“He said he was a vice president in charge of personnel, but the way he acted I think he was a lawyer.”
“What makes you think so?”
“The way he threw questions at me.”
“What sort of questions?”
“He had me sit down and asked me a lot about my background, all about my parents, where I’d been employed, and so forth. Then he asked me to stand up and walk around. He was watching me like a hawk.”
“Passes?” Mason asked.
“I don’t think that was what he had in mind,” she said, “but he certainly was looking me over.”
“And then?”
“Then he asked me how my memory was and if I could give quick answers to questions and a lot of things like that, and then said, ‘What were you doing on the evening of the sixth of September?’
“Well, that hadn’t been too long ago, and after thinking a minute I told him that I had been in my apartment. I hadn’t had a date that night although it had been a Saturday, and he asked me who was with me and I told him no one. He wanted to know if I’d been there the entire evening and I told him I had. Then he asked me if I’d had any visitors at all during the evening, or had had any phone calls, and a lot of personal questions of that sort, and then asked me for my telephone number and told me that I was being seriously considered for the job.”
“Did he tell you what kind of a job it was?”
“He said it was going to be a rather peculiar job, that I was going to have to undergo intensive training in order to hold down the position but that I would be paid during the period of training. He said that the pay was at the rate of a thousand dollars a month, that the position would be highly confidential, and that I would be photographed from time to time in various types of clothing.”
“Did he say what type?” Mason asked.
“No, he didn’t. Of course I became suspicious right away and told him there was no use wasting each other’s time, did he mean I’d be posing in the nude, and he said definitely not, that it was perfectly legitimate and above board, but that I’d be photographed from time to time in various types of clothing; that the people I was to work for didn’t want posed photographs. They wanted pictures of young women on the street, that I wasn’t to be alarmed if someone pointed a camera at me and took pictures of me on the street, that that would be done often enough so that I would lose all self-consciousness.”
“And then what?”
“Well, then I went home and after I’d been there about two hours the telephone rang and he told me I’d been selected for the position.”
“You were unemployed at the time?” Mason asked.
“As it happened, I was. I’d been foolish enough to think I could support myself by selling encyclopedias on a door-to-door basis.”
“Couldn’t you?” Mason asked.
“I suppose I could,” she said, “if I’d absolutely had to. But I just didn’t have the stamina for it.”
“What do you mean?”
“You ring doorbells,” she said. “Someone comes to the door. You only get invited in about once out of five times if you’re really good. If you’re not, you’re apt not to get invited in at all.”
“If you do, what happens?”
“Then you get in and make your sales pitch and answer questions and arrange for a follow-up.”
“A follow-up?” Mason asked.
“Yes, you call during the daytime and the woman doesn’t like to take on that much of an obligation without consulting her husband. So if you’ve really made a good pitch you’re invited to come back in the evening when he’s home.”
“And you didn’t like it?” Mason asked.
“I liked it all right but it was just too darned exhausting. In order to stay with a job of that sort you have to develop a shell. You become as thoroughly professional as a — as a professional politician.”
“So you quit?” Mason asked.
“Well, I didn’t exactly quit but I made up my mind that I’d only work mornings. Afternoons are rather non-productive anyway because so many times you find women who are planning on going to a club meeting or have got their housework caught up and want to do something else during the afternoon. They are either not going to give you the time to let you talk with them or they’re impatient when they do talk with you.”
“I see,” Mason said. “Go ahead.”
“All right,” she said. “I went back to my apartment. It was a day when I was resting. I didn’t feel too full of pep anyway and I was taking life easy when the phone rang and I was told that I’d been selected and asked to come back to the hotel.”
“Then what?”
“Then I went to the hotel and everything had changed. There was no longer the woman at the desk, but this man was sitting in the parlor of the suite and he told me to sit down and he’d tell me something about the duties of the job.
“He gave me the plaid suit I was wearing this morning, the blouse, the stockings, even the underthings. He told me that this was to be my first assignment, that he wanted me to put on these clothes and wear them until I got accustomed to them, that I was to get them so they looked as though they were a part of my personality, and I was not to be at all self-conscious. He suggested that I could step in to the bedroom and try the clothes on.”
“Did you?” Mason asked.
“I did after some hesitancy,” she said, “and believe me, I saw that both doors into that bedroom were locked. I just had a feeling that I had got into something that was a little too much for me.”
“All right,” Mason said, “go on. What happened? Did he make passes?”
“No, I had the deal sized up a hundred per cent wrong. The man was a perfect gentleman. I put on the clothes and came out. He looked me over, nodded approvingly and then gave me a hat and told me I was to wear that hat. He told me that my duties would be very light for the first few days, that I was to sleep late the next morning, that I was to get up and have had breakfast by ten-thirty; that I was to go to the intersection of Hollywood and Vine and cross the street fifty times. At the end of that time I was free to go home.”
“Crossing the street from what direction?” Mason asked.
“He said it didn’t make any difference. Just walk back and forth across the street, being careful to obey the signals, and that I was to remember not to pay any attention to anybody who might be there with a camera.”
“Was somebody there?” Mason asked.
“Yes, a man was there with a camera. He took pictures mostly of me but occasionally he would take a picture of someone else.”
“And you walked back and forth?” Mason asked.
“That’s right.”
“The clothes fit you?”
“As though they’d been made for me. They were the ones I wore this morning.”
“Now then,” Mason said, “this is an important point. Were these clothes new or had they been worn?”
“They were new. They hadn’t been sent to the cleaner as nearly as I could tell. They had, however, evidently been made specially. There were even some bits of the basting threads left in the seams.”
“Did you,” Mason asked, “ever see any of the pictures?”
“No, just the man with the camera.”
“All right, go on. What happened?”
“I was told to telephone a certain unlisted number for instructions. I telephoned the number and was told that everything was okay. I had done all that I needed to do for the day and I could have the rest of the time off.”
“Then what?” Mason asked.
She said, “I did a little detective work on my own.”
“Such as what?”
“I called the unlisted number, disguised my voice and asked for Mac. The man said I had the wrong number and asked what number I was calling and I gave him the number. It was, of course, the correct number. He said I had made a mistake and had the wrong number. I told him that I didn’t, that I knew the number Mac had given me. So then he started getting a little mysterious and I think a little concerned. He said, ‘Look, this is a detective agency, Billings and Compton. We don’t have any Mac working for us,’ and I said, ‘A detective agency, huh?’ And slammed up the phone.”