Crime Stories Page 31

  “I’m not pretending anything.”

  Silence between us for a few seconds, and then—

  “I’m going to make you a proposition,” he said. “You can take it or leave it. The note Dr. Estep wrote before he died was to me, and it is positive proof that he committed suicide. Give me a chance to get away—just a chance—a half−hour start—and I’ll give you my word of honor to send you the letter.”

  “I know I can trust you,” I said sarcastically.

  “I’ll trust you, then!” he shot back at me. “I’ll turn the note over to you if you’ll give me your word that I’m to have half an hour’s start.”

  “For what?” I demanded. “Why shouldn’t I take both you and the note?”

  “If you can get them! But do I look like the kind of sap who would leave the note where it would be found?

  Do you think it’s here in the room maybe?”

  I didn’t, but neither did I think that because he had hidden it, it couldn’t be found.

  “I can’t think of any reason why I should bargain with you,” I told him. “I’ve got you cold, and that’s enough.”

  “If I can show you that your only chance of freeing the second Mrs. Estep is through my voluntary assistance, will you bargain with me?”

  “Maybe—I’ll listen to your persuasion, anyway.”

  “All right,” he said, “I’m going to come clean with you. But most of the things I’m going to tell you can’t be proven in court without my help; and if you turn my offer down I’ll have plenty of evidence to convince the jury that these things are all false, that I never said them, and that you are trying to frame me.”

  That part was plausible enough. I’ve testified before juries all the way from the city of Washington to the state of Washington, and I’ve never seen one yet that wasn’t anxious to believe that a private detective is a double−crossing specialist who goes around with a cold deck in one pocket, a complete forger’s outfit in another, and who counts that day lost in which he railroads no innocent to the hoosegow.

  Eleven

  “There was once a young doctor in a town a long way from here,” Ledwich began. “He got mixed up in a scandal—a pretty rotten one—and escaped the pen only by the skin of his teeth. The state medical board revoked his license.

  “In a large city not far away, this young doc, one night when he was drunk—as he usually was in those days—told his troubles to a man he had met in a dive. The friend was a resourceful sort; and he offered, for a price, to fix the doc up with a fake diploma, so he could set up in practice in some other state.

  “The young doctor took him up, and the friend got the diploma for him. The doc was the man you know as Dr. Estep, and I was the friend. The real Dr. Estep was found dead in the park this morning!”

  That was news—if true!

  “You see,” the big man went on, “when I offered to get the phoney diploma for the young doc—whose real name doesn’t matter—I had in mind a forged one. Nowadays they’re easy to get—there’s a regular business in them—but twenty−five years ago, while you could manage it, they were hard to get. While I was trying to get one, I ran across a woman I used to work with—Edna Fife. That’s the woman you know as the first Mrs. Estep.

  “Edna had married a doctor—the real Dr. Humbert Estep. He was a hell of a doctor, though; and after starving with him in Philadelphia for a couple of years, she made him close up his office, and she went back to the bunko game, taking him with her. She was good at it, I’m telling you—a real cleaner—and, keeping him under her thumb all the time, she made him a pretty good worker himself.

  “It was shortly after that that I met her, and when she told me all this, I offered to buy her husband’s medical diploma and other credentials. I don’t know whether he wanted to sell them or not—but he did what she told him, and I got the papers.

  “I turned them over to the young doc, who came to San Francisco and opened an office under the name of Humbert Estep. The real Esteps promised not to use that name any more—not much of an inconvenience for them, as they changed names every time they changed addresses.

  “I kept in touch with the young doctor, of course, getting my regular rake−off from him. I had him by the neck, and I wasn’t foolish enough to pass up any easy money. After a year or so, I learned that he had pulled himself together and was making good. So I jumped on a train and came to San Francisco. He was doing fine; so I camped here, where I could keep my eye on him and watch out for my own interests.

