Erle Gardner - Case of the Beautiful Beggar

“I wouldn’t go through that again if I had to commit a dozen murders.”

Mason nodded sympathetically.

“Daphne got me out of it.” Shelby said, “bless her soul. She used her head. She got me down at that room in the Northern Lights.”

“And then what?”

“She told me to stay under cover that she’d come and bring me food.”

“And she did?”

“Yes, she went to a Chinese restaurant and brought in some Chinese food.”

“Then what?”

“After she left,” Shelby said, “— and she hadn’t been gone over two minutes, there was a knock at the door.

“I sat tight for a while, but the knock was repeated and I didn’t want to attract attention to the unit by not answering the door. So I went to the door and opened it, and there was Ralph Exeter, smiling that nasty, oily smile of his and he said, ‘I am coming in, Horace,’ and pushed his shoulder against the door and literally pushed his way into the room.”

“Tell me what happened,” Mason said. “I want to know about Ralph Exeter. Just what happened?”

“Exeter pushed his way into the room and put it right up to me,” Shelby said. “He said that he was the one who controlled my future that if I wanted to pay him a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars I could go my way that he’d see that Borden Finchley and his wife cleared out that I could have what was left of my own money to do what I wanted to do with it that if I didn’t play ball with him he was going to turn me in to the authorities that he was going to swear I was completely incompetent and that I’d spend the rest of my days in a sanitarium under the influence of dope or strapped to a cot.”

“Go on,” Mason said.

“You don’t know what I’d been through, Mr. Mason. If it hadn’t been for that experience, I’d have laughed at him and gone to the telephone and called the police. But the way it was, no one would have taken my word for anything. I’d have been considered crazy. I was desperate.”

“What did you do?”

“Daphne had given me some sleeping pills to take in case I needed them. I stepped into the bathroom, ground up some of those sleeping pills in a glass, and came back into the room. I was going to try to slip them into a drink or something.

“But the guy played right into my hands. When I came back he was looking around at that Chinese food. He asked me, “You got a plate and anything to eat this with?”

“I told him we had some chopsticks that this food had been left over from stuff I’d been eating. He wanted the chopsticks. So I got them, and as I handed them to him, took the opportunity to dump the ground-up sleeping pills into the food.

“He cleaned it up.

“I told him that I’d have to try and figure things out a bit that I’d agree with him on principle, but getting a hundred and twenty-five thousand in cash would wipe out my cash reserves. I told him I’d have to do some figuring.

“The sleeping pills began to take effect. It wasn’t long before he stretched out on the bed, yawned, and went to sleep.”

“And what did you do?”

“I washed the containers, took his car, went to the Hollander-Heath Hotel and managed to get the room next to Daphne’s.”

“Why did you take his car?” Mason asked.

“I had to,” Shelby said. “I’d tried calling a taxicab earlier in the day. I had to go out and stand on the street corner to wait for it. That was dangerous.”

“What did you do with the taxicab?”

“I went uptown and — Well, first I was going to the Union Station then I decided to go to the airport. I had money and I wanted to rent an automobile.

“I got to the airport and tried to rent a car and neither one of the places there would let me have one unless I had my driver’s license.”

“You didn’t have your driver’s license?”

“I didn’t have anything. I had a toothbrush, some pajamas, a hairbrush and comb, only the few little things that Daphne had bought for me.”

“So what did you do?”

“I took a bus back to El Mirar and walked four blocks back to the motel.”

“Go on,” Mason said. “What happened after you got to the Hollander-Heath Hotel?”

“Daphne was in the room with me. She didn’t hear people pounding on the door. She had a Do Not Disturb sign on her room, but she’d made the mistake of bolting the door from the inside, and that way people knew she was in there. She had to do something quick. She gulped the rest of the sleeping pills I had, jumped out of her clothes, put on a nightie and climbed into bed. Then she got up to open the door. She was going to put on an act until the sleeping pills began to take effect. She said they’d pump her stomach out and that this would mix things up enough so I’d have a chance to escape.”

“Then what did you do?”

“She went through her end of it. I had to wait for a while to get just the right opportunity. I put the things she’d bought for me in that little plastic bag, went down to the desk, checked out went over and got Ralph Exeter’s car out of the garage, drove down to San Diego, parked the car, spent the night in a motel, went to a used car lot where they weren’t so darned particular about my driving license and got a used car.

“I wanted to go farther down in Mexico, but this is as far as I could go without a tourist permit, and I couldn’t get a tourist permit without proving citizenship and showing a driving license and all that sort of stuff.”

“Is it true,” Mason asked, “that Daphne is the daughter of your housekeeper?”

Shelby looked him square in the eyes. “It’s true,” he said, “and it’s also true that I’m her father.”

“What!” Mason exclaimed.

“That’s the truth,” Shelby said. “I wanted to marry Daphne’s mother, but she hadn’t been divorced and she couldn’t get a divorce. Then my other brother and his wife got killed in an auto accident, and I fell we could bring Daphne up as my niece.

“But of course Borden Finchley would know that wasn’t the truth, so I told Borden Finchley that Daphne was the daughter of my housekeeper and that the housekeeper had been pregnant when she came from the East to work for me.

“Borden Finchley never cared anything about me. I never let him know that I’d put by a goodly bit of money. I guess Ralph Exeter was the one who found out that I was fairly well-heeled.

“Borden was indebted to Ralph Exeter on a big gambling debt. Exeter was putting the screws on him. They came down to make a visit.

“The first time Borden and his wife had visited me in twenty-odd years. Then they got this devilish idea of getting rid of Daphne and started irritating me until I went off my rocker.

“You’ve no idea the things they did, the little things. And then they started giving me dope and the first thing I knew I was all mixed up... Well, I’ve got over that-now, I’m my own man. I’m going back and face the music. If I gave Ralph Exeter too much drug and he died, why that’s a responsibility I’ve got to take. But all I was trying to do was to get him to go to sleep so I could get out of there, and that’s the truth.”

Mason said, “The sleeping pills didn’t kill him. Somebody unscrewed the gas pipe and he was asphyxiated by gas.”

“What!” Shelby exclaimed.

Mason nodded.

Shelby paused for a moment, then sighed, “Well, I guess I’ve got to take the rap,” he said. “No one’s ever going to believe it the other way.”

“The police found out that you took a cab from the motel earlier. They knew that Daphne bought Chinese food for someone, and they thought that it must have been Ralph Exeter because they learned that vou had left earlier.”

“I left and then I came back,” Shelby explained. “And when I did that I broke my promise to Daphne. She wanted me to stay right there, but I just wanted to have the means of escape and I wanted to have a car so I could go places.”