The Case of the Negligent Nymph

Chapter 8

THE KNOCK ON THE DOOR OF DOROTHY FENNER’S APARTMENT was quietly insistent, and yet there was something almost apologetic in the gentle, steady, tat—tat—tat—tat—tat.

Dorothy Fenner walked to the door, jerked it open and said, irritably, “I wish you newspaper people would telephone before you try storming the door. I’ve been … “

She stopped in startled dismay.

“May I come in?” George Alder asked.

Wordlessly, she stood to one side, holding the door open for him.

“The newspaper people have been here?” he asked.

She nodded.

“That’s good,” he said.

“Sit down,” she invited.

“Lock the door, please.”

She hesitated an appreciable instant, then turned the knurled knob on the door, putting the bolt into place.

It was an old-fashioned apartment, with old-fashioned furniture, but there was a certain roominess about it, and the ceilings were high. Woodwork and furniture were dark, which by day made it gloomy and depressing, by night furnished an atmosphere of genteel respectability.

Alder said, “All right, what are your terms?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

Alder settled himself in the straight-backed chair near the table. There was something in his pose which made it seem he was on the point of pulling out checkbook and fountain pen.

“I made a fool of myself,” he admitted.

She watched him with outward hostility as her mind began adjusting itself to this new development.

“Why the sudden burst of conscience?” she asked.

He said, “It isn’t conscience, it’s business.”

“Any business can be discussed with my lawyer, Perry Mason.”

“Don’t be a fool!”

“What’s foolish about that?”

“He’s rich. He makes more every day than you do in a month.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“I’m prepared to be decent and reasonable. All this newspaper notoriety has hurt you. You’ve probably lost your job. Ill compensate you for the damage I’ve caused, but there’s no reason for you to pay Perry Mason part of your money.”

“You’ll pay him?”

“Don’t be a fool. I’m not that dumb. I might be willing to pay you for the damage to you. I’ll be damned if I’ll support a lawyer with any of my money.”

She had moved toward the telephone. Now she paused to think that over.

“You’re a working girl,” he told her. “You’d better start using your brain. You haven’t done much with it so far.”

She walked back toward him and seated herself on the arm of the overstuffed chair, one area over the back of the chair, the other indolently at her side, her right foot crossed over her left knee. A movie star being interviewed for one of the fan magazines had assumed this pose and it had been extremely effective. Dorothy Fenner had tried it, liked it, and filed it away for future use. There was a certain nonchalance about it, an air of informal ease, and it didn’t detract any from her looks.

“Let’s quit beating around the bush and put a few cards on the table,” Alder said.

She said nothing, watching him with thoughtful speculation.

Alder said, “If Minerva Danby wrote that letter, it’s absolutely false. Frankly, I don’t think she wrote it. I think it’s a forgery. I think it’s all either part of a hoax or a trap so that someone can lay the foundation for blackmail.”

Dorothy Fenner held her pose.

“However, when that bottle came into my possession and I read that astounding letter,” Alder went on, “I wanted time to think, and I wanted time to investigate. I started an inquiry on that Los Merritos thing. It’s absolutely false from beginning to end. And I want you to believe me, that I didn’t see Minerva Danby at all that night. In fact, I simply can’t account for that letter.”

He was talking earnestly now, apparently really trying to convince her. Dorothy Fenner had sense enough to realize that silence had so far been her best move. She merely watched him, letting him see she was listening, afraid to say anything lest he find out the cards she held were not as high as he had feared—interested now in just how far the man would go, just what sort of a proposition he was prepared to make. After all there could be no harm in listening. She could always call Perry Mason after she had heard what Alder had to say.

“It’s the truth,” Alder said, pleading with her now for her belief. “I was detained in town. I had intended to shove off about eight o’clock that night, but I didn’t get down to the yacht until after eleven. I gave the captain orders to shove off and I didn’t check the weather or pay very much attention to it.

