The Oxford Book of American Det (46 page)

I nodded and let it go at that. I was sizing her up out of the corner of my eye. She was one of these supple women who seem to be just about half panther. She must have been around thirty-two or three, but her figure and walk were what you’d expect to find on a woman in the early twenties. There was a peculiar husky note to her voice, and her eyes were just a little bit more than provocative.

The night elevators were on. The janitor came up in response to her ring. His face lit up like a Christmas tree when he saw her. He looked over at me and looked dubious.

“It’s all right, Olaf,” she said. “This man’s helping me. Hurry up because my husband’s coming.”

We got in the cage. Olaf slammed the door and sent us rattling upward, his eyes feasting on Olive’s profile. I’ve seen dogs look at people with exactly that same expression—inarticulate love and a dumb, blind loyalty.

He let us out at the sixth floor. “This way,” she said, and walked on ahead of me down the corridor.

I noticed the swing of her hips as she walked. I think she wanted me to—not that she gave a particular damn about me, she was simply one of those women who like to tease the animals—or was she making a play for me?

“No chance of the janitor selling you out?” I asked as she fitted a key in the lock.

“No,” she said.

“You seem to have a lot of faith in human nature,” I told her, as she clicked back the lock and snapped on lights in the office.

“I have,” she told me, “in masculine nature. Men always play fair with me. It’s women who double-cross me. I hate women,”

The office was bare of furnishings, save for a battered stenographer’s desk, a couple of straightback chairs, an ash-tray and waste basket. Wires ran down from a hole in the plaster, to terminate in an electrical gadget. She opened a drawer in the desk, took out two head pieces and handed me one. “When you hear my husband come in the next office,” she said, “plug that in, and remember what you hear. I think things are coming to a show-down tonight.”

I sat across from her and nursed the last of my cigarette. “Anything in particular I’m supposed to do about it?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said.

“What?” I asked.

“That’s up to you.”

“Want me to bust things up with a club?” I asked.

She studied me with her dark, seductive eyes. “I may as well be frank with you,” she said in that rich, throaty voice. “I don’t care a thing in the world about my husband. I don’t think he cares any more about me. A separation is inevitable. When it happens I want my share of the property.”

“What’s the property?” I asked her.

“Mostly a partnership interest,” she said. “He’s a free spender and he’s been stepping around high, wide and handsome. After a man gets to be forty-three and starts stepping around, it takes money.

“So far, he’s been just a mild sugar daddy. I haven’t cared particularly just so there was plenty for me to spend. But now he’s put his neck in a noose. This Diane Locke is shrewd. She’s too damn shrewd, or maybe somebody with brains is back of her. I think it must be a lawyer somewhere. Anyway, they have Harvey over a barrel. He needs money, lots of money. The only way he can get it is to sell his partnership interest.

You heard that crack he made about selling out so he could take me on a cruise.” I nodded.

“Well,” she said, “if that’s what’s in the wind, I’m going to throw a lot of monkey wrenches in that machinery.”

I did a little thinking. “The redhead,” I said, “might open her bag, take out a nice, pearl-handled gun, and go rat-a-tat-tat. They have been known to do that, you know.” It was just a feeler. I wanted to see what she’d say. She said it. “That’s all right, too.

There’s a big life insurance policy in my favour. But what I don’t want is to have him stripped. He—Here they come now.”

I heard the elevator door clang. There were steps in the corridor, then I heard keys rattling and the door in the adjoining office creaked back and I heard the click of the light switch. Mrs. Pemberton nodded to me, and I plugged in the jack and put the ear pieces over my head. She snapped a switch, and I could hear faint humming noises in the ear pieces. Then I heard a voice that I recognised as Bass’ saying, “But, Harvey, why the devil do you want to sell out?”

“I want to play a little bit,” Harvey Pemberton said. “I want to have a real honeymoon with my wife before I’m too old to enjoy it. We’ve never travelled. I married her four years ago, when we were putting through that big hotel deal. And I’ve had my nose pushed against the grindstone ever since. We never had a honeymoon.”

“What are you going to do after you get back?”

“I don’t know.”

“You could arrange things so you could take a honeymoon without selling out,” Bass said. “I hate to lose you as a partner, Harvey.”

