Promptly at 5:30, Mr. Gans came up the ramp, his jaw stuck out and his lower teeth visible against his lip. He listened to what Mr. Layton had to say, made no comment until they were almost in the centre of town. Then, with explosive vehemence, he said: “Great! You’ve done the right thing, Layton! You’ve used your head and you’ve used your guts and Southwest General of N. A. is proud of you! I always say, be aggressive! Move fast! But, if the other party listens to reason, be reasonable! After all what are we, Layton? Insurance men, not hangmen!”
Chapter Eight
Mr. Layton had barely left the room when Tony leaped at Dmitri, caught him by the arm and began shaking him savagely. “Are you nuts? Listen, fellow, you can’t trifle with this thing! What’ll they think of us, cooking up a dilly like we told them already, and then saying it isn’t so? Spiro, you dealt these cards, and there’s no way now to make it a misdeal! You’ve got to play them!”
“Didn’t you hear what he said?”
“Couldn’t you make a deal?”
“Didn’t you hear me try? What happened?”
“Couldn’t you sock him in the jaw?”
“Me? He was a big guy. You sock him.”
“Taking it lying down—”
“Wait a minute, fellow — wait a minute. This wasn’t just a guy. He was from a big insurance company. What good would it do to sock him?”
“It would do plenty of good. A cheap jack of an agent comes out here, lights a cigar, and scares you so bad you turn around and pitch it all out, what’s been done. Don’t you get it? I’m in on it too! I’ve been your witness, I’ve stood for what had to be said to put across accident. Look where that puts me in this town if you go around and tell them it’s all just a lie you thought up.”
Mr. La Bouche spoke in a quiet, worried way. “We think we been getting away with it, but who says we have? Who says that mug is from an insurance company at all? Who says he’s not a cop’s stool pigeon?”
“But switching, that’ll fix it, hey?”
They all sat in gloom for a few minutes. Then Dmitri picked up the letter. “And besides this note can’t go to the Sheriff. It must be another note. Because who knows what this says? Maybe some fool thing. Maybe something about Hezzel. Maybe cracks it wide open.”
“Can’t you burn it?”
Mr. La Bouche explained patiently to Tony that if it had been merely an ordinary letter, burning was possible, but with the postoffice having a record of the delivery, to say nothing of the hotel, burning would be wholly risky. Substituting another letter, one that indicated Vicki intended to take his own life, was the best solution all around. And Dmitri added: “We don’t switch, nothing like that. We tell the same thing. Just like we told it before. Except we remember now, it was Vicki who say, ‘I must have a real one.’ Was Vicki who say, ‘I don’t get this thing till you make it plain.’ We know nothing about a note. The Sharf opens the note, says it must be suicide. Then all see it was suicide, the insurance goes kaput, company no have to pay.”
Tony stormed, pleaded, called Dmitri names. But Benny, the first forger of his time, went out, and when he returned he had the bar’s small electric coffee machine. Filling it with water from the cooler he plugged it in, and while he was waiting for it to steam he looked at the letter. “Green ink, pals. That’s the first thing. Where’s his pen? Anything you put inside has to match up with this envelope outside, if I’m doing it — if the idea is, we’re using this envelope. I guess that’s what you mean, use the envelope to show it come in to the hotel before he even got shot.”
Mr. Spiro unclipped a pen from his shirt pocket, handed it over. “He borrowed my pen to write it with. All full up, all full up with green ink.”
Benny turned the letter over. “Worse and more of it. Maybe the wop is right. Maybe we better leave it lay. Because the flap has a crown on it. It has that crown on it, and the inside paper will have to match.”
“That’s under control.”
Mr. La Bouche explained that he and Dmitri both knew where Vicki kept his paper, up at the shack, and that they would get some at once. This proved to be unduly optimistic, for their entrance into the shack was barred by officers at the door; but on their plea of checking what clothes would be needed for the funeral they were let in, and under the guise of making memoranda they helped themselves to paper, and were back at the Domino in less than an hour. By that time, Benny had steamed open the envelope, extracted the brief note that it contained and tabulated the words in it, in pencil, on another sheet of paper. He pointed the pencil at Mr. La Bouche and Dmitri, looking very solemn. “Now get this, lugs. This presents one of the most unusual problems I ever had challenge me professional skill. How this guy spelled the English language was something to write home about. He had his own system, but it was nothing like Webster’s system, or anybody’s system. But this is what it means: You got to say what you say with these specimen words, these words I got wrote out here, that he used in the original note. Because that’s all the words I can be sure of. Because if I go and spell a word one way, and they dig up a lot of his handwriting at the shack and compare, and he spelled it some other way, that cooks us, friends. You got it?”
Tony scowled, but whether Dmitri or Mr. La Bouche heard it, would be hard to say. They were walking abstractedly about, passing and repassing each other on the linoleum carpet, in the throes of literary composition. Presently Mr. La Bouche said: “There ought to be an affectionate note in it, Dimmy. That’s what I miss in all this. Nobody seems to care.”
“Like for instance, Bushy, how do you mean?”
“Well, you know, something like ‘My mind is all on you, Sylvia,’ or maybe ‘My heart is all with you’ would be better, ‘as the shadows lengthen toward the west’.”
“East.”
“East. Right. You got that, Benny?”
“Look, get this once and for all. If any shadows lengthen in this, they lengthen toward the north, because that was where he was going on his honeymoon and its the only point on the compass I know how he spelled it. He didn’t bother with any H, but how do I know he didn’t spell east with a Y? Maybe he thought it was rich in vitamins.”
“Shadows are out.”
“Bushy, you see something so: The end of my lang, lang trail a-winding? Course that’s not it, but it gives a rough idea. I wan’ something with a punch.”
“Boys, something short would help.”
“The Long, Long Trail is in.”
“Trip with two p’s, but no trail. Sorry.”
“And then, Dimmy, of course I’m only spitballing, throw it out if you don’t like it. But don’t you think there ought to be some little thing? Like, ‘Be kind to—’ What was the name of that hyena he had in the private zoo out on the ranch?”
“You can have ‘switt puss,’ but no hyena.”
“Maybe he’s right. The hyena’s name was Spiro.”
“Dimmy, on a thing like this I always like a quotation of some kind. We’ll say like a quotation from Shakespeare.”
“On that, Bushy, I would hesitate.”
“It would give it class.”
“But suppose they find out how Vicki felt about Shakespeare? After Julius Caesar flopped, Vicki always said Shakespeare was lousy.”
“There might be two opinions about that.”
“I know. I know how Vicki came to produce Julius Caesar. He was wishing he didn’t have to pay for a script and somebody told him about Shakespeare, and he said ‘Why not? It don’t cost anything to find out.’ So we made it and it flopped, and it cost more than the Phoenix Studios cost. Just the same, he blamed it on Shakespeare, and I don’t know if we should put in from Shakespeare.”