Kept Women Can’t Quit

Chapter 3

The telephone directory listed the Breeze-Mount Hotel as an apartment hotel. I called the hotel and asked for the manager. The woman who was on the phone said, “This is the manager, Mrs. Marlene Charlotte.”

I said, “I’m inquiring for a Miss Evelyn Ellis. Can you tell me if she has her own phone or—”

“She has her own phone, which is still in the apartment, but she vacated the apartment yesterday afternoon, and didn’t even do me the courtesy of calling on me,” she said. “She moved out and left me a note stating that her rent was paid up until the first and I could rent the apartment immediately.”

“You don’t know where she went?”

“I don’t know where she went. I don’t know why she went, I don’t know who she went with. Who is this talking?”

“Mr. Smith,” I said. “I hoped I could catch her before she left. I’m sorry.”

I hung up.

I called the office and asked to talk with Elsie Brand.

“Hi, Elsie,” I said. “Want to do something for me?”

“It depends on how wild it is.”

“This one is really wild,” I said. “You have to compromise your good name.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“That’s not all,” I said, “that’s just the first step.”

“How come?”

I said, “I’ll be sitting in the agency heap outside of the Breeze-Mount Apartment Hotel. That’s at the corner of Breeze-Mount Drive and Thirty-third Avenue. Take a taxi and come out there. Take the signet ring off your right hand, put it on the ring finger of your left hand, turn it around so it looks like a wedding ring when someone is looking at the back of your hand. Make it just as fast as you can.”

“Donald, I wish you wouldn’t do this,” she said.

“I know,” I told her, “but it’s done. Will you help or do I have to get a woman operative and have Bertha screaming about the expenses?”

“Better get the woman operative. Bertha likes to scream.”

“Okay,” I said. “This gal is going to be my wife for a while. If the operative sues the agency for—”

“Say, what is this?” she interrupted.

“A very intimate, interesting job.”

“All right, I’ll help. You want me there right away?”

“Just as soon as you can make it. Anybody watching the office?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Haven’t seen anything more of Sergeant Sellers?”

“No. Donald, a letter was delivered here by special messenger. It’s addressed to you and marked personal and important.”

“Bring it along and come on out,” I said.

I hung up the telephone and called the Colter-Craig Casualty Company.

When the operator at their switchboard answered, I said, “Who’s in charge of the investigation on this armored car business?”

“I think,” she said, “you should talk with Mr. George Abner. Just a moment and I’ll connect you.”

A moment later a man’s voice said, “Hello. George B. Abner talking.”

“You in charge of that armored car loss?” I asked.

“I am the investigator,” he said cautiously. “Who is this talking?”

“Mile,” I said.

“You mean Mr. Miles?”

“I said ‘Mile.’ Do you know how many feet are in a mile?”

“Certainly.”

“How many?”

“What is this, a gag?”

“Remember the number,” I said. “Five thousand, two hundred and eighty. If I call you in the future I’ll simply refer to the number — five thousand, two hundred and eighty. Now then, if I can get you all or part of the fifty grand that’s missing and hand it to you on a silver platter, what is there in it for me?”

“I don’t do that sort of business over the telephone,” he said. “And for your information, Mr. Mile, we don’t compound felonies.”

“No one’s asking you to compound a felony,” I said. “You’re facing a loss of fifty grand. What’s it worth to cut it down?”

“If the offer is legitimate,” he said, “our company has always been generous in the matter of rewards, but we certainly don’t discuss things of this sort over the telephone in this manner.”

“What do you mean, being most generous? Fifty percent?” I asked.

“Heavens, no!” he said. “That would be suicidal. We might go to twenty percent.”

“Twenty-five,” I said.

“If you have something definite to offer,” he said, “we’ll be glad to discuss the matter with you.”

“I’m making a definite offer,” I said. “Twenty-five percent of whatever is recovered.”

“If and when anything is recovered,” he said, “I would certainly not recommend going above twenty percent. That represents the highest we go as a matter of policy. Usually we give rewards of around ten percent.”

“Perhaps that’s why you have such high losses,” I said. “Remember the name, and above all, the code number five thousand, two hundred and eighty.”

I hung up, got in the agency heap and drove to the Breeze-Mount Apartment Hotel.

I had to wait about ten minutes before the taxicab deposited Elsie Brand.

I paid off the cab and sent him on his way.

“Come on, Elsie,” I said, “we’re going in.”

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

“Rent an apartment,” I said. “Get friendly with the manager. Be nice, respectable, quiet people. You’re to be particularly demure, easy to get along with.”

“What do I tell her my name is?”

“You don’t tell her,” I said. “I tell her.”

“And what do you tell her?”

“That you’re Mrs. Lam, of course.”

