The Case of the Turning Tide

Chapter 12

Jack Elwell and Ned Fielding returned to their office shortly after two-thirty. The aroma of fragrant cigars trailed along behind them. Elwell’s waistcoat was stretched taut. His face held a placid expression of well-fed satisfaction. Ned Fielding seemed thoughtful, but he couldn’t keep the triumph out of his eyes. Younger than Elwell, broad shouldered, and not as yet putting on weight, he wore his double-breasted suit with an air of distinction. He lacked Elwell’s quick decision, was definitely more cautious, but he knew how to use his magnetic personality. That, and his even, regular profile were responsible for the names of many feminine investors which appeared on the books of Elwell & Fielding.

Martha Gayman looked up as they came in.

“Any telephone calls?” Elwell asked.

“Mr. Hazlit of Hazlit & Tucker wants you to call.”

Elwell grinned at his partner. “Anything else?”

“No, sir, that’s all. Shall I get Mr. Hazlit?”

“Not right away,” Elwell said. “He’s going to be disagreeable. I’ll finish my cigar first.”

“What shall I say if he calls again?”

“Tell him we’re still out.”

“Yes, sir.”

She looked up at them with wide bluish-green eyes in which there was not the slightest trace of expression. She seemed like some human automaton who, as Elwell had said, knew just enough to do the filing, to take down what was said in short-hand, and pound it out afterwards on the typewriter. She was not bad-looking, yet her features were too heavy to be beautiful. Her attempt to keep up her personal appearance was hampered by poor judgment and a limited budget. She did her hair herself. In place of buying a few clothes of better quality at the end of the season, she tried to keep abreast of the very latest styles. Her limited salary necessitated clothes which were cheap copies of the things she should have been wearing.

Elwell regarded her as an office fixture, very much the same as the typewriter, the adding machine, or the office safe. She was, of course, animate, but, so far as Elwell was concerned, hardly human.

Fielding never discussed her with his partner — not after that night when Fielding had some dictation to do before catching a train, and had asked her to stay down and help him get caught up. They had gone to dinner together, and had re-turned to the office. Fielding’s train had left at midnight.

Elwell led the way into the private office, closed the door carefully behind him, took from his pocket the signed type-written document and dropped it on his desk. Then he said slowly and impressively, “Two... hundred... and... fifty... thousand... dollars... net... profit!”

The two men reached across the desk and shook hands.

“Suppose Hazlit finds out about that letter having gone out on Saturday?” Fielding asked in a low voice which was hardly above a whisper.

Elwell said, “What the hell do we care? We never received any letter. If it had been mailed on Saturday, we would have received it this morning.” He closed one eye and said, rather loudly, “I know damn well there wasn’t any letter in the mail because I made it a point to ask Martha about it.”

There was a pad of paper on the desk. Fielding pulled it toward him and scribbled a message to his partner. It read, “Be careful what you say. There’s a lot involved in this deal, and they may have a dictograph planted somewhere in the office.”

Elwell read the message, nodded. Fielding struck a match to the corner of the paper, waited until it had burnt off all of the part which had any writing on it before he dropped the remaining corner into the ash tray.

Elwell said, “Hazlit will want to talk with Martha. I think it’s best that he should. We’d better talk with her before he does. Just explain to her that she isn’t to get rattled or confused because someone asks questions, but simply to keep her head and tell the truth.”

Fielding nodded.

“Want to get her in here now?” Elwell asked.

Fielding said, “I think you’d better do that yourself, Jack. Two of us talking with her might confuse her.”

Elwell flashed his partner a quick glance, said, “Okay, Ned.”

“I’m going out and get a haircut,” Fielding said. “You talk with her.”

Elwell said, “It won’t take long. Thank heavens all she has to do is tell the truth. She’s too dumb to lie. That’s going to be a big help.”

“She isn’t so dumb,” Fielding said. “She does good work. You don’t ever catch any errors in her letters.”

“Oh, she’s all right in a way,” Elwell said. “Sometimes she gets on my nerves, looking at me with that ox-like expression on her face. Now that we’ve put this deal across, we can get better offices — really fix them up, and get a secretary that really amounts to something. Martha’s a good enough stenographer, but we need a real secretary. I don’t know about you, Ned, but it irritates me to have a stupid woman around.”

