Chapter Eleven

  The evening newspapers saved me the trouble of asking my correspondent for a report. I read those papers and had the answer — or thought I did. It was the only answer I could find.

  One George Bishop, a wealthy mining man, had left San Francisco Tuesday night to go to his mine in northern California.

  He had never arrived.

  Early today, the papers reported, his Cadillac automobile had been found where it had been driven off the road above Petaluma. There were blood spatters on the lefthand side of the front seat, and definite blood spatters on the inside of the windshield.

  From the indications on the ground officers decided the automobile had been there for at least five days, perhaps longer. Putting two and two together, it looked as though Bishop had been waylaid late Tuesday night, probably by hitchhikers whom he had picked up and who had killed and robbed their benefactor.

  It was known Bishop was in the habit of carrying large sums of cash with him on his business trips. On this trip he had expected to drive nearly all night in order to reach his mine in Siskiyou County early Wednesday morning.

  In the trunk of the car police found a suitcase and leather handbag, both of the most expensive design, and filled with George Bishop’s personal wearing-apparel and toilet articles. Bishop’s wife had made a positive identification.

  Police were now making an intensive search for Bishop’s body in the vicinity of the automobile. Judging from the position of the bloodstains it was assumed he had been killed by bullets fired by someone sitting in the back seat of his car. This led police to believe Bishop had picked up more than one hitchhiker. They reasoned that a lone hitchhiker would have been sitting in the front seat beside Bishop. If there had been two or three, however, the back seat would have been occupied.

  From the nature of the blood spatters police were not at all certain two people had not been killed. At least one of the homicide experts felt that someone seated on the driver’s right had either been killed or seriously wounded.

  Police, trying to reconstruct Bishop’s trip, felt that the car might have been driven some little distance after Bishop’s body had been dumped out inasmuch as there was no sign of the body anywhere near the car.

  The most intensive search was along the main traveled highway, the assumption being that the murderers would have disposed of the body as soon as possible, and only after that had been done would they have driven the automobile up the little-used side road and then down the narrow lane to the place where it had been found. The murderers hardly dared risk driving any great distance with the body in the car, according to police reasoning.

  The paper published a photograph of Bishop’s wife making an identification of the contents of the suitcase. The picture showed that she was a good-looking babe, and while she was supposed to have been “overcome with grief“ she had, nevertheless, been carefully conscious of the camera angles at the time the picture was taken, or else the photographer had been pretty clever about posing her.

  The address was out in Berkeley and I decided to have a look for myself.

  Bertha would have approved of my economy. I was trying to keep Elsie Brand’s money as intact as possible. I went by bus.

  The bus let me off within three blocks of the place and when I got to it I found there were two official-looking automobiles parked in front of it. I waited for nearly half an hour, prowling around the neighborhood.

  The place was quite some mansion, a half-hillside sweep of grounds with a big house, a view, a swimmingpool, and a back lot where tons of crushed rock had been dumped into a fill.

  I felt there was a good big seventy-five thousand dollars in real estate and improvements, and a lot more money was going to be spent on the place.

  At the end of about a half hour the last car was driven away and when it was out of sight around the terraced turn in the road, I went boldly up the front steps and rang the bell.

  A colored maid answered the door.

  I didn’t waste any time. I flipped a careless hand toward the left lapel of my coat, said, “Tell Mrs. Bishop I want to see her,” and pushed on in without taking my hat off.

  The maid said, “She’s pretty tired now.”

  “So am I,” I said, and, still with my hat on, walked over to slide one hip over a mahogany library table.

  I felt certain no one was ever going to say anything to me about impersonating an officer. I could well imagine the chagrin of the police department if the maid got on the stand and said, “Yes, sir! I knew he was an officer from the way he acted. He didn’t tell me nothin’. He just walked in with his hat on, so I knew he must be an officer.”

  The woman who entered the room after about three minutes was tired to the point of being mentally numb.

  She wore a simple, dark-colored dress that had a V in front low enough to emphasize the creamy smoothness of her skin. She was brunette, slate-eyed, nice-figured, in the mid-twenties, and ready to drop in her tracks.

  “What is it?” she said, without even bothering to look at me.

  “I want to check up on some of your husband’s associates.”

  “That’s been done already a dozen times.”

  “Did he know anyone by the name of Meredith?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t heard him speak of any — Man or woman?”

  “Man.”

  “I haven’t heard him speak of any Meredith.”

  “Billings?” I asked.

  For a swift instant I felt there was a startled flicker of expression in her eyes, then she said in the same flat, weary voice, “Billings — That name is familiar. I may have heard George use it.”

  “Can you tell me a little something about his trip?”

  “But we’ve gone over this, over and over and over.”

  “Not with me, you haven’t.”

  “Well, what’s your interest in it?”

  I said, “I’m trying to solve the case. I’m going to save you a little trouble.”