“About half an hour out, one of those terrific windstorms came swooping down and caught us out in the middle of everything. It was quite a blow. I was on the bridge with the captain nearly all night. I asked him about Minerva Danby. He said she was in one of the staterooms and had gone to bed.

“Well, you know what happened. In the morning, I waited for her to join me at breakfast. When she didn’t show up, I sent the steward to her room. The room was empty, the bed hadn’t been slept in. I thought for a while she might have gone ashore, but the crew told me she hadn’t left the yacht. It had been a terribly rough passage going over, and we’d taken a bit of water, nothing too serious, but we’d had a few of them come over the lower deck. However, you couldn’t possibly think that she could have been washed overboard, and there doesn’t seem to be any reason for thinking it could have been well, anything else.”

“You mean murder?” Dorothy Fenner asked calmly.

He jerked himself more erect in the chair. His eyes rebuked her. “Certainly not. I mean suicide. Don’t talk that way, Dorothy.”

“I see,” she said.

“However,” he went on, “her body was found, and the autopsy showed death by drowning in salt water, and that was that.

“Then, after all this time, Pete Cadiz rings me up to tell me he has a letter that had been tossed overboard from the Thayerbelle. I didn’t think anything of it, thought it must have been some prank, but since he’d gone to the trouble of ringing me up I told him to bring it in and I’d pay him for the trip, and … well, there I was, caught flat-footed.

“I didn’t know what to do. I’m about to launch an investigation—or I was. And then you came in and stole the letter. You can realize the position in which that put me. If that letter had been published in the papers … Well, I lost my head, I guess. You see, the guests had seen you jumping out of the window with something in your hand. They insisted that I should look and see what was gone, and that I must notify the police.

“I was desperately afraid that the police might catch you and find that bottle in your possession and yet I had no alternative. I couldn’t simply sit back and say, ‘Oh, it doesn’t amount to anything. Whoever it was was probably looking for a few postage stamps, or something of that sort.’ Hang it, I was in a position where I had to call the police.

“But first, of course, we tried to run you down. By the time we spotted that canoe, I had a pretty good idea what must have happened, and when we went down through the yacht anchorage and I saw your yacht there, I felt certain.

“I had to make up some story for the police, so I pulled the one about the gems, thinking I could perhaps work tilings out afterwards.”

“You got the letter back?” she asked.

His face was grim. “You can thank your lucky stars that I got that letter back. Otherwise you might not have been alive the next morning. I am not accustomed to being pushed around, my dear—and on this matter my reputation is at stake.”

She tried to keep fear from her eyes. “What do you want?”

“Only to know who your accomplice was, how you learned of the letter, and to insure your silence—by some of the more satisfactory means which are available-satisfactory to you, I mean.”

His smile was ingratiating, but his eyes were cold and deadly.

“How did you know where I hid the bottle?”

He laughed. “The most simple of all places, my dear. During prohibition, we yachtsmen always hid our liquor in the fresh-water tanks.”

“With the letter back, you didn’t have to turn me in to the police.”

“I didn’t turn you in. I merely complained of a thief— which I simply had to do. I had no idea that the police could actually find anything that would lead to you. I thought you’d be too smart for that.”

He said that last reproachfully and she, flaring to her own defense, said, “It was that dog of yours.”

“I admit that was a mistake,” he said. “I shudder to think what would have happened if he’d caught you.”

“Well, that’s the reason I had to abandon that bath towel,” she said.

“There were too many witnesses to the burglary. I couldn’t back up after I’d called the police. I had to go ahead. And that damn lawyer of yours! Why in the world did you ever get Perry Mason, of all people?”

“What’s wrong with himP”

“He’s too damned clever.”

“That’s why I got him.”

