She picked up the key, twisted it about with long, sensitive fingers. “Gil,” she said, “you’re hard. Just as hard as nails. You’ve got a polite exterior, but underneath you’re ruthless as hell.”
The detective grinned at her. “Let’s talk about me, he said, after you get your work done. You know what you’re to do?”
“Yes.”
“O.K., then. Get started.”
Chapter Three
Alias Ellen Henley
Evelyn Rane, with a look of suffering innocence on her wide, black eyes, stared at the frosted glass of the door for a moment, standing in such a position that her indecision would be apparent to anyone in the office who might be glancing at the ground glass panel on the door.
After a moment she knocked timidly with her gloved knuckles.
A typewriter ceased clacking. There was a period of silence during which Evelyn Rane knocked again.
There was the sound of steps back of the door. It opened, and a woman of about thirty-five surveyed Evelyn Rane with skeptical eyes.
“What is it?” she asked.
“This is Five Hundred and Three, Transportation Building?” asked Evelyn Rane.
“Yes.”
“I’m Ellen Hanley.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I sent a questionnaire here,” Evelyn Rane said. “It was an application for employment. I didn’t hear anything about it, so I thought I’d call in person.”
The older woman frowned. “I see,” she said at length. There was pity in her glance.
“I don’t think you’ll get any employment here,” she said in a low voice.
“Oh, but I’ve got to see the person who received the questionnaire,” Evelyn Rane said. “I can’t leave a stone unturned. I thought I had answered the questions very well indeed. I must see the man who has charge of the employment, and—”
A door from an inner office jerked open. A man who wore spectacles as though they were in some way a badge of scholarship, whose face held a cherubic look of beaming good-fellowship, said: “What is it, Gertie?”
The older woman sighed, made a gesture of resignation, indicated Evelyn Rane with a wave of her hand.
“Ellen Hanley,” she said.
The man in the doorway frowned. “Hanley?” he said. “Hanley... Ellen Hanley? It seems to me that—”
The woman interrupted quickly. “Ellen Hanley,” she said, “submitted a questionnaire, Mr. Wigmore. You may remember sending out a questionnaire in response to Miss Hanley’s application for employment.”
The man in the doorway still looked blank.
“It was a questionnaire,” his secretary prompted, “to determine the qualifications of applicants for a position, and in particular, their state of health.”
Sudden light dawned upon Wigmore’s face. His manner became fairly beaming. He rubbed his hands together, bowed and smiled.
“Yes, yes, yes,” he said. “Yes, indeed. Come right in, Miss Hanley. I remember you perfectly now. Come right into my office. Now let’s see, Miss Hanley, you said, as I remember it, that you were in excellent health, did you not?”
Evelyn Rane nodded.
Wigmore’s hand rested on her shoulder, slid down her arm to her elbow. With a gentle pressure he guided her toward the inner office.
“Yes, yes, yes,” he said with the purring satisfaction of a cat that has just chanced upon a saucer of thick cream. “I remember you perfectly. I was very much impressed by the answers you gave me in the questionnaire. Very much impressed, indeed. Do come right in.”
The tired-eyed secretary returned to the typewriter at which she had been working. Her eyes watched the door of the private office as it slammed shut. It was a good two minutes before she sighed and returned to the task of pounding the typewriter.
In the inner office, Sam Wigmore fairly oozed solicitous hospitality. He placed Evelyn Rane in a chair, nodded his head in beaming satisfaction.
“I am so glad you called,” he said. “I was going to write you and ask you to call, but I kept putting it off. Now tell me, Miss Hanley, you were in an accident I believe you said. I am, of course, very much concerned about the personal health of the applicants for employment. I am afraid that an accident would incapacitate you from the rather exacting work that I require.”
“I’m strong enough to stand up to anything,” said Evelyn Rane.
The beaming eyes of the chief counsel for the Airline Stageways surveyed her approvingly.
“I’m quite sure you are, my dear, but would you mind standing up, flexing the elbows and knees... Ah, that’s it... that’s fine. No inhibition of motion whatever. Complete use of the limbs. And how about the lungs, my dear? Can you take a deep breath? Let’s see the chest expansion... Ah, yes, very fine, but by the way, Miss Hanley, suppose we make a good job of this while we’re at it. Just be seated again, please.”
Wigmore’s finger jabbed down on a pearl push-button. The door to the outer office opened and his secretary surveyed the pair with eyes that held no expression, a face that was a mask.
“Ask Doctor Carr to step in here, please,” said Wigmore. “Tell him that it’s very important.”
The secretary nodded. The door slammed.
Wigmore went on with purring complacency: “You understand that our most important positions,” he said, “require women who are in good health. Of course, we wouldn’t submit you to a detailed examination, my dear Miss Hanley, unless we felt that your other qualifications were quite satisfactory. In fact, I may go so far as to say that the question of your health is all that stands between you and a very remunerative situation. As I said, I was on the point of asking you to drop in, and—”
The door to the private office opened, a tall, bald-headed individual in a white coat, from the pocket of which protruded the ear pieces of a stethoscope, stepped into the office.
Wigmore got to his feet. “Bob,” he said, “this is Ellen Hanley. You may remember the name. Ellen Hanley. I need only to call your attention to the fact that Miss Hanley signed a questionnaire and submitted it to us for the purpose of securing employment.
“And Miss Hanley, this is Doctor Bob Carr, one of my associates. He would like to ask you a few questions, would like to look you over. Would you mind stepping into his office with him? It will be just a superficial examination, nothing that will cause you the slightest embarrassment.”
Evelyn Rane looked a trifle dazed, permitted herself to be escorted from the office. Ten minutes later the telephone rang and Bob Carr’s cautious voice came over the wire to Wigmore’s receptive ear.
“Listen, Sam, there’s something phony about this.”
“How do you mean?”
“That girl’s as sound as a nut. She’s too good. Are you sure she’s the one?”
“Sure,” said Wigmore enthusiastically. “We had an operative contact the woman who had been in the smash, talk it over with her and all that stuff, and the operative saw her write the letter asking for the questionnaire.”
“Well, if this woman’s ever been in an accident, she doesn’t show it.”
“Sure she doesn’t, just another one of those cases, although we figured there were some pretty serious injuries. A rib punctured a lung, and the results have been pretty bad.”
“Well,” Doctor Carr said, “this woman’s rib never punctured her lung.”
Wigmore frowned thoughtfully. “Just in order to make sure,” he said, “I’ll send in that questionnaire. You get her to sign her name and see if the signatures check up. Find out where she’s living now and I’ll check back on her to make sure she’s not a phony.”