“She isn’t stupid,” Fielding said. “She’s just average.”

“To men like you and me,” Elwell pointed out, “being aver-age is being stupid. Well, I’ll get her in here, and explain things to her. Gosh, Ned, think of it. Thirty days ago we were thinking we’d be sitting on easy street if Addison Stearne only took up that option and we unloaded for a hundred thousand. Now, we’re getting two hundred and fifty thousand above the price we paid.”

Fielding nodded. “How long will it be in escrow, Jack?”

“Not over four or five days. The title’s all searched. It’s just a question of getting the papers ready, and putting the money up. That syndicate said they’d have the papers down here sometime this afternoon. In the meantime, this little old agreement right here protects us. They obligate themselves to put, the dough in escrow as soon as we put in the papers.”

Fielding said, “Well, I’m on my way. You won’t want me here when you talk with Hazlit on the telephone?”

“Gosh, no, what is there to tell him? He’ll simply ask if we didn’t get a letter, and I’ll tell him no. He’ll perhaps try to run a bluff and say that he happens to know his client dictated and signed one, and intended to mail it. That’s their hard luck. Stearne intended to wait until the last minute just to keep us on the anxious seat — and got murdered before he had a chance to drop it in the mailbox. I suppose old Hazlit’s been breaking his neck, running around and getting a special administrator appointed, and now he thinks he’s going to run some sort of a bluff.”

Fielding put on his hat. “Be seeing you in about half or three-quarters of an hour, Jack.”

“Take care of yourself. Now listen, Ned, don’t start drinking.”

“Of course not.”

Elwell’s eyes grew suddenly hard. “Listen, Ned, I’m not kid-ding on that. There’s too much involved for you to fall off the water wagon and start making careless comments.”

“I never get to a point where I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“That’s what you think. Until we actually have the money on this thing, you don’t do any drinking whatever. You’re on the wagon. Afterwards, we’ll go out and get pie-eyed together — take a drive up to one of the resorts.”

Fielding hesitated, then said, “If you put it that way, Jack.”

“I’m putting it that way. That’s final.”

Fielding gave a little gesture of aquiescence, said, “Okay, big boy,” and walked out of the door of the private office into the corridor.

Elwell stepped to the door which led to the outer office, smiled benignly at Martha Gayman, and said, “Come in, Martha. No, you don’t need to bring your book. I just want to talk with you.”

She entered the office and stood looking at him.

Elwell said, “Sit down, Martha. I want to talk with you.”

He noticed as she walked that she really did have a good figure. She sat down in the chair which Elwell had indicated, a chair reserved for clients. She had pretty legs, Elwell saw. She didn’t cross them, simply sat there with her knees clamped tightly together, the hem of her skirt just at the edge of the kneecap.

“Rather an important business deal has been consummated this afternoon,” Elwell said. “It’s too complicated for me to try to explain it to you. You wouldn’t understand it if I did. It wouldn’t have been possible for the deal to have been made if a certain letter had been in the mail this morning — a letter from a man named Addison Stearne.”

She nodded, the mechanical nod of one who feels that something is expected of her and that a nod in the affirmative will come closest to satisfying the expectations of the other person.

Elwell frowned slightly. “Now, don’t take this as merely routine, Martha,” he said. “Try to follow me closely so you will understand me. Mr. Hazlit is the attorney for Addison Stearne. Addison Stearne is dead. He was murdered sometime Saturday afternoon. It is quite possible that Mr. Stearne intended to mail us a letter sometime on Saturday, but the point is he didn’t mail that letter. That is, there was no such letter in the mail this morning. You opened all the mail, didn’t you?”

“Yes, Mr. Elwell.”

“And if there had been a letter from Addison Stearne, you would have noticed it?”

“Yes, I think I would.”

“Not think,” Elwell said, frowning slightly. “You’re employed here to take care of the office. As part of your duties, you have to open the mail. You read the letters in order to see whether they’re important, how they should be filed, and whether they should go to Ned or to me. That’s right, isn’t it?”

She nodded.

