Who Killed Bob Teal? and Other Stories Read online

  I arrived in the vestibule as Dean pressed Whitacre’s bell-button.

  “Hello,” I said. “You in on this?”

  “Uh-huh. What d’you know?”

  “Nothing. I just got it.”

  The front door clicked open, and we went together up to the Whitacre’s apartment on the third floor. A plump, blond woman in a light blue house-dress opened the apartment door. She was rather pretty in a thick-featured, stolid way.

  “Mrs. Whitacre?” Dean inquired.

  “Yes.”

  “Is Mr. Whitacre in?”

  “No. He went to Los Angeles this morning,” she said, and her face was truthful.

  “Know where we can get in touch with him there?”

  “Perhaps at the Ambassador, but I think he’ll be back by to-morrow or the next day.”

  Dean showed her his badge.

  “We want to ask you a few questions,” he told her, and with no appearance of astonishment she opened the door wide for us to enter. She led us into a blue and cream living-room, where we found a chair apiece. She sat facing us on a big blue settle.

  “Where was your husband last night?” Dean asked.

  “Home. Why?” Her round blue eyes were faintly curious.

  “Home all night?”

  “Yes, it was a rotten rainy night. Why?” She looked from Dean to me.

  Dean’s glance met mine, and I nodded an answer to the question that I read there.

  “Mrs. Whitacre,” he said bluntly, “I have a warrant for your husband’s arrest.”

  “A warrant? For what?”

  “Murder.”

  “Murder?” It was a stifled scream.

  “Exactly, an’ last night.”

  “But—but I told you he was—”

  “And Ogburn told me,” I interrupted leaning forward, “that you called up his apartment last night, asking if your husband was there.”

  She looked at me blankly for a dozen seconds; and then she laughed, the clear laugh of one who has been the victim of some slight joke.

  “You win,” she said, and there was neither shame nor humiliation in either face or voice. “Now listen”—the amusement had left her—“I don’t know what Herb has done, or how I stand, and I oughtn’t to talk until I see a lawyer. But I like to dodge all the trouble I can. If you folks will tell me what’s what, on your word of honor, I’ll maybe tell you what I know, if anything. What I mean is, if talking will make things any easier for me, if you can show me it will, maybe I’ll talk—provided I know anything.”

  That seemed fair enough, if a little surprising. Apparently this plump woman who could lie with every semblance of candor, and laugh when she was tripped up, wasn’t interested in anything much beyond her own comfort.

  “You tell it,” Dean said to me.

  I shot it out all in a lump.

  “Your husband had been cooking the books for some time, and got into his partner for something like $200,000 before Ogburn got wise to it. Then he had your husband shadowed, trying to find the money. Last night your husband took the man who was shadowing him over on a lot and shot him.”

  Her face puckered thoughtfully. Mechanically she reached for a package of a popular brand of cigarettes that lay on a table behind the settle, and proffered them to Dean and me. We shook our heads. She put a cigarette in her mouth, scratched a match on the sole of her slipper, lit the cigarette, and stared at the burning end. Finally she shrugged, her face cleared, and she looked up at us.

  “I’m going to talk,” she said. “I never got any of the money, and I’d be a chump to make a goat of myself for Herb. He was all right, but if he’s run out and left me flat, there’s no use of me making a lot of trouble for myself over it. Here goes: I’m not Mrs. Whitacre, except on the register. My name is Mae Landis. Maybe there is a real Mrs. Whitacre, and maybe not. I don’t know. Herb and I have been living together here for over a year.

  “About a month ago he began to get jumpy, nervous, even worse than usual. He said he had business worries. Then a couple of days ago I discovered that his pistol was gone from the drawer where it had been kept ever since we came here, and that he was carrying it. I asked him: ‘What’s the idea?’ He said he thought he was being followed, and asked me if I’d seen anybody hanging around the neighborhood as if watching our place. I told him no; I thought he was nutty.

  “Night before last he told me that he was in trouble, and might have to go away, and that he couldn’t take me with him, but would give me enough money to take care of me for a while. He seemed excited, packed his bags so they’d be ready if he needed them in a hurry, and burned up all his photos and a lot of letters and papers. His bags are still in the bedroom, if you want to go through them. When he didn’t come home last night I had a hunch that he had beat it without his bags and without saying a word to me, much less giving me any money—leaving me with only twenty dollars to my name and not even much that I could hock, and with the rent due in four days.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “About eight o’clock last night. He told me he was going down to Mr. Ogburn’s apartment to talk some business over with him, but he didn’t go there. I know that. I ran out of cigarettes—I like Elixir Russians, and I can’t get them uptown here—so I called up Mr. Ogburn’s to ask Herb to bring some home with him when he came, and Mr. Ogburn said he hadn’t been there.”

  “How long have you known Whitacre?” I asked.

  “Couple of years. I guess. I think I met him first at one of the Beach resorts.”

  “Has he got any people?”

