5 Detective Novels Magazine — page 60: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

60 “T’ll go with you,” said Rich, putting on his beat-up old hat. E WENT back to Ron Withersteen’s house in a squad car. Flanked by Rich on one side and Sergeant Sam Lucas on the other, I felt like a prisoner already. I wondered if Rich would give me enough freedom of action to find out what I wanted to know. Just what that was I didn’t know myself. But I couldn’t let Vera wear her life away in jail or an asylum. Nothing that had happened to- night had made me any less crazy about her. The show might go on, with a stand-in playing Vara’s part, but my life couldn’t go on the way I wanted it to unless she was with me. A cop on the Withersteen porch let us in. There was another cop inside. The only other person there was a Filipino servant, named Ramon, whom Rich had already questioned. Rich went at him again from a different angle. “Did Mr. Withersteen have many par- ties here?” he asked. The Filipino shook his head. “Did he have any special women he liked to entertain?” “Maybe. I no see,” said Ramon. “Did Miss Dean, the girl we arrested, ever come here?” “T no see.” Rich began to get red around the neck. He gestured toward me. “Did you ever see this guy with Mr. Withersteen ?” “Only tonight,” said Ramon. I could have kissed that Filipino. “Where’s Withersteen’s personal stuff?” Rich demanded. “We want to look it over.” Ramon led us to the second floor and into a little room which had a desk in it, several chairs, a filing cabinet. “Den,” he explained. “Ever’ting here.” Everything was there. It would have taken several certified accountants and a banker or two to go through all the pa- pers and letters having to do with shows. But they were all dated within the past five years. There was nothing that shed FIVE DETECTIVE NOVELS MAGAZINE any light on Withersteen’s past—noth- ing, that is, until I found the photo. It was a class photo, a little faded and yellow. Withersteen hadn’t taken much care of it or thought too much of it, ap- parently, for it was shoved back in a drawer of his desk. Judging by the faces of the students, it was a college photograph, some jerk- water college somewhere, I thought, for the class was small, not more than thirty or SO. The heads were pretty small, too, but I could pick out Withersteen in the front row by his stringy hair, high forehead and long nose. On the back of the photo it said: “Fairfield College. Class of »96.”’ “This is it,” I told Rich. “Let me take it and work on it and I’ll dig up every chapter of Ron’s past life. The college will give me the dope.” “T'll take it,” Rich said in a heavy voice. “There’s nothing a newspaper can find out that the police can’t.” I tried to argue, but he wouldn’t listen. “Just remember, Nick,” he reminded me nastily. “You’re a suspect not a dick. ~The only reason I’m letting you string along with me is to watch you.” Of course he was partly kilding, but not about the photograph. He wasn’t go- ing to let me get my mitts on it. He put it back on the desk. We tried to find something else that might tell about Ron’s background, but there was nothing, not even addresses of relatives. We went into other rooms, even searched the pockets of Wither- steen’s spare clothes. I felt something like a ghoul picking over a dead man’s body, but Rich took it in his stride. The cop downstairs sauntered up while we were working. “There’s a press photographer trying to get in, Chief. Sweeney’s thrown him down the steps twice. Now he’s back.” “Throw him down again,” said Rich. “We're busy.” “Wait! I yelled. “What paper’s he from?” “The News, he claims,” COmiclboookKks @)