Хал Эллсон - Mink Is for a Minx

“It carries her insurance marks,” he told her.

He saw her hand snap into a fist, but she was a cool one and she had her alibi. “If it’s hers, I didn’t know it,” she bit out. “Somebody left it at the house one night, but I didn’t find it until the other day and nobody had inquired about it. I didn’t see how it could be Lili’s, seeing that she lost hers at a New York restaurant, but I called her home anyway.”

Even the best turn weasel when they’re caught! he thought cynically. But she surprised him.

“She wasn’t home, but I spoke to Seth — her husband. In fact, I’m still burning at his rudeness. He practically told me I must be drunk, that it could not possibly be her coat, and as she already had her new one, he didn’t want to hear any more about it. Then he as good as hung up.”

Chip Stack’s mood brightened and he grinned with admiration. Those two cool chicks had figured Harrison out and involved him without his knowing it, just in case something did go wrong sometime, so that he’d have to stick behind them.

“So,” she bit out with scathing anger, “if she got mixed up about the fur she wore to town that night, I can’t help it. I wasn’t the witness — her husband was.”

“Well, it can be very easily settled, if your statement is correct,” Stack said. “I’ll just return this coat to her in exchange for her new one, and the insurance company won’t come out too badly.”

“But... but this is my coat now!” she cried with deeper feeling than the first fright had roused. “It is! It is! I didn’t steal it. Lili’s husband wouldn’t even look at it, and no matter how it happened, it’s mine as long as nobody claims it!”

“But I’ve already claimed it for the insurance company,” Chip said quietly. “Unless you’d rather have me turn it over to the police.”

“Oh no!” she breathed. Then she bent her face into her hands and sobbed the real sorrow on her mind. “But I’ll never — never get another chance to own a mink like this!”

He let her cry a space and then he said, “Now, you might. You might even get to keep this coat.”

Her sobs shut off like a faucet. Every fiber in her was listening.

“And Lili Harrison may also get to keep hers,” he added. “If you’ve told the truth about the phone call.”

“I have! I swear it! You can ask Seth!”

Chip Stack nodded. “I intend to. Now I’m going to take this coat over there and try to straighten this out so everybody’s happy, but you’ll upset the apple cart with any phone calls.”

“I won’t do anything to hurt her!” she declared.

“This won’t hurt her. She’ll probably get to keep her new coat out of it. So you just clam up until things are settled.”

“How will I know if I can’t phone her?”

“She’ll phone you damned fast. But if she doesn’t, and you see her wearing her new coat after tonight, you’ll know everything’s worked out.”

“And I’ll get this one back?” she breathed.

He pulled up beside her car in the shopping center and looked at her. “Any time you want to come in town and call for it — it will be at my apartment.”

She got the message. Scorn flashed in her eyes. But she didn’t say no. She said, “You’re a real fink, aren’t you?”

“A fink for a mink,” he grinned. “But mink are for minx.” He gave her his card. “All the essentials. Just call me.”

She wriggled out of the coat angrily, but she rammed his card into her pocket book. She crossed to her own car without another word, reached in, and pulled on a sport coat. It was clear that she hadn’t dared wear the mink from her home, so her alibi was phoney and the deal had been a criminal switch transpiring at the New York restaurant, as he’d felt sure.

He backed his car out and gave it the gun for Harrison’s estate. He got a lofty reception from the butler. The Harrisons were dressing, the butler insisted.

“I think Mrs. Harrison will want to see me anyway,” Chip Stack grunted. “I have located her lost coat.”

She saw him fast and privately in her personal suite. She didn’t even take time to don a more formal robe in place of the very alluring one in which she came, still damp, from her bath. She shot one glance at the coat and dismissed the maid and butler before she even looked at Chip.

She lighted a cigarette coolly and remained on her feet. “I suppose,” she remarked tartly, “that is the coat poor Valerie thought might be mine.”

“It is yours, Mrs. Harrison,” he said. “You are probably not aware of the fact that valuable coats like this are furrier and insurance marked.”

She sat down with abrupt anger and crossed her legs. Her negligee fell away, and she looked better than in the photo taken at Palm Beach.

He said, “Of course, if Mr. Harrison wishes to reimburse the insurance company for its settlement, the company will have no further interest in the coats.”

“That miser would rather see me naked!” she declared. Chip Stack had his own thought about that, but restrained it. But it must have exuded from him like the beat of a tomtom, for she looked at him with sudden keen speculation.

“I’d rather burn up my mink than return it to the insurance company!” she said. “But maybe you have some alternative?”

Chip Stack looked directly at her bare legs. He said, “I think it could be handled quietly and without a report.”

She smiled coolly and said nothing.

“I think perhaps I can persuade Mr. Harrison to make you a gift of your new mink,” he said.

She inhaled deeply and blew the smoke out slowly. She got to her feet and crossed to him and lifted two fingers to tap his chin. “Try it. Maybe you’re worth knowing,” she said. “That is — if you succeed.”

She gave a wry smile and opened the door to the hall. “If you’ll wait downstairs, I’ll have Mr. Harrison see you.”

He handed her one of his private cards. “It will be a pleasure to see you again wearing your new mink.”

“That is the only way you will,” she said, and stood musingly watching him to the stairs.

In five minutes, Mr. Seth Harrison appeared in the library, arrogant and bad-tempered from being disturbed at dressing. He started to threaten and bully from the height of his unassailable position.

Chip Stack let him run out of wind and then held out the coat on his arm. “Mr. Harrison, this is the coat that you swore to the police that your wife was wearing and lost at the Gay Paree. It was entirely on the strength of your identification that the insurance settlement was made. Now it has shown up at Valerie Snowden’s, who says it was left at her house, and that she so informed you personally, but you refused to see it for possible identification.”

Harrison turned purple, but he stood his ground. “If it was a mistake, it was a mistake that the insurance company accepted after due investigation! The only legal restitution that can be demanded is Mrs. Harrison’s new coat.”

“That would be satisfactory to the company, but it involves a detailed report of the circumstances. The report, of course, will have to emphasize your error of memory as to which coat Mrs. Harrison was wearing at the Gay Paree, and your peculiar attitude in refusing to see the coat Valerie Snowden found at her house. In fact, the report may require a brand-new investigation.”

Harrison’s eyes spit fire, but his color drained to grey.

“And you will probably wish to give your wife a new fur soon in any case,” Chip Stack said guilelessly. “It might wind the whole matter up more satisfactorily for everyone if you just let her keep her new coat and made restitution to the insurance company in cash.”