Kept Women Can’t Quit

“Then Calhoun busted in just as Evelyn had said dirty words to Standley and Standley was proceeding to choke the hell out of her.

“Calhoun picked up a carving knife out of a set that was on the dresser and stuck it into Downer’s back.”

“Will you kindly tell me,” Inspector Hobart said, “where in hell that carving knife actually came from? Excuse me, I didn’t mean to say hell in front of women.”

Bertha looked at him with her glittering eyes and said, “Why the hell not? I always figure that a woman who faints every time she hears some sonofabitch swear is just putting on an act anyway. Now, what was it you wanted to know? The carving knife — oh, yes, the nice homely little touch to the thing. This all took place in a housekeeping suite with a kitchen. Little Evelyn and Standley were going to be all cozy and not go out for a while. They were going to have a nice little honeymoon. So Evelyn made a contribution to the furnishings. She kicked in with a carving set.

“After Calhoun used the knife Evelyn got him out of there. She had him take the fancy box with the fork and steel with him. She said she’d take care of the murder weapon. She told him to take a plane back home. She promised to join him later. I guess he’s there now waiting for this bitch to make good.

“After she got rid of Calhoun,” Bertha said, “little Miss Smartie Pants here opened up the clothing on the corpse and found a money belt with seventy-five one-thousand-dollar bills in it. So she naturally appropriated the money.

“Then she looked through the clothes in the trunk and found a note that the trunk apparently belonged to a guy named George Biggs Gridley who was staying at the Golden Gateway Hotel. She didn’t make the mistake of leaving any messages for Gridley nor did she try calling from her room, but she used up four dollars’ worth of dimes calling the Golden Gateway Hotel from the phone booth in the lobby and asking to be connected with Mr. Gridley.

“The knife and chamois-skin belt she put in a brief case she had here in the room, took it downstairs, casually dropped it among the incoming baggage and went on about her business.

“She did all her cover-up stuff before the body was discovered. Standley Downer was a big-shot gambler who was going to take a powder. He was getting all of his stuff in thousand-dollar bills. But he was afraid of being highgraded, so he wouldn’t put all of his eggs in one basket. He carried seventy-five grand in the money belt, had fifty thousand stashed in his trunk. The fact that the armored car lost the bank’s money was no skin off Standley’s nose. The shipment was insured. The bank paid Standley and kept quiet about it.”

Evelyn simply sat there, completely wilted, sobbing.

Hazel, her eyes as big as saucers stood listening.

Hobart said, “Well, we’ll pick Calhoun up in Los Angeles. We—”

I said, “Just a minute, please.” I stepped over to the phone, picked it up and said to the clerk, “Will you tell Mr. Jackson in Room 813 that a police officer is in the hotel and had asked him to step down to the room of Evelyn Ellis in Room 751?”

I hung up the phone and said to Inspector Hobart, “Come on, we’ve just got time.”

He hesitated a second or two, then followed me out into the hall.

We dashed for the stairs and up to 813.

We had just about reached the door when it burst open and Calhoun, dragging a suitcase, came tearing out, an expression of wild-eyed panic on his face.

“Hello, Calhoun,” I said. “Remember me? I’m Lam. Shake hands with Inspector Hobart.”

Hobart took one look at Calhoun, then reached back to his belt to pull out the handcuffs. When he had them adjusted, he turned and looked at me.

“Now, how the hell did you know the guy was here in this hotel registered under the name of Jackson?” he asked.

“Inspector,” I said, “you’ve just got to put it down to some of that brilliant reasoning that comes from watching television programs. Anyone who had followed the private-eye programs would know he had to be here in the hotel in order to enable us to get the crime solved in thirty minutes, including commercials.”

Inspector Hobart drew back his hand to hit me. He was white he was so mad. Then lie took a deep breath and said, “I’m grateful to you, Lam. Also, I’m beginning to know exactly how Frank Sellers feels.”

We marched Calhoun down to the room where Evelyn Ellis was being guarded by Bertha Cool.

Calhoun took one look at the militant Bertha Cool, at the sobbing Evelyn, and knew the jig was up. He started blabbing out the story.

He knew Evelyn had given him the double-cross. He knew that Downer was planning to go to San Francisco and fix up a place and he and Evelyn were going to start housekeeping. So Calhoun made it a point to ring up her apartment, pretending to be a gangster, with his voice disguised, and leave grim warnings for Downer that he had just so many hours to pay up or else.