Honest Money Read online

  Corning gripped the receiver.

  “How long has that warrant been issued?” he asked.

  Don Graves chuckled.

  “It’s on my desk for an okey on the complaint now,” he said. “I wasn’t certain that I was going to okey a warrant on it; but I’m doing it now, The more I think of it, the more it seems like an aggravated case. I wouldn’t doubt if you got a jail sentence.”

  Ken Corning said: “Let me talk to the D.A. He won’t stand for all these shyster tactics that you use, Graves, and you know it.”

  Graves said: “The D.A.’s busy. He won’t talk over the phone. You know that as well as I do. Why don’t you come to the office and make a squawk.”

  “Yeah,” said Corning, “and have you get that warrant served on me, and me thrown in the can before I got a chance to see the D.A. I wasn’t born yesterday. You can just try and find me to serve that warrant, and you can just try to find out who my client is, and where.”

  Graves said: “We know who she is. That don’t interest us any more. But there’s another angle to this case that we want to investigate. We’re interested in knowing where she is. And we’re going to find out. You can’t prepare to take part in this case and keep under cover at the same time.”

  “The hell I can’t,” said Ken Corning, and slammed the receiver on the hook.

  Helen Vail said, blowing cigarette smoke out with the words: “You shouldn’t lose your temper and cuss when you’re talking with Don Graves, Ken. He’s the kind that’s always trying to make people lose their tempers.”

  Ken stared at her with his eyes cold as twin chunks of ice reflecting the glint of the Northern Lights.

  “Before I get done with that bald-headed crook I’ll show him something. He’s hand in glove with Carl Dwight and the other crooked politicians that are running this town. The D. A., himself, wouldn’t stand for the stuff they pull, if he knew about it. He just leaves things in the hands of his deputies, and they’re a hot bunch of crooks! They’re giving that reporter a warrant just because they know that Mrs. Colton came to my office, and they think I’m hiding her.”

  Helen Vail grinned.

  “Well you are, aren’t you?”

  He nodded grimly, reached for his hat.

  “You bet I am,” he said, “and I’m going to keep on hiding her! That outfit up there is run by the newspapers. The reporters come in and yell for a fresh angle on the murder mystery, and the D.A.’s office has to dig it up for them. The more spectacular the better. Well, there’s just one way to beat that game. I’m going to get one jump ahead of them, and keep there.”

  She watched him with speculative eyes.

  “Be back?” she asked.

  “Some time,” he said. “You stick around the Gladstone. Thought I told you not to leave that woman alone for a minute.” She grinned. “That was because she was figuring on bumping herself off. She’s over it now She’s going to cooperate. It’s a wise steno that knows when it’s safe to disobey orders.”

  He frowned down at her.

  “You’re a wise little rat,” he said. “Some day that independence of yours is going to get you fired.”

  She grinned at him, and he slammed the door.

  “Lock it when you go out and turn the key in at the desk,” he called, and then went striding down the corridor. She could hear the pound of his heels on the carpet, all the way from the door of the room to the elevator shaft.

  Nell Blake was plain, thirty-two and a man-hater. She did her hair back from her forehead in firm lines of rigid precision. She wore spectacles and made no attempt to disguise the fact. She scorned the use of cosmetics, and sat very erect. She was by far the most competent stenographer Harry Ladue had ever hired.

  She sat at the lunch table and stared across at Ken Corning.

  “So you followed me here to talk about the murder?” she asked.

  Ken Corning nodded grimly.

  “I don’t know you, and I don’t know anything about the murder,” said Nell Blake in firm, precise tones. “I don’t want to be annoyed, and unless you leave me I shall call an officer.”

  Ken Corning grinned at her.

  “Listen,” he said, “sooner or later you’re going on the witness stand, maybe more than once. I’m going to be the attorney for the defense, and I’m going to cross-examine you. If you’re willing to be fair with me, I won’t hurt you much with a cross-examination. But you try to ritz me now, and I’ll rip you wide open.”

  She blinked her eyes from behind the spectacles.

  “Oh,” she said, in a slightly altered voice, “you’re the lawyer, are you? I thought you were another reporter, trying to force a sex angle into the case.”

  “I’m not. I’m trying to keep it out, if you want to know.”

  The mouth was a firm, thin line. The eyes behind the spectacles were cool and calculating.

  “Precisely what,” she asked, “was it that you wished to know? I have exactly one hour for lunch, and I don’t propose to waste it listening to some man talk in circles. If you want to interview me, get to the point and keep there.”

  He leaned across the table.

  “You were in the office at the time of the shooting?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who else?”

  “Adella Parks, the other stenographer; and Miss Althea Kent, his private secretary.”

  “All right. Now you and Miss Parks had desks on one side of the outer office, and Althea Kent had hers in a corner near the door to the private office. That right?”

  “Yes.”

  “According to the newspaper accounts, George Colton came to call on Ladue. He gave his name to Miss Kent. She telephoned in to Ladue, and Ladue said to show him in. It was about nine o’clock at night. The office was working full blast trying to get out some letters in connection with a real estate campaign.

