I was frowning. “But what gave him the lead to this shop?”
“We’d like to know. It had to be something he found in the car — we don’t know what. The poor fool kept it to himself and came here and got killed.”
“Didn’t he show it or mention it to anyone here?”
“They say not. All he had with him was a newspaper. We’ve got it — today’s Daily Press, the early, out last night. We can’t spot anything in it. There was nothing in his pockets, nothing on him, that helps any.”
A phone rang. Fickler, by the cash register, looked at Purley, who stepped to the counter where the phone was and answered the call. It was for him. When, after a minute, it seemed to be going on, I moved away, and had gone a few paces when a voice came: “Hello, Mr. Goodwin.”
It was Jimmie, Wolfe’s man, using comb and scissors about his customer’s right ear. He was the youngest of the staff, about my age, and by far the handsomest, with curly lips and white teeth and dancing dark eyes. I told him hello.
“Mr. Wolfe ought to be here,” he said.
Under the circumstances I thought that a little tactless, and was even prepared to tell him so, when Ed called to me from two chairs down: “Fifteen minutes, Mr. Goodwin? All right?”
I told him okay, I would wait, and crossed to one of the chairs over by the partition, next to the table with magazines. I thought it would be fitting to pick up a magazine, but I had already read the one on top, the latest issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine; it was still in its full mailing-wrapper, but I recognized it because the magazine had slid out of the wrapper a little, so that the upper part of the front cover showed outside the tan mailing-sheath. The other magazines didn’t interest me, so I leaned back and let my eyes go, from left to right and back again.
Though I had been coming there for six years, I didn’t really know those people, in spite of the reputation barbers have as conversationalists. I knew that Fickler, the boss, had once been attacked bodily there in the shop by his ex-wife; that Philip had had two sons killed in World War II; that Tom had once been accused by Fickler of swiping lotions and other supplies and had slapped Fickler’s face; that Ed played the horses and was always in debt; that Jimmie had to be watched or he would take magazines from the shop while they were still current; and that Janet, who had been there only a year, was suspected of having a side line, maybe dope peddling. Aside from such items as those, they were strangers.
Suddenly Janet was there in front of me. She had come from around the end of the partition, and not alone. The man with her was a broad-shouldered husky, gray-haired and gray-eyed, with an unlit cigar slanting up from a corner of his mouth. His eyes swept the whole shop, and since he started at the far right he ended up at me.
He stared. “For Pete’s sake,” he said. “You? Now what?”
I was surprised for a second to see Inspector Cramer himself, head of Manhattan Homicide, there on the job.
“Just waiting for a shave,” I told him. “I’m an old customer here. You can ask Purley.”
Purley came over and verified me, but Cramer, checked with Ed, himself. Then he drew Purley aside and they mumbled back and forth a while, after which Cramer summoned Philip and escorted him around the end of the partition.
Janet seated herself in the chair next to mine. She looked even better in profile than head on, with her nice chin and straight little nose and long, homegrown lashes. I felt a little in debt to her, for the mild pleasure I had got occasionally as I sat in Ed’s chair and glanced at her while she worked on the customer in the next chair.
“I was wondering where you were,” I remarked.
She turned to me. “Did you say something?” she asked.
“Nothing vital. My name’s Goodwin. Call me Archie.”
“I know. You’re a detective. How can I keep them from having my picture in the paper?”
“You can’t, if they’ve already got it. Have they?”
“I think so. I wish I was dead.”
“I don’t.” I made it not loud but emphatic.
“Why should you? I do. My folks in Michigan think I’m acting or modeling. I leave it vague. And here — oh, my heavens!” Her chin worked, but she controlled it.
“Work is work,” I said. “My parents wanted me to be a college president, and I wanted to be a second baseman, and look at me. Anyhow, if your picture gets printed and it’s a good likeness, who knows what will happen?”
“This is my Gethsemane,” she said.
That made me suspicious, naturally. She had mentioned acting. “Come off it,” I advised her. “Think of someone else. Think of the guy that got stabbed — no, he’s out of it — think of his wife. How do you suppose she feels? Or Inspector Cramer, with the job he’s got. What was he asking you just now?”
She didn’t hear me. She said through clamped teeth, “I only wish I had some guts.”
“Why? What would you do?”
“I’d tell all about it.”
“You mean last night? Why not try it out on me and see how it goes? Just keep your voice down and let it flow.”
She didn’t hear a word. Her ears were disconnected. She kept her brown eyes, under the long lashes, straight at me:
“How it happened this morning. How I was going back to my booth after I finished Mr. Levinson in Philip’s chair, and he called me into Tina’s booth, and he seized me, with one hand on my throat so I couldn’t scream, and there was no doubt at all what he intended, so I grabbed the scissors from the shelf and, without realizing what I was doing, plunged them into him with all my strength, and he collapsed onto the chair. That’s what I would do if I really want a successful career. I would have to be arrested and have a trial, and then—”
“Hold it. Your pronouns. Mr. Levinson called you into Tina’s booth?”
“Certainly not. That man that got killed.” She tilted her head back. “See the marks on my throat?”
There was no mark whatever on her smooth, pretty throat.
“Bravo,” I said. “That would get you top billing anywhere.”
“That’s what I was saying.”
“Then go ahead and tell it.”
“I can’t! I simply can’t! It would be so darned vulgar.”
At the moment I could have slapped her lovely young face with pleasure. “I understand your position,” I said, “a girl as sweet and fine and strong as you, but it’s bound to come out in the end, and I want to help. Incidentally, I am not married. I’ll go to Inspector Cramer right now and tell him about it. He’ll want to take photographs of your throat. Do you know any lawyers?”
She shook her head, answering, I thought, my question about lawyers, but no. She didn’t believe in answering questions. “About your being married,” she said, “I hadn’t even thought. I think a girl must get her career established first. That s why when I see an attractive man I never wonder if he’s married; by the time I’m ready for one these will be too old. I think a girl—”
If Ed hadn’t signaled to me just then, his customer having left the chair, there’s no telling how it would have ended. No words would have been any good, since she was deaf, but surely I might have thought of something. As it was, I didn’t want to keep Ed waiting, so I got up and crossed to his chair and climbed in.
“Just scrape the face,” I told him.
He got a bib on me and tilted me back. “Did you phone?” he asked. “Did that fathead forget again?”