A. Fair - Spill the Jackpot

“No.”

“Well, do the best you can with that.”

Endicott said, “It looks like we’ll have time to get off a few telegrams, Arthur. Philip, you’d better come along, too. Will you excuse us, Mrs. Cool?”

Most of the dirt brushed out of my clothes, but my tie was badly ripped, and my shirt collar crumpled and dirty. I got on a new shirt and tie, held hot towels on my face until I’d got rid of some of the soreness, combed my hair, and went back to Bertha’s room.

When the door had closed she turned to me. “That’s the first time I ever knew you to do that, Donald.”

“What?”

“Show the white feather. Not that Bertha’s blaming you, lover, because she isn’t. But I just can’t understand why you’re not out after that letter.”

I took the letter out of my pocket and handed it to her. “What’s that?”

“Corla’s letter.”

“Where did you get it?”

“From Helen Framley.”

“Then you lied to Whitewell?”

“No. I didn’t tell him I didn’t have it. I said the girl didn’t have it. She didn’t. She’d given it to me.”

Bertha’s little glittering eyes blinked at me. “What’s the idea?”

“Read it.”

Bertha read the letter, looked up, and said, “I don’t get it. Why hold out on our client?”

“Have you,” I asked, “got that letter Whitewell wrote?”

“The one you gave me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Let’s take a look at it.”

Bertha said impatiently, “Let’s do nothing of the sort. Let’s talk about this Burke matter.”

“I think we can find out more about it by looking at Whitewell’s letter.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at the letter,” I said. “It’s written on a fine grade all-rag bond. The watermark is Scribcar Bond. Notice the dimensions of the sheet. Notice the way it’s folded. See what I mean? That sheet of paper is part of a business letterhead. Someone cut off the top of the letterhead with a sharp knife.”

Bertha blinked her eyes. After a moment, she said, “I think I’m beginning to get it, but keep right on telling me.”

“Whitewell didn’t like the idea of his son marrying Corla Burke. He got Corla into his office. He made her some proposition that she accepted. She agreed to get out, but she wanted to save her face. She was to get out under circumstances that would make it appear she might have been forcibly removed, or been running away from something she was afraid of.”

“Then why the letter?” Bertha asked.

“The letter,” I said, “clinches it. It’s the pay-off, so far as we’re concerned. Corla Burke didn’t know any Helen Framley. Helen Framley didn’t know any Corla Burke. But Arthur Whitewell had friends here in Las Vegas. Those friends were in a position to look around and find some girl who would make a good plant. Whitewell had this letter written as a second string to his bow, a safety anchor out to windward.”

“That’s something I don’t get.”

“Remember, he’s Philip’s father. After all, he has Philip’s best interests at heart. That’s why he interfered in the first place.”

“Naturally.”

“A man like that wouldn’t want to see his son suffer unduly. If it was just a blow due to having the woman he loved walk out on him, Philip would get over it. The father knew that. But if Philip got the idea in his head the girl had been kidnaped or was in danger and he was failing her, he’d never get over it. It would be such a long-drawn nervous strain that it would change his entire career. Evidently, that’s what’s happening.”

“Well?”

“And the father was shrewd enough to know that it might happen. Remember, he’s an amateur psychologist. He certainly wouldn’t have overlooked that possibility.”

“I get you now. He couldn’t have pulled this letter out of his sleeve then and said, ‘Look, son, what I’ve found.’ He’d have to have the letter planted some place where a private detective agency could find it.”

“That’s right. That letter shows that Corla Burke left under her own power. He wants us to find that letter, and is willing to pay us for doing it. Then he’ll show it to his son.”

Bertha blinked her eyes and said, “All right, lover, if it’s a run-around, we’ll just play ring-around-the-rosy with him. We’ll run around in circles, draw a per diem for six days, find this letter on the seventh so we can still get a bonus, and teach him not to play us for suckers. Was that your idea, lover?”

“Not exactly.”

“What then?”

“It’s going to work out about that way. If I accuse him of writing the letter and getting rid of Corla Burke, I can never tell whether he did it or didn’t—”

“Donald Lam, what do you think you’re doing? He’s a client. You can’t accuse him of anything.”

I said, “No, but if we hold this back for a little while, he’ll start putting pressure to bear here and there to see that the letter does get delivered into our hands. When he starts moving around, he’s got to get out in the open enough so we can catch him red-handed.”

“Then what?”

I said, “We’d know more about it then.”

“Donald,” she said, “you’re going overboard again. You’re thinking about Corla Burke’s broken heart.”

“I’d like to see her get a square deal. She’s up against a wealthy man who evidently has used some form of blackmail.”

“What did he do?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think she’d have quit for money. I think Whitewell’s the sort who would put her on the wheel and break her a bit at a time, body and soul. He’d torture anyone who got in his way.”

“Donald, how can you say such things? He’s a nice man.”

“He’s nice when he wants to be, but he’s ruthless when it comes to getting what he wants.”

“Aren’t we all?”

I smiled and said, “Some of us are.”

“I suppose that’s a dirty dig.”

I kept quiet.

Bertha said, “Open that suitcase, lover, and look in the zipper compartment. His letter’s in there.”

I got out his letter, held it up to the light. It was Scribcar Bond. I held the two sheets side by, side. Corla Burke’s letter had been written on his stationery. The upper part of the letterhead had been folded over and cut off with a sharp knife.

Bertha Cool said, “Well, fry me for an oyster!”

I folded Corla Burke’s letter and put it in my pocket. “What do we do next, lover?” Bertha asked.

“I want to check up on the Los Angeles end. How long’s Whitewell going to stay here?”

“I think for a day or two.”

“Want to go to Los Angeles with me tonight?”

“No. Bertha’s rather tired, and I like this desert climate. I think it would be better to—”

“There’s a train at nine-twenty,” I said. “I’ll get reservations on it.”

The cocktails didn’t help things any. Philip Whitewell became moody and showed his heartbreak. His father kept looking at me as a poker player looks at a man who shoves a stack of blues into the middle of the table after announcing a pat hand on the draw. Bertha, trying to hover over us like a dove of peace and keep things running smoothly, showed signs of cracking under the strain.

It was a new role for Bertha, as foreign to her as the relatively slim silhouette she presented. Whitewell had somehow managed to hypnotize her. She was suddenly conscious of the fact that she was a woman. How that was going to affect her business judgment remained to be seen. When Bertha Cool’s newly discovered romantic streak ran up against her business cupidity, it was going to be a major collision.

Personally, I was sitting tight, playing them close to my chest, quite willing to talk about politics and armament — but I’d quit talking about Corla Burke.