He gravely shook hands with me.
I walked out; went to one of the gambling houses and looked around for advertising matter. I finally found a big piece of cardboard that would just fit in the envelope. The cardboard advertised the advantages of gambling at that particular place of business.
I put it in the envelope, sealed the envelope, went to the post office, got airmail stamps and special delivery stamps; then addressed the envelope to Clayton Dawson at the Dawson Re-Debenture Discount Security Company at Denver, Colorado, wrote the address of the office building where Helen Loomis maintained the mail drop service, and dropped the envelope in the mail.
I looked up the schedule of planes to Denver and won a little over seven hundred and fifty dollars at the crap table before I had to leave.
I rented a drive-yourself car in Denver; had a good night’s sleep, and the next morning, bright and early, was where I could watch the office of Helen Loomis.
Once that red envelope with the Chinese lettering on it came in special delivery, I knew she was going to telephone her client, and I felt certain that the man who had given me the name of Clayton Dawson wasn’t going to let any grass grow under his feet in finding out what was in that distinctive letter.
At nine-fifteen, a special delivery mailman delivered the mail to the Loomis office. At ten-fifteen, an attractive young woman, in a tight-fitting outfit which showed her figure to advantage, entered the office. Ten seconds later she came out carrying the big, red envelope.
She made some effort to try and keep the envelope from being quite so conspicuous, but I had chosen it with care. Outside of putting it in a brief case, she couldn’t have done a thing with it where it wouldn’t have stuck out like a sore thumb.
She took the elevator to the ground floor, and I was in the same cage with her.
She was exceedingly naïve, didn’t pay the slightest attention to me.
I had expected a long chase by automobile, but she simply crossed the street to the adjoining office building and went up to the seventh floor.
I hadn’t intended to be so brash about it, nor had I expected to find it so easy, but since she was completely engrossed in her thoughts and apparently carrying on only a routine business errand, I got on the elevator and went up with her.
I was just a piece of animated scenery as far as she was concerned.
I had a chance to look her over as she walked down the corridor on the seventh floor. She had streamlined hips, legs that were long, straight and with just the right curves. I had the impression she was conscious of her beauty but didn’t flaunt it. She went about her business quietly, competently, and the way she held her shoulders showed that she had lots of self-respect.
She was a good kid.
I followed her to an office marked Alting L. Badger, Investments.
She opened the door and went in. I followed.
There was a receptionist at the desk with a telephone switchboard and another vacant desk.
My girl walked over to the vacant desk, picked up an office telephone, held the red envelope in front of her and started talking over the intercom.
She hung up, and a moment later a door marked “private” was pushed open with some violence and the man I had known as Clayton Dawson hurried across the office to the girl’s desk, picked up the envelope, looked at it, frowned, turned it over, studied it again; then turned and started back for the private office.
“Good morning, Mr. Dawson,” I said.
He whirled, looked at me, and his jaw dropped.
I said, “If you’re not too busy, I’d like to have a few moments with you about that matter we were discussing.”
He looked hurriedly around the office, saw the look on the faces of the two young women, said, “Very well, come in.”
I followed him into a sumptuous office.
“All right,” he said, “tell me, how did you do it? I suppose that envelope had something to do with it, but how in hell did you— Oh, well, it doesn’t make any difference. It’s done now. What’s the problem?”
“The problem,” I said, “is that a Los Angeles cop who is two-fisted, straight-shooting, belligerent and doesn’t like glib talkers, has got his hatchet out for me. He’s going to take my license.”
“Why?”
“Because I tried to protect my client.”
“What client?”
“You.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
I said, “You seem to know all about it.”
“I know a good deal about it,” he said.
“I suppose Colton Essex has reported by telephone?”
“All right,” he said, “suppose he has reported by telephone. Suppose I’ve retained him? What then?”
“I just wanted to know,” I said.
“They can’t touch you with a ten-foot pole,” he said. “The officer knows who your client is and knows that a settlement has been made in the accident case. He’ll never be able to find the victim. He’ll never be able to prove you compounded a felony.”
“That’s not what’s bothering me,” I said. “Your attorney explained that very carefully and, I thought, very forcefully.”
“Well, what are you worried about?”
“What I’m mixed in.”
“You aren’t mixed in anything.”
“The hell I’m not,” I told him. “There was a fake accident. It was all fixed up so that it would make a phony hit-and-run charge. I was to settle that, and as soon as I had made the settlement either you or your attorney tipped off Sergeant Sellers that I’d squared a hit-and-run case.
“That means that somebody knew generally of my relationship with Sergeant Sellers. It means that I was picked as a lamb for the slaughter... And you can call that a pun if you want to.
“It means that I was to be put on the spot; that I was to decoy Sellers to the apartment of your so-called daughter and to the automobile she was supposed to have been driving. Then Sellers was to have the police laboratory go over that car carefully and find threads from the clothing Mrs. Chester was wearing at the time of the supposed accident.
“This would give Sellers a perfect case of hit-and-run if he could find the victim and if he could prove the accident.
“In all probability, he can’t find the victim, and even if he does he can’t prove an accident. That leaves me holding the bag. Sellers can’t quite take my license, but he can hold it against me as long as I live.
“For your information, I don’t like to be picked as a fall guy.”
“How much do you want?” he asked.
“I want plenty.”
“I’m not going to be blackmailed. I don’t like blackmailers.”
“I’m not talking about blackmail. I’m talking about compensation, but before I talk about that I want to know what this is all about.”
“What do you mean?”
I said, “You staged a fake accident in Los Angeles. You staged it so that it would appear the woman we’ll call Phyllis was driving the car; so there’d be circumstantial evidence showing that she had been driving the car.
“You know and I know that there wasn’t any accident; therefore, Phyllis wasn’t driving the car at the time of the accident. Therefore, the only real reason you would be so anxious to risk all this is to give yourself an alibi.
“In other words, you want to show that either you or Phyllis, or both, were in Los Angeles at the time that accident was supposed to have taken place.
“The reason you want to show that is not because you want to have it appear you were in Los Angeles, but because it is necessary for you to have it appear that you were not in Denver.
“You’ve taken a chance on a rap which you can beat in Los Angeles to give you an alibi on a rap which you probably can’t beat in Denver.
“Now, if I work hard enough I can find out what it is. It isn’t anything minor. You wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble and taken all those chances unless it was something of major importance, something that involves your reputation here. Perhaps a hit-and-run while you were intoxicated; perhaps something even more serious.”