Free Top of the Heap by Erle Stanley Gardner Page B

escape.
    From an examination of the body, the coroner believed she had been dead about a week. She had been shot twice in the back — a cold-blooded, efficient job. Either bullet would have resulted in almost instant death.
    Both of the fatal bullets had been recovered.
    Los Angeles police, who had been inclined to wash their hands of the attractive moll after her distinct refusal to co-operate in giving the police information concerning the shooting of Gabby Garvanza, now had no comment to make. The sheriff of Orange County was breathing smoke, fire, and threats to gangsters.
    In view of these developments, search was being redoubled for a young man with whom it was known Maurine Auburn had disappeared on the night that police now felt certain was the night of her death. Police had a good description and were making a “careful check.”
    I went to a phone booth and rang up Elsie Brand at the office, putting through the call collect.
    I heard the operator at the other end of the line say, “Mrs. Cool said she would take any collect calls from Donald Lam.”
    A moment later I heard Bertha’s hysterical voice screaming oven the wire. “You damn little moron. What do you think you’re doing? Who the hell do you think is masterminding this business?”
    “What’s the matter now?” I asked.
    “What’s the matter?” she yelled. “We’re in a jam. You’ve tried to blackmail a client. They’re going to revoke our license. The client has stopped payment on the five-hundred- dollar bonus check. What’s the matter? What’s the matter? You go sticking your neck out there in San Francisco. The San Francisco police have a pickup on you, the agency is in bad, the five hundred dollars has gone down the drain, and you’re calling collect. What the hell do you think’s the matter?”
    “I want to get some information from Elsie Brand,” I said.
    “Pay for the call, then,” Bertha screamed. “There won’t be any more collect calls on the phone at this end.”
    She slammed up the receiver so that it must have all but pulled the phone out by the roots.
    I hung up the telephone, sat there in the booth, and counted my available cash.
    I didn’t have enough to squander any money on telephoning Elsie Brand.
    I went to the telegraph office and sent her a collect telegram.
    WIRE ME INFORMATION PREPAID WILL CALL WESTERN UNION BRANCH FIRST AND MARKET.
    Bertha probably wouldn’t think to stop collect telegrams.
    I went back to my hole-in-the-wall hotel and kicked my heels, marking time while waiting for information.
    The noon editions of the San Francisco newspapers blossomed out with useful information. The killing of Maurine Auburn suddenly assumed importance because ithad a swell local angle.
    Headlines across the front page said: Son of Wealthy Banker Volunteers Information in Gangster Killing.
    I read that John Carver Billings the Second had voluntarily reported to police that he had been the one who had asked Maurine Auburn to dance at an afternoon rendezvous spot, that he had been the one whose fascination had charmed the attractive “moll” into leaving her companions.
    The young man’s amatory triumph, however, had been swiftly eclipsed by humiliation when the moll had gone to “powder her nose” and had failed to reappear.
    Young Billings reported that he had thereafter “become acquainted” with two San Francisco girls, and had spent the “rest of the evening” with them. He had not known their names until he had located them through the efforts of a Los Angeles detective agency which had uncovered the identity of the two young women.
    Billings had given police the names of these two women, and, since they were reputable young ladies employed in San Francisco business establishments, and inasmuch as it seemed their contact with Billings had consisted merely in making a round of night spots and using him to “show them the town,” police were withholding their names. It was known, however, that they had