“THIS PLACE,” CHERRY DECLARED TO GLADYS ON MONDAY, “looks like a schoolroom! You’d think we were entertaining the first grade.”
They had their hands full with misplaced and banged-up children. The small boy lying on the cot had a nosebleed, brought on by the excitement of meeting Santa Claus. Cherry had just stanched the flow with a compress of medicated cotton and had sent to the store cafeteria for a little lemon juice for him to drink. The boy’s mother approved the lemon juice, which was an old-fashioned, effective measure, but felt Cherry should summon a doctor.
“Madam,” said Cherry, trying to be patient, “the bleeding has stopped, you can see for yourself. Let Bobby rest a bit, then if you wish you can take him to a doctor.”
“I ain’t goin’ to any nasty old doctor,” Bobby growled.
“Ssh! Nurse, are you sure Bobby is going to be all right?”
“Yes, he didn’t lose very much blood.”
“I did, too!” Bobby protested. “I lost as much blood as Tiger Injun in that movie where he nearly gets killed!”
“Ah, that was probably catsup and not blood at all,” said Cherry. She turned to Bobby’s mother, “I don’t mean to minimize the tiring aftereffects of nosebleed. I’d suggest you take Bobby directly home in a few minutes, and have him rest. He may need a little extra nourishment, too—for example, a chocolate soda before you start on the ride home.”
“Yippee!” Tiger Injun bounced up on the cot.
“You’re supposed to be lying down, in ambush,” and Cherry made him lie flat on his back again.
“I’ll be your lookout scout,” his mother promised, and let Cherry leave.
In the medical department’s main room, small children of various shapes and sizes were perched here and there, nursing a banged, bandaged finger, or, in the case of two tiny girls, howling for their “lost” mother.
Cherry was attending to the small girls when all of a sudden the children shouted with glee. “Santa Claus!” they said blissfully, pointing.
Cherry turned around and there stood the fugitive from the toy department.
“Headache again?” Cherry inquired.
“Santa Claus!” Several small voices rose in a clamor and Bobby came running in to see. “Bring me a sled, Santa!” “I want a talking doll, Santy!” “Look-it me, Santa—”
“Never mind,” said Santa Claus to the nurse. “Just give me an aspirin!”
After the peak hours of afternoon shopping, the store hospital quieted down. Tuesday was relatively quiet. Cherry was congratulating herself when, Tuesday afternoon, the telephone rang.
“Medical department, Miss Ames speaking.”
“Cherry, this is Tom Reese.” He sounded unusually excited. “There’s been a second theft. The highboy has been stolen.”
“That enormous chest? But that’s fantastic.”
“Yes, but it’s true. You know Mrs. Julian fairly well, maybe you can be of use to me. Can you come at once?”
“I’ll be right there.”
Cherry hung up, adjusted her crisp white cap straighter on her black curls, and went next door. She had never been in Tom Reese’s private office before. His heaped-up desk interested her, with its roughs of store advertisements, shipping schedules, personnel reports, credit ratings, correspondence.
“Everything except merchandising,” he said, following her glance, “comes under the jurisdiction of the store manager. Sit down, Cherry. This is bad business.”
“For Mrs. Julian, too?”
“Yes. I’ll come right to the point with you. The highboy has just been stolen, and about ten days ago the miniature Ming vase was stolen. The store detectives suspected Anna Julian of taking the vase, so now they figure she may be connected with the second antiques theft. Pierce, in particular, argues that it’s no coincidence both thefts occurred in Mrs. Julian’s department.”
“Tom, do you think Anna Julian has stolen anything? Though how anyone could steal such an immense, well-known—”
“Well, listen to this trick. Let’s see what you think.”
The highboy was sold last Friday, as Cherry already knew. Mr. Dance had released the buyer’s name to the delivery service department, so that the highboy could be delivered at once to a Fifth Avenue address. The highboy was delivered last Saturday, and the store’s deliverymen reported nothing unusual, except that the house was scantily furnished.