“And you would have noticed if there had been any letter from Mr. Addison Stearne this morning?”

Again she nodded.

“That’s all you need to remember,” Elwell said. “Don’t bother that pretty head of yours with anything else, my dear. Just remember those simple facts, and in case Mr. Hazlit or any other lawyer should talk with you, should try to browbeat you, or ask you a lot of questions, don’t let him rattle you. Just tell the simple truth.”

She said, “Yes, Mr. Elwell.”

“You think you can remember that?”

She nodded.

“And remember not to say that you don’t think there was any letter from Mr. Stearne. You remember positively that there was no letter from Mr. Stearne — and you can say that very positively, can’t you, my dear?”

She nodded again.

Elwell reached for the telephone. “That’s all, Martha,” he said. “When you go out, get me Mr. Hazlit on the line.”

She didn’t make any move, however, to rise from the chair; but continued to regard Elwell with that placid expression which he found so irritating, an expression of respectful attention.

“That’s all,” Elwell said again.

She said, “Mr. Elwell, there’s something I want to ask you about?”

He frowned. “I’m rather busy this afternoon, Martha.”

“It’s very important to me.”

“Well, what is it?”

“Do you remember about six weeks ago when Mr. Fielding was working on these Ventura leases? He had to take a mid-night train to Salt Lake City to see a man.”

“Well?”

“He had a lot of correspondence to get out, and he asked me if I’d mind coming up to the office with him that night. We worked until almost eleven o’clock.”

Elwell showed his annoyance. “My dear,” he said, “if you’re trying to ask us for a raise, come out and say so. We try to be fair with you, but business is pretty bad these days, and the government fixes it so that if you do make anything, you are robbed in income taxes. Then there’s the social security tax and...”

“Yes, I understand, Mr. Elwell. I wasn’t going to ask for a raise.”

“Well, what is it then?”

“That night Mr. Fielding was — most attentive. He... he... he made love to me.”

Elwell’s frown became a scowl. “Martha,” he said, “I’m not in the least interested in your private affairs. You’re certainly over... How old are you, Martha?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Well, my God, I can’t act as chaperon to...”

“And he’s been very cool to me lately,” Martha went on. “For a while, after he came back, he was very nice, very attentive, and very considerate, and then lately he seems to have cooled off.”

“Well, I can’t...”

“And I thought you could speak to him, Mr. Elwell, and perhaps do something to make him do... well, the right thing.”

Elwell dropped the telephone and stared at her as though he hadn’t ever seen her before. “The right thing,” he said, surveying the expressionless countenance.

She nodded her head. “Yes,” she said. “The right thing.”

“My God, girl, what do you mean?”

“I thought he was in love with me. I thought he wanted to marry me.”

“Did he say so?”

“Well, not in so many words, but...”

Elwell raised his voice. “Well, let me assure you that he won’t say so. Ned Fielding has a career ahead of him. He’s not going to waste it by tying himself to some dumb little stenographer. I’m sorry, Martha, but you asked for this. And let me give you a little advice. Don’t ever in the future forget yourself enough to intrude upon your employer with a lot of silly personal problems. In the first place, if Ned Fielding made a pass at you... Hang it, you’re certainly not dumb enough to think... You’ve got a good figure. You’re twenty-five years old. You’ve been around. Why, hang it...”

When Elwell had sputtered himself into silence, Martha Gayman said quietly, “You see, I have a very sensitive disposition, Mr. Elwell. The reason Ned — Mr. Fielding’s — indifference hurts so much is because I’m inclined to notice little things. Things that perhaps no one else would notice always catch my attention. I’ve always been that way.”

Elwell was speechless with exasperation.

“Like this morning,” she went on smoothly. “The way I noticed that you’d been in the office, had waited for the mail-man, then pushed the mail back into the slot again. Lots of girls wouldn’t have noticed that, but you see, little things mean so much to me that — I always have...”

Elwell snapped to straight-backed attention, leaning across the desk, staring at the girl who sat regarding him with such a wistful expression, with eyes that were wide and round and — damn it, yes, utterly ox-like.

“What the devil are you talking about?” Elwell asked, and even to his own ears his voice sounded frightened.

