Give ’Em the Ax

10

The three blocks back to my apartment house seemed to be three miles. I went down into the garage and grinned at the attendant. “I’m going to have to take my car out again,” I said.

He looked at the two-bits I handed him as though it was an insult rather than a tip, then moved a couple of cars and jerked his thumb toward the agency car. “There it is.”

I got in, started the motor and eased it out of the garage. I ran down the street for half a dozen blocks and pulled into the curb and parked. I waited for about five minutes then started up, gave it the gun, went around the corner fast, and did a couple of figure eights around blocks.

No one was following me.

A fog had drifted in from the ocean and now it was beginning to settle. The air had turned cold, and the damp chill went clean through to my bones. I’d be all right for a while and then the weakness would grip me and my blood, thinned from the tropics and weakened by bugs, would turn cold, and I’d shiver and shake the way I did when the old malarial chills would get me. But these spells only lasted for a minute or two and then I’d be myself again. It was just weakness.

I drove up to the Hall of Justice, found a good place to park and parked the bus.

I waited for half an hour that seemed like eternity. Then Billy Prue came bustling out of the lighted entrance, looked up and down the street, turned to the right and started walking with quick, businesslike steps as though she knew exactly where she was going.

I waited until she had nearly a block head start, then slipped the car into gear.

After a couple of blocks she began to look around for a taxicab.

I slid the car up close to the curb, rolled down the window and said, “Want a lift?”

She looked at me at first dubiously, then with recognition, then with anger.

“You may as well,” I said. “It doesn’t cost any more.”

She came across and jerked the door open. “So you snitched on me. I should have known it.”

I said wearily, “Don’t be a damn fool. I’m trying to give you a break.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“It’s a long story.”

“You’d better tell it.”

I said, “Somebody planted the murder weapon in my car while it was parked out in front of Cullingdon’s place.”

Her startled gasp of surprise might have been overdone or it might not.

I said, “Naturally, they hauled me over the coals. Bertha Cool, that’s my partner, thought you’d snared me into it.”

“And so blabbed to the police?”

“Don’t be silly. She isn’t that dumb.”

“Well, how did it happen...?”

I said, “Bertha Cool was sore. She made some crack about me having bought three packages of cigarettes and Frank Sellers, of Homicide, apparently didn’t even notice the crack. That’s when I knew where you were.”

“I don’t get it,” she said.

I said, “Sellers isn’t so dumb. If he hadn’t known all about you, he’d have jumped on that opening about the three cigarette packs and pried enough information out of Bertha so he’d have known what he was after. He ignored it — just didn’t seem to hear it so I knew he’d found out all about you. And if he’d found out all about you before he came to call on me, it was a damn good bet that you were being held at the D.A.’s office. The only thing I didn’t know is whether they were going to hold you or turn you loose. I couldn’t have stuck it out for more than another half hour, but I...”

A shivering fit gripped me. I put on the brake and slowed the car, but by gripping the wheel, didn’t show how I was shaking.

Billy Prue kept looking at me. After a minute the fit passed and I speeded up the car again.

“So,” Billy Prue said, “I came out and you were waiting — for what?”

“To see you.”

“What about?”

“To compare notes.”

“On what?”

“How did that murder weapon get in my car while it was parked out at Cullingdon’s?”

“I don’t know.”

“Try again.”

“I’m telling you the truth, Donald. I don’t know.”

I said, “I don’t like to be played for a fall guy.”

“I shouldn’t think you would.”

“And when I don’t like something, I do something about it.”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know anything at all about it.”

I drove along slowly and said, “Let’s look at the thing this way. You go out to Cullingdon’s. You’re frightened. You want a witness. You take me back and pull a razzle-dazzle about finding Stanberry’s body. Then you go to Rimley’s and I duck out as you could have known I would. I walked a half a dozen blocks before I found a cab. The cab took me up to 906 South Graylord Avenue and I picked up my car and drove back to the agency, had a talk with my partner and then drove out to see Archie Stanberry.”

“Well?” she asked as I stopped.

“There was plenty of time for Rimley to have the murder weapon dropped in my car before I got there,” I said.

