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Another ten minutes with Collingswood left me more frustrated than informed. Like any good father, he’d insisted his daughter couldn’t possibly be involved in anything unsavory. Not in anything which would harm his company, or him personally. Not in gambling or anything shameful which would make her a blackmail target.
Admittedly it seemed like a stretch, having met her and seen how involved she was in her music. Still, I couldn’t forget her wry comments about hearing enough engineering talk to last her a lifetime, or her saying today that her father cared about nothing but his business.
It had been a long day and I needed the solitude of my office to think. The radiator had settled back to tepid. Home sweet home. I kicked off my shoes off and put my feet on my desk. One of my stockings had a runner an inch wide, an occupational hazard whose costs were adding up on this case. I’d replace it from the spares in my drawer before heading for Finn’s.
Meanwhile, I studied the other nugget of information I’d gotten from Collingswood there in the parking lot. Pauline, the young typist with dimples was the one who’d been fired that afternoon. A two-dollar bill Mrs. Hawes kept at her desk for petty cash had gone missing. A search ensued. It hadn’t turned up the money, but behind other items in Pauline’s desk, jammed or stuck to the back of the drawer, was a paper with engineering symbols.
The page was from documentation on the Crescendo project. It wasn’t the missing calculations, but was damning, nonetheless. Collingswood, on seeing the evidence, had fired the girl on the spot.
The incident seemed to confirm that Tremain and the project he’d worked on were the central target in everything happening. Collingswood’s afflictions, the snake and the phone calls, were merely peripheral. But how? And why? Were they simply attempts to confuse the issue?
As much as I liked that idea, I didn’t yet see anything to support it. I turned my thoughts to what I now knew instead.
That Gil Tremain was still alive, probably.
That he was being held against his will and hadn’t given his captors something they wanted. Otherwise, why turn his apartment inside out? Why try to snatch his daughter?
The fact Eve’s would-be abductors had shoved a gag into her mouth to keep her quiet just might tell me something as well. Why hadn’t they used chloroform? It lasted longer and was more effective. Their choice suggested they hadn’t intended to take her far, or they didn’t want her throwing up when the chloroform wore off.
I was just getting to my next conclusion — that Collingswood was an innocent casualty of the situation — when two jaunty taps sounded on my door. Before I could speak, it opened and Clem Stark swaggered in.
“So this is your place, huh?” The miserable excuse for a private eye took it in. “You don’t mind my saying so, you could use some better decorating.” His gaze had settled on the dead plant in the corner, but only after observing my legs thoroughly enough to give evidence on them.
Slowly, so as not to give him any idea I suffered from girlish modesty, I returned them to earth and sat up.
“I don’t recall anyone inviting you in. Get out.”
“Come on, Maggie, don’t get sore. I may have gotten ahead of you once or twice in the past—”
“You stole a case I was working on.”
“Hey, let’s let bygones be bygones. Aren’t you going to ask me to sit down? Hear about how you’d have your own office working for me? Girl out front to take calls when you weren’t around? Do your typing?”
My hand had gone under the seat of my chair, not because I felt threatened by him, but because I was furious. Sliding my Smith & Wesson out of the pocket I’d put it in a short time earlier, I leveled it at him.
“What I’m going to do is put a slug in your arm — or maybe your shoulder — unless your start telling me everything you know about the case I’m working on now and why you’re interested.”
Some of the color left his face.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Your boy in the brown car is a lousy tail. If he’s the best you can hire, no wonder you want to hire somebody smart.”
“Hey. The men I got working for me are plenty smart. None of ‘em drives a brown car, Smartypants.”
He wasn’t scared, I’d give him that, but he was nervous. He looked just indignant enough to make me think he was telling the truth.
“You’re not going to plug me. You’d lose your license.”
“Barging in after the other offices up here have closed for the day. Making a pass at me. What’s a girl to do? The boys at Market House like you a whole lot less than they do me, Stark. You want to see who they believe?”
He knew I meant the detective division. He chuckled nervously.
“You got spunk, kid. I like that.”
“Take off your coat.”
“What?”
I bobbed the .38 in repetition.
“Okay, okay. It’s off. Now what?”
Minus his suit jacket I could see he wasn’t armed.
“Now you sit. And you tell me the truth.”
Rounding my desk, I leaned on the corner. I put the Smith & Wesson behind me where he couldn’t reach it but I could. I picked up the stapler next to my typewriter and opened it for a thick job.
“Otherwise, while I may not shoot you, I guarantee I’ll use this to staple your lying mouth shut.”
Stark flinched a smidgen.
“Hey, simmer down! It doesn’t matter what you do to me, I don’t know anything about someone tailing you. That’s the God’s honest truth. Or what you’re working on, either.”
“So out of the sky blue you’ve taken it into your head to offer me a job.”
“I, uh, got a man who’s going to be leaving. I can’t afford to be short staffed, so I’m trying to line up good talent. You oughta be flattered.”
The first part sounded believable. What didn’t make sense was why he would come to me.
Then it hit me. Shifting the stapler thoughtfully from hand to hand, I sat staring down at him.
“What you’ve got is a man with a low draft number.”
“Yeah, okay. You know you got a ladder in your stocking?”
I ignored the comment.
“And if we go to war, every able-bodied man in the city will be taking off, the ones who work for you included.”
“Opportunity for you, kid. You’d get out of this dump, no more rent to pay. I’d get the only detective left in the city who’s not gimped or blind. We’d be washing each other’s backs. And while I sure wouldn’t mind washing yours the other way too, I ain’t the kind who gets fresh with my help.”
“Help?”
“Employees.”
“Yesterday it was ‘colleagues’.”
He grinned, not sure how to respond but unconcerned. I hopped off the desk.
“Get out, Stark. If you come back here, or waylay me again, or ever try to meddle in a case of mine, I guarantee I’ll lose my temper.”
I raised the stapler to give him incentive.
He left.