Traps Need Fresh Bait

Chapter 8

The office of Lathrop, Lucas and Manly was the last word in modern decor.

The main reception room had chairs for clients who were waiting and a receptionist who sat at a desk with a switchboard at her left hand. Then there was a stenographic and filing room which opened to one side and from which came the sound of clacking typewriters.

From the main room, there were three doors, leading to private offices labeled, “MR. LATHROP”, “MR. LUCAS”, “MR. MANLY”.

The receptionist had ability. She was all hands, arms and fingers, working the switchboard, typing cards on an electric machine which she made sound like a Gatling gun in between telephone calls.

I stood watching her for a moment, which evidently annoyed her somewhat. She kept a smile in her voice, but she couldn’t keep a frown from her forehead.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Mr. Lucas,” I said.

“Oh, yes. And your name, please?”

I said, “Tell Mr. Lucas it’s a personal matter. He’ll know me when he sees me.”

I smiled.

She didn’t smile, but said, “I’ll have to have your name.”

“Tell him it’s Donald,” I said in a bored voice.

“Donald what?” she asked.

I made a bluff of turning toward the door. “Oh, well,” I said, “it’s just a personal matter. When you see him again, tell him that Donald was in but didn’t like the red tape. He’ll know what you mean.”

“Just a moment,” she said icily.

Her fingers flew over the switchboard, pulling out a cord and depressing a key.

She turned a cold shoulder to me, lowered her voice, and spoke into the telephone in such a way that I couldn’t hear what she said.

A moment later she said, “Yes, Mr. Lucas, I’ll ask him.”

She said, “Mr. Lucas would like your name, please.”

I gave her my most cheerful smile, “All right,” I said, “I’ll give it to him.”

I walked past her desk, turned the knob of the door marked “MR. LUCAS,” found it was unlocked, and walked in.

Lucas was still sitting with the telephone at his ear, frowning in irritation.

He looked up with cold anger on his face, slammed the telephone down, pushed back his chair, got to his feet — and then his eyes widened in recognition, his jaw sank. I saw the aggressive set leave his shoulders. All of a sudden the coat looked too big for the man.

“You!” he said.

I closed the door.

I said, “I have been waiting to hear from you. Naturally, I would like my three hundred dollars.”

“How... how did you locate me?”

I smiled. “Does it make any difference, Mr. Lucas? Or do you prefer to be called Mr. Harper when we’re discussing that automobile accident?”

He settled back in his chair, hesitated a moment, said, “Sit down, Mr. Lam.”

I took the chair he indicated.

“I think perhaps I owe you an explanation,” he said.

“I think perhaps you do.”

He hesitated for a long time, caressing the knuckles of his right hand with the fingers of his left hand, evidently trying to coordinate his thoughts.

“That ad,” he said, “was perhaps misleading.”

“Perhaps.”

“We wanted to get in touch with a certain person whom we had reason to believe had seen the accident. We wanted that person for another reason altogether; but we didn’t want to disclose our true reason, so my associates and I decided to advertise for persons who might have seen the automobile accident.”

“I see.”

His face brightened a little as he went along. “So, actually, the ad could have been misleading to a bona fide witness to the accident. We didn’t want that. Apparently, you were inconvenienced. We would expect to compensate you for that inconvenience.”

“How much,” I asked.

His smile was affable now. “A hundred dollars, Mr. Lam.”

“The ad said three hundred,” I said.

“I have explained to you, Mr. Lam, that the ad was directed toward a very special person, and you are not that person.”

“Did you find the person you wanted?” I asked.

He said, “I think that’s hardly pertinent to the subject we’re discussing, Mr. Lam.”

“What subject were we discussing?”

“Your compensation,” he said, and then added after a moment, “if any.”

I said, “For your information, that ad was a complete fabrication. You must have had your ideas completely mixed. Actually, it was the Cadillac that ran the red light. The Ford Galaxie was running with the traffic, according to the signal.”

“That wasn’t the way you talked when I first discussed the matter,” he said.

“That’s the way I’m talking now — the way the facts are.”

“Then you didn’t see the accident?” he said.

“The ad offered a three-hundred-dollar reward to someone who could furnish a witness who had seen the accident.”

“The ad was very carefully worded,” Lucas said, “so that the reward was only to be paid to a witness who would testify that the driver of the Ford was in the wrong.”

I said, “Yes, you couldn’t afford to have had the ad otherwise because you’d have had perhaps as many as half-a-dozen witnesses.”

“Exactly what is it you want?” he asked.

I said, “I think I’m entitled to the three hundred dollars. I answered the ad in good faith, didn’t I?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Did you?”

I simply smiled.

