Erle Gardner - The Case of the Borrowed Brunette

“Why?”

“I think you can give it to me better than she can.”

“What sort of information?”

“You’ve had detectives shadowing her for the last few days. What have they found out?”

Reedley sat perfectly motionless, his eyes fixed steadily on Mason’s face. “Is that a bluff?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know — that’s why I’m asking.”

“Asking me if I’m bluffing on the theory that if I am I’ll be frank and tell you?” Mason asked.

Again Reedley frowned. “I think you’ve asked a question I’m not going to answer.”

“What I am particularly interested in finding out,” Mason said, “is what your wife was doing this afternoon.”

“What made you think I’d hired detectives to watch her?”

“Haven’t you?”

“I would certainly say that was none of your damn business.”

“There are other ways of finding out.”

“What?”

“I might tip off some of my friends on the Homicide Squad, or in the D.A.’s office, that if they’d subpoena the head of the Interstate Investigators they could get some interesting information.”

Orville Reedley thought that over. Then he asked abruptly, “What good would that do you?”

“Put me in solid with the police, and then they’d let me know if they found out you’d put men on the job of shadowing your wife.”

“How did you get your lead?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“You can’t tell me the things I want to know, but you want me to tell you the things you want to know.”

“Exactly.”

“That strikes me as being unfair.”

“Perhaps it is. You don’t have to tell me these things. I can go about finding out the hard way.”

“Meaning through the police?”

“That’s one way.”

“Wait a minute,” Reedley said, “let me think this over. Don’t talk to me for a minute.”

He heaved himself out of the chair, paced nervously back and forth across the rug for a few moments, then went over to stand at a window. He adjusted the Venetian blinds so that he could see out, stood moodily staring out of the window for a few seconds, then walked back to the other side of the room, lit a cigarette, took two or three puffs at it, and threw it away.

The telephone rang. “Excuse me a moment,” Reedley said. He strode to the telephone and jerked the receiver off the hook. “Well — what is it?”

He was silent for a moment. The words that came over the receiver were faintly audible in the apartment as a steady metallic rattle. When they stopped, he said hesitantly, “I don’t know... ”

Again there was sound from the receiver, followed by a one-word reply from Reedley: “Information.”

Another interval of sound, and Reedley said, “Yes... That’s right... Not entirely... Getting close to it, I think. Okay, thanks. Keep an eye on things. Okay, good-by.”

He hung up and walked back to stand by the table, frowning down at Mason. Then abruptly he turned to Paul Drake. “What are you here for?”

“I just came along.”

“You’re a detective?”

“Yes.”

“You’re hiring Mason?”

“Other way around — Mr. Mason hires me.”

“For what?”

“For the thing a person usually wants out of a detective agency: information.”

“You gave him the lead to me?”

“Ask him.”

“How did you get it?”

“Ask him.”

Mason broke in. “What’s the use?” he demanded. “We’ll never get anywhere beating around the bush. I learned that detectives had been employed to shadow Helen Reedley. I got Paul Drake to put his men to work shadowing the detectives. The trail led to the Interstate Investigators, and through them to you. They telephoned you when the police discovered the murder of Hines, and you rushed over there and were given information right up to the minute. Then you drove back here.”

“Don’t you know it’s a crime to tap a telephone wire?”

Mason looked him full in the eyes. “No,” he said; “is it?”

For a moment there was the suggestion of a twinkle in Reedley’s eyes. Then he said, “All right. You’ve put some cards on the table. I’ll match them. I heard that my wife was interested in someone else. I wanted to find out. I put shadows on her. They’ve been on her for two or three days. This man Hines apparently has been in and out. He’s taken her and her chaperone out to dinner, but my wife has never seen him alone. I couldn’t figure the deal. However, one of the detectives picked up some information from the police which interests me. When they made a search of the body, they found that Hines had a key to my wife’s apartment. It’s important to the police and it’s important to me to find out how long he’d had it, and how he got it — and why.”

“What do you think?”

“Use your imagination.”

“It sometimes leads me astray.”

“My wife didn’t want to give me a divorce. She’s not the type that would retire from circulation and live the life of a recluse. She’s had six months. She spent a lot of money having me shadowed. I decided I’d return the compliment.”

“She’s having you shadowed now?”

“Not now. Up to a couple of months ago she made my life miserable. There was some private detective on my trail every time I turned around. She quit because she couldn’t get anything.”

“When did you hire these detectives?”

“Two or three days ago.”

Mason said, “I think we could swap information to some advantage if you’d be more specific.”

“I never make a trade without looking over what I’m going to get.”

“The woman your men were shadowing wasn’t your wife,” Mason told him.

“Don’t be silly.”

“I’m not.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll put it this way. When you decided to have your wife shadowed, you got in touch with a detective agency. You told them that you wanted to arrange for a twenty-four-hour shadow job, on a woman who was around twenty-three or twenty-four, a brunette, height five feet four and a half inches, weight one hundred and eleven pounds, waist measurement twenty-four inches, bust measurement thirty-two. She lived at Apartment 326 in the Siglet Manor on Eighth Street. You wanted them to keep an eye on the apartment, and pick her up and shadow her every time she went out. You also wanted to know what visitors came to the apartment house and went to see her.”

“All right,” Reedley said. “So what?”

Mason took a wallet from his pocket, extracted the folded copy of the ad, handed it to Reedley. “That,” he said, “is the answer.”

Reedley read it through twice before he got its significance. “Well, I’ll be doubly damned!” he said slowly.

“You see what that means,” Mason went on. “There was a tip-off. Someone knew in advance that you were going to hire a shadow to trail your wife. Your wife didn’t want to be shadowed, so she sidestepped and ran in a ringer. Your detectives put an eye on the apartment you designated. A woman was living there who answered in every way the description that you had given; a woman who could very well have been the person pictured in the snapshot you gave the detective agency.”

“I didn’t give them any photographs.”

“That made it a lot easier,” Mason said. “The point I’m making is that here was a tip-off. Someone knew you were going to employ the detective agency two or three days before you actually got the men on the job. Now I want to know where that leak came from.”

“ You want to know,” Reedley said angrily. “How the hell do you think I feel about it?”

“I thought you’d feel the same way,” Mason said. “We might pool our information.”