The Case of the Smoking Chimney

Chapter 6

Harvey L Stanwood, deep-chested, slim-waisted, looked very attractive in his full-dress suit. Eva Raymond, watching him with proud, possessive eyes, felt that he was fully as handsome as any of the movie stars she had seen on the screen.

There was a certain dash about young Stanwood. The atmosphere of success — the aura of romance — clung to him and filled Eva with a heady intoxication.

Harvey Stanwood’s eyes were just bad enough to get him out of the draft, but they were eyes that didn’t miss a thing. As Ralph G. Pressman’s auditor and bookkeeper, he had access to figures which might not have meant much to the ordinary plodder, but to Stanwood’s chain-lightning brain they meant a lot... And Stanwood capitalized on that knowledge. He knew what was going on. Occasionally he cut himself a piece of cake.

Eva Raymond was nobody’s fool, herself. Eva had been on her own ever since she was seventeen. She liked excitement, white lights, and the feeling of gambling with life. She detested the idea of routine drudgery in an office job. She refused to be pushed ever deeper into a daily rut of routine. Eva Raymond wanted action — and got it.

Harvey Stanwood had been winning consistently earlier in the evening, but now the wheel was going against him. Eva noticed a peculiar thing about Harvey’s gambling. When luck was coming his way, his bets were moderately and conservatively placed, but when his luck started going the other way, he began plunging, making big bets, pyramiding, pushing out money recklessly.

Eva had been around gambling tables a lot. She had known some really expert gamblers. She knew that the way to gamble was to plunge heavily when things were coming your way, and to draw in your horns when the tide turned... Somewhere in the back of her mind she debated whether she should tell Harvey Stanwood about that... It was dangerous. Harvey was very conceited. He loved to tell her how to do things, give her little hints on her manners, on her English, on her appearance. If she should reverse their roles, it might not go so well... And then there was the embarrassing question of explaining to him how she had acquired this secret of the gambling fraternity. Stanwood was jealously possessive.

It was while she was turning this over in her mind that the board took Stanwood’s last chip.

“Another stack?” the croupier asked.

Stanwood nodded.

A floorman moved up and said something to the croupier. The croupier, leaning forward, his long, delicate fingers already closing over the stack of chips, said to young Stanwood: “Would you mind stepping into the office for a moment, Mr. Stanwood?”

Harvey grinned amiably. “Not at all. It might change my luck. Be seeing you in a jiffy, Eva.”

Eva was worried. She had seen other men “step into the office” when they had lost their last chip. But Harvey — good heavens, Harvey was rolling in money. He was on the inside of many of Mr. Pressman’s investments, riding along on the gravy train. Surely, Harvey wouldn’t be asked to “step into the office” over a cheque that had bounced or a credit which had suddenly been cut off. Nevertheless, she watched the curtained doorway which led to the sumptuous managerial office with a certain apprehension; and, as the minutes lengthened, the apprehension grew.

It was half an hour before midnight when young Stanwood emerged.

He was his usual gay, debonair self. “Okay, babe,” he said. “We’ll have a drink and go home.”

She let him guide her toward a secluded table. When they were seated she met his eyes. “What’s the matter?”

“Matter? I don’t get you.”

She said: “I know my way around this joint. When you—”

“Don’t say ‘joint’, baby.”

“All right, this place, then. I know what it means when they ask a man to step into the office. Now, what’s the score?”

For a moment Stanwood retained his debonair superiority; then suddenly his lips tightened. He said quietly: “I wasn’t going to tell you, but it’s our last night together. Tomorrow I’ll be in jail.”

She winked her eyes rapidly, trying to clear her vision. Her ears having heard her air castles blasted into the confusion of gaudy wreckage, she felt as though her eyes might betray her next, that the vision of Harvey Stanwood — so good-looking, so magnetic, so sure of himself — might vanish into thin air and leave her sitting at a table with only an empty chair and a waiter insistently presenting a check... It was the feeling she had in nightmares when, without rhyme or reason, every event, no matter how auspicious in its inception, suddenly turns into tragic disaster.

“What... what’s... what’s the matter?” she asked.

Stanwood gave her cold facts.

