Westfall gave me another cold look. Then he got up, and we followed him into his office. It was nothing so elaborate as his main headquarters downtown, but still it was strictly big time. He gave Mary her money in thirty bills and took a receipt for them.
“If you’ll take my advice,” said Westfall, “you’ll go right back to your hotel and put that money in the safe. I’ll send along a couple of my boys, if you like.”
“I don’t like,” I said. “The last time a couple of your boys got close to thirty grand they succumbed to wanderlust. I’ll do all the necessary bodyguarding in this case.”
Westfall shrugged. We went out through the club and took the only waiting cab. I’ll admit I had a few perambulating palpitations. It wouldn’t look so good if somebody came along and I let them take those nice clean bills out of Mary’s handbag. The driver started back downtown, but I said: “Let’s take a ride out into the country. Take it pretty slow and easy.”
If the driver knew anything about a war going on he didn’t hint it. He took us about two miles out, and when we came to a crossroad, I said: “Turn here.”
Mary Ditson eyed me with mingled wonder and suspicion while the cab turned down the cross-road. But she didn’t say anything until the road began to dip and twist.
“What is your idea? We’re going away from my hotel, not back to it!”
“Sure. Westfall wouldn’t pull anything so corny as to put a tail on us at the Silver Dollar. If he has any ideas at all, the tail would pick us up on the way downtown. This way we should cross him up.”
“But why would he have anyone follow us?”
“To see that nobody took the thirty grand away from you.”
“Well what’s the matter with that?”
“Nothing much except that I want it. Hand it over.”
She sucked in her breath in a short gasp.
“You crook! Why, I’ll bet you aren’t Ben Corbett at all! You’re somebody else just pretending you’re him!”
“Hey!” said the driver, slowing almost to a stop. “What goes on back there?”
“Keep out of this, bub,” I told him. “This is no affair of yours.”
Mary Ditson clutched her handbag tightly.
“You’re not going to get away with this!”
“Wrong again. It’s you who aren’t going to get away with it.”
“I... I don’t know what you mean!” Her eyes widened as if she suddenly saw the light. “I know — you think I’m not Mary Ditson, that I’m just pretending I’m she. That’s what you think, isn’t it?”
“Oh, no, you’re Mary Ditson, all right. It’s just that I don’t want to see a swindle pulled, even if it’s on a racketeer like Westfall. Come clean, Mary — tonight’s the second time you’ve collected your father’s gambling loss.”
“You... you’re crazy! Why would Westfall pay me off twice?”
“Because he didn’t know he was doing it. He doesn’t believe Parker and Souders delivered the cash to your father’s hotel room — I do. I think it was you who carried it out of there. You must have been there at the time, or else you came right over when he phoned you the good news.”
Mary Ditson forced a laugh. “That’s good! He got the money at nine o’clock and ten minutes later I was there to collect it from him! And all away across the state line!”
I laughed long and loud. Mary Ditson said: “What are you laughing at?”
“These screwball hunches of mine. Take this one. I had a hunch you might have been in Midtown to pick up the dough, but then there were other candidates. So what happens? You listen three times to as many stories about the thirty grand being delivered to your father’s hotel room. You heard me tell it, you heard Parker and Souders tell it, and you heard Westfall tell it. Nobody said anything about what time the money was supposed to have been delivered. Nobody said it was nine o’clock or that it was ten minutes before your father’s alleged suicide. Yet you just asked me how you could have traveled from your home town across the state line to Midtown in ten minutes, after a phone call at nine!”
Again Mary’s breath went in fast. I reached over and found no resistance when I took the bag away from her. I removed the bills, stuffed them into my inside coat pocket and handed back the bag.
I said, mainly for the benefit of the cab driver: “You’re probably one of Westfall’s stooges, and you may as well tell him what you overheard. You can also tell him he can have his dough if he comes to my hotel in the morning.”
He turned at the next cross-road and headed back toward town. Mary was crying her eyes out by this time. I took an armful of her.
“Think nothing of it, baby. Your old man got a bum break, and nobody will blame you for trying to take a rat like Westfall. My only beef is that your keeping mum was keeping me in doubt about whether I was working on a suicide or a murder. You should have thought of that.”
She whimpered all the more, but didn’t try to break away. Women are like cats — you can’t hate them because you can’t train them to be as dependable as dogs.
The tears were gone by the time we reached the Broadhurst. The cab driver had heard plenty, so I took Mary into the lobby and found a quiet corner, before I asked any more questions.
“O. K., Mary. Let’s hear what happened.”
“There’s nothing much. Those men — I didn’t see them — they stopped in the vestibule and delivered the money. They told Dad to stop squawking and get out of town. They didn’t ask for a receipt. I didn’t understand that.”
“They were trusted payoff men for Westfall,” I told her. “They never took receipts. Nobody would give them any. So they didn’t ask your father for one because the habit was too strong.”
“Well, I made Dad give me the money. I took it to the Broadhurst and the clerk put it in a safe. Of course he didn’t know what was in the envelope I gave him — it was just thirty bills, like the second package.
“I felt pretty wonderful, knowing Dad had got his money back. I went out to a movie. Then when I came out I saw Dad’s suicide in the headlines. I didn’t know what to think. I couldn’t understand why he would commit suicide. I couldn’t believe anybody had murdered him, because he hadn’t any money.”
“Well, you knew it had to be one or the other.”
“Of course. But I didn’t know why it would be one or the other. I waited till next day, then I went to the morgue. They wouldn’t let me claim the body. They treated me terribly — it’s plain that everyone I saw was working for the gamblers.
“I went to police headquarters, and it was the same story there. I suppose I’d have told about the thirty thousand if anybody had treated me half-way decent. But everybody seemed to be trying to brush me out of his hair. A whole day passed with nothing done.
“Then today, I found you were in the picture. Hinchman evidently thought he was getting rid of me by sending me to you — and by that time I was bitter. I didn’t know why Dad had jumped from that window, but I knew he wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been for Spain Westfall’s gambling place.
“I remembered the men hadn’t gotten a receipt. Then you told me Westfall himself believed that the money had never been delivered — that the messengers had gone away with it. So I thought I’d get even with Westfall and collect twice!”
“Sure it wasn’t so much revenge as the money?”
“Why not the money?”
“Atta girl! I don’t blame you for a little opportunism, only you sure played the devil with solving your father’s murder.”
“You really think it was murder?”