The name on Apartment 206’s vestibule mail box was J. M. Wales.
I pushed 206’s button. When the locked door buzzed off I went into the building, past the elevator to the stairs, and up a flight. 206 was just around the corner from the stairs.
The apartment door was opened by a tall, slim man of thirty-something in neat dark clothes. He had narrow dark eyes set in a long pale face. There was some gray in the dark hair brushed flat to his scalp.
“Miss Hambleton,” I said.
“Uh — what about her?” His voice was smooth, but not too smooth to be agreeable.
“I’d like to see her.”
His upper eyelids came down a little and the brows over them came a little closer together. He asked, “Is it—?” and stopped, watching me steadily.
I didn’t say anything. Presently he finished his question:
“Something to do with a telegram?”
“Yeah.”
His long face brightened immediately. He asked:
“You’re from her father?”
“Yeah.”
He stepped back and swung the door wide open, saying:
“Come in. Major Hambleton’s wire came to her only a few minutes ago. He said someone would call.”
We went through a small passageway into a sunny living-room that was cheaply furnished, but neat and clean enough.
“Sit down,” the man said, pointing at a brown rocking chair.
I sat down. He sat on the burlap-covered sofa facing me. I looked around the room. I didn’t see anything to show that a woman was living there.
He rubbed the long bridge of his nose with a longer forefinger and asked slowly:
“You brought the money?”
I said I’d feel more like talking with her there.
He looked at the finger with which he had been rubbing his nose, and then up at me, saying softly:
“But I’m her friend.”
I said, “Yeah?” to that.
“Yes,” he repeated. He frowned slightly, drawing back the corners of his thin-lipped mouth. “I’ve only asked whether you’ve brought the money.”
I didn’t say anything.
“The point is,” he said quite reasonably, “that if you brought the money she doesn’t expect you to hand it over to anybody except her. If you didn’t bring it she doesn’t want to see you. I don’t think her mind can be changed about that. That’s why I asked if you had brought it.”
“I brought it.”
He looked doubtfully at me. I showed him the money I had got from the bank. He jumped up briskly from the sofa.
“I’ll have her here in a minute or two,” he said over his shoulder as his long legs moved him toward the door. At the door he stopped to ask: “Do you know her? Or shall I have her bring means of identifying herself?”
“That would be best,” I told him.
He went out, leaving the corridor door open.
III
In five minutes he was back with a slender blonde girl of twenty-three in pale green silk. The looseness of her small mouth and the puffiness around her blue eyes weren’t yet pronounced enough to spoil her prettiness.
I stood up.
“This is Miss Hambleton,” he said.
She gave me a swift glance and then lowered her eyes again, nervously playing with the strap of a handbag she held.
“You can identify yourself?” I asked.
“Sure,” the man said. “Show them to him, Sue.”
She opened the bag, brought out some papers and things, and held them up for me to take.
“Sit down, sit down,” the man said as I took them.
They sat on the sofa. I sat in the rocking chair again and examined the things she had given me. There were two letters addressed to Sue Hambleton here, her father’s telegram welcoming her home, a couple of receipted department store bills, an automobile driver’s license, and a savings account pass book that showed a balance of less than ten dollars.
By the time I had finished my examination the girl’s embarrassment was gone. She looked levelly at me, as did the man beside her. I felt in my pocket, found my copy of the photograph New York had sent us at the beginning of the hunt, and looked from it to her.
“Your mouth could have shrunk, maybe,” I said, “but how could your nose have got that much longer?”
“If you don’t like my nose,” she said, “how’d you like to go to hell?” Her face had turned red.
“That’s not the point. It’s a swell nose, but it’s not Sue’s.” I held the photograph out to her. “See for yourself.”
She glared at the photograph and then at the man.
“What a smart guy you are,” she told him.
He was watching me with dark eyes that had a brittle shine to them between narrow-drawn eyelids. He kept on watching me while he spoke to her out the side of his mouth, crisply:
“Pipe down.”
She piped down. He sat and watched me. I sat and watched him. A clock ticked seconds away behind me. His eyes began shifting their focus from one of my eyes to the other. The girl sighed.
He said in a low voice: “Well?”
I said: “You’re in a hole.”
“What can you make out of it?” he asked casually.
“Conspiracy to defraud.”
The girl jumped up and hit one of his shoulders angrily with the back of a hand, crying:
“What a smart guy you are, to get me in a jam like this. It was going to be duck soup — yeh! Eggs in the coffee — yeh! Now look at you. You haven’t even got guts enough to tell this guy to go chase himself.” She spun around to face me, pushing her red face down at me — I was still sitting in the rocker — snarling: “Well, what are you waiting for? Waiting to be kissed good-by? We don’t owe you anything, do we? We didn’t get any of your lousy money, did we? Outside, then. Take the air. Dangle.”
“Stop it, sister,” I growled. “You’ll bust something.”
The man said:
“For God’s sake stop that bawling, Peggy, and give somebody else a chance.” He addressed me: “Well, what do you want?”
“How’d you get into this?” I asked.
He spoke quickly, eagerly:
“A fellow named Kenny gave me that stuff and told me about this Sue Hambleton, and her old man having plenty. I thought I’d give it a whirl. I figured the old man would either wire the dough right off the reel or wouldn’t send it at all. I didn’t figure on this send-a-man stuff. Then when his wire came, saying he was sending a man to see her, I ought to have dropped it.
“But hell! Here was a man coming with a grand in cash. That was too good to let go of without a try. It looked like there still might be a chance of copping, so I got Peggy to do Sue for me. If the man was coming today, it was a cinch he belonged out here on the Coast, and it was an even bet he wouldn’t know Sue, would only have a description of her. From what Kenny had told me about her, I knew Peggy would come pretty close to fitting her description. I still don’t see how you got that photograph. Television? I only wired the old man yesterday. I mailed a couple of letters to Sue, here, yesterday, so we’d have them with the other identification stuff to get the money from the telegraph company on.”
“Kenny gave you the old man’s address?”
“Sure he did.”
“Did he give you Sue’s?”
“No.”
“How’d Kenny get hold of the stuff?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Where’s Kenny now?”
“I don’t know. He was on his way east, with something else on the fire, and couldn’t fool with this. That’s why he passed it on to me.”
“Big-hearted Kenny,” I said. “You know Sue Hambleton?”