“No — not that I know of.”
“He was on the train, a heavy-set chap in a double-breasted brown suit.”
“Oh, I remember. No, I didn’t talk with him, but I remember seeing him in the hotel lobby as I went out.”
I asked Genevieve, “Did your cousin tell you anything about what she was doing in South America?”
“No. I’m a poor correspondent, and so is she. We only exchanged short letters. She sent me some postal cards.”
“What’s her nationality?”
“American.”
“Her mother living?”
“No.”
“Did Betty speak German?”
“No. She spoke Swedish. Our ancestors were Swedes.”
I turned back to Daphne. “You haven’t been in touch with Ruttling, haven’t let him know you’re here or made any attempt to get into communication with him?”
“No.”
I got to my feet. “Well,” I said, “I’m going to take a chance. The only thing in your story that supports your statement is that you may have actually been too frightened to have doubled back to your room.”
“I’ve been telling you the truth,” she said, “the absolute truth.”
Genevieve Hotling studied me for a few seconds, then asked, “Could I help any if — if I went along?”
I moved out into the corridor, said, “No,” almost closed the door, then turned, pushed it open and added, “thanks.”
I heard her say, “You’re welcome,” as the door closed.
Chapter Eight
The home of Benjamin Colter Ruttling sat high on a ridge where, on a clear day, the eye could range out across the ribbon of blue water, looking over Alcatraz Island on the right, out through the Golden Gate on the left. On days when it wasn’t clear, the house was a cold, bleak monument wrapped in chill uncomfortable fog.
At the rate at which real estate sold in the neighborhood, one could almost do mathematics with the weather statistics and tell exactly how many thousand dollars an hour the view was worth on those days of the year when it was available.
Tonight it was wrapped in somber mist — a thick, wet blanket that muffled sounds, distorted the perspective, and suited my purpose admirably.
I rang the bell and waited.
A Filipino who was no longer a boy, but a man nearing middle age, answered the bell.
I didn’t waste any time with him. “I’m a private detective,” I said. “My name is Sabin. I want to see Mr. Ruttling personally on a business matter which is important and which can’t be put off. Tell him it has to do with his last trip to New Orleans and that it won’t take over fifteen or twenty minutes to discuss.”
The servant ushered me into a reception hallway, asked me to please be seated, and left.
The house was evidently air-conditioned. The reception hallway, illuminated with an indirect lighting that gave a uniformly gentle glow, was regulated as to temperature and humidity so that there was nothing to indicate that just just outside the door, a chill, wet fog blanket was blowing along the street or dripping monotonously from the eaves.
Somewhere in a distant part of the house, I could hear the occasional mumble of voices, and once or twice, the distant sound of laughter. Then the servant was back. Behind him came a tall, thin gentleman in evening clothes who looked as though he’d been laughing at a funny story before he entered the room, but was striving now to compose his features into a mask of cold, efficient business.
“I am Mr. Whitney, Mr. Ruttling’s confidential secretary,” he said, and waited.
“Good evening, Mr. Whitney,” I said.
“I take it you can tell me something of the nature of your business?”
“Oh, certainly. First, I would like to ask a question about Mr. Ruttling.”
His educated eyebrows indicated that this was not quite the conventional manner of doing business.
“Mr. Ruttling, I take it, has a sense of humor?”
“Oh, yes.”
“If it should appear that the shortage in Mr. Ruttling’s New Orleans office is laid at the door of the attractive female employe with whom Mr. Ruttling went out to see the town, that wouldn’t bother him in the least?”
“I can see no reason why it should.”
“Or if the most sensational tabloid newspaper in the country is offering the young lady in question a large amount of money for diary concerning the night Mr. Ruttling made his visit to New Orleans...”
“Just whom do you represent?”
“No one at present. I’d like to represent the Crescent City Chemical Manufacturing and Supply Company.”
Whitney said, “If you’ll get in touch with me at ten o’clock tomorrow morning, I think I can give you an answer.”
“Doubtless you could,” I told him. “Between now and tomorrow morning, I could get in touch with half a dozen other people who could also give me definite answers.”
“What do you mean?”
I said, “You damn fool, I mean that I have the diary.”
“Oh,” he said. “Wait here just a minute, please,” and walked out.
He was back within five minutes, evidently acting under definite instructions. “This,” he said, “sounds omniously like blackmail.”
“Perhaps it does to you. To me, it sounds like business.”
“Do you have any proposition you would care to make — to me?”
“No.”
He said, “Step this way, please.”
I followed him through a door, up a flight of stairs and into a room that was evidently fitted up as a species of supplemental office with some filing cases, a couple of secretarial desks, typewriters and built-in cases.
“Just a moment, please,” Whitney said, and crossed the office to knock at a massive walnut door.
After a moment, he opened the door an inch or two, peeked inside, then he eased his lath-like figure through the opening. He called back over his shoulder to me, “Just a moment, please,” and closed the door gently behind him.
I stood there waiting, very careful not to touch anything, feeling certain that appraising eyes were watching me from concealed peepholes.
At the end of some three or four minutes, the door opened again and Whitney jackknifed himself into the room. His face was twisted into a smile that was evidently meant to be cordial.
“Step right this way, Mr. Sabin,” he told me.
He opened the door wider this time and stood to one side, ushering me into the presence of greatness.
Benjamin Colter Ruttling sat in a room that was a cross between a den and a private office. He was at his ease in a deep-cushioned, russet leather chair that matched the bindings of rare books that filled the bookcases. He was an expansive, genial gentleman with merry, twinkling eyes, a neck that was slightly inclined to washboard, a forehead that was high and round, with the hair thinning just a bit. The eyebrows were well shaped, and if the man had taken that jovial grin off his face he could have looked deadly and dangerous.
He was wearing a dinner jacket with a black tie, a pleated white shirt, and he exuded an air of well-fed prosperity.
“Ah, yes,” he said, “Sabin, a private detective. Sit down, Mr. Sabin, and tell me what I can do for you.”
I said, “Apparently there’s been a shortage of six thousand or so in your New Orleans office.”
“I’m afraid I don’t keep up with the details of things, Mr. Sabin. I leave the minor matters to my local managers, who are capable of handling them.”
“And,” I said, “the girl the newspapers are going to play up in connection with the shortage is a Miss Daphne Strate — and when you were in New Orleans, you and Miss Strate went out to see the town.”