A Fair - Cut Thin to Win

“So what happened?”

He sighed, started drumming on the edge of the desk. “I goofed,” he said.

“In what way?”

“I wanted to get the evidence.”

“What did you do?”

“I was to give him money and he was to produce the evidence.”

“You met him?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“At a little rooming house that he had selected.”

“You gave him the money?”

“Yes.”

“He didn’t produce the evidence?”

“No, he said that he would get it for me; that he’d left it in a safe place. That he hadn’t believed that I was acting in good faith. He said he had thought that I might have the police grab him and search him.

“All of that was not very smart, because if I’d wanted to go to the police, I’d have gone to them in the first place. I didn’t dare to have that stuff come out. Having him searched by a police officer or anyone else was the very last thing I wanted.”

“So what did you do?”

“I bought him a drink, and Phyllis put the knockout drops in it.”

“Oh, oh!”

“He took the drink and right at the last realized we’d drugged him. He had a gun and tried to pull it. I clobbered him and he passed out cold. We got the keys to his apartment, his gun, and went up to his place. We searched for more than an hour before we found what we wanted. We took it. Then I went back to put the guy’s keys back in his pocket.”

“He was still out cold?” I asked.

“He was dead as a doornail. His heart had stopped on him.”

I thought for a moment and said, “So you called Colton Essex in Los Angeles and told him you needed an absolute, ironclad alibi for yourself and Phyllis.”

“Principally Phyllis,” he said.

“All right, you needed an alibi for Phyllis, and you had to have it fast. You had to be able to prove she was in Los Angeles.”

“Right,” he said.

I thought that over.

“Well?” he asked. “Did I do the right thing in telling you all this?”

“I asked for it... Where did you get the name ‘Dawson’?”

“I made it up,” he said.

“Why?”

“Phyllis and I used that name and address to correspond with each other.”

“You’re married?”

He stroked his chin. “Yes and no.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I’m married,” he said, “but my wife and I haven’t been getting along for a while. She went to Las Vegas to establish a six-week’s residence and get a divorce.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Then why take all these chances with a blackmailer?”

“She has a damned smart lawyer,” he said. “They knew that I had some outside companionship, but they couldn’t prove it. She held off for nearly a year getting a divorce, trying to catch me. They had detectives shadowing me; they tried everything.”

“Who’s the girl in the outer office, the one who got the letter for you?”

“She’s a girl I can trust.”

“What’s her name?”

“Mellie Belden.”

“Not Millie?”

“No, Mellie.”

“You trust her?”

“I trust her with my life.”

“Devoted to you?”

“Devoted to the job. She’s competent, capable, cool, collected and loyal.”

“Helen Loomis down there knows who you are?”

“No, she knows Mellie Belden and that’s all. When something comes in that’s important, she telephones Mellie. She thinks Mellie is the Dawson Re-Debenture Discount Security Company.”

I said, “You left a pretty wide back trail for your wife’s attorney not to be able to follow it.”

“They never did.”

“But you were afraid they were going to?”

“If this blackmailer had gone to my wife’s attorney, he could have sold the information he had for a big sum of money and he knew it.”

“Who was the blackmailer?”

“Deering L. Canby.”

I thought things over for a while. “How do you know he didn’t?” I asked at length.

“Didn’t what?”

“Go to your wife’s attorney?”

“Because they didn’t get the evidence. I got it.”

I said, “I know a little something about blackmail and blackmailers. When there’s a competitive market they like to sell to the highest bidder.”

“This one didn’t,” Badger said.

I thought some more. “You agreed on a price?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“Twenty thousand.”

“It was worth more?”

“I’d have paid a hundred if I’d had to.”

“You met him at this rooming house?”

“Yes.”

“He picked it?”

“Yes. He said he wanted to be certain the room wasn’t bugged.”

“But he didn’t have the stuff you wanted with him?”

“No.”

“Was a specific time fixed?”

He said, “Why do you ask that?”

“It might be important.”

“A very specific time was fixed and he warned me not to be over two minutes late.”

“Late?”

“That’s right.”

“You could have been earlier than the appointed time and that would have been all right, but you couldn’t be over two minutes late?”

“That’s right.”

I thought some more.

“How long before you’ll be in the clear on your divorce?” I asked at length.

“About ten days now.”

I took a long breath. “You had me mixed up in a hit-and-run deal,” I said, “and now I’ve listened to you and I’m mixed in a murder case up to my necktie. Some things are confidential, but information on a murder isn’t. If I don’t go to the police with this, I’ll be in a jam.”

He spread out his hands, palms upward. “You left me with no choice in the matter. I had to tell you. You were hot on the trail, and you’d have found it out.”

“Yes,” I said, “I’d have found it out. I intended to cover the police blotter for the time you had built your alibi and check on every crime... What do the police know about Deering Canby?”

“They know he was a blackmailer; they know that he was keeping an appointment with someone he was blackmailing; they know he had knockout drops slipped in his drink and that he was killed and they think papers and evidence were taken from his body.

“They know that Phyllis’ car was parked in the neighborhood. That’s why we had to work fast. They’re looking for her to question her and when they find her she has to have an alibi.

“I want the police in Los Angeles to give her alibi before things get too hot up here.”

I was silent for a while.

“Well?” he asked. “You going to blow the whistle?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“If you don’t,” he told me, “you can write your own ticket.”

“How strong?”

“The sky’s the limit. This means a lot to me now. They’ve been talking about running me for mayor. I’m a prominent citizen here. This scandal would break me wide open. The information in the hands of my wife would cost me a cool half a million.”

“Where did you get the idea for the knockout drops?” I asked.

“My wife,” he said. “She’d been a nurse before I married her.”

“She told you about chloral hydrate?”

“Yes.”

“That stuff is dangerous,” I said.

“I know it now. A great deal depends upon the condition of a man’s system, his heart, and all that — but we gave the guy what we thought was only enough to knock him out for half an hour. We had a long search in his apartment. I was afraid he was going to come to and make a squawk before we could get out.”

“Where did this take place?”

“At the Round Robin Rooms. He wanted to pick the place because he wanted to be sure it wasn’t bugged. He rented the room.”

“You and I have a good deal in common,” I told him.

He raised his eyebrows.