Лоуренс Трит: Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 118, No. 6, April 16, 1938

Baxter goes to Callum’s home to investigate further. He finds Callum shot to death in the doorway — and in the house is Selma Elmore. She was there, she says, as a guest of Lois Callum, niece of the murdered man. The two girls tell conflicting stories. Some mysterious caller is supposed to have killed Callum.

Callum had mistreated his niece, and she, as Suspect Number One, is jailed. Stan Baxter becomes her attorney at the urging of Selma Elmore. Later he returns to the Callum home. In a dark hallway he is attacked by a mysterious assailant, and recovers consciousness to find that he had interrupted safebreakers.

The trail leads him to the home of Julius Randt, and there he find that Randt also has been murdered. On the scene are Harne and Judge Elmore, both of whom deny complicity. Elmore says that Randt’s bitterest enemy is Frank Kendall, rival camera manufacturer.

At Kendall’s home Baxter gets an intimation that Lois Callum might be Kendall’s daughter, and that Kendall is not aware of the fact because his wife had left him before the child was born. But Kendall admits having been a party to the Callum housebreaking.

In an argument, Baxter shoots a finger off Kendall’s ex-con servant, Wolan.

“I’ll kill you for this!” says Wolan.

Stan stopped off at his office on Bay Street. A light glowed behind the frosted glass door of the dentist’s office across the hall. As he fumbled with his keys, that door opened.

“Mr. Baxter!”

He turned to see Miss Delevan. Her face, under its vivid mop of red hair, looked queerly pale. She held out a ragged bit of brown paper. Her voice sounded shaky:

“I found this under your door a little while ago.”

“Come in — let’s see it.” Stan threw open his office and snapped on the light. He took the brown paper. It looked identical to the one he had found in the same place that morning. This time the crudely penciled message ran:

SECOND NOTIS LAY OFF OR YOUL BE NEXT

“I worked late tonight, getting out the monthly statements,” the redheaded girl said. “I heard someone come along the hall, stop, and then go away. So I opened the door and looked out. Whoever it was, had gone. Then I saw this paper under your door. Mr. Baxter, what does it mean?”

Stan was unlocking the inner office door. “I’d like to know, myself.”

The girl followed him into the inner office. “I tried to telephone you. I happened to know your apartment address, and I tried that. Then I called the Randt place.”

“Randt? Why?”

“Because I had the radio turned on in the office. I heard the news broadcast.”

“Oh.”

She said, “I talked to a police officer there. He said you’d gone. Then another man took the phone. He told me to try Judge Elmore’s home. I tried that, too.” Miss Delevan grinned. “The girl there seemed quite upset. Is she the one, Mr. Baxter?”

Stan mumbled, “What one?” from the depths of a cabinet across the room.

“The Lycinth Hill one,” the redhead said. “The one you wanted to be a lawyer on account of.”

Stan brought a pair of metal boxes to the desk “If you mean Selma Elmore, I’ve only met her half a dozen times. Several years ago about a jewel robbery, and then twice — three times — lately.”

Miss Delevan laughed. “Love at first sight!... What are you doing with that talcum powder?”

“It isn’t talc. Fingerprint dope.”

Presently he looked up and shook his head. “The only prints here are yours, I guess.”

He drew a low-powered microscope from the other box. Among the papers in his pocket was one which purported to be Leslie Kendall’s birth certificate. Stan focused the lens on the physician’s signature.

“Look here, Red. See these broken lines?”

She squinted. “Ch-huh. What do they mean?”

“It’s a forgery,” Stan said. “A tracing, probably. The easiest sort of fake to detect.”

He thought silently for a moment, staring at the safe in the corner of his office. It was a good deal more modern than Callum’s, but was it really burglar-proof?

“Delevan,” he asked, “has your boss a good strong-box in his office?”

“We’ve something better than that. A key to the night depository of the Trans-Continental Bank.”

“Fine,” said Stan, thrusting the papers into a manila envelope. “If anything happens to me tonight, deliver this stuff to Sweeney’s agency, Delevan. Tell them to get in touch with Selma Elmore.”

“Oh, Mr. Baxter!” The girl looked genuinely dismayed. “You are in danger! For heaven’s sake, be careful!”

It was one of life’s little quirks, thought Stan. Red Delevan was a fine, loyal girl, and an exceptionally lovely one. Yet she did not quicken his pulse at all. He had to fall for Selma, who was already in love with another man.

Perhaps Miss Delevan was thinking the same thing. She went silently to fetch the depository key.

He drove up Lycinth Hill again. Lights burned on the lower story of the Elmore house, and Selma came to the door.

“Is the judge at home now?”

“No-o; but he will be, any minute. Come in, Mr. Baxter.”

John Harne got up from a chair in front of the fire. His square chin wore a grape-purple bruise, but he greeted Stan with a grin.

“The judge wanted to take those records back to the plant. He’ll be along very soon. Sit down, Baxter.”

Stan glanced around the room with its shaded, intimate lights. “I don’t want to butt in,” he said, a little awkwardly. “I could wail in his den.”

Harne laughed. “Nonsense. We were only talking about the murders. You’re the authority. We’d be glad to listen to your ideas about it.”

Stan walked slowly across the room. He stared for a moment into the fire. “All right,” he said abruptly, and turned to Selma.

“Miss Elmore, let’s take a hypothetical case. Suppose you’re a young woman who stands to inherit a large sum of money.”

“That’s not very hypothetical,” said Harne with a smile. “Selma ought to be able to imagine that very easily.”

Stan ignored the comment. His eyes remained fixed on the girl. “But also suppose that up to this minute you had been kept in ignorance of the truth. A certain man was hiding your real identity from you. Only by accident did you learn that he had proofs of your right to — say, several hundred thousand dollars. What would you do?”

Selma smiled. “I suppose I’d grab the proofs and run like the devil.”

“You couldn’t. The proof is kept locked in a safe, and you haven’t the combination.”

“Well, I’d certainly do something!”

“But what?”

Selma tossed her brunette head. “Mr. Baxter, I think I’d hire you to help me.”

“And if you had no money to hire me?”

“Oh. John would lend me some,” she said, with a glance at Harne.

“Yes,” Stan muttered. “I was afraid of that. Yes, it’s all perfectly logical.”

He told them the story, leaving out the conversation with Judge Elmore, however.

“Don’t you see?” he concluded. “Callum had those papers. If Lois saw them, she couldn’t help realizing their importance. Therefore she called upon her closest friend — you, Miss Elmore — and borrowed money. But that very evening, Callum offered to sell the papers to Kendall. You see where it leads?”

“Lois was upstairs with me,” Selma countered.

“She let Kendall into the house. She may have guessed what Callum was up to. She may have lingered on the stairs long enough to hear them talking.”

The girl gasped, “You mean she might have killed Callum so he couldn’t sell those proofs?”

“It is plausible,” Stan said coldly. “The evidence was forged, but she couldn’t know that. There was a fortune at stake.”