“No, I wouldn’t leave a business behind in which I had all my money tied up,” Pemberton said. “I’d worry about it so I’d be a rotten companion. I want to step out footloose and fancy-free.”

“One of the reasons I don’t want you to do it right now,” Bass said, is that I’m rather short of money myself. I couldn’t offer you anywhere near what your interest in the business is worth.”

“What could you offer?” Pemberton said, an edge to his voice.

“I don’t know,” I heard Bass say.

“Oh, come,” Pemberton told him impatiently. “You can’t pull that stuff with me, Arthur. I told you this afternoon that I wanted to figure on some sort of a deal. You’ve had all afternoon to think it over.”

There was silence for several seconds, and I gathered that Bass was, perhaps, making figures on paper. I heard Harvey Pemberton say, “I’m going to have an accountant work up a statement showing the status of the business and—“

“That doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Bass said. “It’s not a question of what the business is worth, it’s a question of what I can afford to pay without jeopardizing my working capital. I’ll tell you frankly, Harvey, that I don’t want you to sell. I don’t want to lose you as a partner and you can’t get anything like a fair value for your holdings at the present time. There’s no one else you can sell them to. Under our articles of partnership, one partner has to give the other six months’ notice before—“

“I understand all that,” Pemberton said impatiently. “What’s the price?”

“Ten thousand,” Bass said.

“Ten thousand!” Pemberton shouted. “My God, you’re crazy! The business is worth fifty thousand. I’m going to have an audit made in order to determine a fair figure. But I know my share’s worth twenty-five. I’ll take twenty for it, and that’s the lowest price I’ll even consider.”

There was relief in Bass’ voice. “That settles it then and I’m glad to hear it! You know, Pemberton, I was afraid you were in a jam over money matters and might have considered ten thousand dollars. It would be an awful mistake. I don’t want you to sell.”

Pemberton started to swear. Bass said, “Well, I’m glad we have an understanding on that, Harvey. Of course, I wouldn’t try to exert any pressure to hold you here. In some ways it would be a good business deal for me to buy you out now. But I don’t want to do it, either for my sake or yours. I’d have paid you every cent I could have scraped up, but—well, I’m glad you’re staying. The business needs you, and I need you, and you need the business. Well, I’ll be going. See you later. Good night.” Over the electrical gadget came the sound of a slamming door. Pemberton yelled,

“Come back here, Arthur! I want to talk with you,” but there was no other sound. I exchanged glances with our client.

“You see,” she said, “he’s trying to sell the business. That vamp would get most of the money. He’d probably run away with her. I want you to stop that.”

“What’s the program now?” I asked.

“I think he has an appointment with her,” she said. “The janitor told me that he’d left instructions to pass a young woman to his office.”

Pretty soon I heard the clang of the elevator door, and light, quick steps in the corridor past our door, then a gentle tapping on the panels of the adjoining office. I put the head phones back on, and heard the sound of a door opening and closing.

“Did you bring the letters?” Harvey Pemberton asked.

A woman’s voice said, “Don’t be such an old granny. Kiss me, and quit worrying about the letters. They’re in a safe place.”

“You said you could put your hand on them any time,” Pemberton charged, “and were going to bring them here to show me just what I’d written.”

“I brought you copies instead,” she said. “My lawyer wouldn’t let me take the originals.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I guess he doesn’t trust me. Harvey, I don’t want you to think that I’m utterly mercenary, but you broke my heart. It isn’t money I’m after, dear, I want you.

But you hurt me, and I went to that horrid lawyer, and he had me sign some papers, and now it seems I have to go through with it, unless you go away with me. That’s what I want.”

“My lawyer tells me you can’t sue a married man for breach of promise,” Pemberton interrupted. “I think your lawyer is a shyster who’s trying to stir up trouble and turn you into a blackmailer.”

“No, he isn’t, Harvey. There’s some wrinkle in the law. If a girl doesn’t know a man’s married and he conceals that fact from her, why then he can be sued for breach of promise, just the same as though he hadn’t been married. Oh, Harvey, I don’t want to deal with all these lawyers! I want you. Can’t you divorce that woman and come with me?”

