“Edna had married a doctor — the real Dr. Humbert Estep. He was a hell of a doctor, though; and after starving with him in Philadelphia for a couple of years, she made him close up his office, and she went back to the bunko game, taking him with her. She was good at it, I’m telling you — a real cleaner — and, keeping him under her thumb all the time, she made him a pretty good worker himself.
“It was shortly after that that I met her, and when she told me all this, I offered to buy her husband’s medical diploma and other credentials. I don’t know whether he wanted to sell them or not — but he did what she told him, and I got the papers.
“I turned them over to the young doc, who came to San Francisco and opened an office under the name of Humbert Estep. The real Esteps promised not to use that name any more — not much of an inconvenience for them, as they changed names every time they changed addresses.
“I kept in touch with the young doctor, of course, getting my regular rake-off from him. I had him by the neck, and I wasn’t foolish enough to pass up any easy money. After a year or so, I learned that he had pulled himself together and was making good. So I jumped on a train and came to San Francisco. He was doing fine; so I camped here, where I could keep my eye on him and watch out for my own interests.
“He got married about then, and, between his practice and his investments, he began to accumulate a roll. But he tightened up on me — damn him! He wouldn’t be bled. I got a regular percentage of what he made, and that was all.
“For nearly twenty-five years I got it — but not a nickel over the percentage. He knew I wouldn’t kill the goose that laid the golden eggs, so no matter how much I threatened to expose him, he sat tight, and I couldn’t budge him. I got my regular cut, and not a nickel more.
“That went along, as I say, for years. I was getting a living out of him, but I wasn’t getting any big money. A few months ago I learned that he had cleaned up heavily in a lumber deal so I made up my mind to take him for what he had.
“During all these years I had got to know the doc pretty well. You do when you’re bleeding a man — you get a pretty fair idea of what goes on in his head, and what he’s most likely to do if certain things should happen. So I knew the doc pretty well.
“I knew, for instance, that he had never told his wife the truth about his past; that he had stalled her with some lie about being born in West Virginia. That was fine — for me! Then I knew that he kept a gun in his desk, and I knew why. It was kept there for the purpose of killing himself if the truth ever came out about his diploma. He figured that if, at the first hint of exposure, he wiped himself out, the authorities, out of respect for the good reputation he had built up, would hush things up.
“And his wife — even if she herself learned the truth — would be spared the shame of a public scandal. I can’t see myself dying just to spare some woman’s feelings, but the doc was a funny guy in some ways — and he was nutty about his wife.
“That’s the way I had him figured out, and that’s the way things turned out.
“My plan might sound complicated, but it was simple enough. I got hold of the real Esteps — it took a lot of hunting, but I found them at last. I brought the woman to San Francisco, and told the man to stay away.
“Everything would have gone fine if he had done what I told him; but he was afraid that Edna and I were going to double-cross him, so he came here to keep an eye on us. But I didn’t know that until you put the finger on him for me.
“I brought Edna here and, without telling her any more than she had to know, drilled her until she was letter-perfect in her part.
“A couple days before she came I had gone to see the doc, and had demanded a hundred thousand cool smacks. He laughed at me, and I left, pretending to be as hot as hell.
“As soon as Edna arrived, I sent her to call on him. She asked him to perform an illegal operation on her daughter. He, of course, refused. Then she pleaded with him, loud enough for the nurse or whoever else was in the reception room to hear. And when she raised her voice she was careful to stick to words that could be interpreted the way we wanted them to. She ran off her end to perfection, leaving in tears.
“Then I sprung my other trick! I had a fellow — a fellow who’s a whiz at that kind of stuff — make me a plate: an imitation of newspaper printing. It was all worded like the real article, and said that the state authorities were investigating information that a prominent surgeon in San Francisco was practicing under a license secured by false credentials. This plate measured four and an eighth by six and three-quarter inches. If you’ll look at the first inside page of the Evening Times any day in the week you’ll see a photograph just that size.
“On the day after Edna’s call, I bought a copy of the first edition of the Times — on the street at ten in the morning. I had this scratcher friend of mine remove the photograph with acid, and print this fake article in its place.
“That evening I substituted a ‘home edition’ outer sheet for the one that had come with the paper we had cooked up, and made a switch as soon as the doc’s newsboy made his delivery. There was nothing to that part of it. The kid just tossed the paper into the vestibule. It’s simply a case of duck into the doorway, trade papers, and go on, leaving the loaded one for the doc to read.”
I was trying not to look too interested, but my ears were cocked for every word. At the start, I had been prepared for a string of lies. But I knew now that he was telling me the truth! Every syllable was a boast; he was half-drunk with appreciation of his own cleverness — the cleverness with which he had planned and carried out his program of treachery and murder.
I knew that he was telling the truth, and I suspected that he was telling more of it than he had intended. He was fairly bloated with vanity — the vanity that fills the crook almost invariably after a little success, and makes him ripe for the pen.
His eyes glistened, and his little mouth smiled triumphantly around the words that continued to roll out of it.
“The doc read the paper, all right — and shot himself. But first he wrote and mailed a note — to me. I didn’t figure on his wife’s being accused of killing him. That was plain luck.
“I figured that the fake piece in the paper would be overlooked in the excitement. Edna would then go forward, claiming to be his first wife; and his shooting himself after her first call, with what the nurse had overheard, would make his death seem a confession that Edna was his wife.
“I was sure that she would stand up under any sort of an investigation. Nobody knew anything about the doc’s real past; except what he had told them, which would be found false.
“Edna had really married a Dr. Humbert Estep in Philadelphia in 1896; and the twenty-seven years that had passed since then would do a lot to hide the fact that that Dr. Humbert Estep wasn’t this Dr. Humbert Estep.
“All I wanted to do was convince the doc’s real wife and her lawyers that she wasn’t really his wife at all. And we did that! Everybody took it for granted that Edna was the legal wife.
“The next play would have been for Edna and the real wife to have reached some sort of an agreement about the estate, whereby Edna would have got the bulk — or at least half — of it; and nothing would have been made public.
“If worse came to worst, we were prepared to go to court. We were sitting pretty! But I’d have been satisfied with half the estate. It would have come to a few hundred thousand at the least, and that would have been plenty for me — even deducting the twenty thousand I had promised Edna.