“And you think he dashed out and planted the weapon and...?”

“Don’t be silly. He simply picked up the telephone and said to someone, ‘Donald Lam’s car is parked out at 906 South Graylord Avenue. It would be a swell place for the police to discover the murder weapon because Billy Prue had him with her when the body was discovered. The police will think he’s mixed up in it and...’ ”

“Baloney!” she interrupted.

I said, “I know — it’s easy to pull that stuff.”

“If you’d use your head for a minute, you’d realize that that would be the last thing on earth that Pittman Rimley would do. The minute you are brought into it, that attracts attention once more to me. That’s why they had me down at the D.A.’s office and gave me such a grilling. I couldn’t understand it, unless it was because you had double-crossed me.”

I pulled the car into the curb and stopped. It was a quiet, business street with virtually no traffic and a few lights. The little one story store buildings were all closed up.

“Is this where I get out and walk?” she asked nervously.

I said, “I’ve got something to say.”

“Go on and say it.”

I said, “I went out to the Rimley Rendezvous. You told me to get out. I didn’t get out. The head waiter sent me in to see Rimley. Rimley told me to get out and stay out.”

“Well,” she said, “tell me something I didn’t know already.”

I said, “Rimley’s wrist watch was an hour fast. The clock on his mantel was an hour fast.”

She sat absolutely motionless. I don’t think she was even breathing.

“Is that something new?” I asked.

She kept perfectly still.

I said, “We found the body of Rufus Stanberry in your bathtub. His wrist watch was an hour slow.”

“What does Mr. Master Mind deduce from that?” she asked, trying to be facetious and making a botch of it.

“From that,” I said, “I deduce that Rimley was building himself an alibi. He arranged to have his clock and his watch an hour fast. Probably Stanberry had been in there. Perhaps shortly before that Stanberry went into the rest room and took off his wrist watch when he washed his hands. The rest room attendant was under orders to set the watch an hour fast.”

She said without any particular expression, “An hour fast?”

“That’s what I said.”

“But you just said that when we found his wrist watch, it was an hour slow.”

“Do I have to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s?”

You’d better. Since you started making i’s and t’s — you’d better finish them up artistically.”

I said, “Rimley was working out a slick alibi. Stanberry went in to see Rimley after his watch had been tampered with. Rimley took occasion to call Stanberry’s attention to the time. Stanberry didn’t realize it was that late, but he checked his watch with Rimley’s clock. And then to reassure him, Rimley showed him his wrist watch. From there on it’s just a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth.”

“What do you mean?”

I said, “When you discovered Stanberry’s body, you knew that his watch should be an hour fast. You didn’t know what time it was because you don’t wear a wrist watch. You simply took it for granted that Stanberry’s wrist watch was an hour fast, so you set it back an hour. But someone else, who also knew that the wrist watch was an hour fast, had already set it back an hour.”

She was silent for so long that I looked at her to see if she might have fainted.

“Well?” I asked.

“I haven’t anything to say — not to you.”

I said, “Okay,” and started the motor.

“Where are we going?”

“Back to Bertha Cool’s apartment.”

“What’s at Bertha Cool’s apartment?”

“Sergeant Frank Sellers of Homicide.”

“And what are you going to do there?”

“Tell him what I told you and let him do the talking from then on. I’ve been a sucker long enough.”

She stuck it out for a dozen blocks, then reached over and twisted the key in the ignition. “Okay,” she said, “shut it off.”

“Going to talk?”

“Yes.”

I eased the car into the curb and settled back against the cushions. “Go ahead.”

She said, “I’d get killed if they knew I told you this.”

“You’ll be arrested for first-degree murder if you don’t.”

“You’re hard when you want to be.”

I fought against another spell of shivering as the cold damp fog penetrated into the marrow of my bones, and managed to say threateningly, “I’m as hard and as cold as the back of a barred jail door.”

She said in a tone of resignation, “All right, what do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

She said, “I can’t tell you everything, Donald. I can tell you the things that concern me. I can tell you enough so that you’ll realize you’re not being framed. But I can’t tell you the things that relate to others.”

