“And you made the mistake of not telling me what I was up against so I could have covered my back trail. As it was, I went out in the open without making any attempt to cover up and by this time the authorities know that the firm of Cool and Lam is interested in the Karl Endicott case. Since the police have nasty, skeptical minds, they wouldn’t believe that my interest in the case was purely for the purpose of locating quote good old Karl unquote who gave you an idea for quote a story unquote while you were in Paris. They would naturally think that we were interested in some angle of the murder, and, within a very short time, the police are going to want to know why we are interested.
“The third mistake you made was in not giving us an address where you could be reached so that when I found out what we were up against I could have warned you and told you not to come to the office.
“However, since all those mistakes have been made you’ll have to take your chances. Next time you employ detectives tell them what you want. In the meantime, give us fifty bucks.”
“But... but...” Ansel said, sputtering like a cold motorcycle motor, “you’re jumping at conclusions.”
“Detectives sometimes do that,” I told him.
He squirmed around in the chair. “I’m sorry,” he said, at length.
“Well,” I said, “we’ve done our job. We got you the information you said you wanted. We’re not mind readers. Give my partner the fifty bucks you owe us.”
I started for the door.
“Hey, wait a minute!” Bertha said. “Where are you going?”
“Out!” I told her.
Ansel sat there looking very much nonplused.
I walked out of the office, went down to the parking lot, got in the agency heap, started the motor and waited.
It was nearly fifteen minutes before Ansel came out. He looked over his shoulder apprehensively a couple of times, but seemed reassured when he found no one appeared to be taking any interest in him.
As it turned out he had his car parked in the same parking lot where we kept ours. I had a good look as he drove out. It was a serviceable, nondescript Chevy, four years old, and the license number was AWY 421.
I followed him for a ways. He played it about half-smart. After he got out to where there wasn’t so much traffic, he started cutting figure eights around four-block squares, obviously looking in his rear view mirror to see if anyone was taking an interest in what he was doing.
I quit following him, drove on down the main boulevard half a mile, parked on a side street and waited.
He must have gone through a lot of complicated maneuvers to shake off any pursuit, because it was a good twenty minutes before I saw his car sailing along down the main boulevard.
By that time he had convinced himself no one was following him, and it was a cinch to drop in behind him.
I trailed him to a bungalow out on Betward Drive.
He parked the car and I curbed the agency heap half a block down the street.
I saw him get out and enter the bungalow.
When he hadn’t come out after thirty minutes, I drove back to the office.
The girls had gone home. Bertha was sitting there alone waiting.
“Where the hell have you been?”
“Out.”
“What’s the idea of getting up and leaving a client in the middle of a conference?”
“We found out everything we agreed to find out for him.”
“So what?” Bertha said. “If you were half as brainy as you’re supposed to be, you’d have realized that merely because we’d finished one job is no sign he wouldn’t give us another.”
“I felt certain he was going to offer us another,” I said.
“What do you mean by that?” she asked.
“He wants us to find out if it’s safe for him to come back.”
“What do you mean, safe for him to come back?”
I said, “A cabdriver by the name of Nickerson took a fare out to Endicott’s house the night of the murder. Nickerson described the fare as being a tall, slender man with dark eyes, a man in his late twenties, who was carrying a brief case. Shortly before he got to the Endicott house, he opened the brief case, took out a gun and put it in his hip pocket. The taxi driver thought it was a stick-up. He was watching in the rearview mirror. It wasn’t a stick-up. The fare kept on going to the Endicott ranch, paid off the cab, gave the driver a dollar tip and walked up to the front door. The cabdriver went on about his business. Next day he told the police.”
“Nickerson, eh?” Bertha asked.
I nodded.
“The only witness?”
“He’s the only one the police ever said anything about. There was a banker in the living room, a chap named Hale. He had a business appointment with Endicott.”
“What happened?” Bertha asked.
“It was a night when the servants were all gone. Endicott had gone through a marital crisis with his wife a short time before and his wife had packed up a suitcase, taken her car and driven away. Fortunately for her the wife stopped at a gasoline station in Citrus Grove. It was a station where she had a charge account and she had the car filled up with gas and checked for oil. The attendant remembers the time because he was just closing up the place when she drove in.
“Hale said the doorbell rang. Endicott excused himself and went to the door. Hale heard some man engage in a brief conversation with Endicott, then he heard steps in the hallway, heard voices, and after a minute or so the sound of a shot from upstairs.
“Hale ran upstairs and it took him a moment to locate Endicott who was in an upstairs bedroom. Endicott was lying on the floor in a pool of blood. He was stone dead. A .38 bullet had smashed into the back of his head.”
Bertha’s little, greedy eyes were glittering with intense concentration.
“What about the cabdriver?” she asked.
“The cabdriver knows that the man reached the house a minute or so before nine o’clock, because he went off duty at nine. He was seven minutes late turning in his cab at the station. The witness Hale places the shooting at exactly nine o’clock, and the service station man at Citrus Grove says Mrs. Endicott drove in, then left his station at exactly nine o’clock. He was just closing up.
“Mrs. Endicott drove to San Diego. No one knew where she was. Later on, she told police she knew nothing about the murder until the next morning when she heard it on the radio. She returned for the funeral. Endicott left no will. His wife inherited everything. There were no other heirs.
“After a few months Mrs. Endicott settled down in the Whippoorwill, the Endicott home. She seldom goes out and is reported to be living the life of a recluse.
“Hale has told intimate friends that shortly before the murder Endicott had confided in him his wife had left him for good, that Endicott was pretty well broken up and exceedingly nervous.
“The police have the idea Endicott was paying blackmail to someone and that the person who killed him may have been the blackmailer.”
“How come?” Bertha asked.
“Endicott had drawn twenty thousand dollars in cash that morning. It was the third time he had drawn large amounts in cash within a period of three months. The other times he had drawn ten thousand. He had told Hale he was expecting a visitor who would take only a few moments.”
“Fry me for an oyster!” Bertha Cool said. “Ten grand a month! That’s some blackmail!”
“That’s some blackmail,” I agreed.
Bertha thought things over.
“Did you let him sell you a bill of goods or are we in the clear?” I asked her.
“What the hell do you mean, ‘a bill of goods’?” Bertha asked.
I said, “He matches the description of the guy described by the taxi driver, the one who called on Endicott a few minutes before the shot was fired. Police think this guy was the blackmailer and that Endicott issued some sort of an ultimatum that he was through paying.”