I leaned back and tapped the edge of the packet on my desk. She sat silent now, staring at me with wet eyes. I got a handkerchief out of her bag and tossed it across to her. She dabbed at her eyes. She watched me around the handkerchief. Once in a while she made a nice little appealing sob in her throat.
“Leila gave the money to me,” she said softly.
“What size chisel did you use?” She just opened her mouth and a tear ran down her cheek into it.
“Skip it,” I said. I dropped the pack of money back to the bag, snapped the bag shut and pushed it across the desk to her. “I guess you and Orrin belong to that class of people that can convince themselves that everything they do is right. He can blackmail his sister and then when a couple of small-time crooks get wise to his racket and take it away from him, he can sneak up on them and knock them off with an ice pick in the back of the neck. Probably didn’t even keep him awake that night. You can do much the same. Leila didn’t give you that money. Steelgrave gave it to you. For what?”
“You’re filthy,” she said. “You’re vile. How dare you say such things to me?”
“Who tipped off the law that Dr. Lagardie knew Clausen? Lagardie thought I did. I didn’t. So you did. Why? To smoke out your brother who was not cutting you in—because right then he had lost his deck of cards and was hiding out. I’d like to see some of those letters he wrote home. I bet they’re meaty. I can see him working at it, watching his sister, trying to get her lined up for his Leica, with the good Doctor Lagardie waiting quietly in the background for his share of the take. What did you hire me for?”
“I didn’t know,” she said evenly. She wiped her eyes again and put the handkerchief away in the bag and got herself all collected and ready to leave. “Orrin never mentioned any names. I didn’t even know Orrin had lost his pictures. But I knew he had taken them and that they were very valuable. I came out to make sure.”
“Sure of what?”
“That Orrin treated me right. He could be awfully mean sometimes. He might have kept all the money himself.”
“Why did he call you up night before last?”
“He was scared. Dr. Lagardie wasn’t pleased with him any more. He didn’t have the pictures. Somebody else had them. Orrin didn’t know who. But he was scared.
“I had them. I still have,” I said. “They’re in that safe.”
She turned her head very slowly to look at the safe. She ran a fingertip questioningly along her lip. She turned back.
“I don’t believe you,” she said, and her eyes watched me like a cat watching a mouse hole.
“How’s to split that grand with me. You get the pictures.”
She thought about it. “I could hardly give you that money for something that doesn’t belong to you,” she said, and smiled. “Please give them to me. Please, Philip. Leila ought to have them back.”
“For how much dough?”
She frowned and looked hurt.
“She’s my client now,” I said. “But double-crossing her wouldn’t be bad business—at the right price.”
“I don’t believe you have them.”
“Okay.” I got up and went to the safe. In a moment I was back with the envelope. I poured the prints and the negative out on the desk—my side of the desk. She looked down at them and started to reach.
I picked them up and shuffled them together and held one so that she could look at it. When she reached for it I moved it back.
“But I can’t see it so far away,” she complained.
“It costs money to get closer.”
“I never thought you were a crook,” she said with dignity.
I didn’t say anything. I relit my pipe.
“I could make you give them to the police,” she said.
“You could try.”
Suddenly she spoke rapidly. “I couldn’t give you this money I have, really I couldn’t. We—well mother and I owe money still on account of father and the house isn’t clear and—”
“What did you sell Steelgrave for the grand?”
Her mouth fell open and she looked ugly. She closed her lips and pressed them together. It was a tight hard little face that I was looking at.
“You had one thing to sell,” I said. “You knew where Orrin was. To Steelgrave that information was worth a grand. Easy. It’s a question of connecting up evidence. You wouldn’t understand. Steelgrave went down there and killed him. He paid you the money for the address.”
“Leila told him,” she said in a faraway voice.
“Leila told me she told him,” I said. “If necessary Leila would tell the world she told him. Just as she would tell the world she killed Steelgrave—if that was the only way out. Leila is a sort of free-and-easy Hollywood babe that doesn’t have very good morals. But when it comes to bedrock guts—she has what it takes. She’s not the ice pick type. And she’s not the blood-money type.”
The color flowed away from her face and left her as pale as ice. Her mouth quivered, then tightened up hard into a little knot. She pushed her chair back and leaned forward to get up.
“Blood money,” I said quietly. “Your own brother. And you set him up so they could kill him. A thousand dollars