  “We don’t know there is any case yet,” she said. “They haven’t found — found anything to justify their conclusions. George may be working on some sort of a secret deal and he might go to almost any lengths to conceal what he was doing.”

  I waited for her to look up from the carpet; then I said, “Do you seriously believe that, Mrs. Bishop?”

  “No,” she said.

  Her eyes started to lower, then she raised them to mine once more. “Go on,” she said, and this time I could see that her brain was coming out of the mental fog of weariness in which it had been wrapped.

  “He has a mine up north?”

  “Siskiyou County.”

  “A paying mine?”

  “I don’t know much about his business affairs.”

  “And he left Tuesday?”

  “That’s right. Along about seven o’clock in the evening.”

  “Wasn’t that rather late?”

  “He planned to drive most of the night.”

  “Did he make a habit of picking up hitchhikers?” She said, “You keep going over and over the same things. Who are you, anyway?”

  “The name,” I told her, “is Lam,” and threw another question at her quick before she had a chance to think that over. “Just what did he say to you prior to his departure?”

  She didn’t fall for it. Her eyes kept fastened on me. “Just what’s your capacity, Mr. Lam?” she asked.

  “Sometimes a quart. The results are usually disastrous. I take it your husband was away a good deal of the time?”

  “I mean what’s your capacity with the police force?”

  “Zero-zero-point-zero. If you’ll answer my questions, Mrs. Bishop, instead of asking questions, we’ll get finished a lot faster.”

  “If you’ll answer my questions instead of throwing more questions at me, we may terminate the interview a lot faster,” she said, angry now and very much alert. “Just who are you?”

  I saw then she was going after it until she had an answer. I didn’t want to appear to dodge around the bushes. I said, “I’m Donald Lam. I’m a private detective from Los Angeles. I’m working on a case that I think may have some angles to it that will be of some assistance.”

  “Assistance to whom?”

  “To me.”

  “I thought so.”

  “And,” I said, “perhaps to you.”

  “In what way?”

  I said, “Just because you’re beautiful is no sign you’re dumb.”

  “Thank you. But you can skip all that stuff.”

  I said, “Your husband was wealthy.”

  “What if he was?”

  “The newspaper gave his age as fifty-six.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re evidently a second wife.”

  “I’ll put up with just about so much of this,” she said, “and then I’ll have you thrown out.”

  “There was probably insurance,” I went on. “If you’re dumb enough to think that the police haven’t suspected you of having a young lover, and planning to get rid of your stodgy, middle-aged husband so you could inherit his money and go places with the boy you really like, you’re ivory from the ears up.”

  “I suppose, Mr. Lam, that the ultimate purpose of all this is to frighten me into retaining you at a handsome salary?”

  “Wrong again.”

  “What is the purpose?”

  “I’m working on another case. I think the solution to it may have a great deal to do with your husband and what may have happened to him. Are you interested?”

  She said, “No,” but didn’t make any move to leave the room.

  I said, “If you’re guilty of anything at all, don’t stick around and answer my questions. There’s a phone over there. If you have anything on your conscience go call a good lawyer, tell your story to him and to no one else.”

  “And if I’m not guilty of anything?”

  “If you’re not guilty of anything at all, if there’s nothing you’re afraid to have the police find out, talk with me and I may be able to help you.”

  “If I’m not guilty of anything I don’t need any help.”

  “That shows what an optimist you are. Sometime when you haven’t anything else to do, get Professor Borchard’s book Convicting the Innocent, and read the sixty-five cases of authenticated wrongful convictions that are set forth in that book. And, believe me, that’s just scratching the surface.”

  “I don’t have time to read.”

  “You will.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  I said, “Unless you show a little savvy you may be spending the long afternoon hours in a cell.”

  “That’s a cheap, shoddy attempt to frighten me.”

  “It is,” I admitted.

  “Why are you doing it if you don’t want money?”

  “I want information.”

  “Yet you tell me that I shouldn’t give out information, that I should see a lawyer.”

  “If you’re guilty.”

  “What else do you want to know, Mr. Lam?”

  “Garvanza,” I said. “Ever hear your husband mention that name?”

  This time there could be no mistaking the little start that she gave; then her face was a poker face once more. “Garvanza,” she said slowly. “I’ve heard that name somewhere.”

  “Your husband ever talk with you about a Garvanza?”

  “No, I don’t think he did. We discussed business very infrequently. I am not certain whether he knew a Mr. Garvanza or not.”

  I said, “When I mentioned Meredith, you wanted to know whether it was a man or a woman. On the Garvanza question you popped right out with a denial without asking whether it was Mr. Garvanza or Miss Garvanza or Mrs. Garvanza.”

  “Or the little Garvanza baby,” she said sarcastically.

  “Exactly.”

  “I’m very much afraid you and I aren’t going to get along at all, Mr. Lam.”

  “I don’t see any reason why not. I think we’re doing fine.”

  “I don’t.”

