Man-Trap

IV

My first move was to see the murdered man’s family in Carson City, which in spite of being only a few miles distant, took most of the afternoon by the time I had fought bridge traffic both coming and going. I did not anticipate the visit would be very fruitful, since Hannegan had already interviewed the widow, and the stocky lieutenant rarely misses a bet. It was just as fruitful as I anticipated.

The widow was a rather plain woman of middle-age, dry eyed and controlled, but obviously grief stricken. The son, a redheaded youngster named Rodney, impressed me as being more angry than sad. He had driven home from Illinois University, where he was a sophomore, the moment he heard the news, and he was rearing to tear somebody apart for shooting his dad.

From neither of them did I learn anything which seemed to me at the time to possess value. I did get verification of Laurie Davis’s statement about Lancaster having been a director of four corporations aside from Illinois Telegraph before he resigned all directorships to run for lieutenant governor. But neither Mrs. Lancaster nor Rodney had more than the vaguest understanding of his business affairs.

From the widow I also learned Lancaster had considered his meeting with Jones and Knight Company important, and had been considerably upset for some days before it. But since he never discussed business matters at home, Mrs. Lancaster had no idea what was upsetting him.

Aside from that the trip was a waste of time. Neither could suggest any reason whatever anyone would want to kill Lancaster. And to make the afternoon a complete fiasco, I had to let the last person in the world to whom I cared to be indebted save me from being run over.

The Lancaster Home was right on Carson City’s main street, which is also part of a through highway. I had parked across the road, and I started back across to my car just as a couple of kids in a convertible roared through town at what must have been ninety miles an hour.

I always look before crossing streets, just as I was taught in kindergarten, checking first to the left and then to the right. The highway was clear when I glanced left, but in the half-second it took me to glance right and take one step into the road, the convertible lifted out of a dip a hundred yards away and bore down at me with its horn screaming.

My reactions are fast, but a false leg is unpredictable. My nerves activated the proper muscles in plenty of time to get me out of the way, but the leg picked that moment to buckle. Slipping to the knee of my good leg, I tried to scramble to the curb on all fours, realized I wasn’t going to make it, then suddenly was jerked clear by a pair of hands which gripped both biceps and nearly tore my arms loose from my shoulders.

Since I couldn’t stand until my leg was refastened, I didn’t bother to look up at my rescuer until I had rolled up my trouser leg, readjusted the straps above and below my knee, rolled down the trouser leg again and dusted myself off. Then I climbed to my feet and looked into the buck-toothed face of Farmer Cole.

“Where’d you come from?” I asked sourly, then added reluctantly, “Thanks.”

“I live in this town,” he said. “You’re welcome.”

“Oh. Well, thanks again.” I tried to make this one more enthusiastic, but it still came out sour. Even after the guy had saved my life, I couldn’t shake the feeling of tense watchfulness his nearness induced in me.

Subduing an odd reluctance to put my back to the man, I turned to try the crossing again.

“Want me to help you across?” the Farmer asked.

Slowly I turned to look at him. “That crack makes us even, Farmer. You saved my life; now I’m saving yours by ignoring the crack.”

He grinned at me, a grin as sardonic as Bugs Bunny’s. With dignity I crossed to my car.

Since the only lead I had picked up in Carson City was the widow’s vague idea that Lancaster had been worried over his impending conference with the Jones and Knight Investment Company, I decided to take a chance on finding someone still at the company office, even though it was just five o’clock when I drove off the bridge on my own side of the river. Stopping at the first tavern I saw for a glance in the phone book, I discovered the office was only a few blocks up Broadway, just south of the Federal Reserve Building. I made it by ten after five and found a parking place right in front of the entrance.

According to the building directory, Jones and Knight Investment Company was on the fourth floor. A colored girl took me up in an elevator, informing me as I got off that the elevators stopped running at six.

Though the office building in which it was housed was old and beginning to look run down in a genteel sort of way, the office of Jones and Knight had an air of prosperity about it. Thick carpeting covered the floor of the reception room, the furniture was solidly expensive and Venetian blinds hung at the windows.

A middle-aged woman wearing horn rimmed glasses sat at a desk in the reception room. Apparently I would have missed her had I been five minutes later, for she was just powdering her nose in preparation to go home.

“Mr. Jones or Mr. Knight in?” I asked.

“No, sir,” she said politely. “We close at five. Did you have an appointment?”

I shook my head. “I’m a private investigator inquiring into the Lancaster killing.” I let her look at my license and took a soft leather chair while she was examining it.

She looked it over so long a time I got the impression she was using it as an excuse to gather herself together after the shock of my announcement. And since my announcement had not seemed particularly shocking to me, her reaction intrigued me.

“My name is Matilda Graves, Mr. Moon,” she said finally. “I’m secretary and bookkeeper of the firm. You know, of course, the police have already been here.”

“Yes, but something new has come up since their visit. Are you the only employee aside from the partners, Miss Graves?”

She nodded, not quite seeming to trust her voice.

“Are you sufficiently in Jones’s and Knight’s confidence to know what Mr. Lancaster’s meeting with them was about yesterday?”

Quickly she shook her head. “Mr. Lancaster wasn’t an account of ours, Mr. Moon. This was a personal business matter between Mr. Lancaster and Mr. Knight.”