I said, “You tell me the whole story here and now and without waiting for reinforcements or you get a third degree from Sergeant Frank Sellers. Make up your mind.”

She said, “That isn’t fair.”

“It’s fair to me.”

“It’s not fair to put me in that position.”

“Make up your mind. I’ve stuck my neck out for you a couple of times. Now I’m getting tired of it. You can start paying me back, beginning right now.”

She said, “I could get out of this car and start walking away. You wouldn’t dare try to wrestle me back into it.”

“Try it and see what happens.”

I was shivering again now, but she was so intent on her own predicament that she didn’t realize it.

She sat silently for about ten seconds, then she said, “How did you think Rufus Stanberry made his money?”

I said, “You’re doing the talking.”

“Blackmail.”

“Keep talking.”

“We didn’t know it for quite a while.”

“Who’s we?”

“Pittman Rimley.”

“What happened when he found out?”

“He got busy.”

“Tell me about the blackmail.”

“It wasn’t just the usual thing. He was clever as the very devil. He did lots of embellishment and embroidery — the little things that really got in the big money.”

“Mrs. Crail, for instance?”

“Exactly. He didn’t bother with her on the small stuff, but waited until she got married and then cashed in a big way — and he was doing it so that there wouldn’t really have been any comeback. He was selling her the building at a price about three times what it was worth.”

“Nice business if you can get it,” I said.

“He was getting it. He did it in such a way there was almost no comeback. Most of the time his victims didn’t even know him personally. He may have been blackmailing people he didn’t know by sight.”

“How come?”

“He has some sort of an organization, of course — a little secret service that gets the goods. But Stanberry’s cleverness was in the way he’d save information for months or years — until the time was ripe for a good killing. Then the victim would get a telephone call — just one.”

“What would be said?”

“A nice little threat and orders to pay money in cash to his dear nephew, Archie. After that there might be an anonymous letter or two, but usually that first telephone call was so devastating the rest was just a mop-up that Archie could handle.”

I said, “Archie’s eyes were all swollen with tearful grief — induced by breaking open a cigarette and putting a little grain of tobacco in each eye. I had to help him get one out. I saw the broken cigarette on his dresser.”

She didn’t say anything.

I said, “Archie had had your picture on his wall.”

“He’d taken it down, hadn’t he?” she asked quickly.

“Yes. He said it was a pin-up picture he’d bribed your publicity photographer...”

“Blackmailed was the word he should have used,” she said bitterly. “Archie’s a poor sap. His uncle had brains — dangerous brains.”

“And where did Rimley come in? Don’t make me laugh by telling me he was blackmailing Rimley.”

“He was, in a way. But, of course, it was indirect.”

“How?”

“Blackmailing Rimley’s clients, using the Rendezvous to pick up stuff that he could use later. But he was able to keep under cover and do a lot of his stuff before we found out what was happening. It was the Crail deal that really put us wise. And, of course, Rimley had quite a stake in that. His lease lapsed within ninety days after a bona fide sale.”

“So Mrs. Crail really didn’t want to buy, and Rimley really didn’t want to have Stanberry sell. Is that it?”

“Something like that.”

“What’s the rest of the deal?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that Stanberry had a whole safe full of papers and we got them.”

“Who did the getting?” I asked.

She said simply, “I did.”

I jerked up in my seat with the sheer surprise of that. “You got them!”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“This afternoon.”

“How?”

She said, “It worked out just about as you figured. You know the washrooms there at the Rendezvous, they have a colored grafter who turns on water in the bowl, sprinkles in a little toilet water, hands you some soap and a towel and stands poised solicitously with a brush, all ready to go to work as soon as your hands are dried, which, of course, means a nice tip. Stanberry always washed his hands as though he wanted to make the scrubbing last until Saturday night. He’d take off his wrist-watch and hand it to the attendant. Rimley simply instructed the attendant to set the watch ahead an hour.”

“Then what?”

“Then, almost as soon as Stanberry went back to the dining room, Rimley sent for him. And, of course, Rimley had fixed the watch and the clock in his own office.”