He hesitated, ran his fingers along the angle of his chin, then doubled up his left fist and rubbed the tips of the right fingers over the knuckles. Finally, he said, “Very well, Mr. Lam. Perhaps you’re entitled to the reward after all. You’ll have to pardon me for a moment, because I don’t keep this kind of money in my pocket. I’ll have to draw a voucher and then get the cash from the safe. It will take a few minutes. If you’ll just wait here.”

He got up and left the office.

I was tempted to get up and look around on his desk, but a mirror in the wall looked very much like one of those one-way windows to me, and so I sat there waiting.

After about five minutes, he was back with three one-hundred-dollar bills and a receipt.

“Here you are, Mr. Lam,” he said.

He handed me the three one-hundred-dollar bills and said, “You sign here on the receipt.”

The receipt read, “I, Donald Lam, acknowledge receipt in full payment of compensation due to me for answering an ad and locating witnesses for traffic accident dated April 15, as the ad appeared in the daily papers.”

There was a blank for signature and, below the blank, two lines for address.

“You’ll have to sign your name,” Lucas said, “and be sure to give us the address.”

I folded the three one-hundred dollar bills, put them in my pocket, took the form of receipt in my fingers, tore it in two, then tore the two halves in two, walked over and dropped them into the wastebasket.

“No receipt,” I said, and walked out.

He sat there looking at me, frustrated, angry and undecided.

As I left the office, a good-looking girl who had been seated in one of the chairs said to the receptionist, “I can’t wait any longer. Please tell him I’ll try and see him tomorrow. I have an appointment.”

She preceded me out of the door.

We waited together for the elevator.

I sized her up as an exceptionally clever stenographer who had been given the job of tailing me to see where I went. She was thrilled to death at getting away from her routine work and having a job of shadowing.

The elevator cage came to a stop and the girl walked in ahead of me, giving herself away with almost every move she made.

The technique of shadowing is an art, and it isn’t easy to learn. This girl was doing everything wrong.

She was nervous; she cleared her throat three or four times while the elevator was descending; she carefully avoided turning her face toward mine, but she would make little surreptitious, sidelong glances of appraisal, as though afraid I might vanish into thin air while the elevator was in motion.

When we reached the street, she let me get out first — despite the fact I held back.

There was a cocktail lounge a couple of blocks down the street. I walked directly there, as though expecting to meet someone.

She waited until I had entered and had a chance to look all around, putting on the act of looking for someone who was to have met me, before she came in and took a seat — very prim, very dignified, very self-contained, hoping that I wouldn’t recognize her as the girl who had been in the elevator and the girl who had been in the contractor’s office.

Even so, she couldn’t refrain from those little nervous, sidelong glances.

I talked with the bartender, asking him what time it was. We compared our watches. I went into the men’s room. There was an entrance from the bar and from the big dining room.

I walked in through the bar entrance and walked out through the door to the dining room, hit the street and kept going.

I found an unpretentious hotel, went in and registered as “Donald Lam of Denver, Colorado.” I explained to the clerk that I had left my baggage at the depot in a locker, that it would be out directly, but that, since I had no baggage, I’d pay in advance.

He welcomed the suggestion.

I paid for the room for one night, got a receipt, got my key, thrust it in my pocket and said, “I won’t go up to the room just yet but will wait for my baggage.”

I walked out, then went directly back to the building where Lathrop, Lucas and Manly had their offices.

I waited around the entrance to the building for nearly twenty minutes before she showed up.

She was looking dispirited and dejected as she came walking along the sidewalk.

I walked out and went past her, apparently without seeing her but with my eyes straight ahead. I could still see the sudden start of surprise on her face as she recognized me in the crowd. I saw her twist her neck, then her body, then follow me.

I led her directly to the hotel, walked up to the desk and said in a loud voice, “Any messages for Donald Lam from Denver? I have my key.”

The clerk looked in the box back of the counter, shook his head.

I waved the key at him by way of salute and walked over to the elevator.

She didn’t dare try to follow me into the elevator. That would have been pressing luck too far.

I got off at the fourth floor, hurried to the stairs, ran down to the third floor, and stood there watching the elevator indicators.

The next cage came shooting up, and the needle came to a quivering stop at the fourth floor.

I pressed the button on the down elevator, boarded it on the third floor, went down to the lobby, tossed my key onto the desk.

This would give my shadow a chance to report to her boss that she’d located my address in the downtown hotel where I was staying.

She was satisfied with herself; I was satisfied with myself; and I had Daphne Creston’s three hundred dollars.

I felt I’d need a few clean clothes, so I went to my regular apartment to pack up a bag.

I knew I’d ranked the job as soon as I reached the entrance to the building.

