Стюарт Стерлинг - Collection of Stories

The girl said, “I just like pretty fabrics, that’s all.”

Mary Bayard said quietly, “You put the section manager to a great deal of trouble, getting out special patterns and matching colors with those slips in your handbag.”

The girl said nothing. Don reached for the handbag.

She snatched it to her breast, held it with her forearms crossed over it protectively. “If you try to touch one single thing, I’ll—”

The intercom said, “The traffic supervisor at Central in Old Westbury says the Betterson phone has been disconnected for the last four weeks, Mr. Marko. Says they can’t say for certain, but they understand the place is closed up and that the Bettersons are vacationing on the French Riviera.”

Don said, “Thanks a lot.” He studied the girl for a moment. “Not such a big joke, now.”

She licked her lips. “I didn’t know.”

He said, “You’ll have to make up your mind. Do you want to talk to us or to the police?”

She frowned. “If you’d let me talk to you, alone.” She glanced sideward at Miss Bayard. “There are some things I–I simply couldn’t tell to any woman.”

Mary Bayard’s mouth twisted in a dry smile.

Don said, “All right, Mary. You want to wait outside a few minutes?”

Miss Bayard opened the door. “Yes, Mr. Marko.” But her expression said she had a pretty good idea what the girl wanted to say without benefit of female audience.

Glancing over her shoulder quickly as the door closed behind Mary Bayard, the girl came close to the desk, pointing at the intercom box. “If you’re going to keep that thing turned on so somebody can listen to everything I say—”

Don cut the switch. “It’s off. Try it yourself.”

“I wouldn’t know whether you’re foxing me or not, so I’ll have to trust you.”

“Guess you will.” He waited.

She perched on the corner of the desk, careless of the exposure of a nyloned knee. “I can’t tell you why it’s so important for me to keep my identity secret, except that if my — my family found out I’d been arrested, I might as well kill myself.”

“Married?” Don recognized her perfume as one of the more expensive French imports carried by Nimbletts.

“No.” She squirmed so her skirt pulled up to show a bit of ivory thigh. “If you’ll just take my word it was all meant as a bit of silly ribbing. I’ll do anything you want me to.” She leaned over, put out a hand to touch his caressingly. “Anything,” she repeated. “I’ll give you my address and you can come up to my apartment tonight, so we can talk it over.”

He smiled. “That’s a most entertaining idea — but I’m afraid this has gone a bit beyond my personal inclinations. Anyhow, how could I be sure you aren’t just kidding me along, to get out of trouble?”

She made a pretense of pulling her skirt down a little. “You could come home with me right now if you want to.”

“You make it sound interesting.” He reached for her handbag. “If you’re willing to go that far, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t tell me your name.”

She had misunderstood his movement, apparently thinking he had intended to put his hand on her knee. As soon as his fingers closed on the handle of the bag, she seized it with both hands and slid off the desk to her feet.

“I’m Sally Collins,” she said swiftly. “I live at Sixty-eight East Seventy-ninth. Apartment Five. Regent 2-0917. Please don’t tear my bag!”

He kept his grip on the alligator-leather contraption, stood up and stepped around the desk toward her.

“Look,” he said, “We might be able to arrive at some deal to keep you out of court. But in order to do that we’ll have to know all about you. To protect ourselves against any repetition of this charge coin use.”

“I swear by everything I hold dear I’ll never do it again!”

She wrestled for the bag, brushing close against him. Her month was provocatively near, her lime-green eyes wide with anticipation.

He pried her fingers loose from the handle. “Let’s have a look at those color swatches you were matching those fabrics with.”

He opened the bag. She lunged, slapped at the bag, knocked its contents to the floor.

Don held out a hand to keep her off, bent down to retrieve the scattered conglomeration — comb, compact, billfold, keys, coin purse, checkbook.

She raced to the door, yanked it open, rushed through the outer office.

He straightened up in time to see Mary Bayard seize the fleeing girl as she reached the door to the corridor. It wouldn’t be the first time Mary had blocked an escape in just that fashion. She had proved herself so often, in that connection, that cute little Cora Session, Don’s secretary at her desk out there, didn’t feel it necessary to leave her typewriter to help.

The girl wrenched open the corridor door, struggling wildly as the muscular Miss Bayard tussled with her. They lurched through the doorway to the corridor. The girl screamed.

Don saw Mary Bayard fling up her hands, reel sideways against the door frame and crumple to the floor beyond his line of vision.

Cora cried sharply, “Mr. Marko — quick!”

He ran through the outer office as the corridor door slammed. He shoved at it, but something outside was preventing it from opening. It took a good shoulder heave to push the obstruction back.

Mary Bayard was sprawled unconscious on the floor of the corridor. It had been her dead weight that had held the door. The girl had vanished.

Fifteen feet further along, where the corridor made an L turn by the stair-well one of Nimbletts’s middle-aged executives knelt; huddled against the wall. He held both hands to his mouth. Blood gushed from his nose, ribboning down over his hands, his chin, his shirt front. He goggled in fright at Don Marko, took one hand away from his mouth long enough to mumble, “He went downstairs!”

Don reached the stair door, tugged it open, leaned over to peer down. There was no one in sight, but the girl could have kept close to the wall going down. Yet there was no sound of clip-clopping Cuban heels.

He ran back to Mary Bayard. Cora was squatting beside the plainclothes woman. “She’s breathing, Mr. Marko.”

Don stooped, saw the lump on the back of Mary Bayard’s head just above the tightly coiled bun of dark hair. “Knocked out! Call the hospital. Tell one of our nurses to hop down here fast. Don’t move Miss Bayard till the nurse gets here.”

The middle-aged man stumbled to his feet. “Did he kill her?” he muttered through a bloodstained handkerchief.

“Knocked her out, Ralph.”

Don had known the mousy little man since he’d first come to Nimbletts. Ralph Eddrop, assistant credit manager, hadn’t aged or changed a particle in all the intervening years. He was short, inclined to be pudgy, pale, and colorless of speech and manner as well as of complexion. He’d always been the punctual and painstaking, shy and shrinking timid-soul type, but Nimbletts thought a great deal of Ralph’s judgement as to charge accounts and delinquent balances.

Ralph took the handkerchief away from his mouth and examined it with horrified astonishment. “He tried his best to knock me out, too. But I thought it was only a newspaper he had in his hand, so when I saw him attack Miss Bayard, I tried to grab him. He hit me with a perfectly terrific blow right in the mouth.” The credit man felt of his teeth. “It felt like a mule kick.”

Don saw a rolled newspaper lying against the wall halfway to the turn of the corridor. “Why’d you say ‘he’? It was a girl, wasn’t it?” The newspaper had been rolled around a footlong piece of heavy iron pipe.

Ralph’s forehead crinkled into a puzzled scowl. “There was a girl, but I thought that man was about to strike her, too, Don. She ran right past me before I tried to grab the big brute.”