Gold Comes in Bricks (18 page)

Bertha Cool answered the question. “Sit down, dearie, take a load off of your feet, and keep your trap shut.”

Mrs. Ashbury turned to stare at Bertha Cool. “Madam, do you know whose house this is?”

“I haven’t looked up the record title,” Bertha said, “but I know damn well who’s throwing this party.”

I said to Bob, “Crumweather hired you to get those letters out of the way. Instead of giving them to him, you arranged with Esther Clarde to use some of them to raise a little dough. You—”

There were quick steps in the corridor. Henry Ashbury came striding in through the open door, and stared at the party over the tops of his glasses.

Mrs. Ashbury looked at me, then at Bob, then at her husband. “Oh, Henreeeeee! Where
have
you been? Poor Bernard’s spent the whole night looking for you. Henry, this is the most awful thing—the most hideous thing! Henry, dear, I’m going to faint.”

She closed her eyes and swayed around on her feet. The nurse and the doctor closed in. The doctor muttered soothingly, “Now, Mrs. Ashbury, you simply
can’t
excite yourself.”

“If you’ll just go to bed quietly,” the nurse said.

Mrs. Ashbury let her eyelids flutter down until the eyes were almost closed. She gurgled in her throat, and tilted her head back so she could watch what was going on through the slits at the bottoms of her eyelids.

“Henry, darling.”

Ashbury didn’t pay any attention to her. He looked at me.

I said, “I’m just pinning something on Bob. I think he’s responsible for the thing you wanted investigated.”

Bob said, “I’m not. I swear you’ve got me wrong. I—”

“Stole some of Alta’s letters,” I finished.

He was up on his feet. “You look here, Lam. I don’t care if you can lick Joe Louis with one hand tied behind you. You’re not going to—”

Mrs. Ashbury saw that her husband had swiveled his eyes around to glare at Bob. His face had colored and set in hard lines. She decided fainting wasn’t going to do any good. She planted her feet on the floor, swept the doctor and the nurse to one side, and said, “So
that’s
it. You’ve been hiring a detective to come in here and frame horrible crimes on my son. I want you people to be witnesses to the things that have been said in this room. Henry, you’re going to pay for this, and pay dearly. Robert, darling, you come with Mother. We won’t waste time talking to these people. I’ll see my lawyer in the morning. Things which I hadn’t understood before are perfectly plain to me now. Henry’s trying to frame something on you so as to make me leave him.”

Bob moved to his mother’s side. She put an arm around his shoulder, and sighed.

Bertha Cool got up, slowly and majestically. Her manner was that of a master workman getting ready to tackle a difficult chore in a businesslike manner.

Henry Ashbury raised his eyebrows, looked over the top of his glasses at Bertha Cool, held up his hand, and said, “Don’t.”

There was a second or two of silence. Bertha Cool looked to me for instructions.

Ashbury shook his head at me. “Let it go, Lam,” he said. “I think I’m getting somewhere.”

“You just
think
you’re getting somewhere. If you were, I’d let you go, but the cards are stacked against you.”

Mrs. Ashbury said, “The doctor will testify that I’m in no condition to answer questions.”

“I most certainly will,” Dr. Parkerdale said. “This whole procedure is outrageous.”

Bob was glad of the opportunity to get out. “Come, Mother, I’ll get you back to bed.”

“Yes,” she said, in a voice that was a little above a whisper. “Things are going around and around.”

Bertha Cool pushed a chair to one side, strode over to the door, and kicked it shut.

Ashbury looked at her and said, “No.”

Bertha heaved a sigh. She was itching to pitch in and handle the situation, but a hundred dollars a day was a hundred dollars a day and instructions were instructions.

The nurse came toward the door. Bertha moved to one side. The nurse opened the door, and the doctor and Bob led Mrs. Ashbury down the corridor and into her bedroom. The door slammed. I heard the turn of a key in the lock. Bertha Cool said, “Nuts.”

Ashbury said, “We can’t risk it, Donald. It’s all right if we stood a chance, but that doctor knows which side of the bread has the butter. This will look like hell in a divorce court.”

“You’re the boss,” I said. “Personally, I think you’ve scrambled the eggs.”

