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

After they got the evidence, they did a little thinking. They were drawing a low salary from the county. If they turned the letters over to the district attorney, they wouldn’t even get a raise in pay. I was supposed to be a wealthy woman— Of course, they didn’t appear in it themselves. They got Ringold to act as intermediary. I don’t know how much Ringold was making out of it, but it was arranged that I’d buy the letters in three installments.”
    I pushed my hands down in my pockets, stuck my legs straight out in front of me, crossed my ankles, and stared at my toes, trying to see the picture, not only as she saw it but to get angles that she didn’t know anything about.
    Now that she’d started talking, she didn’t want to stop. She said, “You can see what it would mean to a woman like me. The district attorney is crazy to get a conviction in that case. In the first place, they don’t know whether it was an accident and she fell and struck her head, or whether Lasster hit her with something. Then, even if the district attorney can prove that Lasster hit her, Lasster’s lawyer could bring up that Shanghai trip and might be able to make a showing of emotional insanity or whatever it is a lawyer pulls when he’s trying to prejudice a jury by making them think that a woman needed killing anyway.
    “Well, the district attorney could put a stop to all that right at the start if he could introduce a lot of stuff about me, make it appear that Lasster was infatuated with me, and wanted to get rid of his wife so that he could marry me. I was wealthy and—well, not exactly ugly. He could put me up in front of the jury in a way that would absolutely crucify me, and if he had those letters, he could rip Lasster to pieces the minute he got on the witness stand and tried to deny it, or he could draw the worst sort of conclusions if Lasster didn’t try to deny it.”
    I kept thinking, and didn’t say anything.
    She said, “When the detectives first got the letters, they thought Hampton’s lawyer might buy them off, but Hampton hasn’t much money. I think it was the lawyer who suggested they work through Ringold and get the money out of me.”
    “Who’s the lawyer?” I asked.
    “C. Layton Crumweather,” she said. “He’s the lawyer, incidentally, who does the legal work for Bob’s corporation, and I’ve been terribly afraid that he’d say something, but I guess those lawyers can be trusted to keep their mouths shut.”
    “Are you certain Crumweather knows about the letters?” I asked.
    “Ringold said he did, and I suppose, of course, that Lasster told him. I guess when a man gets arrested for murder, he tells his lawyer everything, no matter whom it may affect.”
    I said, “Yes, I guess he does.”
    She said, “Of course, Crumweather wants to keep those letters out of the district attorney’s hands. Naturally, he wants to get an acquittal in that murder case. The letters would clinch the case against his client. From all I can hear of Crumweather. I think he’s very smart.”
    I got up and started pacing the floor. Suddenly I turned and said, “You didn’t open that envelope when he gave it to you last night.”
    She stared at me with eyes that began to get wider and rounder. “Then you were in that room, Donald?”
    “Never mind that. Why didn’t you open the envelope?”
    “Because I’d seen Ringold put the letters in the envelope and seal it. That’s just what he’d done with the other letters. He’d show them to me and then—”
    “Did you open that envelope after you got home?” I asked.
    “No. I didn’t. There were so many startling developments and—”
    “Did you burn it?”
    “Not yet. I was getting ready to, and then you—”
    “How do you know this whole thing isn’t a trap the D.A. set for you?” I asked.
    She stared at me. “How could it be?”
    “He wants to use those letters to prove motivation for the murder. It won’t do so much good to show letters that