Brett Halliday - Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 27, No. 2 — September 1945)

“I’d have gotten around to you sooner or later,” I told her, stepping aside to let her in. “You’re stopping here at the Maramoor?”

She gave me lifted eyebrows. “But how could I? I can’t pay five dollars a day for a room. No, I’m staying in a little hotel on the edge of the business section, the Broadhurst.”

“Short on cash, huh?”

“Very much so. I have a little money saved up, but it won’t last if I have to stay here much longer. They won’t release my father’s body.”

“Oh.” I thought about how quick Hinchman had been to let go of Sheila Brown. It couldn’t serve any purpose to keep Ditson in the cooler. Doc Barrett had found out everything he possibly could, even if they sealed the body in a time capsule. But red tape only gets tangled around people without the influence to cut it.

“That’s why I wanted to see you, Mr. Corbett. You’re not connected with these local authorities, and I thought maybe you could do something about the body.”

“Is that all?”

“Well, I wanted to tell you how much I wanted you to get the man who robbed my father. I suppose you know who it was — Spain Westfall.”

“Sure. I just talked to him. He admitted your father dropped the thirty thousand at the Silver Dollar, that is, he did by implication. He says, too, that he’d sent a couple of men with that much money to pay him off.”

Mary Ditson’s eyes widened. “But that’s a lie! Dad never got the money! If he had, he wouldn’t have jumped.”

“Sounds logical. Westfall thinks his boys took a powder with the thirty grand. After all, that’s booty in any man’s language.”

“I don’t believe he did! He wouldn’t give that much money back!”

“Well, I don’t know. But I do know how you can collect the thirty thousand.”

This time her eyes got even wider.

“How?”

“The easiest way would be to ask for it. Westfall realizes the heat’s on. He can’t stand having his victim’s daughter in Midtown crying her eyes out and telling her troubles to the papers. He can’t possibly shush this thing up until he’s squared your beef. And he knows you can collect legally, for you’re the only next of kin.”

This time she eyed me a little suspiciously.

“You know that to be true? Are you a lawyer?”

“I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve had to associate with lawyers so long that I’ve picked up a little law. You’ve got a legal claim, but before you give half of it away in attorney fees, you’d better try on your own hook. Suppose you call up Westfall and make an appointment. He’ll do you no harm. He wouldn’t dare disturb a hair on your lovely head.”

She actually blushed. I went over to the phone and had the operator try to get me Westfall. She couldn’t. Nobody seemed to know where Westfall was.

“Well, you can get him tomorrow morning. Do that.”

“All right, I will. But I never thought I could bring myself to look at him.”

“You could afford to ogle the Devil himself for thirty grand. My guess is Westfall will hand it to you on a silver platter.”

“Well, I’m glad I came to see you.”

“Who told you you’d find me here?”

“Captain Hinchman. I think he wanted to get rid of me.”

“Then he was nuts. Suppose I pick you up for dinner at eight?”

She blushed again and said she thought that would be all right. I hoped I’d make it. It was six-thirty then. I found Carl Bronson’s name in the phone book and got a call in to his house.

“Mr. Bronson will see no one,” somebody told me.

“He’ll see me. I’m from the attorney general’s office. Tell him to stick around till I get there.”

It took half an hour to do that. The Bronson place was in a swank residential development a few miles out. A maid led me through the house and out onto the terrace. Bronson was lounging in a summer chair.

“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Bronson, but I’ve got to. You see you’re the only witness to Ditson’s plunge.”

“That’s right. I don’t intend to stand in the way of an investigation. I’ll gladly tell you anything I know. I want somebody to pay for this.”

He looked as if he had been taking it pretty hard. And from Sheila Brown’s pictures in the papers, it looked as if he had plenty of right to take it that way. Bronson himself wasn’t much to look at — he had one of those faces that look like a mask for a calculating machine. His business was investment brokerage, so he was in character.

He was also a little bald, a fact which hadn’t shown up in his newspaper photo. I guessed his age to be an old thirty-seven. Sheila Brown had been twenty-two. I charged the incongruity up to the manpower shortage and let it go at that.

“The only thing I want to establish,” I told Bronson, “is whether Ditson definitely jumped.”

Bronson gave me a long, thoughtful look.

“What makes you think he didn’t?”

“A fair question. I’ve heard a rumor that Westfall sent thirty thousand bucks by way of a couple of his muggs to the Maramoor. The muggs haven’t shown up since. I thought maybe they got the bright idea of heaving Ditson out of the window and making it look like suicide. That way he wouldn’t be around to squawk about not getting the thirty thousand.”

Bronson looked me over as though I had large ears.

“But that’s preposterous! The money didn’t show up after Ditson’s suicide. Westfall must know they didn’t deliver it, so they certainly gained nothing by killing Ditson, assuming your theory is correct, which it isn’t.”

“Oh, it isn’t? You know that, do you?”

“Of course. I’ve already told my story many times. Ditson wasn’t pushed, he jumped. I saw him. He was standing in the window. He just stepped off. Then he turned over and over. His head was down when he... when—”

Bronson covered his face with his hands.

“For God’s sake, Corbett, why make me go into that?”

“I’m sorry. I only thought that Westfall’s boys might have counted on his thinking the cops who searched the room afterward might have got the thirty grand.”

“Then why haven’t they shown up? They can’t be banking on any such idea, otherwise they would.”

“I guess I’ll have to agree on that. But I thought the idea was worth running down. After all, I don’t have a lot to go on.”

“Well, I hope you raise hell in this town. I’ve been fed up for years with the bunch of crooks running it.”

“Then you didn’t approve of your fiancée going to the Silver Dollar?”

Bronson straightened. “Who told you she did?”

“She did go there, didn’t she?”

“Yes, but not with me. I wouldn’t be caught dead inside one of those joints. I can’t afford it, in my business. Pretty soon people who let me handle their money would begin to wonder if I was gambling it away.”

“Then who took Miss Brown there?”

“Her brother. He practically lives at the Silver Dollar, I hear. Dwight’s a nice boy, but he makes a fool of himself. I give him five years, and he’ll have his inheritance down the sewer. And Sheila’s, too, now that she’s gone.”

I got up. “Well, thanks. I’m glad I got to talk to you, though you’ve knocked my bright idea in the head. I’m sorry about your loss, really I am.”

“Thanks. Give ’em hell. Drive all those rotten crooks out of town!”

“I’ll do my best.”

Mary Ditson looked so cute when I picked her up at the Broadhurst that I wished I’d bothered to shave. I tried to make up for it by taking her to the swellest place in town, the Maramoor Ionian Room. Of course it all went on the expense account.

“Who was your father’s worst enemy?” I asked her.