The Case of the Turning Tide

Chapter 9

Jack Elwell, moving with the paunchy dignity of a middle-aged man who eats, drinks, and smokes too much, fitted a latchkey to a door on the frosted glass of which appeared the legend ELWELL & FIELDING, OIL INVESTMENTS.

He hung up his hat and coat, and looked at his watch. It was seven-fifteen. The morning sun, streaming in through the eastern windows, glinted in dazzling reflection from the top of a massive mahogany desk. Elwell crossed to the window, lowered the Venetian blinds, and adjusted them so they shut out the glare. He unfolded a newspaper and settled back in his chair. He tried to lose himself in the sporting section, but his mind wasn’t on what he was reading. Whenever there was the faintest noise in the corridor, Elwell raised his head from the paper to listen attentively.

At seven-thirty-two the phone rang. Elwell said, “Hello,” and the voice of Ned Fielding came over the wire. “Just wanted to make sure you were there, Jack.”

“Uh huh.”

“Anything come in?”

“No. The mail isn’t here yet.”

Fielding said, “Well, the lawyer says we aren’t safe until after the morning mail’s been delivered. If he put an acceptance in the mail Saturday, it sticks us. I don’t think there’s any chance he did. I’ve made an appointment with this other outfit for lunch.”

Elwell said, “Old Stearne is just that sort of an egg. He’ll play with you as a cat plays with a mouse. He’s got lawyers, and he knows exactly what he can do and what he can’t do. You coming up here?”

“I’ll be there in fifteen or twenty minutes. I’m just grabbing a cup of coffee at a restaurant now.”

“You were supposed to be here at quarter past seven,” Elwell said.

“I know. I slept a little late — that is, my alarm clock didn’t go off. I made a mistake in setting it, Jack. I had to see the lawyer last night. We had a long conference. I got in pretty late, and when I wound the clock...”

“Nuts,” Elwell interrupted. “Cut out the excuses, finish your coffee and get up here.”

He hung up the telephone, read a few minutes longer on the sporting page, then turned to the first page, and glanced at the headlines. Abruptly he jerked to startled attention, sucked in a quick breath, and held it for several seconds. He reached for the telephone, and tried to dial a number. He was so nervous that his first two attempts were failures, then on the third try, he heard Fielding’s voice on the line.

“Hello, Ned...”

“Oh, all right, all right!” Fielding interrupted irritably. “If you want to be a damn snoop and play detective, go ahead. I was stalling! I’d just woke up when I telephoned you. So what? I was crocked last night, and...”

“Shut up,” Elwell yelled into the telephone. “Listen to me. Go out and get a paper. Don’t stop to shave, don’t do anything, just grab a newspaper.”

“What’s in the newspaper?”

“All over the front page. Someone bumped the old man off. He was killed on his yacht at Santa Delbarra. They found the bodies yesterday. C. Arthur Right was on the yacht with him, and got his. The police haven’t any clue. They don’t know who did it. It was done Saturday, but they don’t even know what time it was done. Get that?”

Fielding gave a low whistle, said, “Suppose he died before midnight?”

“I don’t know. That’s up to the lawyers, but dead men sign no options. That’s a cinch.”

“He might have mailed one before...”

“Get dressed, grab a paper, and get up here. Make it snappy.”

“Okay, Jack, I’ll be right up.”

Ned Fielding slammed down the telephone. Elwell dropped the receiver back into place, but kept his hand on the telephone, too engrossed to even change his position as he read the details of the murder.

When he had finished, he dialed a number, and when he received no answer, looked at his watch, dropped the receiver back into place, took a cigar from his pocket, and was clipping off the end when he heard steps in the corridor. The events of the last few minutes had distracted his attention from the significance of those steps, and it wasn’t until he heard the sound of mail being shoved through the letter slot in the door that he pushed back his chair, got up, and walked quietly over to stand where he could see the mail, yet far enough back so his silhouette would not be thrown against the frosted glass.

When the postman had moved away Elwell grabbed up the mail, and carried it over to the secretary’s desk. He riffled rapidly through the envelopes, looking quickly at the imprints in the upper left-hand corners. A slow smile appeared on his lips, and then, as he came to the envelope next to the bottom of the pile, the corners of his mouth turned sharply down. He stood for the space of four or five seconds staring at the envelope which bore the imprint, ADDISON STEARNE. The envelope was postmarked “Santa Delbarra, California,” and had been mailed at four-fifty-five P.M. on Saturday, the tenth. It had not been sent by registered mail.

Elwell turned it over and over in his fingers before he finally slipped a knife from his pocket, carefully and methodically slit down the side of the envelope, and shook out a folded piece of paper.

Instinctively Elwell looked at his watch to mark the time. It was exactly twelve minutes before eight o’clock.

He unfolded the letter, and read an epistle which was so entirely typical of Addison Stearne that there could be no question of its authenticity.

The letter was addressed to Elwell & Fielding and read:

Elwell threw the letter down on the desk, and clenched his fist. His face darkened with purplish anger. He said slowly and with emphasis, “The damned bastard!”

After a few moments, he picked up the letter again and held it out in front of him at arm’s length. His eyes narrowed as he looked at the envelope, stared speculatively at the door, once more consulted his watch. For a few moments he was lost in thought, then he hastily folded the letter, pushed it back in the envelope, shoved letter and envelope in his pocket, picked up the balance of the mail, walked over to the door, and arranged the letters in a pile at the bottom of the letter chute. He stepped back to inspect the general effect, shook his head, and tried rearranging the pile. Midway in this, he was struck with another idea. He scooped up all the letters, jerked open the door of the office, stepped outside, and pushed the letters in a bundle through the letter drop, leaving them jammed in the brass mail slot, held in place by the pressure of the bundle.

