Give ’Em the Ax

2

Bertha helped herself to a cigarette, said to me, “Well, that’s the way it goes.”

“It’s okay.”

“Just a little piddling case for a woman who’s eating her heart out, and has an exaggerated idea of what a detective agency can do.”

“It’s okay, Bertha.”

“When you went away,” Bertha said, “you’d got us into the big time stuff. Damned if I know how you did it. You could take even the most insignificant little case, and before you got done it developed into big business and big money. Then after you left, I could take what seemed to be the biggest case and it would peter out into little business and little money. I did all right for a while. Two or three cases went just as though you’d been here. And then the bottom dropped out and it’s been a whole procession of little stuff like this.”

“Don’t bother about it. I’ll take over on this.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Consult the Bureau of Vital Statistics, get whatever dope is available on the present Mrs. Crail, find out where she lived before she was married, make an investigation there, find out where she lived before that, try to find out why her sudden interest in the Stanberry Building.”

“That’s a lot of leg work,” Bertha said.

“That’s all marching is,” I said, and walked out.

Elsie Brand looked up from her typewriter. “Out for the day,” I told her, “working on a case. I’ll telephone in later on in the afternoon and see if there’s anything new.”

Elsie hesitated a minute as though trying to say something, then, after a moment, her face turned red. Whatever it was she was going to say, she didn’t get it out. She turned swiftly in her chair and hid her embarrassment over the rattling keyboard of her typewriter.

I picked up the agency car from the parking station where we’d always kept it. The last eighteen months seemed like a dream. I was picking up the threads of life where I’d dropped them.

The statistical information showed that Ellery Crail was thirty-eight, Irma Begley twenty-seven; that Crail had been married once before and was a widower; that Irma Begley had not been married. She had lived at 1891 Latonia Boulevard.

I drove out to the address on Latonia. It was a modest, four story, brick apartment house with a stucco front, and an ornate doorway. It bore the sign, Maplegrove Apartments, and a notice stating there was no vacancy. I rang the bell marked manager and had to wait for nearly five minutes.

The manager turned out to be a fleshy woman somewhere around forty, with shrewd little black eyes, full thick lips and a perfect complexion. At the start, she was as belligerent, and looked as formidable, as a big tank. Then I smiled at her and, after a moment, she smiled back at me and became kittenish.

“I’m so sorry. There isn’t a vacancy in the place, and...”

“I wanted a little information about a woman who used to live here.”

“What about her?”

“A Miss... Miss...” I made a great show of having forgotten the name and fished a notebook from my pocket, ran my finger down the page and said, “A Miss Latham... No, wait a minute. That isn’t the one.” I ran my finger down a few more lines and said, “Begley, Irma Begley.”

“She used to live here. She got married.”

“Do you know whom she married?”

“No, I don’t. I think it was a pretty good match. She was rather uncommunicative.”

“You were manager at the time?”

“That’s right.”

“Know anything about her — who her folks were? Where she came from, or anything?”

“No. She didn’t even leave a forwarding address when she left. I found out afterwards she’d gone down to the post office and taken care of that herself.”

“Isn’t that rather unusual?”

“Yes. They usually leave a forwarding address in case anything happens to come here.”

I said, “Well, how about when she rented the apartment in the first place, she must have given some references?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Suppose we could look them up?”

“Just what was your name?” she asked.

I smiled at her and said, “You won’t believe me.”

“Why not?”

“It’s Smith.”

“I don’t.”

“People seldom do.”

“Won’t you come in, Mr. Smith?”

“Thanks.”

The manager’s apartment was on the ground floor and was overfurnished and smelled of sandalwood. A Chinese incense burner on a table in the center of the room was sending out wisps of white smoke. There were too many pictures on the wall, too many chairs, too many tables and too many nicknacks.

“Won’t you sit down, Mr. Smith?”

“Thanks.” I offered her a cigarette. She took one and I held a match.

“Just why did you want to know?”

I looked blank.

“I mean what’s the object in getting the information?”

I said, “Shucks, I don’t know. They never tell me. Just hand me a list of names, tell me to find out certain things. It may be she’s applied for an insurance policy, or it might be an old bill, or perhaps she’s inherited money and they’re trying to locate her to close up an estate.”

“She was a very nice girl,” the manager said.

