“So what happened?”

  She said, “I knew where John would be. I went to him that night. We discussed matters. It was decided that John would have to keep out of sight until the person who had killed Karl could be brought to justice. That would be easy because everyone thought John was dead. So we started a long nightmare.

  “John kept under cover. I did everything I could to solve the murder of my husband. I had to go back and take charge of the estate. I inherited Karl’s money because he hadn’t had time to disinherit me and I never enjoyed anything more than stepping into the fortune Karl had left.”

  “But how about the person who murdered Karl Endicott?”

  “Cooper Hale murdered Karl Endicott,” she said, “but we can’t prove it. We’re never going to be able to prove it. Cooper Hale is too smart. Hale knew in some way what was taking place. He followed Karl when Karl went upstairs. Remember Karl was getting out a revolver which he intended to plant on John’s body. Karl intended to call Hale in as a witness to show that the shooting had been in self-defense.

  “Hale stepped into the room, calmly picked up the revolver, shot Karl through the head, then went back downstairs and telephoned for the police.”

  “What was Hale’s motivation?” I asked.

  “That I don’t know. I do know this: that my husband had withdrawn twenty thousand dollars from the bank that day. I think he knew John was alive and was Preparing to pay him the twenty thousand bonus which had been agreed upon. For some reason he wanted to pay that in cash. That twenty thousand vanished.

  “However, for two months my husband had been paying blackmail, ten thousand a month.

  “Hale had been a clerk. Suddenly he became affluent. Hale has grown steadily during the years since Karl’s death. He is now an influential banker.”

  “All right. Let’s get down to the present,” I said. “What happened?”

  “Police watched me day and night. They sensed that I might be in communication with the person they felt was the murderer. I was very, very careful. I went into hibernation in order to protect John. Gradually the police relaxed their vigil. It became possible for John and me to see each other, but we had to meet at rare intervals and under such surreptitious circumstances that it was heartbreaking. Remember everyone thought John Ansel was dead.

  “Drude Nickerson was, of course, the only witness. And then I read that Drude Nickerson had been killed in a traffic accident. I didn’t dare to show interest in the matter, but we felt that it would be possible for John to contact a detective agency, provided the detective agency knew nothing about where John was living so that if anything happened the police couldn’t follow up and arrest John.

  “Then we found out that Nickerson definitely was dead and that the police had thrown up their hands in the case. I suppose we were terribly foolish but we had been starving ourselves emotionally over the years, we had been meeting so surreptitiously that much of the pleasure was taken from the meetings, and we had reason to believe that the police had virtually written the case off the books.

  “The very thought of being able to live together openly as man and wife, of being able to face the world, completely swept us off our feet. We decided that sooner or later we were going to have to face the whole situation, and we decided to face it now.”

  “So,” I said, “you walked into the trap.”

  She twisted her gloves violently. “We walked into the trap. We flew to Yuma. We walked into a justice of the peace to get married, and the officers were waiting. Oh, it was so terribly cruel! Why did they have to strike at that time? At least they could have held off until we were married, and—”

  “And then they couldn’t have forced you to testify,” I said. “They let the thing go right up to the time of the wedding so they could prove motivation.”

  “It was all a trap,” she admitted. “The police had arranged the thing as an elaborate plant. They knew that Drude Nickerson was their only witness. They knew that if he died they didn’t have a case. So they— well, they prepared this elaborate trap. They fixed it up with Nickerson. Tomorrow the newspapers will state that the reports of his death were erroneous, that they were based on the identification of some hitchhiker who happened to have one of Nickerson’s cards in his pocket.”

  I shook my head. “No, they won’t.”

  “What do you mean, they won’t?” she said. “They’ve already told us that—”

  “They’ll have another idea by the time they think things over,” I said. “They will ballyhoo it for what it was, a clever police trap by which they lured a fugitive from justice, who had eluded them for six years, into the police net.”

  She twisted her gloves again, and this time her face twisted with feeling, but she was dry-eyed and her voice was as low-pitched and as deadly as the sound made by a snake’s rattles.

  “I could kill the man who did this to us.”

  “That won’t help,” I said.

  “What am I going to do?” she asked.

  That was Bertha’s cue. “Mrs. Endicott has placed herself entirely in our hands, Donald, and there’s no need at all to worry about the financial arrangements.

  We have worked those out. She got in touch with me just as soon as the officers made the arrest.

  “Now, Donald, we want you to get busy and work on this case. There’s enough involved so we can completely exclude all other business matters from our minds and concentrate on this case.”

  I took the telephone directory from Bertha’s desk. “The first thing you want is a lawyer,” I said, “and you want him fast.”

  She said, “I have already thought of that. There are two outstanding lawyers in Los Angeles whose names command respect. I’ll—”

  “Forget it!” I told her. “The case is going to be tried in Orange County. You want someone in Santa Ana. You also want someone who will listen to reason.“

  “What do you mean, listen to reason?” she asked.

