“I don’t know.”
“Well, let’s find out before we blow any whistles.”
She thought that over and said, “Donald, you may be giving me some pretty darned good advice. Any more suggestions?”
I said, “Let’s try to figure out who would want that affidavit bad enough to get in here and smash things up, and who do you suppose had the fight?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
I said, “It is Holgate’s office. There was a fight.”
She said, “That’s obvious.”
I said, “A fight means two people have alternate objectives and they resort to violence to protect their positions.”
“Go on,” she said.
“It’s fairly obvious that one of the persons engaged in the fight must have been Holgate. This is his office. He was either in here when the intruders came in, or the intruders came in and then he came in. Holgate hasn’t seen fit to notify the authorities. Therefore, there’s no reason why we should.”
“You’ve been over that. I’m sold on that idea.”
I said, “I’m trying to find out what the fight was about and what there is about my affidavit that was important enough for somebody to break in and try to locate it.”
She said, “Donald, I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anybody else. But I want to ask you a question and I want a frank answer.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “Tell me and then ask the question.”
“No,” she said, “I’m going to ask the question and then I’m going to tell you.”
“All right,” I told her, “have it your way.”
“Donald, are you absolutely certain about that automobile accident?”
“Why, yes,” I said. “The thirteenth of August.”
“What time?”
“About three-thirty in the afternoon, give or take a few minutes.”
“Are you certain about the time?”
I watched her face. “I — well, I could be a little mistaken. But you know how it is when you’re making an affidavit. You don’t dare say that it was about this or that or the other, or that you might be mistaken. If you do that, some attorney will take you on cross-examination and tear the daylights out of you.”
She nodded.
“So,” I said, “what’s wrong with the time?”
She said, “There’s a mistake somewhere.”
“How do you know?”
She said, “I happen to remember the thirteenth of August because it’s my birthday. We had a small office party and a few cocktails that afternoon.
“Now it’s true that Mr. Holgate was out during most of the afternoon but he came in shortly after four and joined us for a few minutes, long enough to have a couple of drinks, and then hurried away. He must have had an appointment of some sort. He kept looking at his watch.
“Now the point is that I saw his car at about four-thirty when he drove away and his car wasn’t smashed at all.”
“You mean the accident is a fake?” I asked, “that the car wasn’t smashed and—”
“No, no,” she said. “It’s the time element, that’s all. And I’m not too certain that— Donald, you saw the accident and I want to know whether you could have been mistaken.”
“I could have been mistaken,” I told her.
“Thanks. That’s all I want to know.”
I said, “We’d better close this window and turn out the lights, hadn’t we?”
“And lock up.”
I nodded.
“I guess so,” she said. She walked around the office, looking things over. “What a holy mess!”
“No use trying to straighten it up tonight,” I said. “And in case Mr. Holgate should want to have the authorities notified, we should leave things very much the way they are.”
“That’s right.”
I said, “What about the other office? It’s dark.”
“That’s Mr. Maxton’s private office.”
“Better take a look in there, hadn’t we?”
“I suppose so.”
“You have a key to it?”
“There’s a key in the safe in the outer office.”
“And you have the combination to the safe?”
“Of course.”
“Let’s take a look, just to be on the safe side. The safe doesn’t seem to have been tampered with.”
We went out to the other office and then she stood regarding her typewriter with frowning concentration. “I just can’t understand what happened,” she said. “I can’t understand who could have been using that typewriter.”
“Does Mr. Holgate type?” I asked.
“He can hunt and peck.”
“Then somebody must have been here who could do some typing or Holgate was trying to type a document.”
“I can’t imagine who else could have been typing.”
“The woman’s shoe,” I reminded her.
She nodded.
I said, “That gives us a little more to work on. Holgate was here with the woman. He was perhaps selling her a lot. She was a typist. In any event, a sale was made and she wanted something written up. Holgate asked her if she could use the typewriter and she said she could so he said to use yours.”
Lorraine pursed her lips. “That adds up, Donald. Stay with it. You’re doing fine.”
“And,” I said, “he pointed out your typewriter to her, she took the cover off, turned on the current, put the paper in the machine and started typing.”
“Then what?”
“Then,” I said, “she had finished with the typing and she brought the paper into Holgate’s office for his signature and then was when the intruder came in and started an argument with Holgate. The argument got to the point of a struggle and the girl took off her shoe and tried to rap this man over the head.”
Lorraine frowned and shook her head.
“What’s wrong with that?” I asked.
“Who won the fight?” she asked.
“Quite obviously the other person,” I said.
“All right then, what became of Mr. Holgate and the girl, whoever she was?”
“That,” I said, “is something we’ve got to find out. The man got the paper he wanted. That left Holgate with the girl. He decided that before he notified the authorities, in fact before he did anything, he wanted to go someplace and do something and the girl went with him.”
“All right,” she said, “carry it a step farther. In that case, the fight must have been over that affidavit of yours.”
“Apparently it had something to do with the affidavit, but I don’t think whoever went through those papers was looking for the affidavit.”
“Well, it’s one of the things that’s missing.”
I said, “Let’s try this one for size... The girl came in. Holgate wanted something done in connection with that affidavit. Perhaps he wanted it copied, perhaps he wanted something in connection with it. He went to the riling case, got the affidavit out of the envelope, and the girl went out to the outer office to start copying and—”
Lorraine snapped her fingers.
“Something clicks?” I asked.
“It clicks in a big way,” she said. “That’s what happened. They were working on that affidavit of yours.”
“Then the affidavit wasn’t the important thing,” I said. “The affidavit left the office. It could have left with Holgate and the girl. What the intruder was looking for was something else.”
She said, “If the intruder had a chance to do that much searching, he must have had an opportunity when he was more or less undisturbed. That would mean he’d won the fight.”
“Sure, he won the fight,” I said. “He had to, if we’re building it up that way.”
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go take a look in Maxton’s office and then if everything’s all right there we’ll close this place up and go find Mr. Holgate. Can you stay with me for a while, Donald?”