  “Not that I know of. I don’t know a whole lot about him. Oh, yes! I do know that he served three years in prison in Oregon for forgery. He told me that one night when he was lushed up. He served them under the name of Barber, or Barbee, or something like that. He said he was walking the straight and narrow now.”

  Dean produced a small automatic pistol, fairly new-looking in spite of the mud that clung to it, and handed it to the woman.

  “Ever see that?”

  She nodded her blond head.

  “Yep! That’s Herb’s, or its twin.”

  Dean pocketed the gun again, and we stood up.

  “Where do I stand now?” she asked. “You’re not going to lock me up as a witness or anything, are you?”

  “Not just now.” Dean assured her. “Stick around where we can find you if we want you, and you won’t be bothered. Got any idea which direction Whitacre’d be likely to go in?”

  “No.”

  “We’d like to give the place the once-over. Mind?”

  “Go ahead,” she invited. “Take it apart if you want to. I’m coming all the way with you people.”

  We very nearly did take the place apart, but we found not a thing of value. Whitacre, when he had burned the things that might have given him away, had made a clean job of it.

  “Did he ever have any pictures taken by a professional photographer?” I asked just before we left.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Will you let us know if you hear anything or remember anything else that might help?”

  “Sure,” she said heartily; “sure.”

  Dean and I rode down in the elevator in silence, and walked out into Gough Street.

  “What do you think of all that?” I asked when we were outside.

  “She’s a lil, huh?” He grinned. “I wonder how much she knows. She identified the gun an gave us that dope about the forgery sentence up north, but we’d of found out them things anyway. If she was wise she’d tell us everything she knew we’d find out, an’ that would make her other stuff go over stronger. Think she’s dumb or wise?”

  “We won’t guess,” I said. “We’ll slap a shadow on her and cover her mail. I have the number of a taxi she used a couple days ago. We’ll look that up too.”
r />   At a corner drug store I telephoned the Old Man, asking him to detail a couple of the boys to keep Mae Landis and her apartment under surveillance night and day; also to have the Post Office Department let us know if she got any mail that might have been addressed by Whitacre. I told the Old Man I would see Ogburn and get some specimens of the fugitive’s writing for comparison with the woman’s mail.

  Then Dean and I set about tracing the taxi in which Bob Teal had seen the woman ride away. Half an hour in the taxi company’s office gave us the information that she had been driven to a number on Greenwich Street. We went to the Greenwich Street address.

  It was a ramshackle building, divided into apartments or flats of a dismal and dingy sort. We found the landlady in the basement: a gaunt woman in soiled gray, with a hard, thin-lipped mouth and pale, suspicious eyes. She was rocking vigorously in a creaking chair and sewing on a pair of overalls, while three dirty kids tussled with a mongrel puppy up and down the room.

  Dean showed his badge, and told her that we wanted to speak to her in privacy. She got up to chase the kids and their dog out, and then stood with hands on hips facing us.

  “Well, what do you want?” she demanded sourly.

  “Want to get a line on your tenants,” Dean said. “Tell us about them.”

  “Tell you about them?” She had a voice that would have been harsh enough even if she hadn’t been in such a peevish mood. “What do you think I got to say about ’em? What do you think I am? I’m a woman that minds her own business! Nobody can’t say that I don’t run a respectable—”

  This was getting us nowhere.

  “Who lives in number one?” I asked.

  “The Auds—two old folks and their grandchildren. If you know anything against them, it’s more’n them that has lived with ’em for ten years does!”

  “Who lives in number two?”

  “Mrs. Codman and her boys, Frank and Fred. They been here three years, and—”

  I carried her from apartment to apartment, until finally we reached a second-floor one that didn’t bring quite so harsh an indictment of my stupidity for suspecting its occupants of whatever it was that I suspected them of.

  “The Quirks live there.” She merely glowered now, whereas she had had a snippy manner before. “And they’re decent people, if you ask me!”

  “How long have they been here?”

  “Six months or more.”

  “What does he do for a living?”

  “I don’t know.” Sullenly: “Travels maybe.”

  “How many in the family?”

  “Just him and her, and they’re nice quiet people, too.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “Like an ordinary man. I ain’t a detective. I don’t go ’round snoopin’ into folks’ faces to see what they look like, and prying into their business. I ain’t—”

  “How old a man is he?”

  “Maybe between thirty-five and forty, if he ain’t younger or older.”

  “Large or small?”

  “He ain’t as short as you, and he ain’t as tall as this feller with you,” glaring scornfully from my short stoutness to Dean’s big bulk, “and he ain’t as fat as neither of you.”

  “Mustache?”

  “No.”

  “Light hair?”

  “No.” Triumphantly: “Dark.”

  “Dark eyes, too?”

  “I guess so.”

  Dean, standing off to one side, looked over the woman’s shoulder at me. His lips framed the name: “Whitacre.”

  “Now how about Mrs. Quirk—what does she look like?” I went on.

  “She’s got light hair, is short and chunky, and maybe under thirty.”

  Dean and I nodded our satisfaction at each other; that sounded like Mae Landis, right enough.