  “Listen to me,” I said and reached for the telephone, dialed long distance and said, “Operator, this is an emergency call. I want to talk with Barnard Quinn, a lawyer at Santa Ana, California. His residence number is Sycamore 3-9865. Just start ringing and keep ringing until you get an answer.”

  CHAPTER 9 …

  IT WAS just breaking daylight as we parked our cars in the deserted street in front of the building where Barney Quinn had his offices.

  Quinn was waiting for us.

  He was a stockily built chap who had had a reasonable amount of experience. He had been in law school with me.

  We explained the circumstances to him. He was, of course, familiar with all of the general facts concerning the murder of Karl Carver Endicott. It had been a big murder mystery in its day and the local papers had played it up for all it was worth.

  “They didn’t try to hold you?” he asked Mrs. Endicott.

  She shook her head.

  “They’ll come back after you as a material witness,” he said. “The district attorney will be very fatherly and very nice. He will explain that undoubtedly you were taken in, that if you’ll make a complete statement to him there won’t be any trouble, but he’s going to have to call you as a witness and all of that sort of stuff.”

  “What do I do?” she asked, her lips clamped in a thin line of angry determination.

  “Tell him to go to hell,” Quinn said. “Not in those words of course, but in words having that same general meaning, only more advantageous to the defense. Tell him that he simply doesn’t know John Dittmar Ansel, that there has been a horrible mistake, that Ansel Wouldn’t hurt a fly, that you have never been satisfied with the investigative work that was done in the case, that your husband’s murderer is reading the newspapers right now and laughing at the manner in which the Police are busily engaged in trying to work up a case against the wrong man.

  “Make it dramatic! Pour it on! Let the words come spouting forth with feeling! Put on an act. Then take refuge in tears and refuse to make any further statements. You have said all there is to say, and that’s all you’re going to say.

  ‘When they ask you if you refuse to be of any help m the case, if you refuse to co-operate, become indignant and tell them, ‘Certainly not!’ that you will give them all the co-operation they want, that you will make all the statements they want, but from that point on your statements are to be made in the office of Barnard Quinn who is attorney for John D. Ansel. “Think you can do that?”

  “Of course I can do it.”

  “And you will?”

  "You can count on me.”

  “All right,” Quinn said. “Now I’m going to try and see Ansel. Do you know if he waived extradition, Mrs. Endicott?”

  “I don’t know a thing about what happened. They took him into custody. I tried to talk with him and they wouldn’t let me. It was in the wedding chapel. They rushed him out and loaded him into a car and went away from there as though they were going to a fire. They evidently had men covering both Las Vegas and Yuma. The minute we took out a license we were marked for the slaughter.”

  Quinn said, “If they didn’t get him to waive extradition, we’ll fight extradition. We’ll fight all along the ; way. If he did waive extradition, I’ll get in touch with 1 him just as soon as they book him here in the county jail.”

  Quinn turned to me. “Lam,” he said, “you’ve been of inestimable help on a couple of cases I’ve handled. We want your co-operation in this.”

  “You’re going to have it,” Bertha Cool said.

  Quinn said to Mrs. Endicott, “It is essential that I have the right kind of assistance in getting the facts. I want you to make arrangements with these detectives to-”

  “Arrangements have already been made,” Bertha interrupted with firm finality. “You don’t need to go into that, Mr. Quinn. You can count on our co-operation and assistance.”

  Quinn thought that over, looked into Bertha Cool’s cold, pale eyes, pursed his lips, played with a pencil for a minute, then said to Mrs. Endicott, “I’m going to want a retainer.”

  “How much?” she asked.

  “This isn’t going to be a cheap case.”

  “I didn’t ask you to make it a cheap case.”

  “Twenty thousand dollars,” he said.

  She opened her purse and took out a checkbook. “The man who was responsible for all this,” she said, “is Cooper Hale.”

  Quinn held up his hand. “Don’t mention any names. All that you know is that John Ansel is innocent. You leave the rest to me.”

  “Very well,” she said.

  Quinn looked at me. “And I’ll depend on you folks to get the facts.”

  Whenever a client was making out a check Bertha considered the moment sacred. The slightest sound, the intrusion of a comment might be an interruption.

  Bertha sat there, holding her breath, while Mrs. En- dicott’s pen moved over the tinted oblong of paper. When the check had been signed, Bertha let out the breath she had been holding during the operation. She Watched the passage of the check from Mrs. Endicott’s hand to Barney Quinn’s hand. Then she inhaled a deep breath.

  “When do we eat?” she asked.

  CHAPTER 10 …

  THE MORING NEWSPAPERS had headlines: “MURDER SUSPECT ENTERS POLICE TRAP.”

  There was quite a story. The six-year-old murder mystery of Karl Carver Endicott, a multimillionaire, who had extensive oil interests throughout the country as well as a substantial acreage in citrus lands, and had been mysteriously slain in his home, was on the point of being solved, according to police.

  Police had long had a good description of the killer. A man who at that time was driving a taxicab, but who had since become prosperous through real estate and other investments, had furnished a most detailed description of the last man who had seen Endicott alive.

