"Well, Keyes, what are you going to do?"
"...All right, he wants to wait her out, make her sue,—that suits me. He's going to cover the dead man, find out what he can about why he maybe committed suicide. That suits me. I'm going to cover her. Every move she makes, everything she does, I'm going to know about it. Sooner or later, Huff, that guy's got to show. They'll have to see each other. And as soon as I know who he is, then watch me. Sure, let her sue. And when she goes on the witness stand, believe me, Huff, Norton's going to eat it. He's going to eat every word he's said, and the police may do some eating too. Oh no. I'm not through yet."
He had me, and I knew it. If she sued, and lost her head on the witness stand, God knows what might happen. If she didn't sue, that would be still worse. Her not trying to collect on that policy, that would look so bad it might even pull the police in. I didn't dare call her up, because for all I knew even now her wires might be tapped. I did that night what I had done the other two nights, while I was waiting on the inquest, I got stinko, or tried to. I knocked off a quart of cognac, but it didn't have any effect. My legs felt funny, and my ears rang, but my eyes kept staring at the dark, and my mind kept pounding on it, what I was going to do. I didn't know. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat. I couldn't even get drunk.
It was the next night before Phyllis called. It was a little while after dinner, and the Filipino had just gone. I was even afraid to answer, but I knew I had to. "Walter?"
"Yes. First, where are you? Home?"
"I'm in a drugstore."
"Oh, O.K., then, go on."
"Lola's acting so funny I don't even want to use my own phone any more. I drove down to the boulevard."
"What's the matter with Lola?"
"Oh, just hysteria, I guess. It's been too much for her."
"Nothing else?"
"I don't think so."
"All right, shoot, and shoot quick. What's happened?"
"An awful lot. I've been afraid to call. I had to stay home until the funeral, and—"
"The funeral was today?"
"Yes. After the inquest."
"Go on."
"The next thing, tomorrow they open my husband's safe deposit box. The state has something to do with that. On account of the inheritance tax."
"That's right. The policy's in there?"
"Yes. I put it in there about a week ago."
"All right then, this is what you do. It'll be at your lawyer's office, is that it?"
"Yes."
"Then you go there. The state tax man will be there, under— 68 the law he has to be present. They'll find the policy, and you hand it to your lawyer. Instruct him to put your claim in. Everything waits until you do that."
"Put the claim in."
"That's right. Now wait a minute, Phyllis. Here's something you mustn't tell that lawyer—yet. They're not going to pay that claim."
"What!"
"They're not going to pay it."
"Don't they have to pay it?"
"They think it's—suicide—and they're going to make you sue, and put it in the hands of the jury, before they pay. Don't tell your lawyer that now, he'll find it out for himself later. He'll want to sue, and you let him. We'll have to pay him, but it's our only chance. Now Phyllis, one other thing."
"Yes."
"I can't see you."
"But I want to see you."
"We don't dare see each other. Suicide is what they hope for, but they're mighty suspicious all the way around. If you and I began seeing each other, they might tumble to the truth so fast it would make your blood run cold. They'll be on your trail, for what they can find out, and you simply must not communicate with me at all, unless it's imperative, and even then you must call me at home, and from a drugstore, never the same drugstore twice in succession. Do you get me?"
"My you sound scared."
"I am scared. Plenty. They know more than you'd think."
"Then it's really serious?"
"Maybe not, but we've got to be careful."
"Then maybe I'd better not sue."
"You've got to sue. If you don't sue, then we are sunk."
"Oh. Oh. Yes, I can see that."
"You sue. But be careful what you tell that lawyer."
"All right. Do you still love me?"
"You know I do."
"Do you think of me? All the time?"
"All the time."
"Is there anything else?"
"Not that I know of. Is that all with you?"
"I think so."
"You better hang up. Somebody might come in on me."
"You sound as though you want to get rid of me."
"Just common sense."
"All right. How long is this all going to take?"
"I don't know. Maybe quite some time."
"I'm dying to see you."
"Me too. But we've got to be careful."
"Well then—good-bye."
"Good-bye."
I hung up. I loved her like a rabbit loves a rattlesnake. That night I did something I hadn't done in years. I prayed.
Chapter 9
It was about a week after that that Nettie came into my private office quick and shut the door. "That Miss Nirdlinger to see you again, Mr. Huff."
"Hold her a minute. I've got to make a call."
She went out. I made a call. I had to do something to get myself in hand. I called home, and asked the Filipino if there had been any calls. He said no. Then I buzzed Nettie to send her in.
She looked different from the last time I had seen her. Then, she looked like a kid. Now, she looked like a woman. Part of that may have been that she was in black, but anybody could see she had been through plenty. I felt like a heel, and yet it did something to me that this girl liked me. I shook hands with her, and sat her down, and asked her how her stepmother was, and she said she was all right, considering everything, and I said it was a terrible thing, and that it shocked me to hear of it. "And Mr. Sachetti?"
