Erle Gardner - The Case of the Borrowed Brunette

“Felt for his pulse?”

“That’s right.”

“Touch anything else?”

“No.”

“You didn’t go through the clothes at all?”

“Good heavens, why should I go through his clothes?”

“Were you with her all the time?” Mason asked, turning to Eva Martell.

“What’s the idea of asking questions like that?” Adelle Winters exclaimed irritably. “That’s the same sort of stuff the police have been asking.”

“I was just trying to find out.”

“Yes, I was with her all the time,” Eva Martell said.

“How about when you were telephoning to me?”

“Well, that was just a second or two.”

“And you’ve been together all day?”

“That’s right.”

“Every minute of the time?”

“Every single solitary minute.”

“Well, that’s going to help.”

“That’s the way the police looked at it,” Adelle Winters said.

“Did the officers ask you how you happened to be living in that apartment?”

“Of course they did.”

“What did you tell them?”

“Told them the complete truth.”

“You told them all about Hines and how he had hired you?”

“Yes.”

“To impersonate Helen Reedley?”

“We weren’t impersonating anyone,” Adelle Winters said. “We took a job and he asked us to take a certain name for the job.”

“But you told them about me?”

“That’s right.”

“About how I got in touch with Helen Reedley?”

“Well, no,” Adelle Winters said. “We didn’t tell them too much.”

“What did you tell them?”

“We told them that we had this job and that you told us you didn’t want us to go ahead with it until you were positive it was all right, so that we wouldn’t be guilty of any crime. So we said you investigated and reported that it was all right; so then we went shopping, had dinner, and returned to the apartment. And when we returned, we found the body.”

“You didn’t tell them about being shadowed?”

“No.”

“And did you tell them anything else?”

“What else is there to tell? We just were hired and went to work, and that’s all there was to it. We didn’t know what the job was, but we certainly weren’t impersonating anyone. And we didn’t defraud anyone.”

“Did the police seem to think there was some scheme back of it?”

“No, to tell you the truth, Mr. Mason, the police didn’t seem so interested in that part. They seemed to know Hines — he had a police record for racetrack gambling. They didn’t even ask us for the phone number where we’d been calling him, and so we didn’t give it to them. I think they’d talked with some of the men who had been shadowing us. I don’t know for certain, but I think so. I saw one of them waiting there in the apartment house and thought he was waiting to be questioned.”

Mason said, “I guess they probably already had a statement from him. As a matter of fact, those were two detectives who had been hired to keep an eye on you. They’d been following you everywhere you went ever since you’d been on the job.”

“Well now, isn’t that something!” Adelle Winters exclaimed. “Great goings-on when a couple of respectable women are trying to make an honest living and detectives start traipsing around after them.”

“Did the police tell you to keep in touch with them?”

“No. I told them I’d be at my apartment, and Eva Martell told them she’d be back with Cora Felton. The police took the addresses and said they’d get in touch with us if there was anything else they wanted. But they seem to think it was a gambling murder.”

“Oh,” said Mason. “Well, I guess that’s about all, then.”

Adelle Winters got to her feet and nodded to Eva Martell. “We thought we’d drop in and tell you, Mr. Mason — you’ve been so nice to us.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“I guess... Well, Cora Felton hired you to see that everything was all right with us, and I guess now... Well, I guess there’s nothing more to do. We don’t want to run up too much of a bill, you know.”

Mason laughed. “You won’t.”

“But we don’t want you to be loser either, Mr. Mason. There isn’t anything more to do now, is there?”

“It’s hard to say just what the situation is.”

“Well, I think it would be better if you just — you know — let the whole thing drop and tell us how much we owe you, and that’ll be that. We’ll pay up. And how about this extra money we got from Hines? The amount that was over what we had coming to us?”

“Did you tell the police about that?”

“Well, no, I didn’t. I told them he’d paid us up to date, and they didn’t ask me how much, so I didn’t tell them.”

“Well, that’s right. You are paid up to date. In any event, the police won’t have anything to do with that phase of it. That will be up to the executor of Hines’s estate.”

“You mean that we don’t need to tell anyone just how much we received?”

“Not until the executor asks you. And then you can tell him that what you got was as a payment for services performed and in the nature of a guarantee that the contract would be carried out — so that if anything interfered you’d be assured of your money.”

“I see. Thank you, Mr. Mason. Good night.”

“Good night,” Mason said.

Eva Martell, turning impulsively, gave Mason her hand and a flash of gratitude from dark eyes. “Thank you,” she said in a low voice. “You’ve been so kind. Will we see you again?”

“Perhaps.”

“I thought perhaps you’d drop in and have a drink with us, and there might be some questions you’d want to ask some time in the future.”

“There won’t be a thing,” Adelle Winters said positively. “The case is all closed as far as Mr. Mason is concerned. Come on, Eva.”

A few minutes after they had left, Mason’s private phone rang. Since only Della Street and Paul Drake knew that number, Mason scooped up the receiver and said, “Yes, hello, Paul. What is it?”

“Something red-hot, Perry. And I mean it is red-hot.”

“Shoot.”

“Well, the police got those Interstate men on the carpet and gave them a pretty thorough grilling. They made the boys kick through with everything they had.”

“Naturally the police would do that,” Mason said. “What happened?”

“Well, the boys turned in their notes, giving a complete picture of what had been done with shadowing operations on the two women, telling exactly where they went, the license numbers of the cabs they took — all that kind of thing.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Mason asked.

“Well, it seems that at two-twenty this afternoon, very shortly after the two women got to that hotel where they went and waited, Adelle Winters went exploring. In a passageway she found a lot of garbage cans from the kitchen waiting to be picked up by the garbage man. She lifted the cover of one of the garbage cans and looked in. The man who was shadowing her made a note of what she had done, but didn’t pay much attention to it.”

“Okay, Paul, go ahead. What happened?”

“Well,” Drake said, “the police did pay some attention to it, as a matter of routine check-up; they thought she might have been ditching something. They rushed a couple of the boys down to the hotel. By that time the cans were pretty well filled with garbage, but the Interstate man was able to point out the one that Mrs. Winters had looked into. So the police spread out a canvas and dumped out the contents — and what do you think they found?”

“Well — what?”

“A .32-caliber revolver with one chamber fired,” Drake said.

Mason whistled.