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

“Where was Robert?” I asked. His eyes held mine. He didn’t answer the question. He said instead, “Where were you?”
    “Working.”
    “On what?”
    “On my job.”
    He pulled a cigar out of the pocket of his robe, bit off the end, lit it, and started smoking. “Getting anywhere?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “What do you think?”
    “I think I’m making progress.”
    “Find out who’s been blackmailing her?”
    “I’m not certain she’s being blackmailed.”
    “She isn’t throwing checks around like confetti for nothing.”
    “No.”
    “I want you to stop it.”
    “I think I can.”
    “Think there’s any chance she’ll make any further payments?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “It takes you a long time to make progress,” he said. “Remember I’m paying for results.”
    I waited until the silence had made its own punctuation mark, and then said, “Bertha Cool handles all the business affairs.”
    He laughed then. “I’ll say one thing for you, Donald. You’re a little guy, but I never saw a big one who had more guts. Let’s go up and dress.”
    He didn’t say anything about the reason for his inquiries about where I’d been or what progress I was making with his daughter. I didn’t ask for any explanations. I went up and took my bath and came down to breakfast.
    Mrs. Ashbury was all upset. Maids were running in and out of her room. Her doctor had been called. Ashbury explained she’d had a bad night. Robert Tindle looked as though someone had put him through a wringing machine. Ashbury didn’t say much. I studied him covertly and came to the conclusion that the guys in this world who have money and keep it are the men who can dish it out and take it.
    After breakfast Ashbury went to his office as though nothing had happened. Tindle rode up with him in his car. I waited until they’d cleared out. Then I called a taxi and said I wanted to go to the Fidelity Building.
    C. Layton Crumweather had a law office on the twenty-ninth floor. A secretary tried to find out something about me and about my business. I told her I had some money I wanted to pay Mr. Crumweather. That got me in.
    Crumweather was a gaunt, bony-faced individual with a narrow, sloping nose down which his spectacles kept sliding. He was big-boned and under-fleshed. His cheeks looked as though they’d sunken in, and that emphasized the big gash that was his mouth.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Lam.”
    “You said you had some money to pay me?”
    “Yes.”
    “Where is it?”
    “I haven’t got it yet.”
    Two deep furrows creased the center of his forehead, and emphasized the length of his nose. “Who’s paying it?” he asked.
    “Suckers,” I said.
    The secretary had left the door open a crack. Crumweather looked me over with little black eyes which seemed unusually small for the size of his face. Then he got up, walked across the office, carefully closed the door, came back, and sat down.
    “Tell me about it.”
    I said, “I am a promoter.”
    “You don’t look like one.”
    “That’s what makes me a good one.”
    He chuckled, and I saw his teeth were long and yellow. He seemed to like that crack. “Go on,” he said.
    “An oil proposition,” I told him.
    “What’s the nature of it?”
    “There’s a lot of nice oil land.”
    He nodded.
    “I don’t have title to it—yet.”
    “How do you intend to get title?”
    “With the money that’s paid in for stock.”
    He looked me over, and said, “Don’t you know you can’t sell stock in this state unless you get permission from the Commissioner of Corporations?”
    I said, “Why did you think I took the trouble to come here?”
    He chuckled again, and teetered back and forth in the squeaky swivel chair back of his desk. “You’re a card, Lam,” he said. “You really are.”
    “Let’s call me the joker,” I suggested.
    “Are you fond of jokes?”
    “No. I’m usually wild.”
    He leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk. He interlaced his