A door down the corridor was opened, slammed, then locked. Dr. Parkerdale came striding indignantly into the room. “You have all but killed her,” he said.

“No one invited her to this party,” I said. “Send Bob back here. We want to question him.”

“He can’t leave his mother’s bedside. I won’t be responsible for consequences if—”

“No one wants you to be responsible for anything,” Bertha Cool said. “You couldn’t kill that woman with a sledge hammer, and you know it. She’s putting on an act.” Dr. Parkerdale said, “Madam, like all laymen, you’re prone to judge from external appearances. I’m telling you, her blood pressure has reached a dangerous point.”

“Let it come to a boil,” Bertha said. “It’ll do her good.”

Ashbury said to the doctor, “You think she’s in a dangerous physical condition?”

“Very critical,” the doctor said.

“Yes,” Bertha Cool snorted. “So critical that he leaves his patient to strut down the hall and try and make evidence for a divorce court.”

The significance of that remark soaked into Dr. Parkerdale’s mind. He turned wordlessly and walked back down the corridor to Mrs. Ashbury’s room. He knocked. The door was unlocked, opened, and locked again.

Bertha Cool kicked my door closed.

Ashbury said, “I’m sorry, Donald, but they’ve ganged up on us. The nurse won’t contradict the doctor.”

I reached for my hat. “It’s your funeral,” I said. “I had a winning hand until you trumped my ace.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to be. If you want to do a good day’s job, start getting worried about your wife.”

“That would be playing right into their hands.”

“So worried,” I went on, “that you insist on a consultation. Get a doctor of some real standing in the profession, get him out here right away, and
take her blood pressure
He looked at me for a minute, then his eyes softened into a twinkle.

He started for the telephone.

I said, “Come on, Bertha.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

T
OKAMURA
H
ASHITA
sat on the edge of the bed, blinked his eyes against the light, and listened to my proposition. I said, “These experts say the stuff’s no good, Hashita. They claim it only works with rubber knives and unloaded guns. They claim they’ll put on a test and tie you in a bow-knot like a shoelace. They offer to bet fifty bucks. I tried to show them what you’d taught me, and they jammed me into a garbage can and told me they could do the same with you.”

His eyes reflected back the lights as though they’d been burnished with black lacquer. “Excuse please,” he said. “Plant acorn. After a while is very big oak tree, but cannot make lumber from green sapling. Must allow time for growth.”

I said, “Well, if you think it’ll work, I’m willing to be shown, but the way things stand right now, I think it’s just a stunt. I’ve got fifty bucks to cover their bets.”

He got up and pushed his feet into straw sandals, slippety-slopped across to a closet, opened a door, peeled off his pajamas, and pulled on clothes. When he turned to me, there were reddish lights in his eyes. He didn’t say a word.

I led the way out of the door. He put on a coat and hat, and went down to where the taxicab was waiting at the curb, the meter clicking merrily away. He didn’t say a word as we got in, and he didn’t say a word all the way to the gambling club.

When he was dressed up, he wasn’t a bad-looking chap, a bit heavy in the waist. But it was just thick body muscles, not fat, that gave him that chunky appearance.

I walked over to the roulette table and started gambling. He stood a couple of paces behind me, looking at me scornfully.

The brunette who had taken over Esther Clarde’s date looked up, saw me, and hastily averted her eyes. A moment later she slid quietly out of the room and through a door marked
Private.
I pushed some chips in the Jap’s hand and said, “Put those on the board.” I quit playing. The brunette came back, said something to the man at the wheel, and looked right through me as though she’d never seen me before in her life.

The Jap put a chip on number thirty-six, and the ball, whirring and jumping around the track of the wheel, popped into pocket thirty-six.

The croupier raked in all the chips.

I said, “My friend had a chip on thirty-six.”

The croupier looked at me and shook his head. “Sorry. Your mistake.”

“The hell it is,” I said, and turned to Hashita. “Where did you put that chip, Hashita?”

He placed a thick, capable forefinger on the thirty-six.

The croupier said, “You’ll have to take this up with the manager.”

A man appeared as by magic at my elbow. “This way,” he said.

