“How bad is she hurt?”
“Not enough for the hospital. Doc let us keep her here. She was hit above the right ear with a bottle taken from the supply shelf against the partition, six feet from the entrance to her booth. The bottle was big and heavy, full of oil. It was there by her on the floor.”
“Prints?”
“For Pete’s sake, start a school. He had a towel in his hand or something. Come on.”
“One second. What did the doctor say when you asked him if she could have been just testing her skull?”
“He said it was possible, but he doubted it. Come and ask her.”
I had never been behind the partition before. The space ran about half the length of the shop. Against the partition were steamers, vats, lamps, and other paraphernalia, and then a series of cupboards and shelves. Across a wide aisle were the manicure booths, four of them, though I had never seen more than two operators in the shop. As we passed the entrance to the first booth in the line, a glance showed me Inspector Cramer seated at a little table across from Tom, the barber with white hair. Cramer saw me and arose. I followed Purley to the third booth, and on in. Then steps behind me and Cramer was there.
It was a big booth, eight by eight, but was now crowded. In addition to us three and the furniture, a city employee was standing in a corner, and, on a row of chairs lined up against the right wall, Janet Stahl was lying on her back, her head resting on a stack of towels. She had moved her eyes, but not her head, to take in us visitors. She looked beautiful.
“Here’s your friend Archie Goodwin,” Purley told her trying to sound sympathetic.
“Hello, there,” I said professionally. “What does this mean?”
The long, home-grown lashes fluttered at me. “You,” she said.
“Yep. Your friend Archie Goodwin.” There was a chair there, the only one she wasn’t using, and I squeezed past Purley and sat, facing her. “How do you feel — terrible?”
“No, I don’t feel at all. I am past feeling.”
I reached for her wrist, got my fingers on the spot, and looked at my watch. In thirty seconds I said, “Your pump isn’t bad. May I inspect your head?”
“If you’re careful.”
“Groan if it hurts.” I used all fingers to part the fine brown hair, and gently but thoroughly investigated the scalp. She closed her eyes and flinched once, but there was no groan. “A lump to write home about,” I announced. “Who did it?”
“Send them away and I’ll tell you.” I turned to the kibitzers. “Get out,” I said sternly. “If I had been here this would never have happened.”
They went without a word. I sat listening to the sound of their retreating footsteps outside in the aisle, then thought I had better provide sound to cover in case they were careless tiptoeing back. They had their choice of posts, just outside the open entrance or in the adjoining booths. The partitions were only six feet high. “It was dastardly,” I said. “He might have killed you. You’re lucky you’ve got a good, strong, thick skull.”
“I started to scream,” she said, “But it was too late.”
“What started you to scream? Seeing him, or hearing him?”
“It was both. I was in the customers’ chair, with my back to the door — and there was a little noise behind me, like a stealthy step, and I looked up and saw him reflected in the partition glass, right behind me, with his arm raised, and I started to scream, but before I could get it out he struck—”
“Wait a minute.” I got up and moved my chair to the outer side of the little table and sat in it. “These details are important. You were like this?”
“That’s it. I was sitting thinking.”
I felt that the opinion I had formed of her previously had not done her justice. The crinkly glass of the partition wall behind her could reflect no object whatever, no matter how the light was. Her contempt for mental processes was absolutely spectacular. I asked, “Did you recognize him?”
“Of course I did. That’s why I wouldn’t speak to them. That’s why I had to see you. It was that big one with the big ears and gold tooth, the one they call Stebbins, or they call him sergeant.”
I wasn’t surprised. I knew the power of her imagination now. “You mean he hit you with the bottle?”
“I can’t say it was him that hit me. I think people should be careful what they accuse other people of. I only know it was him I saw standing behind me with his arm raised, and then something hit me. From that anyone can only draw conclusions, but there are other reasons, too. He was rude to me this morning, asking me questions, and all day he has been looking at me in a rude way, not the way a girl is willing for a man to look at her. And then you can just be logical. Would Ed want to kill me, or Philip or Jimmie or Tom or Mr. Fickler? Why would they? So it must have been him, even if I hadn’t seen him.”
“It does sound logical,” I conceded. “But I’ve known Stebbins for years and have never known him to strike a woman without cause. What did he have against you?”
“I don’t know.” She frowned a little. “That’s one of the first things you must tell me, how to answer things to the reporters. That’s how you’ll earn your ten per cent.”
“My ten per cent of what?”
“Of everything I get. As my manager.” She extended a hand. “Shake on it.”
To avoid a contractual shake without offending, I grasped the back of her hand with my left, turning her palm up, and ran the fingers of my right from her wrist to her fingertips. “It’s a darned good idea,” I said appreciatively, “But we’ll have to postpone it. I’m going through bankruptcy just now and it would be illegal for me to make a contract. Later on—”
“I don’t need you later on. I need you right now.”
“Here I am, you’ve got me, but not under contract yet.” I got emphatic: “If you tell reporters I’m your manager, I’ll give you a lump that will make that one seem as flat as a pool table. If they ask why he hit you, don’t say you don’t know; say it’s a mystery. Now—”
“That’s it!” She was delighted.
“Sure. Tell ’em that. Now we’ve got to consider the cops. Stebbins is a cop, and they won’t want it hung on him. They’ve had one cop killed here today already. They’ll try to tie this up with that. They’ll try to make it that somebody here killed Wallen, and he found out that you knew something about it, so he tried to kill you. They may even think they have some kind of evidence — for instance, something you were heard to say. So we have to be prepared. We have to go back over it. Are you listening?”
“Certainly. What do I say when the reporters ask me if I’m going to go on working here? Couldn’t I say I don’t want to desert Mr. Fickler in a time of trouble?”
It took control to stay in that chair. But at home there were the guests locked in the front room, and some time we had to get rid of them.
“That’s the ticket,” I said warmly. “Say you’ve got to be loyal to Mr. Fickler. Have you ever been interviewed before?”
“No, this will be the first, and I want to start right.”
“Good for you. What they like best of all is to get the jump on the police. If you can tell them something the cops don’t know they’ll love you forever. For instance, the fact that Stebbins crowned you doesn’t prove that he’s the only one involved. He must have an accomplice here in the shop, or why did Wallen come here, in the first place? We’ll call the accomplice X. Now listen:
“Some time today, some time or other after Wallen’s body was found, you saw something or heard something, and X knew you did. He knew it, and he knew that if you told about it — if you told me, for example — it would put him and Stebbins on the spot. Naturally, both of them would want to kill you. It could have been X that tried to, but since you say you saw Stebbins reflected in the glass, we’ll let it go at that for now. Here’s the point: