So this girl, whoever she was, actually lived in Lambert’s house, and had enough pull with Lois Lambert to get the use of a damned expensive roadster… There was just the barest possible chance that the kid had told me the truth and that she really was Lois Lambert, but the chances were ten to one in favor of her being a social secretary to the Mrs. or a private stenographer to the head of the family.
Anyway, she and a flabby guy with feverish arms wanted me to be turned away at the door of the Lambert house at eight-thirty Thursday. They must have thought I had a solid vacuum above the ears. Ed Jenkins, international crook, presenting himself at the home of John Lambert, asking to come in and join the dance! It was a goofy scheme all right.
I went back to my apartment and thought the thing over and the more I thought about it the madder I got. Hang it! I was blamed near mad enough to go and walk into their trap and dish things up for them. I’d got to do something spectacular to let all the cheap crooks in the country know that they couldn’t use Ed Jenkins as a stalking horse. I started to ring up old man Lambert himself and tell him to be sure and keep a close watch on his jewels and those of his guests on Thursday, but something held me back. I wasn’t sure I wasn’t going to sit in on the game and draw cards myself.
It remained to find out who the human octopus was. There was a something about that man that also reminded me of a spider. His hands were like the tentacles of an octopus, but there was a something about the way he sat at a table that made me think of a great big spider waiting for his prey to come and walk into his web. Then I remembered that that was the way with an octopus. Those devil fish get down in the dark caves of the rocky ledges and wait for their prey to come swimming by, then there’s the flash of a great, snake-like tentacle, and the victim vanishes within the dark cave where the inert, jelly-like mass of the octopus regards him through two great eyes, his horrid, parrot-like beak working up and down in anticipation of the bloody feast… Ugh! That man gave me the shivers, and I don’t mean maybe. I’d take a stab at looking him up and see if I could locate him.
I went down to the cabaret and had a long talk with the head waiter, a talk that was sandwiched in between a couple of ten dollar bills, and when I left my head was ringing.
The guy with the feverish arms was named Sly, and he was evidently a sly bird. The head waiter didn’t know much about him except that he was the king of blackmailers. He knew nothing about where Sly held out, or just what he was doing, but he did know enough to be afraid of the big man, and also to know about the blackmail business.
I did a little thinking after that. A blackmailer and a girl who was probably a social secretary to Mrs. John Lambert. They wanted to ring me in on the party for some reason. That reason wasn’t exactly clear to me and it bothered me.
The next night when I was sitting in my deep leather chair, browsing through the paper and relaxing, taking life easy, with Bobo sitting nearby, his head on my knees, there came the sound of quick, light steps in the hall, and then a knock on the door. Bobo ducked in back of a screen, a favorite habit of his when he hears company coming, and I flung open the door. After that damned newspaper article I’d had so many visitors I was getting used to ’em.
It was the girl again.
“I just ran in to make sure you’d be at the party Thursday, Ed,” she breezed, as though she’d known me for ten years. “You see it’s mighty important to me to know whether or not you’re coming.”
“Come in and sit down,” I said, and blamed if she didn’t — just as easy like as though calling on crooks in their apartments was all in the day’s work.
“You’ve got lots of confidence in your ability to take care of yourself,” I told her, with a half-glowering look. It commenced to irritate me, the sublime self-assurance of the girl.
“You’re mid-Victorian in lots of things, Ed,” she rippled right back at me. “What’s more you mustn’t look at my knees when I cross ’em. That’s old-fashioned — a sure sign of age. The young, up-to-the-minute fellows are too blasé to even notice ’em.”
Hang the kid! There she was — no bigger than the second hand on a wrist watch, sitting there laughing at me, and stringing me along on some game I didn’t understand. I made up my mind I’d call her bluff and call it cold.
“I’m coming to the dance all right, but I thought I’d better run out and meet your folks first. I was just going to run out for a chat with your father, but if you’re here with your car you can run me out and perform the introductions.”
She ducked her head so the brim of her hat shut off my view of her face, leaving only the tip of her chin peeping out, and I thought she was going to cave-in and spill it then, but I was fooled. When she looked up she was smiling.
“What’s the matter, Ed? Afraid it’s not nice to talk to me without asking permission from the folks? Come on.”
I picked up my hat. Somewhere along the line she’d have to weaken, that is, unless the folks were out and she knew she could have the run of the house.
“Let’s go,” I told her.
She was a vivacious little thing, all thin legs, bobbed hair and smiles, but I began to see there was something to her after the way she handled the car in traffic. However, I sat alongside of her without a word, waiting for her quitting time to come.
She drove straight to the house, swung into the driveway, skipped out and stood waiting for me. “Come on,” she said.
Doggedly, I got out of the car and walked up the steps.
There were lights in the house and I could hear the sound of voices. Somehow I commenced to have a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach.
She let herself in, took my hat and ushered me into a parlor.
“Well, Grouch-face, don’t look so stiff,” she said. “Unbend, both figuratively and literally. Turn up the corners of the lips, and then bend forward and park the hips on the family upholstery. You wanted to meet daddy. I’ll go get him.”
I sat there, feeling as cold and clammy as I’ve ever felt on a job. Ed Jenkins calling on John Staunton Lambert! That was a hot sketch all right. The girl was probably a social secretary and she’d introduce me as a friend of hers, and yet… I commenced to have doubts and those doubts centered in a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach.
The door opened and a tired looking man with a gray mustache and keen eyes stood surveying me. The girl was beside him with her arm around him.
“Daddy, shake hands with Mr. Jenkins, Mr. Ed Jenkins. He’s a friend of mine I haven’t seen for some time and here I ran on to him in a cabaret the other day.”
I found myself shaking hands and looking into the tired, gray eyes.
“My daughter says you’re coming to the dance Thursday evening. That’s fine. We’ll be glad to have you. Do you live here in the city, Mr. Jenkins?”
She answered the question.
“He’s here temporarily. He’s got some sort of a funny business, transferring securities, isn’t it, Ed?”
I nodded. That was as good a name for it as anything, and I didn’t want to engage in conversation. I wanted to get out of there. There was some thinking I had to do.
We chatted about the city, the weather and the League of Nations for a bit, and then the old bird with the tired eyes mentioned that he’d leave us young folks to our own devices, shook hands again and went out.
I turned loose on the girl.
“You little, irresponsible idiot!” I stormed. “Haven’t you got enough respect for your father, for your own house, for your own self-esteem, not to go out bringing in crooks and introducing ’em to your dad? Don’t you know it’d make him the laughing stock of the town if it got out that he had received Ed Jenkins as a guest? Don’t you know it’d be enough to ruin his career? That about half of the people would think I had him bribed to give me respectability? If you’ve got any proposition you want to make to me, get your cards on the table and spit it out, but at least have enough sense of decency to protect your home and your dad’s good name.”