Blondes' Requiem

I

One look at Cranville was enough.

As I drove down Main Street a smell of dirt and decay drifted in through the open windows of the Packard. In the far distance I could see the high brick stacks of the smelters stuck up against the skyline. They belched black smoke that had, in the course of time, yellow-smoked everything into uniform dinginess.

There was a sordid, undisciplined feeling about the town I didn’t like. The first policeman I saw needed a shave, and two buttons from his uniform were missing. The second, directing traffic, had a cigar in his mouth.

The sidewalk, littered with papers and trash, was crowded. Groups of men stood around at street corners. Some of them read newspapers, while others tried to read over their shoulders. Women slouched past like they had something on their minds. Shops seemed empty; even the bartenders were standing outside in the sunshine. I didn’t have to be told that Cranville was coiled up like a spring with suppressed anger and excitement. I could see it just by looking at the people.

I stopped at a drugstore and, using one of the phones, called Lewes Wolf. I told him I had arrived.

“Well, come on out.” He sounded like a man used to getting his own way. His voice was harsh and impatient. “You go through the town and turn right at the traffic lights. It’s a mile or so further on.”

I said I’d be right over and left the drugstore.

There was a small crowd of loafers around my car. I didn’t cotton on at first. As I started to ease my way through the crowd, I heard someone say: “That’s the dick from New York.”

I looked quickly over my shoulder, but I didn’t stop. They were a sick, seedy-looking bunch, dirty, tired and angry. A guy with a big Adam’s apple said: “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get the hell outa here.” I was startled to see he was talking to me.

There was a murmur from the other guys. They edged closer and they looked like they wanted to take a poke at me.

I got the car door open quickly and slid under the steering wheel.

The guy with the Adam’s apple shoved his lean unshaven face through the window. “Beat it, Gum-shoe,” he said in a gritty voice. “We don’t like your kind around here.”

I had the engine running. “Take it easy,” I said, wanting to hang one on his jaw, and I drove off. In the driving mirror I could see them staring after me.

I felt damp under my arms, but I wasn’t here to fight bums. I had other things to do.

I found Wolf’s house without difficulty. It was so big I couldn’t miss it. From the front wall a half-acre or so of fine green lawn spread in a gentle slope down to the street. The sidewalk and the parkway were both very wide and in the parkway the flowering bushes were worth seeing.

I left my car on the street, walked across the lawn and rang the bell in the brick portico under a peaked roof.

The manservant — a noiseless, sharp-eyed man of fifty — took me into Wolf’s study. It was some place. There was tapestry on the blank roughened stucco walls, iron grilles imitating balconies outside high windows, heavy carved chairs and a marble-topped table with carved legs. Thirty years ago it could have been quite a room.

Wolf was sitting by the window waiting for me. He was big and fat. His head was almost perfectly round under the close-cropped white hair. He reminded me of an octopus with his beaky little nose and thin, cruel mouth. His small, watery eyes crawled over me, but he didn’t say anything.

“I called you five minutes ago,” I said. “I’m an International Investigations operative, New York branch. You asked for a man to do some work.”

“That’s what you say,” Wolf growled, peering at me suspiciously. “But how do I know who you’re from?”

I gave him my identity card. It had been designed by Colonel Forsberg, my chief, especially for suspicious, irritable clients like Wolf. It was a neat job. On the outside it had the silver shield of the International Investigations and inside it had my photograph and everything about me, including my thumb-print. It was countersigned by the New York District Attorney.

Wolf stared at the card longer than necessary. Maybe he enjoyed keeping me standing there. “I suppose it’s all right,” he grunted at last and tossed the card back to me. “Know why you’re here?”

I said I didn’t.

He fidgeted with his gold watch-chain, then he waved to a chair. “Sit down.”

I picked the most comfortable chair in the room, pulled it close to him and took the weight off my feet.

He stared out of the window for some minutes without saying anything. I don’t know whether he was trying to get my goat, but if he was, he didn’t succeed. I watched him, knowing that time was on my side.

“See that?” he suddenly barked, pointing out of the window.

I followed his finger. I had to lean forward before I caught a glimpse of the distant smokestacks.

“They were mine.”

I didn’t know whether to console him or congratulate him, so I didn’t say anything.

“I ran that mine for twenty years. I owned it, heart, stun and guts. I quit last month.” His fat face sagged as he said it, I grunted.

That seemed to annoy him. “A pup like you wouldn’t understand,” he snapped, his watery eyes gleaming. “I worked there twelve hours a day for twenty years and I miss it.”

I said I guessed he did.

He thumped on the arm of the chair. “Three days away from that mine and I was crazy with boredom. Do you know what I’m going to do now?” He leaned forward, his face congested with excitement. “I’m going to be mayor of this damn town and I’m going to put it on its feet.”

It wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d gone for the White House.

“There are two other candidates,” he went on, a grim note in his voice. “The election’s in a month’s time. That gives you three weeks to find the missing girls.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about. “What missing girls?”

