“All right,” grinned Pratt. “When will you get over there?”
“I’ve got a conference with my wife’s lawyer in ten minutes. It’ll be two thirty before I can make it. But you be sure and take the letters over there right away. I’ll get down just as soon as I can.”
“All right. Forty thousand bucks, cash, and no funny stuff!” warned Pratt, and hung up the telephone.
Then he called the bank of which he was the head, talked with the girl at the telephone desk.
“Listen, Sadie, a fellow’s going to call up for me right away. Don’t tell him I’m out. Tell him I’m busy talking on the other telephone, but that you’ll have me call as soon as I’m at liberty. Get that? G’-by.”
And Albert Pratt sprinted from the booth, climbed in a cab and made time back to his bank.
The telephone girl greeted him with a wise smile.
“That fellow called you twice. I told him you were still talking. Want him?”
“Yeah. That’s a good kid. You rate a box of candy on that, Sadie.”
Whereupon Albert Pratt passed into his private office, picked up the telephone and heard Stapleton’s voice.
“I’ve been trying to get you for ten minutes, but you were talking.”
“Yes, a very important call from a stockbroker. You’ve heard something from your people?”
“Yes. They’ve stuck me for forty thousand dollars!”
“What? You’re crazy!”
“No, no. This chap who called knew his business. He threatened to take the letters to my wife’s attorney, and I couldn’t have that. It would have nicked me for half a million.”
“I see,” remarked Albert Pratt. “Well, of course, you know your own business best. Personally, I’d have told ’em to go to the devil. But you’re fully decided to pay the forty thousand dollars?”
“Yes, yes! Now this fellow’s going to bring the letters in to you and leave ’em with you. I can’t get down right away. He’s a new party, some one I don’t know. I don’t even know how he got the letters; but I’m playing a little foxy with him. He’s going to leave them with you. I told him he could trust you. Now I want you to be sure they are the missing two letters. Look at the handwriting and everything, will you?”
“Certainly, Mr. Stapleton, but you’ll understand I’ll have to protect the interests of both parties. Much as I despise all forms of blackmail, if this chap leaves any letters with me to be held until you pay forty thousand dollars, I’ll have to demand the forty thousand before I turn them over. You appreciate my position in that, don’t you?”
“Of course. Hang it, man, I want to pay forty thousand for those letters. When I get them I’ll be the most relieved man in the world. Don’t worry about that, but get the letters.”
“Very well,” said Mr. Pratt with a cold smile. “I’ll keep you advised.” And he hung up the telephone.
“Going to lunch,” he informed the chief clerk.
Mr. Albert Pratt treated himself to a very good lunch, and returned to the bank at one o’clock. Ten minutes later he called Mr. George Stapleton on the telephone.
“The chap has just left those letters,” he said. “And they’re the letters all right. I tried to beat him down a few thousand, but he wouldn’t come down a penny. He seemed a mighty tough customer, and I guess you did the wise thing. I’m holding them until you can check out the forty thousand; and then he’s left positive, but confidential, instructions as to what I’m to do with the forty thousand.”
“I’ll be there inside of half an hour!” yelled Stapleton. “I’m sorry you even tried to beat him down. Almost anything might have happened, and I must have those letters, simply must have them. My wife’s attorney would wring the last cent out of me if he even knew of them.”
And Sidney Zoom hung up the telephone, nodded to the girl who waited at his side.
“Go down and strut your stuff, Miss Thurmond. You look great. Now see if you can act the part.”
And Vera Thurmond, attired in the garb of a flashy burlesque actress, one of the type who stops at nothing, nodded eagerly and made for the door.
VII
Albert Pratt looked up as the brass doorknob turned.
The mahogany door of his private office swung inward, and there came to his nostrils the assault of cheap perfume copiously applied.
“This is a private office!” rasped Albert Pratt.
“Go sit on a tack!” retorted the short-skirted female who strode into the office, slammed the door behind her, and dropped into a chair.
One leg crossed over the other, disclosing the top of a meshwork stocking, a liberal expanse of bare flesh. The reddened lips were fairly dripping paint. The cheeks were crimson, and the eyes flashed. The heaving bosom could be seen beneath the filmy waist.
“What a hell of a guy you turned out to be,” she snorted.
Albert Pratt reached a bony finger for a button.
“Don’t do that,” snorted the woman. “Wait till you hear the stuff I gotta spill and you won’t let your finger get within a million miles of that button. Press it an’ you’re goin’ to jail!”
Albert Pratt hesitated.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Myrtle Ramsay!”
The banker’s face paled slightly. He stiffened in his seat.
“And you want?”
“Those two letters you snitched on me this morning.”
Albert Pratt pressed the tips of his fingers firmly together. His lips clamped into a line of grim determination.
“Those two letters were taken by some person whom I do not know. They have been placed with me in an escrow for the payment of money.”
The girl elevated one knee as she scraped a match across the sole of her foot, applied the flame to a cigarette which was placed between her vivid lips.
“Horse radish!” she said. “Bob Dundley brought in the whole ten letters. He’ll swear to it and I’ll swear to it. I was outside waiting in the car. I seen him come in, an’ I seen him come out. Don’t think Mrs. Ramsay raised no foolish children by the name of Myrtle who would trust any Bob Dundley with ten thousand berries of her money.”
Pratt shook his head.
“There’s a mistake somewhere.”
“You’re damn tootin’ there’s a mistake. You made it when you lifted those two letters. They call that by an ugly name down at the district attorney’s office. You fork over those two letters an’ be damned speedy about it, too.”
Pratt shook his head, not quite so emphatically as he had before, but, nevertheless, in a strong negative.
“No. They are held in trust.”
The woman blew out a cloud of smoke, reached for the telephone.
“All right. I’ll just call your bluff, you bat-eared, white-eyed bum. I’ll just call up Papa Stapleton and tell him not to worry, that I’ll swear the letters are forgeries if anybody tries to use ’em. If you’re holding ’em for some one else, you just turn ’em back to that bozo, an’ tell him he’s goin’ to be arrested for blackmail if he even tries to use those letters.
“Old Stapleton was a luke-warm daddy, but he used me square when he decorated the mahogany with the ten grand. That’s the price I made, an’ that’s the price I stick to. I’m a woman of my word. Maybe I could have got more with a breach of promise suit, but juries don’t figure much heart balm for a poor jane that has to work the chorus of a burlesque—”
And the woman lifted the receiver from the hook.
Albert Pratt’s hand crushed down upon the hook, stopped the connection. There were beads of perspiration on his forehead.
“Listen,” he soothed. “You want money. Here’s your chance. Take five thousand dollars and walk out of town for an afternoon.”