“You needn’t yell it,” I said sourly, “so that everybody in the burg will remember hearing it.”
And with that I left him, not at all dissatisfied with myself. By tipping him off to Boyd, I had put him under obligations to me, and had led him to accept me, at least tentatively, as a fellow crook. And by making no apparent effort to gain his good graces, I had strengthened my hand that much more.
I had a date with him for the next day, when I was to be given a chance to earn — illegally, no doubt — ‘a piece of change.’
There was a chance that this proposition he had in view for me had nothing to do with the Estep affair, but then again it might; and whether it did or not, I had my entering wedge at least a little way into Jake Ledwich’s business.
I strolled around for about half an hour, and then went back to Bob Teal’s apartment.
“Ledwich come back?”
“Yes,” Bob said, “with that little guy of yours. They went in about half an hour ago.”
“Good! Haven’t seen a woman go in?”
“No.”
I expected to see the first Mrs. Estep arrive sometime during the evening, but she didn’t. Bob and I sat around and talked and watched Ledwich’s doorway, and the hours passed.
At one o’clock Ledwich came out alone.
“I’m going to tail him, just for luck,” Bob said, and caught up his cap.
Ledwich vanished around a corner, and then Bob passed out of sight behind him.
Five minutes later Bob was with me again.
“He’s getting his machine out of the garage.”
I jumped for the telephone and put in a rush order for a fast touring car.
Bob, at the window, called out, “Here he is!”
I joined Bob in time to see Ledwich going into his vestibule. His car stood in front of the house. A very few minutes, and Boyd and Ledwich came out together. Boyd was leaning heavily on Ledwich, who was supporting the little man with an arm across his back. We couldn’t see their faces in the dark, but the little man was plainly either sick, drunk, or drugged!
Ledwich helped his companion into the touring car. The red tail-light laughed back at us for a few blocks, and then disappeared. The automobile I had ordered arrived twenty minutes later, so we sent it back unused.
At a little after three that morning, Ledwich, alone and afoot, returned from the direction of his garage. He had been gone exactly two hours.
Eight
Neither Bob nor I went home that night, but slept in the Laguna Street apartment.
Bob went down to the corner grocer’s to get what we needed for breakfast in the morning, and he brought a morning paper back with him.
I cooked breakfast while he divided his attention between Ledwich’s front door and the newspaper.
“Hey!” he called suddenly, “look here!”
I ran out of the kitchen with a handful of bacon.
“What is it?”
“Listen! ‘Park Murder Mystery!’” he read. “‘Early this morning the body of an unidentified man was found near a driveway in Golden Gate Park. His neck had been broken, according to the police, who say that the absence of any considerable bruises on the body, as well as the orderly condition of the clothes and the ground near by, show that he did not come to his death through falling, or being struck by an automobile. It is believed that he was killed and then carried to the park in an automobile, to be left there.’”
“Boyd!” I said.
“I bet you!” Bob agreed.
And at the morgue a very little while later, we learned that we were correct. The dead man was John Boyd.
“He was dead when Ledwich brought him out of the house,” Bob said.
I nodded.
“He was! He was a little man, and it wouldn’t have been much of a stunt for a big bruiser like Ledwich to have dragged him along with one arm the short distance from the door to the curb, pretending to be holding him up, like you do with a drunk. Let’s go over to the Hall of Justice and see what the police have got on it — if anything.”
At the detective bureau we hunted up O’Gar, the detective-sergeant in charge of the Homicide Detail, and a good man to work with.
“This dead man found in the park,” I asked, “know anything about him?”
O’Gar pushed back his village constable’s hat — a big black hat with a floppy brim that belonged in vaudeville — scratched his bullet-head, and scowled at me as if he thought I had a joke up my sleeve.
“Not a damned thing except that he’s dead!” he said at last.
“How’d you like to know who he was last seen with?”
“It wouldn’t hinder me any in finding out who bumped him off, and that’s a fact.”
“How do you like the sound of this?” I asked. “His name was John Boyd and he was living at a hotel down in the next block. The last person he was seen with was a guy who is tied up with Dr. Estep’s first wife. You know — the Dr. Estep whose second wife is the woman you people are trying to prove a murder on. Does that sound interesting?”
“It does,” he said. “Where do we go first?”
“This Ledwich — he’s the fellow who was last seen with Boyd — is going to be a hard bird to shake down. We better try to crack the woman first — the first Mrs. Estep. There’s a chance that Boyd was a pal of hers, and in that case when she finds out that Ledwich rubbed him out, she may open up and spill the works to us.
“On the other hand, if she and Ledwich are stacked up against Boyd together, then we might as well get her safely placed before we tie into him. I don’t want to pull him before night, anyway. I got a date with him, and I want to try to rope him first.”
Bob Teal made for the door.
“I’m going up and keep my eye on him until you’re ready for him,” he called over his shoulder.
“Good,” I said. “Don’t let him get out of town on us. If he tries to blow, have him chucked in the can.”
In the lobby of the Montgomery Hotel, O’Gar and I talked to Dick Foley first. He told us that the woman was still in her room — had had her breakfast sent up. She had received neither letters, telegrams, nor phone calls since we began to watch her.
I got hold of Stacey again.
“We’re going up to talk to this Estep woman, and maybe we’ll take her away with us. Will you send up a maid to find out whether she’s up and dressed yet? We don’t want to announce ourselves ahead of time, and we don’t want to burst in on her while she’s in bed, or only partly dressed.”
He kept us waiting about fifteen minutes, and then told us that Mrs. Estep was up and dressed.
We went up to her room, taking the maid with us.
The maid rapped on the door.
“What is it?” an irritable voice demanded.
“The maid; I want to—”
The key turned on the inside, and an angry Mrs. Estep jerked the door open. O’Gar and I advanced, O’Gar flashing his “buzzer.”
“From headquarters,” he said. “We want to talk to you.”
O’Gar’s foot was where she couldn’t slam the door on us, and we were both walking ahead, so there was nothing for her to do but to retreat into the room, admitting us — which she did with no pretence of graciousness.
We closed the door, and then I threw our big load at her.
“Mrs. Estep, why did Jake Ledwich kill John Boyd?”
The expressions ran over her face like this: Alarm at Ledwich’s name, fear at the word “kill,” but the name John Boyd brought only bewilderment.
“Why did what?” she stammered meaninglessly, to gain time.
“Exactly,” I said. “Why did Jake kill him last night in his flat, and then take him in the park and leave him?”