It was done that simply. None of that movie stuff of having a couple of tight-lipped men move up on each side —just a matter of putting the customer in a position where he had to beef, telling him to take the beef to the manager, and marching him through that door marked
Private.

“Come on, Hashita,” I said.

The man who escorted us into the office didn’t bother to come in. He pulled the door shut. A lock clicked—probably an electric bolt which could be released by pressing a button somewhere on the manager’s desk.

The manager was a thin-mouthed chap with high cheekbones, gray eyes, and restless hands. The long, slim fingers seemed delicately fragile. The hands were those of a poet, a musician—or a gambler.

He looked up at me and said, “Sit down, Lam,” and then looked questioningly at the Jap.

I said, “This chap put a chip on the thirty-six. The thirty-six turned up, and the croupier raked in all the chips.” “Dollar chips?” the manager asked.

I nodded.

He opened a drawer, took out a stack of silver dollars, and shoved them across to the Jap. “All right,” he said, “that disposes of
you.”

He looked at me and said, “Now that you’re here, Lam, you can sit over there at that desk and write out a statement that you were in room four-twenty-one when Jed Ringold was killed, that you went through his pockets, and took out a check for ten thousand dollars payable to cash.”

I said, “You can go to hell.”

He opened the humidor on the desk. There was a peculiar click as the cover swung back, but all that was inside was a row of cigarettes. He took one out and closed the cover. The humidor didn’t move by so much as a hair’s breadth. It might have been a part of the desk itself. The signal wires ran through it, of course, down through the desk and under the carpet.

A door opened. Two men came in.

The man behind the desk said, “Frisk them.”

I said to Hashita, “Stand perfectly still.”

The men came over and rammed their hands along our bodies, then stepped back. “They’re clean, Sig,” one of the men said.

The manager indicated the desk. “Go ahead and write, Lam,” he said.

“What do you want me to do, stick my head in a noose?”

“Just tell the truth,” he said. “No one’s going to hurt you.”

“I know damn well no one’s going to hurt me.”

“Unless you act rusty,” he went on.

“I guess you don’t know the news. The cops picked me up and tried to pin that hotel room on me. I guess you framed that. Well, it didn’t work. The witnesses won’t identify me.”

He acted very bored. He said to the Jap, “You got your money all right.”

The Jap looked at me.

I said, “He’s taken care of.”

“All right, show him out.”

The two men moved toward the Jap, who stood his ground quietly, his muscles seemingly completely relaxed, but there was something solid about the way he stood.

When the men were close to him, I said, “All right, Hashita, let’s win that bet.”

One of the men grabbed him by the shoulders and started to push him around.

I couldn’t see exactly what happened. The air got full of arms and legs. The Jap didn’t seem to exactly throw them. He juggled them, as though they’d been tenpins, and he was putting on a vaudeville exhibition in stage juggling.

The manager opened a drawer in his desk and reached inside.

One of the men sailed through the air with his head down and his feet up. He hit a picture on the wall in that position. The glass broke, and the man, the picture, and the frame hit the floor at the same time.

I made a grab for the manager’s arm.

The other man jerked a gun out of his pocket. From the corner of my eye, I saw what happened. Hashita grabbed his wrist, twisted his arm, swung his own body around, smacked his shoulder up under the other man’s armpit, jerked down on the guy’s arm—and threw him at the manager.

The guy hit the top of the desk and the manager and the manager’s gun all at the same time. The swivel chair gave way with a crash under the impact. The drawer splintered, and the men sprawled on the floor.

Hashita didn’t look at them. He looked at me. There was still that burning red light in his eyes.

I said, “All right, Hashita, you win.”

He didn’t smile. He kept looking at me with ominous intensity.

One of the men scrambled up from behind the desk. He lunged forward. I saw blued-steel in his hand. The Jap leaned across the desk and chopped down on the guy’s forearm with the edge of his open hand.

The man yelled with pain. His arm and the gun hit the desk together. The gun bounced. The arm lay there on the desk. The man couldn’t get enough strength in his muscles to move it.

Hashita walked around the desk with quick, businesslike steps.

I went to work. I went through that desk with as much attention to detail as the circumstances and time element permitted. The manager on the floor looked up at me with the dazed expression of a punch-drunk fighter.

