“Can you tell me exactly where she is?”
“Right at the present moment, she’s in a nightclub. She’s just getting ready to leave.”
“Anyone with her?” he asked eagerly.
“Not at the moment.”
“And you’re not going to lose her?”
“I’m keeping an eye on her.”
“That’s splendid. Wonderful! Donald, you’re a man in a million! When I said you were an owl, I really—”
Central interrupted to say, “Your three minutes are up.”
“Good-by,” I said, and slammed the receiver back onto its hook.
Chapter Nineteen
The elevator contained the usual Monday-morning crowd returning to the grind of routine office work, men who had gone without hats on the golf course or the beaches and whose foreheads were flaming with sunburn, girls looking a little weary about the eyes trying by intensive make-up to neutralize the telltale marks of not enough sleep — people who found the gloomy confines of an office doubly distasteful after a taste of a day spent in the open.
Elsie Brand was in the office ahead of me.
I could hear the machine-gun clatter of her typewriter as I approached the door marked Cool and Lam, Confidential Investigations.
She looked up as I entered the door. “Hello. Glad you’re back. Have a nice trip?”
She swung around away from the typewriter, flashed a quick look at the clock as though determining how much of the partnership time she could afford to give to one of the partners.
“So-so.”
“Did a good job on that Florida case, didn’t you?”
“It turned out all right.”
“How’s the New Orleans business?”
“Hanging fire. Where’s Bertha?”
“Hasn’t come in yet.”
“Did she make some investigation in that Roxberry Estates matter?”
“Uh huh. There’s a file — quite a few notes.”
She got up from the chair, crossed over to the filing cases, ran her finger down the index, jerked open a drawer in the steel file, stabbed at the pasteboard jackets with the swift certainty of one who knows exactly what she is doing, pulled out a file, and handed it to me.
“You’ll find in there everything we’ve been able to get.”
“Thanks. I’ll take a look at it. How’s the construction business coming along?”
She glanced quickly at the door, lowered her voice, and said, “There’s been a bit of correspondence about the business. It’s all in the file. Some of the other correspondence is in Bertha’s office — locked up. She hasn’t sent it out to the file. I don’t know where it is.”
“What’s that correspondence about?”
“Getting you placed in a deferred classification.”
“Did she make it stick?”
Again Elsie looked at the door. “This would cost me my job if she knew about it.”
“Don’t I have something to say about that?”
“Not about that. She’d ride me so I had to quit.”
“Well, what about it? Did she fix it up?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Last week.”
“It’s all settled?”
“Yes.”
I said, “Thanks.”
She watched me curiously. A puzzled frown appeared between her arched eyebrows. “Are you going to let her get away with it?”
“Sure.”
“Oh.”
“What did you expect me to do?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said, without looking up.
I took the file of the Roxberry Estates into my private office, sat down at the desk, and went over it in detail.
It told me nothing.
Silas T. Roxberry had done a lot of financing, putting money in various business activities, some of which he controlled, some of which were simply outlets for funds which he held for business investment. He had died in 1937, leaving two children, a son named Roy aged fifteen, a daughter named Edna aged nineteen. Because his affairs had been considerably complicated and a distribution of the estate might have resulted in a shrinkage of assets, it had been decided to assign the rights of the heirs to a corporation known as Roxberry Estates and a decree of distribution had been made to the corporation, the heirs taking stock in that corporation to the extent of their interests.
Howard C. Craig had been Roxberry’s confidential bookkeeper, had been employed by him for nearly seven years. The Roxberry Estates Corporation employed Craig as its secretary and treasurer. After Craig’s death, a man named Sells had taken Craig’s place. An attorney by the name of Biswill had handled the estate and had become general manager of the corporation. He was carrying on the business in just about the same way that Silas Roxberry had. Because it was a closed corporation, it was impossible to learn anything about the degree of success with which the business was being administered, but Bertha Cool had secured a commercial report to the effect that the business was solvent, prompt in paying its bills, although it was rumored it had, of late, made some poor investments.
It was, of course, possible that Edna Roxberry was Edna Cutler. I picked up the telephone, got the Roxberry Estates on the phone, said I was a friend of the family who had been away for several years, and asked if Edna Roxberry was married. I was told she hadn’t married as yet and I would find her name in the telephone book. The party at the other end of the line wanted to know who was talking, and I hung up.
At ten o’clock Bertha still hadn’t showed up.
I told Elsie I was going out, and went over to the offices of the Roxberry Estates.
It was possible to tell the whole story in the lettering on the doors of the offices. Originally Harman C. Biswill had had a string of offices. Silas Roxberry had been one of his main clients. With Roxberry’s death, Biswill had moved in on the estate. Having sold the heirs on the idea of making distribution to a corporation, he had become the manager of the corporation. Now, the signs on the doors read, Harman C. Biswill, Attorney at Law. Private. Entrance 619, and on 619 appeared Roxberry Estates, Inc. Entrance. Down below in the left-hand corner was Harman C. Biswill, Attorney at Law. Entrance. The lettering on the door of the private office looked rather faded. It had been Biswill’s old private office, and he hadn’t changed the sign. As he’d gradually abandoned the general practice of law for the more profitable gravy of the estate corporation, he’d changed the sign on the entrance room.
It didn’t take a first-class detective to tell that Harman C. Biswill had cut himself a very nice slice of cake.
I opened the entrance door and walked in.
Biswill had gone hog wild on office machinery. There were bookkeeping machines, typewriters, dictating machines, adding machines, billing machines, addressing machines scattered around the office. An elderly woman was punching an adding machine. A girl was pounding out correspondence on a typewriter, the earpieces of a transcribing machine dangling from her ears.
There was a switchboard and a little window marked Information, but no one was at the desk. As I came in, a light came on on the switchboard and a buzzer sounded. The woman at the adding machine came over to the switchboard, plugged in a line, said, “Roxberry Estates, Incorporated... No, he isn’t here... I can’t tell you just when he will be... No, I’m not certain he’ll be here at all today... Was there any message?... Very well, I’ll tell him Thank you.”
She was past fifty, a woman who had evidently been working all of her life. Her eyes were tired but kind, and there was about her the air of a person who knows exactly what she is doing.
I followed a hunch. “You’ve been with the corporation since it was organized?”
“Yes.”
“And were employed by Mr. Roxberry prior to that time?”