“All right,” I said, “that accounts for that much of it. Now tell me how he happened to be in your apartment.”

“Don’t you get the sketch?”

“No.”

“He was blackmailing me.”

“Over what?”

She laughed and said, “Over some bait that I gave him. When Rimley wanted to stop his blackmailing activities, he needed a decoy. I was it.”

“And so?”

“Archie Stanberry had been making little passes at me. I let Archie get the bait and take it to his uncle. The uncle swallowed it.”

“What did he find out about you?”

She smiled. “I was wanted for murder.”

“Any foundation?”

“Of course not. It was a plant. I had some old newspaper clippings and a couple of incriminating letters that I’d written to myself and a few other things in a drawer in the table where Archie could find them. He found them, read them and took them to uncle.”

“And what did uncle do?”

“Called on me this afternoon, you dope. Haven’t you got the play yet?”

“And you cracked him over the head with a hatchet?”

“Don’t be silly. I slipped him a drugged drink that was due to make him unconscious for just about an hour and fifteen minutes.”

I said, “I get it now. You had an appointment with him for a definite time. You made some mention of the time when he came in so that he would see that he was exactly on time. Then when he became unconscious you’d set his watch back to the right time, tell him that he’d only been out for ten or fifteen minutes; that it must have been a spell with his heart, and let it go at that.”

“Exactly.”

“And during that hour and fifteen minutes, what were you doing?”

“During about forty-five minutes of that time, I was playing burglar.”

“Did you leave any back trail?”

“I don’t think so.”

“How did you work it?”

She said, “About a month ago, I got an apartment in the Fulrose Apartments. I was very careful never to go there except when I knew Stanberry was out. And even then, I only stayed there overnight once in a while so the maids would find the bed had been slept in. My story was that I was a newspaper woman who was working on a story and commuting between here and San Francisco. When I get ready to give up the apartment, it’s going to be because I find that I’m in San Francisco so much of the time it will be cheaper to stay at a hotel whenever I happen to be back here.”

“Go on with the rest of it.”

“That’s just about all there was to it. He had his drugged drink, got groggy and started for the bathroom. Then he got sleepy and half fell in the bathtub. I slipped the keys out of his pocket. We already knew that the combination of the safe was written in his notebook so it would look like a telephone number. Rufus Stanberry never trusted anything entirely to memory.

“It was duck soup. I simply whizzed out to the Fulrose Apartments, went up to my apartment, then down the hall to his, opened the door with his key, spun the combination on the safe and cleaned it out of everything that was at all incriminating to anyone. We put Rufus Stanberry out of the blackmail business in one clean sweep.”

“Then what happened?”

“You know. I got back to my apartment. He was dead.”

“What did you do with the keys?”

She said, “I put them back in his pockets.”

“Then what?”

She said, “I telephoned Rimley. He told me over the telephone to beat it out right away to Philip Cullingdon’s place and find out everything he knew about an Irma Begley who had shaken him down in an automobile accident.”

“Did you ask him why?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“That Irma Begley was Mrs. Crail.”

“Who told you about the amount of the settlement and about those other actions?”

“Rimley did.”

“Over the telephone?”

“Yes.”

“And what did he tell you to do after that?”

“He said to get out and get the stuff on Mrs. Crail, then I was to pick up some witness, very casually, make it seem accidental if possible, and go to my apartment and discover the body.”

“So you picked me as a witness?”

“After you horned in on my play I thought that you might make a swell witness. The trouble was you were too good. You figured things out because of that key.”

“Why the sudden interest in Mrs. Crail?” I asked.

“Because Mrs. Crail was with him in the Rendezvous. She went out when he did. And when Stanberry’s car pulled away, Mrs. Crail was following it.”

“How do you know?”

“Rimley told me.”

“How did he know?”

“I don’t know.”

“And you think Rimley thought Mrs. Crail was implicated in the murder?”

“I think he thought it would be a good thing to have enough evidence... oh, Donald, I don’t know what Rimley thought. He’s a deep one.”

“All right, let’s get back to the murder. You drugged Stan-berry’s drink. Where did you get the drug?”

“Rimley gave it to me.”