He waved his hands impatiently. “I forget their names. My secretary will give you details. Three girls are missing. Esslinger and Macey are using the disappearances to get votes. That’ll show you the kind of heels they are, but three can play at that game. Your job’s to find the girls before either Esslinger or Macey fund ’em. I’ve paid Forsberg plenty, and God help you if you don’t get results.”

This was all Chinese to me. I saw he wasn’t the kind of guy to bother with details. It was a waste of time to sit and listen to him.

“Maybe I’d better talk to your secretary,” I said, getting up.

“She’ll tell you.” He nodded his round head vigorously. “Only remember, I’m going to be mayor of this town. When I want something, I get it. Understand?”

I said I did.

He rang a bell. A girl of nineteen or twenty, small, pale and scared, came in. She wore glasses and she looked as if she could have used a meal.

“This is a detective,” Wolf harked at her. “Take him away and tell him what he wants to know.”

She looked at me curiously and moved to the door.

I stood up.

Wolf said: “Remember what I said... results. Don’t come here until you’ve something to tell me.”

I said I’d have something for him before long and followed the girl out of the room. She took me across the lobby into a smaller room, equipped as an office.

“I’m Marc Spewack,” I said, as she closed the door. “I hope I’m not fording up your work.”

She again looked at me curiously. Maybe she had never seen a detective before. “What did you want to know?” she asked, moving round behind her desk.

I sat down on a hard chair. There was no comfort in this little room.

“Mr. Wolf wrote my chief, Colonel Forsberg, sent him a cheque and asked him to handle a case for him. He didn’t say what the case was. I’m doing the work, so I want to know what it’s all about.”

She sat down. “Then I’d best give you a brief account of what’s been happening,” she said.

I said that’d be fine.

“About a month ago,” she began, in a low, monotonous voice, “a girl named Luce McArthur disappeared. Her father works in a drugstore on the corner of Sydney and Murray. A couple of days later another girl disappeared. She was the daughter of a janitor named Dengate. A week after that a third girl, named Joy Kunz, disappeared. Mr. Wolf went to Chief of Police Macey to find out what was being’ done about the missing girls. You see, there was a great deal of unrest in town. Parents were naturally anxious and the local press were hinting that there was a mass killer at large.

“As a result of Mr. Wolf’s visit, the police started a search. They went to all the empty houses in Cranville and in one of them they found a shoe that belonged to Joy Kunz. They didn’t find anything else, nor have they any clues even now. The finding of the shoe started a panic in Cranville. Mr. Wolf thought he’d get experts in and that’s why he’s sent for you.” She stopped talking and made a row of fingerprints along the polished edge of her desk.

“That clears the air,” I said, admiring the way she had given me the story. “Who’s Esslinger?”

“He’s the local mortician.” She didn’t look at me while she talked. “He’s running for the election too.”

“A mortician?” I was startled.

When she didn’t elaborate, I said, “What are his chances of becoming mayor?”

She made more fingerprints before saying: “Very good, I believe. The workers like him.” I thought there was a hint in her voice that she liked him too. But I couldn’t swear to that.

Anyway, I couldn’t imagine the workers liking Wolf, but I didn’t say so. “Mr. Wolf thinks that if he finds the girls he’ll win popularity and get elected mayor, is that it?”

She nodded. “Something like that.”

“What does Esslinger say?”

“He’s started an investigation too.”

I was vaguely surprised. “Who’s working for him?”

“Cranville has its own local agent,” she said. “Mr. Esslinger didn’t want strangers meddling with Cranville’s private affairs.”

I looked at her sharply. “That sounds as if you agree with him.”

She flushed and said: “My opinions don’t matter.”

There was a pause while I stared at her, then I said: “Why didn’t Mr. Wolf employ your local agent?”

Her mouth tightened. “He hasn’t any confidence in women,” she told me. “You see, the agency’s run by a woman.”

That was comforting news to me, I didn’t have much confidence in women myself. I thought for a moment and then asked: “What do the police think?”

“They won’t help either Mr. Wolf or Mr. Esslinger. Chief of Police Macey has his own candidate.”

I laughed.

Her mouth looked less prim, but she didn’t look up. “It’s a little complicated,” she admitted. “Chief of Police Macey wants Rube Starkey to be mayor, so he is carrying out his own investigation.”

“Who’s Starkey?”

She shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t know anything about him except he’s a gambler and I don’t think he’s a very desirable person to be mayor.”

“Well, that’s not bad considering you don’t know anything about him,” I said, with a smile. “What about these girls? Any angles?”

“They’ve just disappeared. Nothing has been found so far.”

“I see.” I selected a cigarette from my ease and lit it. This looked a hell of a case. “Let me get all this right. There are three separate investigations going on to find these girls. Wolf, Esslinger and Macey know that whoever finds them has the best chance of becoming mayor. I’m not likely to get any help from the police and I won’t be popular in Cranville because I’m an outsider. Esslinger’s investigator is likely to get support from Cranville, but not from the, police. Thu about it, isn’t it?”

