“But Ringold decided to double-cross everybody. He couldn’t see any reason for turning over that last bunch of letters to the D.A. and getting nothing in return except the thanks of the prosecutor’s office which he didn’t like anyway.
“Then he realised that Carter would know there’d been a double cross, and Ringold was in a quandary. Finally he hit on a bullet-proof scheme. He’d hocus-pocus you into thinking you had the last bunch of letters. He’d cash your check, and then turn over the rest of the letters to the D.A.
“But Carter didn’t trust Ringold, and Mrs. Ashbury couldn’t understand the delay. The conversation you overheard between her and Carter was when she was telling Carter to go ahead and show some speed and get you dragged into the case.”
“How was the murder committed?” she asked.
“Carter didn’t intend to kill anyone,” I said, “but he knew you were going to see Ringold. He thought perhaps there was going to be a double cross. He got a room in another part of the hotel, found four-twenty-one vacant, picked the lock with a skeleton key, watched his chance to slip through the communicating door, and hid in the bathroom. He found out all he wanted to know, and wanted to sneak out, but, in the meantime, I’d checked into that room and locked the communicating door. He couldn’t get back. Ringold caught him in the bathroom. Carter shot his way out.
“As a matter of fact, Carter gave himself away. He was so anxious to get you on the defensive by telling you that he’d seen you near the scene of the murder at the time the murder was committed, he entirely overlooked the fact that this constituted an admission he was there himself — otherwise he couldn’t have seen you.”
“He hasn’t admitted anything. My stepmother’s going to get a lawyer for him, and they’ll put up a fight,” she said thoughtfully.
“Swell,” I said. “Let them.”
“But won’t those letters enter into it?”
“Not unless the D.A. can get hold of them.”
“Well, where are they?”
I said, “Look at it this way. Carter doesn’t know where they are. Esther Clarde, who was handling the payoff, doesn’t know where they are, and Crumweather doesn’t know where they are. They’ve searched the room in the hotel — and I mean searched it. Jed Ringold had those letters when he went to the hotel. He didn’t leave the hotel, and apparently the letters didn’t either.”
“Donald, what are you getting at? You mean they’re concealed in some other room?”
“Perhaps,” I said, “but as I size up Ringold’s character, I don’t think he was that big a sucker.”
“What did he do with them then?”
I said, “We’ll find out.”
I drove to the post office, walked in to the window which had Q to Z over the wicket, and said, “Jack Waterbury, please.”
A bored clerk with a rubber finger stall thumbed through a pile of envelopes and handed me one addressed to Jack Waterbury, General Delivery.
I handed it to Alta as soon as I got in the car. “Take a look at this,” I said, “and see if it’s what you want.”
She ripped open the corner of the envelope and looked inside. Her face told me, the answer.
“Donald, how did you know?”
“There was only one place he could have put those letters — down the mail chute. He had them with him when he was in the room with you. A few minutes later, when he was shot, he didn’t have them. The murderer didn’t get them. Crumweather didn’t get them. Esther Clarde doesn’t know where they are — there was only one place for them to go — down the mail chute.
“The man certainly hadn’t acted the part of a gentleman while you were in the room. Yet when you got up to leave, he fell over himself getting out to the hall to ring the elevator for you. The reason he did that was because the mail chute was right by the elevator. He wanted to drop that letter down the mail chute the minute you left him.”
She said, “I don’t understand just how Crumweather fits into it.”
“He had me fooled at first,” I said. “As Lasster’s lawyer, he naturally asked his client about women. Lasster told him about you and about the letters. Crumweather wanted to get them. He approached Carter. Carter told your stepmother, and she promised to get them. She did all right, but she couldn’t see any reason why she should let you out of the trap — well, you know the rest. She thought the letters were going to the D.A. Carter and Ringold wanted to get twenty thousand dollars, and then turn the last third over to the D.A. Apparently, it never occurred to Crumweather he was being double-crossed until after the murder. Then Esther Clarde got in touch with him by telephone and told him what had happened. Naturally, he was frantic. He wanted to get that last batch of letters before the D.A. did.”
She said, “You’re a wizard when it comes to figuring things out.”
“Not me. I should be kicked for getting off on the wrong foot. I figured Crumweather was in on it all the time. I thought that he saw a chance to sell the letters to you for thirty thousand dollars, and let you burn them up — but evidently he wasn’t in on the play. Carter and Ringold were double-crossing him.”
“Then why should he agree to represent Carter?”
“Money,” I said.
She thought for a minute. “How did you know the name that would be on the envelope?”
“It was Ringold’s real name. I asked Esther Clarde what it was last night.”
“You mean you’d figured out about the mail chute then?”
“Yes.”
“And Carter didn’t know Ringold was going to sell me that last bunch of letters?”
“No. Ringold did that on his own. Carter was suspicious, that’s all. He didn’t dare fall down on the job of putting those letters in the district attorney’s hands. Your stepmother meant more to him than Crumweather.”
She thought for a minute. “Where are you taking me now?” she asked.
“To the Commons Building. I want to talk with Mr. Fischler’s secretary,” I said, grinning, “and instruct her to hold out for ten thousand dollars before she surrenders certain certificates of stock and options in a mining company.”
Alta said, “Donald, are you going to stick them for that much?”
“All the traffic will bear,” I promised.
We reached the Commons Building and went to the Fischler Sales Office. Elsie Brand hastily slammed a desk drawer shut on a magazine as I opened the door. “Oh,” she said, “it’s you.”
I introduced Alta Ashbury. I could see that Elsie was impressed.
“When that salesman comes in,” I said, “tell him that Mr. Fischler is in conference out of the office, that he’s going to call in, in about fifteen minutes; that you can talk with him over the telephone, but he absolutely won’t take message from anyone else; and that he doesn’t expect to be in the office for two or three days.”
She jerked her shorthand notebook out of the drawer on the left-hand side of the desk and made rapid notes. “Any thing else?” she asked.
“He’ll ask you to call me up and give me a message. Twenty minutes later you can call him back and tell him that I’ll forget the whole business and surrender the options for ten thousand dollars, and that I won’t take a cent less.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s all. Tell him you want the ten thousand in cash, that you’ll have Mr. Fischler sign the necessary papers and have the escrow made at Bertha’s bank.”
Her pencil made a swift flying succession of pothooks.
“That’s all?”
“That’s all,” I said to her, and to Alta, “Want to walk into my private office?”
She nodded.