Angrily Sargent tore up the sheet of paper and threw the scraps into his ample wastebasket. He was working here as an editor, not as a detective. He owed Chapman nothing.
Sargent had had just about enough for one day. He picked up a copy of Turkey Talk, rolled it up and stuck it in his pocket. Then he stepped out of his office, preparatory to “calling on an advertiser.”
But he didn’t just then, for someone was passing Mildred O’Kelly’s office desk and coming toward him. He knew who it was instantly, Chapman’s new employee, although when Chapman had interviewed her there had been so many blondes present that they had all looked alike to Sargent. Now he wondered why he hadn’t been able to spot this one, for certainly she stood out from all the other blondes the way a sunflower stands out in a field of daisies.
She was tall, at least five feet nine. She was slender yet filled out in the right places. Her complexion was better than any schoolgirl’s, for she had improved on nature with a wonderful blend of creams, powder and rouge — and mascara and false eyelashes. She was blond, oh, gorgeously blond and she wore a tailored suit with a sweater that would most certainly have been banned by the Will Hays office.
She smiled at Frank Sargent and he became so rattled that he bumped the door of Jim Robertson’s office.
“I’ll bet you’re one of the editors,” she said in a voice that tinkled.
“Yeah, sure,” Sargent mumbled. “Turkey Talk.”
“Oh, Turkey Talk. Then this is a pleasure. I’m your new advertising representative. Why, you’re my boss!”
“Huh?” said Sargent.
“But of course! Mr. Chapman said we would work closely together. I think that’s marvelous, don’t you?”
“Yeah, sure, it certainly is. Uh, sure!”
“Miss Prescott!” exclaimed Ben O. Chapman, stepping out of his office. “What luck?”
“Oh, marvelous, Mr. Chapman! Simply marvelous. I called on Mr. Eli Crombie of Crombie & Company, and you know what the dear boy did? He invited me to have dinner with him. Isn’t that marvelous? A prospective advertiser taking me to dinner. Oh, I’m so excited, I just couldn’t make another call today. But tomorrow...”
Sargent reeled out of the office.
Chapter Eight
The Harcross Apartments turned out to be a four-story, somewhat grimy walkup on Clark Street. From the mailbox tags Sargent learned that Ben O. Chapman’s apartment was on the third floor. He had no difficulty finding it once he reached the third floor; the din could come only from Chapman’s party. He rang the doorbell and waited for a full minute, then rang again. Still receiving no answer, he opened the door and became a member of the party.
The main part of it was in Chapman’s living room, lit up ridiculously with low-watt electric light bulbs concealed in paper Japanese lanterns.
Sargent would have guessed from the noise that there were at least fifty people at the party, but actually there were only a dozen or so. It was a loud dozen, however.
Two or three men and that many girls were crowded around a player piano singing “Margie.” Near by a man and a girl were somehow seated on a single armchair, necking.
Ben O. Chapman, himself, was sitting cross-legged on the floor, haranguing three or four guests who were crowded around him in various postures.
He was saying loudly, “There I was, one of the biggest men in the city, making fifty dollars a week. That may not sound like much to you, but you must remember that this was twenty years ago in a small town. People used to point me out on the street... Hello, Sargent, get yourself some ginger ale in the kitchen. I told you to bring a bottle of liquor, didn’t I?... So then I got wind of the Sugar Beet Review, a run-down magazine that no one thought much of. I took it over and made it the best trade journal in the country and...”
Sargent found the kitchen and in it Miss Prescott, the new advertising representative of Turkey Talk wrestling with an uncouth, bald-headed man, who was drooling at the mouth. Miss Prescott was holding her own, but she seemed glad to see Sargent.
“Why, Frankie!” she cried. “I had no idea you were coming here. I’m so glad. I want you to meet Eli Crombie, a very dear friend. Mr. Crombie is president of Eli Crombie & Company.”
Mr. Crombie glowered at Sargent, because he had interrupted the wrestling match, but stuck out a fat hand. “H’arya, Frankie... Any friend of Eileen’s is a friend of mine.”
“Hello, Eli,” Sargent said shortly. “Ben told me I’d find a drink out here.”
“Sure, help yourself,” said Eli Crombie generously. “I brung a couple of quarts of rye. Help yourself.”
Sargent found a bottle that someone besides Crombie and Eileen had been helping themselves from and poured out about an inch into a glass. While he was searching for ginger ale or soda Eileen Prescott came up behind him and draped an arm about his neck.
“Make me a drink, too, Frankie. Now, don’t be jealous of Frankie, Eli. He’s really my boss and I’ve got to be nice to him. Don’t I, Frankie?”
“Sure,” said Sargent, “but be nice to Eli, too.”
“Oh, I are, aren’t I, Eli?”
“Sure, babe, but whaddya say we go somewhere where it ain’t so crowded? This party’s kinda dull anyway.”
Another party guest kicked open the kitchen door. “Ben says to come out, he’s going to put on a show.”
In the living room the player piano was silent and the guests were all squatted on the floor, facing the front of the room.
Ben Chapman, wearing a black Hallowe’en mask, popped out of a bedroom door. He was whirling a deadly-looking Malay kris over his head.
All the girls squealed.
“Yi-yi-yi!” yipped Ben O. Chapman, the president of Business Journals, Incorporated. “Scared you, didn’t I? I picked this up in a little shop down in New Orleans when I was publishing the Sugar Beet Review. A Dutch sailor brought it there, the man told me. Claimed it came direct from Borneo. Now, wait a minute and I’ll really show you something.” Chapman ducked back into the bedroom.
“Is he nuts?” asked Eli Crombie, breathing heavily down Sargent’s neck.
“No,” said Sargent. “Not nuts, just a little squirrelly.”
Ben Chapman’s voice came from the bedroom. “Pull yourselves together, now; don’t be afraid of this one.”
He came out still wearing the Hallowe’en mask, but waving a five-foot curved saber. “This is the Scimitar of Hassan,” he declaimed. “Hassan Ibn Sabah, the Old Man of the Mountain, who formed the Order of Assassins in the twelfth century—”
“Jeez!” cried a voice in the rear of the room. “I’m cockeyed drunk!”
Sargent, whirling, saw redheaded Lew Thayer in the open doorway. Thayer’s hair was disheveled, his face had a three days’ growth of red beard, and his clothes were soiled and creased.
“ ’Scuse me, folks,” Thayer said, bowing drunkenly. “I musta got the wrong door. Maybe the wrong building.”
“Shut the door, Thayer!” snapped Ben O. Chapman through his false face.
Thayer’s head came up like that of a colored man walking through a cemetery at midnight and having a skeleton pop up in front of him.
“Who’s that talkin’ to me?” he yelled. “Ya wanna make something of it? Put up your dukes! I ain’t ’fraida no one, not even with your cheese-knife.”
“You’re drunk, Thayer,” said Ben O. Chapman.