A Fair - Cut Thin to Win

I looked round and failed to see her.

I went over to the rack where incoming baggage was placed and saw no trace of her.

She had vanished into thin air.

All that was left was the warning in my ears.

I went to the telegraph office and wired Colton C. Essex at his office in Los Angeles:

SEND ME DESCRIPTION AND ADDRESS OF MINERVA BADGER CARE WESTERN UNION IN LAS VEGAS.

I signed it Donald Lam and went to a hotel.

At the hotel, I climbed into a bathtub and tried to scrub off the sickly sweet smell of jail disinfectant.

I knew that most of the odor was still in my nose rather than on my body, but I gave my body a good scrubbing anyway.

I went to a restaurant, had a good meal, a good night’s sleep, and about noon stopped by the Western Union office.

A telegram had just come in for me. It read:

ARE YOU CRAZY. DON’T GO NEAR THAT WOMAN. AGE 37, GREEN EYES, MEDIUM BUILD, HAIR CURRENTLY CHESTNUT. WEIGHT 115 LBS. DANGEROUS AS A RATTLESNAKE. ADDRESS, COOKINETTE APARTMENTS, LAS VEGAS, FIVE WEEKS OF JURISDICTIONAL RESIDENCE COMPLETE. REPORTEDLY HAS BEEN HIRING PRIVATE DETECTIVES. GIVE HER A WIDE BERTH. THIS IS IMPERATIVE.

The telegram was signed Essex.

I sent him a telegram in reply.

AM NOT CRAZY. PARTY HAS ASSUMED THE INITIATIVE. APPARENTLY SMELLS A VERY LARGE RAT.

I signed it Donald.

I did a little gambling, killed a little time, and put through a person-to-person call to Elsie Brand at the office.

“How are you coming, Elsie?” I asked.

“I was just ready to close the desk and go home,” she said. “Where are you, Donald?”

“It’s probably better if you don’t know,” I said. “How are things at the office?”

“Tight. Very, very tight.”

“Got any money?”

“I can get some.”

“Get on a plane that reaches Las Vegas at ten-thirty tonight. I’ll meet you.”

“Oh, Donald, I can’t make it.”

“Sure you can.”

“Well, I’ll... I’ll try. What do I tell Bertha?”

“Tell her nothing. Leave a note that you won’t be in tomorrow.”

“Donald, Bertha is fit to be tied.”

“Let’s tie her then.”

She laughed nervously. “I’ll be on the plane,” she said.

“Bring a brief case, notebooks, pencils and that small tape recorder, the one that works with flashlight batteries. We may need it.”

“Donald, Bertha told me if I heard from you at all or knew where you were, I was to let her know at once.”

“She’s in touch with Sellers?”

“He’s been in the office two or three times.”

“How does he feel?”

“Chewing cigars like mad, pacing the floor and telling Bertha she’s got to bail out before everything crashes.”

“And Bertha wants to bail out?” I asked.

“I don’t know, Donald. She got mad at Sellers the last time he was in and told him that she wasn’t going to condemn you without a hearing. He got mad at her and told her he’d been jeopardizing his standing on the force, trying to protect her on account of friendship, and that she couldn’t presume on it too far.”

“That’s fine,” I told her. “Keep the pot boiling,”

“Well, don’t you think for a minute it isn’t boiling— Are you going to meet me at the plane, Donald?”

“Yes.”

“Donald, have you got... accommodations?”

“Yes.”

“One room or two?” she asked.

“Two.”

“Oh.”

She was silent for a while.

“You’ll be there?”

“I’ll be there.”

“Okay, I’ll meet you.”

I hung up and went down to the telegraph office.

Essex was burning up the wires:

SMELLING A RAT AND CATCHING A RAT ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS. KEEP AWAY FROM THE TRAP AND I MEAN FAR AWAY.

I sent him a wire: “I’M NOT A RAT.”

And signed it Donald.

Then I had a session at the tables, dinner, drove around enough to shake shadows, then went to a motel, looked the place over and selected two adjoining units which had a connecting door.

After I had registered and paid in advance, I went to the airport and picked up Elsie as she got off the plane.

She was starry-eyed with excitement. Her fingers dug into my arm. “Oh, Donald, this is so exciting! You have something for me to do — I mean, this is business?”

“Business,” I said.

“You really have two rooms?”

“I wouldn’t lie to you. But there’s a connecting door.” She didn’t say anything for a while.

We got her baggage, got in the car I had rented, and I drove her to the motel. I felt it might be a good plan to keep moving around and, with a rented car and a motel while still retaining my room at the hotel, I was in a little more flexible position.

“You left a note for Bertha?” I asked her.

“Yes, I just left a note and said I wouldn’t be in. You know what that means, she’ll probably fire me.”

“She can’t fire you,” I said. “You’re my secretary. She can fire her own secretary if she wants to, but she can’t fire you. We’ve been through that before. You’re mine.”

She started to say something, then lowered her eyes demurely. “Yes,” she said, and then, after a moment added, “I am.”

After I was satisfied I hadn’t been followed, I moved Elsie Brand’s bag from the car into her room at the motel.

She looked it over and said, “Where’s the connecting door, Donald?”

I showed her.

“It goes into your room?”

I nodded, opened the door, and we went through.

She started to say something, then blushed and checked herself.

“Now listen, Elsie,” I told her, “this is going to be quite an assignment. I want you to get it straight. You see this closet door?”

She nodded.

“At the top there’s a metal latticework,” I said. “That’s to give the closet ventilation. There’s no window in the closet. It’s a big closet.”

She looked at me inquiringly.

I said, “I have a room in a downtown hotel here. I think that when I go back to that room a shadow will pick me up and an attempt will be made to follow me wherever I go from that point on.

“I’m going to drive directly back here to this motel, pretending that I’m naive enough not to worry about being followed.”

“You think you will be followed?”

“I’m almost certain of it.”

“But Donald, if you got this place as a hideout, why do you lead people directly to it?”

“Because I’m ready to lead people to it now,” I told her.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

I said, “I come back to the motel. We leave the door to the connecting room wide open until I come in.”

She lowered her eyes.

“If anyone knocks on my door,” I said, “you take your notebook, hurry into that closet as fast as you can, closing the connecting door behind you, and also the closet door. In the closet you can hear what’s being said. You take down the conversation in shorthand as far as possible but we’ll fix up this tape recorder now so the microphone is just underneath this metal grille. Everything that’s said in the room will be registered on the tape.

“You will of course have to be very, very silent. If anyone suspects you’re in there — well it could be dangerous.”

“Donald,” she said, “I’ll be all right, but you’ll be in danger.”

I said, “I think things are going to be all right. Are you game to try it?”

“Of course I am. I’ll do anything, Donald, anything — for you.”

“Good girl,” I told her. “Now it’s late. You get everything settled, rig up that tape recorder. You know how to do it. Tie the microphone to the grille, have things all fixed up by the time I get back. I’ll be gone about thirty minutes. I’m going to go to my hotel, go out, drive around the block, then make a beeline for this place.”