“Come on, Edison the Boy,” I said. “Turn on your recording machine. Play it back for yourself. I said, quote, ‘Walter, I’m going to shoot you in the belly.’ Unquote.”
“Richard,” Walter said, “have you gone mad? Put away that gun.”
“I’ve had enough of this, Walter,” I said. “I’m going to do something desperate. I already did something desperate. I just beat up one of the men who wrecked my apartment. And guess who he turned out to be? Your friend Max’s chauffeur. Isn’t that interesting?”
Behind me, I heard the door quietly opening.
“Oh, Jimmie,” Walter said. “Come in.”
“Oh, Jimmie,” I said, without turning around, “beat it.”
“Jimmie,” Walter said, “would you be kind enough to take away my luncheon tray? I’m finished. You may leave the champagne, however.”
Jimmie began to make small, nervous sounds.
“Oh, it’s quite all right,” Walter said. “Take the tray and go. Richard is a wild one, but perfectly harmless. Run along now, like a dear boy. I’ll ring you if I should need anything.”
Jimmie picked up the tray and left.
I heard the door close again.
I brandished the revolver wildly under his nose. “I’m going to find out who killed Jean Dahl. And I’m going to find out why she was killed and I’m going to find out right now. Personally, I think your friend Maxie did it.”
“I refuse even to discuss the matter with you until you put down that gun. As you obviously know nothing whatever about the use of firearms, you are quite likely, in your present hysterical condition, to pull the trigger accidentally.”
He was, of course, absolutely right.
I lowered the gun.
“That’s better,” Walter said. “Now then, if you are prepared to continue this discussion in a reasonable fashion, I will tell you this much. Your surmise, however wild, was shared by someone else. An hour or two before her untimely demise, Jean Dahl was under the impression that Max Shriber was planning to murder her.”
“What makes you think that?”
“She told me,” Walter said simply.
I exploded. I roared, “She told you! First you said you didn’t even know her. You told me you didn’t know who she was, and had never seen her before in your life. Damn it, Walter, if you don’t stop lying to me I’m going to kill you right now.”
Walter giggled.
Very deliberately he took a cigarette from the box, tapped it and finally lighted it. “Well,” he said finally. “Since we are going to be partners, Richard, I suppose we might as well know the worst about each other.”
“Tell me the worst about you, Walter.” I stared at him coldly.
Walter sighed. “If my sordid confessions are distasteful to you,” he said, “I ask you to remember that you brought them on yourself.”
I did not say anything. I continued to stare.
“As you may have suspected,” Walter said, “I neither maintain this lavish establishment nor give my extravagant parties solely out of a desire to bring pleasure and entertainment to my fellow man. I find that by running what might in another day have been called a salon, I am in a position to discover a great deal about what goes on in the world. In short, my guests supply me with inside information, and I in turn supply them with entertainment.
“I provide my guests with food, drink, and stimulating, intellectual companionship. With certain guests, it is sometimes necessary that I provide other kinds of companionship. Therefore it is sometimes necessary to have on tap a number of professional companions. Let us say Jean Dahl was a professional companion. Of the one-hundred-dollars-a-night variety.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Let me get this straight.”
“Now really, Richard, I don’t know how I can make it more plain. Jean Dahl was a call girl whom I frequently hired for the entertainment of one of my more special guests. As I was the source of a substantial portion of her income, she quite naturally regarded me as her benefactor. You may not believe this, but I thought of that girl as my daughter. Nevertheless, when she suggested that poor Max wanted to murder her, I could hardly credit such a thing. Poor Max wouldn’t harm a fly.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “What made her think Max Shriber wanted to murder her? What motive could he have had?”
Walter looked thoughtful. “Well, for one thing,” he said, “she was blackmailing him.”
I walked slowly across the room to the bar and mixed myself a drink. “Jean Dahl was blackmailing Max Shriber?” I said. “How? With what?”
“It is a long, rather unpleasant story,” Walter said. “It goes back to poor Charles Anstruther’s accident. As you know, the poor soul blew his brains out with a gun. He was absolutely stinking at the time, of course.”
“So,” I said. “What does that have to do with Jean Dahl?”
“The night of the accident,” Walter said, “Anstruther was not alone. He had a young lady in his hotel room. Jean Dahl.”
My head was beginning to spin.
“You must try to see the whole picture,” Walter said. “If you want to understand this you must take the broad view. As I have told you, a small corporation with myself at the head had just purchased outright all title to Anstruther’s new book. Anstruther had been given a check for one hundred thousand dollars as payment in full.”
I was trying desperately to follow Walter’s story, but something jarred in my mind. “Wait a minute,” I said. “I thought you said you paid one hundred fifty thousand dollars. I thought you said the three of you each put up fifty thousand.”
Walter looked annoyed for a moment. “Anstruther was, in effect, paid one hundred fifty thousand dollars. It happens that my fifty thousand dollars was paid not in cash but in services.”
I laughed out loud.
“You mean you were getting a free ride,” I said. “Let me guess. Your two partners thought you were putting up an equal share of cash.” I could suddenly see this part of it clearly. “Let me ask you something, Walter. Did Anstruther know you told Max and Janis the price was one hundred fifty thousand? Or did you tell him that the three of you together were putting up one hundred thousand?”
“You have the mind of a certified public accountant,” Walter said in injured tones.
“O.K., Walter,” I said, “continue with the broad view. You were double crossing your partners and you were double crossing Anstruther. You told him you could only get one hundred thousand dollars for his book, and you told your partners they would have to pay one hundred fifty thousand. So Janis and Max between them put up one hundred thousand dollars-what they believed was their share-but what was really the whole price. So you were getting a third interest free. O.K. Go on. You gave Anstruther a check for one hundred thousand dollars. And he gave you the book?”
“Not so fast, Richard. Anstruther was a neurotic man with an ugly suspicious side to his nature. He refused to deliver the book to us till the check had cleared and he had the cash.”
“That was very wise of him,” I said.
“And the afternoon the check cleared, Anstruther disappeared with the one hundred thousand dollars in his pocket. He was found by the police three days later with a bullet through his head. The one hundred thousand dollars had vanished and, worst of all, we discovered that we had been duped by this unscrupulous man. There was no new book.”
I laughed. I laughed uproariously. I laughed till the tears ran down my face. “So he conned you,” I said. “So the three sharp crooks get taken. So he sold you the rights to nothing for one hundred thousand dollars and managed to spend it all before you found him. I think that’s wonderful.”
“It is not nearly so amusing as you imagine,” Walter said.
“So that’s why nobody can see the new book,” I said. “Because there isn’t any new book.”
Walter smiled. “Now, now, Richard, don’t be naive. Do you seriously imagine that we would allow an investment like that to go up in smoke? You must try to grasp for a moment the basic laws of supply and demand. People everywhere are clamoring for a new novel by Charles Anstruther. Motion picture companies are bidding. Magazines are begging for the rights to serialize. We should be very poor businessmen indeed if we did not at least try to meet that demand.”