Erle Gardner - Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Murderer’s Bride and Other Stories

“Same here,” I told him.

We went up in the elevator and hadn’t much more than unlocked the door of the room when the telephone rang.

I picked up the receiver, and the voice of the clerk, who was evidently taking over the switchboard on the night shift, said, “She’s here again. Wants to come up.”

“Send her up,” I told him, hung up the phone, and said to Gabby, “A redheaded gal is about to cross our paths.”

Gabby walked over to the mirror, hitched his tie into position, ran a comb through his wavy hair. “Let’s not fire until we see the whites of her eyes. Perhaps she has a friend.”

Knuckles tapped with gentle impatience against the panel of the door.

I opened it.

The girl was something to take pictures of and then pin the pictures up on the wall.

“Won’t you come in?” I asked.

She walked in as easily and naturally as though this was where she lived. She took off her gloves, smiled affably up at me, and said, “Which one of you is Mr. Burr?”

I nodded. “I have the—”

“Honor,” Gabby finished.

We all laughed then and the tension let down. She said casually, “I’m Muriel Comley.”

“You are!”

The blue eyes widened in surprise. “Why, yes. Why not?”

I said, “You aren’t the Muriel Comley I saw earlier.”

She looked puzzled for a minute, and then said, “Oh, you must have seen Lorraine.”

“Who’s Lorraine?”

“Lorraine Dawson.”

“Tell me a little more about Lorraine.”

“Lorraine was looking for an apartment on a fifty-fifty basis. I had this place on a lease. It was too big for me, and too much rent. Lorraine came in with me about a week ago.”

I said, “You might tell me how it happens Lorraine got hold of your purse.”

“She didn’t get hold of it. I merely left it in the taxi. I got out. Lorraine stayed in.”

“And how did you know where to come for your purse?”

“The taxi driver said you had it.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“You see,” she said, “I called up the cab company. The purse hadn’t been turned in. They got hold of the cab driver. He said he remembered you had picked something up from the seat of the cab when you got out. He thought it might have been the purse.”

“I didn’t know you had been in that cab.”

She sighed. “Lorraine and I went to the depot,” she explained. “I got out and went to meet a train. Lorraine was coming on home, and wasn’t going to wait. I waited down there at the depot for the train to come in. The person I expected to meet wasn’t on it. Then suddenly I realized I didn’t have my purse. I thought back, and remembered that I must have left it in the cab. That was when I called the cab company. Now do I have to explain to you anything more about my private affairs in order to get what belongs to me? After all, Mr. Burr, your own actions are subject to considerable question.”

Gabby said, “He’s just trying to be sure, that’s all.”

She turned to him, and her eyes softened into a smile.

I said, “I’m not interested in your private affairs. But, under the circumstances, since you’re the second person this evening who has claimed to be Muriel Comley, I’d like some proof.”

“Very well,” she said, dropped her hand to the pocket of her light coat, and pulled out a transparent envelope which contained a driver’s license.

The driver’s license was made out to Muriel Comley. The description fit her to a T.

“The purse,” she said, “is of black leather with a smooth glossy finish. The mountings are silver with narrow borders stamped around the edges of the metal, silver curlicues embossed against a dull-finished background. The handles are of braided leather. Is that enough?”

“The contents?”

“You looked inside?”

“Naturally.”

She met my eyes. “The purse,” she said, “contained something over seven thousand five hundred dollars in cash, in addition to having my lipstick, keys, a small coin purse with about a dollar and a half in change, an embroidered handkerchief, some cleansing tissues, an address book, and a compact.”

Gabby sighed. “I guess,” he said to me, “she gets the purse.”

I hesitated.

“Well?” she demanded.

“All right,” I said.

At length, after I had signed my name on a receipt, being the receiving end of suspicious scrutiny from the clerk, the package was returned to me.

Back in the apartment I unwrapped the purse, handed it to her, and said, “Please count the money.”

She opened the purse, took out the money, spread the bills on the floor, and counted them carefully. Then she said, “Thank you, Mr. Burr,” snapped the purse shut, and started for the door.

Gabby opened it for her. Her eyes caressed his. “Thank you very much, Mr. Hilman,” she said, and was gone.

I stood looking after her. “I don’t like it,” I said.

“For the love of Mike, Jay! Snap out of it! She owns the purse. You’ve got her address. You—”

“And there’s a murdered man in her apartment.”

“Well, what of it? You can see she doesn’t know anything about it.”

“Don’t be too certain,” I said.

I was just getting into bed, and Gabby, in his pajamas, was sitting on the edge of the chair smoking a last-minute cigarette, when knuckles tapped on the door.

Gabby looked at me in surprise.

Suddenly I remembered. “She’s back after that slip of paper, I bet.”

“My gosh!” Gabby said. “You got a robe, Jay?”

“Gosh, no,” I told him. “You’re decent. Go to the door.”

“What do you mean I’m decent?” Gabby demanded, looking down at his pajamas.

The light tapping on the door was resumed. “Stick your head out if you’re so damned modest,” I said. “After all, she’s been married. She must know what pajamas are. Tell her you’re going to get dressed and take her down to a cocktail bar.”

“ That’s an idea!” Gabby barefooted across to the door, opened it a scant three inches, cleared his throat, and said, in the very dulcet tone he reserved for particularly good-looking women, “I’m sorry — you see, I was just getting into bed. I—”

The door pushed open as though a steam roller had been on the other end of it. Gabby jumped up in the air, grabbed his left big toe, and started hopping around in agonized circles.

A tall competent-looking man in a gray suit, a gray hat to match, with a face that was lean and bronzed, pushed his way into the room and slammed the door shut behind him.

Gabby managed to sidetrack the pain of his skinned toe long enough to get belligerent. “Say,” he demanded, “who the hell do you think you are? Get out of here, and—”

“Now then,” the man announced, “what kind of a damn racket are you two guys pulling?”

“And just who are you?” I asked.

“Inspector Fanston, Headquarters. What’s the idea?”

“The idea of what?”

“Who was the jane who was just up in the room?”

I said, “I’m not going to lie to you, Inspector. Her mother and I are estranged and she came to get me to go home. But I told her nothing doing. I shouldn’t have married a woman who was forty-five years older than I was in the first place, and I should never have had a daughter who was only five years younger. It makes for a terrific strain on family life. Or don’t you think so?”

“Do you,” he asked, “think this is a gag?”

“Why not? We’re over twenty-one. And if a woman can’t pay us a five-minute visit in a hotel room without some house dick—”

“Forget it. I’m not a house dick. I’m from headquarters. I want to know who the woman was, and when you get done making wisecracks I want to know what the hell the idea was ringing up headquarters and telling them a murder had been committed at the Redderstone Apartments.”