  “He got married about then, and, between his practice and his investments, he began to accumulate a roll. But he tightened up on me—damn him! He wouldn’t be bled. I got a regular percentage of what he made, and that was all.

  “For nearly twenty−five years I got it—but not a nickel over the percentage. He knew I wouldn’t kill the goose that laid the golden eggs, so no matter how much I threatened to expose him, he sat tight, and I couldn’t budge him. I got my regular cut, and not a nickel more.

  “That went along, as I say, for years. I was getting a living out of him, but I wasn’t getting any big money. A few months ago I learned that he had cleaned up heavily in a lumber deal so I made up my mind to take him for what he had.

  “During all these years I had got to know the doc pretty well. You do when you’re bleeding a man—you get a pretty fair idea of what goes on in his head, and what he’s most likely to do if certain things should happen.

  So I knew the doc pretty well.

  “I knew, for instance, that he had never told his wife the truth about his past; that he had stalled her with some lie about being born in West Virginia. That was fine—for me! Then I knew that he kept a gun in his desk, and I knew why. It was kept there for the purpose of killing himself if the truth ever came out about his diploma. He figured that if, at the first hint of exposure, he wiped himself out, the authorities, out of respect for the good reputation he had built up, would hush things up.

  “And his wife—even if she herself learned the truth—would be spared the shame of a public scandal. I can’t see myself dying just to spare some woman’s feelings, but the doc was a funny guy in some ways—and he was nutty about his wife.

  “That’s the way I had him figured out, and that’s the way things turned out.

  “My plan might sound complicated, but it was simple enough. I got hold of the real Esteps—it took a lot of hunting, but I found them at last. I brought the woman to San Francisco, and told the man to stay away.

  “Everything would have gone fine if he had done what I told him; but he was afraid that Edna and I were going to double−cross him, so he came here to keep an eye on us. But I didn’t know that until you put the finger on him for me.

  “I brought Edna here and, without telling her any more than she had to know, drilled her until she was letter−perfect in her part.

  “A couple days before she came I had gone to see the doc, and had demanded a hundred thousand cool smacks. He laughed at me, and I left, pretending to be as hot as hell.

  “As soon as Edna arrived, I sent her to call on him. She asked him to perform an illegal operation on her daughter. He, of course, refused. Then she pleaded with him, loud enough for the nurse or whoever else was in the reception room to hear. And when she raised her voice she was careful to stick to words that could be interpreted the way we wanted them to. She ran off her end to perfection, leaving in tears.

  “Then I sprung my other trick! I had a fellow—a fellow who’s a whiz at that kind of stuff—make me a plate: an imitation of newspaper printing. It was all worded like the real article, and said that the state authorities were investigating information that a prominent surgeon in San Francisco was practicing under a license secured by false credentials. This plate measured four and an eighth by six and three−quarter inches. If you’ll look at the first inside page of the Evening Times any day in the week you’ll see a photograph just that size.

  “On the day after Edna’s call, I bought a copy of the firs
t edition of the Times—on the street at ten in the morning. I had this scratcher friend of mine remove the photograph with acid, and print this fake article in its place.

  “That evening I substituted a ‘home edition’ outer sheet for the one that had come with the paper we had cooked up, and made a switch as soon as the doc’s newsboy made his delivery. There was nothing to that part of it. The kid just tossed the paper into the vestibule. It’s simply a case of duck into the doorway, trade papers, and go on, leaving the loaded one for the doc to read.”

  I was trying not to look too interested, but my ears were cocked for every word. At the start, I had been prepared for a string of lies. But I knew now that he was telling me the truth! Every syllable was a boast; he was half−drunk with appreciation of his own cleverness—the cleverness with which he had planned and carried out his program of treachery and murder.

  I knew that he was telling the truth, and I suspected that he was telling more of it than he had intended. He was fairly bloated with vanity—the vanity that fills the crook almost invariably after a little success, and makes him ripe for the pen.