  “Colton walked into the inside office and was heard to say: ’Hello, Harry,’ then the door closed and there was silence for a few seconds, then the sound of two shots. When the door was opened, the inner office was in darkness, Ladue was lying on the floor, dead, and Colton was yelling that Ladue was shot.

  “There was a gun on the floor. It was subsequently identified as having been Colton’s gun. He admits that it was his, but swears that he didn’t bring it with him. He says he was talking with Ladue when the lights went out and someone shot.” Corning quit speaking.

  “Well?” asked Nell Blake, in a coolly superior tone of voice.

  “I want to know if those facts are correct,” said Corning.

  “They are.”

  “Can you add to them?”

  She hesitated, sipped her coffee, looked up at him and said: “No.”

  He kept his eyes on hers.

  “Had there been someone else in the office that evening?”

  “Which office?”

  “The entrance office. Had anyone else gone in to see Ladue?”

  “No.”

  “How about the other office? Had anyone else gone in there? There’s a door that opens out to the corridor. It’s used as an exit from the private office, but a person could have come in there.”

  “Not unless Ladue had let them in.”

  “Well, did he let anyone come in?”

  She sipped her coffee again.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  Ken Corning drummed with his fingers on the edge of the table. His eyes dwelt upon the girl’s face in calm appraisal. “You were all three in the outer office?”

  “At the time of the shooting. Yes.”

  “Exactly who was in the private office at the time of the shooting, beside Ladue and Colton?” rasped Corning.

  She said: “Why, I didn’t know that anybody was. If anybody had been it’s almost certain that Mr. Colton would have known it, isn’t it?”

  Ken Corning stared at her. She lowered her eyes and sipped the coffee again.

  Corning said: “The newspapers say the lights were turned off at the switch. Why would C
olton have turned off the lights?”

  She set down the coffee cup and let her eyes stare into his.

  “If,” she said, “you’re Mr. Colton’s attorney, don’t you think that would be a good question to ask him?”

  Ken Corning pushed aside a sugar bowl and salt cellar so that he could lean his elbows on the table. He thrust his weight forward on those elbows, his forearms crossed, the lingers gripping the bend of the elbow.

  “All right,” he said, “if you feel that way about it, I want to know what there was about that inner office that you’re concealing!”

  She reached for the coffee cup again, then raised her eyes to his. They were cool, impersonal.

  “Am I concealing something?” she asked.

  He nodded grimly.

  “Yes,” he said. “Your answers ring true enough whenever I ask you about the outer office. But every time I mention that inner office you start reaching for that coffee cup. Now tell me what there is about that inner office that you’re not sure about.”

  She locked her eyes with his, felt the full impact of those coldly questioning eyes of his, and lowered her own.

  “Come on,” said Ken Corning. “There’s a human life at stake, you know.”

  She spoke more slowly now, and in a lower tone. She seemed less sure of herself.

  “We have an extension telephone system,” she said. “Miss Kent handles the incoming calls and puts through those that should go to Mr. Ladue, and weeds out the others. She stepped out of the office for a moment, and a call came in. I stepped over to her desk to put it through.

  “It was a man by the name of Perkins. He’d been at the office before. I recognized his voice and, in addition to that, he gave me his name. I think he was a detective. He asked for Mr. Ladue and I put the call through. I should have hung up then, but I wanted to make certain that I’d handled it all right, because Mr. Ladue was very particular about his calls, so I waited on the line.

  “I heard Mr. Perkins call Mr. Ladue by his first name. He said, as nearly as I can remember: ‘I’ve got some important information for you, Harry. I want to come right up.’ And Mr. Ladue said for him to come along; that the time limit was about up.

  “That was all I heard. I went back to my desk. Miss Kent came in, but Mr. Perkins didn’t come in. At least he didn’t come to the outer office. After a while Mr, Ladue rang for Miss Kent to come in and bring her book. She stepped into the office, and I thought there was just a bit of surprise in her manner as she opened the door to the inner office. It was just the way she would have acted if she’d expected to find Mr. Ladue alone, and had found someone else in there with him.”

  “That all?” asked Ken.

  “That’s all.”

  “I can’t very well go before a jury with that as a defense,” he told her.

  She replied testily: “I didn’t say you could. You’re the lawyer, I’m not. You asked me for the facts, and I gave them to you. Incidentally, if you should mention that I told you this, as though I thought it was at all significant, I’d be out of a job—to say the least,”

  He looked at her with thought-squinted eyes.

  “It’s a corporation of some sort, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. It handles real estate.”

  “And Ladue was the head of it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t he handle the purchase for the city of a big tract? Wasn’t there something about his getting options and selling them to the city?”

  Her voice became utterly cold.

  “If you wish to discuss the business affairs of my employers, you will have to ask your questions elsewhere. I am merely telling you what I know about the murder.”

  Ken Corning said: “Can you describe this man, Perkins?”

