Kept Women Can’t Quit

Four minutes passed. The telephone rang again. Sellers picked it up and said, “Hello.”

This time the call was for Sellers. It was good news. A slow smile spread over his face. “Well, well, what do you know!” he said. “Well, what do you know?”

Sellers hung up the telephone and looked at me thoughtfully.

Abruptly the door started rattling. Somebody grabbed the knob from the outside and twisted it, jerked the door, then pounded on the panels.

“Who’s there?” Sellers asked.

Bertha Cool’s voice came from the other side of the door.

“Let me in.”

Sellers grinned, shot back the bolt and opened the door. “Come on in, Bertha,” he said. “This is the Hazel Downer that I told you about. I told you I didn’t want you monkeying around with her. Your partner has got you into a mess, but good.”

“What’s he done?” Bertha asked.

“For one thing,” Sellers said, “your sweet little partner is mixed up in a murder.”

“Who’s dead?” Bertha asked.

“The man who was posing as Hazel’s husband,” Sellers said. “Hazel started living with him without benefit of clergy but with the benefit of everything else, including a damned good allowance. Then she started two-timing with a man named Herbert Baxley. Herbert Baxley’s a stick-up artist. It may have been one of those cute little threesomes that you run onto in the mobs, where everybody is all hunky-dory-two men and a woman. On the other hand, it may have been business between Baxley and Downer.

“My present guess is that Standley Downer had fifty grand as his half of that armored truck job. It all begins to add up. When Herbert Baxley got a little alarmed he went into a phone booth and called a number. We thought he was calling Hazel, but it looks now as though he was calling Standley.

“We’re running down a red-hot clue that a cute little trick by the name of Evelyn Ellis may have been the apex of another triangle. I’ve got men covering that now. When I get a report on that I may be able to find out where Donald picked up Standley Downer’s trunk.”

“His trunk?” Bertha asked.

“That’s right,” Sellers said. “Your little smart partner here somehow managed to palm off his trunk on Standley Downer.”

Bertha turned to look at me with her hard, glittering eyes. Her face was a little more florid than usual but there wasn’t the flicker of expression except in her hard eyes.

“What about that trunk, Donald?” she asked.

Sellers intervened. “Donald went to his place yesterday, Bertha. He was in a hell of a hurry. He threw some things in a trunk and beat it, carrying the trunk with him. A man that answered Donald’s description bought a ticket on the Lark last night and checked a trunk. Now you start putting two and two together.”

“You accusing him of murder?” Bertha asked.

“Why not?” Sellers said. “Standley Downer had some obligations with the fifty grand he’d picked up on that armored car job. He went to San Francisco. He intended to pay off some of his pressing obligations and then pick up Evelyn Ellis and go places and do things. He registered in the Caltonia Hotel. He had a suite. Evelyn was in that same hotel under the name of Beverly Kettle. Downer must have had this suite because he expected people would be calling on him. He undoubtedly had some business to attend to or he would have simply asked for a room. Actually, he’d wired ahead for a suite.

“When Standley Downer got to his suite, he found out he had the wrong trunk. The people who were expecting to collect from him thought his explanation was a little corny. They pulled everything out of the trunk, ripped out the lining, threw the clothes all over the joint... and in the middle of all that was Standley Downer who had had a very flat thin carving knife stuck in his back — with no trace of the weapon. The murderer took that away with him.

“Now then,” Sellers went on, “Donald is a smart little boy. He wouldn’t come walking back into the arms of the police with any money on him. But a check with the air express companies shows that Donald bought some photographic goods in San Francisco. That package was sent down at Donald’s request by air express with special handling instructions. So we called back to San Francisco and checked the photographic company that made the shipment and what do you know? A guy that answered Donald’s description was in there this morning and bought a thirty-five millimeter camera, gave his card and insisted that the camera be packed and shipped by air express within an hour of the time he bought it, with special handling charges.

“Now, you know what we’re going to do, Bertha? We’re going right to your office and we’re going to wait until that package comes in, and—”

“A package came in just as I left,” Bertha said. “I wondered what the hell it was and started to open it and then your telephone call came in and I dropped everything and beat it over here.”

“Where’s the package now?” Sellers asked.

“Being wrapped to send back,” Bertha said. “Nobody’s buying cameras with partnership funds while I’m running the joint.”