But this morning, Tuesday morning, the credit department reported that a check given in part payment for the highboy, a small deposit, had been returned by the bank as worthless. The highboy was charged to the customer’s account, a perfectly good account. The store detectives immediately sent men to the Fifth Avenue address. They found the house vacant and untenanted. The valuable highboy was gone. What happened, apparently, was that the house was rented temporarily and the highboy was removed to some unknown hiding place.
“So the Fifth Avenue address was simply a respectable ‘front,’ is that it?” Cherry asked. “Who was the customer who’d do such a thing?”
“We contacted the customer. He was astounded—said he never ordered the highboy, although Mr. Dance had phoned him it was available.”
“Is the customer telling the truth?” Cherry asked.
“Well, he’s a man whose reputation is beyond question. Have you seen the name John Cleveland in the newspapers as one of the President’s dollar-a-year men and heading up Red Cross committees?”
Cherry nodded. The name was a respected one.
Although the highboy was charged to Mr. John Cleveland’s long-standing and perfectly sound account, Tom explained, it was done by an agent. Or by a man claiming to represent Mr. Cleveland, with authority to act for him. The so-called agent purchased the highboy and ordered it sent not to Mr. Cleveland’s address but to the Fifth Avenue address, saying Mr. Cleveland was sending it as a gift to his daughter. But Mr. Cleveland declared today that he had no agent, that he had not authorized any such purchase, and that his daughter lived in Virginia.
“So the agent was an impostor,” Cherry said, “and the Fifth Avenue address was a phony setup. How could Willard Dance have been fooled like that?”
“Easy enough. We questioned Dance at noon today,” Tom said. “Dance says the agent offered him written credentials with John Cleveland’s signature. Faked and forged, of course, hut Dance says these were good enough to convince him. No, it’s not Dance’s fault. Busy, prominent people like Mr. Cleveland often send an agent to transact business for them. The ‘agent’ was awfully clever, that’s all.”
Cherry sat staring at Tom Reese as he picked at a knotted string, stubbornly trying to untangle it. She had never before seen him fidgety and angry.
“About the check that bounced—?”
“That’s what alerted our bookkeeping and credit departments,” Tom said. “It was the phony agent who gave a rubber check, in part payment for the highboy—to expedite its immediate delivery. He charged the balance to John Cleveland, claiming he was authorized to do so.”
So in exchange for a worthless check, the unknown man had obtained possession of the highboy.
“Has the store any idea who the ‘agent’ was?” Cherry asked.
“No. Dance furnished a detailed description of the man, and detectives are now hunting for him. Dance is contacting other art dealers, including Mr. Otto who knows a lot of people, to see whether they know the ‘agent.’ But locating him or the highboy in a city of this size is—”
“Like searching for a needle in a haystack,” Cherry said. “What else did Mr. Dance say?”
Mr. Dance had told store executives and detectives that on Friday morning, when the highboy arrived in the store, he telephoned the John Cleveland residence. Mr. Cleveland did not come to the telephone; Dance spoke to a secretary, presumably. He left a message that the famed highboy was for sale, in case Mr. Cleveland wanted first chance to acquire it. Thus, Willard Dance had said, he was not surprised when a little later on Friday a man claiming to represent Mr. Cleveland came to buy the highboy. When the ‘agent’ said that the prominent Mr. Cleveland wished no publicity about his acquisition just yet, Willard Dance honored the request. It was usual enough—and Cherry recalled Mrs. Julian’s confirming that.
“I must say,” Tom admitted, “that Mr. Cleveland is being awfully decent. He’s already let our detectives search his New York house, and he’s offered to throw open his country home for search.”
“Tom,” said Cherry musingly, “do you think Willard Dance is telling the truth? All we have is his word for what happened.”
“Yes, I believe him. His story is airtight. And he’s badly worried. Because he’s the one who sustains the loss of the highboy. Dance is the one whom the phony agent victimized—”
“Not the store? Besides, I thought Dance was insured.”
