A. Fair - Gold Comes in Bricks

“Donald, will you do that for me?”

“Yes.”

“Where do we go?”

I said, “I know a little hotel that’s quiet.”

“You’ll take me there? Go there with me?”

“Yes.”

“You know how it is, Donald. A woman alone at this hour of the night without any baggage — well, you come and register with me.”

“As husband and wife?”

“Do you want to?”

I said, “I’ll tell them you’re my secretary, that you had to do a lot of work tonight, and have got to start early in the morning, and I want to get you a room in the hotel. It’ll be all right.”

“They won’t let you stay there with me?”

“Of course not. I’ll take you up to your room, and then come back down. Here’s a hundred. It will take care of you for the time being.”

She took the hundred, thought things over for quite a little while, and then said, “I guess perhaps that’s the best way. Thanks, kid. You’re white. I like you.”

I started the car and drove to the hotel I had in mind — a little place on a side street where a night clerk and an elevator operator ran the whole place after midnight.

Just before we went into the hotel she said, “Donald, if I could get hold of the rest of those letters, I’d be sitting pretty.”

“How do you figure?”

“Crumweather wants them, Alta Ashbury wants them, and the D.A. would pay money to get them so he could build up a case against Lasster.”

“The D.A. can’t pay anything.”

“He could make a bargain.”

“On what?” I asked. “Immunity?”

“Yes, if you want to put it that way.”

“With whom?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Where do you think the letters are?” I asked.

“Honest, Donald,” she said, “I don’t know. Jed walked to the hotel with me. He was a little afraid that something might happen, and he’d get pinched in a blackmail racket. He had been tipped off that Ashbury was going to get a detective to find out what his daughter had been doing with her money.”

“Where did that tip come from?”

“I don’t know, but Jed knew it. I suppose it came from Crumweather. Anyway, Jed didn’t want to have the letters in his possession until the last minute. He walked up to the hotel with me, and I was carrying the letters under my coat. I handed them to him just before I went in behind the cigar counter. I know he had them when he went up in the elevator and— Well, he never came down, that’s all. The murderer must have got them.”

I’d walked around to open the car door and help her out. Now I stood there, thinking. “Jed Ringold wasn’t his real name?”

“No.”

“How long had he been going under that name?”

“Two or three months.”

“What was the name before that?”

“Jack Waterbury.”

“Get this,” I said, “because it’s important. What was the name on his driving license?”

“Jack Waterbury.”

“One other thing. When I came in and asked you about gamblers, why did you tell me about Ringold?”

She said, “Honestly, Donald, you had me fooled. You certainly took me in on that one. You didn’t look like a detective. You looked like a — well, a sucker— You know what I mean. Occasionally a man comes in and gets in touch with either Jed or Tom Highland. They’ll have a poker game running.”

“Who’s Tom Highland?”

“He’s a gambler.”

“Connected with the Atlee outfit?”

“Yes.”

“And he’s in the same hotel?”

“Yes, room seven-twenty.”

“Why not look him up? If the papers went upstairs with Ringold and didn’t come down, and Highland is in the hotel, why doesn’t that add up to make an answer?”

“Because it doesn’t. Highland hasn’t got them.”

“How do you know?”

“Because Highland wouldn’t dare to hold out. There was a poker game going on in Highland’s room at the time, and they all say Highland never left it.”

“In a killing of that sort, the one who has the most perfect alibi is usually the one who did it.”

“I know, but these weren’t the sort of people who would lie. One of them was a business man. He’d have a fit if he thought he was being dragged into it as a witness. You were following Alta to the hotel, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“She asked you to do it?”

“No. Her dad.”

“How much does he know?”

“Nothing.”

“Well,” she said, “let’s don’t stand here and talk. Do you want to come up for a while?”

“No. I’ll get you your room and then go and raise some money.”

She put her hand in mine to steady herself as she came out of the car. Her hand was cold. I walked into the hotel with her, and said to the night clerk, “This is Evelyn Claxon. She’s my secretary. We’ve been doing some work late at the office. She had no baggage, so I’ll register and pay in advance.”

The clerk gave me a fishy eye.

I said to Esther for his benefit, “You go up and get to bed, Evelyn. Get a good night’s rest. You won’t need to come to the office in the morning until I telephone you. I’ll make it as late as possible. Perhaps not before nine or nine-thirty.”

The clerk handed me a fountain pen and a registration card. “Three dollars with bath,” he said, and then added, “single.”

I registered for her and gave him three one-dollar bills. He called the bellboy over and handed him a key. I gave the bellboy a dime, raised my hat, and walked out.

I went as far as the car, stood there for a minute, and then came back. The clerk’s lips tightened when he saw me. I said, “I want to ask you some questions about rates by the month.”

“Yes?”

I said, “It isn’t very satisfactory to me, having my secretary live way out in the sticks where it’s a nuisance getting back and forth. She has a sister who’s working here in town, and the two of them have been talking about getting a place in town where they could be together. How about a monthly rate?”

“Just the two girls?” he asked.

“Just the two girls.”

“We have something very attractive — some nice rooms we could give them on a permanent basis.”

“A corner room?”

“Well, no, not a corner room. It’d be an inside court room.”

“Sunlight?”

“Yes, sir. Sunlight. Not a great deal — of course they wouldn’t be here during the day except on Sundays and holidays if they’re working.”

“That’s right.”

The bellboy came back down in the elevator.

“Whenever they get ready to move in, I’ll be glad to talk rates with them,” the clerk said.

“Do you happen to have a floor plan of the hotel so that I can look at the rooms and figure on prices? I might have to make some salary adjustment. You see the girls are living at home now.”

He reached under the counter, took out a floor plan of the hotel, and started pointing out rooms. The switchboard buzzed. He moved over to it, and I picked up the floor plan, walked over, and started talking to him while he was taking the call. “How about this suite of rooms on the corner in front? Would that—”

He frowned at me and said, “What was that number again, please?”

He was holding a pencil over a pad. I shifted around so as to get a better light on the floor plan and be where I could watch his pencil as he wrote the number down. I didn’t need to. He repeated it. “Orange nine-six-four-three-two. Just a moment, please.”

He dialed the number on an outside extension, then when he had it on the line, plugged in the line and moved over to me. “What was it you wanted to know?”

“About that suite.”

“That’s rather expensive.”

“Well, you might give me prices on these three.” I checked three rooms. He went over to the desk, looked over a schedule, and wrote the prices on a slip of paper with the room numbers opposite. I folded the paper and put it in my pocket.