“In other words,” I said to Calhoun, “there was, right then, in the back of your own mind, the idea that you might kill Downer in order to get him out of the way.”
“No, no, no, no!” he yammered hysterically. “I swear it! I swear it!”
“Baloney,” Hobart said. “I don’t know whether we can prove it on you or not, but I think we can — self-defense, hell, this is premeditation. It’s first degree.”
“He was defending me,” Evelyn sobbed.
“That’s your story,” Hobart said. “We’ll see how it stands up.” He turned to me and said, “Okay, this is where you two came in. You get the hell out of here, and I mean out of town, and if you so much as open your yap to a newspaper reporter until you get out of here I’ll see that you never set foot in San Francisco again without having the whole damn police force trail you around.
“I’m going to give you a police escort down to the airport. You’re going down there so fast you’ll establish a record, just as fast as sirens and a red light can get you there.
“Then I’m going to take this precious pair down to Headquarters and we’re going to wrap this thing up by good old police methods.
“And when you get to Los Angeles don’t give out any stories to the newspaper reporters. Frank Sellers has already told about how he recovered the dough down there and I’ll be telling him about how I solved the murder case up here. You can put in your time, Lam, trying to figure what happened to that fifty grand, provided you ever had it.”
“I don’t need to put in my time on it,” I said. “I know where it is now.”
“Where?”
I said, “I was a damn fool not to think of it before.”
“All right,” he said, “you’ve got me sold. Where is it?”
I pointed my finger at Bertha Cool. “All right, Bertha, kick through,” I said.
Bertha’s face purpled with anger for a minute, then she said, “You had me so goddammed scared I almost fainted. I opened that damn camera box so I could see what was in it and send it back, and I opened that box of photographic paper and out tumbled thousand dollar bills all over the place. I scooped up the money, put it in my desk, and then the phone rang and Frank Sellers was telling me about you and I knew damned well you’d left me sitting in the middle with a lot of hot money. So I dashed down to the photographic store, bought another box of enlarging paper just like the one you’d had, cut the seals with my penknife, stuck it back in the box, took the carton out to the reception room and told Dorris Fisher to wrap it up and send it back to the damn camera company for credit.
“Fifty grand of hot money! My God, I haven’t slept—”
I turned to Hazel Downer and grinned. “It wasn’t hot,” I said to Bertha, “just pleasantly warm.”
“My money?” Hazel asked.
“Sure it’s your money,” I said.
“You’re going to have a hell of a time proving it, dearie,” Bertha told her.
“No, she isn’t,” I said. “I have a letter signed by Standley Downer in which he admits he had given it to her. Downer was a big-time bookie. He had one weakness — he liked the babes. After Evelyn came along he decided he’d trade Hazel in on a new model.”
“One that had even more mileage,” Hazel said cattily.
Evelyn didn’t even raise her head. She was licked. Hazel gave a little squeal and melted in my arms, her hot, grateful lips clinging to mine. “Donald,” she whispered, “these bills you found, did they have the corners cut off?”
“If they didn’t when I found them,” I whispered, “they will have by the time Bertha produces them. She isn’t going to let a fat fee slip through her diamond-studded fingers... Frankly, Hazel, I was working too fast to notice. However, I think that—”
Bertha said, “For God’s sake, cut out this damn lollygagging.”
Inspector Hobart said into the phone, “Get me a squad car up here with a red light and a siren and the best damn driver you’ve got. I want to get two people down to the airport so fast the dust doesn’t have a chance to settle.”
He slammed up the phone and turned to me and shook his head. “You goddammed amateurs!” he said.