“Look, Cherry, it works like this—”
Tom impatiently flung away the knotted string and explained. Actually there was no money loss to the store. The store could not charge Mr. Cleveland for an article which he neither ordered nor received. The charge for the highboy would simply be deleted from his account. Nor did the “agent’s” bad check cost the store any money. Mr. Dance sustained the loss of the bad check, since his concession—his independent business—accepted it. What was lost, so far as the store was concerned, was the highboy itself, and this was Mr. Dance’s responsibility.
“Wasn’t it insured?” Cherry asked.
“Dance had been insured, but after the Ming vase was stolen, his insurance company considered him guilty of carelessness, a poor risk. They paid on the Ming vase, but they canceled his policy on the usual five days’ notice. Dance just told me this.” Tom frowned. “He’s trying to get further insurance from another company.”
“But the highboy—wasn’t it insured earlier by its owner?”
Tom explained. When the owner transferred the highboy from his house to Dance’s antiques gallery within the store, he notified his own insurance company of the highboy’s change of location. Once the highboy was on Dance’s premises, Dance was responsible for it. The owner’s insurance company now held Willard Dance responsible to pay back to them the full value of the missing highboy—many thousands of dollars. The insurance company in turn would pay this sum to the highboy’s owner, who had taken out and paid for the insurance policy.
“What is Dance going to do?” Cherry exclaimed.
Tom shrugged. “He’s remarkably calm in the face of trouble. What we all hope is that the missing items can be found. Dance claims he’s been victimized, and he’s asking the owner’s insurance company to give him a little time to let him cooperate with their detectives. But they’re not giving him much time—one to two weeks, not more. Insurance companies are tough, Cherry. I think they said Dance has to pay right after Christmas—unless the highboy is located, or the thief is caught and confesses where the missing things are.”
“You say ‘the things,’” Cherry observed, “as if you almost think the same thief took both the vase and the highboy.”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know what to think, at this stage,” Tom replied. “Some of the detectives said that. They believe both thefts were an inside job.”
“By someone like Mrs. Julian?” Cherry asked unwillingly. “But, Tom, why Mrs. Julian? Why not another insider like Miss Janet Lamb or Adam Heller or even Mr. Dance himself?”
“Because of all those people, only Mrs. Julian is without any family or any resources except her job. She’s the only one in Dance’s department who has real motive to steal. That’s why the police detectives, with store and insurance company detectives, are inclined to suspect her.”
“Does Mr. Dance suspect her, now that the highboy has disappeared?”
Tom shook his head. “Still, everyone is suspect until proved innocent. Let’s go talk a little bit to Anna Julian and see what we can learn.”
Together, they left the store manager’s busy office and walked across the sixth floor to the quiet of the antiques concession. Cherry was just as well satisfied that Mr. Dance was nowhere around.
“He’s probably upstairs consulting with the store detectives,” Tom muttered. He called, “Good afternoon, Mrs. Julian. Have you a moment?”
“I’m free, as you see,” Mrs. Julian said politely, coming up to them.
The woman’s pallor and strained look disturbed Cherry. Mrs. Julian must be badly shocked by the theft of the highboy, and she must realize, even if no one had told her, that this second theft could reflect on her.
“Mrs. Julian,” she said in concern, “I don’t at all like the way you look. I’d recommend that you go around the corner to see Dr. Murphy when you leave the store this evening, or sometime tomorrow.”
“Why, you sound quite serious, Cherry!”
“I am serious. I’ll write out the medical authorization form for you. Don’t you agree, Tom?”
“I certainly do. Would you mind answering one more question, Mrs. Julian?” She looked weary but smiled. “Did you see the pretended agent on Friday morning?”
“I saw several people in the department on Friday morning. I’m not certain, Mr. Reese, whether I saw the man Mr. Dance described or not. Mr. Dance handled that transaction personally, you know. Mr. Dance generally does take care of the really important sales himself.”
“Thank you,” Tom said. “Now we won’t bother you any more.”
“Thank goodness! Have you a moment to spare? Cherry, you remember the music box I showed to you on Sunday? Here it is.”
Cherry felt sorry to see the music box set out on one of the display tables. But Mrs. Julian seemed relieved to be able to talk about the music box rather than the theft, and matter of fact about parting with it. That is, if Mr. Dance were able to sell it for her, on his usual commission basis.