“Well, he certainly crucified me this afternoon. Of course, those damned jewels. … I didn’t realize at the time they were all covered by insurance, but then as soon as Mason started asking me about the insurance I knew I was licked. If I made a claim that the gems were lost, the insurance company would start an independent investigation, and—well, I was just licked, and that’s all there was to it. If I don’t make a claim against the insurance company, it’s going to be a give-away, and if I do, it’ll be trying to get money by false pretenses. Insurance companies don’t take kindly to that.”

“What happened this afternoon?” she asked, sparring for time.

“That deputy district attorney got hold of me after court, and told me he didn’t like my answers, and that he would have to dismiss the case if I couldn’t be more cooperative. So I pushed back my chair, managed to put on quite an act, told him I was entitled to more consideration as a taxpayer, but that as far as I was concerned, he could go ahead and dismiss the case that I’d seen enough of his courtroom tactics to know that Perry Mason would tie him up in a knot and make me a laughingstock instead of an aggrieved victim, so I didn’t give a damn. Then I turned and stalked out of the office.”

“And now?” she asked.

“Now,” he said, “I want to come to terms.”

“What terms?”

“As a businessman, I suppose I should say that I want to do what’s right and then try to keep the figure at the lowest possible point. But I don’t feel much like a businessman now. I feel like a parent, perhaps an uncle who has harmed someone whom he really loves. … How much?”

“For what?”

He held up his hands as he checked off the points. “For a complete release for complete silence on your part as far as the press is concerned for the name of your accomplice and for completely forgetting that letter.”

“I don’t think I could do that. I don’t think it’s fair. And I really didn’t have an accomplice. I just happened to be picked up by a casual canoeist.”

He studied her, and she felt uneasy under his eyes. “The letter,” he said impressively, “is a forgery. You have my assurance of that. Will that make it any easier for you to promise to forget?”

“How do I know it’s a forgery?”

“Ill prove it to you.”

“Go ahead.”

“Not here. I haven’t even the letter here, much less the proof. But if you’ll give me the chance, my dear, I’ll prove the forgery, the complete spuriousness of that letter. Then there will be nothing to prevent you being reasonable with me.”

She thought over what he had said, her eyes speculative. “And you’d give me money?”

“Of course, my dear, a large … well, shall we say an adequate sum? After all, Dorothy, while you and I don’t get along, I’m trustworthy.”

She turned her eyes to get away-from his probing scrutiny. The telephone caught and held her gaze.

George Alder said, “Look, you’re nervous, you’re upset, and you’re a little frightened of me, aren’t you?”

“I think you have some ulterior motive, or you wouldn’t be . .

“Good lord!” he exclaimed impatiently. “I don’t want notoriety. And I’m trying to do the right thing—if you’ll only let me.”

He got to his feet.

“Dorothy,” he said, “I’m going back to the island. You think this over. Then, when you’ve seen the logic of my position, when you’re ready to accept a very adequate cash payment and be relieved of this criminal prosecution, you will come to me and I’ll prove to you that this letter is a complete falsification.”

“When?”

“Any time tonight, dear. The sooner the better. Ill let the servants go and the dog will be shut up in his closet. I’ll be waiting.”

“Not tonight I…”

“Tonight,” he interrupted with firm insistence. “I have plans of my own to make. And remember, my dear, you’re still guilty of breaking and entering, and even though you’re out on bail, you’re still the defendant in a criminal action. Say nothing to anyone. Just come and let me show you the real proof of the falsity of the charges made in that letter, and then you and I will come to a complete understanding.

“I’ll be waiting, my dear, but say nothing to anyone. And it would be better if you left this hotel—shall we say, surreptitiously? Your lawyer, you know, would want to have a hand in this settlement, and we don’t want him to have any of your money. Do we, Dorothy?”

He walked rapidly to the door, paused in the doorway, and said, “Remember, I’ll be there at the island-waiting. The dog will be shut up and the servants absent. Just walk across the bridge and then around tjie walk to my study door. You know the way.

“Good night, Dorothy.”

He closed the door behind him.