“Mr. Dean, this is Alma Brady. She works in Colonel Dolson’s office. She was hired by the Colonel as a clerk-bookkeeper. She has something to tell you.”
“I waited for you,” Alma said to Perry, “and I was about to go home. I was thinking about it. I guess I don’t want to tell him anything after all.” Her voice was thin and immature.
Perry took a step toward her, eyes hot. “You promised, Alma! You promised! You’ve got to tell him.”
“Hold it,” I said quickly. “Sit down, both of you. Behave.”
Alma hesitated and then crossed over to a chair with a sulky strut, sat down, crossed her legs, patted her skirt smooth, hunted in her bag for cigarettes. I gave her a light. “How did you gals meet?”
Perry answered, “Alma rents a room near my house and we wait at the same bus stop, so we got friendly that way. She prepares the vouchers that Colonel Dolson handles through Mr. Granby’s office as charges against the cost-plus contract.”
“I don’t want to get in any trouble,” Alma said in her childish voice.
“I file our copies of the vouchers,” Perry continued. “And I couldn’t help noticing that there were certainly an awful lot of them coming from his office as charges against the D4D contract. So a couple of months ago I asked Alma if he was about through buying stuff. I wanted to know because I was going to have to set up new file folders and re-index them to keep them in order.”
Alma had been staring stubbornly out the window. She turned sharply on Perry. “It wasn’t any of your business what he bought.”
“It wasn’t,” Perry said gently, “until we had that little chat today in the office. You made it my business, Alma.”
“There’s a lot of difference between telling you and telling him. I don’t want to get in any jam. I was just talking.”
She turned stubbornly away and looked out the window. She exhaled smoke through her nose and it made her look like a petulant little dragon. Perry looked at me and shrugged. I edged my chair closer to Alma and said, “The last thing I want to do is get you in trouble, Miss Brady. I’d like to have you trust me.”
“You say.”
“I have no official connection with the firm. When I was president, Miss Perrit was my secretary. I have every confidence in her judgment. If she thinks you should tell me, then it is probably a good idea for you to tell me.”
Alma looked at her cigarette and then obliquely at me. “She’ll tell you anyway.”
“She probably will. But I promise to keep you out of trouble if it’s humanly possible.”
The bland forehead wrinkled, and I could almost hear the wheels going around in her head. She sighed. “All right. Gee, I guess I’ve got to trust somebody in this thing. But the main thing is I want somebody to catch up with Curt Dolson and really clobber the hell out of him, but I don’t want him knowing I had anything to do with it.”
She looked at Perry. “Now I’ve started talking, I better cover some ground I didn’t tell you today, Perry.” She looked down at her crossed legs and tugged her skirt a bit forward where it had started to slip above her knee. She kept looking down. “He hired me in Washington and it was with the idea I’d be willing to be transferred here. I got here and it was a strange place to me, and you know, you get lonesome, especially around Christmas time. I got here just before Christmas. He was nice to me. I knew he was getting ideas. I mean that fatherly act is one you see through pretty easy, but I didn’t brush him off because I was lonesome, and I figured if it ever came to an issue, I could handle it all right without making him sore. He got me a promotion right after Christmas and hinted about getting me another one. And he gave me a Christmas present and I thought that was sort of cute, you know. I guess he is a little smoother than I thought. He said we’d have our own private New Year’s party. I took on so much champagne I thought I could even come up to his room here in the hotel and still handle him. Like a challenge, I guess. I don’t know exactly how I ended up in bed with him, but I did. It wasn’t going to happen again, believe me, but he was sweet about it, and sorry and all, and gave me presents, and I figured, oh, hell, the damage is done and who cares, so it got to be a regular thing. Now he’s had enough. He’s after the little broad that sings here. Hildy something. He’s chasing her. He hasn’t got time for me. Yesterday I tried to talk to him and he asked me what I was kicking about. I got my promotion, didn’t I? That’s why I want to see him get it in the neck. He’s a stinker and I don’t want to see him get away with doing that to me or anybody.”
I said carefully, “It’s unethical for a man in his position to get into that sort of situation, Miss Brady. But there isn’t any basis there to — take any action against him.”
She looked directly at me and her blue eyes narrowed. “All that, my friend, was telling you the why of it. I haven’t gotten to the how yet.” I sensed I had underestimated her intelligence. Those blue eyes in that moment were very knowing.
“I brought her here on account of the other part,” Perry said.
“Mr. Dean, once it happened to me, I started thinking. I started wondering about something. When we were — going together, he was always in a sweat about money. He likes to live it up, you know. He borrowed money from Captain Corning a few times, near the end of the month. He had his pay and some income from that store of his. Then, while we were still — friendly, he started living better. That was back in late January and early February. He started carrying fat money around with him. And he gave me nicer things. This watch, for instance.
“It wasn’t until after he broke if off that I began thinking about how he suddenly had a better income. When I got here, Curt Dolson and Mr. Mottling weren’t getting along at all. He used to yammer about Mottling to me. Then, in late January they kissed and made up or something. That was about the time Curt started having money.
“Then I remembered Perry asking me about those vouchers, and I thought some more and I wondered if Curt was pulling something. I began checking our purchase order file against shipping instructions and inventories. Curt was ordering a lot of things chargeable to the cost-plus contract. A lot of it was coming to the plant and a lot of it wasn’t, even though the inventory reports checked against the total ordered. With Curt doing the ordering and also being responsible for inventories, he could order stuff and have it shipped someplace else. And I remembered that in January, about the time he and Mottling got friendly, he’d gotten permission to rent warehouse space in town because storage facilities at the plant weren’t adequate. I kept checking the files every time I had a chance, and finally I spotted one purchase order that looked like a duplicate. It was made out to something called Acme Supply. That’s right here in Arland, 56 River Street, and that’s close to the warehouse space the Colonel rented. Letters from Acme are signed by some man named LeFay. I’m positive, Mr. Dean, that Curt is placing legitimate orders, then having the incoming stuff diverted to Acme, and then placing a duplicate order with Acme.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Let me get this straight. Say Dolson had to order typewriters. He’d order, say, three and divert two of them to that rented warehouse space?”
“Yes. Then he’d order two from Acme. Acme would get those two out of the rented space and deliver them to the plant. Dolson would see that Acme got paid. The records would show five typewriters ordered, three in use and two in storage, and because the Colonel keeps the warehouse inventory records, there isn’t any way to check. Maybe he had the incoming stuff diverted to Acme somehow, so it never goes into storage, then places a duplicate order with Acme. That way, paying twice for the same stuff, he and this LaFay could split whatever they get for it.”