“You have a hell of a way of respecting confidences,” I told her angrily. “How much did the Free Press pay you for the inside dope we let you in on last night?”
“They paid quite well, thank you. With this additional verification from Mr. Dwight...”
Burke and Dwight came up together. Burke’s hand was tightly on the millionaire’s arm, and Dwight was wiping a slime of saliva from his lips with a silk handkerchief.
“I’ll take care of her,” Burke was saying. “And you’d better send your limousine in for Senor Rodriguez. We’ll have a showdown, here and now.”
“That’ll be just ducky,” Laura Yates said brightly. “I’ll be delighted to sit in on the conference... and I don’t believe there’ll be any more talk of libel when it’s over.”
“How do you stand in this?” Dwight asked Burke, disregarding Laura with an obvious effort.
“All I want is Young’s murderer,” Burke assured him. “I won’t interfere with any of your double-dealing unless it has some connection with the case.”
Dwight’s limousine came purring up the drive just then. Laura’s eyebrows went up when she saw Myra Young getting out of the back seat. She had changed from her mannish costume to a white silk dress with a belt of red leather set jauntily about her hips.
Dwight hurried forward to take her arm, and the chauffeur set two traveling bags out on the concrete.
“More stuff and such,” Laura exclaimed ecstatically. “The Widow Wore White would make a swell lead line.”
“For a story you’re not going to write,” Burke growled.
“But you don’t know what I can do with a sensational sex angle,” she cried with shining eyes. “It looks as though she’s moving in. Did Dwight kill her husband?”
“That,” Burke told her, “is one of the things we don’t know... yet.” He paused, watching Dwight and Myra go in the front door together; went on in a different tone:
“That story was good work. There’s nothing like publicity to smoke out a stink.”
I looked at him in astonishment. “Did you know she was going to sell out to the Free Press?”
Burke laughed. “I could see her itching to get to a typewriter last night... and I knew the Free Press would headline any story they could twist into a slam at me. But I intend to censor your next story,” he went on to Laura. “Where are the keys to your car?”
“In the ignition. But you needn’t be afraid I’ll leave. I’ll stick around and see what happens.”
“I know you won’t leave until you get a story,” Burke agreed. “But we can get along nicely without further publicity until we have Young’s murderer.” He went to Laura’s car and took her ignition keys, stalked away without a backward glance.
Her red lips smiled after him. “What a masterful brute he turned out to be.” Her gaze strayed on to the shabby car with its Mexican license and she ceased smiling. “You didn’t tell me the O’Toole menace was here.”
“You didn’t ask me.”
It was difficult to remain angry with her when she smiled with disarming frankness and said: “Let’s not be stuffy.”
She put her hand on my arm and I let her lead me to a garden seat where we could see the red rim of the sun above the horizon.
“Tell me what’s been happening,” she said as we sat down together.
I took out a pack of cigarettes and offered them to her. She accepted, and leaned close for a light when I struck a match, her eyes fixed on mine.
“You hate me, don’t you?”
I said, “No,” and lit my cigarette.
She sank back, with half-closed eyes contemplating the glowing tip of her cigarette. “We’re both after the same thing... material we can sell. Why do you begrudge me my share of the profits in a nice, juicy, murder?”
The woman was always putting me on the defensive, and I didn’t relish it. “The Free Press is a muckraking sheet,” I told her heatedly. “They’ve been on Jerry Burke’s tail ever since he took the job of cleaning up El Paso.”
“That’s exactly why I sold them my story. No other paper would have played it up so sensationally and brought Rodriguez, Hardiman and Dwight out in the open,” she came back irritably. “Aroused public opinion is going to make it difficult for them to put over a pirate deal.”
“And the Free Press will use the issue as fuel to make another attempt to drive Burke out of town. I have a hunch that in cleaning up El Paso, Burke has cleaned out their pockets to a great extent... theirs and their henchmen’s.”
She laughed softly. “From what I’ve seen of Burke, he gives the impression of not being very good at running. Besides, I dug through some old copies of the Free Press last night and checked up on some of his activities.”
“The Free Press is no criterion for what Burke has done,” I told her. Then I went down the line on how the sheet had tried to hold him back... and also how Jelcoe, with his slapstick sleuthing had given Burke a lot of trouble.
She laughed again when I finished. “Chief Jelcoe came to my apartment with a search warrant after lunch. He wouldn’t tell me what he was looking for, but he seemed awfully disappointed and stamped out after going through all my things and leaving them scattered all over the floor. He refused to discuss the case with me, but left the impression that he would like to pin it on Myra Young.”
“He might have succeeded if Dwight hadn’t popped up with an alibi for her.”
“What does the Mastermind think?”
“You’ll be doing better than I can if you get an opinion out of Jerry Burke,” I answered gloomily. “The only definite statement he has made is that he’s convinced the anonymous telephone threat had a direct connection with Young’s death.”
I was feeling a lot better after my spiel about the Free Press and Jelcoe. I relaxed, and Laura did too, over my way. Presently she said:
“O’Toole will bear watching. I have an idea she can sprout claws on her little soft paws at will. And that hard-faced watchdog of hers looks capable of anything.”
I agreed to that, recalling the dagger he wielded over me and the pistol he held in my ribs. Laura had not met Desta Dwight, and she listened interestedly while I described Desta and our interview with her.
“She sounds like another good suspect,” she commented.
I nodded. “Jerry and I agreed it lay between you and her.” I tried to make my voice sound joking but I’m afraid I wasn’t very successful.
She asked in a low tone: “Do you believe me capable of murder?”
I hesitated, then said: “Yes, damn it, I do.”
She laughed and let her head lie back against my shoulder. “You and I are going to get along. And you’re right... I am perfectly capable of murder.” Her voice was as calm and steady as if she were discussing her ability at tennis or quoits.
A faint chill came with the setting of the sun. Dwight’s chauffeur drove away toward the city and I remember wondering if he was going in to pick up Senor Rodriguez. That would bring all the actors in the life-drama together and I felt that the solution would be a relatively simple one of untangling the various motives and cross-motives of them all.
It was very quiet on the lawn. Serene and peaceful after a hectic twenty-four hours. I had a feeling that it was all over... and I didn’t have half enough material for a book.
An upstairs window was suddenly flung up behind us, and Laura and I turned on the garden seat as a woman’s scream of terror knifed through the soft mantle of twilight.
Through the dim light we saw two women struggling on the ledge of an open window twenty feet above the ground.