She did not remember her father, she confided. Her mother once told her she was a Spanish croupier in the games at Monte Carlo. He vanished one day and was never heard from again. “Mother still lives in Monaco,” she told Malone. “I’ve always dreamed of going back some day.”
With as much tact as he could manage, Malone broke the news to her and turned over the envelope Mr. Petty had left with him. After the first shock she sobbed quietly for a while, dabbing at her eyes with a corner of her apron. Then, “He was like a father to me,” she said. “Yes, I knew he was married. He never deceived me about anything. He was a gentleman, he was. I always called him Mr. Petty. When we went places, weekends, he always took separate rooms, with adjoining bath, like nice people do. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, except that you were his friend. He went to you in his trouble. He didn’t do anything wrong, did he, Mr. Malone? The police — they won’t be coming to me, will they, asking me questions about — well, you know—?”
Malone patted her hand gently. It was a soft, well-groomed hand for a girl who slung hash in a quick lunch joint. He could easily imagine her dressed in the latest Paris fashion, the center of attention as she swept into the Monte Carlo casino.
“Maybe not, if you answer my questions first,” Malone told the girl.
From her answers Malone learned that she had met Mr. Petty about a year ago when she waited on him at a lunch room near the plant where she was working at the time. He had given her presents from time to time, inexpensive things, and money from time to time, which she said she had sent to her mother in Monaco. Apparently she knew nothing of his embezzlements. He had never introduced her to his friends. She said she had seen him last about two weeks ago and the account of her movements over the weekend sounded spontaneous and unforced. Unless, he reminded himself, unless it should turn out that this vision of slightly tarnished innocence was serving him up something new in Irish blarney — with Spanish sauce. No, he decided. It was just one of those simple, unbelievable things that could happen only to the Mr. Pettys of this world. And simple young things like Carmelita Maguire, who go along trustingly with anything that comes along, only to be sideswiped by fate, like an unsuspecting pedestrian in the middle of Saturday night traffic.
“It’s true, every word of it,” Malone told Maggie when he got back to the office. “Even to the mother in Monte Carlo. Just the same I advised her not to leave for Monte Carlo just yet. If the police get wind of this they will want to question her, and it won’t look so good if she’s left the country in such a hurry.”
The telephone rang and Maggie answered it. “It’s Von Flanagan,” she said.
Malone said, “Tell him I’m in conference.”
Maggie relayed the message and handed the phone to Malone saying, “Tell him yourself. This is no fit language for a lady’s ears.”
Malone took the receiver and held it twelve inches from his ear till the bellowing stopped. “Malone, Malone, are you there?” the voice resumed, in more moderate volume.
“Yes, I’m here,” Malone replied. “Where are you, in Indo China? I can’t hear you very well.”
“You can hear me all right,” the Chief of Homicide replied. “What I want to know is, what have you got to do with this payroll robbery and murder? We found your name and address on the victim’s body.”
Malone said, “Maybe he was planning to give me as a character witness to St. Peter at the pearly gates.”
“That must be it,” Von Flanagan came back, in a voice that had more edge and less volume to it. “Because right here in his little book — entry made last Saturday — John J. Malone, retainer, twenty dollars. Are you going in for cut rates now?”
“Got to meet the amateur competition,” Malone said. “Anyway, it looks as if my client has met with foul play. I suppose you know by this time who his assailants are.”
“Don’t give me that, Malone. What I want to know is, what was Algernon Petty doing in your office the day before he was murdered?”
Malone said, “He wasn’t consulting me about getting himself murdered, if that’s what you’re thinking. The man you should be questioning is George V. Benson.”
“What’s he got to do with it?”
“I don’t know,” Malone said, “but I’ve got a hunch.”
“Benson was in Pittsburgh when the job was pulled.” Von Flanagan said. “He’s due back in less than an hour, and if you’ve got any evidence involving him in the crime bring it to my office and confront him with it. And it better be good, or you’ll need that twenty buck retainer to buy yourself cigarettes in the County Jail. Ever hear of false arrest, accessory before the fact, giving misleading information, failure to report—”
Malone hung up the receiver and jumping up reached for his hat.
“What’s the hurry?” Maggie called out after him.
“I’ve got to go see a lawyer,” Malone said, and bolted, with surprising celerity, out the door.
5.
“To the Municipal Airport,” Malone told the cab driver, “and never mind the red lights. I’ve got friends at City Hall.”
“I’ve heard that one before,” the cabby shot back over his shoulder. “What’s the big rush?”
Malone said, “The accessorius post mortem has just been caught in flagrante delicto.”
“Happens all the time,” the cabby said, and settled back into moody silence the rest of the way.
At the airport Malone went straight to the ticket window. “I’ve got to fly to Pittsburgh Saturday afternoon and be back here in time for an important homicide last night,” he told the clerk. “Can I make it?”
The clerk blinked, started writing up a ticket, blinked again and, “You mean Saturday night out of Pittsburgh,” he said, “There is an extra plane back to Chicago on Saturday nights, arriving here Sunday morning at—”
“Did you say Sunday morning?”
“Yes sir, Sunday. But that won’t leave you much time in Pittsburgh. I wouldn’t advise it, sir—”
Malone said, “Thank you, I was only inquiring.”
At the information desk he was told that the plane from Pittsburgh was preparing to touch down, and put in a page call for George V. Benson.
Malone waited till Benson had shaken off reporters with a curt “No comment,” and presented his card. “The matter of a loan of three thousand dollars you made my client, Mr. Algernon Petty, last Saturday,” he explained.
Benson had stuck the card in his pocket with the air of a man who has other business on his mind and is not to be detained. Now he took it out again and read aloud, “John J. Malone. Not the John J. Malone,” he said.
“Thank you,” Malone said. “I thought you might wish to discuss this little transaction before you talk to the police.”
“It was simply a matter of helping out an old employee in a jam,” Benson told Malone over a highball in the airport bar a few minutes later. “Besides, it would have been bad publicity for the company. I had no idea it would lead to anything — he seemed like such a harmless sort. Must have been in a lot deeper than he let on, to try anything like this.”
“What do you mean?” Malone said.
Benson said, “Surely, Mr. Malone, you don’t think Petty could have thought up anything like this by himself. He must have had confederates.”
“Then why did he come to you with his story about the embezzlements?”
“Oh, so you know about that too?” For the first time Benson looked disturbed. “What else did he tell you?”
“He said you promised to leave the three thousand for him in the safe Saturday afternoon. Of course you knew the payroll cash was in the safe. Didn’t you think it was a bit of a risk to leave a man like Petty alone with two hundred thousand dollars when he had just confessed to embezzling company funds?”