A. Fair - Shills Can't Cash Chips

“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s the thing that bothers me.”

“Why does it bother you?”

“Because this car drove up while I was there and some man came in the office. He could have been a night watchman. It could have been police. I don’t know who it was. I jumped out the window and made a getaway. He took after me and I outdrove him to a point where I could double back and throw him off the trail.”

“Well, you got away from him.”

“Suppose he got the license number of the automobile?” I said. “I’d left the rented automobile and was driving the agency car that’s registered in our names.”

“What the hell did you do that for?” Bertha asked. “My God, if that man got the license number—”

“I was cutting down on expenses,” I said.

Bertha glowered.

I grinned at her.

After a while Bertha said, “Don’t we have to report something like that to the police?”

“Something like what?”

“Where a man’s office has been broken into and—”

“How do we know it was broken into?” I said. “The office door was open. It’s a public place. Probably Holgate invited the person in.”

“Well then, the place was wrecked and papers were stolen and—”

“How do we know papers were stolen?” I asked her. “Someone was looking for something in the files and was rather careless in the way he conducted his search. He didn’t pull the filing drawers out and put them back, he pulled out one drawer after another and after they were all out the weight of the papers in the open drawers shifted the center of gravity so that the whole filing case toppled over. When it did, the papers spilled out and the person who had been conducting the search pushed the filing cabinet back into an upright position and that was all. How do we know he took anything?”

Bertha thought that over.

“In other words,” I said, “we don’t know any crime has been committed and there’s no reason for us to report a crime if there hasn’t been any crime.”

“You’re a brainy little punk,” Bertha said. “I wouldn’t dare to skate on that thin ice but if you think you can get away with it, go to it.”

“The point is,” I said, “I want to know what happened to Holgate.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did he wait until the intruders, whoever they were, had left and—”

“Don’t call them intruders,” Bertha said. “Call them visitors. I like this idea of yours that it’s a public office and that Holgate probably invited them in and tried to sell them a lot.”

“All right,” I said, “when his visitors departed, did Holgate take off after them or—”

“Sure, he took off after them,” Bertha said. “His car was gone. You said that when you drove up there, there weren’t any cars at all.”

I nodded.

“Well, he didn’t walk out to the place,” Bertha said. “He had his car there. The visitors left in their car and then Holgate left in his.”

“Before or after he called me?” I asked.

“Probably before,” Bertha said.

“Let’s hope so,” I told her.

“You don’t think so?”

“I don’t know, Bertha. Since they know who I am, this thing may get a little ticklish. I think we should call Lamont Hawley. Do you have a night number where you can reach him?”

“Hell, no,” Bertha said. “He didn’t give me any night number. This was supposed to be respectable business. He gave me a private number but I don’t suppose—

“My God, Donald, I don’t know what it is about you. Every time you start working on a case the damned thing blows up into some kind of an emergency and every now and then there’s a corpse.”

“Well, let’s hope this is the then,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“If it’s a corpse now,” I told her, “it could be bad business.”

Bertha blinked her eyes. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about what would happen if it should turn out there was a corpse.”

“Who do you mean?”

“Holgate.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“What’s silly about it?”

Again Bertha blinked her eyes. “Dice me for a carrot!” she said.

There was a moment’s silence, then Bertha said, “Wait a minute. You’re just talking about somebody seeing the license number on your automobile. But what about fingerprints? You went out of there in a hell of a hurry. You must have left—”

“I left fingerprints all over the place,” I said. “Don’t be silly. I’m going to fix that.”

“How? You can’t go back and wipe all the fingerprints off. You don’t even know all the places where you put your hands.”

“Of course not,” I told her. “I’m going back and leave more fingerprints.”

“How come?”

“That’s one of the oldest gags in the book,” I told her. “If you can’t get rid of your fingerprints at the scene of a crime, make some excuse so you go back when you have a witness with you. Then you touch everything in sight. When the police find a fingerprint there’s nothing on it that tells when it was made. The only time element on this one is the powder cake out of the compact. I got that on my fingers and then touched things. I want to be sure to go through that routine again when I’m out there the second time.”

“And when’s that going to be?”

“Right now,” I told her. “Now, look, Bertha. Get busy and try and locate Lamont Hawley. The guy has a telephone somewhere, and the insurance company has some kind of an investigative service that has a night number. Get hold of Hawley and tell him what the score is.

“You can keep this report from the Ace High agency. I don’t want to have it with me. There’s one clue there. Notice that a part of the second page has been torn off, but there’s an expense account there with a long-distance bill of a dollar and ninety cents. And the woman’s shoe that I found out there was sold in Salt Lake City. So I have an idea you’ll find the telephone call was made to Salt Lake City and that’s where the client was living. As soon as the Ace High client found out I was a detective, she grabbed a plane and flew on to—”

“She?” Bertha asked.

“The shoe,” I said.

“Oh,” she said. “You’re taking too much for granted, Donald. I still think it’s Lamont Hawley.”

“I’m beginning to think it may be a woman in Salt Lake,” I said. “Anyway Hawley should know about what’s happening now.”

Bertha said, “Dammit, I was just getting comfortable! I got that damn girdle off and now I’ve got to struggle into it again. I wish to hell you could work cases the way other people do. There’s no reason on earth why we couldn’t build up a respectable, decent agency with the right kind of clients and—”

“You’ve got the right kind of a client now,” I told her. “That is, you told me he was the right kind when you closed with him.”

“Well, I’m not nearly as sure now as I was a couple of days ago,” Bertha said. “If he’s hiring one detective agency and then hiring another — fry me for an oyster, I’ll fix that bird!”

“All right,” I told her. “He’s all yours. Fix him.”

I crossed over to Bertha’s telephone, dialed information and said, “I want the number of Lorraine Robbins of Colinda, please.”

Information said, “Just a moment,” and a short time later gave me the number. “It’s three-two-four, nine-two-four-three. You can dial it from your phone.”

“Thanks,” I said. I dialed the number and after a moment heard Lorraine Robbins’ voice, calmly efficient, saying, “Yes?”

“Lorraine,” I said, “this is Donald Lam.”

“Oh, yes, Donald.”