She came within the next two minutes, driving a big, shiny Cadillac which she handled as though it had been a baby buggy.
She swung it in to the curb with a deft flick of the wrist and the aid of power steering. She braked to a stop, slid across the seat, opened the door and then paused as she saw me standing there.
She was a dish.
Poised there on the edge of the seat, just ready to get out, her skirt well up, her face alert and intelligent, she caught my eye, smiled and moved over as I crossed the sidewalk to the car.
“Well. What a show!” she said. “These modern skirts just won’t behave in these low cars... Now, wait a minute. We’d better get things straight first. You’re Donald Lam?”
“I’m Donald Lam.”
“I’m Lorraine Robbins. If you’re ready, let’s go.”
“I’m ready,” I said, sliding into the car and pulling the door shut.
She gave a quick glance to the rearview mirror, put the signal light on a left turn, gave one second glance to make sure, shot out to the left and into traffic.
She threaded her way through the afternoon traffic and across the Seventh Street intersection. “Live here?” she asked.
“Not permanently,” I said. “I’m here back and forth.”
“So you saw the accident?”
“That’s right.”
She said, “Mr. Holgate is going to want me to take down what you say in shorthand.”
“Now?” I asked.
“Heavens, no. I’m driving the car now. Later on, when you talk with him.”
“Okay by me.”
“What do you do, Mr. Lam?”
“Almost anything,” I said.
She laughed and said, “I didn’t mean it that way. I mean what’s your occupation?”
“I’m sort of between jobs at the moment.”
“Oh.”
She flicked the directional signal over to right, glided around a right turn on First Street, then speeded up.
She handled the car with such skill that she never seemed to have to use the brakes, simply picking the potential openings in traffic before the opening itself had materialized. Then, by the time she got there, the opening had developed and she was able to glide through with a touch of the throttle.
It was a swell job of driving.
“You’re Mr. Holgate’s secretary?”
“His, and Mr. Maxton’s. It’s a partnership. Real estate, subdivisions.”
“Lots of correspondence?” I asked.
“Correspondence,” she said, “telephone calls, contracts, options, receipts, figuring interest, keeping a tickler system for time payments, running errands, making a sales pitch once in a while.”
“How big’s the subdivision here?” I asked.
“Quite a project,” she said. “Right at the moment it’s taking just about full time for everyone, but that’s the way things go in this business. You’re working at high speed to full capacity one day and the next you’re carrying a fifty per cent overload and the next you’re working twice as hard — and I like it.”
“You seem to be good at it.”
She flashed me a glance and said, “I try to be good at everything I do. I think a girl owes that much to herself — and to her employers. This is a competitive world. You can’t get anywhere if you aren’t good. If you’re going to do anything, do it so you make an outstanding performance. That’s my motto.”
“It’s a pretty good philosophy,” I told her.
“Thanks,” she said. “I like it.”
She swung the wheel to the left, then to the right into a semicircular driveway, came to a stop in front of a typical real estate subdivision building and said, “Here we are.”
A big sign said HOLGATE & MAXTON, SUBDIVIDERS and then underneath in large red letters outlined with a green border: BREEZEMORE TERRACE ESTATES.
I got out of the car and stood for a moment, ostensibly taking in the srroundings with an air of deep approval. Actually I was looking around to see if there was any sign of the person who had been shadowing me.
I couldn’t see anyone.
Down at the place marked Parking there were half a dozen cars and in a couple of places salesmen were showing potential customers blueprints of the subdivision. A couple of hundred yards farther up the hill I could see three or four parties standing on the curving driveways inspecting lots.
The real estate office consisted of typical freakish high-peaked portable structures which had evidently been trucked out to the location separately and then joined together.
Lorraine Robbins got out of the car on the left, walked around to where I was standing, said, “What do you think of it?”
“Sure looks good,” I said. “It’s a beautiful site.”
“The best suburban homesite in the country,” she said. “It’s a shame somebody didn’t open this up sooner because there’s a tremendous population pressure in this area. Believe it or not, the horny-handed son of toil who owned this place had been operating it for fifty years as a dairy.”
“You mean no one approached him to—”
“Sure, they approached him,” she said, “but he wouldn’t listen. He’d got this place as a dairy and, by gum, it was going to keep right on being a dairy! Gosh all tarnation, what do you think I am, anyway?”
Lorraine’s flexible voice changed so that she gave a perfect mimicry of an obstinate old man.
“So,” I said, “he died.”
“He died, and when the heirs saw the appraisal of the land on the basis of inheritance tax, they fell all over themselves getting in touch with Holgate and Maxton. Actually they got in touch with three different subdividers. We made them the best offer.
“Want to go in?”
“It’s so beautiful out here that—”
“Mr. Holgate is expecting you. He’s held his time open.”
I grinned at her and said, “Let’s go.”
She led the way into a reception room where the walls were plastered with photographs and maps. There were half a dozen desks in here and at three of the desks salesmen were evidently closing deals, giving receipts and taking checks.
To the right was an office door with a sign, CHRISTOPHER MAXTON, and to the left one that said CARTER J. HOLGATE.
The back part of the reception room had three typewriter desks, some telephones and filing cases. A good-looking brunette was hammering away on a typewriter. “My assistant,” Lorraine said over her shoulder as we turned toward Holgate’s office.
The assistant looked up with big, romantic dark eyes and smiled directly at us, vivid red lips parting over pearly teeth.
She got up and came toward us.
She was a long-legged, graceful, statuesque girl who could have won first prize in a bathing-beauty contest hands down.
She said, “Is this—”
Lorraine cut her off. “For Mr. Holgate,” she said. “We’re going in.”
She opened the door without knocking and left the brunette standing there looking at me, the smile on her face but her eyes no longer smiling.
Holgate’s office was a big sumptuous room with a long table containing model dwellings, built to scale and placed on lots on a papier-mâché sloping hillside which had been carved with contour roads, covered with green paint to simulate lawns, and had artificial trees growing here and there. The scale houses were on the level lots and could be moved from lot to lot. Their red tile roofs gleamed in artificial sunlight thrown down by a powerful searchlight in the ceiling.
Holgate’s desk was a huge affair covered with various knick-knacks and a few loose papers.
Holgate himself, in his late forties, a big, beaming individual with shrewd gray eyes, a slight drawl and the easy affability of a successful salesman, got up to shake hands.