A. Fair - Owls Don't Blink

It didn’t take a first-class detective to tell that Harman C. Biswill had cut himself a very nice slice of cake.

I opened the entrance door and walked in.

Biswill had gone hog wild on office machinery. There were bookkeeping machines, typewriters, dictating machines, adding machines, billing machines, addressing machines scattered around the office. An elderly woman was punching an adding machine. A girl was pounding out correspondence on a typewriter, the earpieces of a transcribing machine dangling from her ears.

There was a switchboard and a little window marked Information , but no one was at the desk. As I came in, a light came on on the switchboard and a buzzer sounded. The woman at the adding machine came over to the switchboard, plugged in a line, said, “Roxberry Estates, Incorporated... No, he isn’t here... I can’t tell you just when he will be... No, I’m not certain he’ll be here at all today... Was there any message?... Very well, I’ll tell him Thank you.”

She was past fifty, a woman who had evidently been working all of her life. Her eyes were tired but kind, and there was about her the air of a person who knows exactly what she is doing.

I followed a hunch. “You’ve been with the corporation since it was organized?”

“Yes.”

“And were employed by Mr. Roxberry prior to that time?”

“Yes. What is it you wish?”

I said, “I’m trying to find out something about a man by the name of Hale.”

“What did you want to know about him?”

“Something about his credit.”

“May I have your name?”

“Lam. Donald Lam.”

“And what company are you with, Mr. Lam?”

“It’s a partnership,” I said. “Cool and Lam. I’m one of the partners. We’re doing some business with Mr. Hale.”

“Just a moment, and I’ll see what I can find out,”

She went into the back part of the office, opened a card index, ran down through a number of cards, pulled out one, looked at it, and returned to the counter.

“What were the initials?”

“Mr. Hale’s?”

“Yes.”

“Emory G. Hale. He may have been an attorney when he was here.”

She looked at the card again, said, “We have no Emory G. Hale. No record of ever having done business with him.”

I said, “Perhaps you can remember him. He may have been representing someone else, and it’s possible you didn’t have his name, a tall man around six feet. He’s about fifty-seven or fifty-eight years of age, has broad shoulders and very long arms. When he smiles, he has a peculiar habit of holding his front teeth together and pulling back his lips.”

She thought for a minute, shook her head, and said, “I’m afraid I’m not able to help you. We carried on rather a large and varied business. Mr. Roxberry did both personal and business financing.”

“Yes, I know. And you don’t remember Mr. Hale?”

“No.”

“He might even have been going under another name.”

“No. I’m quite certain.”

I started for the door, turned back suddenly, and said, “Did you have business dealings with a Marco Cutler?”

She shook her head.

“Or,” I asked almost as an afterthought, “an Edna Cutler?”

“Edna P. Cutler?” she asked.

“I believe that’s right.”

“Oh, yes, we had quite a large number of dealings with Edna Cutler.”

“Do those dealings continue?”

“No. They were all wound up. Mr. Roxberry did a lot of business for Miss Cutler.”

“Miss or Mrs.?”

She frowned and said, “I don’t know. I only remember the name on the books as Edna P. Cutler.”

“What did you call her when she came in?” I asked. “Miss or Mrs.?”

“I don’t think I ever saw her in my life.”

“Her account isn’t active now?”

“Oh, no. It was some sort of a joint deal she had with Mr. Roxberry. Just a minute. Frances,” she called to the girl at the transcribing machine, “hasn’t all the Edna Cutler business been closed up?”

The girl stopped typing long enough to nod her head, and then went back to the typewriter.

The woman behind the counter gave me a tired smile of dismissal.

I went out and stood in the corridor, thinking.

Edna Cutler. Many business dealings with Silas Roxberry... Yet she never came to the office... Howard Chandler Craig, a bookkeeper... Out riding with Roberta Fenn... A mysterious love pirate, and the bookkeeper of the Roxberry Estates, the one who must have had all the financial transactions of Silas T. Roxberry at his finger tips, murdered.

I rang up the office, found that Bertha Cool hadn’t come in yet, told Elsie Brand I would be in around noon, and if Bertha came in, to tell her to wait.

I went down to police headquarters.

Sergeant Pete Rondler of the Homicide Squad had always got a kick out of me. For one reason, he had had a couple of run-ins with Bertha Cool, and hated the ground she walked on. When I started working for her, he’d predicted I’d be a thoroughly broken-in doormat within three months. The fact that I’d worked up to a partnership and that, on occasion, I stood up to Bertha Cool gave him a great deal of private satisfaction.

“Hello, Sherlock,” he said as I opened the door. “Want something?”

“Maybe.”

“How’s the sleuthing?”

“Only fair.”

“How are you and Bertha getting along?”

“Swell.”

“Don’t see any footprints on your hip pockets.”

“Not yet.”

“She’ll get you in time. You can stall her off for a while, but you’re just living on borrowed time. She’ll earmark you, put her brand on you, kid you along until you’re fattened up, and then send you to the slaughterhouse. After she has your hide nicely tanned and made into leather, she’ll start looking for another victim.”

“That’s where I fool her,” I said. “I won’t get fat.”

He grinned. “What’s on your mind?”

“Nineteen-thirty-seven. Unsolved murder. Man by the name of Howard Chandler Craig.”

He had bushy eyebrows. When he frowned, they came down over his eyes like black thunderclouds piling up behind a mountain. Now I got the full effect of them.

“Aren’t you funny?” he said.

“I didn’t think I was being funny.”

“What do you know about that?”

“Nothing.”

“When were you in New Orleans?”

I hesitated.

“Start lying to me,” he said, “and I’ll bust your damn agenda. You won’t get a bit of co-operation as long as you live.”

“I just got back from there.”

“I thought so.”

“Why, what’s wrong?”

He placed his forearm flat’ on the desk, raised the wrist, and slapped the tips of his fingers with an up-and-down drumming motion against the scarred desk top. At length, he said, “The New Orleans police are making inquiries.”

“There may be a New Orleans angle on it.”

“What?”

I looked him straight in the eye, said with wide-eyed candor, “A girl by the name of Roberta Fenn was riding in the car with Craig when he was killed. She’s been mixed up in another murder case in New Orleans. Police aren’t certain what happened, whether she was a victim or whether she pulled the trigger, or whether she’s just got frightened and taken a powder.”

“Two murders in five years is altogether too many murders for a nice young girl.”

“So it would seem.”

“What’s your angle on the case?”

“Just investigating.”

“For whom?”

“A lawyer,” I said, “trying to close up an estate.”

“Nuts!”

“That’s the truth. That’s what he’s told us anyway.”

“Who’s the lawyer?”

I grinned.

“What’s the angle?”

“We’re looking for a person who seems to have disappeared.”