“Okay, baby. I was the wise guy. I couldn’t make money fast enough, the way things were going. I had a sure-thing tip. I needed some money for a flyer. I dipped into the boss’ funds... Nothing big, nothing that I couldn’t have paid off before I’d been discovered if I’d lost. The point was that I didn’t lose. I won. That started me going. I spread out rather thin. The first thing I knew, I ran into a whole flock of bad luck. By that time I was hooked. I could never have paid off the slow, steady way — not before I was discovered, anyway.

“I was left with only one alternative. I’d lost it gambling, and I’d have to get it back gambling. I could have done it tonight if they’d let me alone. I had a swell run of luck for a while, and was on my way to getting everything back. Then things turned against me, and I lost... Well, they’ve shut off my credit.”

“You mean they know you’re short?”

“I’m not certain whether they know it here or not. That isn’t the point. The point is that I had to stake everything on one gamble. This was no time to be conservative... When Ralph G. Pressman shows up at the office tomorrow morning, certain things will be glaringly apparent. I can’t cover them up any longer. Pressman will start asking questions within thirty minutes of the time he reaches the office. Thirty minutes after that, I’ll be in custody.”

“How... how much?”

“Something over seventeen thousand. I haven’t figured it all out to the last penny.”

“Isn’t there anything you can do?”

“No.”

“Couldn’t you go to Pressman and explain—”

His bitter laugh interrupted her. “You don’t know Pressman.”

For a moment she was silent; then her eyes half squinted thoughtfully. “That’s right,” she said almost musingly. “I don’t know Pressman.”

He was too preoccupied to notice the significance of her words.

“Will Mr. Pressman be in the office tomorrow?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps not until the next day. He’s putting over a slick deal. I guess I’m probably the only one who knows where he is. I’ll bet his wife doesn’t even know.”

“Where is he?” she asked.

“Ever hear of a place called Petrie?”

“No.”

“It’s a little town up in Santa Delbarra County.”

“I’ve been in Santa Delbarra quite a lot. I didn’t know there was a place called Petrie near there.”

“It isn’t exactly near, some thirty miles from Santa Delbarra, out in the east end of the county. Just a little hick place, but there’s been some oil activity there.”

“And Mr. Pressman is up there?”

Stanwood said: “It’s a complicated business transaction. You wouldn’t be interested.”

“Yes, I would. Tell me.”

“It’s confidential.”

“Tell me. I might help.”

“You help?”

She nodded.

He laughed, not rudely, but bitterly.

“Tell me, anyway,” she commanded.

Stanwood said: “It goes back into the early history of California when thousands on thousands of acres were given by the Mexican government in the big Spanish grants. At that time the whole north-east end of Santa Delbarra County was owned by Don José de Salvaro. He died, and the property eventually came into the hands of a shrewd Yankee named Silas Wendover. When Wendover sold the property in small parcels, he put a clause in each deed stating that he was keeping all the oil on the property for himself, his heirs and assigns.

“Back in those days, people hardly knew what oil was. They thought Wendover a little crazy. They cheerfully left the Yankee with any oil that might be on the property. It was a great joke.

“For years and years that reservation was considered simply as a cloud on the title. Then as oil began to be discovered in California, people took it a little more seriously, but no one ever bothered to look up exactly what that reservation in the deeds meant. They considered vaguely that owning the oil was one thing and getting at it quite another.

“Then Pressman looked it up. He found that under the wording of that reservation as it existed in that old deed and some of the court decisions, the Wendover heirs had the right to enter upon the land, to prospect for oil, to erect all reasonable derricks and sumps, to build roads, and, when oil was discovered, to lay pipelines, put in refineries, storage tanks, additional roads, pumping stations — in fact, anything that might be reasonably necessary to get the oil out of the land.

“Pressman quietly bought up those outstanding oil rights. When he moved in and started putting down a test well, it was as though he’d dropped a bombshell right in the middle of Petrie. The people went crazy.”

“And Mr. Pressman is up there now?” she asked. “In the hotel?”

“Not in the hotel.”

“Where?”

“If I tell you, you promise you won’t tell a soul?”

“Yes. Tell me.”

