A Fair - Cut Thin to Win

“He’s told me that they’ve put thirty detectives on the trail of Mrs. Chester. They’re going to find her.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “But he can’t go after me.”

“What do you mean he can’t go after you?”

“He gave me a deadline to tell him the name of my client. He said in the presence of witnesses that if I told him the name of the client he’d turn off the heat.”

“No, he didn’t,” Bertha said. “He told me you tried to trip him into doing that, but he told you that if you’d cut one little corner he’d throw the book at you. He says you cut a corner. You told him the name of the client but you still compounded a felony.

“He says if you produce Mrs. Chester before noon today, he’ll be a lot more lenient with you, but he isn’t going to stand for any detective agency going around compounding felonies.”

I said, “I can’t produce her. I don’t know where she is.”

“Sellers will find her,” Bertha said.

After a while I said, “The case doesn’t add up. It doesn’t make sense.”

“What do you mean?”

I said, “Let’s begin at the beginning. This wasn’t too serious a hit-and-run case. The woman was struck in a pedestrian crossing, but there were no bones broken. That isn’t as though we were dealing with a corpse.

“Now then, mysterious people rush into the act with a lot of money, more money perhaps than Mrs. Chester could ever have recovered. We got money to go and call on the victim. It has to be hushed up right away and fast. I get an opportunity to settle for ten grand and wire our client.

“There isn’t even so much as a quibble. My judgment isn’t questioned. No one suggests that I try to get the amount whittled down. Whoever is back of this tossed the ten grand in my lap, fast.”

“I know what you’re getting at,” Bertha said. “That means someone who was important was driving the car.”

“Provided there was a car,” I told her.

“What?” Bertha asked.

I said, “How do we know there was a car?”

“What are you talking about?”

I said, “The whole damned thing is too pat.

“How did Frank Sellers get on my trail so fast? How did he know that Mrs. Chester had been paid money to forget the whole thing?”

“Because Mrs. Chester blabbed. She showed money to her neighbor.”

“And how did it happen that Sellers called on the neighbor?”

“He was investigating the case.”

“And how did it happen that a man of Seller’s stature in the police department started investigating the case?”

“Because it was... important.”

“It wasn’t important at that time,” I said. “It wasn’t important until he got the lead on a cover-up of compounding a felony — provided there ever was any felony.”

“It was a hit-and-run,” Bertha said.

“All right,” I said, “let’s concede for the sake of the argument that it was a hit-and-run. How did Sellers get on the job, personally and get there so fast?”

“I don’t know,” Bertha said. “Frank Sellers doesn’t confide in me.”

“There’s only one way he got on the job that fast,” I said. “He got a tip from someone.”

“And who is the someone?” Bertha Cool asked.

I sat there in the chair, thoughtfully silent.

“Well?” Bertha Cool asked, “who was it?”

“Under the circumstances,” I said, “it had to be one of three people — No, one of four people.”

“Who?”

“Either our client, Clayton Dawson, or his so-called daughter, Phyllis, or Sidney Eldon, the boy friend of Phyllis, or Colton Essex, the attorney... And we don’t know there really is a Sidney Eldon.”

“Are you completely crazy?” Bertha asked. “None of those people would have done it. They were the ones who stood to lose everything.”

I got to my feet and said, “I’m going to be out all day, and I may be out for several days.”

“You can say that again,” Bertha said. “You’re out, period. I’m not going to monkey with anyone who is losing his license. Sellers told me to get out from under. I’m getting out.”

“Okay,” I told her, as I walked out, “the partnership is dissolved.”

I went down to my private office.

Elsie Brand had been crying.

“What’s the trouble, Elsie?” I asked.

“Bertha told me.”

“About the license?”

“Yes.”

“Forget it,” I told her.

“It means the end of the partnership; it means the end of your career.”

“They haven’t got my license yet,” I said.

“Donald, I couldn’t stay on here for a minute without you — you know that.”

“Don’t sell me short,” I said.

She looked at me with warm eyes. “I’ve never sold you short, Donald,” she said, “but this time the cards are stacked against you and Bertha is on the warpath. She should have more loyalty as a partner,” Elsie blazed. “I could never work under her!”

“You’re not going to have to,” I said. “Stick around and be where I can reach you on the phone. I’m going to be out for a while.”

“Where can I reach you in case — in case any real emergency should turn up?” she asked.

“You can’t,” I told her. “I’ll call in from time to time.”

“Donald, please — please be careful.”

“It’s too late to be careful now,” I told her. “I’m dealing either with a crooked lawyer, a jealous boy friend, a scheming daughter, one hell of a wealthy father, or a combination of any number of them.

“You can’t be careful when you go up against a combination of that sort.”

“You could at least try,” she said, and watched me with anxious eyes as I walked out of the office.

Frank Sellers was a square cop. He was also opinionated, bigoted, not too quick on the uptake, suspicious of any glib talker, and possessed of a bulldog tenacity.

Sellers had the jump on me when it came to finding Mrs. Harvey W. Chester.

I knew that by this time every directory in the city had been searched; every Chester had been contacted, questions had been asked about whether they had a relative named Harvey Chester or knew of a widow, a Mrs. Harvey Chester.

In short, all the ordinary avenues had been plugged.

If I tried to follow the ordinary trails, I’d be trailing along behind, following a beaten path that had been flattened by the feet of a whole bunch of cops.

I had to find some angle of approach which the police officers hadn’t thought of as yet.

Mrs. Chester had received ten thousand bucks. She had had an ambulance call and pick her up. She had gone to the airport. She had been placed aboard a plane for Denver.

When she arrived in Denver, a wheelchair was waiting for her. A solicitous gentleman had taken over and wheeled her to a car. She had vanished completely from that instant. The stewardess who had helped her said she was full of dope.

It was a cinch Sellers had been in touch with the Denver police and every attempt was being made to locate Mrs. Chester at that end.

The plane had made one intermediate stop at Las Vegas.

There was no possibility a wheelchair case could have disembarked at Las Vegas without the stewardess knowing it.

There was one other possibility.

The woman who arrived at the Los Angeles airport by ambulance didn’t necessarily have to be the same one who had got off the plane at Denver. A wheelchair could have been ordered for a Mrs. Harvey W. Chester; and an entirely different Mrs. Harvey W. Chester could have purchased a ticket, switched places on the plane before it took off and while the stewardesses were busy checking incoming passengers.

The woman who boarded the plane could have got off at Las Vegas, having switched her through ticket to a woman who had boarded the plane at the same time that she did.