Complete works of peter.., p.48
Complete Works of Peter Cheyney. Illustrated, page 48
I get up off the box. This counterfeit case is beginnin' to look sweet an' interestin' to me. It is gettin' so tied up that in a minute I shall think I done it myself.
But way back in my head is an idea that I'm goin' to work on. The idea that it was this secretary bird Burdell who sent me that anonymous letter so's I should get out here an' get next to Henrietta, an' maybe start something that is goin' to end up with her bein' pinched on a first degree murder charge. An' if I am right about this what is he doin' it for? Is he doin' it because he thinks that he is helpin' justice that way or because he's got some reason for wanting to put Henrietta on the spot.
I take another swig at the tequila an' I put the picture of me back in the garbage can which is where a whole lot of crooks would like to see me too an' I scram. I get outside an' get the car goin' an' I slide back in the direction of Palm Springs, because I think that it is time that I got busy on this case. I reckon that if nobody else won't start anything then I had better myself.
When I get back to the Miranda House I find a telegraph waiting for me. It is coded an' is in answer to the one I sent the "G" office in New York askin' for information about the people in Granworth Aymes' employ at the time of his death. It says:
"Aymes employees as follows stop. Langdon Burdell secretary in service seven years now carrying on Aymes business under own name New York stop. Enrico Palantza butler at apartment in service four years present location unknown stop. Marie Therese Dubuinet maid to Mrs. Henrietta Aymes now in service Mrs. John Vlaford New York stop. Juan Termiglo chauffeur service three years present location unknown stop. Dispatching to you photographs Palantza Dubuinet and Termiglo within two days stop."
This don't tell me very much an' between you an' me I didn't see just then that havin' pictures of these guys was goin' to do me much good neither.
I light a cigarette an' I do some thinkin'. I decide that just for the moment I ain't goin' to do much good around here. Whether Henrietta decides that she is goin' to hitch up with Maloney or Fernandez ain't goin' to get me no place.
Another thing is that I wanta have a little conversation with this guy Burdell. I bet he can tell me a coupla things I would like to know, an' if he can I guess I am comin' back to start something good an' proper.
Back of my head I have gotta big idea that Henrietta is holdin' out on me; that she is twicin' me good an' proper. There is somethin' about that dame's face that is very nice, but that don't prove nothin' at all.
I remember a dame in Nogales on the Arizona-Mexico border. She was a honey. This dame had a face like a saint an' she spoke that way too. She was Mexican an' she figured to get some more culture an' teach herself English by readin' the History of the Civil War to her husband every night. He was a bit older than she was an' of a very doubtin' disposition. While she was readin' the History of the Civil War with one hand she was mixin' arsenic in his coffee with the other.
One day this guy peters out. He gives a big howl and hands in his dinner pail. Some suspicious dick pinches the dame for murder although she says it musta been the History of the Civil War that give him the pain in his stomach.
When she goes for trial she gets a hot lawyer who knows all the answers an' he tells her to put a veil all over her face an' cry all the time she is in court. She is lucky. The jury disagree an' another trial is ordered. This time she gets another lawyer. He don't know anything about law, but believe me he knows his onions. He gets her all 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 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 S.A. 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 guess I wouldn'ta minded bein' her husband. I just wouldn'ta drunk coffee, that's all.
V. NEAT STUFF
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 Granworth woulda maybe justified it. But what good's it gonna do if she really an' truly don't know anything about the counterfeiting 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 cops 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 down town 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 page-boy cut that woulda made Greta Garbo 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 wiggle when she walks that woulda won her a beauty contest anywhere where the judges' wives weren't around.
She uses a beauty parlor 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 damn 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 hara-kiri 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 that Henrietta Aymes wasn't in town the night that Granworth bumps himself off.
"O.K. 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.
"O.K. 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 comin' to town to see Granworth because I saw the letters she wrote. I knew she came 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 apartment 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 Federal 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's 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 guess he has some liquor an' maybe makes up his mind that he will bump himself off. Knowin' him I decide 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 bein' in town that night. I take a thousand that Granworth had in the drawer of this desk an' I graft the watchman to keep his trap shut. I thought then that Granworth had bumped himself off an' I didn't see why she should be brought into it. He'd caused her enough trouble anyway.
"All right. Everything works out swell an' the investigation finishes an' that's that. But a few months afterwards you come along an' you say that Mrs. Aymes has tried to pass a phoney bond down at the bank at Palm Springs. You ask me a lotta questions before I have time to think this thing out, so I give you the same story as I handed out to the cops during the investigation. But after you went I got down an' I did a little thinkin'. I knew damn well that the bonds that Granworth's lawyer handed over to Henrietta Aymes was the real stuff. They was got outa Granworth's safe deposit where they had been kept. I started thinkin' that if she had tried to pass a phoney bond then she musta got it from somewhere an' knew it was phoney.
