It wasn’t until two days later that the local newspapers were available in Yuma. There were headlines on an inside page:
The newspaper account went on to state that Mrs. George Ollie had telephoned the society editor from Yuma stating that George Ollie and she had left the night before and had been married across the state line. The society editor had asked her to hold the phone and had the call switched to the police.
Police asked to have George Ollie put on the line. They had a surprise for him. It seemed that when the merchant patrolman had made his regular nightly check of Ollie’s restaurant at one a.m., he found it had been broken into. Police had found a perfect set of fingerprints on the cash register and on the safe. Fast work had served to identify the fingerprints as those of Big Larry Giffen, known in the underworld as Rubber-glove Giffen because of his skill in wearing rubber gloves and never leaving fingerprints. This was one job that Big Larry had messed up. Evidently he had forgotten his gloves.
Police had mug shots of Big Larry and in no time at all they had out a general alarm.
Only that afternoon George Ollie’s head waitress and part-time cashier had gone to the head of the police burglary detail. “In case we should ever be robbed,” she had said, “I’d like to have it so you get a conviction when you find the man who did the job. I left a hundred-dollar bill in the safe. I’ve torn off a corner. Here’s the tom comer. You keep it. That will give you a conviction if you get the thief.”
The police thought it was a fine idea. It was such a clever idea they were sorry they couldn’t have used it to pin a conviction on Larry Giffen.
But Larry had elected to shoot it out with the arresting officers. Knowing his record, officers had been prepared for this. After the sawed-off shotguns had blasted the life out of Big Larry, the police had found the bloodstained hundred-dollar bill in his pocket when his body was stripped at the morgue.
The police also found the loot from three other local jobs on him, cash amounting to $7000.
The police were still puzzled as to how it happened that Giffen, known to the underworld as the most artistic box-man in the business, had done such an amateurish job at the restaurant. Giffen’s reputation was that he had never left a fingerprint or a clue.
On being advised that his place had been broken into, George Ollie, popular restaurant owner, had responded in a way which was perfectly typical of honeymooners the world over.
“The hell with business,” he had told the police. “I’m on my honeymoon.”
Peggy Castle and Uncle Benedict in
The Jeweled Butterfly
There was an office rumor that old E.B. locked the door of his private office on Wednesday mornings so he could practice putting. This had never been confirmed, but veteran employees at the Warranty Exchange & Fidelity Indemnity, known locally as WEFI, made it a rule either to take up important matters on Tuesday or to postpone them until Thursday.
Peggy Castle, E.B.’s secretary, didn’t inherit the Wednesday breathing spell from her predecessors. When Old E.B. found out that before coming to WEFI, Peggy had worked on a country newspaper upstate he inveigled her into starting a gossip column in the WEFI house organ.
Peggy was interested in people, had a photographic memory for names and faces, and a broadminded, whimsical sense of humor. The result was that her column, which she called Castle’s in the Air, attracted so much attention that Old E.B., beaming with pride, insisted she devote more and more time to it.
“It’s just what we’ve needed,” he said. “We’ve had too much money to spend on the damn paper. We made it too slick, too formal, too dressed up. It looked impressive, but who the hell wants a house organ to be impressive? We want it to be neighborly. We want it to be interesting. We want the employees to eat it up. We want something that’ll attract customer attention on the outside. You’re doing it. It’s fine. Keep it up. One of these days it’ll lead to something big.”
Old E.B. carried a bunch of clippings from Peggy’s column in his wallet. Very often he’d pick out priceless gems and sidle up to cronies at the club. “Got a girl up at the office — my secretary, smart as a whip,” he’d begin. “You ought to see what she’s done to the gossip column in our house organ. This is it. Castle’s in the Air. Listen to this one:
“ ‘The identity of the practical joker in the Bond Writing Department has not as yet been discovered. When Bill Fillmore finds him he insists he’s going to choke him until his eyeballs protrude far enough to be tattooed with Bill’s initials. It seems that Bill and Ernestine have been keeping pretty steady company. At noon on last Thursday, Bill decided to pop the question, did so, and was accepted. That afternoon he was walking on air. However, it seems that Bill had confided his intentions to a few friends, showing them the ring he had bought to slip on Ernestine’s finger if she said yes. So some was managed to dust the knees of Bill’s trousers immediately after lunch. Bill doesn’t know how it was done. He didn’t even know it had been done. While Ernestine was telling the news and showing her sparkler, observant eyes were naturally looking Bill over. People couldn’t refrain from seeing the two well-defined dust spots on the knees of Bill’s trousers. Ernestine thought it was cute, but Bill — well, let’s talk about something else.’
“How’s that for a yarn?” E.B. would say, slapping his crony on the back. “Damnedest thing you ever heard? You can figure what that’s done to the house organ. Everybody reads it now. Stuff like that really peps it up.
“How’s that? Hell, no! Not a word of truth to it, but the funny thing is that Bill Fillmore doesn’t know it. He really thinks there was dust on his trousers, put there by some was, and he’s going around chewing tenpenny nails. Half of the people in the place are in on the secret, and the other half are looking for the practical joker. Damnedest thing you ever saw, the way stuff like that peps up the house organ. Here’s more of it.”
Given the slightest provocation, Old E.B. would pull out more clippings. Usually his cronies gave him the provocation. The clippings were always good for a laugh, and many of E.B.’s friends had house-organ problems of their own.
On this Wednesday afternoon, Peggy opened the anonymous letter and read it through carefully.
Don Kimberly is having a date tonight at the Royal Pheasant with Miss Cleavage. Is this going to burn somebody up! I don’t ask you to take my word for it, so I won’t sign my name. Just stick around and see what happens.
The missive was signed A Reader, and the writing was feminine.
Ordinarily she would have consigned this sort of thing to the wastebasket after only a cursory glance, but Don Kimberly, troubleshooter in the Claims Adjusting Department, was the most eligible catch in the organization. A young, clear-headed bachelor with a legal education, he had dark wavy hair, steady slate-colored eyes, bronzed skin, and a rather mysterious air of reserve. Every girl in the organization got cardiac symptoms when he walked by her desk — and Peggy was no exception.
“Miss Cleavage” was Stella Lynn, who had won a beauty contest at a country fair before coming to the city to work for WEFI. It was obvious that the judges of this local show had been more interested in well-developed curves than in streamlined contours.
Stella Lynn, proud of her curvaceousness, habitually wore the most plunging necklines of any employee in the WEFI organization. When someone came up with the nickname of “Miss Cleavage,” the appellation had fit as snugly as the office dresses she wore and had stuck like chewing gum.