“His wife? Where is she?”
“Presumably with him. She never returned, either.”
“I presume you’ve checked out Cromwell’s background?”
“Yes. The FBI was put on that even before I was contacted in Manila. Not much there. Anthony Bowdler Cromwell, age thirty years”—Putnam was rattling it off from a small photostat he’d taken from his pocket—“born and raised in Danville, Indiana, grade and high school educations there, also graduated Central Normal College in Danville. Since his graduation, he has been employed as a statistician and cost accountant in a local foundry. Two promotions with raises and he’s in line for a third. His boss rates him extremely competent and conscientious. Neither his boss nor fellow employees were aware that he was an amateur inventor. Some of his neighbors know because he converted his garage into a workshop and always leaves his car parked in the driveway. But they have no idea what he was working on. He’s been married six years. His wife is twenty-six years of age, name Carrie Cromwell, nee Carrie Semple.”
“That’s it!” I snapped my fingers. “Now I remember! She’s a gingham type with an aprony manner that’s supposed to make you forget the way her hips wiggle and the 39-inch bosom she points in your face. Sure, one of those respiratory systems that’s always heaving with virtue like a canary trying to get out of its cage. Nice legs with dimpled knees and hot thighs that always managed to sneak out from under those demure long skirts she wore. Wholesome brown hair with a wholesome curl and wholesome bangs and a wholesome face under it, a face so sincere it made you want to run right out and buy a copy of Good Housekeeping, but with a sort of smoldering in the brown eyes that made you wonder about the wholesomeness and the sincerity. Carrie Cromwell -- I remember her well.”
“It does sound like she made quite an impression on you,” Putnam observed.
“She did. It’s been at least five years, and I only met her the one time. But the contrast between the morality she was spouting then and the sexy way she looked stuck in my mind.”
“Well”—Putnam consulted his photostats—“the description you give would seem to tally with the one we have of her. What about her husband? Did you meet him?!’
“Sure.”
“Can you describe him?”
“Roughly my height, just over six feet. Wispy blond hair, light blue eyes a little on the watery side, skinny, with narrow shoulders and a thin, sort of ascetic face. A good, deep voice, though—I remember that—and a delivery that might strike some people as impressive and others as ponderous and pompous. A logical mind, the kind that ticks off points — one-two-three, you know— and a very pedantic, very black-and-white approach to things. But of course I could be biased about that.”
“Why ‘of course,’ Mr. Victor?”
“Because of the circumstances of our meeting. It was a debate, a sort of public forum, and we were on opposite sides.”
“What was the topic? ”
“Resolved: Moral Laxity is Destroying the Fabric of Modern Society in America Today. He took the affirmative. I took the negative. I’d been asked to debate because of my connection with O. R. G. Y. and because I’d studied under Kinsey at Indiana U while he was still alive. Cromwell, as I recall, was the present of some state-wide group devoted to outlawing so-called pornography. The debate took place in Bloomington. Not at the University, though. It was sponsored by some sort of civic organization and held in a public hall. His wife was up on the platform with him. After the discussion, she sort of launched a private offensive against me personally. She was prissy as hell, but she was also damn attractive, so I kept the argument going even when it was obvious that her husband was annoyed and wanted to leave. I remember they hadn’t been married too long then and I twitted her about not really having the experience to discuss lapses in morality. She laughed and looked interested; at that point Cromwell did drag her away.”
“It’s a stroke of luck that you know them, Mr. Victor. Now I’m sure that you’re the man to track them down.”
“You say they’ve both been missing for a week?”
“Yes.”
I pondered that one for a moment. Then I posed another question. “But somebody wanted me on the job even before you knew I’d met them. Why? Why me?”
“Because of two very small clues which may give the only hints to their whereabouts.”
“What clues?”
“I think it would be best if you saw them for yourself,” Putnam said firmly. “Their quarters have been gone over by government agents with a fine-tooth comb, but it was done so that everything was left exactly as it was when the Cromwells departed. It’s two floors below this one. Come along and I’ll show you.”
Putnam led the way out the door and down the hallway to the staircase. We walked down two flights and stopped in front of the door directly in front of the stairway exit. Putnam took out a key and opened it. He motioned for me to precede him into the room.
At first glance it seemed the ordinary sort of scene you’d, expect in a hotel room. Two suitcases on the floor in front of the window: one opened, one closed. There was some men’s underwear and socks visible in the opened one. One of the closets was also opened, and there were three rather conservative dresses hanging in it. The bathroom door was ajar, and there were toiletries on the shelf over the sink. The bed was made, but the spread was ruffled as if someone had been lying on top of it. I took a second look at the spread and immediately spotted the first of the clues Putnam had mentioned.
It was a pair of women’s panties, cut bikini style, and made of leather! I picked them up and looked at Putnam quizzically. “You ran a trace on these, I presume,” I said.
“Yes. But it was a dead end. They’re homemade. No label. And the leather is common. It could have come from anywhere.”
“What about the styling?”
“It’s common in bathing suits, and even in women's lingerie today.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. I held the panties up and eyed them and tried to remember. “They’d fit Carrie Cromwell,” I said tentatively.
“From the descriptions we’ve obtained of her, there’s no doubt they would.”
“My first impulse is to say it’s out of character,” I told him, “but I wonder . . .”
“Take another look around, and perhaps you’ll see something to make you wonder even more.”
I did, and finally I spotted the tabloid on the night table. It was one of those irregularly published magazines with a newspaper format. You know the kind— attention-getting headlines like “I WAS RAPED BY MY TOY BULLDOG” or “CONFESSIONS OF A BABY- KILLER” or “WHY THE NINTH POSITION MADE ME HAPPIEST” (by some allegedly nymphomaniac, but probably really frigid, female movie star) all in 48-point type over stories in cheap, blurry newsprint with even murkier photos to illustrate them. The last eight pages of this one were devoted to the personal ad columns. The paper had been folded back to one of these pages, and one of the ads had been circled. I picked it up and read it to myself.
“SEX MUST BE DISCIPLINED”—that was the heading. And underneath—-“Young married couple devoted to spreading Prussian rules of sexual behavior eager to contact other young marrieds with similar viewpoint.” A Washington, D. C., box number followed the ad copy.
“Did they check out the box number?” I asked Putnarn.
“Yes. It’s the mail drop for a bookstore proprietor. Evidently he picks it up and re-distributes it himself.”
“Did they sweat him?”
“No. He’s under surveillance, but he hasn’t been picked up. The feeling was that, if he was grabbed it would be like sounding the alarm for those involved with him. That might wash out the Cromwells’ trail altogether. Whatever they’ve gotten themselves involved in, it’s far more important that Cromwell be found than that we crack down on some sort of vice setup. That’s where you come in. Your job is to find out just what the setup is, infiltrate it any way you can, and find Cromwell. That’s why they had me bring you to Washington. You’re the only man with the requisite experience in both the vice world and undercover work that’s needed in this case."