“We’ve got to find Manning.”
“How about the passenger?” Best suggested. “He should make a good witness for you.”
“He’s a swell witness to the statement that Manning made, but he can’t be a witness to the accident. He was dozing at the time. It was the crash that woke him up. He looked through the back of the stage and saw the car rolling over, had a glimpse of Miss Hanley being pitched out.”
“I see,” the detective remarked.
“You don’t see anything yet,” grumbled Dillon, pulling a handkerchief from the side pocket of his coat and mopping his perspiring brow. “Wigmore pulled a fast one.”
“Another one?”
“Yes, another one.”
“What did he do?”
“Miss Hanley hasn’t any money,” Dillon said. “She hasn’t any money to even pay her ordinary living expenses. She had to get some form of work. A woman who must have been in the employ of the stage company told her about some employment she could get if she’d write to a certain address. She made it appear that the applicant would have to show she was in good health.”
The lawyer broke off, to stare at the frail form of the woman as though she had been some particularly obnoxious insect.
“Do you know what she did, Gil? The little fool went ahead and answered a questionnaire that was sent her — a questionnaire that said the position was open only to applicants enjoying good health, and containing a lot of inquiries about whether she’d ever been in an accident, and if so, whether she’d had a complete recovery, and a lot of that stuff. It was a printed questionnaire. It looked innocent enough. It wouldn’t have fooled me if she’d told me about it. But she didn’t tell me about it until afterwards. She filled it in, stating that she’d been in a minor accident, but that she’d had a perfect recovery; that she was enjoying good health.”
Dillon glared at his client. Ellen Hanley had another fit of coughing. Best’s eyes showed sympathy. “How did you find out about it?” he asked the lawyer.
“When Wigmore quit his talk of compromise and decided he was going to trial. I had him almost worked up to a twenty-thousand-dollar settlement.”
“Twenty thousand dollars is a lot of money,” said Best.
“There’s some bad injuries in this case,” Dillon said, and tapped his lungs.
Best frowned. “Then,” he said, “as I see it, aside from the fact that you can’t prove your case against the stage company, in the first place, and can’t show any serious injuries, in the second place, there’s nothing much wrong with your lawsuit.”
“That’s it,” groaned Dillon. “Of course, I could put Ellen Hanley on the witness stand and get a doctor to support her testimony concerning the injuries, but you know how juries are. They see so many people who fake injuries against transportation companies that as soon as Wigmore flashes her written statement on ’em that she’d had a complete recovery and is in good health, I’d stand no chance of collecting anything, except maybe a few hundred dollars for doctor and hospital bills.”
Best frowned for a moment, then stared at Dillon. “It’s going to take money,” he said.
Dillon’s face instantly became a cold, hard mask. “I can advance you,” he said, “a hundred dollars, and pay you twenty dollars a day.”
Best shook his head. “I said money,” he remarked.
Dillon’s face mottled. His voice grew high-pitched with emotion. “What the hell do you think I am?” he asked. “Santy Claus? Do you think money grows on bushes? This whole thing is contingency with me, except costs. I got a retainer to cover costs, and that’s all.”
“How much of a retainer?” asked Best.
It was the woman who answered the question. “All I had,” she said. “A hundred and eighteen dollars.”
Best picked up his hat. “So long, Dillon,” he said, and strode from the office.
The lawyer tugged at the edge of the desk, heaved his bulk out of the chair. “Now wait a minute, Gil,” he said. “You can’t—”
Best slammed the door of the private office behind him, walked through the law library, pushed open the door into the outer office, shook his head at Norma Pelton.
“No go?” she asked.
“No go,” he told her. “I can’t stand your boss. He makes me seasick. The big stuffed shirt.”
“Huh,” she said, “you should be working for him.”
“Took all she had,” said Best in a voice that was edged with disgust, “and then kicks her all around the office because she tried to go to work and make some money to support herself — over a hundred dollars for ‘costs.’ Hell, it didn’t cost him over fifteen dollars to file the suit and serve the papers, and then he was too damn stingy to get a detective to sew the case up for him, but pocketed the rest of the retainer and tried to club the stage company into a settlement. It serves him right.”
Best pounded his way across the office, slammed the door to the corridor and started toward the elevator.
A key clicked in a lock, a knob turned. One of the doors marked, Frank C. Dillon — Attorney at Law — Private, opened. Dillon’s faun-colored vest blocked the opening. His face wore an ingratiating smile.
“All right, Gil, old kid,” he said, “I wouldn’t hold out on you. I’ll put up the money.”
The detective remained in the hallway. His face did not smile. “I meant money,” he said, “not for myself, but to keep that woman going until we can get a settlement for her, or bring the case to trial. And I need money for some help in this thing, and I don’t want any questions asked about what I do with it. You know the way Wigmore and his detectives strong-arm a case as well as I do. They’ve had five months’ head-start on me. I’ve got to pull a fast one.”
Dillon sighed, stood to one side and wheezed: “Come on in, Best. We can fix all that up.”
“And,” said Best, “I want the address that she wrote to get the employment.”
Dillon’s reply was a snort of contempt. After a moment he said: “That’s what burns me up, Best. That damn shyster, Wigmore, had the crust to put on there the address of Five Hundred and Three, Transportation Building. That’s the claim department of the Airline Stageways.”
Best pushed his way into the office, took a notebook from his pocket, handed it to Ellen Hanley, smiled reassuringly.
“Sign your name on that page,” he said, “just the way you signed it on that questionnaire.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Dillon, peering over Best’s shoulder, his wheezing breath sounding in the detective’s ear.
“Give me some money,” Best said, “and shut up. The less you know about this, the better.”
Chapter Two
Hard as Nails
Gilbert Best completed his canvass of the city directory. He had four Ellen Hanleys listed. Two of them were housewives; one was a milliner; the other was a stenographer. He also had three Miss Hanleys whose first names were not given, but were indicated only by initials and whose first initials were “E.”
They were, respectively, E. L. Hanley, E. M. Hanley, and E. A. Hanley.
Best selected the Ellen Hanley who was a stenographer as being his best bet. She resided in an apartment on Ninety-first Street. He made note of the address, climbed into his light, fast car, found the apartment without difficulty, jabbed his finger against the bell, and, within a second or two, heard the buzz of the electric door release. He pushed the door open, barged up a flight of stairs, and found an apartment door half open on the second floor, the figure of a young woman silhouetted against the light which came from the apartment.
“Miss Hanley?” asked Best.