“How do you know it was a personal business matter if you don’t know what it was? Couldn’t it have been a personal social matter?”

I asked the question in an easy tone, with no intention of upsetting her, but she surprised me by turning dead white.

“The police never questioned me at all,” she said in a faint voice. “I’ve been driving myself crazy trying to decide whether or not I ought to contact them. But if I caused Mr. Knight trouble and there was nothing to it, I might lose my job. Anyway...”

“What about Mr. Knight?” I prompted.

“I thought about talking it over with Mr. Jones and asking his advice, but he doesn’t know anything about it, and that would put him in the same position I am. Making trouble for Mr. Knight, I mean. And after all, they’re partners, so you see it would be uncomfortable for him. He’s such a nice man. Mr. Jones, I mean, not Mr. Knight.” She added hurriedly, “Not that Mr. Knight isn’t nice too, but I mean...”

I said, “Just a minute, Miss Graves. Take a deep breath and start at the beginning.”

She took me literally. She took a deep breath and started at the beginning. It took her a long time and I had to interrupt with questions about every third sentence, but I finally pieced together what was bothering her.

She said Walter Lancaster had met with Knight in Knight’s office at about three P.M., and the two had argued for two hours. Jones had been using a dictaphone in his own office, which was right next to Knight’s, and had not been present at the conference.

I stopped her long enough to ask if she had gotten the impression Jones was deliberately excluded from the conference, or simply had not bothered to attend.

“Why neither, I think,” she said. “Since it wasn’t a company matter, but a personal thing between Mr. Lancaster and Mr. Knight, I suppose Mr. Jones had no reason to sit in. He did go in for a minute once, when Mr. Knight started shouting. I guess to calm Mr. Knight down. But he came right out again and went back to his own office. Mr. Knight didn’t shout any more, but he had left the key open on his call box, and I heard everything he and Mr. Lancaster said.”

It developed there had been quite an argument. Miss Graves was not exactly sure what it was about, but she gathered Walter Lancaster had unearthed some kind of irregularity in a corporation in which he was a major stockholder, and intended to make it public. She did not catch the name of the corporation, but apparently Knight personally owned stock in the same company and was trying to get Lancaster to hold off his announcement at least twenty-four hours so that both of them could unload. Lancaster insisted he would not allow the public to be cheated any more than it already had been. He argued that since he and Knight were two of the principal stockholders and had induced others to invest, it was up to them to bear the loss honestly. He himself, the lieutenant governor said, had no intention of unloading his own stock, even though it meant immediate loss of three-fourths of his fortune.

Knight angrily assured Lancaster he had no intention of being ruined by the latter’s misguided sense of honesty, and he would “find a way” to prevent the announcement being made.

At that point the lieutenant-governor had walked out of the office and slammed the door.

“What was Jones’s reaction to all this?” I asked curiously.

“Oh, he didn’t know it,” the woman said. “You see, he left shortly after four, while they were still arguing. At five he phoned from home and asked if Mr. Knight was still tied up in conference. I told him Mr. Lancaster had just left, but Mr. Knight was still here. He said to tell Mr. Knight he was flying to Kansas City at six and would be back in the morning. I didn’t tell him anything about the argument.”

“And you haven’t mentioned it since?”

“No. I hated to upset Mr. Jones. He’s such a nice man. You see, when the police talked to Mr. Jones this morning, he told them Mr. Lancaster left the office alone at five and he didn’t know where he went from here. I guess they got the impression Mr. Jones had seen him leave, whereas actually he was merely repeating what I told him over the phone. And they never asked me anything.”

“Didn’t the police talk to Knight also?”

She shook her head. “Mr. Knight didn’t come in today. When he failed to arrive this morning, Mr. Jones had me phone his home and Mrs. Knight said he was out of town visiting a customer.”

“Where?” I asked.

“She didn’t say.” Her lips trembled a trifle and she blurted out, “I think he’s hiding!”

“Hiding? Why? Even if he killed Lancaster, presumably he would figure no one had reason to suspect him. Unless you told him the key to his call box was open.”

“I did,” she said.

“What?”

“I did tell him. Right after Mr. Lancaster left, Mr. Knight called me over the intercom. He said, ‘My key seems to be open, Miss Graves. Has it been all along?’ I said, ‘Yes, sir.’ He growled, ‘Hope you got an earful,’ and shut it off.”

“Sounds like a pleasant guy to work for,” I said. “Do you have access to all company records?”

She nodded. “I keep the books.”

“Think you could figure out what company Lancaster was talking about?”

She pursed her lips dubiously. “I doubt that it would appear in our records. Both partners handle their own personal financial transactions, so they don’t run through our books. I doubt that this office even has a record of the stock Mr. Knight owns. He would have that at home.”

“Look anyway, will you, and I’ll phone you tomorrow. I can narrow the search somewhat for you, because Lancaster held stock in only five corporations: Illinois Telegraph, Rockaway Distributors, Ilco Utilities, Eastern Plow and Palmer Tool.”

“I’ll do my best,” she promised.

One good turn deserves another.

Rising, I said, “Thanks very much for your information, Miss Graves. And don’t fret about the police anymore. I’m working with them, and I’ll pass everything along.”

She seemed as pathetically grateful as a death row prisoner who unexpectedly receives a pardon.