“Oh yeah, plenty of times.”
“They have a hotel there, yes?”
“The old brick hotel, it’s still there. Little more hotel than Goldfield needs right now, but they’ll take care of you.”
“Always wanted to see this place. Doch, it’s impossible to start now. I want to see the Sharf, too. What makes you think it’s a murder case?”
“Think? I know.”
“You talked to the police, yes?”
“Yeah, I talked to them, but I generally always haven’t got time to wait for the police to wake up. Insurance is my line. Southwest General of N. A., and when you’ve handled as many cases as I have, you know and you don’t even know how you know. You just smell it.”
“I don’t smell nothing, myself.”
“To me, it’s quite a stink.”
There was a long pause, while Mr. Layton set his heels on the desk and lit a cigar. When he could see through the wreathing smoke, he noted that Tony was in the room. Then, with the air of one who regretfully pronounces a final judgment on a matter long since closed, he said: “Her big mistake was making it accident. That gets an insurance company a little sore. Now if he was just dead, then O. K., he had to die sometime, and we were on the risk. But when she made it accident, that made the big accident-and-health bond operative, and that makes a difference of fifty thousand bucks. Well, that’s just too bad.”
“...She? Who are you talking about?”
“Shoreham. The widow.”
“You mean she made it accident?”
“She gets the dough, don’t she? As beneficiary?”
“How can you talk that way?”
“What have you got to do with it?”
Mr. Layton snapped this at Dmitri sharply, as though his discussing the case at all were a very suspicious circumstance. But Dmitri looked at Mr. Layton as though he were plain crazy. “You ask me that? What I have to do with? Me? Dmitri Spiro, president of Phoenix Pictures, that makes all Shoreham production? Me, the best friend of Baron Adlerkreutz? You ask me what I have to do with?”
“And what have you got to do with it?”
Tony was cold, hard, malevolent. Mr. Layton answered with a smile, a genial freckled smile, in the accents of Dmitri. “Me? You ask me what I got to do with? Me, agency chif for Southwest General of N. A.?” Then, speaking with a smile not so genial, he asked Tony: “And what have you got to do with it?”
“You can go to prison in this state. For slander.”
“And you can hang, for murder.”
“Suppose you get out.”
“O. K., O. K.”
He got up, but Dmitri held up his hand, said there should be no hard feelings, that Tony didn’t really mean what he said. Mr. Layton, turning from the door in very friendly fashion, said: “Yes sir, yes sir, making it accident was bad. If it had been suicide, now, I wouldn’t have a word to say.”
Tony and Dmitri looked at each other, and Dmitri said: “Why?”
“We don’t pay off on suicide. Not for three years, we don’t. It used to be one year, but during the depression we raised it. Got to be too many fellows taking out a fifty-thousand-dollar life policy in favor of the little woman, then diving out a fifteenth-story window in some hotel downtown. Same way on the accident-and-health, all bets off on suicide. So, if she’d make it suicide, it wouldn’t have concerned the Southwest General of N. A. even a little bit. But when she made it accident, that concerns us a lot. That means exactly one hundred thousand bucks to us, so it’s what you might call, the hundred-thousand-dollar mistake. I’m going to miss her, too. I go to all her pictures. All of them.”
He sat down again, in no hurry to go. Dmitri stared at Tony in abject misery, and Tony stared at Mr. Layton, a look in his eye that one sees in the eye of a Siberian tiger. After a long time, Dmitri looked over and said: “Look here, old man. It’s ridiculous. It’s quite ridiculous. It was an accident, we all know it was an accident. I was there. He died in my arms. Just the same, nobody wants any trouble. Can’t we make a deal? Can’t—”
“Hey, hey, hey!” Mr. Layton jumped up as though he had been shot, and said: “Don’t you talk to me about any deal. Not to me!”
“Why not?” Tony’s tone was savage.
“Weren’t you talking about laws?”
“Laws? What do you care about laws? All you’re thinking about is money. O. K., so it’s dead open-and-shut. Why don’t you make a deal? It’s like Mr. Spiro says, you’re talking through your hat, there’s been no crime. But she’s a big picture actress and your measly hundred grand don’t mean half as much to her as not having any mess. Well, suppose they agree to tear up your policies? What do you care? Don’t that let you out?”
Mr. Layton had a wild, instinctive notion that Mr. Gans, if he had been present, would have made a deal. But he had got a great deal further than he had even dreamed was possible, and his only clear idea was that he had to get out of there, that he had no authority to make a deal and that he had to consult Mr. Gans. Then, probably a deal would still be possible. Blandly he asked Tony: “Where’s Ethel?”
“What’s Ethel got to do with it?”
“Ethel saw something today.”
“Such as, what?”
“I don’t exactly know. Mighty pretty girl, Ethel is. Part Indian.”
Tony’s pasty pallor, as well as Dmitri’s soft look of complete collapse, told him quite a lot. Mr. Layton added: “She’s not coming back to work, I guess. She’s a little worried, though I can’t imagine what for.” Then, to Spiro: “I’d talk to Ethel, if I were you. She’ll be in the lobby of Shoreham’s hotel at seven o’clock.”
He picked up his hat, and there was a tense, strained silence. A tall man and a thin man came in, pitched a package of telegrams and letters on the desk. The tall man said: “Fan stuff mostly, been coming in at the hotel ever since the story went on the air. I told Western Union to hold the rest of it and we’d pick it up. This stuff, I thought we better take charge of it, so nothing gets lost.”
“O. K., Bushy. Thanks.”
Benny sat nervously down. Mr. La Bouche suddenly said “Oh,” as though he had just remembered something, and found a letter in the stack of telegrams. Leaning close he mumbled: “It’s that special Vicki sent her, in case she wouldn’t answer his call. I took it along, because God knows how it’ll affect her. Better hang onto it a few days, hah? Before we give it to her to read?”
Dmitri fingered the letter, stared at the special delivery stamp, at the round clock with an arrow showing the time of receipt, that had been stamped by the hotel. Then, looking straight at Mr. Layton, he said: “Boys, I got an awful premonition creeping up my back that in this communication Victor Adlerkreutz announces his intention to take his own life.”
“What?”
Benny’s mouth hung open in amazement, but Mr. La Bouche grabbed him quickly and said: “Shut up! I would think you’d know by now that when Mr. Spiro has something creeping up his back, he’s practically never wrong.”
But Mr. Layton, so badly crossed up he didn’t quite know what he was doing, was already at the door. To Dmitri he said: “I’m going. If that’s a suicide note, I know you don’t want any strangers around when you read it.” Then, not sure that he shouldn’t make some show of encouragement, he turned a ghastly smile at Dmitri and said: “Yeah, I know you’re kind of unstrung about it.”