The Case of the Smoking Chimney

Chapter 1

Jane Graven, secretary to Ralph G. Pressman, sat at the dressing-table, surveying her reflection with a critical eye. It had been a hard day at the office. Ralph Pressman had disappeared abruptly in the middle of the afternoon, without telling anyone where he was going. He had been doing that quite frequently of late, and Jane Graven had been left with a hundred and one loose threads dangling, and no idea of where the boss was, when he was coming back, or how she might reach him.

But the boss, bad as he was, wasn’t as much of a problem as his wife. Sophie Pressman could make life very, very irritating for her husband’s employees, and Jane Graven saw in the reflected image of her face little lines of worry and nerve strain that shouldn’t have been there.

Her telephone rang.

Jane frowned, looked at the clock. It was almost eleven. She hesitated a moment before picking up the receiver, saying, “Hello.”

A woman’s voice said: “I have a long-distance call for Miss Jane Graven. Is this she?”

“Yes,” Jane said. “Who is calling, please?”

“It’s long-distance from Petrie, California. Hold the phone, please... Here’s your party. Deposit sixty cents, please.”

Jane heard the sound of two quarters and a dime tinkling the bells at the other end of the line, heard the girl say: “Go ahead, please.”

Jane said, “Hello.”

There was no answer. Abruptly, the line went dead. The operator said, “Just a minute, please.” A few moments later the operator’s voice, sounding very puzzled, said: “I’m sorry, but your party has hung up. He doesn’t answer the phone. It’s in a pay station at the Petrie Hotel.”

“Did he,” Jane asked, “give his name?”

“Yes. Ralph G. Pressman.”

Jane sat up for another hour, waiting for Mr. Pressman to call. Then she switched out the light, and finally got to sleep.

Up in Petrie, the man who was calling Jane left the telephone booth hurriedly as he saw a familiar face in the lobby. He dared not wait to talk on his call. Leaving the hotel, he drove several miles out of town to a disreputable, unpainted cabin, where he had one of the few really good night’s rests he had enjoyed in months.