Erle Gardner - Turn on the Heat

I opened the purse and dropped it on the floor. I upset one of the chairs, twisted a rug into a ball, and threw it into a corner. Over near the door, I tapped myself on my sore nose with the side of my hand.

The damn thing wouldn’t bleed. It had been bleeding at intervals all afternoon. Now that I wanted it to, I couldn’t get it started. Tears smarted my eyes, but my sore nose was as dry as a wildcat oil well.

I screwed up my nerve and tried it again. This time I got results, Blood spilled out, and I walked around the apartment, making certain that a few drops would be where they’d do the most good. Then I had a job stopping it. After a while I got it stopped and started for the door.

The telephone bell shattered the silence.

I walked out and pulled the door shut behind me, leaving the telephone ringing mechanically at regular intervals.

I drove to a drugstore that I knew had a telephone booth. I bought a dozen fresh handkerchiefs, went into the telephone booth, and placed a station-to-station call for the Santa Carlotta police station. When I had them on the line, I said, “Let me talk to Sergeant Harbet, please.”

“Who is this talking?”

“Detective Smith, Homicide, Los Angeles,” I said.

“Just a minute.”

I waited about a minute, and then the operator said, “Sergeant Harbet should be in your office now, Smith. He got a call from the district attorney late this afternoon, and left at once for Los Angeles.”

I said, “Thanks. Guess he stopped to get a bite to eat. I want to see him,” and hung up.

Things were breaking swell for me.

I called Bertha Cool and said, “Everything’s under control. Sit tight. Don’t get stampeded, and don’t know anything about me.”

“Donald, what the hell are you doing now?” she asked.

“Scrambling eggs,” I said.

“Well, keep your nose clean. You’re clever, but you sure as hell do take chances.”

“I’m on my own now,” I said. “What you don’t know won’t hurt you.”

She said, “I know so much now I hurt all over.”

I hung up, went back to my rooming-house, and knocked on Marian’s door. She opened it, and I said, “Hi, beautiful. I’ve just had a break. Bertha’s given me a night off. I won’t even have to worry about reporting. We can go out and do things.

“I’ll have to wait to get your things. I drove to your apartment house, but a couple of men were out front watching the place. I’ll have to wait until the coast is clear and try again.”

She said, “Donald, I’ve lost my purse.”

I walked in and propped the door open with a chair. “How come?” I asked.

She said, very determinedly, “Someone took it out of this room.”

“Nonsense.”

“But someone did! ”

“This is a respectable rooming-house. Mrs. Eldridge wouldn’t have anyone in here who—”

“I can’t help that. I had it when I left the apartment. I’m quite certain that I brought it up here with me.”

I pursed my lips into a whistle and said, “That’s bad. I bet you left it in the agency car, and I’ve had the car parked around in a dozen different places on the street. What was in it?”

“Every cent I had in the world.”

“How much?”

“All that I had.”

I said, “Well, the D.A.’s office told me to take care of your expenses, and I can let you have an advance.”

She walked very determinedly over to the chair, jerked it out from under the knob of the door, and slammed the door shut.

I said, “Wait a minute. Your good name will be ruined. Mrs. Eldridge will kick you out for that. She’s the kind who puts her offspring out in snowstorms and—”

Marian Dunton came walking over to me. “Now, you look here, Donald Lam,” she said. “I’d do almost anything for you. You’ve been treating me like an unsophisticated little country girl. I suppose I am, but at least I have some human intelligence. You’ve been nice to me, and I like you, and I have confidence in you, but you can’t steal my purse and get away with it.”

“Steal your purse!” I said.

“Yes, steal my purse. I know you’re a detective. I know you’re doing things that you don’t want me to know anything about. I know that you’ve been using me to have the case break the way you want it to break. I figure you’re entitled to that much. You gave me the right steer from the start, but you’ve been lying to me all afternoon, and I don’t like it.”

I raised my eyebrows, and said, “Lying to you?”

“Yes, lying to me,” she said. “I don’t think you even went to the district attorney’s office. I think you just hung around the apartment house.”

“What makes you think that?”

“You told me about how you’d been breaking speed laws,” she said, “but your car was stone cold when you tried to start it. You had to use the choke, and nurse it along. I know you never even went near Mr. Ellis. If you want to know how I know, he called me up not more than five minutes before you came back and asked me if I could meet him at his office at ten-thirty tonight. He said some officers from Santa Carlotta were going to be there, and he wanted me to look at a photograph. He didn’t say a single thing about you being there or about all that hocus-pocus that you dished out.

“That’s okay by me. I have enough confidence in you so that if you don’t want to take me into your confidence, I’ll play the game the way you want. But when you steal my purse, that’s just too much. I had it here in this room when you were here. You walked out, and now it’s gone.”

I dropped into a chair and began to laugh.

There was indignation in her eyes.

“It’s no laughing matter,” she said.

I said, “Listen, Marian. I want you to do one more thing for me.”

“I’ve done a lot for you already,” she said.

“I know you have. This is going to be hard for you to do, but I want you to do it.”

“What?” she asked.

“Believe every word that I’ve told you.”

She said. “You’re a city detective and are supposed to know all the answers, but you must think the country is a backwoods. I’d certainly have to be dumb to believe all you’ve told me.”

“If you believe it,” I said, “and there’s any jam, I’m the one who’s responsible. If you conspire with me, then you’ve stuck your neck out. Don’t you see?”

The indignation faded from her eyes. There was apprehension. “What are you getting into?” she asked.

I met her eyes and said, “I m darned if I know.”

She thought for a while, then said, “Okay. But it makes me look awfully dumb. Under those circumstances, we go to dinner and a movie. What do I do for money?”

I took a wallet from my pocket and handed her some of Bertha Cool’s expense money.

“And how about clothes?” she asked.

I said, “You buy a new wardrobe — such as you have to have for the next day or two. And one more thing, Miss Dunton. When I was talking with Mr. Ellis, he said that he thought it would be a bad plan for you to read the newspapers for the next few days.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Well, be said that there would be things in it about this case, and that he didn’t want you to get a lot of erroneous ideas fixed in your mind from reading the stuff the newspapers would be publishing.”

She looked up at me with wide, innocent eyes and said, “Well, I certainly will do exactly as Mr. Ellis suggested. If he doesn’t want me to read the papers, then I won’t read them.”

“That’s fine. I know he’ll appreciate it.”

“Was there anything else Mr. Ellis asked you to tell me?” she asked.

“If there was, I can’t think of it now. I—”