She said it was.

I remembered the bunch of men who had surrounded my car. If that was going to happen to me every five minutes, I was going to have a swell time.

“Excitement is pretty high, isn’t it?”

“People are worried because nothing’s been done,” she said. “Some of them went down to police headquarters and broke some windows last night.” She sounded very calm about it all.

I thought they’d be breaking my neck if I didn’t watch out.

“Can you give me the names and addresses of all the people you’ve mentioned?”

She opened a drawer and took out a sheet of paper. “I thought you’d want that,” she said.

I thanked her and put the paper in my pocket.

“I’ll poke around,” I said, getting up. “Maybe I’ll have something for Mr. Wolf in a day or so.”

She suddenly looked straight at me. It was a shock to see she was hating me. Being a worker, I guessed she was on Esslinger’s side. With Wolf for a boss, I didn’t blame her, but it was a shock all the same. I could see how complicated it was all going to be.

“Is there somewhere where I can leave my car?” I asked.

She looked puzzled. “Leave your car?” she repeated.

“It carries New York licence plates. They don’t seem popular around here. Some guys have already told me so.”

For a split second she looked pleased, then she got her expression under control. “You can leave it in the garage around toe back. There’s plenty of room.”

I thanked her. “I didn’t get your name,” I said at the door.

“Wilson.” She flushed and looked embarrassed.

“You’ve been a big help, Miss Wilson,” I said. “I hope I haven’t taken up too much of your time.”

She said it was all right and pulled the typewriter towards her.

I booked a room at the Eastern Hotel on Main Street, dumped my bags and went out into the heat again. I took a cab out to McArthur’s place.

The cab driver seemed to be in a hurry to get rid of me. He went through a red light with a policeman standing a yard away. The policeman didn’t even bother to look up. I thought Chief of Police Macey must be a pretty dumb cop.

Four minutes’ furious driving brought us to a grim, sordid street, flanked either side by dirty tenements. Metal fire escapes crawled up the front of the buildings and men and women stood or sat on the iron steps in isolated groups.

Faces looked into the street at the sound of the cab. Some of the women shouted in through the open windows, not wanting their husbands to miss anything.

I knew I had made a mistake coming in a cab. I told the driver to keep on.

“The address you want is right here,” he said, slowing down.

I told him to keep going, and with a quick scowl over his shoulder he drove on. At the end of the street he turned left and I told him to stop. I gave him fifty cents and walked away before he could say anything.

I walked round the block, giving the rubbernecks time to calm down. Then I sauntered down the street towards McArthur’s place.

All the way I felt eyes watching me. I didn’t look up, but I knew the rubbernecks were wondering who I was and who I was going to see. That’s the worst of working a small town like Cranville. Everyone knows everyone else and a stranger sticks out like a boil.

McArthur’s place was a five-storey brick building, halfway down the street. I was glad to get into the lobby, out of the sight of prying eyes. There were six mailboxes; McArthur was on the third floor.

I went up. The stairs were uncarpeted, but clean. There was a stale smell of cooking, but otherwise the house wasn’t so bad.

I rapped on a door on the third floor and waited.

The door was opened by a little man in shirt, trousers and slippers. He wore no collar and he hadn’t shaved. His thin, yellow face looked sad. “Yes, please?” he asked, peering at me through thick glasses.

“Mr. McArthur?”

He nodded. I could see he was surprised to be called mister. He looked like a guy who had been kicked around plenty in his day.

“It’s about your daughter,” I said, watching him carefully.

Fear and hope crowded into his eyes and he had to steady himself against the door. “Have — have they found her?” he said with pathetic, crushed eagerness.

“Not yet.” I moved a step forward. “I’d like to come in a moment.”

His face sagged with disappointment, but he stood aside. “We’re in a bit of a mess,” he muttered apologetically. “It ain’t easy to keep things going with this hanging over us.”

I made sympathetic noises and closed the door. The room was clean, small and poorly furnished. Some stockings and women’s underclothes hung on a string across one side of the room.

McArthur stood by the table and looked at me questioningly. “Who did you say you were from?”

I took out my identity card and waved the shield at him. Before he could take a good look, it was back in my pocket. “I’m checking on your daughter’s disappearance,” I said. “Give me the help I want and I’ll get her back.”

“Of course,” he said eagerly. “What did you want to know? So many people have been around asking questions.” He twisted his fingers. “But nothing’s been done.”

I sat on the corner of the table. “What do you think’s happened to her?”

“I don’t know.” He tried to control, his hands, but he wasn’t successful. They reminded me of two white fluttering moths. “I don’t seem able to think properly since it happened.”

“Was she unhappy at home? I mean do you think she’s run away or something like that?”

He shook his head helplessly. “She was a good girl. She had a good job and she was happy.”

“Do you believe this stuff about a mass-killer being at large?”