  “As soon as you get over the act of righteous indigna- tion that you’re using to cover up your slip when I mentioned Garvanza’s name, I think we’re going to be real chummy.”

  The slate-colored eyes studied me for four or five seconds which felt like as many minutes; then she said, “Yes, Mr. Lam. He knew Gabby Garvanza. I don’t know how well. I’ve heard him speak of Mr. Garvanza, and when he read in the papers that Gabby Garvanza had been shot down in Los Angeles he was very, very much worried. I know that. He tried to keep me from seeing it, but I know that he was. Now I’ve answered your question. Where do we go from there?”

  “Now,” I said, “you’re beginning to talk. Garvanza never called on him at the house here?”

  “I have heard him mention Mr. Garvanza’s name. And I know that he knew Gabby Garvanza. Offhand, I don’t know exactly when Garvanza was shot. Let me see, that was on the Thursday before my husband disappeared. He was reading the paper, and all of a sudden he gave a startled exclamation, a half-strangled cry.

  “It was at breakfast. I looked up at him and thought he might have something stuck in his throat. He coughed and reached for the coffee cup as though to take a swallow of liquid, then kept on coughing, putting on an act of having choked over something he’d eaten.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I played right along. I got up and patted him on the back a few times, told him to hold his head down between his knees, and then, after a while, he quit coughing and smiled at me and said that a piece of toast had gone down his windpipe.”

  “You knew he was lying?”

  “Of course.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “After he’d left for the office I folded the newspaper over in just the position it had been in when he’d been reading, and looked for the item that had alarmed him. It must have been the one about a Los Angeles mobster, Gabby Garvanza, being shot. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why that would have made any difference to George, but I remembered it. The paper said Garvanza would recover.

  “I knew something was really bothering him all Sunday night and all Monday. When he told me he was going to the mine Tuesday I felt certain that in some way it had something to do with the thing that had been on his mind.

  “You understand, Mr. Lam, I haven’t any evidence for all this. It’s simply womanly intuition, and I don’t for the life of me know why I’m letting my hair down and telling you all this.”

  “Probably,” I said, “because I called the turn and you do have a young lover. Therefore, you’d like very much to get the case cleared up before the police start messing around.”

  She said, “I don’t know what it is about you, but you can say things and get away with them that would cause me to start slapping your face if it weren’t for — for the way you say them. Sometimes — I don’t know — you seem to be sincere.”

  “All right, you haven’t answered the question.”

  “No, Mr. Lam. You’re wrong. I haven’t any lover, and I don’t give a damn how much the police mess into my present.”

  “How about your past?”

  Again her eyes held mine steadily. “That,” she said, “I wouldn’t like.”

  “Vulnerable?”

  “I’m not answering questions on that. Anyway, I’ve given you all the information I have because I think you might be on the right track. While the police haven’t started suspecting me as yet they will before very long, and I’d like to avoid that phase of the case. My husband took out insurance in my favor about six weeks ago.”

  “You haven’t told the police that?”

  “They haven’t asked me.”

  I said, “Tell me about this mine up in Siskiyou County.”

  “It’s owned by one of my husband’s corporations. He had several different companies.”

  “Just where is this mine?”

  “Somewhere up in the Seiad Valley. That’s a wild country in the back part of Siskiyou County.”

  “What happens at the mine?”

  She smiled. Her voice was that of a patient parent. “People work the mine. The ore is dumped into conveyors and carried down to the railroad. It’s put aboard flat cars and shipped to the smelting company.”

  “That’s another one of your husband’s corporations?”

  “He controls it, yes.”

  “And then what happens?”

  “He gets checks from the smelting company for the amount of mineral that’s in the ore.”

  “Big checks?”

  “I think so. My husband makes big money.”

  “Who handles your husband’s accounts? Does he have an office?”

  “No, my husband has no office in the conventional sense of the word. He’s a mining man. His office is under his hat. His accounts are kept by an income tax man — a Mr. Hartley L. Channing. You’ll find him listed in the phone book.”

  “Know anything else that could be of help?”

  She said, “There’s one thing. My husband is terribly superstitious.”

  “In what way?”

  “He is a great believer in luck.”

  “Most mining men are.”

  “But my husband has this one fixed superstition. No matter how many mines he opens and closes, one of them, usually the best one, must be named ‘The Green Door,’ and so carried on the books.”

  I thought that over. There was a gambling joint in San Francisco known as The Green Door. I wondered if she knew of that, and I wondered if her husband did. Perhaps he’d been lucky in the gambling house one night and felt the name would bring him luck in connection with his mining companies.

  “Anything else?” I asked.

  “Well, yes — in a way—”

  “Go on.”

  “When my husband left Tuesday evening he knew that he was going into danger.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He was always a little apprehensive about leaving me alone.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve tried to figure that one out, too. I think it’s largely because he was an older man and I was so much younger and — Well, I think under those circumstances a man gets a little more possessive than would otherwise be the case, and is — shall we say, a little more apprehensive.”

  “So what?”