“He’s slipping over a fast one on the ranchers up there. A man named Sonders owns the property on which Pressman located his first oil well. Sonders went into court to get an injunction. He got licked. He appealed. Only today, the appellate court affirmed the decision. Pressman knew it would.”

“That still isn’t telling me where he is.”

“Be patient, baby. I want you to get the picture. When it comes to a showdown, the ranchers up there will try to buy the boss out. Most of that land is citrus land, highly developed. Some of it is swell subdivision property — small irrigated ranches... Well, the boss is up there finding out just exactly how much they’re going to be able to pay him, what their top price will be.”

“But how can he expect to do that?”

Stanwood grinned. “No one up there knows Pressman personally. He’s just a name... Well, down at the lower end of the property affected there’s some land that isn’t quite so valuable, a few small ranches. A month ago one of those ranchers got an offer through a real estate man to sell out at a fancy price. He accepted. The buyer was Jack P. Reedley. Reedley is a dirty unkempt bachelor who’s planning on putting in some chickens and rabbits when he can raise the money.”

“But you were going to tell me where Pressman was,” she said impatiently. “That’s what I want to know. Just where he is tonight — now.”

“That’s it,” Stanwood said. “Pressman is Reedley.”

“You mean—”

“Exactly.”

“But what’s the idea?”

“Don’t you get it? The ranchers, led by a man named Howser, are levying secret assessments on all the property, getting a huge fund of cash. In the course of a few days they’ll call on Reedley. They’ll find a dirty, tight-fisted old bachelor, living in a shack. They’ll tell him how much they want him to put in the kitty and why. Because Reedley is a newcomer, he’ll ask questions.”

“But those ranchers won’t tell him anything.”

Stanwood laughed. “You don’t know Pressman.”

“You’ve said that before.”

“Well, when Pressman gets done talking with those hicks, he’ll have the whole inside story. That leaves Pressman holding all the ace cards. If he should happen to strike oil in a test well, he’s sitting on top of the world. If he gets a dry hole, he’ll pretend that he’s got oil anyway. The ranchers won’t know the difference. They’ll squeeze every dollar they can possibly raise. They’ll start offering a hundred thousand or so, and then come up as they have to... By that time Pressman will know exactly how high they’ll go, exactly how much money they have.”

“And Mr. Pressman is up at Petrie now?”

“That’s right. With a day’s growth of whiskers and old dirty clothes, slouching around a little three-room shack... It’s a slick scheme.”

“You don’t think if anyone went to Mr. Pressman and tried to — well, intercede for you— After all, you’ve done a lot for him.”

“And I’ve been paid for what I’ve done. That’s the way Pressman would look at it.”

“And if Pressman doesn’t get back to his office in the morning?”

Stanwood said: “I’m safe until Pressman gets back. He may be up there four or five days. It’ll depend on things up there. If he doesn’t show up for a while — well, I could squeeze a little more cash out of the business and make one more fling — and that fling might pay off.”

“Is Mr. Pressman married?”

“Uh huh.”

“What’s she like?”

“She’s a beauty. But don’t let that fool you. She’s playing him for a sucker. She’s somewhere in the thirties. He’s in the fifties... Boy, she’s sure good-looking! But Pressman can have her. I wouldn’t want her.”

“Why not?”

“Too cold-blooded, too scheming, too selfish — but boy, oh, boy, she certainly has a figure.”

“Pressman likes — figures?”

“He did when he married her.”

“His first wife?”

“Don’t be silly. Pressman’s a millionaire... No, she saw him, decided she wanted to be Mrs. Ralph G. Pressman, and dispossessed the party in charge... Oh, she’s nobody’s fool.”

“How long have they been married?”

“Five years.”

“Perhaps Mr. Pressman is a little disillusioned and — well, deep down in his heart, a little lonely. Perhaps that’s why he’s so cold-blooded in business.”

“It may be,” Stanwood said, “but let’s quit talking about Pressman. Tonight is ours, darling — and perhaps tomorrow night. If Pressman only stays up there for a few days more and I can get my fingers on a little more cash — what the hell, baby! Perhaps we can pay out... Oh, waiter—”