  “Yes,” she said. “He was at the office a few times. He’s about forty-five with very broad shoulders and a short neck. He carries his head pretty well forward, and has a pair of shrewd gray eyes that seem to twinkle at times. He usually wears a tweed suit… .”

  “I know him,” said Corning. “His name’s Charles C. Perkins. He works as a detective. I think he’s on the force.”

  “I never did know,” said Nell Blake, “exactly what he did. And now, if you’ll pardon me, I’ll be leaving.”

  “One question more. Have you asked Althea Kent about any of this?”

  “Certainly not. You know what she told the newspaper reporters. I’m certainly not fool enough to go to her and insinuate that she was concealing any facts.”

  Ken Corning reached for the lunch check by Nell Blake’s plate.

  “Permit me,” he said

  She drew herself up with dignity, taking the check and folding it in her fingers.

  “I am perfectly capable of paying my own way,” she said, coolly, turned on her heel and walked away.

  Ken Corning got the Gladstone on the telephone and asked for Miss Seaton in room five-thirty-six. After a few moments he heard Helen Vail’s voice over the telephone.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “In a speak down on Madison,” he said. “Know anything?”

  “Lots,” she told him. “I got to thinking about the mail, and wondering if there might not be something important in it. I wanted to get it. So I went down to a public telephone booth and called the assistant janitor of the building.”

  Ken Corning said: “ You mean the one with the patent leather hair that’s got such a case on you?”

  She giggled.

  “Well,” he rasped, “go on What was in the mail?”

  She giggled again, and said: “A circular from a house that wanted to save you money on socks and neckties, and another circular advertising a privately printed book that was being sold to doctors and lawyers—and anybody else that had the price.”

  “That all?”

  “That was all.”

  “Well, what the devil? What’s so important?”

  “It was what the assistant janitor told me,” she said. “He said the wire had been tapped. They’re fixed to listen in on your phone calls. He found it out by accident. He came into the office when they were working. They ¥/ant … you know who … and they figure you’re in touch with her. They’re waiting for her to try and call up, or for you to call the office.”

  Ken Corning rasped out a curse.

  “Naughty, naughty,” she chided. “They’ll take the phone out if you talk that way. Central might be listening in, and she’s got tender ears.”

  Ken Corning said: “Okey. Never mind the comedy. You stick around there until I call you again. And don’t disobey orders again. I’ll tie a can to you one of these days for taking liberties with instructions.”

  “You’ve got to admit,” she said, “that it always works out for the best.”

  He slammed the receiver back on its hook, left the telephone booth and had two rye whiskies, one right after the other, His eyes were cold and hard, and the black pupils seemed like bits of coal against lumps of ice.

  The apartment house corridor was redolent with the odors of cooking. There were odors of fresh meals which seeped through the cracks of doors and transoms, and there were the stale odors of long dead meals that clung tenaciously to wall paper and carpet to give a musty smell of human occupancy.

  Apartment 13 B was near the end of the corridor. Ken Corning raised his hand and knocked.

  After a moment there was the rustle of motion from the interior of the apartment. The door opened and afternoon sunlight streamed through the window and into the corridor.

  Althea Kent was the exact antithesis of Nell Blake.

  Her figure was distinctively feminine. Her complexion was well cared for. Her eyes held a deliberately provocative expression. The lips were full and shapely. There was a vague something about her, as elusive as the perfume of a flower and yet as persistently suggestive, which spoke of a knowledge of her attractiveness to men.

  “What do you want?” she asked,

  Ken Corning said: “I want to ask you a few ques
tions.”

  “Come in,” she invited.

  As the outer door closed behind him, she asked: “Are you a reporter?”

  “No. I’m investigating it from another angle. I want to find out one or two things that don’t check up. The theory has been that Colton switched off the light and killed Ladue in the dark. Can you give me any reason why he should have done that?”

  She shook her head. “Colton killed him. You’ll have to ask him for his reasons,” she said.

  Corning nodded.

  “The office was dark when you rushed in there?”

  “Yes, except for the light that came from the outer office.”

  “The switch is near the entrance to the private office?”

  “Yes.”

  “You turned it on when you went in?”

  “Shortly afterwards.”

  “All right. Now think. Did the lights go on when you turned the switch on?”

  “No,” she said. “Not when I tried to turn it on the first time. I was excited. I didn’t punch the button clear in, I guess. I remember snapping at it, and I heard a click, but the lights didn’t go on. A little while later I tried it again and that time I snapped the switch on all right and the lights went on.”

  Ken Corning heaved a big sigh.

  “Okey,” he said. “Now tell me about Perkins. He was in the office when you went in there the first time, wasn’t he?”

  At his question she stiffened. She seemed to be holding her breath. When she spoke her voice had lost its cooing note of affectation, and her eyes were cold and hard.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “Perkins,” said Ken Corning, without hesitation. “He was in the office when you looked m there to take some dictation a little while before Colton came. Was he there when Colton arrived?”

  She said, in a cold monotone: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And who are you? You haven’t told me that yet.”

  “My name,” he said, “is Corning. I’m a lawyer.”

  “Representing Colton, I suppose?”