Crime on My Hands (12 page)

“So my agent tells me,” I said. I was still cross at the interruption.

“Then. Then perhaps. Perhaps
you
can tell me what I'm supposed to do.”

The bewildered look in his eyes would have made nicks in a heart of stone.

“See here,” I said. “Haven't you been in pictures before?”

He shook his head. “No. And it's very confusing. You see, I don't know just what I'm supposed to be doing here–”

I confess that I drew a long breath, squared off, and prepared to deliver a lecture. Luckily that was the moment when Sammy came in.

He stared around the trailer, focused on the beard, and said, “Oh, it's you again.”

‘I'm sorry to have disturbed Mr. Sanders,” the beard said unhappily, “but it's just that I don't quite know what I'm supposed to do.”

“Just watch the director,” Sammy said.

“Oh,” the beard said. He paused. “Oh. Thanks.” He walked to the trailer door and paused again. “Only you see. My agent said–”

“Never pay any attention to what an agent says,” Sammy said in his friendliest tone. “You just turn in your slips and collect your pay and everything will be swell, see?”

The beard looked as bewildered as ever, but he said “Thanks” all over again before he went out the door and disappeared into the night like a drop of water disappearing down a drain.

“And now,” Sammy began.

Carla rose.

All the fright was gone. She was once more in character, smooth, suave, perfectly poised. “Hello, Sammy,” she said. She turned to me. “Thanks so much, George,” she said warmly. “We'll see how the scene plays tomorrow.”

Sammy looked after her for a moment. “Well,” he said, “did the trap work?”

“This trailer,” I said wryly, “had all the aspects of a drug store telephone booth this evening. Everybody came, for one good-sounding reason or another.”

I told him in detail. He shook his head. “I can't make anything of it. Well, I'd better return that film.”

‘I'll take it back,” I said firmly. “You go see Listless. I can see her hunched in misery over a pound of chocolates, listening for your step.”

Sammy grinned. “Well, thanks. Keep 'em crying isn't exactly my motto, but a little of it helps.”

He left, walking, as I noticed, with an airy grace. I cut all the lights but one and sat in the dimness, thinking.

I wasted no time on guessing at Carla's relationship to Flynne. I tried to deduce from her attitude the fact or facts that would help tag the killer. I was convinced again that I had all the facts necessary to point out the killer, and deduction alone could do it.

But I was tired, and my thought processes wandered into odd channels. Presently I found myself concentrated on my own telephone problem.

One of the necessary evils of our civilization is that instrument invented by Don Ameche and Alexander Bell. You may be in the middle of your bath, but if the phone rings you draggle out to answer it, spotting rugs and, likely as not, answering the doorbell too. You can be jerked out of a sound sleep at three a.m. to fumble in the dark and tell some halfwit that this is not the Superba Doughnut Company; and not be able to sleep again for wondering what kind of hours they work at Superba. You cannot imagine any privacy which the telephone bell cannot invade.

I have had my share of such invasions, and I had been working on a solution for several months before the
Seven Dreams
episode. I had installed a loudspeaker and microphone in each room of my Hollywood apartment, connected respectively to the receiver and transmitter of my phone, through an amplifier. When my phone rang, a relay was set in motion that, in effect, lifted the receiver. If I were in, say, my big chair, reading a script, all I needed to do was answer in a clear voice. The microphone in my living room ran it through the amplifier to the telephone to the caller. When the caller answered, his voice came through the loudspeakers located all over the place. So, I did no dripping from bathrooms or wandering in cold darkness.

But I couldn't hang up.

I had been unable to devise a means of breaking the connection automatically. Until it was broken, nobody could call me. I thought about this, seeing in my mind's eye the various circuits affected, trying to fasten on the answer.

I hadn't realized that I was tired until electrical circuits, murderers, guns, clues, and a few stray gremlins began to do an insane ballet dance against the darkness in the trailer. Then I closed my eyes. Tomorrow would just have to be another day, whether it wanted to or not.

