The men entered the apartment. Heavy drapes covered the windows. Thick rugs were under foot. Deep overstuffed chairs were invitingly placed beneath the mellow illumination of reading lamps. The air was heavy with tobacco smoke. A siphon of carbonated water, a bottle of Scotch, a tray of ice and two glasses were on a small taboret between two chairs which had been drawn toward the center of the room.
A man in a dinner jacket stood very erect and dignified. He did not bow. His eyes stared steadily at the men who had entered. He was in the late twenties or early thirties. His forehead was high. Dark hair had grizzled somewhat at his temples. His eyes were steady and appraising. He didn’t speak until Duncan had turned to him. Then he bowed from the waist and said, “How are you, Mr. Duncan? Perhaps you don’t remember me. I’m Wickes — Thomas W. Wickes. Carl Thorne introduced me to you a little over a year ago.”
Duncan mechanically shook hands, the handshake of a politician who must meet hundreds of people whom he cannot remember and yet must not offend.
“How are you?” he asked readily, but with no warmth in his tone. “Your face is familiar. Shake hands with Sam Moraine. You’ve probably heard of him — Moraine Advertising and Distributing Company.”
The man moved with well-timed, athletic grace.
“Glad to know you,” he said, muscular fingers closing about Moraine’s hand. “Doris — Mrs. Bender — wanted me to come up and give her some advice. I told her the only thing to do was to get in touch with the district attorney at once.”
Duncan sat down, crossed his legs.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
Wickes glanced over at Doris Bender. She started to talk.
“We can speak frankly,” she said. “Tom Wickes understands everything. He’s been in my confidence from the start. You remember that I told you I thought Ann had been murdered...”
She broke off and turned to Sam Moraine and said, by way of explanation, “She’s my sister, or, rather, my half-sister. She lives in Saxonville with her husband, Dr. Richard Hartwell, a dentist. She disappeared, and I thought she’d been murdered. Frankly, I thought Richard might have murdered her. He acted very queerly about it all. He said she frequently threatened to disappear. He didn’t seem to care, particularly, yet he was nervous.”
The woman paused, glanced about at her little circle of listeners, Moraine’s eyes showed frank interest.
She was between twenty-eight and thirty, and vivacious. Her hands were constantly in motion, making swift little gestures. Her eyes and hair were dark, her lips very red.
She lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, puffed out a long ribbon of thin blue smoke, turned wide eyes back to the district attorney.
Duncan puffed out cigar smoke and muttered, “Go ahead.”
“About an hour ago,” she said, “I received a special delivery letter. It looked strange right from the start — you know, the way it was addressed and everything. I opened it and there was a demand that I should pay ten thousand dollars for Ann’s ransom. If I didn’t pay it, I was never to see her again. If I called in the officers, they were going to kill her.”
Duncan removed the cigar from his lips. His eyes showed sudden interest.
“Where’s the note?” he asked.
She looked across at Tom Wickes, who pulled an envelope from his pocket and handed it to the district attorney.
Duncan held it by the edges, took out the folded sheet of paper. “Let’s be careful not to rub off any fingerprints,” he said. “There’s just a chance we might develop something.”
He unfolded the single sheet of paper, read the message, held it so Moraine and Barney Morden could see the contents.
“What do you make of it, Sam?” he asked.
“Printed with a rubber stamp,” Moraine said. “It’s a lot of work to do that. It’s one of those outfits they sell for kids. You can only set up one or two lines at a time. Someone went to a lot of work on this.” The letter read —
“MRS. BENDER:
IF YOU EVER WANT TO SEE ANN HARTWELL AGAIN GET TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS IN OLD TWENTY DOLLAR BILLS AND WAIT FOR A SECOND MESSAGE. TAKE THE MONEY WHERE WE TELL YOU TO AND ANN HARTWELL CAN COME BACK SAFE AND SOUND. IF YOU CALL IN THE POLICE OR LET THE NEWSPAPERS KNOW ABOUT IT SHE’LL BE KILLED.”
There was no signature on the message, but, at the bottom, where a signature would have been, appeared four capital X’s in a row.
“What do you make of it, Barney?” Phil Duncan asked.
“Looks phoney,” Barney Morden said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know, it just does. Let’s get in touch with the postal authorities and see if we can’t trace that special delivery letter. That rubber-stamp address is distinctive. Perhaps some mail man picked it up from a box and would remember it.”
“But,” Doris Bender cautioned, “we can’t let anyone know about it. We mustn’t notify the authorities.”
“You’ve notified me,” Duncan told her. “I’m the district attorney.”
“I know,” she said, “but you don’t count.”
“Thanks,” Duncan retorted ironically.
“Oh, I didn’t mean it that way, Mr. Duncan. You see, I’m not consulting you as an official, just as a friend. That’s what I meant. Through Carl, I feel I know you informally — no, I don’t mean that — I mean unofficially.”
Duncan said in steady, measured tones, “Now, let’s get this straight: Are you consulting me as the district attorney?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then my duty is clear. I must notify the federal men and probably the police.”
“Then the newspapers will get hold of it.”
“They might through the police but they won’t through the federal men. We could put the thing in their hands. That is, you could. I wouldn’t want to do it, if it were going to be handled that way.”
“Why not?”
“Because it would build up ill-feeling between the police and myself. There’s too much of that already.”
“But I don’t want to notify the federal authorities,” Doris Bender said.
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to pay the money.”
Phil Duncan studied the tip of his cigar, glanced almost surreptitiously at Sam Moraine, encountered an expressionless face, turned to Barney Morden and received an almost imperceptible nod.
“Why didn’t you pay the money without calling on my office? Surely you must realize that these people may have the place watched. They may have seen me come here.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Well, let’s think of it now.”
“What should I do?”
“The only advice I can give you officially is to notify the authorities.”
“I don’t want to notify the authorities.”
“Then,” said Duncan, getting to his feet, “if you’re not going to follow my advice, I can be of no further assistance to you.”
She clung to his arm. “Oh,” she said, “but you can’t!”
He shook her loose, turned on her with some show of exasperation.
“You little fool!” he said. “Can’t you see what I’m doing? I’m giving you an opportunity to pay the money, if that’s what you want to do. This may be a racket. It may be a genuine snatch. I don’t know; you don’t know. The only advice I can give you, as an official, is not to’ have anything to do with the crooks. That may be the wrong kind of advice. Perhaps the best thing to do is to pay the money and get your sister back. As an official, I can’t give you that advice. Therefore, I’m getting out and leaving you to your own devices.”
Wickes nodded his head emphatically.
“Clever,” he said. “Damn clever! He’s quite right, Doris. Let him go. He’s splendid.”