The Case of the Smoking Chimney

Chapter 10

Mrs. Pressman came sweeping into the office at two-thirty, her manner that of a haughty monarch who condescends to confer a priceless boon upon her subjects by making a personal appearance in public.

Corliss Ramsay barely had time to plug in the line, ring Jane Graven in her office, and say, “Bad News is here,” before Mrs. Pressman opened the door which led to her husband’s private office and the secretarial office which opened from it.

“Good afternoon, Jane,” she said and walked directly over to her husband’s desk.

Jane Graven started to say something, then caught herself, and became elaborately busy with secretarial matters on her own desk.

Mrs. Pressman finished her survey of her husband’s desk, then came to stand in the doorway of Jane’s office, exerting upon the secretary the silent pressure of her disapproving presence.

Jane looked up.

“The mail,” Mrs. Pressman said.

Jane smiled. Her lips felt cold. “Oh, yes I have it here.”

Mrs. Presssman walked over to the desk, scooped up the pile of mail. “I’ll take it to him,” she said.

“Won’t he be in the office today?”

Mrs. Pressman countered with a quick question. “Have you heard from him?”

“No,” Jane admitted.

“I think, under the circumstances, it would be better for me to take it home with me. He’ll want it there.”

Jane knew this for a barefaced falsehood, knew also there was nothing she could do about it.

“Have you a briefcase I can put this in?” Mrs. Pressman asked.

Jane had only her own briefcase. There were some papers in it, but Mrs. Pressman, having invaded the office, was quite apparently in no mood to put up with half measures.

“I have my own briefcase,” Jane said.

Mrs. Pressman’s silence had all the force of a command. Jane dumped the papers out of it and helped Mrs. Pressman put in the mail.

“That’s all of it?” Mrs. Pressman asked.

Jane could only nod.

“I’ll have it ready for him in his study at the house when he arrives,” Mrs. Pressman said, and then vouchsafed the second smile of the interview. “Good afternoon, dear.”

“Good afternoon,” Jane said, and watched her out of the door.

Mrs. Pressman was exactly twenty-two years younger than her husband. They had been married five years, the same length of time that Jane had been working for Mr. Pressman. One of Mrs. Pressman’s premarital demands had been that her husband discharge the secretary who had been working for him for some ten years. Jane — young, timid, and inexperienced — had been sent by the employment agency for an interview with Ralph G. Pressman. She had got the job.

Jane waited until she heard the click of the door confirm Mrs. Pressman’s departure; then she went to the outer office.

“Couldn’t you have given me more notice, Corliss?”

Corliss Ramsay shook her blonde head. “She swept through here like a whirlwind through a pile of loose papers,” she said. “I had the line plugged in before she was halfway across the office, but she’d gone through the door of the directors’ room by the time I had you on the line. What she want?”

Jane parried the question by saying: “Mostly a chance to show her authority.”

Corliss said: “Well, if I were Ralph G. Pressman, I’d—” She broke off to plug in on an incoming call, listened, said: “It’s for you, Jane.”

Jane, thinking it might be Pressman, ran rapidly into her office, saying: “I’ll take it there.”

But it wasn’t Pressman. It was Stanwood.

“The boss in?” he asked.

“No.”

“Heard anything from him?”

“Not yet.”

“I’m working on a point the income tax people have asked me to clarify, and will have to get some data on the outside. If he’s not going to be in, this afternoon would be a good time to do it.”

“Well,” Jane said dubiously, “I don’t know. He may show up at any moment. If he does, he’ll be apt to want you.”

Stanwood said definitely: “Somehow, I have an idea he won’t be in the office today. This stuff has to be done. I think I’ll do it now, Jane. I’ll take the responsibility.”

“Okay. Is there any place where I can reach you on the telephone?”

“No. I’m going to be here and there. If I get a chance I’ll call in later.”

“Okay,” Jane said.

She heard Stanwood hang up, and, at the very moment the connection was broken at the other end of the line and before Jane could even take the receiver from her ear, she heard Corliss Ramsay’s voice coming over the wire, saying hastily: “Once more, Jane. Get ready.”

Jane said: “You mean that—” and caught herself just in time to keep from saying, “Bad News is here again.”

