The door was opened by a little man in shirt, trousers and slippers. He wore no collar and he hadn’t shaved. His thin, yellow face looked sad. “Yes, please?” he asked, peering at me through thick glasses.
“Mr. McArthur?”
He nodded. I could see he was surprised to be called mister. He looked like a guy who had been kicked around plenty in his day.
“It’s about your daughter,” I said, watching him carefully.
Fear and hope crowded into his eyes and he had to steady himself against the door. “Have — have they found her?” he said with pathetic, crushed eagerness.
“Not yet.” I moved a step forward. “I’d like to come in a moment.”
His face sagged with disappointment, but he stood aside. “We’re in a bit of a mess,” he muttered apologetically. “It ain’t easy to keep things going with this hanging over us.”
I made sympathetic noises and closed the door. The room was clean, small and poorly furnished. Some stockings and women’s underclothes hung on a string across one side of the room.
McArthur stood by the table and looked at me questioningly. “Who did you say you were from?”
I took out my identity card and waved the shield at him. Before he could take a good look, it was back in my pocket. “I’m checking on your daughter’s disappearance,” I said. “Give me the help I want and I’ll get her back.”
“Of course,” he said eagerly. “What did you want to know? So many people have been around asking questions.” He twisted his fingers. “But nothing’s been done.”
I sat on the corner of the table. “What do you think’s happened to her?”
“I don’t know.” He tried to control, his hands, but he wasn’t successful. They reminded me of two white fluttering moths. “I don’t seem able to think properly since it happened.”
“Was she unhappy at home? I mean do you think she’s run away or something like that?”
He shook his head helplessly. “She was a good girl. She had a good job and she was happy.”
“Do you believe this stuff about a mass-killer being at large?”
He sat down abruptly and hid his face in his hands. “I don’t know.”
He wasn’t helping much.
“You know these disappearances are being used to gain votes for the coming election,” I said as patiently as I could. “It’s not possible, is it, that these girls are being paid to duck out of sight? I mean your girl wouldn’t do a thing like that?”
“Whatever’s happened to Luce has happened against her will,” he whispered. “You don’t think she’s dead, do you, mister?”
I thought it was likely, but I didn’t say so. Before I could go on, the door jerked open and a big, grey-haired woman came in. Her eyes were swollen and red and stony.
“Who is it, Tom?” she said, going to him.
McArthur looked vague and uneasy. “Someone about Luce.”
“It’s all right, Mrs. McArthur,” I said hastily, “I’m helping with the investigation.”
She looked me over and her mouth tightened. “You’re working for Wolf.” She got excited about that. Turning on McArthur, she said: “You fool! Why did you let him in? He’s Wolf’s spy.”
McArthur looked pleadingly at her. “He’s going to help,” he explained anxiously. “We want all the help we can, Mary.”
She walked to the door and threw it open. “Get out!” she said to me.
I shook my head. “You don’t understand, Mrs. McArthur,” I said soothingly. “The more people in on this, the quicker we’ll get results. You want your daughter back and I can help you. It won’t cost you-anything.”
“He’s right, Mary,” McArthur said eagerly. “He only wants to help.”
“I’m taking no help from a louse like Wolf,” the woman said, and she went out, closing the door violently.
McArthur wrung his hands. “You’d better go,” he said. “She’s gone for her brother.”
I didn’t care if she’d gone for the Marines. “Take it easy,” I said, not moving. “Why does she hate Wolf? What’s he done to get her feeling that way?”
“Most folks hate him. Leastways, those who’ve worked for him,” McArthur said, looking anxiously at the door. “You’ll find them all the same.”
The woman came back. With her was a thickset man of about forty. He was full of toughness and self-confidence.
“Is this the fella?” he said to Mrs. McArthur.
“Yes.” There was a triumphant note in her voice which annoyed me.
He came over to me. “Get out and stay out,” he said, poking his finger at my chest. “We don’t want a spying louse like you around here.”
I took his finger and gave it a little jerk. It was a trick I’d picked up from a guy who’d spent some time in China.
The man fell on his knees with a howl of pain and I grinned at him. “Don’t be a sissy,” I said, helping him up. “Can’t you take a joke?”
He toppled into a chair and held his hand, moaning.
I went to the door. “You’re all crazy,” I said to them. “Can’t you see you’re wasting time? I can find the girl if you’ll let me. It’s your business, of course, but she’s been missing for four weeks. No one’s turned up anything yet. If that gives you confidence, then I’m sorry for you. If I don’t find her, I’ll find the other two. By that time she won’t be worth finding. Think it over. I’m at the Eastern Hotel. If you want my help, come and see me. And don’t think I care one way or the other.”
I didn’t stop to see how they took it, but walked out of the room and closed the door quietly behind me.
The Cranville Gazette was on the fourth floor of a dilapidated building sandwiched between a large cut-rate emporium and a drugstore. The small, dark lobby was dirty and harboured the stale smell of bodies and tobacco smoke. The lift wasn’t working so I climbed the four flights of stairs.
I wandered around the fourth floor until I came to a door lettered in flaked black paint on pebbled glass: Cranville Gazette.
I turned the knob and went into a small, narrow room with two windows, a battered typewriter desk, a number of filing cases and a threadbare carpet.
A woman turned from the window and looked at me without much interest. She was forty, thin, frowzy and full of vinegar.
“The editor in?” I said, tipping my hat and trying to look more pleased to see her than she did to see me.
“Who is it?” she asked in a way that told me the editor didn’t have many visitors.
“The name’s Spewack,” I said. “And I’m not here to sell him anything or to waste his time.”
She opened a door which I hadn’t noticed before at the far end of the room. She shut the door behind her.
I leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette. I decided for an editorial office this was pretty punk. The newspaper, I thought, was a worthy representative of the town.
The woman came back. “Mr. Dixon will spare you a few minutes.” I walked down the narrow room, smiled at her and entered the inner room.
If anything, it was more dreary than the outer office. In a swivel chair at the desk sat an elderly number in a blue serge suit which looked like it had been nickel-plated. A pale-grey bald patch loomed high up in the middle of stringy white hair. He had sharp blue-green eyes and his beaky nose looked as if it had hung over a lot of quick ones in his time.
“Mr. Spewack?” he said in a fruity baritone.
I nodded.
“Take a chair, Mr. Spewack.” He waved a fat hairy hand at the chair across the desk. “I’m always glad to meet a visitor to our little town.” He paused and stared at me with a calculating expression in his eyes. “You are a visitor, I suppose?”
I sat down. “More or less,” I said, hitching the chair a little nearer to his desk. “Before I tell you my business, I’d like to ask you a question.”