He sat down abruptly and hid his face in his hands. “I don’t know.”

He wasn’t helping much.

“You know these disappearances are being used to gain votes for the coming election,” I said as patiently as I could. “It’s not possible, is it, that these girls are being paid to duck out of sight? I mean your girl wouldn’t do a thing like that?”

“Whatever’s happened to Luce has happened against her will,” he whispered. “You don’t think she’s dead, do you, mister?”

I thought it was likely, but I didn’t say so. Before I could go on, the door jerked open and a big, grey-haired woman came in. Her eyes were swollen and red and stony.

“Who is it, Tom?” she said, going to him.

McArthur looked vague and uneasy. “Someone about Luce.”

“It’s all right, Mrs. McArthur,” I said hastily, “I’m helping with the investigation.”

She looked me over and her mouth tightened. “You’re working for Wolf.” She got excited about that. Turning on McArthur, she said: “You fool! Why did you let him in? He’s Wolf’s spy.”

McArthur looked pleadingly at her. “He’s going to help,” he explained anxiously. “We want all the help we can, Mary.”

She walked to the door and threw it open. “Get out!” she said to me.

I shook my head. “You don’t understand, Mrs. McArthur,” I said soothingly. “The more people in on this, the quicker we’ll get results. You want your daughter back and I can help you. It won’t cost you-anything.”

“He’s right, Mary,” McArthur said eagerly. “He only wants to help.”

“I’m taking no help from a louse like Wolf,” the woman said, and she went out, closing the door violently.

McArthur wrung his hands. “You’d better go,” he said. “She’s gone for her brother.”

I didn’t care if she’d gone for the Marines. “Take it easy,” I said, not moving. “Why does she hate Wolf? What’s he done to get her feeling that way?”

“Most folks hate him. Leastways, those who’ve worked for him,” McArthur said, looking anxiously at the door. “You’ll find them all the same.”

The woman came back. With her was a thickset man of about forty. He was full of toughness and self-confidence.

“Is this the fella?” he said to Mrs. McArthur.

“Yes.” There was a triumphant note in her voice which annoyed me.

He came over to me. “Get out and stay out,” he said, poking his finger at my chest. “We don’t want a spying louse like you around here.”

I took his finger and gave it a little jerk. It was a trick I’d picked up from a guy who’d spent some time in China.

The man fell on his knees with a howl of pain and I grinned at him. “Don’t be a sissy,” I said, helping him up. “Can’t you take a joke?”

He toppled into a chair and held his hand, moaning.

I went to the door. “You’re all crazy,” I said to them. “Can’t you see you’re wasting time? I can find the girl if you’ll let me. It’s your business, of course, but she’s been missing for four weeks. No one’s turned up anything yet. If that gives you confidence, then I’m sorry for you. If I don’t find her, I’ll find the other two. By that time she won’t be worth finding. Think it over. I’m at the Eastern Hotel. If you want my help, come and see me. And don’t think I care one way or the other.”

I didn’t stop to see how they took it, but walked out of the room and closed the door quietly behind me.

The Cranville Gazette was on the fourth floor of a dilapidated building sandwiched between a large cut-rate emporium and a drugstore. The small, dark lobby was dirty and harboured the stale smell of bodies and tobacco smoke. The lift wasn’t working so I climbed the four flights of stairs.

I wandered around the fourth floor until I came to a door lettered in flaked black paint on pebbled glass: Cranville Gazette.

I turned the knob and went into a small, narrow room with two windows, a battered typewriter desk, a number of filing cases and a threadbare carpet.

A woman turned from the window and looked at me without much interest. She was forty, thin, frowzy and full of vinegar.

“The editor in?” I said, tipping my hat and trying to look more pleased to see her than she did to see me.

“Who is it?” she asked in a way that told me the editor didn’t have many visitors.

“The name’s Spewack,” I said. “And I’m not here to sell him anything or to waste his time.”

She opened a door which I hadn’t noticed before at the far end of the room. She shut the door behind her.

I leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette. I decided for an editorial office this was pretty punk. The newspaper, I thought, was a worthy representative of the town.

The woman came back. “Mr. Dixon will spare you a few minutes.” I walked down the narrow room, smiled at her and entered the inner room.

If anything, it was more dreary than the outer office. In a swivel chair at the desk sat an elderly number in a blue serge suit which looked like it had been nickel-plated. A pale-grey bald patch loomed high up in the middle of stringy white hair. He had sharp blue-green eyes and his beaky nose looked as if it had hung over a lot of quick ones in his time.

“Mr. Spewack?” he said in a fruity baritone.

I nodded.

“Take a chair, Mr. Spewack.” He waved a fat hairy hand at the chair across the desk. “I’m always glad to meet a visitor to our little town.” He paused and stared at me with a calculating expression in his eyes. “You are a visitor, I suppose?”

I sat down. “More or less,” I said, hitching the chair a little nearer to his desk. “Before I tell you my business, I’d like to ask you a question.”

