Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Smoking Chimney

It was while she was turning this over in her mind that the board took Stanwood’s last chip.

“Another stack?” the croupier asked.

Stanwood nodded.

A floorman moved up and said something to the croupier. The croupier, leaning forward, his long, delicate fingers already closing over the stack of chips, said to young Stanwood: “Would you mind stepping into the office for a moment, Mr. Stanwood?”

Harvey grinned amiably. “Not at all. It might change my luck. Be seeing you in a jiffy, Eva.”

Eva was worried. She had seen other men “step into the office” when they had lost their last chip. But Harvey — good heavens, Harvey was rolling in money. He was on the inside of many of Mr. Pressman’s investments, riding along on the gravy train. Surely, Harvey wouldn’t be asked to “step into the office” over a cheque that had bounced or a credit which had suddenly been cut off. Nevertheless, she watched the curtained doorway which led to the sumptuous managerial office with a certain apprehension; and, as the minutes lengthened, the apprehension grew.

It was half an hour before midnight when young Stanwood emerged.

He was his usual gay, debonair self. “Okay, babe,” he said. “We’ll have a drink and go home.”

She let him guide her toward a secluded table. When they were seated she met his eyes. “What’s the matter?”

“Matter? I don’t get you.”

She said: “I know my way around this joint. When you—”

“Don’t say ‘joint’, baby.”

“All right, this place, then. I know what it means when they ask a man to step into the office. Now, what’s the score?”

For a moment Stanwood retained his debonair superiority; then suddenly his lips tightened. He said quietly: “I wasn’t going to tell you, but it’s our last night together. Tomorrow I’ll be in jail.”

She winked her eyes rapidly, trying to clear her vision. Her ears having heard her air castles blasted into the confusion of gaudy wreckage, she felt as though her eyes might betray her next, that the vision of Harvey Stanwood — so good-looking, so magnetic, so sure of himself — might vanish into thin air and leave her sitting at a table with only an empty chair and a waiter insistently presenting a check... It was the feeling she had in nightmares when, without rhyme or reason, every event, no matter how auspicious in its inception, suddenly turns into tragic disaster.

“What... what’s... what’s the matter?” she asked.

Stanwood gave her cold facts.

“Okay, baby. I was the wise guy. I couldn’t make money fast enough, the way things were going. I had a sure-thing tip. I needed some money for a flyer. I dipped into the boss’ funds... Nothing big, nothing that I couldn’t have paid off before I’d been discovered if I’d lost. The point was that I didn’t lose. I won. That started me going. I spread out rather thin. The first thing I knew, I ran into a whole flock of bad luck. By that time I was hooked. I could never have paid off the slow, steady way — not before I was discovered, anyway.

“I was left with only one alternative. I’d lost it gambling, and I’d have to get it back gambling. I could have done it tonight if they’d let me alone. I had a swell run of luck for a while, and was on my way to getting everything back. Then things turned against me, and I lost... Well, they’ve shut off my credit.”

“You mean they know you’re short?”

“I’m not certain whether they know it here or not. That isn’t the point. The point is that I had to stake everything on one gamble. This was no time to be conservative... When Ralph G. Pressman shows up at the office tomorrow morning, certain things will be glaringly apparent. I can’t cover them up any longer. Pressman will start asking questions within thirty minutes of the time he reaches the office. Thirty minutes after that, I’ll be in custody.”

“How... how much?”

“Something over seventeen thousand. I haven’t figured it all out to the last penny.”

“Isn’t there anything you can do?”

“No.”

“Couldn’t you go to Pressman and explain—”

His bitter laugh interrupted her. “You don’t know Pressman.”

For a moment she was silent; then her eyes half squinted thoughtfully. “That’s right,” she said almost musingly. “I don’t know Pressman.”

He was too preoccupied to notice the significance of her words.

“Will Mr. Pressman be in the office tomorrow?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps not until the next day. He’s putting over a slick deal. I guess I’m probably the only one who knows where he is. I’ll bet his wife doesn’t even know.”

“Where is he?” she asked.

“Ever hear of a place called Petrie?”

“No.”

“It’s a little town up in Santa Delbarra County.”

“I’ve been in Santa Delbarra quite a lot. I didn’t know there was a place called Petrie near there.”

“It isn’t exactly near, some thirty miles from Santa Delbarra, out in the east end of the county. Just a little hick place, but there’s been some oil activity there.”

“And Mr. Pressman is up there?”

Stanwood said: “It’s a complicated business transaction. You wouldn’t be interested.”

“Yes, I would. Tell me.”

“It’s confidential.”

“Tell me. I might help.”

“ You help?”

She nodded.

He laughed, not rudely, but bitterly.

“Tell me, anyway,” she commanded.

Stanwood said: “It goes back into the early history of California when thousands on thousands of acres were given by the Mexican government in the big Spanish grants. At that time the whole north-east end of Santa Delbarra County was owned by Don José de Salvaro. He died, and the property eventually came into the hands of a shrewd Yankee named Silas Wendover. When Wendover sold the property in small parcels, he put a clause in each deed stating that he was keeping all the oil on the property for himself, his heirs and assigns.

“Back in those days, people hardly knew what oil was. They thought Wendover a little crazy. They cheerfully left the Yankee with any oil that might be on the property. It was a great joke.

“For years and years that reservation was considered simply as a cloud on the title. Then as oil began to be discovered in California, people took it a little more seriously, but no one ever bothered to look up exactly what that reservation in the deeds meant. They considered vaguely that owning the oil was one thing and getting at it quite another.

“Then Pressman looked it up. He found that under the wording of that reservation as it existed in that old deed and some of the court decisions, the Wendover heirs had the right to enter upon the land, to prospect for oil, to erect all reasonable derricks and sumps, to build roads, and, when oil was discovered, to lay pipelines, put in refineries, storage tanks, additional roads, pumping stations — in fact, anything that might be reasonably necessary to get the oil out of the land.

“Pressman quietly bought up those outstanding oil rights. When he moved in and started putting down a test well, it was as though he’d dropped a bombshell right in the middle of Petrie. The people went crazy.”

“And Mr. Pressman is up there now?” she asked. “In the hotel?”

“Not in the hotel.”

“Where?”

“If I tell you, you promise you won’t tell a soul?”

“Yes. Tell me.”

“He’s slipping over a fast one on the ranchers up there. A man named Sonders owns the property on which Pressman located his first oil well. Sonders went into court to get an injunction. He got licked. He appealed. Only today, the appellate court affirmed the decision. Pressman knew it would.”