I don’t know where Sergeant Sellers had been waiting, but it was probably in a parked car. He made good time getting out and up the short flight of steps, because he was looking over my shoulder before I’d finished sorting the mail that was in my mailbox.

“Hello, Pint Size,” he said.

I didn’t look up. “Hello Frank. I smelled soggy tobacco and figured you must be around somewhere. What’s new?”

“You are.”

“Whatta you mean?”

“You’re news.”

“News to me.”

“It won’t be. Let’s go up.”

“Up where?”

“Your apartment.”

“What for?”

“I want to look around.”

“Got a warrant?” I asked.

“You’re damn tooting!” Sellers said.

We went up to the apartment. I took a key from my pocket.

Sellers pushed in behind me. I could smell the half-smoked cold cigar he was chewing.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll take a look at the warrant,” I said.

“Suits me,” Sellers said, and handed me a copy of a search warrant, showing that he was looking for evidence of an undisclosed nature taken from 1771 Hemmet Avenue, where one Dale Dirking Finchley had been murdered.

“This warrant is no good,” I said. “It has to describe the person or place to be searched and the thing or things to be found.”

Sellers shifted his cold cigar and grinned, “Want to resist an officer on the strength of your objection?” he asked.

“No. I’ll raise the point in court.”

“Do that. That’s your privilege.”

“Just what are you looking for, Sellers?” I asked.

“A girl,” he said.

“I’m a respectable bachelor,” I told him.

“Nuts!” he said.

He started looking around the apartment, looking in the wastebasket, looking in the closet, looking under the bed. He prowled in the back part of the closet, looked carefully at the shoes, looked at the ash trays to see if he could find any cigarette stubs with lipstick on them.

“Where have you got her, Pint Size?” he asked.

“Got who?”

“The girl.”

“And the theory is that I have a girl who knows something?”

“You’re concealing the girl, and you know what that’s going to do.”

“What?”

“I’ll tell you that,” he said, “when your license hearing comes up. I hate to keep picking on you Donald, because at times you have co-operated, and Bertha is a good egg.

“Bertha made her mistake when she went into partnership with you. Bertha was running a respectable...”

“Collection agency,” I interrupted.

“Well, it was on the up-and-up anyway, and Bertha didn’t need to lose sleep nights wondering about her license.”

“She doesn’t need to lose any sleep now,” I told him.

“Perhaps not as long as I’m her friend and she plays square with me,” he said.

Sellers went into the bathroom, looked at the toothbrushes, examined the bath towels, looked in the hamper for soiled clothes.

“You look for things in funny places,” I told him.

“Sometimes I find things in funny places,” he said. “What else besides a girl?” I asked.

“Money.”

“How much money?”

“According to the tip I have, a firm of contractors was going to make bids on the construction of roads, grading, development of storm drainage and eventually all of the improvements in a big subdivision. There was to be a whole series of bids. Finchley was attorney for the subdividers.

“Bids were supposed to be accompanied by a cash deposit as evidence of good faith and performance.

“Since these deposits were returned to the unsuccessful bidders, they were usually in the form of certified checks or cashier’s checks, but I’m told a group of contractors got in on the bidding at the last minute and, in order to make their bid legal, they had to send over forty thousand in cash. They phoned Finchley and got an O.K. Then they sent the money over. It could have been in the house when Finchley got in the way of a bullet.”

“Who told you all this?” I asked.

“A little bird.”

“Who are the contractors.”

Sellers looked at me and rolled the cigar stub around with his lips.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I’d like to find out.”

Sellers said, “Frankly, Donald, I don’t know.” And then he added, “And somehow I have the sneaking idea that perhaps you do. And, if you do and you’ve been holding out, I’ll break you if it’s the last damn thing I do.”

Sellers looked me over thoughtfully. “O.K., Donald,” he said. “I’m going to give you a chance to come clean.”

“Thank you.”

“You should thank me. A lot of cops would just lower the boom. Now, I’ll tell you this much: we’re looking for a woman in connection with Dale Finchley. There’s evidence that a woman was in the house at the time the murder was committed. The assumption is that the woman fired the fatal shot. There’s also evidence that a woman ran out of the house shortly after the fatal shot and disappeared down the street.

“We don’t know where she went to, but we do know that you were cruising in the neighborhood. We know that you’re a Don Quixote as far as women are concerned, and we have reason to believe that you may have taken this woman down to the Finchley home and were waiting outside for her to join you.”

“What evidence?” I asked.

“Lots of evidence,” he said. “We don’t give a suspect all of our evidence, you know.”

“Am I suspect?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks.”

“Not at all... I’ll tell you this much more: there’s evidence that you got acquainted with a woman named Daphne Creston; that you called at the Travertine Hotel; that Daphne Creston was with you; that you picked up her baggage and drove away; that you were in a hurry and were acting suspiciously.

