Honest Money Read online

  “All right,” said Millwright, “what do you want me to do?”

  “I want you,” said Corning, slowly, “to find out what’s funny about the case.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “There’s something funny about the case—something that I don’t know anything about. I don’t think it’s anything connected with Sam Driver, so I think it’s something connected with Harry Green, the murdered man. I want you to get those fingerprints and check them.”

  “I could get the fingerprints,” said the expert, “the records of the morgue are open. But I’m not so certain about checking them; not the way you want them checked, anyway.”

  “Don’t you know some peace officer who could wire the classification in to some of the central identification bureaus?”

  “I might work that, yes.”

  “All right, do that; and furthermore, I wish you to check up the fingerprints with any police bulletins that may be floating around, on unsolved crimes.”

  “In other words, you think there’s something fishy about this man, Green, is that it?”

  “I don’t know,” Corning said slowly, “but I’m going to find out. There’s something funny about the case, and pretty powerful influences are bringing pressure to bear on me, to make me handle it in a certain way.”

  “Why should powerful influences be mixed up m a case involving a hobo?” Millwright wanted to know.

  “That’s what I want to find out,” said Corning.

  Millwright nodded, got to his feet.

  “With any kind of luck,” he said, “I can let you know inside of twenty-four hours; otherwise, it’ll just be a slow and tedious process, with the cards stacked against me.”

  He was shaking hands with Millwright, when Vare, the private detective, came into the room.

  Vare waited until the door had closed behind Millwright, then sat down and pulled a list from his pocket.

  “Well,” he said, “I got a list of all of the Cadillacs that have been purchased in the last year. That is, of course, those that were purchased from the agency here in the city, or those that were registered as being owned in the city.”

  “Does it give us anything?” asked Corning.

  “Not a thing,” Vare said. “It was a crazy proposition thinking that it would. As I understand it, you figure Sam Driver may be hooked up with somebody who bought a Cadillac. Driver’s a hobo, a crook and a murderer. The list of the fellows who bought Cadillacs reads like a social directory. Everybody on this list has got some social position, except the three fellows who have stars opposite their names—they’re bootleggers.”

  “Well,” said Corning, “a bootlegger may have some connection with a murderer.”

  Vare grinned.

  “Try to uncover it,” he said. “Those birds work pretty fast and play ’em pretty close to their chest. Try to nose into their business, and see what happens.”

  Ken Corning’s forefinger slid down the list. Abruptly it came to a stop and he looked at the detective.

  “I notice,” he said, “that Harrison Burman bought a Cadillac.”

  Vare nodded.

  “Burman,” he said, “is the owner of The Courier. That’s the paper that stands in with the big shots. It comes pretty near running the town.”

  “Wait a minute—wait a minute!” said Corning. A strange light of excitement was growing in his eyes.

  He grabbed a pad and wrote names on it, which Vare could not see—names set in the form of a circle with short lines leading from one to the next

  In order as he scribbled, they were:

  Green—Driver—Mrs. Bixel—The Courier—Jerry Bigelow— George Bixel—Harrison Burman. The name Burman completed the circle next to that of Green.

  Ken Corning crumpled the sheet, looked at the private detective and grinned.

  “Do you remember,” he asked, “a murder case that took place last October, a chap by the name of George Bixel?”

  “Sure,” Vare said. “I remember something about the facts of the case. There was quite a bit of comment about it at the time. It was one of those lonely mountain cabins, and a crook pulling a hold-up, trying to get Mrs. Bixel’s jewelry. Her husband came in and tried to hold the guy for the police. The guy shot him and escaped.”

  “Harrison Burman was up there in the cabin at the time, wasn’t he?” Corning asked.

  Vare looked at the attorney, and his forehead puckered into a frown.

  “What the hell are you driving at?”

  “Nothing,” said Corning. “I’m just asking you about the case. You should remember it fairly well. It seems to me there’s a reward out for the murderer, or there was at one time.”

  Vare nodded slowly.

