dressed up for the trial in a skin tight black lace dress an' flesh coloured chiffon silk stockings. He sticks her on the witness stand with a hand picked jury of old gentlemen all over seventy an' they take one look at her an' say not guilty without goin' outa the jury box.
The judge - who is also an old cuss-gives her the once over an' says he agrees with the verdict. After the trial he gets her a job in the local dry cleaners an' the way the old boy used to rush around every week for his laundry was just nobody's business.
All of which goes to show you that you never know where you are with dames - especially when they got sex- appeal. The more SA a dame has got the more trouble she causes.
An' Henrietta has got sex-appeal plus. Boy, she has everything it takes an' then a lot. When I was lookin' at her when we was havin' that coffee I was thinkin' that maybe she was like the dame in Nogales.
Even then I reckon I wouldn'ta minded bein' her husband. I just wouldn'ta drunk coffee, that's all.
CHAPTER 5
I AM back in New York.
Maybe you think that I am a mug for takin' so much trouble but the way I look at it is this:
It woulda been easy for me to pinch Henrietta on suspicion an' bring her back here. I coulda got the New York police to re-open the Aymes inquest an' the production of the letters she wrote Granwortli woulda maybe justified it. But what good's it gonna do if she really an' truly don't know anything about the counterfeitin', an' even if she did kill Aymes still you gotta realise that I am a Federal dick investigatin' a counterfeitin' job an' not a guy rushin' around tryin' to teach New York coppers their business.
Besides which I have gotta bunch of ideas stewin' around in my head. I have gotta hunch an' I'm goin' to play it, an' that hunch certainly takes in this Langdon Burdell who, if you ask me, is tryin' to play me for a mug. You'll see why pretty soon.
I check in at the airport, fix myself up in my usual dump, have a shower an' change, an' after just one little bourbon just to keep the germs away, I jump me a yellow cab an' scram downtown to the Burdell office.
Burdell is runnin' Granworth's old business, an' is in the same office building.
I go up in the elevator an' walk in. In the outer office there is a fancy dame smackin' a typewriter about. She has got four inch french heels an' a pompadour that woulda made Marie Antoinette look like a big cheese.
She is wearin' long jade earrings an' an expression like somebody was burnin' cork under her nose all the time, an' when she gets up from the typewriter as I go in, she has gotta wriggle when she walks that woulda won her a beauty contest anywhere where the judges' wives weren't around.
She uses a beauty parlour plenty by the look of her pan, an' she has gotta mouth made up with a lipstick that is about four shades too light.
It is a durn funny thing but I have only found about one jane in sixty-four ever uses the right shade of lipstick An' whenever I strike this odd one she is always goin' some place or is married or somethin' else that don't help me along any.
I tell her I wanta see Mr Burdell an' she says he's in but I'll have to wait because he is in conference. I crack back that any time I have to wait to see Mr Burdell I will commit hankari with a tin-opener an' I walk straight into his room which is at the back of the office behind a fancy oak door.
Burdell is sittin' behind a big desk helpin' himself to a shot of rye out of a swell flask.
He looks up an' smiles.
'Pleased to see you, Mr Caution,' he says. 'Come right in, I ain't busy.'
I stick my hat on a big bronze figure of a boxer that he is usin' as a paper weight, an' I sit down in the big chair opposite him an' help myself to a cigarette out of a swell silver box.
'Listen, Burdell,' I tell him. 'I wanna talk to you, an' I want you to listen an' not make any slip-ups, otherwise I'm goin' to get very tough with you.'
He looks surprised. This Burdell guy is a bird about five feet four with sandy hair an' a thin face like a weasel with indigestion. He has got red eyes an' a pointed chin. He is one of them guys who might be good or bad or just nothin' at all. You just wouldn't know a thing by lookin' at him.
'Listen here,' he says. 'You don't have to talk like that, Mr Caution. I've always told you anything you wanted to know, ain't I?'
'Sure you have,' I tell him, 'but I wanta know some more that's all. Now stay quiet an' listen to this.
'Two weeks ago when I get put on this counterfeitin' job I come around here an' I ask you a lotta questions. Well, the main thing is that you say that you and the servants at the Aymes apartments have given evidence at the inquest that Henrietta Aymes wasn't in town the night that Granworth bumps himself off.
'OK. Well next morning I get around an' I talk to this watchman down at Cotton's Wharf - the guy who saw the car go over the edge, an' I grill this guy plenty. Finally he comes across that the mornin' after Aymes killed himself you got down there an' he told you that he saw some woman get outa that car way down the wharf. He says that you gave him a thousand dollars to keep his trap shut about that little fact, an' that he kept it shut.
'OK. Three days afterwards I get an anonymous note sayin' that I oughta go to Palm Springs an' check up on some letters that Henrietta has got. Right, well I checked up an' I have found them letters.
'Now I am very interested in who the guy was who sent me that anonymous note, an' I have come to the conclusion that the guy is you. You sent it to me, Burdell, an' you're goin' to tell me why, because you are a very contradictory sorta cuss. First of all you graft this watchman to keep quiet about the dame; then at the inquest you an' the servants say Henrietta Aymes wasn't in town on that night, an' a few months afterwards, after I have seen you an' heard one thing from you, you send me an anonymous letter that gets me out to Palm Springs where I find some letters that might hang a murder rap on Henrietta. So what? I'm listenin' an' I wanta hear plenty. Did you write that letter?'
He looks serious.
'Yeah,' he says. 'I wrote it, an' I'm goin' to tell you why, an' maybe when you've heard you'll understand why I played it like I did.
'You gotta get the set up,' he says. 'In the first place I knew Mrs Aymes was comm' to town to see Granworth because I saw the letters she wrote. I knew she come to town on the night he died, but I kept my trap shut about it at the inquest, an' I told the servants at the flat to keep quiet too, an' I'll tell you why.
'Granworth Aymes was a lousy dog. We none of us liked him, but we liked her plenty. We knew he usta play around with a lotta janes an' that he gave her a raw deal. But when he made that dough an' told us that he was goin' to give two hundred grand in Registered Dollar Bonds to her I thought that maybe he was goin' to start over an' be a good guy. I believe this because he acts that way, an' because he takes out extra insurance an' says he's goin' to be a regular feller.
'On the night he died he went outa this office an' I knew that later he was goin' to meet up with Mrs Aymes an' talk to her about this dame that she was so burned up about. The next thing I hear is when the police ring up the next mornin' an' say that they have fished Granworth outa the river an' want identification. I go down an' do it.
'I also knew that Mrs Aymes had gone back to Connecticut late the night before, because Granworth told me she was goin' back after she'd seen him.
'Now I worked it out this way. I worked out that she'd seen him an' told him plenty; that she'd told him he was a lousy double-crossin' dog an' that she was goin' to leave him an' after that she'd started back for Connecticut. Well, I know Granworth. He was an excitable sorta guy an' he probably was a bit upset, so I reckon he has some liquor an' maybe makes up his mind that he will bump himself off. Knowin' him I reckon that he woulda been drinkin' with some jane somewhere an' that she was the woman that the watchman saw.
'But I think that if I say that he saw Mrs Aymes that night that the police will think that the dame with Granworth was her; that they will bring her back here an' start givin' her the works an' makin' things tough for her So I get around to the apartment, an' I have a talk with the servants, an' we fix to keep quiet about her bien' in
