“Yes,” Shale said. “What do I do after I get your purse?”
“Hide it under your coat,” she said. “Hold it in place with your arm so you won’t drop it. Leave the apartment. Go to the office of my attorney and tell him I expect to be there later on, that you had a drink with me, and found I had inadvertently left my purse in your car, that you want to leave it there with them so I can pick it up whenever I come in. Now, have you got that straight?”
“Straight as a string,” Shale said.
“A little later on,” she said, “we could go out and have a drink and perhaps a dance or two. Would you like that?”
“Very, very much,” he told her.
Her laugh was low-throated, seductive. “So would I,” she said. “By!”
She dropped the receiver into position and carefully noted the time on her wrist watch.
Chapter 21
Joan Harpler looked across the desk at Frank Duryea with frank, steady eyes, eyes in which there was the hint of a smile.
“I feel like a notorious woman,” she said.
“I’m sorry you’ve been inconvenienced, but I had no idea there’d been any notoriety. I thought I’d handled that angle very carefully.”
“Oh, but you have. I didn’t say I was notorious. I said I felt like a notorious woman.”
There was something about this young woman that bothered the district attorney. She had a calm assurance, a poise which almost made him feel ill at ease. Trying to analyze it, he thought that perhaps it came from a complete lack of nervousness. Most of the witnesses who sat across that desk from him had something to conceal, something that was preying on their minds. And, knowing that their consciences had a tender spot, they were in fear that the district attorney’s questions might suddenly jab at the sore place — and so they schooled themselves, behind a casual mask, to conceal any little wince which might have come from this sudden prodding. But this young woman apparently regarded her visit as merely an entertaining interlude.
“You look far from being a notorious woman,” Duryea said. “You look young and rather unsophisticated.”
She laughed at him. “I’ll have to remedy that. Young women rather resent being referred to as unsophisticated these days.”
“Well,” Duryea went on, “what I meant was that you’re hardly the type one would expect to find sailing alone in a private yacht. Don’t you usually have parties with you when you cruise?”
“Oh, sometimes — when they’re congenial. But I get bored with these average yachting parties, men on the make, girls trying to have a fling, too much liquor — and then your yacht’s a mess afterwards. I have a yacht because I like the sea. I like big game fishing. I have a few friends who have similar tastes.”
“Isn’t that rather a large yacht for a person who likes to cruise with a small party?”
“She’s larger than I would have selected if I’d been building it. I picked it up last year. Naturally, I got it at a bargain. And she’s a dream. Now, I’m warning you. I know you didn’t get me up here simply to ask me about my yacht and my tastes for yachting. You’re sort of feeling me out before you start swapping punches. But if you get me started talking about the Albatross, you won’t hear anything else. So you’d better come right to the point.”
Duryea smiled. “Even conceding that you have the most marvelous yacht on the coast, don’t you find it rather inconvenient cruising alone?”
“Yes. I don’t very often do it.”
“And I gather this trip to Santa Delbarra was an exception?”
“In a way, yes.”
“Would it be fair to ask what made it an exception?”
She laughed. “You certainly maneuver very adroitly, Mr. Duryea. For a moment I thought that talk of the yacht was merely a preliminary sparring. You launched your attack so smoothly I didn’t see it coming.”
He matched her smile, but beneath the courtesy of that smile was a steady insistence.
“A young man in whom I find myself taking more and more of an interest is getting a little — well, a little too independent. No. I don’t really mean that, Mr. Duryea. It isn’t that he’s in-dependent, but that he wants to rob me of my independence. Our friendship has progressed to that stage where he thinks that he has the right to tell me what I shall do and what I shall not do. And so I found it very convenient to take a trip without telling him where I was going or with whom. Afterwards, when the questioning and protests would come, I could wait until the smoke had blown away, proved to him I had been taking a cruise all by myself, and placed him in the position of being very much in the wrong. I thought it would be good discipline — and if he made too much of an issue, I would realize in time how very unfortunate it would be to have him in the role of a jealous husband.”
“Isn’t that going to a lot of trouble just to train a young man?”
“Training a young man is a lot of trouble, anyway,” she laughed. “However, I suddenly found that I was far more fond of this person than I had realized. I happen to value my in-dependence very highly. So there you are, Mr. Duryea. Rather a bad combination, one which requires thought — more than thought, meditation. And so you have the spectacle of a young woman traveling all by herself on a yacht.”
“I see. And your trip Sunday afternoon?”
She made a little grimace. “That trip! I certainly wish I’d kept out of the whole business. I find myself in the position of the innocent bystander who is collecting most of the bruises.”
“Hardly that bad, is it?”
“Almost. It’s decidedly inconvenient.”
“Perhaps you could tell me about that trip with the same frankness with which you’ve discussed the other?”
“More so because it’s so much less personal and because it is so evidently connected with the case.”
He smiled. “I’ll have to acknowledge that that was rather neatly delivered — even if it was below the belt.”
“I’m sorry. It was such a temptation. I should have concealed the barb a little more. Well, Miss Moline came aboard to change her clothes. I offered her the hospitality of my yacht. I thought that was the least one could do for a fellow yachts-man under the circumstances.”
“And then?”
“This young man — Shale — went ashore. I certainly felt sorry for him, watching him trudging along with his sopping wet clothes clinging to him. He was trying to carry it off with something of an air of nonchalance. I certainly sympathized with him, and yet I had to laugh.”
“You enjoy your laughs as you go through life?”
“Frankly, I do — and a good many of them are on myself.”
“Miss Moline was changing her clothes while you were watching young Shale?”
“Yes, and then she made me a proposition. She said that it was exceedingly important to her to find out who went aboard the Gypsy Queen. Aside from the officers, of course.”
“Did she say why she wanted to know?”
“Not in so many words. But she seemed trying to give the impression that some person had been expected to join the yachting party and hadn’t. She was anxious to find out whether that person had been delayed or decided not to join up. How-ever, that’s merely conjecture on my part. Shall we strike it from the record?”
“Exactly what was her proposition?”
“She wanted to know if I was open to a financial proposition. I told her I wasn’t, and then she explained what it meant to her and said that she’d get someone to keep watch, but that there was no place from which they could watch to advantage except from my yacht.”