  “All right,” said Corning, “what are the facts, as nearly as you can remember them?”

  “Bixel and his wife went up to the cabin,” said Vare. “It wasn’t Bixel’s cabin. It was a cabin they had secured from a friend somewhere. In fact, come to think of it, I think it was a cabin Burman had hired or owned, or something. Anyway, Bixel and his wife went up there and asked Burman to come up and join them for a week-end.

  “While they were there,” he went on, “a yegg got into the room one night when Mrs. Bixel was dressing, and tried to stick her up for her jewels. George Bixel happened to come into the room. He grappled with the yegg, and Mrs. Bixel screamed. Burman was outside somewhere. He came in on the run, just as the shot was fired that killed Bixel, and the crook turned the gun on Mrs. Bixel. Burman struck at the crook and jiggled his arm so that the shot went wild. Then Burman tried to grab the man, but the man jumped to the window, took a shot at Burman, which missed, and jumped out and ran away. The police found the gun where he’d left it by the window.”

  “Fingerprints on the gun?” asked Corning.

  “Yes, fingerprints on the gun, and the police were able to trace it by the numbers, and I think they managed to identify the man who had pulled the job. He was an ex-convict; one who had been paroled. I can look it up in just a few minutes and let you know.”

  “All right,” Corning said. “Look it up and telephone me.”

  “Anything else?” asked Vare.

  Corning shook his head.

  “Go get that information,” he said, “and let me know as soon as you can. That’s what I’m after right now.”

  Vare nodded and left the office.

  Ken Corning got up from behind his desk and started pacing the floor. He paced back and forth for almost twenty minutes, and then the telephone rang. Vare’s voice came to him over the wire:

  “Got all the dope on that case, Corning,” he said. “The convict’s name was Richard Post. He’s got a long criminal record, most of it for petty stuff. He was paroled from the pen on a charge of forgery, and two weeks after his parole, pulled this hold-up in the mountain cabin.”

  “Have the police got out dodgers for him on this Bixel murder?” asked Corning.

  “Oh, sure,” said Vare. “I’ve got one of them here in the office.”

  “Gives fingerprints and everything?”

  “Yes. Gives his criminal record and a photograph—front and side.”

  “Thanks,” said Corning, “I think that’s all,” and hung up.

  He put through a call to Millwright, the handwriting expert.

  “Millwright,” he said, “the police have got a dodger out on a convict named Richard Post. He’s wanted for murder. The dodger has got his fingerprints, taken from the jail records; also front and side photographs. I wish you’d hunt up that dodger and check it with the fingerprints of this man, Harry Green, who was murdered.”

  “I can do that for you in just about five minutes,” Millwright said. “I’ve got the fingerprints from the morgue records, and we keep a file of the police dodgers.”

  “Okey,” said Corning, “I’ll hold the phone.”

  He held the receiver to his ear, lit a cigarette, and had smoked less than one-third of it, when Millwright’s excited voice came to his ears.r />
  “Got it!” he said. “And it’s a good hunch.”

  “The same man?” asked Corning.

  “The same man. There can’t be any doubt about it; the fingerprints check. The man that was murdered is the man the police have been looking for, under the name of Richard Post. He’s the one who murdered George Bixel in a hold-up in a mountain cabin.”

  “All right,” said Corning, “that’s all I wanted to know.”

  “What do you want me to do with the information?” asked Millwright. “Pass it on to the police? They’ll be interested to know that the Bixel murder case is cleared up.”

  Corning chuckled.

  “The reason that I got you to work on this thing,” he said, “instead of a man who had any police affiliations, is because I wanted to control the information, once I’d secured it.”

  “What do you want me to do with it?” asked Millwright.

  “Lock it up tight in a safe and then forget it’s there,” Ken Corning said slowly. “When I want to use it, I’ll ask you about it. Until then, sew it up in a sack.”

  Millwright’s voice was dubious.

  “That,” he said, “is plain dynamite. It’s going to get out sooner or later.”

