I said, “Try again, Esther.”
Her eyes raised to mine. For a moment there was glittering hatred in them. “You mean that after all I’ve done for you, you won’t do it?”
“No. It isn’t that. Try again telling me why you want to leave.”
“It’s just as I told you.”
“No, it isn’t.”
She was silent for a while, then she said, “It’s not safe for me here.”
“Why?”
“They’ll— I’ll— The same thing that happened to Jed will happen to me.”
“You mean they’ll kill you?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I’m not mentioning any names.”
I said, “I’m not going into it blind.”
“I went into it blind for you.”
“Is it Crumweather?” I asked.
She gave a quick start when I mentioned his name, then shifted her eyes and didn’t look at me for five or ten seconds. She was staring down at the illuminated dials on the dashboard of the car. “All right,” she said after a while. “Let’s say it’s Crumweather.”
“What about him?”
She said, “That business with Alta Ashbury was all planted. They intended to sell her two-thirds of the letters. The other one-third that had all the damaging things in them was to go to Crumweather.”
“What was he going to do with them?”
“He was going to make Alta Ashbury kick through with everything he needed to get Lasster acquitted.”
“You know about him?”
“Of course.”
“And about Alta Ashbury?”
She nodded.
“Go ahead.”
“Crumweather was going to make the last shakedown. The first two payments went to someone else.”
“And Jed Ringold gave her the third batch of letters,” I asked, “and double-crossed everyone?”
“No. That’s the funny part of it. He didn’t. He only gave her an envelope with some hotel stationery in it.”
“Did you know he was going to do that?”
“No. No one knew it. It was a racket Jed thought up for himself. He thought he could pocket the money and get out, but — things just didn’t work that way.”
“Where’s that batch of those letters now?”
“I don’t know. No one knows. Jed played along all right for a while, and then he got ideas of his own. I told him it was dangerous.”
“You were Jed’s woman?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Why, the idea of saying things like that to me!”
“You were, weren’t you?”
She met my eyes, then glanced away and didn’t say anything.
“You were, weren’t you?”
She waited a moment, then said, “Yes,” in a voice that was almost a whisper.
“All right, let’s go on from there. When the officers came up to your apartment tonight and pounded on the door and told you they were officers, and told you to open up, you were frightened stiff, weren’t you?”
“Of course I was. Anyone would have been under those circumstances.”
“You were in bed?”
She hesitated again, then said, “Yes. I’d just got to sleep.”
“You opened the door and came out into the corridor, and closed the door behind you?”
“Yes.”
“You had your keys with you?”
“Yes, in the pocket of my housecoat.”
I said, “The reason you were so frightened when you heard the police, the reason you didn’t let them go into your apartment and talk there, was because someone was in the apartment. Who was it?”
“No, no! I swear it wasn’t! I’m telling you the honest truth. It wasn’t the law. It was — something else.”
“When do you want to leave?”
“Right now.”
I lit a cigarette and didn’t say anything for quite a while. She was watching me anxiously. “Well?” she asked.
I said, “Okay, sister. I’ll have to get some money. I haven’t enough with me.”
“But you can get it?”
“Of course.”
“From Ashbury?”
“Yes.”
“When can you have it?”
“As soon as Ashbury gets back. He’s up north on a mining deal.”
“He was up with you?”
“Yes.”
“When will he be back?”
“He should be back almost any time. I don’t know whether he’ll drive back or take a plane.”
“Listen, Donald. As soon as he comes back, you arrange to get some money so I can leave. Will you do that for me?”
“I’ll take care of you.”
“But what am I going to do in the meantime?”
I said, “Let’s go to a hotel somewhere and register under an assumed name.”
“How about my clothes?”
“Leave them where they are. Just disappear.”
She thought for a while, and said, “I haven’t a cent with me.”
“I have some money. Enough to cover hotel bills, incidental expenses, and getting some new clothes.”
“Donald, will you do that for me?”
“Yes.”
“Where do we go?”
I said, “I know a little hotel that’s quiet.”
“You’ll take me there? Go there with me?”
“Yes.”
“You know how it is, Donald. A woman alone at this hour of the night without any baggage — well, you come and register with me.”
“As husband and wife?”
“Do you want to?”
I said, “I’ll tell them you’re my secretary, that you had to do a lot of work tonight, and have got to start early in the morning, and I want to get you a room in the hotel. It’ll be all right.”
“They won’t let you stay there with me?”
“Of course not. I’ll take you up to your room, and then come back down. Here’s a hundred. It will take care of you for the time being.”
She took the hundred, thought things over for quite a little while, and then said, “I guess perhaps that’s the best way. Thanks, kid. You’re white. I like you.”
I started the car and drove to the hotel I had in mind — a little place on a side street where a night clerk and an elevator operator ran the whole place after midnight.
Just before we went into the hotel she said, “Donald, if I could get hold of the rest of those letters, I’d be sitting pretty.”
“How do you figure?”
“Crumweather wants them, Alta Ashbury wants them, and the D.A. would pay money to get them so he could build up a case against Lasster.”
“The D.A. can’t pay anything.”
“He could make a bargain.”
“On what?” I asked. “Immunity?”
“Yes, if you want to put it that way.”
“With whom?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Where do you think the letters are?” I asked.
“Honest, Donald,” she said, “I don’t know. Jed walked to the hotel with me. He was a little afraid that something might happen, and he’d get pinched in a blackmail racket. He had been tipped off that Ashbury was going to get a detective to find out what his daughter had been doing with her money.”
“Where did that tip come from?”
“I don’t know, but Jed knew it. I suppose it came from Crumweather. Anyway, Jed didn’t want to have the letters in his possession until the last minute. He walked up to the hotel with me, and I was carrying the letters under my coat. I handed them to him just before I went in behind the cigar counter. I know he had them when he went up in the elevator and— Well, he never came down, that’s all. The murderer must have got them.”
I’d walked around to open the car door and help her out. Now I stood there, thinking. “Jed Ringold wasn’t his real name?”
“No.”