“And then what?”
“Then, out of a clear sky, I received a letter from her, stating that until I made terms with her, I could never be elected, that at the last minute she would, as she expressed it, blow the lid off. She charged that I had cast her into the junk pile and left her a social and financial outcast — although I had done nothing of the sort. I had stripped myself of my property, and—”
“Charles,” Mrs. Alftmont interrupted, “that isn’t going to help any now. Mr. Lam wants the facts.”
“The facts,” he said, “were that she wrote this letter.”
“What were her terms?” I asked.
“She didn’t offer any.”
I did some thinking over the last puffs of my cigarette, then ground it out, and asked, “Did she give you any address where you could get in touch with her?”
“No.”
“What did she want?”
“First, she wanted me to withdraw from the campaign.”
“You didn’t do that?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I was in too deep,” he said. “Shortly before that letter was received, the opposition newspaper started publishing a series of slurring articles, intimating that my past would stand investigation. My friends demanded that I sue the paper for libel. I was placed in a very embarrassing position.”
“Are you,” I asked, “absolutely certain that the letter you received was in your wife’s handwriting?”
“Yes,” he said. “There are, of course, certain changes which are only natural. A person’s handwriting has a tendency to change during a period of twenty-odd years, but there can be no question. I have compared the handwriting carefully.”
“Where are the letters?” I asked.
“I have them,” he said.
“I want them.”
He glanced at his wife. She nodded. He got up and said, “It will take a few minutes. If you’ll excuse me, please.”
I heard his feet slowly climbing the stairs. I turned to Mrs. Alftmont. She was staring steadily at me.
“What can you do?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “We’ll do all we can.”
“That may not be enough.”
“It may not,” I admitted.
“Would it help,” she asked quietly, “if I should step out of the picture — if I should disappear?”
I thought that over for a while, and said, “No. It wouldn’t help.”
“Stay and take it on the chin?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She said, “I don’t care a thing in the world so far as I’m concerned, but it makes an enormous difference to Charles.”
“I know it does.”
“Of course,” she said, “if the true facts were known, I think public sentiment—”
“Forget it,” I said. “It isn’t a question of public sentiment now. It isn’t a question of scandal. It isn’t a question of extramarital relations. He’s facing a murder charge.”
“I see,” she said, without batting an eyelash.
I said, “I think Evaline Harris was sent to Oakview by a man named John Harbet.”
Her eyes were veiled, without expression. “You mean Sergeant Harbet of the Vice Squad?”
“Yes.”
“What makes you think so?”
“He was in Oakview. He beat me up and dragged me out of town.”
“Why?”
“That,” I said, “is the thing I can’t figure. When I find out why he did what he did in the way he did, I think I’ll have a weapon we can use.”
She frowned thoughtfully. “It’s very hard on Charles. He’s almost frantic. He suppresses himself behind a mask of professional calm. I’m getting afraid of what may happen.”
I said, “Don’t worry about it. Leave that to me.”
Steps on the stairs again, and Dr. Alftmont came into the room with two letters. One of them was dated 1921 and was written on the stationery of the Bickmere Hotel in San Francisco. The other letter had been written two weeks before, and mailed from Los Angeles. Apparently both were in the same handwriting.
I said, “Did you try to reach her at the Bickmere Hotel, Doctor?”
“Yes,” he said. “I wrote her a letter. It was returned with a statement that no such party was registered there.”
I studied the letter for a while, and then said, “What was her maiden name?”
“Sellar. Amelia Rosa Sellar.”
“Did she have any parents living?”
“No, no relatives. An aunt back East had raised her, but the aunt died when she was seventeen. She’s been on her own since then.”
“I presume you didn’t try very hard to locate her when this first letter was written?”
“I didn’t employ detectives,” he said, “if that’s what you mean. I wrote to her at the hotel. When, my letter was returned, I took it for granted she’d simply used the hotel stationery as a blind.”
“At that time,” I said, “she wasn’t trying to keep under cover. She had the whip hand and knew it. She wasn’t trying to get property then. She was simply trying to keep you from making Vivian Carter Mrs. Alftmont.”
“Then why didn’t she let me know where I could reach her?” he asked.
I thought that over for a minute and said, “Because she was doing something she didn’t want you to know about, something that would have given you the whip hand if you’d found out about it. That’s where we’ll start our investigation.”
I caught a note of quick hope in Mrs. Alftmont’s voice. She said, “Charles, I believe he s right.”
Alftmont said, “I can believe anything of her. She became selfish, neurotic. Her ego demanded flattery. She was never happy unless some man was paying attention to her. She wanted to be on the go all the time. She was apparently trying to escape any form of routine, any conventional—”
“I know the type,” I said. “Never mind putting it in medical terms.”
“She is selfish, tricky, deceitful, and unbalanced,” he said. “You can expect anything of her. Once she starts, she won’t stop anywhere.”
I got to my feet and said, “I’m taking these letters. Is there a night train through here for San Francisco?”
“None now,” he said.
“How about a bus?” I asked.
“I think there’s a bus goes through.”
“I’ve had about all the night driving I want for a while,” I said. “I’m taking these letters with me.”
“You’ll take good care of them?” he asked.
I nodded.
Mrs. Alftmont walked across to give me the pressure of firm, strong fingers on my hand. “You’ve brought disturbing news,” she said, “yet I feel reassured. I want to protect Charles. As far as I’m concerned, I have no regrets. A true, deep love is all the marriage a woman needs. I have always felt married to Charles. If there’s to be a scandal, we have each other. As for the murder — you’ll have to handle that, Mr. Lam.”
“Yes,” I said, “I’ll have to handle that.”
Chapter Eight
It was late Saturday afternoon before I dug up the information I wanted in San Francisco — that the woman I wanted had been a hostess at one of the beach night spots. She’d gone under her maiden name, Amelia Sellar, and had lived at the Bickmere Hotel. It was Sunday night when I managed to locate “Let ’em Ride” Ranigan, who had operated the place and who had acquired his nick-name from a tendency to let his bets ride in the crap games.
Ranigan was a genial, age-mellowed soul who had put on a lot of weight, had flowing white hair, and liked nothing better than to smoke a cigar and talk of the “good old days.”
Ranigan sat at a corner table over some champagne that would be listed on Bertha Cool’s expense account as taxi fare, and became reminiscent.
“You’re a young chap,” he said. “You wouldn’t know about it, but I’m telling you in those days San Francisco was the greatest city in the world. None of the European cities could touch it. Paris couldn’t.