This guy knows about the letters. He fixes to get me out here after 'em. In doin' this he knows that he must be puttin' the idea in my head that Henrietta bumped Granworth Aymes an' he also takes the trouble to send a picture out to somebody here so's they'll know I'm me.
An' what is the big idea behind all this? Is it to get me out here because it will be easier to rub me out in this place - easier than anywhere else?
I get up off the box. This counterfeit case is beginnin' to look sweet an' interestin' to me. It is gettin' so tied up that in a minute I shall think I done it myself.
But way back in my head is an idea that I'm goin' to work on. The idea that it was this secretary bird Burdell who sent me that anonymous letter so's I should get out here an' get next to Henrietta, an' maybe start something that is goin' to end up with her bein' pinched on a first degree murder charge. An' if I am right about this what is he doin' it for? Is he doin' it because he thinks that he is helpin' justice that way or because he's got some reason for wanting to put Henrietta on the spot?
I take another swig at the tequila an' I put the picture of me back in the garbage can - which is where a whole lot of crooks would like to see me too - an' I scram. I get outside an' get the car goin' an' I slide back in the direction of Palm Springs, because I think that it is time that I got busy on this case. I reckon that if nobody else won't start anything then I had better start something myself.
When I get back to the Miranda House Hotel I find a telegraph waiting for me. It is coded an' is in answer to the one I sent to the 'G' office in New York asking for information about the people in Granworth Aymes' employ at the time of his death. It says:
Aymes employees as follows stop. Langdon Burdell secretary in service seven years now carrying on Ayrnes business under own name New York stop. Enrico Palantza butler at apartment in service four years present location unknown stop. Marie Therese Dubuinet maid to Mrs Henrietta Aymes now in service Mrs John Viaford New York stop. Juan Termiglo chauffeur service three years present location unknown stop. Despatching to you photographs Palantza Dubuinet and Termiglo within two days stop.
This don't tell me very much an' between you an' me I didn't see just then that havin' pictures of these guys was goin' to do me much good neither.
I light a cigarette an' I do some thinkin'. I reckon that just for the moment I ain't goin' to do much good around here. Whether Henrietta decides that she is goin' to hitch up with Maloney or Fernandez ain't goin' to get me no place.
Another thing is that I wanta have a little conversation with this guy Burdell. I reckon he can tell me a coupla things I would like to know, an' if he can then I reckon that I am comm' back here to start something good an' proper.
Back of my head I have gotta big idea that Henrietta is holdin' out on me; that she is twicin' me good an' proper. There is something about that dame's face that is very nice, but that don't prove nothin' at all.
I remember a dame in Nogales on the Arizona-Mexico border. She was a honey. This dame had a face like a saint an' she spoke that way too. She was Mexican an' she figured to get some more culture an' teach herself English by readin' the History of the Civil War to her husband every night. He was a bit older than she was an' of a very doubtin' disposition. While she was readin' the History of the Civil War with one hand she was mixin' in arsenic in his coffee with the other.
One day this guy peters out. He gives a big howl and hands in his dinner pail. Some suspicious dick pinches the dame for murder although she says it musta been the History of the Civil War that gave him the pain in his stomach.
When she goes for trial she gets a hot lawyer who knows all the answers an' he tells her to put a veil all over her face an' cry all the time she is in court. She is lucky. The jury disagree an' another trial is ordered. This time she gets another lawyer. He don't know anything about law, but believe me he knows his onions. He gets her all dressed up for the trial in a skin tight black lace dress an' flesh coloured chiffon silk stockings. He sticks her on the witness stand with a hand picked jury of old gentlemen all over seventy an' they take one look at her an' say not guilty without goin' outa the jury box.
The judge - who is also an old cuss-gives her the once over an' says he agrees with the verdict. After the trial he gets her a job in the local dry cleaners an' the way the old boy used to rush around every week for his laundry was just nobody's business.
All of which goes to show you that you never know where you are with dames - especially when they got sex-appeal. The more SA a dame has got the more trouble she causes.
An' Henrietta has got sex-appeal plus. Boy, she has everything it takes an' then a lot. When I was lookin' at her when we was havin' that coffee I was thinkin' that maybe she was like the dame in Nogales.
Even then I reckon I wouldn'ta minded bein' her husband. I just wouldn'ta drunk coffee, that's all.
CHAPTER 5
I AM back in New York.
Maybe you think that I am a mug for takin' so much trouble but the way I look at it is this:
It woulda been easy for me to pinch Henrietta on suspicion an' bring her back here. I coulda got the New York police to re-open the Aymes inquest an' the production of the letters she wrote Granwortli woulda maybe justified it. But what good's it gonna do if she really an' truly don't know anything about the counterfeitin', an' even if she did kill Aymes still you gotta realise that I am a Federal dick investigatin' a counterfeitin' job an' not a guy rushin' around tryin' to teach New York coppers their business.
Besides which I have gotta bunch of ideas stewin' around in my head. I have gotta hunch an' I'm goin' to play it, an' that hunch certainly takes in this Langdon Burdell who, if you ask me, is tryin' to play me for a mug. You'll see why pretty soon.
I check in at the airport, fix myself up in my usual dump, have a shower an' change, an' after just one little bourbon just to keep the germs away, I jump me a yellow cab an' scram downtown to the Burdell office.
Burdell is runnin' Granworth's old business, an' is in the same office building.
I go up in the elevator an' walk in. In the outer office there is a fancy dame smackin' a typewriter about. She has got four inch french heels an' a pompadour that woulda made Marie Antoinette look like a big cheese.
She is wearin' long jade earrings an' an expression like somebody was burnin' cork under her nose all the time, an' when she gets up from the typewriter as I go in, she has gotta wriggle when she walks that woulda won her a beauty contest anywhere where the judges' wives weren't around.
She uses a beauty parlour plenty by the look of her pan, an' she has gotta mouth made up with a lipstick that is about four shades too light.
It is a durn funny thing but I have only found about one jane in sixty-four ever uses the right shade of lipstick An' whenever I strike this odd one she is always goin' some place or is married or somethin' else that don't help me along any.
I tell her I wanta see Mr Burdell an' she says he's in but I'll have to wait because he is in conference. I crack back that any time I have to wait to see Mr Burdell I will commit hankari with a tin-opener an' I walk straight into his room which is at the back of the office behind a fancy oak door.
Burdell is sittin' behind a big desk helpin' himself to a shot of rye out of a swell flask.
He looks up an' smiles.
"Pleased to see you, Mr Caution," he says. "Come right in, I ain't busy."
I stick my hat on a big bronze figure of a boxer that he is usin' as a paper weight, an' I sit down in the big chair opposite him an' help myself to a cigarette out of a swell silver box.