Free 1956 - There's Always a Price Tag by James Hadley Chase

handle a tentative tug, but the safe was locked.
    I looked through the drawers in the bureau and in most of the likely places; I went through his pockets after I had undressed him, but the key didn't show.
    I kept looking, but I didn't find it, and finally I turned off the light and went into the dressing room, leaving the communicating door open.
    I got undressed, turned out the light and lit a cigarette while I lay and looked out at the big moon and wondered what Solly would have to tell me in the morning. The whole setup seemed to be slipping through my fingers. Twice I had saved Dester's life. Maybe I was crazy to have stopped Helen from putting him in the Buick and letting him out into the traffic. The trick might have worked, and if it had, by now, I should be bargaining with her for my share.
    Then I remembered the loose ends. I thought of the police and how they would handle us, and I was glad I had stopped it.
    I got up soon after half past seven the next morning, looked into Dester's room and saw he was still asleep. I let myself out of the silent house and went to the apartment over the garage. After I had shaved and made myself a cup of coffee, I put a call through to Solly's apartment.
    He answered after a delay.
    'For sweet Pete's sake!' he moaned, 'You woke me up. Damn it! You said nine o'clock.'
    'Did you dig up anything?'
    'I said I would, didn't I? Let's get together some time today. And listen, you bring the five hundred bucks or I don't give.'
    'Come over here. I don't know if I'll be needed today so I'll have to stick around. We can talk here.'
    He said he would come after he had had breakfast and not before. I told him I'd have something for him here, and to get out his car and come right away. Grudgingly he said he'd be over, and forty minutes later I spotted him walking up the drive. At least he had had the sense to leave his car somewhere out of sight.
    'You're a lucky guy,' he said, sitting down at my table. 'That job could have taken me a week, but I ran into a newspaper guy I knew in the old days, and he had the whole thing at his fingertips.'
    I put eggs and ham in front of him. I didn't feel like eating myself, but I poured a cup of coffee.
    'Let's have it,' I said. 'What did you find out?'
    'How about something on account if you haven't got the five hundred here?'
    'You can have a hundred if that's any good to you.'
    He wasn't expecting that, and he stared at me pop-eyed.
    'You haven't started anything yet, have you?' he asked anxiously.
    'What do you mean?'
    'How did you get the money? Look, pal, this business worries me. If you're going to put the bite on this woman...'
    'Will you relax?' I said. 'Dester's paid me. He gave me an advance.' I took out my chequebook. 'So I can let you have a hundred.'
    'Not by cheque you won't,' he said hurriedly. 'That's okay. I'll trust you. When you pay me, I want it in cash.'
    'I don't believe you'd trust your own mother.'
    'I did once, and she gypped me out of fifty bucks,' he said, scowling. 'I don't know what game you're playing, but I do know any dough I get from you is going to be in small bills and not by cheque.'
    'Okay, okay, now tell me what you have found out.'
    'I was lucky. I ran into this newspaper guy by chance. His name's Mike Stevens, and he's on the World Telegram. He's a smart reporter and I thought it might pay off if I told him what I wanted to find out, and it did. He covered the case himself. The guy who fell out of the window was Herbert Van Tomlin: he was in the fur trade; an agent or something - a one-man show like mine, only he made it pay. He was a bachelor, had a small apartment on Park Avenue, ran a Cadillac, and when he wasn't working, he was having himself a good time. It came out at the inquest that he met your Mrs. Dester at the Fi-Fi Club: she was a cigarette-girl there. She took Van Tomlin's eye and he propositioned her. He suggested he should set her up in an apartment in return for the usual favours. She agreed, and he got