  “All right,” Corning said, “let’s make it later. Forget that you know a thing about it.”

  He hung up the receiver, and grinned triumphantly.

  Corning threaded his way through the narrow alleys where the little houses were crowded close together. He found the one where he had called on Mrs. Ambrose, and after searching in vain for a bell button, resorted to his knuckles.

  There was no answer.

  He pounded again. After a minute or two, the door of an adjoining shack opened, and a hatchet-faced woman, with sharp black eyes, stared at him.

  “Are you in charge of these houses?” he asked*

  “Yes, what do you want?”

  “Is this the house occupied by Mrs. Ella Ambrose?”

  “She’s gone.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “I don’t know. She packed up all of a sudden, and got out inside of an hour. I thought maybe somebody was dead or something. She wouldn’t tell any of us anything. But she paid her rent when she left.”

  “Is that unusual?” asked Corning.

  “It was with her,” she said. “She was away behind with her rent, She paid it all up.”

  Corning stood, thinking, for a moment, then said:

  “I’d like to rent this house.”

  “All right,” she said, “it’s for rent if you’ve got the money. It’s cash in advance, and no wild parties. This is a respectable place, tenanted by people that are trying to get along.”

  Corning pulled out his wallet. “I’ll pay a month’s rent in advance.”

  “You’ll pay two months’ rent in advance,” she said, “I’ve had enough trouble with these houses.”

  Corning paid the small sum demanded as rent, pocketed the receipt, received the keys to the place, and returned to open the door.

  The place was furnished as he had seen it last. All that had been taken were the personal belongings of Mrs. Ambrose. The rooms still held that peculiar musty smell of stale cooking. There was the same rickety furniture with its faded upholstery, trying bravely to put up a bold front.

  Corning prowled about for fifteen or twenty minutes, then locked the door, pocketed the key, returned to his car, and went to his office.

  Helen Vail stared at him curiously.

  “You’re going to put on a one-act skit,” he told her.

  “What about?”

  “You remember the Mrs. Ella Ambrose that we got out on habeas corpus?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “All right. She’s moved away.”

  “Suddenly?”

  “Yes.”

  “I take it Santa Claus came down the chimney and gave her a big wad of coin and she moved away without leaving an address.”

  “That’s exactly what happened,” said Corning. “And it just occurred to me that the person who played Santa Claus for her doesn’t know her personally.”

  He tossed the key to the little shack on the desk, and said: “Get some of the oldest clothes you can find. Get your hair all snarled up and let your face go to seed. Take a little grease paint and make lines around your eyes.”

  She grinned.

  “Then,” he said, “go down to the place on Hampshire Street, where there’s a bunch of shacks clustered together in the back part of the block. It’s way out in the sticks. I’ll give you the address. It’s on a rent receipt somewhere.” He fished around in his pocket until he found the rent receipt, and tossed it over to her.

  “Then what do I do?” she asked.

  ‘Then,” he said, “you pretend that you’re Mrs. Ella Ambrose, and put on an act. I’ve got to write it out. Bring your book, and I’ll dictate the things I want you to say. The first thing we’ve got to do, however, is to make a decoy note.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Write,” he said, “in an angular, feminine handwriting a note addressed to Harrison Burman. It will read as follows:

  “ ‘I got to thinking things over, and I don’t know where I stand. I know well enough who’s back of the whole business. I’m going to talk with you before I go away and stay away. After I started away, I got to thinking things over. I’ve got a boy, and it ain’t fair to him, so I figured I’d come back. You’ve got to come down to my place and talk with me personally. I’ll be expecting you this evening. When you do that, I’ll be satisfied, but I ain’t going to do no wrong with a boy to bring up. Yours respectfully. Mrs. Ella Ambrose.’ ”

  “Think he’ll fall for that?” asked Helen Vail, looking at her shorthand notes with puckered eyes.