She had a peculiar feeling that Mrs. Pressman was standing somewhere behind her within earshot, and said into the telephone in her most impersonal voice: “Yes, in the event he rings in, tell him that Mr. Stanwood just called. He’s going to be out on some income tax matters all the afternoon.”

She dropped the receiver back into place, and heard motion from behind her as Mrs. Pressman moved forward, smiling now, a far more cordial and personal smile than she ordinarily vouchsafed to the office help. “Jane, dear, I wonder if you could do something for me. I’ve simply got to get a cheque in the bank before three o’clock, and I also have an appointment at five minutes after three. I can’t do both. Would you mind running down to the bank and depositing this cheque?”

Jane hesitated. This was the first time in all the five years she had been working for Mr. Pressman that his wife had ever attempted to interfere in the business, the first time she had ever asked one of the girls to “run errands’.

The sudden freezing of Mrs. Pressman’s face made Jane realize that her hesitation was perhaps even more harmful than an outright refusal.

“You see,” Jane explained hastily, “some important messages have come in for Mr. Pressman, and if he should telephone while I am gone — I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Mrs. Pressman. I’ll send Corliss, and I can watch the switchboard while Corliss is out.”

“No,” Mrs. Pressman said. “I would prefer that you went yourself. Let Corliss give any messages to Mr. Pressman in case he calls... It’s quite all right. I’ll take all the responsibility. If anything happens, you may explain to Ralph that you are acting under my orders.”

For some four seconds Jane debated whether to tell her she took orders from only one person. But, after all, it was a trivial thing. She could make the trip down to the bank and back in ten minutes.

“You see,” Mrs. Pressman explained coldly, “it’s because I’m in such a hurry.”

“All right,” Jane said. “Give me the cheque.”

She received the cheque duly endorsed, Mrs. Pressman’s passbook, and a smile which once more was cordial. “Thank you very much, Jane, dear. It’s really a big help to me. I’ll tell Ralph that you’re a lifesaver.”

Jane made certain that Mrs. Pressman actually was going to take all the responsibility, by stopping at Corliss Ramsay’s desk and saying: “Mrs. Pressman has sent me out to do an errand for her. If Mr. Pressman calls in, tell him that Mrs. Pressman sent me out on an errand.”

Corliss Ramsay’s eyes were sympathetic, understanding. She said, with just the right emphasis: “If he calls in, I’ll tell him.”

“Tell him she’s going to the bank,” Mrs. Pressman supplemented. “I think that’s a little better than saying ‘on an errand’, don’t you, girls? Come, Jane, I’ll ride down in the elevator with you.”

She walked down the corridor and rode down in the elevator with Jane as though her presence conferred some special favour. She was calling a taxi as Jane smiled a worried good day, and hurried the four blocks down to the bank. Because it was near closing time, there was a line at the window, and it took Jane longer than she had anticipated. A full fifteen minutes had elapsed before she returned to the office.

“Any telephone from the boss?” she asked Corliss.

“No. Gosh, how I was hoping he’d call. When I told him that Bad News had sent you out on an errand, he’d have gone straight up in the air!”

Jane said: “I suppose I really shouldn’t have gone. I don’t believe she was in any such hurry as she said. She didn’t act like it.”

“And she came back again after you’d left,” Corliss said. “Had the taxi waiting down at the kerb, said she’d forgotten her gloves.”

“Forgotten her gloves!” Jane exclaimed.

“Yes.”

“Why, she couldn’t have. I saw her put them in her handbag... I’ll bet she forgot she’d put them there and came all the way back and—”

“No,” Corliss said, “she actually deigned to notice me as she went out. She said she’d found them right where she’d left them on your desk.”

Realization flooded Jane’s mind as though someone had thrown a bucket of ice water over her head.

“Oh, my gosh!”

“What’s the matter?” Corliss asked.

Jane said vaguely: “Nothing. I thought I’d forgotten something, but I guess it’s all right.”

She mustn’t let Corliss know. It was terribly obvious, now that she paused to thing back on it. She said breezily, “Well, I’ll get to work,” and went back to her own office.

She took the precaution of closing the door before pulling open the top drawer on her desk.

She realized, even as she stood staring down with dismayed eyes, that pulling the drawer open had been an empty, meaningless gesture. She had, of course, known the answer.

The envelope from the detective agency with the confidential report and the photographs was no longer there.