“Had you ever drugged a drink before?”

“No.”

“Now then, when you went out leaving Stanberry in your apartment, exactly what did you do? You locked your door, of course?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I was instructed not to.”

“By whom?”

“Rimley.”

“What was the idea?”

She said, “I was to leave a note in Stanberry’s hand where he’d be sure to see it when he woke up, saying: ‘You’ve had a spell with your heart. I’m dashing down to the drugstore to get some medicine.’ In that way in case Stanberry recovered consciousness before I returned, I could account for my absence.”

“That’s all right, but why did you leave the door of the apartment unlocked?”

“Unlocked and slightly ajar so that Stanberry would think I’d dashed out in a hurry.”

“Whose idea was that?”

“Rimley’s.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Why not?”

I said, “If your story is true, it looks as though Rimley had played you all the way through for a fall guy. It’s all just too convenient — a perfect setting for murder. The man passes out in your apartment. You are instructed to leave the door open. You’re sent out on an errand that... No wait a minute!”

“What is it, Donald?”

I said, “Rimley’s too smart for that. If he had wanted to frame you, he wouldn’t have hit the man over the head with a hand ax. He could have put a pillow over his head and smothered him, and then it would have appeared that the drug had affected his heart. No, that tapping him over the head with a hatchet is just too crude. And it doesn’t fit in with Rimley’s scheme. Now I see Rimley’s interest in Mrs. Crail. The note was still in Stanberry’s hand when you returned?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do with it?”

“Destroyed it.”

I said, “Well, so far it checks. It was a nice scheme. Stanberry would have kept his appointment with you. Naturally it would never have occurred to him that his watch had been set ahead an hour and then turned back an hour. He might well have been suspicious that the drink was drugged, but would hardly have thought you’d have had time to get his keys and — his keys were important?”

“I’ll say they were important. He had a lock on his door that no passkey would open. There was a very fine lock on the inner steel door of his safe and another lock on the steel door of the compartment where the incriminating papers were kept.”

I said musingly, “It could have worked out just that way. On the other hand, it could have been a perfect setup for the murder only...”

She flung herself on me. Her arm went around my neck. Her face pressed up close to mine.

Startled, I tried to pull away.

She crushed me to her, said in my ear, “Get hot! A prowl car just swung around the corner. We’ve got to be necking. If they catch you and me parked out here...”

She didn’t need to say any more. I kissed her.

She mumbled, “Don’t be so damned platonic.”

I hugged her a little tighter.

Her full red lips half parted, clung to mine. Her body pushed itself up against mine.

I heard a car stop.

“You’re not in Sunday School,” Billy Prue muttered.

I warmed up to my job. A flashlight beat on my face. A hard-boiled gruff voice said, “What the hell’s coming off here?”

I released Billy Prue and blinked into the flashlight.

“What the hell’s the idea?” the man said. “This is a business street.”

Billy Prue gave him one look, then covered her face with her hands and started to sob.

The flashlight darted around through the car. “Let’s have a look at you,” the cop said.

I held my face up to the beating rays of the flashlight. He took in the smeared lipstick, the rumpled hair, the necktie that was pulled to one side, said, “Okay, get the hell out of here and try an auto camp next time.”

I started the car and drove away fast.

Billy Prue said, “Gosh, that was a squeak!”

“You thought that up quick,” I told her.

“I had to. My God, Donald! Does it always take you that long to get going?”

I started to say something and then the chill of the fog and the emotional build-up that had come when Billy Prue started necking hit me with the force of a sledge hammer. I was shivering all over. I tried to stop the car, but before I could get it stopped I was wobbling around the street.

“Say, what the hell’s the matter with you?” Billy asked.

I said, “The tropics turned my blood to water and... and you started it boiling.”

I brought the car to a stop.

Billy Prue pulled me out from behind the steering wheel. “Listen,” she said, “you’re going to bed. Where do you live?”

“Not my apartment,” I told her. “You can’t take me there.”

“Why not?”

“Frank Sellers will be having it watched.”

She didn’t say anything, just started the car.

“Where?” I asked.

“You heard what the cop told us.”