Gold Comes in Bricks by A. A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner) Read Free Book Online Page A

here because I want to make a good job of having this over with once and for all. I hate snoops and spies. I suppose my stepmother employed you to find out just how I felt. Well, she’s found out. I could just as well have told her to her face, but as far as you’re concerned, I think you’re beneath contempt. I—”
    I said, “Come down to earth. I’m a detective. I was hired to protect you.”
    “To protect me ?”
    “Yes.”
    “I don’t need any protection.”
    “That’s what you think. Remember what I told you. You were tired and nervous. You canceled a date. You went to a movie but couldn’t stick it out. You came back home. You haven’t been anywhere else.”
    She stared at me.
    I took the check from my pocket. “I don’t suppose,” I said, “that you bother to keep stubs of such minor cash outlays as ten-thousand-dollar checks, do you?”
    Her face went white as she sat staring at that check, her eyes riveted on it.
    I took a match from my pocket, struck it, and set fire to one corner. I held it until the flame got close enough to burn my fingers, then I dropped it into an ash tray. I ground the ashes to powder with the tips of my fingers.
    “Good night,” I said, and started for the stairs.
    She didn’t say anything until I was going through the door.
    “Donald!” she cried—just one sharp cry.
    I didn’t turn around but closed the door behind me, went up stairs, and to bed. I didn’t want her to know he’d been murdered until she read it in the papers or until the cops told her. If anyone around the hotel knew who she was and the cops came out to question her, she could put on a lot better act of surprise, or grief, or relief, or whatever it was going to be, if she wasn’t acting a part.
    I had a hell of a time getting to sleep.

CHAPTER FIVE
    T HE SIRENS CAME about three o’clock in the morning. I could hear them coming a long way off. I started to get up and dress, because I wanted to be on hand when things began to happen; then I remembered my own position in the matter and went back to bed.
    But it wasn’t Alta the cops were after. They banged around on the front door until Ashbury got up. Then it seemed they wanted to talk with Robert Tindle.
    I slipped on a pair of pants over my pajamas, put on my coat, and tiptoed to the head of the stairs immediately after Tindle had gone down to the library. The cops didn’t lower their voices or try to pull any punches. They wanted to know if he was acquainted with a man named Jed Ringold.
    “Why, yes,” Tindle said. “We have a salesman by that name.”
    “Where’d he live? Do you know?”
    “No, I don’t. It’s on the records up at our office. Why? What’s he done?”
    “He hasn’t done anything,” the cop said. “When did you see him last?”
    “I haven’t seen him for three or four days.”
    “What does he do?”
    “He’s a stock salesman. That is, he’s a scout. He gets prospects located and phones in a tip. Then the other boys close.”
    “What kind of stock?”
    “Mining.”
    “What’s the company?”
    “Foreclosed Farms Underwriters Company.”
    “What kind of a company is it?”
    “For any detailed information,” Tindle said, and it sounded to me as though it was something he’d memorized, “I must ask you to get in touch with our legal department, C. Layton Crumweather, with offices in the Fidelity Building.”
    “Well, why can’t you answer the question?”
    “Because there are certain legal matters involved, and in my status as an officer of the corporation I might bind the corporation in some pending litigation.” His voice got more friendly and he said, “If you can tell me what you want, I can give you more information, but the lawyer has cautioned me not to speak out of turn because anything I say would be binding on the company, and there are a lot of legal technicalities that—”
    “Forget it,” the cop told him. “Ringold was murdered. Do you know anything about