  “Are they home much?” I continued.

  “I don’t know,” the gaunt woman snarled sullenly, and I knew she did know, so I waited, looking at her, and presently she added grudgingly: I think they’re away a lot, but I ain’t sure.”

  “I know,” I ventured, “they are home very seldom, and then only in the daytime—and you know it.”

  She didn’t deny it, so I asked: “Are they in now?”

  “I don’t think so, but they might be.”

  “Let’s take a look at the joint, I suggested to Dean.

  He nodded and told the woman: “Take us up to their apartment an’ unlock the door for us.”

  “I won’t!” she said with sharp emphasis. “You got no right goin’ into folks’ homes unless you got a search-warrant. You got one?”

  “We got nothin’,” Dean grinned at her, “but we can get plenty if you want to put us to the trouble. You run this house; you can go into any of the flats any time you want, an’ you can take us in. Take us up, an’ we’ll lay off you: but if you’re going to put us to a lot of trouble, then you’ll take your chances of bein’ tied up with the Quirks, an’ maybe sharin’ a cell with ’em. Think that over.”

  She thought it over, and then, grumbling and growling with each step, took us up to the Quirks’ apartment. She made sure they weren’t at home, then admitted us.

  The apartment consisted of three rooms, a bath, and a kitchen, furnished in the shabby fashion that the ramshackle exterior of the building had prepared us for. In these rooms we found a few articles of masculine and feminine clothing, toilet accessories, and so on. But the place had none of the marks of a permanent abode; there were no pictures, no cushions, none of the dozens of odds and ends of personal belongings that are usually found in homes. The kitchen had the appearance of long disuse; the interiors of the coffee, tea, spice, and flour containers were clean.

  Two things we found that meant something: A handful of Elixer Russian cigarettes on a table; and a new box of .32 cartridges—ten of which were missing—in a dresser drawer.

  All through our searching the landlady hovered over us, her pale eyes sharp and curious; but now we chased her out, telling her that, law or no law, we were taking charge of the apartment.

  “This was or is a hide-out for Whitacre and his woman all right,” Dean said when we were alone. “The only question is whether he intended to lay low here or whether it was just a place where he made preparations for his get-away. I reckon the best thing is to have the Captain put a man in here night and day until we turn up Brother Whitacre.”

  “That’s safest,” I agreed, and he went to the telephone in the front room to arrange it.

  After Dean was through phoning, I called up the Old Man to see if anything new had developed.

  “Nothing new,” he told me. “How are you coming along?”

  “Nicely. Maybe I’ll have news for you this evening.”

  “Did you get those specimens of Whitacre’s writing from Ogburn? Or shall I have someone else take care of it?”

  “I’ll get them this evening,” I promised.

  I wasted ten minutes trying to reach Ogburn at his office before I looked at my watch and saw that it was after six o’clock. I found his residence listed in the telephone directory, and called him there.

  “Have you anything in Whitacre’s writing at home?” I asked. “I want to get a couple of samples—would like to get them this evening, though if necessary I can wait until to-morrow.”

  “I think I have some of his letters here. If you come over now I’ll give them to you.”

  “Be with you in fifteen minutes,” I told him.

  “I’m going down to Ogburn’s,” I told Dean, “to get some of Whitacre’s scribbling while you’re waiting for your man to come from Headquarters to take charge of this place. I’ll meet you at the States as soon as you can get away. We’ll eat there, and make our plans for the night.”

  “Uh-huh,” he grunted, making himself comfortable in one chair, with his feet on another, as I l
et myself out.

  Ogburn was dressing when I reached his apartment, and had his collar and tie in his hand when he came to the door to let me in.

  “I found quite a few of Herb’s letters,” he said as we walked back to his bedroom.

  I looked through the fifteen or more letters that lay on a table, selecting the ones I wanted, while Ogburn went on with his dressing.

  “How are you progressing?” he asked presently.

  “So-so. Heard anything that might help?”

  “No, but just a few minutes ago I happened to remember that Herb used to go over to the Mills Building quite frequently. I’ve seen him going in and out often, but never thought anything of it. I don’t know whether it is of any importance or—”

  I jumped out of my chair.

  “That does it!” I cried. “Can I use your phone?”

  “Certainly. It’s in the hallway, near the door.” He looked at me in surprise. “It’s a slot phone; have you a nickel in change?”

  “Yes.” I was going through the bedroom door.

  “The switch is near the door,” he called after me, “if you want a light. Do you think—”

  But I didn’t stop to listen to his questions. I was making for the telephone, searching my pockets for a nickel. And, fumbling hurriedly with the nickel, I muffed it—not entirely by accident, for I had a hunch that I wanted to work out. The nickel rolled away down the carpeted hallway. I switched on the light, recovered the nickel, and called the “Quirks’” number. I’m glad I played that hunch.

  Dean was still there.

  “That joint’s dead,” I sang. “Take the landlady down to Headquarters, and grab the Landis woman, too. I’ll meet you there—at Headquarters.”