Kept Women Can’t Quit

“Sellers was right again,” I said. “The guy was shipping a trunk. I juggled things so that I got his trunk and he got mine. The fifty grand was in his trunk. I just had a hunch that they might be laying for me, so I bought the camera and some enlarging paper. The box of enlarging paper had two packages of paper on the inside. I surreptitiously opened the box under the counter while the manager was getting some accessories for the camera I wanted and pulled out some of the paper and put the fifty grand inside the box. I said I wanted it shipped at once to the office here. I wanted a special messenger to take it to the air express so it would be here by the time I arrived.”

“My God,” Bertha said, “that’s enough to have made the guy suspicious right there.”

“No, it isn’t,” I said. “I did a lot of testing with the camera. I treated the paper as just a matter of course, nothing at all. The camera was the thing I seemed to be interested in. He was calling one of his clerks to rush it over to the air-express office when I left.”

Bertha shook her head. “You’re a brainy little bastard, Donald, and then at times you just knock yourself for a loop being too damn smart. Why the hell didn’t you pick a store run by an American? You can’t fool those Orientals. They bow and scrape and giggle, and all the time their shrewd little eyes are slithering around like a snake’s tongue, seeing things that wouldn’t mean anything to us but make us like an open book to them.”

“You’re provincial, Bertha,” I said. “All nationalities have their individual mannerisms. The Japanese probably feel that we look each other straight in the eyes, shake hands, clap each other on the back with expressions of cordial sincerity and are lying like hell all the time. The oriental manners you describe are simply ceremonial. You’re afraid of them because they can out-think you.”

Bertha glowered at me angrily. “Go to hell,” she said. “They didn’t outwit me, they outwitted you.”

“Well,” I said, “there’s no use arguing. You saw the package when it came in. Had it been tampered with?”

“Hell, no,” Bertha said. “It was all sealed up nice and shipshape and it had this label from the camera store and was addressed to the firm for your attention. So I took it and opened it to see what it was. I never did find out. I just had the wrappers off when the phone rang and it was Frank Sellers, and so I beat it out there.”

“Well,” I said, “now we’re really in the soup.”

“In the soup!” Bertha exclaimed. “We’re out of the frying pan and right in the middle of the fire. Somebody must have followed you, Donald. If it wasn’t that damn Jap, somebody must have followed you and when you went into the camera store managed to be where he could watch you through a window or something. Then he probably intercepted the package some way and—”

Bertha caught the expression on my face. “What is it, Donald?”

“It was a woman,” I said. “I remember that right after I went into the camera store a good-looking babe came in and started asking questions about cameras. She was down at another counter near the front of the store. I was in the used-camera department at the back end of the store.”

“What did she look like?” Bertha asked.

I shook my head.

“Don’t hand me that guff,” Bertha said, suddenly angry. “A good-looking babe and you can’t tell what she looked like?”

“Not this babe,” I said. “I was too intent on making a substitution of that fifty grand while the Jap was out back getting cameras to show me. I wanted a camera and a case, too.”

“All right,” Bertha said after a while. “We’ve been taken. Now, you switched trunks. What happened to the trunk you got from Downer after you got the fifty grand?”

I said, “I paid rent on a room in the phony name of George Biggs Gridley. It’s at the Golden Gateway Hotel. I left a teaser in my trunk so Downer would find it when he opened the trunk. That teaser would indicate that someone with the name of Gridley at the Golden Gateway Hotel was the owner of the trunk.”

“What did you do that for?”

“I wasn’t sure the money was in his trunk. I thought he’d fall for the gag the trunks had been mixed up by the railroad company and call Gridley at the Golden Gateway. I had things rigged so I could either take the call or fade out of the picture.”

“Did Downer call?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because he was dead.”

Bertha thought that over. “How come the police didn’t find the teaser and come barging down on the Golden Gateway Hotel looking for Gridley?”

“Because it wasn’t there.”

“Why not?”

“The killer took it.”

“Good God!” Bertha exclaimed. “You’ve got the police after you for a murder and killers stalking you for fifty grand... with some slick highgrading chick sitting pretty with our fifty grand stuck in her girdle.”

“It looks that way,” I admitted.

“Fry me for an oyster!” Bertha said.