  His eyes glistened, and his little mouth smiled triumphantly around the words that continued to roll out of it.

  “The doc read the paper, all right—and shot himself. But first he wrote and mailed a note—to me. I didn’t figure on his wife’s being accused of killing him. That was plain luck.

  “I figured that the fake piece in the paper would be overlooked in the excitement. Edna would then go forward, claiming to be his first wife; and his shooting himself after her first call, with what the nurse had overheard, would make his death seem a confession that Edna was his wife.

  “I was sure that she would stand up under any sort of an investigation. Nobody knew anything about the doc’s real past; except what he had told them, which would be found false.

  “Edna had really married a Dr. Humbert Estep in Philadelphia in 1896; and the twenty−seven years that had passed since then would do a lot to hide the fact that that Dr. Humbert Estep wasn’t this Dr. Humbert Estep.

  “All I wanted to do was convince the doc’s real wife and her lawyers that she wasn’t really his wife at all. And we did that! Everybody took it for granted that Edna was the legal wife.

  “The next play would have been for Edna and the real wife to have reached some sort of an agreement about the estate, whereby Edna would have got the bulk—or at least half—of it; and nothing would have been made public.

  “If worse came to worst, we were prepared to go to court. We were sitting pretty! But I’d have been satisfied with half the estate. It would have come to a few hundred thousand at the least, and that would have been plenty for me—even deducting the twenty thousand I had promised Edna.

  “But when the police grabbed the doc’s wife and charged her with his murder, I saw my way into the whole roll. All I had to do was sit tight and wait until they convicted her. Then the court would turn the entire pile over to Edna.

  “I had the only evidence that would free the doc’s wife: the note he had written me. But I couldn’t—even if I had wanted to—have turned it in without exposing my hand. When he read that fake piece in the paper, he tore it out, wrote his message to me across the face of it, and sent it to me. So the note is a dead give−away.

  However, I didn’t have any intention of publishing it, anyhow.

  “Up to this point everything had gone like a dream. All I had to do was wait until it was time to cash in on my brains. And that’s the time that the real Humbert Estep picked out to mess up the works.

  “He shaved his moustache off, put on some old clothes, and came snooping around to see that Edna and I didn’t run out on him. As if he could have stopped us! After you put the finger on him for me, I brought him up here.

  “I intended salving him along until I could find a place to keep him until all the cards had been played. That’s what I was going to hire you for—to take care of him.

  “But we got to talking, and wrangling, and I had to knock him down. He didn’t get up, and I found that he was dead. His neck was broken. There was nothing to do but take him out to the park and leave him.

  “I didn’t tell Edna. She didn’t have a lot of use for him, as far as I could see, but you can’t tell how women will take things. Anyhow, she’ll stick, now that it’s done. She’s on the up and up all the time. And if she should talk, she can’t do a lot of damage. She only knows her own part of the lay.

  “All this long−winded story is so you’ll know just exactly what you’re up against. Maybe you think you can dig up the proof of these things I have told you. You can this far. You can prove that Edna wasn’t the doc’s wife. You can prove that I’ve been blackmailing him. But you can’t prove that the doc’s wife didn’t believe that Edna was his real wife! It’s her word against Edna’s and mine.

  “We’ll swear that we had convinced her of it, which will give her a motive. You can’t prove that the phoney news article I told you about ever existed. It’ll sound like a hophead’s dream to a jury.

  “You can’t tie last night’s murder on me—I’ve got an alibi that will knock your hat off! I can prove that I left here with a friend of mine who was drunk, and that I took him to his hotel and put him to bed, with the help of a night clerk and a bellboy. And what have you got against that? The word of two private detectives. Who’ll believe you?

  “You can convict me of conspiracy to defraud, or something—maybe. But, regardless of that, you can’t free Mrs. Estep without my help.

