Sir Lancelot’s Crime Wave

Chapter One Hard-Boiled Rover Boy

Lieutenant of Police Isaac Jamison gave the girl his most soothing smile. She sat on the edge of the chair placed beside his desk, looking at him with wary suspicion. She was young enough, with a face just a shade too wide for beauty, capable square hands, neat inexpensive suit. Isaac Jamison had noted the worn edge of the red leather shoulder bag, the alligator pumps, well-cared-for, but showing age. He guessed that this girl worked, understood the value of money, was willing to buy the best whenever she could afford it.

Her eyes were her best feature. Blue-gray, direct, without a shred of coyness. And she had the faint antagonism of the self-respecting person not accustomed to contacting the police.

“The man outside said you are a special assistant, Lieutenant. How much authority do you have?”

Isaac Jamison’s voice was low, with undertones of warmth. His voice was one of the reasons Deputy Chief Ringold had assigned him to this thankless job. His voice and his smile. His face had a long, bleak bone structure, severe, a thin-lipped mouth with the smallest hint of the fanatic, his beard blue-heavy under the dark skin. But the smile made him warm and human. He used it often in this new job, calculatingly, watching its effect.

He smiled and said, “Enough authority, Miss Dobbs, to refer you higher if this should turn out to be a large-scale crime wave you’re reporting to me.”

Some of the suspicion went out of her eyes and she relaxed a little. “Maybe I’m giving all this too much importance.” “Tell me about it and we’ll see.” He composed himself to listen. That was his job. Listening.

Ringold, the new Deputy Chief had said to him, “Jamie, we’ll have efficiency here. Every crackpot in the city wants to bend my ear. I can’t listen to all of them, and we can’t afford not to listen. One out of every fifty has something we should look into. So you do the screening. I’ll give you a nice office, a title that doesn’t mean anything, and you listen. You’re a smart cop, Jamie. You’re relieved of all other assignments.”

Protest had been no good. Ringold had listened to his objections with gradually increasing coolness and at last Jamison had stepped, knowing that it was no good to go on. His active cases were reassigned and he had landed behind the big dark desk. Case and Lobund called him ‘our new receptionist’.

The worst of it was that Jamison knew in his heart that Ringold was right. The big city department needed a phony special assistant to screen out the cranks.

In one month behind the desk, only two cranks had managed to bull their way through him to Ringold, and he had opened up two cases, one giving a little more dope on a known car-theft ring, the other resulting in the booking of an elderly landlady for extortion. The thing most disturbing to Isaac Jamison was that he had to turn the data over to the appropriate departments. Following through had been his doctrine for eight years with the department.

The girl looked down at her hands for a moment, as though to compose her thoughts, and said, “I’m a stenographer and file clerk for Ballou and Stark, a wholesale drug company. It’s large, as you may know, with about thirty in the office. A year ago they hired a salesman named John Kiern. I thought he was fresh at first. His territory is in the city here, so he was in the office a lot. He kept asking me for two months, and finally I went out with him.” She flushed slightly.

“He wasn’t like I had thought. He was... nice. I had fun. We got along nicely. We were even talking about marriage. But to tell the truth, he wasn’t doing very well as a salesman. They pay a small salary and then a commission scale. Some weeks he’d make sixty dollars and then he’d drop down to thirty or so. Along with the thirty-seven fifty I make, it didn’t seem like enough. I told him so and it hurt his pride. He began to act... well, queer. A month ago he changed. He told me that everything was going to be fine and I didn’t have to worry any more. He got me this ring.”

She held her hand out. It was a quite respectable diamond. Isaac guessed that it was a full carat.

“Nice,” he said.

“Too nice. I told him that the man from the store would probably be around to take it back. He laughed at me. He said it was paid in full. He acted as though he were on top of the world for two weeks. And then he disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“He just didn’t come to work. He left the company car in the lot. The attendant had the keys. All his display items were in the car. They’re still holding a check for him at the office. Back commissions. A small check.”

