A. Fair - Bedrooms Have Windows

Sellers glared at me. “And I checked up on the book, incidentally, and your fingerprints are all over the cellophane cover.”

“Sure,” I said. “I was out there.”

“That’s the second time he’s admitted it,” Sellers said to Bertha Cool and Claire Bushnell. “Remember it.”

I said, “There’s pretty good reason to believe that whatever the blackmail consisted of, it centered around the Cabanita Club. You know what happens around those places. The playboys go out when they’re on the loose. Occasionally some smart egg with a good memory and an eye for faces sticks around and gets a line on who’s doing the celebrating. If it happens to be a married man from out of town, or someone who lives in the city and is doing a little week-end playing, the blackmailers look them over. Nearly all of those places have blackmailers who hang around, or, I’ll put it another way: Lots of blackmailers drop around to those places and keep looking the crowd over, trying to pick up the licence number on an automobile, or something that’ll mean a little cash. It’s usually a job of slim pickings, but I think that this blackmail centers around the Cabanita outfit. I think that Tom Durham is mixed up in it, and I think that Bob Elgin knows who Tom Durham is and where he can be found.”

“Durham was staying at the Westchester Arms Hotel. He checked out right after the killing. I thought at the time it was because he’d found out I was shadowing him. I think now it was because he knew there’d been a shooting. I’d like to look him over. We might find a .32 bullet parked somewhere in his anatomy.”

Sellers said, “Okay, I’ll keep it in mind and see what can be done.”

I said, “I started prowling around the Cabanita last night. I started getting pictures that had been taken. People didn’t like it. They tried to work me over. I barely squeezed out from under a good beating. I had some pictures and an address. The address was that of the blonde girl who was killed last night. I went out there to check, to find out what was at that address. I found out. Somebody was following me, or else someone knew I was going to be there.”

“That’s what you say,” Sellers said.

“And that,” I told him, “is why I want you to get this thing cleared up. It’s my only chance for my white alley. Let’s go down and talk with Claire Bushnell’s aunt before she has a chance to think up a good story. She was being blackmailed. I think the blackmailer would keep in touch with her, probably by telephone. I don’t think Tom Durham is doing much travelling around today, because I think he’s got a .32 bullet in him somewhere. All you need to do is to stop by Amelia Jasper’s house on the road to headquarters and give her a grilling.”

“Yeah, and lose my badge for it,” Sellers said. “What do you think I am? A sucker that’s going to break in on somebody’s rich aunt and say, ‘Look here, Madam, you’re being blackmailed’?”

I said, “You’re going to let me do that. I wouldn’t ask you to do it. All you need to do is to sit and listen.”

Sellers thought it over, then shook his head and said, “It’s a gag. You’re going to headquarters.”

“By that time the trail will be cold and you’ll never find out anything.”

“I’ve caught me a murderer,” Sellers said, grinning with self-satisfaction. “That’s all right for one day’s work. Come on.”

Bertha said, “For the love of Mike, Frank, give me a break. You’re busting up my partnership and smearing the thing with a lot of publicity that’s going to cost me all kinds of dough. I’m on the trail of an eighty-thousand-dollar insurance job. If what Donald says is right, I stand a chance of throwing the hooks into the insurance company and cleaning up a little gravy.”

Frank Sellers hesitated. At length he said to me, “If you doublecross me on this thing I…”

“Since when did anybody doublecross you?” Bertha demanded.

Sellers looked at me and frowned. “It’s not you, Bertha. It’s this guy. You never know what he’s figuring.”

I held out my manacled wrists, and said sarcastically, “Yeah, it looks like I’m smart.”

Bertha said. “We could give you a cut in case we…”

“Don’t be a fool, Bertha,” I interrupted. “Frank isn’t thinking about money.”

Sellers gave me a grateful look.

I said, “You have an opportunity to straighten up that killing out at the KOZY DELL SLUMBER COURT. You have an opportunity to put a whole bevy of feathers in your cap. You have a chance to break up a blackmailing ring, and you have a chance to show how that Hollister girl was actually killed, why she was killed and who killed her.”

“A lot of people would say I had the answer to that last right here, right now,” Sellers said, but his tone lacked the positive conviction he had shown earlier.

“And,” I went on, “you’ve got a widow out there in San Robles who has two kids. Those kids have got to grow up, they’ve got to go to school. They’ve got to go through college, if they really want to make a dent in the world. It takes education these days, and education takes money. There’s a woman out there who doesn’t know where her next dime is coming from. Now, then, if you could play things my way, and she could have eighty thousand bucks…”

“You’ve made a sale,” Sellers said. “Let’s go.”

We all got up, and I said, “What about the handcuffs?”

“Just let them ride,” Sellers grinned. “Don’t bother about them. You can walk all right if you just keep your hands in front of you and right close to your belt.”

“I could do a lot more good if you would take them off.”

“Good for whom?” he jibed.

“The trouble with you is you have the mind of a cop. Come on, let’s go.”

We piled into the lift, rattled down to the ground floor, and then all climbed into Frank Sellers’ police car.

“What’s the address?” Sellers asked.

“226 Korreander,” Claire Bushnell said.

Sellers pushed the car into speed.

I said, “You’ll do better if you don’t use the siren.”

Sellers gave me a withering glance, then devoted his attention to driving.

He slowed the car to a conservative thirty miles an hour before we got to the two hundred block on Korreander, then slid to a stop in front of the white stucco house.

We all piled out and trooped up the stairs to the porch. Sellers rang the bell.

Susie, the loose-jointed maid, came striding deliberately down the hallway. She opened the door, and for a moment I thought she recoiled at the sight of Frank Sellers. Then she let her face petrify in expressionless lines of wooden indifference.

“Hello, Susie,” Claire said. “Is Aunt Amelia in?”

The maid hesitated.

Frank Sellers pulled back his coat, showed his star. “She in?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Come on,” Sellers said, and pushed his way in, without waiting for any announcement to be made.

Susie glowered at him, but stood helplessly where she had been pushed to one side. Just before we got to the living-room her presence of mind reasserted itself and she raised her voice and called in a high, shrill tone, “Oh, Mrs. Jasper! Claire and the police are here to see you.”

Sellers, with one hand gripping my arm, pushed the door open with his left hand and we entered the sitting-room.

Amelia Jasper looked up from her wheel chair and transfixed us with her most winning smile. “How do you do!” she said. “Won’t you all be seated? Hello, Claire, honey. How are you today, dear?”

“Fine, thank you.”

“Well, since I can’t get up you’ll have to act as hostess, Claire. That sciatica again, a flare-up from that horrid automobile accident. I do wish I could do something to get over the pain. I’ve taken aspirin until I’m sick — but do sit down. Pardon me if I seem a little groggy. I’ve taken so much drug.”