“Little things that most people wouldn’t notice,” she said. “For instance, you hadn’t been in your private office. You came up here and waited in the outer office. That means you must have been waiting for something — like the mailman.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Elwell said.

She went on as though he hadn’t said anything. “You always read the sporting section of the paper first. It had been folded so that the sporting section was turned around, then you’d looked back at the headlines and had seen that about Addison Stearne. You’d dropped the paper on the floor then. You see, the janitor cleans out the ash trays, and polishes them as well, on Saturday. Your cigar ashes were in the ash tray and also the band from the cigar — that particular brand that you smoke, Mr. Elwell. You have them mailed to you from Florida, and your initials are on the band. Remember when you had me write the letters to the man who advertised that he made custom-built cigars?”

Elwell started to say something, then kept silent.

“And,” she said, “even the mailman has his little peculiarities. He has a certain particular method of sorting the mail for the offices in the building. You probably wouldn’t have noticed it, Mr. Elwell, because you don’t get the mail out of the mail chute, but I have done it morning after morning, so I’ve noticed the mailman’s system. The addresses are always facing up, and all the envelopes are stacked so that the addresses are straight up. Moreover, he puts the small envelopes on top, and the larger envelopes on the bottom. Well, this morning that was just reversed. The larger envelopes were on the top, and the smaller envelopes on the bottom, and the addresses weren’t the way the postman has them. Some of the addresses were up on the envelopes, and some of them were down. I’m just mentioning it, Mr. Elwell, to show you how sensitive I am and how I notice little things, and how Mr. Fielding’s conduct to a girl that’s as sensitive as I am makes so much more difference than — well, than if I were the kind who didn’t notice little things.”

Elwell said very slowly in a voice which sounded strangely unlike himself, “Just what do you want?”

She said innocently enough, “I thought perhaps that something had happened and Mr. Fielding felt I didn’t like him any more. Perhaps I’ve hurt his feelings and — well, you know how it is with lovers. You read about it in books and magazines. A person’s pride gets hurt, and he won’t come to the person he loves the way he would to someone else, and ask forgiveness and...”

“All right, just what do you want?”

“I thought perhaps you could speak to Mr. Fielding and tell him that I’m not at all angry with him, that I feel just like I did — like I always have. And you know, Mr. Elwell, of course, I wouldn’t want you to intimate that if he’d ask me to marry him, it would make me very, very happy, because I always think it’s better for a man to be a little in suspense when he proposes, don’t you? In that way, it’s sort of the high spot in his life. He remembers it always then.”

Elwell studied her face. “By God,” he said, “Fielding will always remember it, all right.”

“There’s a lot involved in this business deal, Mr. Elwell, the one that you said Mr. Hazlit might talk to me about?”

“Yes.”

She said, “Don’t you think it might be better for you to talk to Mr. Fielding before I talked with Hazlit? You see, I’ve been frightfully upset about this, and I’d hate to have something on my mind that would make me, perhaps, say the wrong thing.”

Elwell reached for his hat. “You’re quite right,” he said. “I’ll talk with Ned before you talk with Hazlit. If Hazlit rings up again, tell him I haven’t been in, and that I may not get in again this afternoon.”

“Where did Mr. Fielding go?”

“Down to get a haircut.”

“I think he has his hair cut at the barbershop right here in the building,” she said. “You’ll find him down there, and... and—”

“What now?” Elwell asked, his voice rasping.

“Nothing.” she said. “Only I haven’t any engagement for this evening — in case Mr. Fielding should ask you. Well, Mr. Elwell, I’m sorry I bothered you with a lot of my private affairs, but it’s been on my mind a lot lately. I feel so much better now. I feel that I can really concentrate on my work. I’ve got some filing to do. I hope I didn’t presume on your kindness, Mr. Elwell.”

He said nothing, but sat rigidly straight-backed at his desk, regarding the door through which she had left the office as though that door might hold the key to some secret. His cigar had gone out, and when he started to light it again, he saw that he had chewed the end of it into a ragged, soggy mass. With an exclamation of annoyance, he dashed it into the cuspidor, got up, and walked through the exit doorway into the corridor.