"I'd rather not talk about Mr. Sachetti."
"I thought you were friends."
"I'd rather not talk about him."
"I'm sorry."
She got up, looked out the window, then sat down again. "Mr. Huff, you did something for me once, or anyhow I felt it was for me—"
"It was."
"And since then I've always thought of you as a friend. That's why I've come to you. I want to talk to you—as a friend."
"Certainly."
"But only as a friend, Mr. Huff. Not as somebody—in the insurance business. Until I feel I know my own mind, it has to be in the strictest confidence. Is that understood, Mr. Huff?"
"It is."
"I'm forgetting something. I was to call you Walter."
"And I was to call you Lola."
"It's funny how easy I feel with you."
"Go ahead."
"It's about my father."
"Yes?"
"My father's death. I can't help feeling there was something back of it."
"I don't quite understand you, Lola. How do you mean, back of it?"
"I don't know what I mean."
"You were at the inquest?"
"Yes."
"One or two witnesses there, and several people later, to us, intimated that your father might have—killed himself. Is that what you mean?"
"No, Walter, it isn't."
"Then what?"
"I can't say. I can't make myself say it. And it's so awful. Because this isn't the first time I've had such thoughts. This isn't the first time I've been through this agony of suspicion that there might be something more than—what everybody else thinks."
"I still don't follow you."
"My mother."
"Yes."
"When she died. That's how I felt."
I waited. She swallowed two or three times, looked like she had decided not to say anything at all, then changed her mind again and started to talk.
"Walter, my mother had lung trouble. It was on account of that t
hat we kept a little shack up at Lake Arrowhead. One week-end, in the middle of winter, my mother went up to that shack with her dearest friend. It was right in the middle of the winter sports, when everything was lively up there, and then she wired my father that she and this other woman had decided to stay on for a week. He didn't think anything of it, wired her a little money, and told her to stay as long as she wanted; he thought it would do her good. Wednesday of that week my mother caught pneumonia. Friday her condition became critical. Her friend walked twelve miles through snowdrifts, through the woods, to get a doctor—the shack isn't near the hotels. It's on the other side of the lake, a long way around. She got into the main hotel there so exhausted she had to be sent to a hospital. The doctor started out, and when he got there my mother was dying. She lived a half hour."
"Yes?"
"Do you know who that best friend was?" I knew. I knew by the same old prickle that was going up my back and into my hair. "No."
"Phyllis."
"...Well?"
"What were those two women doing in that shack, all that time, in the dead of winter? Why didn't they go to the hotel, like everybody else? Why didn't my mother telephone, instead of wiring?"
"You mean it wasn't she that wired?"
"I don't know what I mean, except that it looked mighty funny. Why did Phyllis tramp all that distance to get a doctor? Why didn't she stop some place, and telephone? Or why didn't she put on her skates, and go across the lake, which she could have done in a half hour? She's a fine skater. Why did she take that three-hour trip? Why didn't she go for a doctor sooner?"
"But wait a minute. What did your mother say to the doctor when he—"
"Nothing. She was in high delirium, and besides he had her in oxygen five minutes after he got there."
"But wait a minute, Lola. After all, a doctor is a doctor, and if she had pneumonia—"
"A doctor is a doctor, but you don't know Phyllis. There's some things I could tell. In the first place, she's a nurse. She's one of the best nurses in the city of Los Angeles—that's how she met my mother, when my mother was having such a terrible fight to live. She's a nurse, and she specialized in pulmonary diseases. She would know the time of crisis, almost to a minute, as well as any doctor would. And she would know how to bring on pneumonia, too."
"What do you mean by that?"
"You think Phyllis wouldn't be capable of putting my mother out in the night, in that cold, and keeping her locked out until she was half frozen to death—you think Phyllis wouldn't do that? You think she's just the dear, sweet, gentle thing that she looks like? That's what my father thought. He thought it was wonderful, the way she trudged all that distance to save a life, and less than a year after that he married her. But I don't think so. You see—I know her. That's what I thought, the minute I heard it. And now—this."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Nothing—yet. Except listen to me."
"It's pretty serious, what you're saying. Or at any rate intimating. I suppose I know what you mean."
"That's what I mean. That's exactly what I mean."
"However, as I understand it, your mother wasn't with your father at the time—"
"She wasn't with my mother either. At the time. But she had been."
"Will you let me think this over?"
"Please do."
"You're a little wrought up today."
"And I haven't told you all."
"What else?"
"...I can't tell you. That, I can't make myself believe. And yet—never mind. Forgive me, Walter, for coming in here like this. But I'm so unhappy."
"Have you said anything to anybody about this?"
"No, nothing."
"I mean—about your mother? Before this last?"
"Not a word, ever, to anybody."
"I wouldn't if I were you. And especially not to—your stepmother."
"I'm not even living home now."
"No?"
"I've taken a little apartment. Down in Hollywood. I have a little income. From my mother's estate. Just a little. I moved out. I couldn't live with Phyllis any more."
