“There are fires behind those beautiful eyes!”
“No fires. I’m not afraid.”
“Did I say you were afraid?”
“You were going to.”
“No. One thing you’re not is afraid. You’re not afraid of anything. Cautious, perhaps. You don’t want to — to disturb what you have. Like one of your husband’s ships. It can weather any typhoon in the Pacific, but the captain prefers smooth waters.”
“Mr. Alder,” Nikki Collinson said firmly, “what good books have you read lately?”
He smiled crookedly. “Very well, we’ll discuss literature — if you call me Tom, not Mr. Alder.”
“I prefer the mister.”
“All right, but I’ve never known a girl named Nikki and I was hoping to try it out. Mrs. Collinson, I’ve just read John O’Hara’s new book. What did you think of it?”
They discussed O’Hara then. And Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Neither cared for Faulkner. She touched on Robert Wilder. And then she mentioned television. Surprisingly, she knew it well. Her taste in programs was catholic. She liked an occasional Western. She was an ardent fan of mysteries. She did not especially care for the panel shows. She sometimes watched the “late” movies when her husband was away on a business trip.
Their conversation wandered into other channels and a sudden twinge of near-panic assailed Alder when the stewardess’ voice came over the speaker. “Fasten your seat belts, please. We’re preparing to land.”
It was Chicago and she was leaving the flight. There was a half-hour stopover, but she obviously did not plan to spend it with him. As the plane taxied across the field she gave him her hand. Her clear eyes looked into his.
“I feel a little sorry — for Linda.”
He did not reply to that. He felt strain, so he said: “It’s been a pleasure — Nikki.”
She knew that the name was not a slip and she smiled.
Then she was unfastening her seat belt. He stood up to let her out from the window seat, but he remained on the plane. Through the window he saw her as she walked away.
She did not look back. Alder thought of that and it gave him a measure of comfort. If she had not been thinking of him she could not have resisted looking back at the plane. She was deliberately, consciously, not turning her head.
Chapter 7
It was three hours to New York. The picture of Nikki Collinson was in his mind all the way. Her face was more vivid than that of Linda Foster. Yet Linda was available and Nikki was not. Not by at least fifty million dollars.
By the time he got to the hotel from the airport it was seven o’clock. He took a shower, put on a black mohair suit and had a sandwich in the hotel coffee shop. A taxicab took him to the huge building that housed the newspaper on 39th Street, just off Seventh Avenue. Consulting the directory, he rode up to the fourteenth floor. The mustiness of years of old newsprint assailed his nostrils as he entered an office.
An elderly man got up from a desk.
“I’d like to see a file of your old papers,” Alder said. “The early part of nineteen thirty-eight.”
The oldster nodded and went into one of the narrow passages that contained the file bins.
Alder took out a twenty-dollar bill and laid it on the counter. The man returned carrying three huge bound volumes.
“First three months of 1938,” he said, putting the volumes on the counter. “Anything special you want?”
Alder shook his head. The custodian picked up the twenty-dollar bill. “What’s this?”
“Somebody must have left it.”
The man fingered the bill, then folded it up. “Thank ye kindly.”
Alder began with January 1. He merely looked at the front pages of each edition, turning rapidly to each day’s paper. He went through the first volume quickly, started on February.
On February 16 there was a subhead across the front page. “Millionaire’s Daughter Kidnaped — Police Claim.”
He turned back three days of newspapers, went carefully through the entire issue. Nothing. The next paper he searched closely. In the Personal column he found the first mention, a carefully worded ad: “DORIS — PLEASE TELEPHONE. WE LOVE YOU. DAD.”
At this point they had obviously reported it to the police because they thought the girl had run away.
The next day, February 16, there was the headline and a compact story on page 12. It gave only the bare details. Doris Delaney had left Miss Tabitha Tubbs’s School for Girls on February 13. She had confided in her closest friend, Sally Weaver, that she was going to the malt shop a block away. She had not returned. It was not until late evening that the school learned of her disappearance. Her frightened chum, confronted by the headmistress, revealed that Doris had slipped out a number of times but had always returned within an hour or two. This occasion, Sally declared, was no different from any other. She was certain that Doris had no other objective than the forbidden trip to the malt shop. She had not changed her clothes — the school middy blouse and blue skirt. Yes, she had taken a coat because it was cold outside.
The parents, when notified of her disappearance, had come to the school. They had gone to the malt shop. They knew Doris there, but whether she had come in that afternoon was not certain. The proprietor, one Salvatore Genualdi, said no. His wife, Carmelita, thought she had. Under questioning she became uncertain. It could have been the day before, February 12. A school holiday. A number of the girls had come into the shop that day.
Mr. and Mrs. Delaney had asked the school to keep it out of the papers. A child’s escapade. She would show up, contrite and penitent, the next day.
Doris did not return. The next day the frightened parents inserted the newspaper ads. The school insisted that the girls be given only a modest allowance. Doris could not have had more than a dollar or two. If she had gone to the movies, eaten a meal or two away from the school, she would have been without funds.
After the second night away, the Delaneys called the police.
Doris was not a wayward girl. She was devoted to her parents. The reason she had been enrolled in the boarding school — when her home was only a few blocks away — was because her parents did not want to spoil their only child with too much attention. She went home for the weekends.
The police questioned Sally Weaver. Doris had not complained to her about her parents. She was attached to them. She did not hate the school, or its discipline. She was a straight A student in everything but algebra, and in that subject she had a strong B.
Boys?
Oh, she danced and perhaps flirted with those who came to the school cotillions. She occasionally dated a boy on weekends. The police refused to reveal the identity of the boy because of his age. The boy, however, was well known to the family and the dating had had the approval of the parents. The father of the boy was a business associate of Jonathan Delaney.
There was a two-column picture of Doris Delaney above the story. It showed a very pretty girl in a middy blouse. A light blonde girl, almost a towhead. A slight girl. She was partly turned when the picture had been snapped and Alder noted her immaturity — there was only a very slight curve of the youthful breast. The article called the girl sixteen, but a later reference said that she was born February 28, 1922, which would have made her fifteen actually at the time of her disappearance.
In the picture the girl seemed even younger than sixteen. A young sixteen, or perhaps only fourteen or fifteen. A child.
Alder turned to the February 17 issue of the newspaper. No subhead now, but a screaming 72-point streamer across the page: DORIS DELANEY BELIEVED KIDNAPED. The story was on page 1 and carried over to page 2.
No word had been received from Doris. The family had received no ransom notes, but the F.B.I. — under the Lindbergh Law — had entered the case. In spite of them, Jonathan Delaney told the newspaper’s ace crime reporter that he stood ready to deal with the kidnapers. The police had questioned attendants at the major railroad terminals, the airports. No girl answering Doris Delaney’s description had boarded any train or plane. Or been seen in bus depots. The picture of Doris Delaney, in two columns the day before, had been blown up to four columns. A headline over it read: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL?