A. Fair - Up for Grabs

“Taken all in all, it was a sweet two-way fraud.

“The payoff was those tracks down the sandy wash.

“After Chester went down and set fire to that car, he wasn’t going to climb all the way back up the hill, so he had his accomplice who happened to be the woman he was supposed to have murdered, drive the car down to the foot of the grade. He then walked down the sandy wash.

“This guy, Chester, has been working a sweet racket. You’ll find he had two accomplices, Melita Doon and Josephine Edgar. He was playing Santa Claus for them in their apartment. They stole X-ray photographs for him and then when he wanted to hit the jackpot and had Melita sucked into the fraud scheme so there was no way out for her, he had her steal a corpse.

“If you go down to their apartment in the Bulwin Apartments you’ll find some of Chester’s clothes there, even a shirt with a neat little C embroidered on the pocket.”

Sellers had been looking at me while I was talking. From time to time he shifted his, eyes to the woman. When she began to cry, Sellers knew that he’d struck pay dirt.

“All right, madam,” he said, “I guess you’re going to have to go to headquarters: If you have the carfare, we’ll take a cab and that won’t attract quite so much attention.”

“Want me to go?” I asked Sellers.

Sellers jerked his thumb toward the door, “Scram,” he said.

I could tell then he was already thinking of the interview he was going to give to the reporters describing the brilliant detective work by which he had uncovered the fraud.

I didn’t bother to call Breckinridge. For one thing there wasn’t time. There was a night plane leaving for Dallas and I had to make it. I’d make my report to Breckinridge all in a lump.

I traveled first class this time. The hostess had made the trip in from Dallas, now she was flying back. She looked at me curiously but she didn’t say anything and I didn’t.

I settled back and got some sleep. I’d been up all night watching that apartment house.

I got back to Dallas, picked up my rented car and drove to Melvin’s offices.

Melvin was waiting for me. It was a magnificent suite of offices with a huge law library which doubtless furnished him the tools he needed in winning cases, but also was designed to impress clients.

And he had one of his secretaries working overtime, a girl in a suit that fitted her all over.

She pressed a buzzer, and Melvin himself came out of his private office to escort me in. The guy was so sore and stiff he could hardly walk, but he tried to keep a breezy air of cordial informality.

“Hello, Lam. Hello!” he said. “How are you? I got your wire saying you’d be in on this plane so I waited... Come in, come right in. I take it you’re prepared to close up this case of Bruno versus Chester.”

I smiled at him and said, “I think I have everything I need.”

“That’s fine. Sit down. Sit right down, Lam. There’s no reason you and I can’t be friends — after all, business is business, and an insurance company expects to pay out money. That is why it collects premiums. Their troubles are not our troubles. I’m representing a client. You’re representing a client.

“You know, Lam, we have a good deal of business scattered around the country and quite frequently we have to run down witnesses in Los Angeles and get statements. I’m very glad I met you. I’m satisfied we can be a lot of help to each other.”

“That’s fine,” I told him.

“You have the checks?” he asked, looking at my briefcase.

“I have the checks,” I told him. “Do you have the motion pictures?”

He smiled and took a circular tin container out of his desk drawer. He put it on his desk, and said, “We’ll settle everything all at once, Lam.”

I said, “Now, these checks are payable both to A. B. Melvin, as attorney, and Helmann Bruno, as the claimant.”

“That’s right. That’s right,” he said, smiling. “That’s the way to do it. I like to deal with an insurance company that protects the attorney. Of course, we can always accompany our client to the bank, but it’s a lot more dignified to have the client sign and then the attorney signs and the lawyer’s secretary takes the checks down to the bank.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s the way the checks are made, but I don’t think you’ll want them that way.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” I said, “if you sign them you’ll be signing yourself into the penitentiary.”

His face lost its cordiality and became hard and ominous.

“Now, look, Lam,” he said, “I’ve been dealing with you straight across the board. I don’t want you to try any smart double cross, because if you do I’ll make you and that insurance company so damned sick, neither one of you will ever get well.”

“I’m not trying any double cross,” I said, with a look of candid innocence on my face. “It’s your client who did that.”

“What do you mean?”

I said, “Helmann Bruno is Foley Chester.”

“What!” he exclaimed.

“And,” I said, “I think an investigation will show that Chester, alias Bruno, or Bruno, alias Chester, has been making a living out of malingering for a long time. He has quite a racket. He takes out an insurance policy, then he goes to another city, establishes a double identity, reports an imaginary accident, claims that the insured is in the wrong and then, as the insured, goes to the insurance company in the city where he has his alter home and confesses that it was all his fault.

“After that, he gets some attorney and they rig up a case with the aid of stolen X-ray photographs, the insurance company makes the settlement and then they move on to their next victim.”

Melvin’s jaw dropped. “You’re sure about this?”

I said, “The police arrested Mrs. Bruno this morning. It turns out she’s Mrs. Foley Chester, the woman that the authorities thought had been murdered.

“This time they used the nurse, not to steal X-ray photographs, but to steal a corpse. Then they dressed this corpse in Mrs. Chester’s clothes, set fire to the body and were prepared to collect a hundred thousand life insurance if they could, and, if they couldn’t, they were still going to keep their racket going of bilking the insurance companies on settlements of ten, fifteen and twenty thousand dollars.”

“You’re sure?” he asked. “You have proof of all this?”

I said, “You have a connection with the police force here. Get them to ring up Sergeant Sellers in Los Angeles and find out about the latest developments in the Chester case.”

Melvin pushed back his chair. “Excuse me a minute,” he said. “I want to see my secretary about something.”

He was gone about ten minutes; when he came back he was trembling.

“Lam,” he said, “I want to assure you on my professional honor that I had absolutely no inkling of all this. I was acting in the highest good faith.”

“Yes?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

I motioned toward the circular tin case with the motion pictures on his desk.

“What about those pictures?” I asked.

He looked at them, took a deep breath. I could see his mind working. “Pictures?” he said, vacantly. “Are those pictures?

“They seem to be.”

“It’s news to me. I’ve never seen them before. You must have brought them in.”

“I’m taking them out,” I told him.

I took the case, put it in my briefcase, and said, “Well, as you remarked earlier, it’s all in a day’s game. We’re each representing a client.”

“I make it a rule never to represent a crook, Melvin said. This is a shock to me. A great shock.”

“Where did you think those X-ray pictures were coming from?” I asked.