A. Fair: Owls Don't Blink

Rondler said to Hale, “And I don’t suppose you’ll admit seeing Nostrander the night he was murdered?”

“Who, me?” Hale asked.

“Who the hell did you think I was talking to?” Rondler asked.

Hale said with dignity, “I was in New York. Look up the records of the airplane passengers.”

I grinned at Rondler. “Look up the records of the airplane company, and you’ll find that the man who made the trip to New York weighed a hundred and forty-six pounds. Hale weighs about two hundred. Marco Cutler is the lad who answers that description.”

“Preposterous!” Hale said. “The records of the airplane company are in error.”

I lit a cigarette.

Rondler said, “Well, I guess that’s all of it. You folks can go, but don’t any of you leave the city without my consent. In a way, you’re all in custody as material witnesses, and will be under surveillance.”

We all filed out into the corridor. Hale said to Roberta Fenn, “I regret the deception I practiced on you. I got acquainted with Edna Cutler. I couldn’t get anything out of her, but I did get her to give me a letter of introduction to you. You’ll understand how it is.”

“Oh, sure,” Roberta Fenn said. “It’s all in a lifetime.”

I stretched and yawned. “Well, I’ve had a hard siege of it,” I said. “I’m going home and go to bed.”

Bertha looked at me with those glittering, intense eyes of hers, said, “Let me talk with you a moment, Donald.”

She hooked her arm through mine, drew me off to one side. Her voice was positively motherly. “Now, Donald. You must get some sleep. You’re all in.”

I said, “Certainly. That’s why I’m breaking up the party.”

She lowered her voice, said out of the side of her mouth, “If you’re going to get that gun and try planting it, it’s too dangerous. Tell me where it is and I’ll get it.”

“What gun?” I asked.

“Don’t be a damn fool,” Bertha said. “Do you think I don’t know an agency gun when I see it? Where’s the other one?”

I said, “In my apartment in the upper dresser drawer.”

“Okay. Where do you want it?”

“Just any place. Under Edna’s apartment window. Don’t leave any tracks.”

Bertha said, “Trust me. I think they’re shadowing you. Is the gun Cutler used on you out of the way?”

“For a while — I hope. By then I should worry.”

Roberta Fenn came walking directly toward us, “May I intrude for just a moment?” she asked.

Bertha said, “It’s all right. I’m finished.”

Roberta’s eyes were caressing me. She gave me both her hands. “Darling!”

Lieutenant Pellingham came stamping into the office about 12:45 Tuesday. Elsie Brand told me he was out in the other office, and I went out to talk with him.

“I hope you don’t hold any hard feelings, Lam.”

“I don’t if you don’t.”

“You should have told me you were trying to protect Roberta Fenn because you thought she was in danger.”

“Then you’d have taken her into custody and dragged her back to New Orleans.”

“Well,” he admitted at length, “there may be something to that.”

“To say nothing of Edna Cutler,” I went on.

He said, “Lam, you’re rather a deep one. I wish you’d tell me exactly what happened in New Orleans.”

“You mean Nostrander?”

“Yes.”

I looked at my watch, and said, “I’ve got an appointment down the street in twelve minutes. It’ll take me just about ten minutes to walk there. I’ll want to be on time. What do you say we get started? We can talk as we walk.”

“All right. I’ll appreciate any tip you can give me. My mission out here has been a failure. Louisiana may extradite Roberta Fenn, but I don’t think so, not on the evidence available at the present time. If I could go back with a solution of that murder case, it would be a big feather in my cap.”

I said, “All right, let’s go.”

I picked up my hat, walked over to Elsie Brands desk, and shook hands.

Her face showed surprise. “Going away?” she asked.

“Yes. I may be gone for a while. Take care of yourself.”

There was a strange look in her eyes. “You make it sound very final.”

“Oh, I’ll be back.”

We walked out. She followed me with her eyes until the door closed.

Just as we were getting out of the elevator, we met Bertha Cool. Bertha put on her best smile for Pellingham. “Heard the news, Donald?” she asked me.

“What?”

“Sergeant Rondler found the gun Cutler had used where it had been thrown out of the window of Edna Cutler’s apartment. A test bullet fired from it showed that it was the same gun that killed young Craig. Cutler’s yelling frame-up, but they’re really going to town with him now, giving him a real third degree.”

“That’s good.”

“Where are you two going?” Bertha asked.

“Just down the street a way. Walk along with us. Pellingham said he wanted to talk.”

She looked at the elevator as though wondering whether to come along, then said, “We-e-ll, I wanted to go to the office. I’ve ordered a bunch of genuine silk stockings. I want to see if they’ve come. Oh, well, I’ll walk along, yes.”

We walked three abreast down the sidewalk, Bertha on the inside, Pellingham in the middle, while I walked along on the outside.

Pellingham said to me, “You really think Hale went up to that apartment at two-twenty in the morning?”

“I’m sure he did. What have you found out about him?”

He grinned. “He isn’t a lawyer at all.”

“I didn’t think he was. A private detective?”

“Yes. Head of a New York detective agency. Cutler employed him to get some admissions out of Roberta Fenn, or to get something on her. To tell you the truth, I think he planted that whole evidence there in Roberta’s New Orleans apartment, hoping he could bring pressure to bear on her by threatening to open up that old murder case and make it appear she was the guilty party. The price of his silence was to be her giving testimony that would make it appear there was a conspiracy between her and Edna Cutler.”

“Sounds reasonable,” I said.

“Where they fell down,” Pellingham went on, “was in not realizing the gun they had dug up somewhere and planted in the desk would eventually be checked to see whether it had fired the murder bullet.”

I said, “Of course, if Roberta had caved in and done what they wanted, the gun and the clippings would have been delivered to her .”

“That’s right, yes. I’d never thought of that.”

I said, “Perhaps all they wanted was to bring pressure on her.”

“There’s something to that,” Pellingham said. A lot of it isn’t clear as yet-little details. There are some angles on this, however, that I think you could clear it up.

“Such as what?”

“Giving me a hint on which I could work on Nostrander’s murder. Did Hale do that?”

I looked at my watch. It was five minutes to one. “I’ll tell you something,” I said, as we waited for a signal to change. “Bertha Cool and I were the first ones to find that body.”

“What!” he exclaimed in surprise.

Bertha said sharply, “Donald!”

I said, “It’s all right. They can’t touch us. We reported it. I’m the one who telephoned the police.”

“Let’s have the rest of it,” Pellingham said as we moved forward with the changing signal.

“We pressed the buzzer of Roberta Fenn’s apartment. Somebody answered the signal and buzzed the door open. We got up to where we could look in the apartment. We could see Nostrander’s body. I dragged Bertha away because I thought the murderer must have been in the apartment.”