Beware the Curves

Chapter 13

Helen Manning had dolled herself up for the occasion. She had taste in selecting her garments. She’d been to the beauty parlor, and she had that indefinable something which enables some women to wear clothes so they look like Parisian gowns.

We had a couple of cocktails. She went through the motions of counting calories when it came to ordering dinner, but she surrendered easily to the waiter, the menu and my suggestions. She had a lobster cocktail, avocado-and-grapefruit salad, cream of tomato soup, filet mignon, a baked potato and mince pie à la mode.

We went to her apartment, and she brought out a bottle of crème de menthe. She turned the lights down because her eyes hurt after a long day in the office.

She crossed her knees. She had good legs. In the subdued lights of the apartment she looked about twenty-two, and she had class.

When I’d seen her by daylight banging away at the typewriter, in the office where she was working, she looked thirty-five and tired.

“What is it you want to know?” she asked.

I said, “You worked for Karl Carver Endicott?”

“Yes.”

“In what capacity?”

“As a confidential secretary.”

“How was he to work for?”

“Splendid!”

“A gentleman?”

“Wonderful!”

“Anything personal?”

“Certainly not,” she said acidly. “The relationship was on a business basis. If he hadn’t been enough of a gentleman to have kept it on that basis, I was enough of a lady to have insisted upon it.”

“You learned a good deal about his affairs?”

“Yes.”

“How about his honesty?”

“He was absolutely, scrupulously honest. It was a very fine position.”

“Why did you quit?”

“For personal reasons.”

“What were they?”

“I resigned.”

“Why?”

“The atmosphere of the office had changed in a way.”

“In what way?”

“It’s difficult to describe. I didn’t care for some of the other girls in the office. I could get a job anywhere. I didn’t have to put up with an environment I didn’t like. I quit the job.”

“Any hard feelings?”

“Certainly not. Mr. Endicott gave me a very fine letter of recommendation. I can show that to you if you wish.”

“I’d like to see it.”

She went to the bedroom and came out after a while with a letter on the stationery of the Endicott Enterprises. It was a swell letter. It recommended Helen Manning as a competent secretary who had been with him for years. She was leaving voluntarily and he regretted losing her.

“Now then,” I said, folding the letter, “shortly afterwards you went to talk with Mrs. Endicott, didn’t you?”

“I did?” she exclaimed incredulously.

“You.”

“Certainly not!” she said. “I had seen Mrs. Endicott in the office once or twice. I knew who she was, and of course I exchanged the time of day with her, but that’s all.”

“You didn’t talk with her at all after you had quit your position?”

“I may have said good morning if I saw her on the street, but I don’t even remember that.”

“You didn’t give her a ring on the telephone and ask her to tell you where you could meet her because you had something to tell her?”

“Certainly not.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “Would you mind giving me an affidavit to that effect?”

“Why should I?”

“So I can report the true facts to my employers and spike a rumor that is going around.”

“But I see no reason for making any such statement.”

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

“Of course it’s true. I wouldn’t lie.”

“Then you can make an affidavit.”

She was silent for several seconds. Then she asked abruptly, “How did you know about this?”

“About what?”

“About my going to Mrs. Endicott.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “You didn’t go to her. You’re going to give me an affidavit to that effect.”

“All right,” she said savagely. “I went to her! I told her things I thought she should know.”

“What was the trouble with Karl Endicott?” I asked.

“Everything,” she said. “After all I’d done for him! I gave him the best years of my life. I was loyal. I was absolutely devoted to him. I put up with things that... I closed my eyes to things... I wouldn’t permit the slightest thought of his chicanery even to enter my mind. And then he got this little hussy in. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she could have done the work. She couldn’t even type. She didn’t know straight up. She was just a little strumpet who was twisting him around her finger, and—”

“And you made a scene?” I asked.

“I did not make a scene,” she said. “I simply told him that if he wanted to keep a mistress, he should keep her in an apartment and not jeopardize the business by frying to keep her in the office. I also told him that if I was going to be the chief secretary I wanted it understood that I was the chief secretary, that I didn’t want some little tart who had a face and a figure and no brains telling me what to do.”

“So he fired you?”

She began to cry.

“He fired you?” I asked.

“He fired me, goddam him!” she said between sobs.

“That’s better,” I told her. “You went to Mrs. Endicott. What did you tell her?”

“I told her what had happened. Karl Endicott sent John Ansel and another man into the Amazon jungles. He knew that it was legalized murder. He wanted to get rid of both of them.”

“When did you know this?”

“I knew it when I talked with Mrs. Endicott.”

“How long before?”

“Not very long before.”

“Why not?”

“Because... because I wouldn’t let myself even question his motives.”

“How did he know what they were going to encounter in the Amazon?”

“Some other people had been up in that same territory. That had been a bona fide expedition. The people had been killed. Endicott knew they had been killed.”

“How?”

“It was an expedition by another oil company and Endicott got the information on that.”

“How?”

“By correspondence.”

“Where’s the correspondence?”

“In his files, I guess.”

“You didn’t take it out when you left?”

“No, I wish I had.”

“You have no photostats?”

“No.”

“No way of proving what you know?”

“Only that I saw the letters. I typed some of his letters of inquiry.”

“Did Endicott make any settlement when you left? Any sort of property adjustment?”

“Why should he?”

“Did he?”

“No.”

“You’re dependent on your salary?”

“I’m a working girl.”

I sized her up. Six years ago she had been quite a dish. She was still a good-looking babe. Then she had been twenty-nine. Now she was thirty-five. She could type like nobody’s business.

I said, “It would be unfortunate if some of this came out.”

“In what way?”

I said, “Employers don’t like secretaries who become temperamental and go to wives with stories of the husband’s business.”

She thought that over.

I looked at my watch.

“Gosh, Helen,” I said, “I’ve got to rush on. I’m working on this Endicott case, and I’ve got a million and one things to do. It was perfectly swell of you to give me an evening of your time.”

“Thank you for a wonderful dinner, Donald,” she said.

She came to the door with me. I kissed her good night but it wasn’t much of a kiss. She was preoccupied with her thoughts, and she was worried to beat hell.