I said, “Tell me where those Ashbury letters are hidden.”

He didn’t answer me. He may not even have heard me. If he did, the words probably didn’t make sense.

I went through the desk. I found an agreement which showed that C. Layton Crumweather owned a controlling interest in the Atlee Amusement Corporation. I found a statement of net profits, of gross income, a recapitulation of operating expense—I didn’t find any letters to Alta Ashbury. I was so disappointed I could have chewed up a bag of tenpenny nails.

The side door opened. A man stuck his head in, stared incredulously, and jumped back.

I said to the Jap, “All right, Hashita, that’s all.”

There was another side door. It led into a private toilet and washroom. Another door from there opened into an office which would have made a bank president turn green with envy. It didn’t look as though it had been used for some time. There was dust on the desk and on the chairs. I figured that would be Crumweather’s office. A door led to a corridor, and then there were back stairs. The Jap and I went down.

I shook hands with the Jap and gave him fifty dollars of my expense money. He didn’t want to take it. I could see the red glints still in his eyes. I said, “The pupil begs the pardon of Honorable Master. The pupil was wrong.”

He bowed, a stiffnecked bow of cold courtesy. “It is master,” he said, “who is very dumb. Good night please. Do not call again—ever.”

He got in the taxi and went home.

I turned around to look for another cab.

One was pulling in toward the curb. I flagged it, and motioned to the driver I’d pick him up as soon as he dropped his passenger. He nodded, brought the car to a stop, hopped out, and opened the door.

The man who got out of the taxi was C. Layton Crumweather.

He looked at me, and his bony face wreathed into a cordial smile. “Well, well,” he said, “it’s Mr. Lam, the man with the oil-land proposition. Tell me, Mr. Lam, how are things coming?”

“Very well,” I said.

He reached out with his hand, and I took it. He kept shaking my hand, hanging on to my right, pumping it up and down and smiling at me. “I see you completed your business in the Atlee Amusement Corporation.”

I said, “I presume that brunette girl telephoned you as soon as she tipped off the manager.”

“My
dear
young man,” he said, “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. It just happens that I eat here in the restaurant occasionally.”

“And have an interest in the gambling upstairs,” I supplemented.

“Gambling!”
he exclaimed. “What gambling? What are you talking about?”

I laughed.

“You astound me, Mr. Lam. Do you mean to say there’s gambling going on in the restaurant?”

“Save it,” I said.

He kept holding my right hand. “Let’s drop into the restaurant for a bite to eat.”

“Thanks, but I don’t like their coffee. Let’s go across the street to that restaurant.”

“Their
coffee is perfectly atrocious.”

Crumweather kept holding my right hand. He looked back over his shoulder toward the door of the restaurant as though expecting something to happen. Nothing did. Reluctantly, he let me withdraw my hand from his. “You haven’t told me about the oil.”

“Going fine,” I said.

“By the way, I find
we
have some mutual friends.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. Miss Ashbury. Miss Alta Ashbury. I have taken the liberty of asking her to be at my office tomorrow afternoon. I know she’s a very popular young woman and can’t arrange her time to suit the convenience of a crusty old lawyer, but you might impress upon her, Mr. Lam, that it would be very much to her advantage to be there.”

“I’ll tell her if I see her.”

“Well, come and join me in a cup of coffee.”

I shook my head. “No, thanks.”

“You were in there?” he asked, jerking his head toward the building.

“Oh, yes.”

He looked me over as though trying to find signs of violence.

“My business in there,” I said, “was concluded very satisfactorily to all concerned.”

“Ah, yes.” His face wrinkled into a smile that reached his ears. “You did the wise thing, Lam, my boy. No one will make any trouble for you as long as you show a spirit of co-operation. I am very glad you saw things our way. We can use you.” He groped out for my hand again. I pretended not to see the gesture.

“Well,” I said, “I must be going.”

“I think now that we understand each other, we’ll get along much better,” Crumweather said. “Kindly remember that I want Miss Ashbury at my office tomorrow afternoon without fail.”

“Good night,” I said, and stepped in the cab.

He was still standing on the curb, looking beamingly after me as I gave the cab driver Alta Ashbury’s address.