"Another thing. I looked in the drawer of this desk where Granworth had put those three letters. They was gone, an' I remembered that when she came down from Connecticut after his death I found her at this desk one day. I begin to get a screwy idea in my head. I get the idea that maybe I have been a mug, that maybe she did bump off Granworth after all; that she was the woman the night watchman saw, an' that's why she wanted the letters.
"Well, I may have sympathized with her in the first place, but I don't hold with murder an' I began to get a bit uncomfortable. Especially with you musclin' around because you have got a hot reputation, Mr. Caution, an' I start wonderin' what is goin' to happen to me if you find out the truth. I was right here because the first thing you do is to go an' grill the truth outa the watchman, although I didn't know that at the time.
"So I sit down at the typewriter an' I send you that letter, without any signature, because I work it out that way. If you get down to Palm Springs an' get them letters, well you can do what you like about it. If you think she bumped Granworth you can set out to pin it on her, or you can leave it alone, just as you think. I thought that you might not worry about who wrote the letter providin' you got the information, an' I also thought that if you did pin that letter on me I would come across with the whole works. Well, there it is. That's how it was, an' I'm sorry if I've caused you any trouble by bein' a mug an' not tellin' the truth first go off."
I get up an' I hold out my hand.
"Fine, Burdell," I tell him. "I guess you're a wise guy to come clean. I'm beginning to think that this Henrietta bumped off Granworth all right, an' if she did, well she'll have to fry for it."
He shakes hands with me an' I scram.
I say so long to the dame with the french heels outside, an' I take the elevator down. I ease along pretty quick to the caretaker's office on the entrance floor an' flash my badge an' grab the telephone. I get chief operator at the telephone exchange.
I tell the chief operator who I am an' I also tell him that I have just left Burdell's office an' that I have got an idea that Burdell will be puttin' a long-distance call through to somebody at Palm Springs pretty quick. I say that they are to listen in to that call an' take a note of it an' who the guy is at the other end who takes it. I say that they are to keep this shorthand note for me to call for an' that they can check up on my authority in the meantime.
The chief operator says O.K.
I then go back to my hotel an' give myself a swell cigar. First of all it is quite plain to me that this second story of Burdell's is not so hot either. I'll tell you why.
Supposin' he did know that Henrietta had taken the letters outa the desk drawer because they proved she'd seen Granworth on the night he died. Well, wouldn't it have been sensible for Burdell to think that she took 'em to destroy 'em, not to carry 'em about with her? How did he know they was at Palm Springs? There's only one way he coulda been certain of that an' that was if somebody down at Palm Springs had told him that she still had 'em an' had 'em in the rancho where she was stayin'.
So I reckon that after I have got out of his office he is goin' to telephone through to this guy an' say that I have blown in an' tell him that I have fallen for this story an' that everything is O.K., an' that the job has been played the way this Burdell bird wants it played.
An' this brings me to another little thing. What about that picture of me cut out of the Chicago Times an' sent down to somebody at the Hacienda Altmira at Palm Springs? Don't it look like Burdell sent that too. An' the reason he sends it is easy. When he has sent me the anonymous letter he knows I will scram out to Palm Springs so he gets 'em good an' ready for me He searches around until he finds a newspaper that has gotta picture of me in it an' he cuts it out, writes "This is the guy" on it, an' sends it down to the Hacienda.
An' this Burdell bird is goin' to slip up plenty in a minute. Mind you, the guy has got brains plenty brains. He knows that I can figure out that it was him that wrote the anonymous letter to me, an' so he has a swell story all ready for me when I blow in; but what he don't know is that I am wise to that picture business, an' that is just where he is goin' to slip up.
I guess you will agree that this business is gettin' good an' interestin'. It is beginnin' to get me interested almost!
I stick around till it is six o'clock, an' then I get another idea. I think that I will ring through to the New York "G" Office an' ask 'em if they have dispatched them pictures of the Aymes' servants, the butler, the chauffeur an' the maid, that they was goin' to send to me at Palm Springs. I am lucky. They tell me that they have sent off one lot but they have got a duplicate set an' they fix to send these around to me at the hotel. I also ask 'em to send somebody around to the main exchange office an' see if they have gotta transcript of the shorthand notes of any telephone conversation that Burdell has had since I went outa the office, an' they say they will do this.
After which I give myself another shower to pass the time an' change into a tuxedo just so's I can feel civilized for one night anyhow.
At seven o'clock things begin to happen. An agent comes round from the "G" Office with a note of a conversation that Burdell has had with Palm Springs. He leaves this an' he leaves the packet of duplicate pictures an' after he has had a little rye with me he goes. I read the note of the Burdell conversation, and do I get one big kick outa it. Here it is:
New York. Central Exchange Time: 5:24 p.m.
Report of long-distance telephone conversation from office of Langdon Burdell Central 174325 and Hacienda Altmira, Palm Springs, Calif.
