figured that if, at the first hint of exposure, he wiped himself out, the authorities, out of respect for the good reputation he had built up, would hush things up.
“And his wife – even if she herself learned the truth – would be spared the shame of a public scandal. I can’t see myself dying just to spare some woman’s feelings, but the doc was a funny guy in some ways – and he was nutty about his wife.
“That’s the way I had him figured out, and that’s the way things turned out.
“My plan might sound complicated, but it was simple enough. I got hold of the real Esteps – it took a lot of hunting, but I found them at last. I brought the woman to San Francisco, and told the man to stay away.
“Everything would have gone fine if he had done what I told him; but he was afraid that Edna and I were going to double-cross him, so he came here to keep an eye on us. But I didn’t know that until you put the finger on him for me.
“I brought Edna here and, without telling her any more than she had to know, drilled her until she was letter-perfect in her part.
“A couple days before she came I had gone to see the doc, and had demanded a hundred thousand cool smacks. He laughed at me, and I left, pretending to be as hot as hell.
“As soon as Edna arrived, I sent her to call on him. She asked him to perform an illegal operation on her daughter. He, of course, refused. Then she pleaded with him, loud enough for the nurse or whoever else was in the reception room to hear. And when she raised her voice she was careful to stick to words that could be interpreted the way we wanted them to. She ran off her end to perfection, leaving in tears.
“Then I sprung my other trick! I had a fellow – a fellow who’s a whiz at that kind of stuff – make me a plate: an imitation of newspaper printing. It was all worded like the real article, and said that the state authorities were investigating information that a prominent surgeon in San Francisco was practicing under a license secured by false credentials. This plate measured four and an eighth by six and three-quarter inches. If you’ll look at the first inside page of the Evening Times any day in the week you’ll see a photograph just that size.
“On the day after Edna’s call, I bought a copy of the first edition of the Times – on the street at ten in the morning. I had this scratcher friend of mine remove the photograph with acid, and print this fake article in its place.
“That evening I substituted a ‘home edition’ outer sheet for the one that had come with the paper we had cooked up, and made a switch as soon as the doc’s newsboy made his delivery. There was nothing to that part of it. The kid just tossed the paper into the vestibule. It’s simply a case of duck into the doorway, trade papers, and go on, leaving the loaded one for the doc to read.”
I was trying not to look too interested, but my ears were cocked for every word. At the start, I had been prepared for a string of lies. But I knew now that he was telling me the truth! Every syllable was a boast; he was half-drunk with appreciation of his own cleverness – the cleverness with which he had planned and carried out his program of treachery and murder.
I knew that he was telling the truth, and I suspected that he was telling more of it than he had intended. He was fairly bloated with vanity – the vanity that fills the crook almost invariably after a little success, and makes him ripe for the pen.
His eyes glistened, and his little mouth smiled triumphantly around the words that continued to roll out of it.
“The doc read the paper, all right – and shot himself. But first he wrote and mailed a note – to me. I didn’t figure on his wife’s being accused of killing him. That was plain luck.
“I figured that the fake piece in the paper would be overlooked in the excitement. Edna would then go forward, claiming to be his first wife; and his shooting himself after her first call, with what the nurse had overheard, would make his death seem a confession that Edna was his wife.
“I was sure that she would stand up under any sort of an investigation. Nobody knew anything about the doc’s real past; except what he had told them, which would be found false.
“Edna had really married a Dr. Humbert Estep in Philadelphia in 1896; and the twenty-seven years that had passed since then would do a lot to hide the fact that that Dr. Humbert Estep wasn’t this Dr. Humbert Estep.
“All I wanted to do was convince the doc’s real wife and her lawyers that she wasn’t really his wife at all. And we did that! Everybody took it for granted that Edna was the legal wife.
“The next play would have been for Edna and the real wife to have reached some sort of an agreement about the estate, whereby Edna would have got the bulk – or at least half – of it; and nothing would have been made public.
“If worse came to worst, we were prepared to go to court. We were sitting pretty! But I’d have been satisfied with half the estate. It would have come to a few hundred thousand at the least, and that would have been plenty for me – even deducting the twenty thousand I had promised Edna.
“But when the police grabbed the doc’s wife and charged her with his murder, I saw my way into the whole roll. All I had to do was sit tight and wait until they convicted her. Then the court would turn the entire pile over to Edna.
“I had the only evidence that would free the doc’s wife: the note he had written me. But I couldn’t – even if I had wanted to – have turned it in without exposing my hand. When he read that fake piece in the paper, he tore it out, wrote his message to me across the face of it, and sent it to me. So the note is a dead give-away. However, I didn’t have any intention of publishing it, anyhow.
“Up to this point everything had gone like a dream. All I had to do was wait until it was time to cash in on my brains. And that’s the time that the real Humbert Estep picked out to mess up the works.
“He shaved his moustache off, put on some old clothes, and came snooping around to see that Edna and I didn’t run out on him. As if he could have stopped us! After you put the finger on him for me, I brought him up here.
“I intended salving him along until I could find a place to keep him until all the cards had been played. That’s what I was going to hire you for – to take care of him.
“But we got to talking, and wrangling, and I had to knock him down. He didn’t get up, and I found that he was dead. His neck was broken. There was nothing to do but take him out to the park and leave him.
“I didn’t tell Edna. She didn’t have a lot of use for him, as far as I could see, but you can’t tell how women will take things. Anyhow, she’ll stick, now that it’s done. She’s on the up and up all the time. And if she should talk, she can’t do a lot of damage. She only knows her own part of the lay.
“All this long-winded story is so you’ll know just exactly what you’re up against. Maybe you think you can dig up the proof of these things I have told you. You can this far. You can prove that Edna wasn’t the doc’s wife. You can prove that I’ve been blackmailing him. But you can’t prove that the doc’s wife didn’t believe that Edna was his real wife! It’s her word against Edna’s and mine.
“We’ll swear that we had convinced her of it, which will give her a motive. You can’t prove that the phoney news article I told you about ever existed. It’ll sound like a hophead’s dream to a jury.
“You can’t tie last night’s murder on me – I’ve got an alibi that will knock your hat off! I can prove that I left here with a friend of mine who was drunk, and that I took him to his hotel and put him to bed, with the help of a night clerk and a bellboy. And what have you got against that? The word of two private detectives. Who’ll believe you?
“You can convict me of conspiracy to defraud, or something – maybe. But, regardless of that, you can’t free Mrs. Estep without my help.
“Turn me loose and I’ll give you the letter the doc wrote me. It’s the goods, right enough! In his own handwriting, written across the face of the fake newspaper story – which ought to fit the torn place in the paper that the police are supposed to be holding – and he wrote that he was going to kill himself, in words almost that plain.”
That would turn the trick – there was no doubt of it. And I believed Ledwich’s story. The more I thought it over the better I liked it. It fitted into the facts everywhere. But I wasn’t enthusiastic about giving this big crook his liberty.
“Don’t make me laugh!” I said. “I’m going to put you away and free Mrs, Estep – both.”
“Go ahead and try it! You’re up against it without the letter; and you don’t think a man with brains enough to plan a job like this one would be foolish enough to leave the note where it could be found, do you?”
I wasn’t especially impressed with the difficulty of convicting this Ledwich and freeing the dead man’s widow.
