A. Fair - Gold Comes in Bricks

The man who got out of the taxi was C. Layton Crumweather.

He looked at me, and his bony face wreathed into a cordial smile. “Well, well,” he said, “it’s Mr. Lam, the man with the oil land proposition. Tell me, Mr. Lam, how are things coming?”

“Very well,” I said.

He reached out with his hand, and I took it. He kept shaking my hand, hanging on to my right, pumping it up and down and smiling at me. “I see you completed your business in the Atlee Amusement Corporation.”

I said, “I presume that the brunette girl telephoned you as soon as she tipped off the manager.”

“My dear young man,” he said, “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. It just happens that I eat here in the restaurant occasionally.”

“And have an interest in the gambling upstairs,” I supplemented.

“Gambling!” he exclaimed. “What gambling? What are you talking about?”

I laughed.

“You astonish me, Mr. Lam. Do you mean to say there’s gambling going on in the restaurant?”

“Save it,” I said.

He kept holding my right hand. “Let’s drop into the restaurant for a bit to eat.”

“Thanks, but I don’t like their coffee. Let’s go across the street to that restaurant.”

“Their coffee is perfectly atrocious.”

Crumweather kept holding my right hand. He looked back over his shoulder toward the door of the restaurant as though expecting something to happen. Nothing did. Reluctantly, he let me withdraw my hand from his. “You haven’t told me about the oil.”

“Going fine,” I said.

“By the way, I find we have some mutual friends.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. Miss Ashbury. Miss Alta Ashbury. I have taken the liberty of asking her to be at my office tomorrow afternoon. I know she’s a very popular young woman and can’t arrange her time to suit the convenience of a crusty old lawyer, but you might impress upon her, Mr. Lam, that it would be very much to her advantage to be there.”

“I’ll tell her if I see her.”

“Well, come and join me in a cup of coffee.”

I shook my head. “No, thanks.”

“You were in there?” he asked, jerking his head toward the building.

“Oh, yes.”

He looked me over as though trying to find signs of violence.

“My business in there,” I said, “was concluded very satisfactorily to all concerned.”

“Ah, yes.” His face wrinkled into a smile that reached his ears. “You did the wise thing, Lam, my boy. No one will make any trouble for you as long as you show a spirit of co-operation. I am very glad you saw things our way. We can use you.” He groped out for my hand again. I pretended not to see the gesture.

“Well,” I said, “I must be going.”

“I think now that we understand each other, we’ll get along much better,” Crumweather said. “Kindly remember that I want Miss Ashbury at my office tomorrow afternoon without fail.”

“Good-night,” I said, and stepped into the cab.

He was still standing on the curb, looking beamingly after me as I gave the cab driver Alta Ashbury’s address.

It was eight-forty when I strode into the hotel where I’d left Esther Clarde. A young woman telephone operator was on duty at the switchboard. I told her to ring Miss Claxon’s room, and tell her that Mr. Lam was waiting in the lobby.

She said, “Miss Claxon has checked out.”

“How long ago?” I asked.

“Sometime last night.”

“Can you find out exactly when?”

She said, “You’d better ask the room clerk.”

I walked over to the registration desk and asked the room clerk. He moved down to the window marked Cashier and said, “She paid in advance.”

“I know she paid in advance. What I want to know is when she left.”

He shook his head, started to push back the drawer of cards, then some notation caught his eye. He turned it over to the corner and looked at the pencil note. “She went out about two o’clock this morning,” he said.

I thanked him and asked if there were any messages for me. He looked through a stack of envelopes and said there were none.

I called up Bertha Cool from a booth in a restaurant a couple of doors down the street. No one answered at either the office or her apartment.

I had breakfast and smoked cigarettes over two cups of coffee. I got a newspaper, glanced through the headlines, and read the sporting news. I called Bertha Cool’s office again, and she was in.

“Anything new?” I asked.

“Where are you, Donald?”

“At a pay station.”

Her voice was cautious. “I understand the police are making headway in the Ringold murder.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. There are some recent developments they can’t figure out.”

“Such as what?”

“Someone got into the hotel room, apparently early this morning, and ripped it all to pieces. The upholstery was cut open, curtains were pulled down, carpets torn up, pictures taken out of the frames — a hell of a mess.”

“Any clues?”

“Apparently none. The police aren’t exactly communicative. I had to get information that was bootlegged out.”

“Nice goings,” I said.

“What are you going to do, lover?”

“Just keep circulating.”

“Mr. Crumweather’s office called up. It seems that Mr. Crumweather is very anxious to see you.”

“Say what he wanted?”

“No. He just wanted to talk with you.”

“Sociable old buzzard, isn’t he?”

“Uh-huh. Donald, watch your step.”

“I’m watching it.”

“Bertha couldn’t use you, you know, if you were sleeping in a room that had iron bars all over it.”

I pretended to be surprised and hurt. “You mean you’d stop my salary if I had to go to jail over trying to solve a company case?”

Bertha fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. She said, “You’re goddam right I’d stop your salary, you impudent little squirt,” and slammed up the telephone so hard it sounded as though she’d pulled the receiver hook out by the roots.

I went back and had another cup of coffee on the strength of that, then went over to Crumweather’s office.

Miss Sykes gave me one look, said, “Just a minute,” and dived into Crumweather’s private office. It was a good minute before she came out. I figured she’d had fifty seconds worth of instructions.

“Go on in, Mr. Lam.”

I went into the private office. Crumweather beamed all over his face. He pushed out a bony hand at me, and was as effusively cordial as an applicant for a loan greeting a bank appraiser who’s called to go over the physical assets.

“Well, well, Lam, my boy,” he said, “you certainly are an active little chap — damnably active! You certainly do get around. Yes, sir, you certainly do.”

I sat down.

Crumweather pushed his bushy eyebrows together in level speculation, pushed his glasses up on his nose, and looked me over with cold, hard appraisal. He tried to soften the severity of his eyes by freezing his lips into a smile.

“What have you been doing since I saw you last, Lam?”

“Thinking.”

“That was clever, that idea of yours about the oil company— Now tell me, Lam, just what made you use that approach.”

“I thought it would be a good one.”

“It was a good one, very good indeed! Too good. Now, I want to know who put you up to it.”

“No one.”

“There’s been a leak somewhere. Someone has been talking about me. A man in my position can’t afford to have his professional reputation questioned.”

“I understand that.”

“Rumours have a way of traveling, getting garbled, distorted out of all sense of proportion.”