“What have you to say to that?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you deny it?”

“No.”

“Do you admit it?”

“Not altogether,” I said.

“Who is Daphne Creston?”

“I said I’m doing a job for a woman. I’m not mentioning her name.”

“Bertha doesn’t know anything about it,” Sellers said. “It wasn’t a woman who came to the office. It was nothing you’re doing in the regular routine of partnership affairs.”

“I’ve been pretty busy lately,” I said. “I haven’t had a chance to report to Bertha on all the details.”

“What kind of a job are you doing for this Daphne Creston?”

I hesitated as though on the point of telling him, then shook my head. “It’s confidential.”

“All right, Pint Size,” Sellers said; “I’ve put you on notice.”

Sellers walked over to the telephone, dialed a number and said, “Sergeant Frank Sellers talking. O.K., here’s an order — 16-72-91-4, urgent! Got that? O.K., goodbye.”

Sellers twisted the cigar in his mouth, sat down in the most comfortable chair in the place as though he intended to stay for a week, said, “Now, Donald, I don’t need to to tell you that if what we’ve been told is true, or if any great percentage of it is true, you’re in for a lot of trouble.”

“Yes,” I said, “if I took a woman out to the Finchley residence; waited while she went in and murdered Finchley; then picked her up when she came out; hustled her back to the Travertine Hotel, where she was staying; picked up her baggage; took her out and concealed her — and if I am keeping her concealed, that could make me a guest of the state for a long, long time.”

“Exactly,” Sellers said.

“If, on the other hand,” I told him, “I’m trying to do a job for a woman client, and it’s a confidential job, I’m under no obligations to betray her confidence to the police just because Katherine Elliott is trying to make trouble for me.”

“Who did you say?” Sellers asked, pulling the soggy cigar out of his mouth and sitting upright.

“Katherine Elliott.”

“Who’s she?”

“A disgruntled woman who is trying to make trouble for me.”

“What’s she disgruntled about?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Search me. I tried to get some information for a client and received a brush-off.”

“What sort of information?”

“About a want ad covering an accident that took place on April fifteenth.”

Sellers started to put the soggy cigar back in his mouth, looked at it distastefully, got up, walked in the bathroom and flushed the cigar down the toilet.

I knew he was stalling for time.

“Can you tell me any more about that accident,” he asked, “or about the job.”

“Bertha can tell you,” I said. “You believe everything she tells you. You don’t believe anything I tell you. Why don’t you get in touch with Bertha?”

Sellers said, “Some of that checks, Donald. I have been covering as much of your back trail as possible. Bertha told me you were working on some kind of a phony ad — that you were employed by a big association of insurance executives that were trying to chase down a perjury ring.”

“Well,” I said, “I don’t know as I would have told you that much, but if Bertha told you, it’s all right. Katherine Elliott was mixed up in that ad business. I don’t know just to what extent, but I do know that she took a violent dislike to me. I also know that she’s been in trouble with the Better Business Bureau.”

“The hell she has!”

“That’s right,” I told him. “She’d tell you anything in order to make trouble for me because she knows I’m investigating and she’s afraid that before I get through, she’ll be in trouble herself.”

Sergeant Sellers walked to the window, then seated himself at the little dinette table and started drumming on the surface. “You could be on the up-and-up,” he said.

“I could be.”

“Well, let’s hope that you are,” Sellers said, “because you could be in lots of trouble if you aren’t, and this time you’d probably drag Bertha into it with you; and that would be bad. Bertha’s tight as the bark on a tree; but she’s honest and she’s always co-operated with the police.”

“I’ve always co-operated with the police,” I said.

“You certainly have,” Sellers said, raising his finger and drawing it across his throat; “some co-operation.”

“It’s paid off,” I said, and then added, “to you.”

“Yes,” Sellers admitted after a moment, “it’s paid off. Well, I’m going to be on my way, and I’ll leave you alone for a while. But I’m warning you: keep your nose clean!”

Sellers walked to the door, turned and said, “No hard feelings.”

“No hard feelings,” I told him.

Sellers walked out.

I knew that the order he had given over the telephone in code was an order to the dispatcher to have radio cars rush to this address and put me under surveillance as soon as I came out.

I waited a good fifteen minutes to give the police trap time to get itself set; then I took from my pocket the note which described Dennison Farley, the big winner of the Irish Sweepstakes, and gave his address as 1328 Severang Avenue.

I walked over to the bureau where I keep my .38-caliber revolver and put it on in a shoulder holster.

The thing makes a bulge in my coat no matter how I try to hang it, and for that reason I hate to carry a gun. But where I was going I thought it might be a good plan to have a bulge in my coat this time.