“You tried to find him?”

“He lived in a one-room apartment on Lincoln Avenue. Number 1281. I thought he was drunk, or something silly like that, and I waited three days before I went there. He had moved out and left no forwarding address.”

Jamison frowned slightly. Before he could speak, the girl said:

“I know what you’re thinking. That he got tired of me and sick of the job and just moved away. But I know that isn’t so. It couldn’t be!”

“Mind telling me why not?”

She lifted her chin. “I’m not the most fascinating creature in the city, Lieutenant, but I know that John Kiern was in love with me. It wasn’t a case of my being fooled by a line. If you want me to put it plainly, Lieutenant, he was on the hook.”

“I can’t exactly write that in a report, Miss Dobbs. How about relatives?”

“That was one of the things we have... had in common, Lieutenant. Both of us are completely alone. I have an older sister that I heartily dislike. She is in Alaska with her husband. He has two cousins in Omaha, but they weren’t in touch and he’s never seen them.”

“How long have you been with Ballou and Stark?”

“Three years. I reported for work there the day after my twenty-first birthday.”

“Tell me just why you came here.”

For the first time she lost her crispness. “Johnny was hard up, Lieutenant. And... and suddenly he seemed to have money. He didn’t report for work on a Monday, two weeks ago yesterday. The previous Saturday night he took me to a nightclub, and I know the evening cost him close to forty dollars. We had a Sunday afternoon date and he told me he was thinking of buying a car. He cancelled our Sunday night date because he said he had to see some people. I think, maybe because I always suspected he was a little weak, that he found some crooked way to get money. And I think he’s dead.”

Isaac Jamison raised one dark eyebrow.

“Dead?”

She didn’t sniffle and dig around in her purse for a handkerchief. She kept those blue-gray eyes on him while tears gathered in the lower lids, broke free, rolled down her cheeks.

“When you love somebody, Lieutenant, it makes sort of a bond between you. Lots of people know when somebody they love is in trouble. I woke up after midnight Sunday and I had been crying in my sleep. I went down to work in the morning and I knew that something bad had happened.”

“But you didn’t go to his place for three days?”

“Stupid pride, Lieutenant. I know that now. But he checked out early Sunday evening. It wouldn’t have done any good if I had gone.”

“Again, Miss Dobbs, there’s nothing I can put in a report.”

She quickly wiped her cheeks. “Does that mean that you won’t investigate?”

He shrugged. “I can take a description and turn it over to missing persons. Do you have a picture?”

She took it out of her purse. A snapshot, hand tinted. Jamison saw a fairly heavy young man smiling up at him out of the picture. He was blond, with a ruddy complexion, hairline beginning to recede. Though he didn’t look over twenty-six, it was easy to see what he would look like at fifty. The young man’s mouth was too small.

“What does turning this over to missing persons accomplish?” she asked.

“A description goes out on the wires. And the data is filed for comparison with any unidentified bodies that show up.”

“But there wouldn’t be an investigation?” There was resignation in her voice. But she still sat bravely, her shoulders squared.

He said, “Not on the basis of what you’ve given me. If there were more facts to go on.”

With a touch of anger she said, “I thought it would be this way.”

“The department is not exactly overstaffed, Miss Dobbs. If we were having a lull right now, I might wrangle an assignment of one man to do legwork on it.”

She stood up with a quick movement. “Sorry to have wasted your time, Lieutenant. May I have the picture, please.”

Jamison groaned inwardly. This was borderline. Less than borderline, actually. The girl was sincere and she had a strong conviction But Ringold would laugh at her two major premises.

He ran a strong hand back through his coarse dark hair. “Sit down, Miss Dobbs. Can you keep a secret?”

She gave him an odd look. “Of course!”

“Well, I’m just a dummy official set up here to comb out the cranks and please the public. I’ve been sitting at this desk for a month. If I try to refer this case for investigation, they’ll pat me on the head and tell me I fell for a pretty little package with a tale of woe.