  Police had long acted on the theory that the killer, whoever he might have been, had been actuated by romantic motives. They also knew that the fatal weakness of their case was that Drude Nickerson, the former taxi driver, was the only person who could furnish eyewitness identification.

  Therefore, as a last desperate resort, police baited a trap with the co-operation of the press.

  When an unidentified hitchhiker had been killed near Susanville, police had arranged for Drude Nickerson to keep out of circulation for a few days. They had made a tentative identification of the body of the traffic victim as that of Drude Nickerson and, thanks to co-operation on the part of the press, had lulled the suspect into a false sense of security.

  Having kept under cover for years, John Dittmar Ansel, who was himself supposed to have perished in the Amazon years before, had come into' the open. Almost within a matter of hours of the announcement that police were closing their files in the Endicott murder case because of the death of the only witness who could make an identification, John Dittmar Ansel and Elizabeth Endicott, the wealthy widow of Karl Carver Endicott, had appeared in Yuma, Arizona, had taken out a marriage license and were on the point of becoming man and wife when police, who had been waiting in the wings, so to speak, had swooped down upon the pair, whisking Ansel off to jail.

  No charges had as yet been made against Elizabeth Endicott, but the district attorney of Orange County announced that he wanted to question her as a material witness and intended to do so. His questioning, he indicated, would seek to determine whether Mrs. Endicott had known that Ansel was alive and where he had been concealing himself during the past six years, the number of times Mrs. Endicott had seen Ansel, what steps if any she had taken to assist in his concealment, and whether she knew anything concerning the murder of her husband which had not previously been disclosed to authorities.

  The newspapers pointed out that it was to be remembered Mrs. Endicott had left the house shortly before the murder. The time of the murder had been accurately fixed and Mrs. Endicott had an alibi of sorts in that apparently she had been purchasing gasoline for her automobile at a point some two miles from the house at the exact time the murder had been committed.

  The district attorney stated, however, that a new and searching inquiry into this time element was going to be launched, that the entire case was going to be given a thorough and exhaustive investigation.

  We had breakfast and drove back to Los Angeles. I went to a barber shop, had a shave, a massage and a lot of hot towels.

  When I reached the office, Elsie Brand, my secretary, handed me a note with a number I was to call.

  “Any name?” I asked.

  “No name, just a seductive voice. She said she had met you in Reno, and would you care to call?”

  I called.

  Stella Karis said, “I wondered if you’d like to have breakfast with me?”

  “I’m a working man,” I told her. “I had breakfast a long time ago.”

  “How long?”

  “Hours.”

  “Then you could have a second breakfast.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In my apartment.”

  “How did you get back?” I asked.

  “I drove.”

  “When did you get in?”

  “About eleven o’clock last night.”

  “Read the papers?”

  “No.”

  “Some news in connection with Citrus Grove,” I said. “You might like to take a look.”

  “I’ll read them. The point is, do you come for breakfast?”

  “When?”

  “Now.“

  “Where?”

  “The Monaster Apartments.”

  “I’ll be up,” I told her.

  Elsie Brand, who had been listening to the conversation, had a poker face. “Do you want to dictate this correspondence now, Donald?” she asked.

  “Not now,” I said. “I’m busy.”

  “So I gathered.”

  “Now look, Elsie, if Bertha wants me, I’ve been in and now I’ve gone out again. You don’t know where. You know Bertha well enough so you can tell whether it’s something important or whether she’s just checking up.

  “If it’s something really important, call me at this number, but don’t let anyone have that number, and don’t call unless it’s something really important. Understand?”

  She nodded.

  “Good girl,” I told her and patted her shoulders as I went out.

  The Monaster apartment house was a swank little place and Stella Karis had a nice apartment with sunlight pouring in eastern windows.

  She had on some sort of a fluffy creation which kept popping open around the throat, and long bell-shaped sleeves that would have trailed in the coffee, across the fried eggs and into the toast if she hadn’t been some kind of an indoor acrobat and managed to grab the trailing cloth just in time.

  I watched her with fascination.

  It was a nice breakfast. I didn’t particularly need it, but it tasted good.

  “Donald,” she said after I had cleaned up my plate. *You know something?”

  “What?”

  I told you about this Nickerson.“

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He isn’t dead.”

  “I told you to read the papers.”

  “I didn’t need to. He called me at seven o’clock this morning.”

  “Surprised to hear his voice?”

  “I was terribly shocked. I—well, I had hoped I wasn’t going to have anything more to do with him.”

  “You hate to come out and say you hoped he was dead, don’t you?”

  “All right, I hoped he was dead.”

  “That’s better.”

  “He called and told me that he needed ten thousand dollars more. He said that the members of the city council had been a little more obstinate than he had expected, that there were five of them and it was going to take five thousand apiece. He said at that price it wouldn’t leave a cent for him, that he was embarrassed because he hadn’t been able to deliver the goods as promised, so he’d simply act as middleman and go- between. He said he’d make me a present of his services and he wouldn’t take a cent.”

  “Philanthropist, eh?” I asked.

  “That’s what he said.”

  “What did you do?”

 

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