She said, “And I suppose you’re going to promise that if we stay in a single apartment you’ll be the soul of honor and discretion at all times.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said.

She looked at me with a flush of anger starting to stain her face.

“Therefore,” I said, “I won’t be there. I’ll be away from home. I’m just leaving on a trip. You’ll sit there for a few hours and monitor the telephone calls. If anybody asks for Evelyn Ellis you’ll pretend to misunderstand them. If you can get by acting the part of Evelyn Ellis you’ll do it. If you can’t, you’ll be very friendly over the telephone and state that Miss Ellis probably won’t be in for some time, but that you’ll try to get a message to her. You’ll definitely try to find out who’s talking but do it in a nice way so it doesn’t arouse suspicions. Be friendly and visit with them. If they’re men, your voice will be particularly seductive.”

“But why in the world should we rent an apartment?” she asked. “Good heavens, Donald, you know what will happen if Bertha finds out and—”

“In this business,” I said, “you can’t wait for the breaks. You have to make your own breaks and you have to keep moving. Come on.”

We entered the Breeze-Mount and rang the bell of the apartment marked MANAGER — MARLENE CHARLOTTE.

The woman who came out in answer to our ring was in the forties. She was a fairly big woman who had started to sag. There was an expressionless placidity about her face which made it seem she felt everything that could possibly happen had already happened.

“Yes?” she asked, looking us over appraisingly.

“I heard that you were expecting a vacancy next month,” I said.

“We have three vacancies right now,” she said.

“May we look at them?”

“Certainly,” she said, and again sized us up, this time more carefully.

Elsie said demurely, “We both work. We’ll be here nights and weekends but not during the day.”

“No children?” the manager asked.

Elsie shook her head, then let the corners of her mouth twist a bit as though she were about ready to cry. “Not any more,” she said. “No children.”

“Well, come with me,” Mrs. Charlotte said, taking some keys from the board. “I have some apartments I think you’ll like.”

The first one she showed was neat as a pin and had no telephone. The next one was a larger apartment, with no phone.

Elsie glanced at me surreptitiously and I shook my head.

“Don’t you... don’t you have anything else?” she asked.

“I have one that’s just been vacated,” Mrs. Charlotte said. “It hasn’t been cleaned up. It’s just the way the person left it. She moved out sometime during the night and left me a note.”

“May we look at it?” Elsie said, somewhat dubiously.

Mrs. Charlotte led us to the apartment I wanted.

There was a private telephone and the place was in a mess. The tenant who had moved out had made no attempt to disguise the haste of her departure. A wastebasket was crammed to overflowing with the various debris that a person would keep for a while in bureau drawers only to discard when packing up to leave. There were crumpled papers, a pair of old shoes, stockings with runs, and a broken coathanger. More crumpled papers were on the floor of the closet.

Mrs. Charlotte gave an exclamation of annoyance. “The maid was supposed to get in here and clean some of this stuff out,” she said.

I looked over at Elsie and raised my eyebrows.

“Well, honey,” I asked, “what do you think? Of course it’s hard to judge a place in this condition but I have an idea it’s just what we want.”

Elsie said dubiously, “Yes, I suppose so, but, Donald, you must remember we have to move into a place right away.”

“Yes,” I said lugubriously, “we do, for a fact. I’ll tell you, honey, this place is exactly what we’ve been looking for. It’s only the fact that it isn’t clean that—”

Mrs. Charlotte said, “What do you mean when you say you have to move in right away?”

I said, “We’ve been staying with friends and every time we tried to move they wanted us to remain on with them. They have a small child that they won’t trust with a baby-sitter and because we were there they had quite a bit of freedom for the first time in months. Then the man’s parents showed up this morning. They’d written they were coming but the letter miscarried. We’re going to have to get out right away.”

I suddenly whipped a billfold out of my pocket and said, “I’ll tell you what. We’ll pay the rent now in advance but we’ll take off five dollars because of the condition of the apartment. The maid can dump the stuff tomorrow but if you can get some clean linen, we’ll move in. Unfortunately I’ve got to go to San Francisco but Elsie can stay right here. I’ll finish bringing our stuff in. Then we can phone our friends that we’ve found a place. They were terribly concerned. They wanted to have their folks go to a hotel tonight but I told them we’d be sure to find a place.”

Mrs. Charlotte hesitated, said, “How long will you be here? Do you want a year’s lease?”

I said, “I’d prefer not to take a year’s lease unless we have to, because there is a possibility I’ll be transferred.”

“What sort of work are you in, Mr. Lam?”

“High-security work,” I said. “Of course, if you want references I can get you some of the best. However, as long as I’m here you’ll have the cash in advance right on the dot.”