“Look — I work from nine to five. At five I’m my own man. The deputy chief would hack off my ears with a dull knife if I went out officially on a case without his okay. But maybe I can dig up a little to add to your story. Then I give you the facts I find and you come in here and tell me those facts and maybe we get some action.”

Her voice was soft. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Remember, I’m no cop on this job. I’m a curious friend helping you get data for the cops.”

“It will be so good to have someone help, Lieutenant.”

“Can you take time off from your job?”

“A girl can have a headache.”

“Fine. Tomorrow pick the likely jewelry stores and tramp around until you find the one that sold Kiern that ring. Take his picture along. Make up a song and dance. When you find the store, quit right there. I’ll ask the questions later. It’s three-fifteen now. Go back to the office and see if you can get your hands on a complete list of all the customers Kiern called on. If you can make it, I’ll meet you at six under the clock in the lobby of the Pritchard.”

He walked her to the office door. She was taller than he had thought.

Before he opened the door he said, “This will be strictly personal, not official. Keep that straight, please.”

The building superintendent at 1281 Lincoln was a limp and languid young man with a surprising and carefully modulated basso profundo voice.

He stood in the hallway and said, “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Is it so tough to understand?” Jamison asked. “Kiern was going to marry my cousin here, Miss Dobbs. If he’s run out on her, he wants a good bust in the nose. All I’m asking you is how he acted when he left. I want to give the guy the benefit of the doubt.”

The superintendent glanced again at Corrine Dobbs. He coughed, ran a thumbnail along one side of his hairline mustache. “Well, Mr. Kiern seemed in a bit of a hurry. He had ten more days rent coming. But he seemed very... gay. I told him I had to check the inventory and check for breakage. His apartment was furnished, you know. He gave me twenty dollars and said he was in a hurry and that money, plus no refund on his rent, should cover everything.”

“Was he drunk?”

“I believe he’d been drinking, but I wouldn’t say he was drunk.”

“When you cleaned out the room, did you find he’d left anything?”

“Nothing important. Some receipted bills, movie stubs, a third of a bottle of bourbon, two soiled neckties. Everything was thrown out but the bourbon. The janitor got that.”

“Did he have any guests the last few days he was here?”

“I really couldn’t say.”

“Was he alone when he left here?”

“His car was parked out in front. I told him not to park it in front of the entrance, but he always did. It had the name of the company he worked for on the door, you know. There was somebody in the car waiting for him.”

“A woman?”

“I think it was a man. It was dark, you know. I didn’t go out to the car. I glanced out and got the impression someone was smoking a cigar. The glowing end of it was bigger than a cigarette.”

“He carried his own bags out to the car?”

“Yes, there were two of them. He was whistling as he went down the walk to the car.”

“He did the driving?”

“He got in the car on the other side, so I would imagine so.”

“What did he say about a forwarding address?”

“He said he would stop and pick up any mail that might come, though he wasn’t expecting any, and when he stopped he would leave his new address.”

“That would indicate that he was staying in the city?”

“It looks that way to me.”

“Thanks,” Jamison said. “Thanks a lot.”

“It’s nothing, really. Glad to oblige,” the superintendent said. He favored Corrine Dobbs with another look that approached sly amusement.

Out in Jamison’s car, Corrine said, “Ugh! He’s an awful little weasel, isn’t he?”

“Did you mind being Woman Scorned?”

“Except for the way he looked at me, no. We... we aren’t getting anywhere, are we?”

“One mysterious citizen with cigar, Corrine. He would have the answers. Now we hit the parking lot. Do you know the attendant?”

“Yes. The company let the salesmen use the cars in the evening. We used to park it there when we went to the movies. His name is Charlie something and he’s an old man with a bad limp and something wrong with his mouth.”

“I’ll park a block away then and go back and see what I can do on my own.”