It wasn't a sound that woke me, some time later, it was a presence. Someone was in the trailer, someone moving so quietly that there wasn't the faintest shadow of a sound. I lay still for a minute or two, my eyes closed, pretending sleep. But whoever was in the trailer had already looked to make sure I wasn't awake, and wasn't paying any attention to me. I lifted my eyelids a fraction of an inch. Then I sat up, wide awake now.

“Hey,” I said angrily. “What are you doing in here at this time of night?”

Wanda Waite stared at me and turned white. She was dressed in stout walking shoes, a sheer nightgown, and a massive fur coat. She looked very beautiful, and very worried.

“George – I came in to talk to you, and you were asleep. So I decided not to bother you.”

“The way people wander through here, you'd think it was a public lavatory. Well, I'm awake now. What do you want?”

“It can wait until morning,” she said. “Sorry.”

“I'll drag you back by the hair,” I threatened, and I think I meant it. “You'd better whip up an explanation. Twice tonight you've sneaked in here. Now, my heart is all for lady burglars. I think it's a wide open field for females. But when I'm affected, I want to know why.
Why?
”

“It wasn't important,” she said nervously. “I said I was sorry I bothered you. Good night.”

A new voice came out of the darkness outside. “Do you live here?” Lamar James asked, coming to the door.

Wanda went into her act again. “Please, Mr. James, this was our secret. Don't give it away.”

“What secret?” I demanded.

“Thank you, George,” she murmured huskily. “You don't need to protect me. I'm not ashamed of it, and besides, Mr. James won't tell. Will you, Mr. James?”

James looked at her for a moment, his eyes an imponderable black in the dim light. “You're under arrest,” he said formally. “It is my duty to warn you that anything you say may be used against you.”

This was different. “What's the charge?” I demanded. “She didn't kill Flynne, and I can prove it.”

“You'll have your chance,” James said. “I tried to get her to cooperate, but all she did was act mysterious. She isn't to be charged – yet. She's to be held for questioning in connection with the killing of Severance Flynne. Her fingerprints were all over his room, and I want to know why.”

This stopped me. I tried to remember what I had seen of her actions through the crack in Flynne's closet door. Hadn't she had sense enough to wear gloves, or wipe off fingerprints? I couldn't remember her doing either.

Wanda didn't seem perturbed. She glanced down at her costume. “May I go to my room and change? You don't want to take me to jail in my nightgown, do you?”

James said, “All right. Come on.”

“I'll get you out, Wanda,” I said. “They can't do this to you.”

“Thank you, George,” she said. “I knew that you, if no one else, would stick by me. Everything has been wonderful, dear, and I hope you sleep well. Dream of me – a little.”

When you run up against something unexplainable, you give up trying. I sat there in a numb state until I thought of the time. I looked at my watch and leaped up. I had about ten minutes to return the film, under the deadline.

I looked in the window seat that opens into a bed when you press the right button. The reel of film I'd counted on to prove my innocence was gone.

I had a sudden, uneasy feeling that it had left the trailer under Wanda's fur coat. 

At the crack of 7:30 the next morning, J. Brewster Wallingford came sorrowfully into my trailer. I was folding the electric grill back into its daytime role of writing desk. The little man fixed great brown eyes on me and shook his head.

“It ain't enough,” he said sorrowfully, “to get a poor extra killed and pay off his relatives. We got to lose a scene. Plenty I'll give for a story to tell the bank yet. Tell me you got a lead on that can of film, George, tell me.”

‘I'm sorry, Wally,” I said. “I looked where I thought it had to be, and it wasn't.”

I thought of my search of Wanda's room. I'd done everything but take off the wallpaper. The can of film wasn't there.

Wallingford dry-washed his hands. “Me, I pick my name for luck,” he said. “Brewster for
Brewster's Millions
, and Wallingford for
Get-Rich-Quick
. And what happens? A scene gone, a coming star in jail, and a dead man on the sand. And besides, we lost the author. You can't lose an author, but we did, and he's got to do us a scene with desert sunset. Is this luck? I'm asking.”

“You're not obligated to pay Flynne's relatives,” I said. “You're not to blame.”