  “Turn me loose and I’ll give you the letter the doc wrote me. It’s the goods, right enough! In his own handwriting, written across the face of the fake newspaper story—which ought to fit the torn place in the paper that the police are supposed to be holding—and he wrote that he was going to kill himself, in words almost that plain.”

  That would turn the trick—there was no doubt of it. And I believed Ledwich’s story. The more I thought it over the better I liked it. It fitted into the facts everywhere. But I wasn’t enthusiastic about giving this big crook his liberty.

  “Don’t make me laugh!” I said. “I’m going to put you away and free Mrs, Estep—both.”

  “Go ahead and try it! You’re up against it without the letter; and you don’t think a man with brains enough to plan a job like this one would be foolish enough to leave the note where it could be found, do you?”

  I wasn’t especially impressed with the difficulty of convicting this Ledwich and freeing the dead man’s widow.

  His scheme—that cold−blooded zigzag of treachery for everybody he had dealt with, including his latest accomplice, Edna Estep—wasn’t as air−tight as he thought it. A week in which to run out a few lines in the East, and—But a week was just what I didn’t have!

  Vance Richmond’s words were running through my head: “But another day of imprisonment—two days, or perhaps even two hours—and she won’t need anybody to clear her. Death will have done it!”

  If I was going to do Mrs. Estep any good, I had to move quick. Law or no law, her life was in my fat hands.

  This man before me—his eyes bright and hopeful now and his mouth anxiously pursed—was thief, blackmailer, double−crosser, and at least twice a murderer. I hated to let him walk out. But there was the woman dying in a hospital . . .

  Twelve

  Keeping my eye on Ledwich, I went to the telephone, and got Vance Richmond on the wire at his residence.

  “How is Mrs. Estep?” I asked.

  “Weaker! I talked with the doctor half an hour ago, and he says—”

  I cut in on him; I didn’t want to listen to the details.

  “Get over to the hospital, and be where I can reach you by phone. I may have news for you before the night is over.”

  “What—is there a chance? Are you—”

  I didn’t promise him anything. I hung up the receiver and spoke to Ledwich. “I’ll do this much for you. Slip me the note, and I’ll give you your gun and put you ou
t the back door. There’s a bull on the corner out front, and I can’t take you past him.”

  He was on his feet, beaming.

  “Your word on it?” he demanded.

  “Yes—get going!”

  He went past me to the phone, gave a number (which I made a note of), and then spoke hurriedly into the instrument.

  “This is Shuler. Put a boy in a taxi with that envelope I gave you to hold for me, and send him out here right away.”

  He gave his address, said “Yes” twice, and hung up.

  There was nothing surprising about his unquestioning acceptance of my word. He couldn’t afford to doubt that I’d play fair with him. And, also, all successful bunko men come in time to believe that the world—except for themselves—is populated by a race of human sheep who may be trusted to conduct themselves with true sheeplike docility.

  Ten minutes later the doorbell rang. We answered it together, and Ledwich took a large envelope from a messenger boy, while I memorised the number on the boy’s cap. Then we went back to the front room.

  Ledwich slit the envelope and passed its contents to me: a piece of rough−torn newspaper. Across the face of the fake article he had told me about was written a message in a jerky hand.

  I wouldn’t have suspected you, Ledwich, of such profound stupidity. My last thought will be—this bullet that ends my life also ends your years of leisure. You’ll have to go to work now.

  Estep.

  The doctor had died game!

  I took the envelope from the big man, put the death note in it, and put them in my pocket. Then I went to a front window, flattening a cheek against the glass until I could see O’Gar, dimly outlined in the night, patiently standing where I had left him hours before.

  “The city dick is still on the corner,” I told Ledwich. “Here’s your gat”—holding out the gun I had shot from his fingers a little while back—“take it, and blow through the back door. Remember, that’s all I’m offering you—the gun and a fair start. If you play square with me, I’ll not do anything to help find you—unless I have to keep myself in the clear.”