband had withdrawn twenty thousand dollars from the bank that day. I think he knew John was alive and was preparing to pay him the twenty thousand bonus which had been agreed upon. For some reason he wanted to pay that in cash. That twenty thousand vanished.

“However, for two months my husband had been paying blackmail, ten thousand a month.

“Hale had been a clerk. Suddenly he became affluent. Hale has grown steadily during the years since Karl’s death. He is now an influential banker.”

“All right. Let’s get down to the present,” I said. “What happened?”

“Police watched me day and night. They sensed that I might be in communication with the person they felt was the murderer. I was very, very careful. I went into hibernation in order to protect John. Gradually the police relaxed their vigil. It became possible for John and me to see each other, but we had to meet at rare intervals and under such surreptitious circumstances that it was heartbreaking. Remember everyone thought John Ansel was dead.

“Drude Nickerson was, of course, the only witness. And then I read that Drude Nickerson had been killed in a traffic accident. I didn’t dare to show interest in the matter, but we felt that it would be possible for John to contact a detective agency, provided the detective agency knew nothing about where John was living so that if anything happened the police couldn’t follow up and arrest John.

“Then we found out that Nickerson definitely was dead and that the police had thrown up their hands in the case. I suppose we were terribly foolish but we had been starving ourselves emotionally over the years, we had been meeting so surreptitiously that much of the pleasure was taken from the meetings, and we had reason to believe that the police had virtually written the case off the books.

“The very thought of being able to live together openly as man and wife, of being able to face the world, completely swept us off our feet. We decided that sooner or later we were going to have to face the whole situation, and we decided to face it now.”

“So,” I said, “you walked into the trap.”

She twisted her gloves violently. “We walked into the trap. We flew to Yuma. We walked into a justice of the peace to get married, and the officers were waiting. Oh, it was so terribly cruel! Why did they have to strike at that time? At least they could have held off until we were married, and—”

“And then they couldn’t have forced you to testify,” I said. “They let the thing go right up to the time of the wedding so they could prove motivation.”

“It was all a trap,” she admitted. “The police had arranged the thing as an elaborate plant. They knew that Drude Nickerson was their only witness. They knew that if he died they didn’t have a case. So they — well, they prepared this elaborate trap. They fixed it up with Nickerson. Tomorrow the newspapers will state that the reports of his death were erroneous, that they were based on the identification of some hitchhiker who happened to have one of Nickerson’s cards in his pocket.

I shook my head. “No, they won’t.”

“What do you mean, they won’t?” she said. “They’ve already told us that—”

“They’ll have another idea by the time they think things over,” I said. “They will ballyhoo it for what it was, a clever police trap by which they lured a fugitive from justice, who had eluded them for six years, into the police net.”

She twisted her gloves again, and this time her face twisted with feeling, but she was dry-eyed and her voice was as low-pitched and as deadly as the sound made by a snake’s rattles.

“I could kill the man who did this to us.”

“That won’t help,” I said.

“What am I going to do?” she asked.

That was Bertha’s cue. “Mrs. Endicott has placed herself entirely in our hands, Donald, and there’s no need at all to worry about the financial arrangements. We have worked those out. She got in touch with me just as soon as the officers made the arrest.

“Now, Donald, we want you to get busy and work on this case. There’s enough involved so we can completely exclude all other business matters from our minds and concentrate on this case.”

I took the telephone directory from Bertha’s desk. “The first thing you want is a lawyer,” I said, “and you want him fast.”

She said, “I have already thought of that. There are two outstanding lawyers in Los Angeles whose names command respect. I’ll—”

“Forget it!” I told her. “The case is going to be tried in Orange County. You want someone in Santa Ana. You also want someone who will listen to reason.”

“What do you mean, listen to reason?” she asked.

“Listen to me,” I said and reached for the telephone, dialed long distance and said, “Operator, this is an emergency call. I want to talk with Barnard Quinn, a lawyer at Santa Ana, California. His residence number is Sycamore 3-9865. Just start ringing and keep ringing until you get an answer.”