Her face broke into a sagging smile. “Well, of course I don’t like to have you folks move into an apartment looking like this, but... if Mrs. Lam doesn’t mind...”

“It’s quite all right,” Elsie said, looking around. “Frankly, however, I won’t try to do much cleaning up until after the maid gets in tomorrow.”

“That’s fine,” Mrs. Charlotte said. “I’ll have some linen up here right away.”

She said to me, “Come downstairs and I’ll give you a receipt for the rent.”

The phone started to ring.

I frowned and said, “I suppose that’s never been disconnected.”

“No, it’s still in the name of the other occupant, Evelyn Ellis,” she said.

“Oh, well, we’ll get that straightened out,” I said, taking her by the arm and shooting Elsie a significant glance.

I led the manager out of the door and down to the elevator.

Elsie moved over toward the telephone.

Down in the office Mrs. Charlotte gave me a receipt and I told her, “I’ll run up and tell the wife I’m going out to pick up our stuff.”

I hurried back up to the apartment.

“Find out who it was, Elsie?” I asked.

She said, “Apparently you’ve been getting around, Donald.”

“How come?”

“This,” she said “was a gentleman who inquired for Evelyn Ellis. I told him that she wasn’t here but that I expected to be in touch with her and I could give her a message if necessary. He said to have her call Mr. Calhoun, the public relations man. I told him that I didn’t think she’d be free to call, that she was going to call me but that that was all the telephoning she’d have a chance to do. He wanted to know who I was and I told him I was her roommate, so he finally let down his hair and told me to tell her that a Mr. Lam had been asking questions, that he had become suspicious of Mr. Lam and on a hunch had looked Lam up in the telephone book. There was only one Donald Lam he’d been able to find and he was a member of the firm of Cool & Lam, private investigators. So, Mr. Calhoun asked me if I’d be sure to get in touch with Evelyn and tell her a private eye was on her trail.

“I told him I’d try and reach Evelyn right away and asked him if he had any idea what you were after and he said he didn’t, that you were posing as a writer but that you certainly were on the track of something. He said you tried to make a circuitous approach, but he’d had you figured out right from the start.”

“Interesting,” I said.

“Isn’t it?”

“Where’s the letter that came by messenger?” I asked.

She opened her purse and handed me an envelope. I looked it over, pulled out my knife, cut the envelope along the edge, then pulled out a sheet of note paper. It was covered with masculine handwriting and was signed “Standley Downer.” It read:

I handed the letter to Elsie. She read it and her eyes widened. “Donald, how did he know about all this?” she asked.

I said, “He might have a pipeline in to police headquarters, he might have a newspaper reporter tipping him off, or Hazel may have a friend in whom she’s confiding who is double-crossing her.”

“Interesting possibilities, aren’t they?” she said.

I nodded. “The guy works fast.”

“What was his object in writing you?” she asked.

“Trying to get me to layoff the case by telling me there wouldn’t be any money for a fee,” I said.

“But, Donald, if they’re not married, doesn’t that leave you in something of a spot? If you find him he’ll tell you to go jump in the lake.”

I said, “After I find him Hazel is supposed to take over. You remember she said she had something on him?”

Elsie thought things over for a moment, then said, “Donald, do you know what I think?”

“What?” I asked.

“That there’s collusion between Hazel and Standley. He assisted in stealing the money from the— Donald, they’re going to get you involved in this money deal and make you some sort of a cat’s-paw.”

“Could be,” I said.

“Donald, it has to be! This letter must have been written not too long after Hazel left your office.”

“It’s possible,” I said.

“Donald, don’t you understand? They’re working hand in glove, trying to trap you in some way.”

“If that’s true, we can’t stop them from being hand and glove,” I said.

“But what do we do?” she asked.

“You sit right here, Mrs. Lam,” I said. “You make up the bed. You ride herd on that telephone. You answer it every time it rings. You tell them that you’re Evelyn’s roommate, that Evelyn is going to call you sometime later on and that you’ll take any messages.”

“How long do I stay here?”

“Until I get back to relieve you,” I said. “Ring up the office. Say you had to leave early on account of a headache. Don’t let the switchboard operator get Bertha on the line.

“Incidentally, there’s an enclosed garage space that goes with this apartment. I’m going down now and take a look in there. You prowl through the wastebasket and see if there’s anything that would give us a clue. I don’t think there is, but you can give it a prowl.”

I headed for the door.

Elsie stood looking at me dubiously.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Afraid?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “It’s just that I’m trying to reconcile my ideas of a honeymoon with you to a dirty wastebasket filled with some other woman’s discarded clothing.”

“That’s the trouble with realization,” I said. “It’s always short of anticipation. You should think of how I feel.”