“Apparently not,” Harvey Pemberton said. “Since you’ve been such a little fool and signed your life away to this lawyer, he isn’t going to let me get free. There’s enough stuff in those letters to keep me from getting a divorce from my wife, and she won’t get a divorce from me unless I turn over everything in the world to her. She wants to strip me clean. You want to do almost that.”

For a moment there was silence, then the sound of a woman sobbing.

Pemberton started speaking again. His voice rose and fell at regular intervals, and I gathered he was walking the floor and talking as he walked. “Go ahead and sob,” he said. “Sit there and bawl into your handkerchief! And if you want to know it, it looks fishy as hell to me. When I first met you on that steamboat, you didn’t have any of this bawling complex. You wanted to play around.”

“You w—w—wanted to m—m—marry me!” she wailed.

“All right,” he told her, “I was on the up-and-up on that, too. I thought my wife was going to get a divorce. Hell’s fire, I didn’t have to use marriage for bait. You know that. That came afterward. Then, when I break a date with you because of a business deal, you rush up to see this lawyer.”

“I went to him as a friend,” she said in a wailing, helpless voice. “I’d known him for years. He told me you’d been t—t—trifling with me and I should get r—revenge. After all, all I want is just enough to get me b—b—back on my feet once more.” Pemberton said, “Add that to what your lawyer wants, and see where that leaves me.

Why the hell don’t you ditch the lawyer?”

“I c—can’t. He made me sign papers.”

Once more there was silence, then Pemberton said, “How the hell do I know you’re on the level? You could have engineered this whole business.”

“You know me better than that,” she sobbed.

“I’m not so certain I do,” Pemberton told her. “You were a pushover for me and now—“

Her voice came in good and strong then. “All right, then,” she said, “if you don’t want the pill sugar-coated we’ll make it bitter. I’m getting tired of putting on this sob-sister act for you. I never saw a sucker who was so damn dumb in my life. You seem to think a middle-aged old gander is going to get a sweet, innocent girl to fall for just your own sweet self. Bunk! If you’d been a good spender, taken what you wanted and left me with a few knick-knacks, I’d have thought you were swell. But you thought I was an innocent little kid who’d fall for this Model T line of yours. All right, get a load of this: You’re being stood up. And what’re you going to do about it? I have your letters. They show the kind of game you were trying to play. So quite stalling.”

“So that’s it, is it?” he said. “You’ve been a dirty double-crosser all along.”

“Oh, I’m a double-crosser, am I? Just a minute, Mr. Harvey Pemberton, and I’ll read from one of your letters. Figure how it will sound to the jury.

“ ‘Remember, sweetheart, that except for the silly conventions of civilization, we are already man and wife. There is, of course, a ceremony to be performed, but I’ll attend to that just as soon as I can arrange certain business details. It would hurt certain business plans which are rapidly coming to maturity if I should announce I was going to marry you right now. I ask you to have confidence in me, sweetheart, and to know that I cherish you. I could no more harm you than I could crush a beautiful rose. I love you, my sweetheart—‘” She broke off and said, “God knows how much more of that drivel there is.”

“You dirty, double-crossing tramp,” he said.

Her voice sounded less loud. I gathered she’d moved over toward the door. “Now then,” she said, “quit stalling. You have twenty-four hours. Either put up or shut up.” I heard the door slam, then the click of heels in the hall, and, after a moment, the clang of an elevator door.

All was silent in the other office.

I slipped the head pieces off my head.

“Well,” Mrs. Pemberton said, “there it is in a nutshell. I suppose he’ll sell out to Bass for about half what his interest is worth and that little redhead will get it all.”

“How do you know she’s redheaded?” I asked.

“I’ve seen her and I’ve had detectives on her tail turning up her past and trying to get something on her. I can’t uncover a thing on her, though. She dressed the window for this play.”

“All right,” I told her, “let your husband go ahead and fight. Even if he can’t prove anything, a jury isn’t going to give her so much in the line of damages.”

“It isn’t that alone,” she said, “it’s a question of the letters. He writes foolish letters.

Whenever he loses his head, he goes all the way. He can’t learn to keep his fountain pen in his pocket. Remember that Bass & Pemberton have some rather influential clients. They can’t carry out business unless those clients believe in the business acumen of the members of the partnership.”