“Of course I’m sorry not to keep it, especially since it was a gift from my husband, but I could use the funds.”
She insisted on winding the music box and playing the minuet for them. All three stood listening to the odd, plaintive melody. Mrs. Julian seemed extremely nervous today, and inclined to chatter.
“Isn’t it remarkable that the first theft was of a very small object, and the second theft a very large object? Whoever is taking these things has expensive taste. I told Mr. Dance, poor man, that I’ve taken good care to insure my music box—”
Her chattering was not making a very good impression on Tom Reese. It was not like her, and Cherry recognized it as unease. Tom moved away, with a nod. Cherry whispered to Mrs. Julian:
“Try to relax. You mustn’t worry so.”
Cherry caught up with Tom in the corridor.
“Tom,” Cherry pleaded, “couldn’t you ask the various investigators and detectives not to be too harsh with her?”
He frowned. “They have to continue their investigations. I’ll do what I can, though.”
“Thank you for your kindness to Anna Julian.”
“It’s for you, too, Cherry,” he said. “I just hope you aren’t wrong about her.”
His remark set Cherry to thinking back over her conversations with Mrs. Julian. With Mr. Dance, too, for that matter. What persistently came back to Cherry was Mrs. Julian’s remark: “Mr. Dance doesn’t know too much about antiques, he cheerfully admits it.” That was plainly the reason he needed Mrs. Julian with her wide, firsthand knowledge of antiques. While she was not a scholar, like Mr. Otto, she easily outstripped Miss Janet Lamb and Adam Heller. Probably Mr. Dance could get some other knowledgeable assistant, but not as inexpensively as Mrs. Julian. No wonder he kept her on.
Yet this entire situation raised a tantalizing question. If Mr. Dance didn’t know much about antiques, why was he in this business? True, he was an experienced businessman, or the store would not have given him a contract and floor space. But why was he in antiques?
Well, Cherry reasoned, there were immense sums of money to be made in the sale of, for example, the highboy. Just think of what ten or even five per cent of the sale price of the highboy would have put in Dance’s pocket! Since he obtained the antiques on consignment from their owners, the emphasis was on selling—on the commercial aspect of the antiques business. “Then,” Cherry figured, “Mr. Dance is in this business for the profits to be made, and he relies on Mrs. Julian and Mr. Otto and probably others for their specialized knowledge.”
Mr. Otto … She walked along ruminating. “Then why,” she asked herself suddenly, “was Willard Dance so agitated that time Mr. Otto called him up at the store?”
The scene flashed back into her memory—his saying, “Otto shouldn’t phone me here,” and the way Dance quickly covered up his agitation in front of the people in his department. The way Dance had said half-humorously, “That Otto never gives me any peace …” That incident was rather extraordinary. Mr. Dance had covered up so fast, she hadn’t fully noticed it at the time.
But why didn’t he want Otto to telephone him at the store? The store seemed the logical place to discuss antiques. Cherry recalled that Adam Heller had answered the telephone that day. Did Dance not want anyone to take Otto’s messages? Otto had not left any message with old Adam Heller. What was so secret, that Dance didn’t wish his assistants to know it?
Cherry could not find any answers, but a nameless, uneasy doubt about Willard Dance formed in her mind. A doubt of Otto, too? Well, she didn’t know anything about Mr. Otto. It was Mr. Dance who had acted upset.
In fairness, Cherry tried to remember if being upset and excited was a regular part of Mr. Dance’s temperament. No, every time she had seen him, Willard Dance had been affable and easygoing.
Another curious thing occurred to Cherry. Mr. Dance had operated his concession for many months and no thefts had ever occurred before. Now all of a sudden two thefts occurred, and within ten days of each other. Could Mrs. Julian be involved? But Mrs. Julian had been with the department ever since it opened, and her personal situation had been the same then as now.
Some vague uneasiness about Dance persisted. Still, Cherry had nothing tangible to go on. She wondered whether Mr. Otto, who was an experienced and established art expert, entertained any suspicions toward Willard Dance.