“Did you ever lose a son, George?” he asked. “No, you didn't. There ain't anything so bad. I just got to give his family something. They can take a trip, or buy a house. It don't bring back the son, but it takes their mind off.”

“You're a good chap, Wally,” I said.

“George,” he said gloomily, “you shouldn't ought to have taken that film. Honest, you shouldn't.”

“What do you want to do about it?”

“What can I do?” he asked. “Can I say ‘good-by, George, we don't want you no more'? We got money invested in you. And I can't make you pay for retaking the scene. You thought what you did was right. Everybody guesses wrong sometimes. I got to take it, that's all. But you made a deal with Riegleman, so you got to drop whatever you're doing about this murder.”

He had me there. Certainly the loss of that can of film had jeopardized the picture. I'd have to stick to my word. What, then, of those two guns on the sand dune? What of my fingerprints on the gun found in Carla's wagon? What of my lie about having carried .45's?

We couldn't shoot the scene over with me carrying .45's, for in the earlier sequence I had been shown clearly with pearl-handled guns. It wouldn't matter to James what I carried in the retake, but it would to the script girl. Peggy Whittier never missed a trick. She would point out the oversight, and everybody would remember that the gun found in Carla's wagon had a pearl handle. This would bring James and his questions into the picture.

It was open and shut. I
couldn't
give up the investigation. On the other hand, I couldn't go on with it. I'd be fired off the one job that meant more than any other to me. After having had a taste of playing Hilary Weston, I couldn't imagine not being allowed to finish the picture.

As I had told Melva, I'd have played the role for nothing. After too many years of outwitting dull police and distasteful gangsters, I had found a part greatly to be desired. I was given a choice: actor or detective. And I couldn't take one in preference to the other. I
must
be both.

“All right, Wally,” I said. “I made my agreement. I'll stick to it.”

He took me at my word. His round glowing face showed it. That was the nicest thing about him. He'd believe any lie, even mine.

“George,” he said warmly, “sometimes I think you ain't half so bad as people make out. Now we got to get started.”

A knock on the door caused me to reflect that somebody was being amazingly polite. I opened it to a telegraph messenger.

“Why don't you sell the goats and move into town,” he said, grinning. “I had hell's own time finding you.”

“A half dollar's worth?” I asked, reaching in my pocket.

“Thirty-five cents'll cover it,” he said. “It wasn't really so tough.”

He gave me fifteen cents change and a telegram. It read:

“CAN YOU VERIFY WANDA WAITE ARRESTED IMMORAL CONDUCT IN MALE ACTOR'S ROOM? TELEPHONE REVERSE CHARGES.”

It was signed “Smith.” If the situation had been otherwise, I would have grinned. “Smith” was the city editor of a Los Angeles newspaper, and his name wasn't Smith any more than Wally's was Wallingford. He happened to be a friend of mine, and I could detect his wry humor in the wording of the telegram. Only, it wasn't funny. Not this time.

Someone had tipped off the papers that Wanda Waite had been arrested.

I folded the telegram and slipped it in my pocket. “My aunt Maggie got along fine in her tonsillectomy,” I said. Then I added, “What are we going to do if someone tips off the papers about Wanda's being arrested?”

Wally moaned softly. “Serpents' teeth we have to have yet. No gratitude, that's what somebody's got. I give 'em jobs, I pay 'em regular, and they stick a lie through my heart for a headline. Who'd tip off the papers?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Wanda might know. Can we visit her in jail, do you suppose?”

“She ain't in jail,” he said. “Not since one o'clock this morning. I told that sheriff I would see personally to his losing the next election, so he turned her out and offered me a drink.”

“Let's go see Wanda, then.”

On the way to the hotel I asked, “I understand the Brewster and the Wallingford, Wally, but what does the “]” stand for?”

“J.P. Morgan. Why should I be a piker?”

“Oh,” I said. I decided not to ask questions. Wallingford, for
Get-Rich-Quick
Wallingford. Brewster, for
Brewster's Millions
. J., for J.P. Morgan.

“Funny,” he said, as I parked the car and we started for the lobby, “I never thought much about the J. Now, you got me worrying about it. Now, I got to find out.”