He dug his little finger in his ear and worked it around for a while. Then he pulled it out, examined his nail and wiped it on his trouser-leg. “Anything you like,” he said, smiling. His bridgework was ill fitting and yellow and the smile didn’t reach his eyes.

“Do you care who becomes mayor of this town?” I asked, shooting it out fast.

He hadn’t expected that. He closed his eyes quickly and huddled into his clothes like a startled tortoise. “Now I wonder why you should ask that,” he said, after a pause.

“Couldn’t you say yes or no in a nice straightforward manner?” I said, tapping ash on the threadbare carpet.

He looked at me sharply and considered this. “I suppose so,” he said cautiously. “But I don’t see why I should. I don’t discuss politics with strangers, Mr. Spewack.”

We eyed each other. “You don’t have to make me a stranger,” I said. “If you put your cards on the table, we might see a lot of each other.”

He considered this too, then he suddenly laughed. It was a harsh sound like the bark of a hyena. “You’re a character, sir,” he said, washing his hands over the blotter. “Why shouldn’t you know a little thing like that? Very well, then, let me, as you suggest, put my cards on the table. There is very little to choose between Mr. Wolf and Mr. Starkey as mayors. Mr. Esslinger, however, would be better. Taken by and large, it wouldn’t greatly matter to me who got in. I am able to regard the election as an unprejudiced spectator.”

“That’s fair enough,” I said, taking out my identity card. I handed it to him.

He examined it with genuine interest. After he had been over it long enough to learn the contents by heart, he handed it back. “A very interesting little document,” he said, and again dug his finger in his ear. “I guessed you were the detective from New York the moment I saw you.”

I was watching him closely to see if he was going to turn hostile, but his expression didn’t change.

“You might be able to help me,” I said, putting the identity card back in my pocket.

“I might,” Dixon returned, tapping on the dirty ink-stained blotter. “But I don’t see why I should. I’m not helping anyone else, Mr. Spewack.”

I smiled at him. “Maybe they don’t need your help,” I returned. “All want is a little inside information about Cranville. I’m authorized to pay for all information.”

He closed his eyes, but not before I saw interest and greed jump into them.

“Very interesting,” he muttered under his breath. “Now I wonder what kind of information you’d want.”

“I understand Chief of Police Macey wants Rube Starkey to become mayor. Can you tell me why?”

He pulled at his beaky nose and turned this over very thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t like to give you my personal opinion, but I don’t mind giving you the opinion of the town... if that’s any use to you.”

“Go ahead,” I said, knowing that it’d be his opinion anyway.

“The trouble with Cranville,” he began, folding his hands on the blotter and looking at me with shrewd, sly eyes, “is this. For the past twenty years all the mayors have been elected on a reform ticket.”

Cranville has been so reformed that there’re no real opportunities to circulate money.

The working man, Mr. Spencer has to be encouraged to spend his spare money if a town is to flourish. It is a lamentable fact that unless the methods of encouragement are of a questionable nature, big profits are limited.

“Twenty years ago, Cranville had four gambling-houses, a racetrack, two excellent nightclubs and even a little organised vice. People spent their money, enjoyed themselves, and the town flourished. All these places have been closed down. It makes a big difference”

He picked up a pencil and began to draw a cube on the blotting paper.

“Macey wants Starkey to become Mayor because he’ll promote the kinds of entertainment that will be lucrative to Macey. Macey wishes to reopen the gambling-houses, nightclubs and even the racetrack. Starkey has had a lot of experience and could easily do it”

He finished drawing his cube and began rolling the pencil under his hand across the blotter. “Macey isn’t a very good policeman, but he is an excellent business man.”

“If Starkey gains control, Cranville may be in for a life of crime, is that it?” I made a sound like I didn’t care one way or the other.

“Very likely, Mr. Spewack. I should say it was very likely.” He smiles at me. “Only don’t quote me. I would not like everyone to know my views... not just now anyway.”

“Suppose Esslinger got in?”

“Well, Esslinger’s a different proposition. I think things might improve. I don’t know, of course. He is a little too anti-capitalist to be really comfortable in Cranville, but he is a very sincere man.”

“Tell me about him,” I invited.

Dixon leaned back in his chair and placed his fingertips together. “Now let me see,” he said, frowning at the dirty ceiling, “He came to Cranville thirty years ago. He was assistant at Morley’s Funeral Parlor for some time, and when Mr. Morley died he took over the business. He was and still is a hard, painstaking worker and has done a lot of good for the town. He is liked and trusted. You will like him Mr. Spewack, although you may not like his wife.” He glanced out of the window and shook his head. “A very strong-minded woman. It has always puzzled me why Esslinger ever married her.” He lowered his voice.

“She drinks.”

I grunted.

