Norma Pelton looked up from the switchboard. “Mr. Wigmore is still on the line,” she said. “He’s sputtering—”
Dillon danced up and down in an ecstasy of rage. “You damn robber!” he shouted. “You damn—”
Best started for the door. Dillon lunged for him, flung his arms around the detective’s shoulders, looked imploringly at Norma Pelton.
“For God’s sake, Norma,” he said, “tell him to wait.”
The flabby hands tugged at the detective’s shoulders.
“Come on in, Gil old kid,” he said. “I’ll play ball with you. Come on in.”
Best turned, vanished through the door marked, Private, with the lawyer pushing along behind him.
It was fifteen minutes later when Best emerged from the office.
“How’s tricks?” asked Norma Pelton.
Best grinned at her. “Pretty good. I told Dillon that I heard he’d been reducing wages because business was bad. I told him I thought business was picking up with him.”
She grinned. “What did he say?”
“You listened in on the conversation with Wigmore?”
“Yes. It was the funniest thing I ever heard in my life.”
“Well,” Best said, “to make a long story short, that ten-percent cut becomes a twenty-percent increase.”
“I could kiss you,” she said, “if I weren’t afraid you’d take it seriously.”
Gilbert Best strode toward the desk.
The switchboard buzzed into activity and Norma Pelton started to plug a line into Dillon’s phone.
“The boss wants me,” she said.
Best leaned over, jerked the plug out of her fingers, tilted her face to his. “Let him wait,” he said. “The stuffed shirt.”
Complete Designs
Peter B. Strickland looked like a typical salesman as he barged toward the desk marked “INFORMATION.” That was because John Du Nord had insisted the employees were not to know a detective had been consulted.
“Mr. Du Nord,” he said.
The blue eyes behind the telephone switchboard grew slightly scornful as they drifted over Pete Strickland’s massive frame, and rested momentarily on the battered, leather sample case.
“Mr. Jocelyn does all the buying,” she said, “and his hours are two to three-thirty.”
Strickland sighed wearily, the sigh of one who has learned not to expect too much of his fellow men. It would, after all, be just in the nature of things that Du Nord should go to all the trouble to impress upon the agency that the detective they sent, to cover the case, must keep his identity sufficiently concealed to fool the employees, and then make no arrangements by which the man could be received, without disclosing his errand and the nature of his business.
Yet there was no rancor in Pete Strickland’s manner, just a great weariness, a resignation to mediocrity.
He fished a leather card case from his pocket, took out a card, held it so the girl at the desk couldn’t see it.
“An envelope?” he asked.
She hesitated a moment, then with curiosity in her eyes, handed him an envelope.
“We can take your card in,” she said, “but it won’t do any good.”
Strickland pushed the card into the envelope, carefully sealed the flap into place.
“Take that,” he said, “to Mr. Du Nord. Tell him I’ve got a special proposition to make him.”
“Mr. Jocelyn,” she began, “is—”
“Mr. John C. Du Nord,” Strickland interrupted, and there was something in the impact of his eyes upon hers which led her to press a button without further comment. A sluggish office boy lounged into view from around the corner.
“Mr. Du Nord,” she snapped at him and thrust the sealed envelope into the boy’s hand.
The boy flashed Strickland a glance filled with the insolence that only youth can muster, and listlessly vanished around the corridor.
Ten seconds later there was a swirl of motion. A short, paunchy individual with the manner of one who is restlessly pushing time before him, as the bow of a steamer pushes up water, propelled his bulging stomach toward Strickland with piston-like strides of short, active legs.
“I hope I didn’t keep you waiting,” he said. “Come right in. Come right in.”
Strickland’s voice held a note of warning.
“Got some fine price bargains,” he said, as he stooped for his worn, leather sample case.
Du Nord looked puzzled for a moment, then nodded his head in vehement assent.
“Oh yes. Yes, of course,” he bubbled with too much emphasis and too much cordiality. “Of course, of course, come right in, Strickland. Come right in.”
The blue eyes of the girl back of the telephone board turned to the baffled countenance of the office boy. She pursed her lips in a silent whistle and said “Gee,” in an awed undertone.
From which it was to be inferred that John Du Nord reserved such effusive courtesy only for bank presidents and the buyers of the largest customers.
Du Nord bustled down a corridor, flung open a door and said, “Step right inside, Strickland.”
Pete Strickland looked around him at the big desk, the thick oriental rugs, the massive leather chairs. His eye spotted the envelope in which his card had been enclosed, and on it, the card itself.
He fished a leather card case from his pocket.
“Hope you don’t mind,” he said to Mr. Du Nord, picking up the card and replacing it in the card case. “The agency makes us pay for our cards out of our own pockets, and I’m Scotch.”
Du Nord laughed nervously, adjusted himself in a big, swivel chair, motioned Strickland to a seat.
“I take it,” he said, “the agency manager has told you why you are here. We’ve got four of the highest priced garment designers in the business. They work in a room which is isolated. Each one of the four is above suspicion. Their finished designs go into our vault. Aside from Mrs. Carver and myself, three employees have access to those vaults. There is a very definite leak in our proposed designs. I happen to know that in at least two instances they’ve been in the hands of our competitors within twenty-four hours of their approval by us.”
Du Nord’s glasses quivered with indignation.
The president of the Du Nord Sincere Service Stores could consider a leak in his organization as a major catastrophe. To Pete Strickland it was just another case.
“Who’s this Mrs. Carver?” he asked.
Du Nord’s eye beamed.
“A most wonderful woman,” he said, “a psychologist. She has charge of our personnel and placement. It’s surprising what she can tell about you just from looking at you. Most of your work on the case will be with her. In fact, I’ve got to leave within half an hour. My son arrives from Paris. He’s taking a trip to the Orient. He arrives on the President Coolidge.”
Pete Strickland made polite conversation.
“Going to be here for awhile before he starts for the Orient?” he asked.
“No, he sails on the same boat,” Du Nord cleared his throat, and went on hastily, “He’s young, impressionable. I want him to take the tour to get perspective. There was a woman in Paris — wanted his money, of course. It was serious — Dane intended to marry her.”
Du Nord jammed a suddenly savage thumb against a bell button.
Almost immediately a swinging door was pushed open by a woman, a pair of granite hard eyes surveyed Pete Strickland in swift appraisal, a pair of hands that seemed about ten years older than the face, made swiftly fluttering gestures, a voice that rattled effortlessly from between two layers of even, glistening teeth, struck Strickland’s ears with the rapid fire rattle of a boy running a stick along the pickets of a fence.