On the way back to the stock department I had a bright idea. I still hadn’t seen Gwynne Ferris. If a unit of personnel could waylay me on Wednesday, why couldn’t I return the compliment on Thursday? Not by waylaying, but through channels. I would wait until I saw her to decide whether to invite her to Rusterman’s or take her home with me and let Wolfe do some work.
But I didn’t see her. Using my phone, I was told by the head of the reserve pool that he was sorry, but Miss Ferris had so much in her book that she would have to stay overtime, and he would greatly appreciate it if I could wait till morning. I told him sure.
I knocked off with the bunch, at quitting time, and going down in the elevator I couldn’t complain of lack of attention. Some stared at me openly, some glanced when they thought I wasn’t looking, and some used the corner-of-the-eye technique, but for each and all I was certainly it.
CHAPTER Sixteen
Wolfe was reading three books at once. He had been doing that, off and on, all the years I had been with him, and it always annoyed me because it seemed ostentatious. The three current items were The Sudden Guest by Christopher La Farge, Love from London by Gilbert Gabriel, and A Survey of Symbolic Logic by C.
I. Lewis. He would take turns with them, reading twenty or thirty pages in each at a time. In the office after dinner that evening he sat at his desk, having a wonderful time with his literary ring-around-a-rosy.
I had already, before dinner, reported to him on the day’s events, and presumably he had listened, but he had not asked a single question or made a single comment. For table conversation business was of course taboo, but it might have been supposed that with digestion proceeding under control and according to plan he would have one or two suggestions to offer. Not so.
I was at my own desk, cleaning and oiling my arsenal—two revolvers and an automatic. When he finished the second heat with A Survey of Symbolic Logic, dogeared it, put it down, and reached for Love from London, I inquired respectfully, “Where’s Saul?” “Saul?” You might have thought he was trying to decide whether I meant Saul of Tarsus or Saul Soda. “Oh. It seemed pointless to waste a client’s money. Did you want him for something? I believe he’s working on a forgery case for Mr.
Bascom.” “So I’m doing a solo. Shall I go up and start catching up on sleep, or would you care to pretend we both earn money?” “Archie.” He picked up the book. “I do not propose to start sorting out chaos.
At present this case is merely a guggle of unintelligible babel. If Mr. Naylor killed Mr. Moore, it is quite possible that he will carry his joke too far. If he didn’t, and he knows that someone else did, the same comment can be made. If neither, the corporation is spending money foolishly but we are not stockholders. We’ll probably know more about it after my talk with Mr. Naylor Monday evening. Until then it would be futile to bother my head about it.
Besides, you don’t really want me to. You are wallowing in clover, with hundreds of young women accessible, unguarded, and utterly at your mercy.” “I do not,” I said, closing the drawer where I kept the arsenal and getting to my feet, “like clover.” I walked to the door to the hall, where I turned. “It is not my mercy they’re at. And if I stick my foot in something down there that you have to pull it out of, don’t blame me.”
CHAPTER Seventeen
At nine-thirty-five A.M. Friday, the next morning, I stood in front of the filing cabinet in my room in the Naylor-Kerr stock department, gazing down into the drawer I had opened with a feeling of real satisfaction. Not only were the tobacco crumbs nowhere visible, but the edge of the Thursday report was a good half inch down from the Wednesday report, and I had left them precisely even.
I enjoyed the satisfied feeling for a few seconds and then could have kicked myself. Thursday I had brought paraphernalia with me, but had taken it home again, not wanting to leave it around, and this morning I hadn’t brought it.
That cost me an extra forty minutes. I closed the drawer and locked it. Down on the street I had no trouble finding a taxi, since it was the time of day that the carriage trade gets to work in that part of town. At Wolfe’s house I popped in and right out again, with the cab waiting, and no encounter with Wolfe since his morning hours in the plant rooms are from nine to eleven, and headed back for William Street.
I would have liked to lock my door, since the custom there was to enter without knocking, but there was no key, so I barricaded it by shoving the desk against it. With the folders from the drawer carefully and lovingly transported to the desk, I opened my kit and started to work. It was like picking peaches off a tree with all the branches loaded. Any schoolboy could have harvested that crop.
Within twenty minutes I had three dozen beauts, some on the slick cardboard of the top folder, a few on the second, more on the third, and a whole flock on the coated stock of the two reports.
My feeling of satisfaction had tapered off a little. The total bulk of curiosity out in the arena, not to mention the two rows of offices, regarding me and my activities, would easily have filled a ten-ton truck, and common curiosity has led people into more complicated and perilous ventures than sneaking into a room and looking over the contents of a filing cabinet. But even at the biggest discount I was doing something, getting something you could see and show around, instead of hopping around bobbing the chin.
The next step, presumably, was to acquire additional equipment, preferably at wholesale, and proceed to take the prints of everyone on the floor. Granted that they would all be eager to co-operate, it would keep me busy for four or five eight-hour days, working alone. That had drawbacks. I went and stooped for the phone, having deposited it on the floor when I moved the desk, and told it I wished to speak to Mr. Pine.
It took a while to get him. When he was on I said, “I need an answer to a question I don’t like to ask anyone else. I know some of the big corporations have adopted the custom of getting fingerprints of all their employees, and I wonder if Naylor-Kerr is one of them. Is it?” “Yes,” he said, “we started that during the war. Why?” “I’d like to have permission to take a look at them. I mean go over them.” “What for?” “Someone has been monkeying around my room, nosing into my papers, and it would be fun to know who.” “That seems a little farfetched, doesn’t it? By the way, I got that report. It will be discussed at a meeting of some of the executives this afternoon. And Mr.
Hoff insisted on seeing me; he just left a few minutes ago. He says your presence is demoralizing the whole department. Damn it, I tell you frankly, I could run a car over Mr. Naylor myself. At least you have prodded him along a little. Perhaps you should have a talk with Mr. Hoff whether he likes it or not.” “I’d love to. What about the fingerprints?” “Certainly, if you think it’s worth the trouble. See Mr. Gushing and tell him I said so.” Mr. Gushing was the assistant vice-president who had introduced me around when I started to work. I got him on the phone. It might have been expected that he would show some curiosity as to what a personnel expert expected to accomplish by inspecting fingerprints, but he didn’t, so evidently the news of my real status had got beyond the stock department. He was anxious to please, even to the extent of sending me a boy with an empty carton and a supply of tissue paper for the safe transport of my specimens.
I wasn’t left alone with the prints, which were filed in a locked cabinet of their own in a room on the thirty-fifth floor. A middle-aged woman with dyed brown hair and a flat chest who had apparently eaten onions for breakfast never got more than ten feet from me. She had an uncertain moment when I sent for the boy and asked him to bring me sandwiches and milk, but she fielded it nicely by phoning a pal to come and relieve her for a lunch period.
I knew what I was doing, but was by no means an expert, and I had to go slow if I didn’t want to miss it and have to start all over again. I had the advantage of having an ample collection of good specimens, but even so it was a long uphill climb. A couple of times during the afternoon the onion eater offered to help, but I politely declined, with my eyes smarting and my neck developing a crick.