“Did you tell them that you’d been working with Mackenzie Fabrics?”
“Of course.”
“And were you trying for a job in the same trade?”
She looked at me hard. “Yes,” she said at last.
I grinned at her. “Then that ain’t a mystery to me. Your Mackenzie Fabrics pay the biggest dividend in the trade. They have more dough than all the rest put together. Why, naturally those guys wanted you to work for them. They were hoping they’d learn how the business was run.”
She looked a little blank, then she laughed. “I didn’t think of it like that,” she confessed ruefully.
“I bet you thought the boss was goin’ to come the heavy?”
“I’m afraid I did.” She coloured a little. I had to make a strong effort not to pat her.
“All right,” I said, “forget it. You know now that you can get a swell job if you want to, so let’s have the rest of it.”
She shook her head. “I can’t, that’s the trouble. When I got back to my apartment I found Lee Curtis waiting for me. He’s Spencer’s right-hand man. We don’t like him a lot in the office, and I was none too pleased to find him there. He told me that Spencer wanted me to come back. He was sorry that he’d shouted me out and would I forget it. Well, I was still sore, and I knew I could get something just as good, so I said no. Curtis started pressing me and finally persuaded me to come back and see Spencer.
“The way Spencer went on made me suspicious. I didn’t know what it was all about, but I didn’t like the way he almost begged me to come back. I turned him down.” She shivered suddenly. “I can see him now. He sat behind his big desk, his face went white and he looked as if he could strangle me. ‘You’ll be sorry about this,’ he said in a horrible, quiet voice. ‘If I were you, I’d get out of town.’
“He really terrified me and I didn’t get to sleep that night. Then from that moment to this morning I’ve been watched. A tall, thin man, dressed in black with a black slouched hat pulled over his face, always turns up wherever I go. Two days of that decided me. I packed my things, gave notice to my landlady and prepared to leave town.”
“Where were you going?” I put in.
“I thought I’d go down to the coast. I wanted a vacation and had got some money put by, so I thought I’d go down there until they had forgotten about me.”
I didn’t want to scare her, but I thought they were not likely to forget her. I just said: “So what happened?”
She twisted her hands in her lap, and a little frown settled in her eyes. “I thought I was being awfully smart,” she said. “I arranged with my landlady to get my stuff to the station, and I went off on a long ramble round town, taking the thin man along behind me. I thought I could give him the slip, get to the station and leave town without anyone knowing.” She smiled at me ruefully. It certainly did me a lot of good when that honey smiled at me.
“I was all set when I ran into Curtis. He wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. He stuck to me like glue for the rest of the afternoon and then insisted on bringing me to Barry Hughson’s party. That’s all.”
I shut my eyes and let my brain sort it out.
“Why do you think he brought me to Hughson’s and then walked out on me?”
“Curtis think a lot of you?” I asked.
She looked uncomfortable. “He has been rather pressing,” she admitted. “But then, he’s like that with most girls.”
I could think of a number of reasons why Curtis had taken her to Hughson’s, but I wasn’t going to tell her. Suppose Spencer had planned to get rid of her and Curtis knew about it? If this guy was a little soft on her, and I’m not blaming him if he was, he’d probably hang around with her to see that nothing happened. Once she was round at Hughson’s place, he might think she was safe for a while. Then this other dame rings him up and he has to get out and leave her.
It struck me Mardi wasn’t any too safe running around at large. The point was to find out how much she knew.
I said quietly, “Suppose I tell you all about this business, then maybe you can see where you fit in.”
“Do I fit in anywhere?”
I grinned. “Yeah, I’m afraid you do.” I lit another cigarette and got down to it. “I wantta put this to you just like you knew nothing about it. Maybe if I put it to you like that, you might get a slant on it. To start at the beginning. Larry Richmond was shot to death almost a year ago. This guy Was a rich playboy who called himself the President of the Mackenzie Fabrics. He was no more President than I am, but that don’t matter for the moment. His chief job seemed to be peddling the stock of the company to his rich friends. Well, he succeeded, not because he was a good salesman, but because the shares were worth having. They kept climbing and everyone was happy. The Mackenzie Fabrics was a blind for some illegal racket, with a list of shareholders including the Police Commissioner and the Customs officials. Richmond was playin’ a cagy hand. As everyone was gettin’ a share under a strictly legal guise, no one was going to kick. Okay, that’s the first set-up. The fact that Richmond never showed up at the office and just fooled around spending the dough points to Spencer being the guy who runs the racket.” I got up to give myself a drink.
Mardi sat quite still. Her face was a little pale and she looked tired. It was getting on towards three o’clock, but I’d got to get this thing sorted out.
“Then Richmond gets bumped. Very unfortunate this, because Spencer did the bumping. I guess he was getting tired of doing all the work and seeing Richmond doin’ all the spending. If Spencer took the rap the lid would come off Mackenzie Fabrics all right. That wouldn’t please the shareholders. I don’t know, but I can guess what happened. They all got around and wagged their heads about this and came to the only conclusion. Someone had to be the fall-guy.
“Now Richmond played around with the dames. As long as the dame was a looker, she was okay by him. He was fooling around with a floozie of the streets just before he was knocked off, and this bird usually ran around with a guy named Vessi, a real twelve-minute egg. What could be simpler? Vessi is the Fall-guy. They frame that bohunk so fast he’s dizzy in the head. The cops frame him, Spencer frames him, the lawyers frame him, and the judge frames him. So he’s framed. Just like that. To make matters safe an’ sound, they get his moll to frame him.
“This is where I come in. The case to me was just a sordid bit of shooting with no news angle for my particular stuff. One night a dame rings up and tells me she’s sending round a ticket that’ll let me in to see Vessi’s execution. She tells me that Vessi will give me an angle on this business, and she will pay me ten grand to explode the frame. This dame is plenty steamed up. Before I can turn it down she rings off.
“Okay, I’m the mug. I go along and see Vessi have a nose-full. Before he hands in his pail, he tells me that Spencer pulled the shootin’. I pass the news on to the mystery woman, who sends me five grand as an act of good faith. Before I can lay my hands on the dough, Blondie, that’s Vessi’s late moll, nips into my room and grabs it. I do a bit of Philo Vance stuff and track this moll to her lair. We have a few words and then in blows Katz. Now Katz is Spencer’s bodyguard. A guy that walks around loaded up with shooting-irons and itching to use ’em. All he seems keen about is to find out who’s been staking me to start trouble. This guy gets plenty tough so I tell him a story that’s not quite true but which he falls for.
“I then do some thinking and decide that I’m not interested. I’m a peace-lovin’ guy an’ this seems too exciting. Anyway, why the hell should I worry about Vessi? He was just a small-time crook. So when the dame comes on the ’phone again I tell her I’m through.