A. Fair - Owls Don't Blink

Hale got down on his knees and struck two matches to verify my conclusions; then he said, “You’re right, Lam! You really are a detective! Let’s see what the letters have to say.”

We picked up some of the old letters. They didn’t mean much: some old receipted bills; a pleading, desperate letter from some woman who wanted a man to return and marry her; another letter from some man who wanted to borrow money to tide him him over an emergency and written in the “dear-old-pal” vein.

Hale chuckled. “I like these things,” he said as he finished reading the letter. “Little cross-sections of life. Being perfect strangers to the transaction, we can examine the tone of that letter and see how badly that ‘dear-old-pal’ stuff is overdone. I wouldn’t trust that man as far as I could throw this desk with one hand.”

“Neither would I,” I told him. “I wonder what the newspaper clippings are.”

He pushed those to one side. “Those are meaningless. It’s the letters that count. Here’s one in feminine handwriting. Perhaps it’s another letter from the girl who wanted the man to marry her. I wonder how that came out.”

I picked up the old newspaper clippings, ran idly through them, said suddenly, “Wait a minute, Hale. We’ve struck something here.”

“What?”

“Pay dirt.”

“What do you mean?”

I said, “It may tie up with this thirty-eight caliber revolver.”

Hale dropped the letter he was reading, said excitedly, “How’s that?”

“These clippings have to do with the murder of a man by the name of Craig. Howard Chandler Craig. Twenty-nine years old, unmarried, employed as a book-keeper by the Roxberry Estates. Let’s see. Where was the murder committed? Wait a minute. Here’s a heading. Los Angeles Times, June 11, 1937. ”

Hale said, “Now wouldn’t that be something? Suppose the murderer escaped and came here—” He picked up one of the clippings, started reading through it. It had been folded over a couple of times, and he unfolded it and looked at the photograph just about the time I was reading the details of the account.

When I heard Hale’s quick intake of breath, I knew what caused it.

“Lam!” he said excitedly. “Look here!”

I said, “I’m reading about it in this one.”

“But here’s her photograph.”

I looked at the coarse-meshed reproduction of Roberta Fenn’s picture. Underneath it were the words Roberta Fenn, twenty-one-year-old stenographer, was riding with Howard Craig when holdup occurred.

Hale said excitedly, “Lam, do you know what this means?”

I said; “No.”

He said, “I do.”

“Don’t be too sure you do. I don’t.”

“But it’s as plain as the nose on your face.”

I said, “Let’s study these clippings before we go jumping to any hasty conclusions.”

We read through all of the clippings, exchanging them with each other. Hale finished reading first.

“Well?” he asked when I’d finished.

I said, “Not necessarily.”

“Bosh!” Hale said. “You can see it all as plain as day. She went out with this bookkeeper — probably another case of a girl wanting a man to marry her, and he refused. She got out of the car on some excuse or another, walked around to the driver’s side, shot Craig twice through the left temple, hid the gun, and came in with this story of the masked bandit who had stepped out of the bush and ordered Craig to throw up his hands. He’d done it. The man had gone through his pockets, and then had ordered Roberta Fenn to walk down the road with him.

“That was more than Craig would stand tor. He started the motor in his car, threw it into gear, and tried to run the man down, but the chap just managed to get to one side. He shot Craig twice in the head as the momentum of the car carried Craig up even with him.

“No one ever questioned the girl’s story. Craig was considered a gentleman and a martyr. One reason police didn’t question Roberta’s story was that there had been two dozen petting-party holdups in the neighborhood within a period of a few months. On several occasions where the girl had been unusually attractive, the bandit had ordered her to walk down the road with him. There had been two other murders—”

Hale paused dramatically, motioned toward the gun, and said, “Well, there you are! It was murder. She got away with it once — and, by George, she tried getting away with it again. This time she can’t make it stick.”

I said, “Not necessarily. Simply because that’s a thirty-eight caliber gun doesn’t mean it’s the same gun with which Craig was killed.”

“Why are you protecting her?” Hale asked suspiciously.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Perhaps because I don’t want you sticking your neck out.”

“How do you mean?”

I said, “Making positive statements accusing a person of crime is sometimes dangerous, unless you have the information necessary to back them up.”

Hale nodded. “That’s so,” he said. “Of course, there’s nothing to prove that the gun goes with the newspaper clippings.”

I pointed out, “The newspaper clippings could have been placed in that desk drawer, and worked on down through the opening in back. The gun couldn’t. The gun was placed there deliberately.”

Hale said, “Let me think.”

I said, “While you’re thinking, I’d better know exactly why you wanted Roberta Fenn, and who your client IS.”

“No. That doesn’t enter into the picture.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can tell you it doesn’t. What’s more, I’m protecting the confidence of my client.”

“Don’t you think that now he would want me to know more about it?”

“No.”

“It’s a man, isn’t it — your client?”

“You can’t pump me, Lam, and I don’t want you to try. I told you I wanted you to find Roberta Fenn. That was all.”

“Well, I’ve found her.”

“And lost her again.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

He said, “Find her again.”

“You haven’t known Bertha very long, have you?”

“You mean Mrs. Cool?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

I said, “She’s rather hard-boiled in a business deal.”

“That’s all right. I’m rather hard-boiled myself.”

I said, “You employed the agency to find Roberta Fenn. You offered a bonus in the event she was found within a certain period of time.”

“Well,” he said impatiently, “what’s wrong with that?”

I said, “We found her.”

“But you didn’t keep her found.”

I said, “That’s why I asked you if you’d had much experience with Bertha Cool. My best guess is that she’ll say that all we were employed for was to find her.”

“And that having found her, your employment is completed, and you’re entitled to the bonus?”

“Exactly.”

I waited for him to get mad. He didn’t. He sat there on the floor, staring at the gun and the yellowed newspaper clippings. A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth; then the smile became a chuckle. “Damn it. Lam, she’s right! Here I am, a lawyer, and I stick my neck out on an agreement of that sort.”

He looked up at me.

I didn’t say anything.

He said, “That is the agreement in a nutshell. I remember the way it was worded now.” He laughed outright.

I said, “I thought I’d tell you, that’s all.”

“Well,” he admitted, “that’s one on me. Okay, I’ll hire the firm all over again and arrange for another bonus. I like the way you work. In the meantime, we’d better get in touch with the police about this gun.”

“What are you going to tell them?”

He said, “Don’t worry. Lam. I’m going to tell them the bare facts, that I happened to be looking through ‘the desk because I was interested in it as a piece of furniture. I intended to make the landlady an offer for it. I tilted it up in order to see the bottom, and realized there was something heavy in it. I shook it out, and the gun and these papers came out. Naturally, I don’t want to appear in front of the public as a snoop who was going around reading correspondence that was really no concern of mine.”