“I see,” I said. “I’m guilty as hell, is that right?”
“We don’t know. We’re investigating.”
I said, “You’re a hell of an investigator. You find my fingerprint on the underside of a papier-mâché subdivision model weighing a hundred pounds, so you immediately come to the conclusion that I broke into Holgate’s office, licked Holgate, clubbed him into unconsciousness, pulled him out of the window, dragged him across the lawn, put him in the trunk of my automobile and then went back for something. What did I go back for, another body?”
“Perhaps you wanted that affidavit you’d signed, after you found out it was cockeyed,” Sellers said.
“And if I couldn’t move one side of a papier-mâché model, just how did I pick up the two-hundred-and-twenty-five-pound Holgate in my arms, jump out of the window with him, carry him across to the car and put him in the trunk?”
“We don’t know,” Sellers said. “We intend to find out.”
“It should be worth while finding out,” I told him. “If I could carry a two-hundred-and-twenty-five to two-hundred-and-fifty-pound man out of the window and put him in the trunk of my car, it would seem that I should be able to pick up one end of a papier-mâché subdivision model that only weighed a hundred pounds in all.”
“You could have had an accomplice, you know,” Sellers said. “You only needed to carry half of the load.”
“That makes it fine,” I said. “Who was my accomplice?”
“We’re looking around,” Sellers said, chewing thoughtfully on the cigar.
“All right, where does that leave me? Am I charged with murder?”
“Not yet.”
“Am I under arrest?”
“Not yet.”
“What is happening?”
“You’re being held for questioning.”
I shook my head and said, “I don’t like that. Either charge me or turn me loose.”
“We can hold you for questioning.”
“You’ve questioned me. I want to use the phone.”
“Go right ahead,” he said.
I walked over to the telephone, called the office and told the office operator to get me Bertha Cool on the line fast.
When I heard Bertha’s voice saying, “All right, what is it this time?” I said, “I’m being questioned about the murder of Carter Holgate. I’m out at the airport. Holgate’s body was found in the trunk of our automobile. I’ve got work to do. I want to—”
Bertha interrupted me. “Holgate’s body!” she screamed.
“That’s right,” I explained patiently, “his murdered body. It was found jammed into the trunk of the agency car.”
“The agency car!” she yelled.
“That’s right,” I said. “Now, Sellers is here. He’s questioning me and I’ve got work to do. I’ve told him all I know. I want him either to charge me with murder or release me. He doesn’t want to do either right at the moment. I want you to get the best lawyer in the city to file habeas corpus proceedings.”
Bertha said, “You let me talk with Frank Sellers.”
I held the phone out to Sergeant Sellers. “She wants to talk with you, Frank.”
Sellers grinned and said, “Tell her it won’t be necessary. I’m protecting my left eardrum. Tell her we’re turning you loose.”
I said into the telephone, “Sellers said it isn’t necessary. He says he’s turning me loose.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m coming to the office,” I said.
Sellers said, “You aren’t driving your car any more, Donald. That’s being impounded for evidence, bloodstains and all of that.”
I told Bertha on the telephone, “Sellers is impounding the car. I’ll get a cab.”
“A cab, my eye! Get one of those damned limousines and save four dollars.”
“This is murder,” I told her. “Minutes count.”
“Minutes be damned!” Bertha said. “Dollars count, too.”
“And,” I told her, “get our client to come to the office. I want him there.”
“And put out a chair for me,” Sellers said.
“How’s that?” I asked.
“Put out a chair for me. I’m going to be with you. If you’re going to get a smart lawyer to file habeas corpus, we aren’t going to lead with our chins. We aren’t going to charge you with murder before we know what kind of a case we have, but I’m going to be with you, Donald, just like a brother.”
“You tell Bertha,” I said.
“You tell her,” he told me.
I said, “Sellers is going to be with me. They aren’t ready to charge me with murder but Sellers is going to stick with me, at least that’s what he says.”
Bertha said, “Can we stop him?”
“Probably not,” I said. “That’s the way the police act. They’ll either insist on having someone with me or they’ll put me in custody and charge me with suspicion of murder. They can hold me for a while on that.”
Bertha thought that over for a minute, then said, “We’ll make that s.o.b. pay half the taxi fare if he’s going to ride with you.”
“We can probably do better than that,” I said. “I think he has a police car. You get our client there in the office. I want to talk with him.”
“And I want to listen,” Sellers said, grinning. “This is getting better and better.”
“How soon will you be here?” Bertha asked.
“Right away,” I told her. “You get the interview all set up.”
I hung up.
Sellers was still grinning.
“I told them you’d do just that,” Sellers said.
“What?”
“Threaten to get habeas corpus,” Sellers said, “to force our hand, and that we could just give you all the rope you wanted, and you’d lead us to all the people we wanted.”
Chapter Nine
We gathered in Bertha’s office: Frank Sellers, chewing on a fresh cigar, smugly satisfied with his cleverness; Bertha Cool, gimlet-eyed, cautious, playing them close to her chest; and Lamont Hawley, calm, dignified, reserved, quite evidently wishing to keep out of the whole mess as much as possible.
“All right, Pint Size,” Sellers said. “This is your party. You’ve called it. Start addressing the chair.”
He grinned at Bertha Cool.
Bertha Cool’s eyes blazed back at him. “The idea of you trying to pin a murder on Donald Lam, Frank Sellers!” she stormed.
“He’s trying to pin it on himself,” Sellers said, “and the more wading he does, the deeper in he gets. It’ll be over his head pretty quick.”
“I’ve heard you talk that way before,” Bertha said, “and by the time the smoke blew away Donald was right and you were riding along on his coattails to get a lot of credit you didn’t deserve. What’s more, that damn cigar of yours stinks. Throw it away.”
Sellers said, “I like the taste of it, Bertha.”
“Well, I don’t like the smell of it.”
“I’ll take it out if you want.”
“Well, take it out!” Bertha stormed.
Sellers got up and started for the door.
“Hey, wait a minute. Where are you going to throw it? There’s no place to throw that cigar out in—”
“Who said anything about throwing it?” Sellers asked innocently. “You said you wanted me to take it out. I was just going to take it out.”
“And take yourself with it?”
“Why, sure.”
“You sit down in that chair,” Bertha Cool said, “and you can listen for a minute and not be so damned smart. Now Donald, what the hell is this all about?”
I turned to Lamont Hawley. “You didn’t get the Ace High Detective Agency on the job?”