“Then there’s his son,” Dixon went on. “An excellent fellow. Takes after his father in every way. Clever, full of brains. Studying medicine and, I imagine, has a brilliant career in front of him.” He dug his finger in his ear again. “His mother dotes on him. She has no other interest, except, of course, the bottle.” He shook his head at the tiny bit of wax he had levered out of his ear.

“Has he any money?” I asked.

Dixon pursed his lips. “Esslinger? Depends on what you call money. He has a very nice little business. People die. In fact a lot of people die in Cranville. It isn’t what you would call a healthy town.” He looked at me with a sly smirk. “At least not for everyone.”

“I’ve gathered that,” I said dryly. “But I don’t scare easily.”

We eyed each other and then I fished out a packet of Camels and tossed him one. “What do you think’s to those girls who’ve disappeared?” I asked lighting up.

“What I think and what I print in y paper are two different things,” he said cautiously. “I have a young man who works for me, covering the local news. He is a sensationalist. It was he who convinced me that the mass-killer theory would increase our circulation.” He showed his yellow teeth in a foxy smile. “He was right, Mr. Spewack; it has.”

“But you don’t believe it?”

He shook his head. “I don’t.”

“What’s your theory?”

Again he shook his head. “Never mind about my theories, Mr. Spewack. You don’t want to clutter up your mind with the theories of an old man.”

“Come on, loosen up,” I urged. “I want all the help I can get.”

But I could see he was going to be obstinate. “There is one thing worth considering,” he said. “If those girls have been murdered, where are the bodies?”

“I’ve thought of that,” I said. “Maybe you have an idea?”

“No ideas,” he returned promptly. “You must expect to do a little work on this case yourself. No doubt Mr. Wolf is paying you well.”

“So-so,” I said and decided to let his theories drift. “Esslinger’s engaged a woman investigator, hasn’t he?”

I went on after a pause.

“A most charming young woman,” Dixon said, and gave the nearest thing he could to a leer. “You’ll like her. Of course, she’s had no experience as an investigator.”

“She’s getting nowhere?”

Dixon shook his head and smiled. “I don’t think anyone expected her to,” he said, underlining the “anyone.”

“That go for Esslinger, too?” I said, watching him closely.

He nodded, but didn’t say anything.

“And yet Esslinger has hired her.”

“And he doesn’t think she’ll break the case? That does not make sense.”

Dixon picked up his pencil and began another cube.

“I can only suggest an idea here and there,” he said apologetically. “You mustn’t expect me to do your work for you, Mr. Spewack.”

I leaned back in my chair and looked at him thoughtfully. We sat for a few minutes in silence. I knew he wasn’t going to elaborate, so I tried another angle.

“What do you know about the missing girls?”

He pulled open a drawer and took out three photographs, the kind that are taken by street cameramen. He gave them to me. “I assure you, Mr. Spewack, they are ordinary working-class girls with no secrets and with nothing extraordinary about them.”

Looking at the photographs, I believed him. They were the type you could see in any street, any day, in any town.

“Have they anything in common besides being all blondes?” I asked, handing the photographs back.

He opened his mouth to say something, when the telephone rang. He stared at the telephone with a blank, surprised look in his eyes. “Excuse me,” he said, picking up the receiver. He held it gingerly against his ear.

I sat back, watching him absently.

He said, “Are you there?” and listened.

Faintly I could hear a voice talking over the line. It was a sharp, high-pitched staccato voice, but I couldn’t understand what it was saying.

Dixon suddenly huddled into his clothes. “I understand,” he mumbled into the mouthpiece of the telephone. “Yes, of course. Yes... naturally.” He listened some more, then I heard a click as the caller hung up on him. He very slowly put the receiver hack on its cradle and stared down at his blotter. I saw a little cluster of sweat beads on his forehead which hadn’t been there before.

“Have they anything in common besides being all blondes?” I repeated after a long pause.

He started, then stared at me as if he’d forgotten was still there. “I’m afraid I can’t spare any more of my time, Mr. Spewack,” he said, looking hurriedly away. “It’s been very interesting to meet you.” He got up and offered me a damp, limp hand. His face was the colour of white mutton fat and high up near his right eye a nerve twitched. “I don’t think you’d better come here again, Mr. Spewack. Your time’s valuable and I wouldn’t like to waste it.”

“Don’t worry about my time,” I said. “I’ll take care of that.” I took out my pocket book and let him see the twenty-five dollar bills I had in it. “And I’ll buy your time, so you don’t have to worry about that either.”

“Very thoughtful of you,” he said. There was no interest in his voice or his eyes. “But I have nothing to sell. Do you understand, Mr. Spewack? Nothing to sell.”

I put the pocket book away and stared at him thoughtfully. “Who was that on the telephone?” I said.

“No one you’d know,” he returned, sitting limply in his chair. “Good day, Mr. Spewack, I’m sure you can find your own way out.”

I put my hands on the desk and leaned over him. “I bet it was Macey or maybe Starkey,” I said, watching him. “I bet you were told to keep your trap shut or else. Wasn’t that it?”

