Erle Gardner: The Case of the Haunted Husband

“That’s the one.”

“Got anything on it?”

“Worked a couple of days and don’t know what to do next. Had a couple of good operatives on it here, and an associate in San Francisco.”

Mason said. “Okay, Paul, let us hear it.”

“To begin with, Perry, every time I get to fooling around with it, I smell something fishy. That Stephane Claire is a good egg. She had a fight with an uncle, took out for herself, and learned how to light on her feet. Incidentally, Perry, she is a raving beauty, the platinum blonde type.”

“What is wrong with Horty?” Mason asked.

Drake grinned. “If you would take about thirty pounds off of her, Perry, you’d...”

“Ruin her disposition,” Mason interrupted.

“There is something to that,” Drake admitted. “She certainly is comfortable, that girl. Feels comfortable herself, and makes you feel comfortable. Miss Claire tells me that the boyfriends who talk to Horty talk matrimony.”

“Bet she is a good cook.”

“I shall bet. Well, here is the dope on this thing, Perry. The D.A.’s office is showing lots of activity. That man who was injured died. That means they are going to put a manslaughter charge against the girl.”

“Are they investigating her story?”

“Not the D.A.’s office. They are sold on the idea she was driving the car. The way they put it together, the girl got a lift as far as Bakersfield all right, just as she says. But they think the man who gave her the ride had a bottle and that Stephane Claire wasn’t at all unwilling to help him empty it. By the time she got to Bakersfield, she was pretty high. She blundered into this car, which another thief had abandoned, saw that its home was Hollywood, climbed in, and started going places.”

“Sounds goofy,” Mason said.

“No more goofy than her story. Well, anyway, here is the point, Perry. The car belongs to Jules Carne Homan. He is a big-shot Hollywood producer. Probably about half as big as he thinks he is, which still makes him draw quite a bit of water.

“He had a fight with his insurance company a couple of years ago, and decided to carry his own car insurance. Now get this, Perry. If that car was being driven with his permission, expressed or implied, he is stuck for damages up to ten thousand dollars. If Stephane Claire was driving that car, he is going to claim he isn’t responsible for anything because the car wasn’t being operated with his implied permission. If the car was being used by an agent of his — someone who was working for him or doing something for him at his request — he is stuck for the whole hog. So you can see what it means to Homan. On one theory, it costs him nothing. On another theory, it costs him ten thousand. If the person who was driving the car was on business for him, it might cost him plenty — and then some.”

Mason narrowed his eyes. “Why do you talk about the car being driven by someone on business for him, Paul?”

“Because I think there is a darn good chance that is what happened.”

“Let us have it.”

“Well, I went out to see Homan. I didn’t get anywhere. He was nasty nice, in an insulting way. Something about Homan didn’t register. His story about how the car happened to be taken in the first place didn’t click. It was all right from his viewpoint, but when I put myself in the position of a car thief and looked at it from that angle, it sounded phony. If the car wasn’t stolen he must have known who the driver was. What is more, the car was stolen around the middle of the day. According to Claire, the driver was wearing a tuxedo. Car thieves don’t wear tuxedos when they walk out to swipe parked cars in the middle of the day.

“So I did a little detective work based on the theory that Homan might be lying. I had a man go down to the telephone office, say he was Homan’s butler, that there was something wrong with the long-distance bill, and Homan wasn’t going to pay some of the charges. I was looking for telephone calls from or to Bakersfield. Of course, the telephone office told him Homan was stuck if the calls had been placed from that phone. My man got in an argument and finally got to see the telephone bills.

“There was nothing to or from Bakersfield, but the day before the accident, Homan had been calling San Francisco, and San Francisco had been calling him, collect.”

“You got the numbers?” Mason asked.

“Sure.”

“What were they?”

“They all came from a cheap rooming house. The phone is listed in the name of L.C. Spinney — and there is lots of mystery about Spinney.”

Mason’s eyes showed interest. “Go ahead, Paul.”

“Spinney has a cheap room in a cheap house in a cheap district. He has a telephone. It is a single line with an unlisted number. Spinney shows up about once a month. He has a portable typewriter. He bats out letters and mails them. He puts in calls to numbers we haven’t been able to trace as yet, but other tenants in the building hear him talking. It sounds like a long-distance conversation. They hear him putting through long-distance calls, always station-to-station. They hear him tapping away on his typewriter. Spinney gets mail once or twice a month. He shows up to get that mail at irregular intervals. Sometimes the letters stay in his mailbox two or three weeks before they are taken out.

“But, get this, Perry — no one has ever seen Spinney!

“It is a fact. He rented the room one night by sending a taxi driver in with some money and hand baggage. He has a room with a private outside entrance. He comes at night and he goes at night. No one knows whether he will come in tonight and leave tomorrow before daylight, or come three weeks from now, stay a half hour while he bats out some stuff on his typewriter, and then vanish again.

“Of course, people have had glimpses of him, but not close enough to get stuff that would give me a description. He is a man. He is between twenty and fifty. He is not very thin and not very fat. He wears an overcoat and a felt hat and quite frequently he is seen wearing evening clothes. Got it? A man in a cheap rooming house wearing evening clothes?”

Mason’s eyes were partially closed in concentration.

“One of these letters is in his mailbox now,” Drake went on. “My operative was afraid to steam it open, but he held the envelope up in front of a powerful light. He was able to see there was a money order in it and a letter. We managed to photograph that letter without opening the envelope.”

“How?” Mason asked.

“Oh, it is a simple dodge. You put a piece of film in front of the envelope, clamp it firmly, turn on the light, and develop the film. Because the letter is folded, you get a scramble of slanting lines, but with a little care you can make out what’s in the letter. This one said: ‘I am sending fifteen dollars which is all I can possibly spare this month. I wish he could write to me. Tell him I carry on somehow, but if he would only write, it would make me so much happier.’”

“How was the letter signed?”

“Just Lois.”

“Who is the money order from?”

“Lois Warfield.”

“Check on her?” Mason asked.

“Sure. What do you think they are paying me for?”

“Darned if I know. Go ahead.”

“She was frightened to death when my New Orleans correspondent contacted heir. She wouldn’t talk. She is working in a cafeteria. One of the girls in the cafeteria gave my correspondent a little dope. Mrs. Warfield has only been in New Orleans a short time. Her husband left her a couple of years ago — some trouble over his thinking she was going to have a baby — and then she didn’t. They were estranged for over a year, then she told him she still loved him and was saving money to come out and join him. He was supposed to be in Hollywood. Next thing she got a letter from one of the husband’s friends saying something had happened, that Warfield was in a jam, couldn’t even communicate with her himself. Evidently he was dodging cops and was afraid they would watch her mail. She was in Ridgefield, Connecticut, then. She wrote this friend she was coming west to see if she could help, and started working her way across the country. When she hit New Orleans, she got a letter saying her husband was in jail. He had done something so reprehensible, he wanted her to forget him. But she stuck. So she keeps herself broke sending money to pay for a lawyer who is going to try to get the husband’s sentence shortened to ten years, or something like that. My operative had to get it second-hand. Mrs. Warfield wouldn’t talk.”