Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Smoking Chimney

Karper began as soon as the soup had made its appearance and the waitress had withdrawn and dropped the brown curtain into place. “Stanwood, I want some information.”

Stanwood kept quiet.

Karper said quietly: “There’d be some money in it for you — quite a bit of money. Perhaps you could use a little ready cash, eh?”

Stanwood felt his heart give a sudden, quick leap, then felt colour in his face. He tried to keep from showing any eagerness. Holding the water glass in his hand so that he could take a quick sip of water in case he felt his voice was betraying him, he asked: “What do you want?”

Karper said: “Something you can furnish me. No one else will know about it, something that need concern only the two of us.”

Stanwood said: “I couldn’t do anything that would betray the interests of my employer.”

“Oh, certainly not,” Karper agreed.

There followed a period of silence while the waitress brought food. Karper let Stanwood alone with his tumultuous thoughts.

That silent pressure bothered Stanwood. He ate half of what he had ordered, pushed his plate away, and asked: “Well, what is it you want?” The voice was crisp enough, but the lighting of a cigarette gave Stanwood an excuse as he spoke to avoid Karper’s eyes.

Karper said: “The low-down on that Petrie oil business — all of it.”

Stanwood said: “That would be impossible.”

“Impossible,” Karper pointed out, “is a very definite and a very final word.”

Stanwood shifted his position.

“Nothing is impossible ,” Karper went on.

Again there was an interval of silence.

Karper said suavely: “Let us forget that word ‘impossible’. Let’s look at it this way. Everything has its price. Sometimes the thing that is desired is so valuable that no price seems high enough. Then we say casually that it is impossible. Whereas it’s all a matter of price.”

“Price?” Stanwood asked.

“Exactly.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Stanwood said, knowing all the time that he did understand.

Karper said: “A friend of mine whom I mentioned over the telephone is quite a student of the psychology of gambling. He says it’s quite possible to tell when a man is gambling merely for amusement, when he’s gambling because he hopes to win, and when he’s gambling because he’s desperate... Interesting subject, don’t you think? Because we’re all gamblers more or less... I’m frank to admit that I want this information so that I can gamble, but I want to take some of the risks out of the gamble. That is, as far as possible.”

Stanwood suddenly met Karper’s eyes. “How much?” he asked.

“Five thousand.”

“It isn’t enough.”

Karper stared steadily, hypnotically. “You could run it up on the tables so that it would be enough.”

Stanwood shook his head. “If I’m going to sell out, I get what I need.”

“How much do you need?”

“Eighteen thousand dollars.”

Karper said: “That’s out of the question.”

Suddenly Stanwood found that he could hold Karper’s eyes. He said: “I’m not entirely a damn fool, Karper. I may be weak, but I’m not dumb — at least, not that dumb. That information would be worth a lot of money to you.”

“Not that much.”

Stanwood got up and reached for his hat. “All right then,” he said, “it’s your lunch. You pay the bill.”

“Wait a minute,” Karper said, surprised respect in his voice.

Stanwood remained standing.

“Sit down,” Karper commanded.

Stanwood hesitated perceptibly, then sat down on the extreme edge of the bench, still holding his hat.

Karper said: “I’m not representing all these surface rights. My own interests are limited. I can’t afford to pay eighteen thousand. I might go to seven. The wheel owes you eighteen thousand. You can’t get it back because you haven’t enough operating capital to force the law of averages to work for you. Seven thousand would give you enough to win back what you’ve lost.”

Stanwood looked at his wristwatch. “We’ll have time,” he said, “before I go back to drop around to your bank and arrange for a transfer of eighteen thousand dollars.”

“Eight thousand,” Karper said. “That’s the limit.”

Stanwood cleared his throat. “That wouldn’t do me any good, even if I won, unless Mr. Pressman didn’t return to the office for a day or two.”

Karper said: “We have time to go to the bank before my two o’clock appointment — if we start now.”

Karper let Stanwood see cold finality in his eyes.

Stanwood cleared his throat.

“All right,” he said in a dry voice, “let’s go.”

Mrs. Pressman came sweeping into the office at two-thirty, her manner that of a haughty monarch who condescends to confer a priceless boon upon her subjects by making a personal appearance in public.

Corliss Ramsay barely had time to plug in the line, ring Jane Graven in her office, and say, “Bad News is here,” before Mrs. Pressman opened the door which led to her husband’s private office and the secretarial office which opened from it.

“Good afternoon, Jane,” she said and walked directly over to her husband’s desk.

Jane Graven started to say something, then caught herself, and became elaborately busy with secretarial matters on her own desk.

Mrs. Pressman finished her survey of her husband’s desk, then came to stand in the doorway of Jane’s office, exerting upon the secretary the silent pressure of her disapproving presence.

Jane looked up.

“The mail,” Mrs. Pressman said.

Jane smiled. Her lips felt cold. “Oh, yes I have it here.”

Mrs. Presssman walked over to the desk, scooped up the pile of mail. “I’ll take it to him,” she said.

“Won’t he be in the office today?”

Mrs. Pressman countered with a quick question. “Have you heard from him?”

“No,” Jane admitted.

“I think, under the circumstances, it would be better for me to take it home with me. He’ll want it there.”

Jane knew this for a barefaced falsehood, knew also there was nothing she could do about it.

“Have you a briefcase I can put this in?” Mrs. Pressman asked.

Jane had only her own briefcase. There were some papers in it, but Mrs. Pressman, having invaded the office, was quite apparently in no mood to put up with half measures.

“I have my own briefcase,” Jane said.

Mrs. Pressman’s silence had all the force of a command. Jane dumped the papers out of it and helped Mrs. Pressman put in the mail.

“That’s all of it?” Mrs. Pressman asked.

Jane could only nod.

“I’ll have it ready for him in his study at the house when he arrives,” Mrs. Pressman said, and then vouchsafed the second smile of the interview. “Good afternoon, dear.”

“Good afternoon,” Jane said, and watched her out of the door.

Mrs. Pressman was exactly twenty-two years younger than her husband. They had been married five years, the same length of time that Jane had been working for Mr. Pressman. One of Mrs. Pressman’s premarital demands had been that her husband discharge the secretary who had been working for him for some ten years. Jane — young, timid, and inexperienced — had been sent by the employment agency for an interview with Ralph G. Pressman. She had got the job.

Jane waited until she heard the click of the door confirm Mrs. Pressman’s departure; then she went to the outer office.

“Couldn’t you have given me more notice, Corliss?”

Corliss Ramsay shook her blonde head. “She swept through here like a whirlwind through a pile of loose papers,” she said. “I had the line plugged in before she was halfway across the office, but she’d gone through the door of the directors’ room by the time I had you on the line. What she want?”