Erle Gardner - The Case of the Borrowed Brunette

“You started to gamble.”

“Yes — I gambled.”

“Speculative investments, or just plain gambling?”

“Gambling — plain and fancy gambling. And I won. And then I quit. That is, I didn’t leave off gambling entirely, but I quit gambling for big money. I had won a big enough stake to provide me with something to invest. I saw that there was a good market in real estate, and I started— Well, I’m not going to tell you too much about that, because I’m somewhat vulnerable myself, you see. If my husband found out what I’d been doing... ”

“I’m not interested in your financial affairs, but I am interested in how you happened to know that your husband intended to put detectives on your trail.”

She smiled. “After all, that’s simple. I told you I won my money gambling — the initial stake; and then I quit playing for big money. When I did that, I earned the friendship and the respect of the very men I had gambled with. Because they see lots of people try to beat the game, but only a few of them do. Most people who make big money throw it all back before they’re done.”

“Does your husband gamble?” Mason asked.

“Yes, but not in the places I go to. He is an inveterate poker player, and he likes to play for high stakes with a select crowd — some of them professional gamblers, the sort who are honest but shrewd. Well, at a poker session he asked one of them the name of a good detective agency that he could count on to give him service and not sell out his interests to the other side. The man recommended the Interstate Investigators. And that’s all there was to it — just that one question. But a friend of mine happened to be sitting in that game, and he overheard my husband. So he came to me and said he suspected that my husband intended to put detectives on my trail.”

“And Hines?” Mason asked. “How did he come into it?”

“Hines,” she said, “is, or rather was, a small-time gambler. He wasn’t a bookie but he would place bets for you and things of that sort. I got acquainted with him through a girl friend of his in the building where I had my apartment. He would do anything for money and was fairly competent within limits.”

“And you approached him with your proposition?”

“That’s right. He had no idea what was behind it, knew only that I wanted to disappear for a while and to leave someone in my place while I was gone. Because Hines had an entree to the apartment house, yet wasn’t actually registered there, he was ideal for my purpose. He assured me he’d have no trouble getting a brunette who could double for me so far as an ordinary physical description was concerned. If any of my friends should come to the apartment to see me — which was unlikely because I had told all my friend? never to come without telephoning first — the report would be that I was out, and whoever telephoned would be told that I’d call back inside of half an hour. Then the call was reported to Hines, and he in turn called me here and told me who had called up. I would call back direct from the hotel, and the person at the other end had no way of knowing that I wasn’t calling from my apartment, of course.”

“How long did you intend to keep this up?” Mason asked.

“Until my husband was presented with the picture of a very discreet young woman living with a chaperone in perfect propriety, occasionally going to dinner with Bob Hines, but being very discreet about it. He would get a picture of Caesar’s wife!”

“You thought your husband would fall for that?”

“I was sure he would.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s the way detective agencies work. I told you I had made a mistake in judging my husband’s character, and I didn’t mean to repeat it. What I planned to do was — after he had that picture of his wife living a rather lonely, well-chaperoned life — was to tell him I had grown tired of the separation and wanted to return to him. This would have led him to start a suit for divorce within twenty-four hours.”

“Hines impressed me as being something of a smalltime opportunist.”

“He was.”

“Perhaps not too ethical,” Mason suggested.

“Well?”

“There was the chance that he would not be as simple as he seemed.”

“Meaning precisely what, Mr. Mason?”

“Meaning that perhaps Hines may have gone through the motions of being very docile and working with you, but that all the time he was quietly making investigations of his own to find out exactly why you wanted to have someone impersonate you.”

Her face showed a quick flash of some emotion that might have been fear. But her tone was casual as she said, “I don’t think there was any cause for worry on that score. Hines was rather docile so long as he was getting money.”

Mason grinned. “You didn’t do that very well, Mrs. Reedley.”

“What do you mean?”

“That shot about Hines hit you right where you lived.”

“Not at all — I had considered that possibility before I hired him!”

“Then, of course,” Mason went on musingly, “having found the answer, the man certainly would not be above blackmail. That was a pretty big sum of cash money he had in his wallet, when you consider his rather small-time activities.”

“How much was it?” she asked.

“A little over three thousand dollars.”

“Bosh! I told you the man was a gambler, and gamblers keep their money where it is instantly available. I know several who habitually carry ten times that amount with them.”

Mason seemed to ignore her protest. “It’s an interesting thought,” he was saying. “Hines would start snooping around on this investigation of his own. And, knowing exactly where you were, he would be in a position to get information that the detectives wouldn’t readily uncover. Then he could either sell out to your husband or threaten you with a sell-out and see how much it was worth to you to buy his silence.”

“Mr. Mason, I wouldn’t have paid a dime to a blackmailer!”

“What would you do?”

“I’d... why, I’d... ”

“Exactly,” Mason said; “you’d kill him first.”

“Mr. Mason, are you insinuating that I shot Robert Hines?” she exclaimed indignantly.

“I’m verbally exploring certain very definite possibilities,” he replied. “You might say I’m prospecting.”

“That’s hardly the way to reciprocate my frankness.”

“I’m wondering just what prompted that frankness.”

“Surely, Mr. Mason, you can gauge character well enough to realize what prompted it. It was a tribute to your intelligence, the mental and moral pressure you exert on people, your ability to wear down resistance. You’ve already noticed that I’ll fight for a while, and then, when I yield, I yield suddenly and with good grace, and then come all the way, as though I had thought of some other scheme I intended to try.”

Mason nodded.

“But perhaps it’s a little more than that. I am intensely feminine, and there’s something about you — though it is subtler — that resembles the appeal my husband had for me. There is the same initial impact of a strong personality, the same steady insistent pressure to overcome obstacles and resistance. I admire that in a man. With my husband I held out for a while, then suddenly yielded. With you I have put all my cards on the table. I have been frank.”

“Disconcertingly so,” Mason said. “Did you have a gun in your purse when you called at my office yesterday?”

“Don’t be silly, Mr. Mason!”

“Did you?”

She started to say something, then looked him in the eyes. “Yes.”

“What caliber?”

She hesitated. “A .38.”

Mason laughed.

“You don’t believe me.”