I blew out cigarette smoke and said, “Uh huh.”

“Very quiet as I remember her, and kept very much to herself. No wild parties.”

“That’s nice.”

“She wasn’t the type that would have any unpaid bills.”

“Then it can’t be an unpaid bill,” I said.

“But you don’t know what it is?”

“That’s right. Someone wants to know, that’s all. That’s my business, investigating. I get a dollar a name and furnish my own expenses.”

She said, “I have a few people I’d like to know about.”

“Give me their names. I’d have to turn them in through the office. I don’t know just how the office handles it. There’s some charge for a retainer. You have to guarantee so much business in the course of a month or a year or whatever it is, and, of course, they charge you more than a dollar. A dollar is my cut.”

She said, “Well, when you put it that way, it’s not worth much to me to find them, because you can’t get blood out of a turnip. Let me see what I can find.”

She opened a drawer in a flat-topped desk, pulled out some cards and started riffling through a classification marked “Ba-Be.”

After a moment, she found the card she wanted, pulled it out, said, “That’s right, Irma Begley. She lived at 392 South Fremington Street before she came here.”

“Give any references?” I asked.

“Two. Benjamin C. Cosgate, and Frank L. Glimson.”

“Any address?”

The manager said, “It’s a downtown business address — and that’s all the information we have about her except that she paid her rent promptly, and was listed as a good tenant.”

“All right, that’s all I need,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

The manager said, “If you can get enough of them in a day, you should be able to make money at that.”

I said, “You have to keep jumping around.”

“Yes, I hadn’t thought of that. Paying your own expenses makes a difference. How much information do you have to get?”

“Oh, enough to let them know whatever it is they want to find out. Sometimes it’s easy. Sometimes it’s quite a job. Most of the time you can count on an average of forty-five minutes to a name. Well, I’ve got a couple of more names in the neighborhood — try to group them all together.”

“I hope you find what you want, Mr. Smith,” she said.

“Thank you,” I told her.

A telephone book in a near-by drugstore showed me that Benjamin C. Cosgate was a lawyer, Frank Glimson was a lawyer, and there was a firm of Cosgate & Glimson.

I started to call them, then thought better of it and postponed it until after I’d driven once more to the courthouse.

This time I looked at the Register of Actions, Plaintiff, and read through so many names that I all but passed up the one I wanted, but there it was: Irma Begley versus Philip E. Cullingdon. I made a note of the number of the case, told the deputy clerk I was a lawyer looking up some of the old records and asked for files on the case.

There was a neat little complaint, a demurrer, an amended complaint, a demurrer to an amended complaint, and a notice of dismissal. Attorneys for the plaintiff were Cosgate & Glimson.

I skimmed through the complaint. It stated that on the fifth day of April, 1942, while the plaintiff had been driving and operating a motor vehicle in a careful and law-abiding manner, the defendant, without due or any regard for the safety of other vehicles or the occupants thereof, had so carelessly, negligently, and unlawfully driven and operated his automobile over, along, and upon a certain public highway known as Wilshire Boulevard, that he had caused his said automobile to collide with the automobile driven by the plaintiff; that as a result of said collision, plaintiff had sustained a permanent injury of the spine which had necessitated the payment of doctor’s bills in the amount of two hundred and fifty dollars, nursing and medicine in the amount of eighty-five dollars and twenty cents, X-rays in an amount of seventy-five dollars and specialist fees in an amount of five hundred dollars; that plaintiff was permanently injured, and that the careless driving of the defendant’s automobile as aforesaid was the sole and proximate cause of said injury. Wherefore. Plaintiff prayed judgment in an amount of fifty thousand dollars and for her costs of suit incurred herein.

The suit had been filed on the thirty-first day of March 1943.

I made a few notes from the papers, getting the names and addresses of the defendant’s lawyers, and looked in the telephone book for Philip E. Cullingdon. I found him listed as a contractor and made a note of his residence. Then I went down the hall to a telephone booth, called the office, found Bertha Cool was out, told Elsie Brand I was going to drop around for a cocktail at the Rimley Rendezvous; that if anything important turned up, Bertha could reach me there. Elsie asked me how I was doing on the case, and I told her I was making a little progress — nothing to write home about, but getting a few leads, and hung up.