He huddled deeper into his clothes and shut his eyes. “Good day, Mr. Spewack,” he said softly.

“So long,” I said, and went out.

The vinegar-faced woman looked up as I passed.

“The old guy’s got cold feet,” I said. “You’d better light him a fire.”

I felt her eyes on my back, but I didn’t look round. I shut the outer office door behind me and walked slowly down the four flights of stairs. I found myself whistling in an absent-minded way Chopin’s “Funeral March.”

The Eastern Hotel was a rambling three-storey brick building with metal fire escapes on the front. There were a dozen or so rocking chairs on the porch.

I went up the steps and across the verandah and into the lobby. I saw potted palms and heavy mahogany furniture and brass spittoons.

The clerk at the reception desk was fussing with the register. A girl stood at the desk. She was tall; gold hair rested on the collar of her grey-and-blue check dress. On her arm she carried a light grey dust-coat and at her feet stood a bag, covered with hotel labels.

I came up to the desk and waited.

The clerk said to the girl: “Have you a reservation?”

She said she hadn’t.

He looked doubtfully at her and I had a feeling he was going to refuse her.

“Why should anyone need a reservation?” I said to him. “You’ve more vacant rooms than a dog’s got fleas.”

He gave me a cold, impersonal stare, but shoved the register at the girl. She gave me a quick glance and then signed her name. She was pretty in a sensible way. Her skin was good and her features small and regular.

The clerk gave me my key and I went across to the lift. A negro porter picked up the girl’s bag and joined me. The girl came over a moment later and we all travelled up to the third floor together.

The negro porter unlocked a door opposite mine and showed her in while I was unlocking my door. I turned before I went into my room to look at her. She was already looking at me.

“Thanks,” she said, and gave me a nice smile.

“Maybe it would have been better if you’d’ve tried elsewhere,” I said. “This is a pretty lousy hotel.”

“It’s a lot better than some,” she said, smiled again and went into the room.

I closed my door.

The room wasn’t anything to shout about. It had a small bed by the window. A bureau with a white stain where some gin had been spilled and a couple of big chairs. On the table by the bed was an old-fashioned telephone with an unpainted metal base and a transparent celluloid mouthpiece. Beyond the clothes cupboard was a bathroom.

I took off my hat and sat down in one of the chairs. Streetcars rattled past the hotel and the whine of the lift as it crawled between floors indicated that there wasn’t going to be a lot of peace for me in this room.

I lit a cigarette and decided I could do with a drink. I went over to the telephone and told the clerk to send up some Scotch and Whiterock. Then I went back to the chair again and thought about Wolf and Dixon and Esslinger. After turning it all over in my mind, I came to the conclusion that before long I would run into trouble. I didn’t mind that so much, because I’d run into trouble before. But I thought I’d better let Colonel Forsberg know as he had special rates which he charged if his operators ran into trouble.

I was beginning to compose the report I intended to send Colonel Forsberg without actually writing it down when a knock came on the door.

Thinking it was the Scotch and Whiterock, I called, “Come in,” without getting up.

A girl’s voice said: “I’ve done such a silly thing. I’ve lost the key to my bag.”

I turned and stood up.

She had taken off her hat and she looked even nicer without it. She stood in the doorway, holding the doorknob in her hand, looking at me hopefully. I noticed that she had long thighs and nice legs.

“How did you know I’ve been picking locks since I left school?” I said. “I thought I was concealing it from even my best friends.”

She laughed. “Oh, I didn’t know,” she said. “I thought you’d be able to do something because you are big and intelligent-looking.”

“Won’t you come in?” I said, waving to the other armchair. “There’s some Scotch and Whiterock on their way up. My mother doesn’t like me to drink alone.”

She hesitated, then closed the door and walked over to the armchair. She sat down, pulled her skirt over her knees and looked up at me. “I really only wanted you to open my bag,” she said.

“Don’t worry about your bag.” I returned, sitting down again. “I’ll do that after we’ve had a drink. I’ve only been in this town three hours and I’m lonely already.”

“Are you?” She seemed surprised. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d ever be lonely.”

“Only in this town,” I said. “There’s something about it that I don’t like. It isn’t friendly. Haven’t you noticed it?”

She shook her head. “I’ve only just arrived. Shall we introduce ourselves, or would you rather we didn’t?”

“Spewack’s the name,” leaning back and enjoying everything about her. “Marc Spewack. I’m a sleuth.”

“You don’t have to kid me,” she said seriously. “I’ve been around too long for that. Are you selling something?”

I shook my head. “Only my brains,” I said. “They’re fetching high prices in Cranville.”‘ I gave her one of my cards.

She studied it and gave it back. “So you are a sleuth.” She looked at me curiously. It’s funny how dames always look at me like that when they hear what I am. I was getting quite used to it. “I’m Marian French,” she went on. “I sell a snappy line in lingerie.” She made a little face. “The trouble is a town like this thinks snappy lingerie isn’t very nice. I’ll have a lot of opposition.” She touched her hair with long fingers. “But I’m used to opposition by now.”

