At the Hall of Justice we didn’t book her; but simply held her as a material witness, putting her in an office with a matron and one of O’Gar’s men, who were to see what they could do with her while we went after Ledwich. We had had her frisked as soon as she reached the Hall, of course; and, as we expected, she hadn’t a thing of importance on her.
O’Gar and I went back to the Montgomery and gave her room a thorough overhauling – and found nothing.
“Are you sure you know what you’re talking about?” the detective-sergeant asked as we left the hotel. “It’s going to be a pretty joke on somebody if you’re mistaken.”
I let that go by without an answer.
“I’ll meet you at six-thirty,” I said, “and we’ll go up against Ledwich.”
He grunted an approval, and I set out for Vance Richmond’s office.
Nine
The attorney sprang up from his desk as soon as his stenographer admitted me. His face was leaner and grayer than ever; its lines had deepened, and there was a hollowness around his eyes.
“You’ve got to do something!” he cried huskily. “I have just come from the hospital. Mrs. Estep is on the point of death! A day more of this – two days at the most-and she will -“
I interrupted him, and swiftly gave him an account of the day’s happenings, and what I expected, or hoped, to make out of them. But he received the news without brightening, and shook his head hopelessly.
“But don’t you see,” he exclaimed when I had finished, “that that won’t do? I know you can find proof of her innocence in time. I’m not complaining – you’ve done all that could be expected, and more! But all that’s no good! I’ve got to have – well – a miracle, perhaps.
“Suppose that you do finally get the truth out of Ledwich and the first Mrs. Estep or it comes out during their trials for Boyd’s murder? Or that you even get to the bottom of the matter in three or four days? That will be too late! If I can go to Mrs. Estep and tell her she’s free now, she may pull herself together, and come through. But another day of imprisonment – two days, or perhaps even two hours – and she won’t need anybody to clear her. Death will have done it! I tell you, she’s -“
I left Vance Richmond abruptly again. This lawyer was bound upon getting me worked up; and I like my jobs to be simply jobs – emotions are nuisances during business hours.
Ten
At a quarter to seven that evening, while O’Gar remained down the street, I rang Jacob Ledwich’s bell. As I had stayed with Bob Teal in our apartment the previous night, I was still wearing the clothes in which I had made Ledwich’s acquaintance as Shine Wisher.
Ledwich opened the door.
“Hello, Wisher!” he said without enthusiasm, and led me upstairs.
His flat consisted of four rooms, I found, running the full length and half the breadth of the building, with both front and rear exits. It was furnished with the ordinary none-too-spotless appointments of the typical moderately priced furnished flat – alike the world over.
In his front room we sat down and talked and smoked and sized one another up. He seemed a little nervous. I thought he would have been just as well satisfied if I had forgotten to show up.
“About this job you mentioned?” I asked presently.
“Sorry,” he said, moistening his little lumpy mouth, “but it’s all off.” And then he added, obviously as an afterthought, “For the present, at least.”
I guessed from that that my job was to have taken care of Boyd – but Boyd had been taken care of for good.
He brought out some whisky after a while, and we talked over it for some time, to no purpose whatever. He was trying not to appear too anxious to get rid of me, and I was cautiously feeling him out.
Piecing together things he let fall here and there, I came to the conclusion that he was a former con man who had fallen into an easier game of late years. That was in line, too, with what Porky Grout had told Bob Teal.
I talked about myself with the evasiveness that would have been natural to a crook in my situation; and made one or two carefully planned slips that would lead him to believe that I had been tied up with the ‘Jimmy the Riveter’ hold-up mob, most of whom were doing long hitches at Walla Walla then.
He offered to lend me enough money to tide me over until I could get on my feet again. I told him I didn’t need chicken feed so much as a chance to pick up some real jack.
The evening was going along, and we were getting nowhere.
“Jake,” I said casually – outwardly casual, that is – “you took a big chance putting that guy out of the way like you did last night.”
I meant to stir things up, and I succeeded.
His face went crazy.
A gun came out of his coat.
Firing from my pocket, I shot it out of his hand.
“Now behave!” I ordered.
He sat rubbing his benumbed hand and staring with wide eyes at the smouldering hole in my coat.
Looks like a great stunt, this shooting a gun out of a man’s hand, but it’s a thing that happens now and then. A man who is a fair shot (and that is exactly what I am – no more, no less) naturally and automatically shoots pretty close to the spot upon which his eyes are focused. When a man goes for his gun in front of you, you shoot at him – not at any particular part of him. There isn’t time for that – you shoot at him. However, you are more than likely to be looking at his gun, and in that case it isn’t altogether surprising if your bullet should hit his gun – as mine had done. But it looks impressive.
I beat out the fire around the bullet-hole in my coat, crossed the room to where his revolver had been knocked, and picked it up. I started to eject the bullets from it, but, instead, I snapped it shut again and stuck it in my pocket. Then I returned to my chair, opposite him.
“A man oughtn’t to act like that,” I kidded him; “he’s likely to hurt somebody.”
His little mouth curled up at me.
“An elbow, huh?” putting all the contempt he could in his voice; and somehow any synonym for detective seems able to hold a lot of contempt.
I might have tried to talk myself back into the Wisher role. It could have been done, but I doubted that it would be worth it; so I nodded my confession.
His brain was working now, and the passion left his face, while he sat rubbing his right hand, and his little mouth and eyes began to screw themselves up calculatingly.
I kept quiet, waiting to see what the outcome of his thinking would be. I knew he was trying to figure out just what my place in this game was. Since, to his knowledge, I had come into it no later than the previous evening, then the Boyd murder hadn’t brought me in. That would leave the Estep affair – unless he was tied up in a lot of other crooked stuff that I didn’t know anything about.
“You’re not a city dick, are you?” he asked finally, and his voice was on the verge of friendliness now: the voice of one who wants to persuade you of something, or sell you something.
The truth, I thought, wouldn’t hurt.
“No,” I said, “I’m with the Continental.”
He hitched his chair a little closer to the muzzle of my automatic.
“What are you after, then? Where do you come in on it?”
I tried the truth again.
“The second Mrs. Estep. She didn’t kill her husband.”
“You’re trying to dig up enough dope to spring her?”
“Yes.”
I waved him back as he tried to hitch his chair still nearer.
“How do you expect to do it?” he asked, his voice going lower and more confidential with each word.
I took still another flier at the truth.