"Oh."
"Can I come in again?"
"I'll let you know when to come. Give me your number."
I spent half the afternoon trying to make up my mind whether to tell Keyes. I knew I ought to tell him, for my own protection. It was nothing that would be worth a nickel as evidence in court, and for that matter it was nothing that any court would admit as evidence, because that's one break they give people, that they have to be tried for one thing at a time, and not for something somebody thinks they did two or three years before this happened. But it was something that would look mighty bad, if Keyes found out I knew it, and hadn't told him. I couldn't make myself do it. And I didn't have any better reason than that this girl had asked me not to tell anybody, and I had promised.
About four o'clock Keyes came in my office and shut the door.
"Well, Huff, he's showed."
"Who?"
"The guy in the Nirdlinger case."
"What?"
"He's a steady caller now. Five nights in one week."
"...Who is he?"
"Never mind. But he's the one. Now watch me."
That night I came back in the office to work. As soon as Joe Pete made his eight o'clock round on my floor I went to Keyes's office. I tried his desk. It was locked. I tried his steel filing cabinets. They were locked. I tried all my keys. They didn't work. I was about to give it up when I noticed the dictation machine. He uses one of them. I took the cover off it. A record was still on. It was about three quarters filled. I made sure Joe Pete was downstairs, then came back, slipped the ear pieces on and started the record. First a lot of dumb stuff came out, letters to claimants, instructions to investigators on an arson case, notification of a clerk that he was fired. Then, all of a sudden, came this:
Memo, to Mr. Norton
Re. Agent Walter Huff
Confidential—file Nirdlinger
With regard to your proposal to put Agent Huff under surveillance for his connection with the Nirdlinger case, I disagree absolutely. Naturally, in this case as in all cases of its kind, the agent is automatically under suspicion, and I have not neglected to take necessary steps with regard to Huff. All his statements check closely with the facts and with our records, as well as with the dead man's records. I have even checked, without his knowledge, his whereabouts the night of the crime, and find he was at home all night. This in my opinion lets him out. A man of his experience can hardly fail to know if we attempt to watch his movements, and we should thus lose the chance of his cheerful cooperation on this case, which so far has been valuable, and may become imperative. I point out to you further, his record which has been exceptional in cases of fraud. I strongly recommend that this whole idea be dropped.
Respectfully
I lifted the needle and ran it over again. It did things to me. I don't only mean it was a relief. It made my heart feel funny. But then, after some more routine stuff, came this:
Confidential—file Nirdlinger
SUMMARY—investigators' verbal reports for week ending June 17th:
Daughter Lola Nirdlinger moved out of home June 8, took up residence in two-room apartment, the Lycee Arms, Yucca Street. No surveillance deemed necessary.
Widow remained at home until June 8, when she took automobile ride, stopped at drug store, made phone call, took ride two succeeding days, stopped markets and store selling women's gowns.
Night of June 11, man caller arrived at house 8:35, left 11:48. Description:—Tall, dark—age twenty-six or seven. Calls repeated June 12, 13, 14, 16. Man followed night of first visit, identity ascertained as Beniamino Sachetti, Lilac Court Apartments, North La Brea Avenue.
I was afraid to have Lola come down to the office any more. But finding out they had no men assigned to her meant that I could take her out somewhere. I called her up and asked her if she would go with me to dinner. She said she would like it more
than anything she could think of. I took her down to the Miramar at Santa Monica. I said it would be nice to eat where we could see the ocean, but the real reason was I didn't want to take her to any place downtown, where I might run into somebody I knew.
We talked along during dinner about where she went to school, and why she didn't go to college, and a whole lot of stuff. It was kind of feverish, because we were both under a strain, but we got along all right. It was like she said. We both felt easy around each other somehow. I didn't say anything about what she had told me, last time, until we got in the car after dinner and started up the ocean for a ride. Then I brought it up myself.
"I thought over what you told me."
"Can I say something?"
"Go ahead."
"I've had it out with myself about that. I've thought it all over, and come to the conclusion I was wrong. It's very easy when you love somebody terribly, and then suddenly they're gone from you, to think it's somebody's fault. Especially when it's somebody you don't like. I don't like Phyllis. I guess it's partly jealousy. I was devouted to my mother. I was almost as devoted to my father. And then when he married Phyllis—I don't know, it seemed as though something had happened that couldn't happen. And then—these thoughts. What I felt instinctively when my mother died became a dead certainty when my father married Phyllis. I thought that showed why she did it. And it became a double certainty when this happened. But I haven't a thing to go on, have I? It's been terribly hard to make myself realize that, but I have. I've given up the whole idea, and I wish you'd forget that I ever told you."
"I'm glad in a way."
"I guess you think I'm terrible."
"I thought it over. I thought it over carefully, and all the more carefully because it would be most important for my company if they knew it. But there's nothing to go on. It's only a suspicion. That's all you have to tell."