The Case of the Mischievous Doll

“I found an apartment on the eighth floor was vacant, 805; that was right close to the stairs and almost directly under Apartment 907 where this Dorrie Ambler had her residence.”

“You rented that apartment?”

“Yes, sir. I told the manager that I wanted an apartment, that I thought that 805 would be about right but that I wanted my wife to look at it, that my wife was coming down from San Francisco, that she’d been up with her father who’d been very sick, and she wouldn’t be in for a day or so. I suggested that I pay a hundred dollars for a three-day option on the place and that my wife would look at it and if she liked it, then I’d sign up a lease on it and pay the first and last months’ rent.”

“What name did you give?”

“The name of William Camas.”

“And you were given a key to the apartment on that basis?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then what did you do?”

“Well, it was all fixed up with the defendant that right after the court hearing on her case, which was coming up the next day, she’d rush out to the apartment house and we’d put our plan in operation and get rid of Dorrie Ambler.”

“Now you say, ‘get rid of her.’ Do you mean— Well, what do you mean?”

“Well, it eventually turned out we were supposed to get rid of her, but at first the talk was only about kidnapping.”

“All right, what happened?”

“Well, you see the defendant was going to come down to join us immediately after her court hearing was finished.”

“Did she say why she’d picked that particular time?”

“Yes, she said that would be the time when she would be free of shadows and reporters and all that stuff. She said that her attorney would get her out of the court and down in his car and drive her for half a dozen blocks to a place where she had her car parked, that the attorney would give instructions to her to go into hiding and stay in hiding, probably to go home; that she’d come and join us. She said that in case anything should go wrong with our scheme that she could go to the door and impersonate Dorrie Ambler and explain any noise or commotion or anything of that sort. In that way we wouldn’t stand any risk.”

“All right, what happened?”

“Well, we had a chance to nab Dorrie Ambler while she was in the kitchen. We knocked on the back door and said we had a delivery, and she opened the door and we grabbed her right then.”

“What did you do?”

“We put a gag in her mouth, put a gun in her back and hustled her down the back stairs and into Apartment 805. Then we doped her with a shot of morphine and put her out.”

“Then what?”

“Shortly after that the defendant showed up. She wanted us to get out fast. She said Dorrie Ambler had been consulting Perry Mason and we didn’t have much time, that Mason wasn’t the sort to let grass grow under his feet. But we reminded her about the ten grand. We really took that apartment to pieces, looking for it.”

“Did you find it?”

“No... That is, I don’t think we did.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, my partner, Barlowe Dalton, acted just a little bit strange. I got to thinking afterwards perhaps he might have found it and just stuck it in his pocket and pretended that he hadn’t found it. In that way he’d have had the whole thing for himself instead of making a split.”

“You don’t know that he found it?”

“No, sir. All I know is that I didn’t find it.’

“Very well. Then what happened?”

“Then I told the defendant we’d better arrange for a getaway in case something went wrong.”

“What did you do?”

“I started barricading the kitchen door; that is, the door between the kitchen and the living-room so we could open it ourselves but hold off anyone that came in the front door — and that was when the doorbell rang and this man was there.”

“What man?”

“This detective, this man that was killed, Marvin Billings.”

“All right, go on. Tell us what happened.”

“Well, I’m getting just a little ahead of my story. The defendant also frisked the apartment looking for something. She didn’t tell me what, but she had found a twenty-two-calibre revolver.”

“The defendant had this?”

“That’s right. She said she was going to show Dorrie Ambler a thing or two about the difference between lead bullets and blank cartridges.”

“And then?”

“Well, then is when we come to this thing that I was telling you about. The doorbell rang, and this Marvin Billings was there, and the defendant went to the door and tried to shoo him away.”

“What happened?”

“He just pushed his way right into the place and of course right away he saw that it was a wreck, that we’d been searching it, and he wanted to know what was going on. And the defendant, pretending to be Dorrie Ambler, said that somebody had evidently been in looking for something and that was when Billings tried to put the bite on her.”

“Now, what do you mean by that?”

“Well, he wanted to shake her down.”

“Where were you?”

“I was in the bedroom.”

“Did he see you?”

“No, he couldn’t see me. I was behind the door.”

“What happened?”

“He told the defendant that he knew what she’d been up to. He thought he was talking to Dorrie—”