Having done this, he walked rapidly down the hallway to the men’s lavatory where he once more took the letter from his pocket. Striking a match, he held it to one corner and watched the flame lick up around the edges of the paper. When it had all burnt away, he flushed the ashes, and the small corner he had been holding between thumb and fore-finger. Then he walked down to the elevator, and frowned when the elevator operator said, “You’re early this morning, Mr. Elwell.”

“Thought perhaps my partner would be in,” Elwell said in a low voice.

Riding down in the elevator, he tried to think of something else to say which would make his appearance at the office seem more casual, less of an event to be remembered in case there should be an inquiry; but realized that anything he might say would only impress upon the mind of the operator the fact that he had been there. He left the elevator quietly, walked across the lobby, moved a few feet down the sidewalk, and stood carefully scanning the stream of pedestrians which poured along the street.

After he had waited for nearly ten minutes, he saw Ned Fielding, a newspaper under his arm, hurrying toward the building. Elwell stepped out, swung into step alongside his partner, and grasped his arm.

Fielding jumped with a convulsive start, frowned, and said, “Good God, Jack, don’t ever do that! I thought it was a pinch.”

“Come on,” Elwell said, puffing at his cigar. “Snap out of it. Keep moving.”

“Don’t you want to go to the office?”

“No.”

“How about our lawyer?”

“Stay away from him.”

“What’s the idea?”

“We can’t talk here.”

Elwell piloted his companion into the relative seclusion of a side street. “It came,” he said.

“What did?”

“The letter.”

“An acceptance?”

“Uh huh. He’s been wise to the play the whole time. He was just stringing us along and letting us kid ourselves.”

“Damn him,” Fielding said, his voice vibrant with intense feeling.

“Okay,” Elwell said in a low voice, “use your bean. We never received the letter, see?”

Fielding blinked at him.

“Get the sketch?” Elwell asked. “I pulled out of the office and stuck the mail back through the door. The stenographer will come in at eight-thirty. She’ll pick up the mail, and open it. We’ll give her plenty of chance to read it all through and get familiar with it. We’ll come in about nine o’clock, just as though nothing had happened. We’ll ask her what’s in the mail and ask her if there was any letter from Addison Stearne. When she says there wasn’t any letter, we’ll grin at each other and shake hands as though we’re highly pleased. We’ll call up these other people right then and tell ’em it’s a deal. I’ll have a newspaper under my arm. After I hang up the telephone, I’ll open the newspaper, and we’ll start talking about the news. Then you’ll give a yell and point to the headlines. In that way, we’ll find out for the first time that Addison Stearne is dead. The stenographer will be a witness to the whole thing. Get me?”

“Martha Gayman ain’t exactly dumb,” Fielding pointed out. “We’ll have to play it just right so she won’t think it’s an act. She...”

“Bosh!” Elwell interrupted. “She’s got sense enough to do filing and take dictation. Aside from that, she’s just a dumb cluck. Every time I look at her, she reminds me of a cow with a full stomach. But she’s honest, and if we can convince her, she’ll make a swell witness.”

Fielding squinted his eyes. “It’s okay, Jack, but if they should ever prove we had that letter...”

“How they going to prove it?” Elwell demanded. “That letter’s gone. There isn’t even a chance they could recover a cinder the size of a pinhead.”

“That letter was typewritten?” Field asked.

“Uh huh.”

“He’ll have kept a copy.”

“What do we care? It doesn’t cut any ice with us. He could have written a dozen letters. He can’t hold us unless the letter was put in the mail. He may have written the letter and intended to put it in the mail, but he never did, see? We never got it. Our secretary can swear to that. She got into the office first and opened the mail.”

Fielding said, “Wait a minute, Jack. Let me think this over. It...”

“It’s been done now,” Elwell said. “There’s nothing to think over. Don’t be so damn conservative. You’ve got to take a chance once in a while. There’s two hundred and fifty thou-sand involved in the deal.”

“That’s what makes it so dangerous,” Fielding said. “Keep quiet for a minute. Let me think... That letter was postmarked from Santa Delbarra?”

“Yes.”

“He went up there on his yacht. He didn’t have any secretary with him. He must have written it himself. Probably had a typewriter along. Did you notice down in the lower left-hand corner if there were any marks that showed whether it had been dictated or not?”

Elwell frowned. “No,” he said, “I didn’t. Hell, I never thought of that.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Well, what difference does it make?”

“It might make a lot.”

Elwell shook his head doggedly. “We never got any letter,” he said. “That’s all that counts, as far as we’re concerned. Stearne never mailed it.”

Fielding said, “That’s okay, but the thing to do is to find out if he had a typewriter aboard the yacht. In other words, was the letter written up there, or was it dictated at his office before he left. Get the idea? If he didn’t have a typewriter on the boat and the letter was dictated at his office, he was carrying it in his pocket, intending to mail it. He was killed before he had a chance to mail it. The letter disappeared and...”

Elwell interrupted to say impatiently, “You try to cross too damn many bridges before you come to them. We didn’t get any letter. That’s all.”

Fielding said, “Well, while I’m crossing bridges, I’ll give you another one to think about. Where were you Saturday after-noon and night — in case the district attorney at Santa Delbarra should ask you?”