Having done this, he walked rapidly down the hallway to the men’s lavatory where he once more took the letter from his pocket. Striking a match, he held it to one corner and watched the flame lick up around the edges of the paper. When it had all burnt away, he flushed the ashes, and the small corner he had been holding between thumb and fore-finger. Then he walked down to the elevator, and frowned when the elevator operator said, “You’re early this morning, Mr. Elwell.”
“Thought perhaps my partner would be in,” Elwell said in a low voice.
Riding down in the elevator, he tried to think of something else to say which would make his appearance at the office seem more casual, less of an event to be remembered in case there should be an inquiry; but realized that anything he might say would only impress upon the mind of the operator the fact that he had been there. He left the elevator quietly, walked across the lobby, moved a few feet down the sidewalk, and stood carefully scanning the stream of pedestrians which poured along the street.
After he had waited for nearly ten minutes, he saw Ned Fielding, a newspaper under his arm, hurrying toward the building. Elwell stepped out, swung into step alongside his partner, and grasped his arm.
Fielding jumped with a convulsive start, frowned, and said, “Good God, Jack, don’t ever do that! I thought it was a pinch.”
“Come on,” Elwell said, puffing at his cigar. “Snap out of it. Keep moving.”
“Don’t you want to go to the office?”
“No.”
“How about our lawyer?”
“Stay away from him.”
“What’s the idea?”
“We can’t talk here.”
Elwell piloted his companion into the relative seclusion of a side street. “It came,” he said.
“What did?”
“The letter.”
“An acceptance?”
“Uh huh. He’s been wise to the play the whole time. He was just stringing us along and letting us kid ourselves.”
“Damn him,” Fielding said, his voice vibrant with intense feeling.
“Okay,” Elwell said in a low voice, “use your bean. We never received the letter, see?”
Fielding blinked at him.
“Get the sketch?” Elwell asked. “I pulled out of the office and stuck the mail back through the door. The stenographer will come in at eight-thirty. She’ll pick up the mail, and open it. We’ll give her plenty of chance to read it all through and get familiar with it. We’ll come in about nine o’clock, just as though nothing had happened. We’ll ask her what’s in the mail and ask her if there was any letter from Addison Stearne. When she says there wasn’t any letter, we’ll grin at each other and shake hands as though we’re highly pleased. We’ll call up these other people right then and tell ’em it’s a deal. I’ll have a newspaper under my arm. After I hang up the telephone, I’ll open the newspaper, and we’ll start talking about the news. Then you’ll give a yell and point to the headlines. In that way, we’ll find out for the first time that Addison Stearne is dead. The stenographer will be a witness to the whole thing. Get me?”
“Martha Gayman ain’t exactly dumb,” Fielding pointed out. “We’ll have to play it just right so she won’t think it’s an act. She...”
“Bosh!” Elwell interrupted. “She’s got sense enough to do filing and take dictation. Aside from that, she’s just a dumb cluck. Every time I look at her, she reminds me of a cow with a full stomach. But she’s honest, and if we can convince her, she’ll make a swell witness.”
Fielding squinted his eyes. “It’s okay, Jack, but if they should ever prove we had that letter...”
“How they going to prove it?” Elwell demanded. “That letter’s gone. There isn’t even a chance they could recover a cinder the size of a pinhead.”
“That letter was typewritten?” Field asked.
“Uh huh.”
“He’ll have kept a copy.”
“What do we care? It doesn’t cut any ice with us. He could have written a dozen letters. He can’t hold us unless the letter was put in the mail. He may have written the letter and intended to put it in the mail, but he never did, see? We never got it. Our secretary can swear to that. She got into the office first and opened the mail.”
Fielding said, “Wait a minute, Jack. Let me think this over. It...”
“It’s been done now,” Elwell said. “There’s nothing to think over. Don’t be so damn conservative. You’ve got to take a chance once in a while. There’s two hundred and fifty thou-sand involved in the deal.”
“That’s what makes it so dangerous,” Fielding said. “Keep quiet for a minute. Let me think... That letter was postmarked from Santa Delbarra?”
“Yes.”
“He went up there on his yacht. He didn’t have any secretary with him. He must have written it himself. Probably had a typewriter along. Did you notice down in the lower left-hand corner if there were any marks that showed whether it had been dictated or not?”
Elwell frowned. “No,” he said, “I didn’t. Hell, I never thought of that.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“Well, what difference does it make?”
“It might make a lot.”
Elwell shook his head doggedly. “We never got any letter,” he said. “That’s all that counts, as far as we’re concerned. Stearne never mailed it.”
Fielding said, “That’s okay, but the thing to do is to find out if he had a typewriter aboard the yacht. In other words, was the letter written up there, or was it dictated at his office before he left. Get the idea? If he didn’t have a typewriter on the boat and the letter was dictated at his office, he was carrying it in his pocket, intending to mail it. He was killed before he had a chance to mail it. The letter disappeared and...”
Elwell interrupted to say impatiently, “You try to cross too damn many bridges before you come to them. We didn’t get any letter. That’s all.”
Fielding said, “Well, while I’m crossing bridges, I’ll give you another one to think about. Where were you Saturday after-noon and night — in case the district attorney at Santa Delbarra should ask you?”
Chapter 10
Nita Moline deftly guided the big cream-colored coupe through the streets of Los Angeles and finally into a parking place, slid across the seat, opened the right-hand door, and thrust out a trim pearl-gray suede shoe. There followed a quick glimpse of stocking. Her suit was gray, a few shades darker than the shoes. Her body looked trimly tailored, freshly supple, but her face gave evidence of the strain to which she had been subjected.
She moved briskly up the walk which led to the stucco Spanish-type bungalow and rang the bell.
The maid answered the door, said, “Good morning, Miss Moline,” and stood aside for her to come in. “Mrs. Right said she just couldn’t see anyone. I’m sorry.”
“Where is she?”
“In her bedroom. She...”
Nita Moline swept past the maid, saying, “I’m sorry. This is too important to be put off.”
The maid followed for a few steps, protesting, then kept silent until Nita Moline opened the door of the bedroom. Then she said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Right. She...”
Pearl Right still had the remains of a breakfast on the tray by the window. She said, “Never mind, Edna,” to the maid, and when the door had closed, said to Nita Moline, “Had breakfast?”