The negro porter came in with the Scotch and Whiterock. He looked at me and then at Marian French; then he rolled his eyes. I gave him some loose change and got rid of him.

“I haven’t seen anyone in this town so far who looks like a proposition for snappy lingerie,” I said, stripping the tissue paper off the Scotch bottle. “Apart from you,” I added on second thoughts. “How do you like your poison?”

She shook her head. “My mother told me not to drink hard liquor with strangers. I’ll have the Whiterock straight.”

“Sure?”

“Sure.”

I gave her a half-glass of Whiterock, poured myself a stiff whisky and sat down again.

“Here’s to a lot of luck with your silk glamour,” I said, and put half the whisky away. It tasted good, and it was only after it had hit my belly that I realized how badly I needed it.

“Are you working here or on vacation?” she asked, stretching out her long legs and relaxing in the chair.

“Working,” I told her, thinking it would be nice to have a girl around more often. Only she’d have to be a nice girl like Marian French. I didn’t want the kind of floozy who is easy to get into a bedroom. “Haven’t you heard? Three blondes disappeared from Cranville during the past four weeks. I’ve been hired to find them.”

“That’s easy,” she said. “Why don’t you tell the police? They’ll do all the work and you’ll get the money. I wish I had someone to sell my specialities for me. But I have to do all my own work.”

I finished my drink. “I hadn’t thought of that,” I said. “It’s an idea at that.”

“I’m full of ideas,” she said, a little wearily. “But they don’t get me anywhere. Two years ago I had an idea that I’d get married and raise some children.” She closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of the chair. “But it didn’t work out.”

I wondered if she wanted sympathy; then looking at her profile and the firm line of her mouth I decided she didn’t. She was taking the opportunity of letting off a little steam to a guy she had decided she could trust. That was all right with me.

“Never mind,” I said lightly. “You’re not a withered old maid yet. You’ll catch someone.”

She smiled. “I’ve got to unpack,” she said, drawing in her legs and standing up. “This is a record. You’re the first friendly, nice man I’ve met in two years.”

“You haven’t been trying,” I said, getting up too. “Come on, show me your bag. I want to see if I’ve lost my old cunning.”

She wasn’t listening. Her eyes were fixed on the floor by the door with the kind of expression a girl will have when she thinks she’s seen a mouse.

I followed her gaze. A white square envelope was being pushed gently under the door. As I looked at it, it stopped coming further into the room. I took a step towards the door, collided with her, pushed her gently aside and jerked open the door. I looked up and down the long passage, but there was no one around. I picked up the envelope and put it in my pocket.

“Now you see what kind of a hotel this is,” I said carelessly. “They hand you your check before you’ve been here an hour.”

“Are you sure it’s a check?” she asked, a puzzled, curious expression in her eyes.

“Maybe the nigger likes me and wants me to go out with him.” I took her by her elbow and pushed her gently from the room, across the passage and into her room. “You’d be surprised how coy some of these niggers are.”

I opened her bag with a hairpin she lent me. It didn’t take me a minute. “Do you see?” I said, smiling at her. “I’m not called Picklock Harry by my friends for nothing.”

“I thought your name was Marc?” she said.

“So it is, but I don’t tell everyone that.” I went over to the door and opened it. “Suppose you and me get acquainted? How about having dinner with me tonight?”

She looked at me thoughtfully. I could see what was going in her mind.

“Don’t go mixing me up with the local masher,” I said gently. “I don’t have any strings hanging to my invitations.”

She blushed faintly and laughed. “Sorry,” she said quickly, “but I’ve had too many experiences. A girl in my position develops a lot of arm muscles pushing off gentlemen with high blood pressure. I’m feeling a little tired tonight, so I didn’t want anything like that.”

“There’s nothing up my sleeve,” I said. “But skip it if you’d rather.”

“I’d love to,” she returned. “Give me time for a bath. Eight o’clock?”

“Eight o’clock,” I said, and left her.

I went back to my room, took out the envelope from my pocket and opened it. The note inside was typewritten:

I poured myself out another drink and sat down. The guy who had slipped this under my door must be in one of the rooms either side of mine. He couldn’t have run down the passage and out of sight in the time it had taken me to reach the door.

I stared at the wall opposite me and then at the wall behind me. I wondered which room he was in and whether he was sitting there wondering what I was going to do. The idea gave me a spooky feeling.

I put the letter carefully away, thought for a moment, then went over to the table to write my report to Colonel Forsberg. I had an hour and a half before I saw Marian French again. In that time I had to write to Forsberg, take a bath and decide whether I was going to leave town tomorrow morning or not.

I sat at the table thinking, then I reached for my bag, opened it and took out a black Police .38. I let it lie in my hand while I stared out of the window at the traffic. Then I shoved it down the waistband of my trousers and adjusted my vest points over the butt.