  “I don’t know,” said Corning, “If he doesn’t fall for that one, I’ll think up another one. But I think this will do the work. Write it without any punctuation and don’t use many capitals. Make it look illiterate—like the sort of letters we get from cranks.”

  Helen Vail set to work.

  After the letter was finished and mailed, Corning spent some time giving careful instructions to his alert secretary and having her repeat them back to him until he was satisfied.

  Helen Vail sat in a dilapidated overstuffed chair in Mrs. Ambrose’s former home. She wore stockings that were shapeless, with runs in each stocking. Her dress was ill-fitting and had evidently been dyed by unskilled hands. The color was a nondescript black which seemed to have been unequally spread over brown, with the brown peeping through in places. There were deep lines etched about her mouth and her eyes. In the dim light, she seemed twenty-five years older than her real age. She was patiently embroidering.

  Knuckles sounded on the door.

  “Come in,” she called.

  The door pushed open, and a big man with a curiously white face, stood on the threshold.

  “Mrs. Ambrose?” he asked.

  “Come in,” she said, in a thin toneless voice of great weariness.

  He closed the door behind him.

  “I’m Harrison Burman,” he said slowly. “I got your letter.”

  Helen Vail sighed. It sounded like a sigh of weariness, but it was of intense relief. The man did not know the real Ella Ambrose and had taken her at her word.

  “All right,” she said. “Come in and sit down. I want to talk with you.”

  Burman’s tone was cautious. “You want money?” he asked.

  “No. I just want to put my mind at rest.”

  “All right,” he told her irritably, “go ahead and put it at rest. You probably know that you’re double-crossing me. You’re not living up to your bargain. You had promised to be in Colorado by this time, and to stay there.”

  Helen Vail acted her part perfectly.

  “I can’t help it,” she said, in that same lifeless tone which is the unconscious badge of those who have given up the struggle.

  “I’m a mother with a boy to bring up and I want to bring him up
right.”

  “Well,” rasped Burman, “what is it you want?”

  “I know a lot more than most people think I know,” she said.

  “Have you got to go into all that?”

  “Yes,” she said, “into all of it.”

  “Then go ahead and get it over with.”

  His hands were pushed down deep into his coat pockets. Helen Vail kept her eyes downcast and spoke in the same weary monotone.

  “I knew Sam Driver,” she said, “and Driver talked to me, and I knew Harry Green, who wasn’t Harry Green, but was Richard Post, a man wanted for murder.”

  “Sure,” said Burman irritably, “we know all that. That’s why you got the money to get out of the country. If it hadn’t been for that, you wouldn’t have had a cent.”

  “I know,” she said, in that patient monotone of weariness. “And I know something else. Harry Green didn’t kill George Bixel. You paid him to take the rap. You got caught with Mrs. Bixel. George Bixel, her husband, caught you, and you shot him.

  “I guess you had to do it to keep him from shootin’ you. Maybe you’re to blame. Maybe you ain’t. That’s what bothers me. I got that on my conscience and I can’t sleep. You didn’t think I knew about it. You thought I just knew about planting Harry’s body in Sam Driver’s car. But I knew everything about what had happened. Sam Driver didn’t know it, because Harry never told him. Harry told me all he knew and Sam told me all he knew. So I knew everything.

  “There you was out with another man’s wife and mixed up in a shooting. She and her husband hadn’t taken that cottage at all and have you come up to join them. You and the woman had taken that cottage and the husband found you. You was a big publisher and you couldn’t afford to get mixed in a scandal, even if you could prove that you had to kill him to keep him from killing you. So you paid Harry to take the rap for murder and get out. You made him do it. But Harry spent the money, and then he wanted to get more, so he came back and got more.

  “First, you tried to scare him by saying you’d let him get tried for the murder and then he scared you by telling you to go ahead and his lawyer would show up what happened. There was a lot of things, I guess, that had to be kinda shaded over. Things that you didn’t want the authorities looking into too much, about how long you’d been up there and how long Mrs. Bixel had been up there and how long her husband had been up there.