Scott O’Hara
Sir Lancelot’s Crime Wave
Chapter One
Hard-Boiled Rover Boy
Lieutenant of Police Isaac Jamison gave the girl his most soothing smile. She sat on the edge of the chair placed beside his desk, looking at him with wary suspicion. She was young enough, with a face just a shade too wide for beauty, capable square hands, neat inexpensive suit. Isaac Jamison had noted the worn edge of the red leather shoulder bag, the alligator pumps, well-cared-for, but showing age. He guessed that this girl worked, understood the value of money, was willing to buy the best whenever she could afford it.
Her eyes were her best feature. Blue-gray, direct, without a shred of coyness. And she had the faint antagonism of the self-respecting person not accustomed to contacting the police.
“The man outside said you are a special assistant, Lieutenant. How much authority do you have?”
Isaac Jamison’s voice was low, with undertones of warmth. His voice was one of the reasons Deputy Chief Ringold had assigned him to this thankless job. His voice and his smile. His face had a long, bleak bone structure, severe, a thin-lipped mouth with the smallest hint of the fanatic, his beard blue-heavy under the dark skin. But the smile made him warm and human. He used it often in this new job, calculatingly, watching its effect.
He smiled and said, “Enough authority, Miss Dobbs, to refer you higher if this should turn out to be a large-scale crime wave you’re reporting to me.”
Some of the suspicion went out of her eyes and she relaxed a little. “Maybe I’m giving all this too much importance.” “Tell me about it and we’ll see.” He composed himself to listen. That was his job. Listening.
Ringold, the new Deputy Chief had said to him, “Jamie, we’ll have efficiency here. Every crackpot in the city wants to bend my ear. I can’t listen to all of them, and we can’t afford not to listen. One out of every fifty has something we should look into. So you do the screening. I’ll give you a nice office, a title that doesn’t mean anything, and you listen. You’re a smart cop, Jamie. You’re relieved of all other assignments.”
Protest had been no good. Ringold had listened to his objections with gradually increasing coolness and at last Jamison had stepped, knowing that it was no good to go on. His active cases were reassigned and he had landed behind the big dark desk. Case and Lobund called him ‘our new receptionist’.
The worst of it was that Jamison knew in his heart that Ringold was right. The big city department needed a phony special assistant to screen out the cranks.
In one month behind the desk, only two cranks had managed to bull their way through him to Ringold, and he had opened up two cases, one giving a little more dope on a known car-theft ring, the other resulting in the booking of an elderly landlady for extortion. The thing most disturbing to Isaac Jamison was that he had to turn the data over to the appropriate departments. Following through had been his doctrine for eight years with the department.
The girl looked down at her hands for a moment, as though to compose her thoughts, and said, “I’m a stenographer and file clerk for Ballou and Stark, a wholesale drug company. It’s large, as you may know, with about thirty in the office. A year ago they hired a salesman named John Kiern. I thought he was fresh at first. His territory is in the city here, so he was in the office a lot. He kept asking me for two months, and finally I went out with him.” She flushed slightly.
“He wasn’t like I had thought. He was... nice. I had fun. We got along nicely. We were even talking about marriage. But to tell the truth, he wasn’t doing very well as a salesman. They pay a small salary and then a commission scale. Some weeks he’d make sixty dollars and then he’d drop down to thirty or so. Along with the thirty-seven fifty I make, it didn’t seem like enough. I told him so and it hurt his pride. He began to act... well, queer. A month ago he changed. He told me that everything was going to be fine and I didn’t have to worry any more. He got me this ring.”
She held her hand out. It was a quite respectable diamond. Isaac guessed that it was a full carat.
“Nice,” he said.
“Too nice. I told him that the man from the store would probably be around to take it back. He laughed at me. He said it was paid in full. He acted as though he were on top of the world for two weeks. And then he disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“He just didn’t come to work. He left the company car in the lot. The attendant had the keys. All his display items were in the car. They’re still holding a check for him at the office. Back commissions. A small check.”
“You tried to find him?”
“He lived in a one-room apartment on Lincoln Avenue. Number 1281. I thought he was drunk, or something silly like that, and I waited three days before I went there. He had moved out and left no forwarding address.”
Jamison frowned slightly. Before he could speak, the girl said:
“I know what you’re thinking. That he got tired of me and sick of the job and just moved away. But I know that isn’t so. It couldn’t be!”
“Mind telling me why not?”
She lifted her chin. “I’m not the most fascinating creature in the city, Lieutenant, but I know that John Kiern was in love with me. It wasn’t a case of my being fooled by a line. If you want me to put it plainly, Lieutenant, he was on the hook.”
“I can’t exactly write that in a report, Miss Dobbs. How about relatives?”
“That was one of the things we have... had in common, Lieutenant. Both of us are completely alone. I have an older sister that I heartily dislike. She is in Alaska with her husband. He has two cousins in Omaha, but they weren’t in touch and he’s never seen them.”
“How long have you been with Ballou and Stark?”
“Three years. I reported for work there the day after my twenty-first birthday.”
“Tell me just why you came here.”
For the first time she lost her crispness. “Johnny was hard up, Lieutenant. And... and suddenly he seemed to have money. He didn’t report for work on a Monday, two weeks ago yesterday. The previous Saturday night he took me to a nightclub, and I know the evening cost him close to forty dollars. We had a Sunday afternoon date and he told me he was thinking of buying a car. He cancelled our Sunday night date because he said he had to see some people. I think, maybe because I always suspected he was a little weak, that he found some crooked way to get money. And I think he’s dead.”
Isaac Jamison raised one dark eyebrow.
“Dead?”
She didn’t sniffle and dig around in her purse for a handkerchief. She kept those blue-gray eyes on him while tears gathered in the lower lids, broke free, rolled down her cheeks.
“When you love somebody, Lieutenant, it makes sort of a bond between you. Lots of people know when somebody they love is in trouble. I woke up after midnight Sunday and I had been crying in my sleep. I went down to work in the morning and I knew that something bad had happened.”
“But you didn’t go to his place for three days?”
“Stupid pride, Lieutenant. I know that now. But he checked out early Sunday evening. It wouldn’t have done any good if I had gone.”
“Again, Miss Dobbs, there’s nothing I can put in a report.”
She quickly wiped her cheeks. “Does that mean that you won’t investigate?”
He shrugged. “I can take a description and turn it over to missing persons. Do you have a picture?”
She took it out of her purse. A snapshot, hand tinted. Jamison saw a fairly heavy young man smiling up at him out of the picture. He was blond, with a ruddy complexion, hairline beginning to recede. Though he didn’t look over twenty-six, it was easy to see what he would look like at fifty. The young man’s mouth was too small.