As the door to the room slammed convulsively behind Myrtle, Mrs. Rutherford relaxed, laid the automatic on the sofa between us, and flung back her mink coat. She was an appetizing little number, if you like 'em red-haired, well-developed and mad through and through.
Instinctively I started to reach for the gun but was checked by her laugh.
"Take it, by all means," she said. "It's not loaded. I only needed it for the maid. Tell me, Winnie, have you got her on your string, too? The maid made or undone, as they used to say."
"Virginia," I said firmly, "I told you earlier this morning that we were through. There's nothing more to be said about it. It's finished, done, kaput! All's well that ends."
She laughed again, and looked at me closely. In spite of myself, I began pulling nervously at the lobe of my left ear, a habit of mine when confused which has always irritated my Dorothy.
"There!" Virginia said finally, "that's it!"
Her voice had a note of finality with a touch of total triumph that I found disturbing.
"Well, have you anything to say?" I asked.
"Haveyouanything to say?"
"I've already said it, Virginia. Nice as you are and beautiful as you are, we're washed up. It won't work and we both know it. So why not shake hands and quit friends?"
She took my proffered hand in hers but, instead of shaking it, examined it carefully.
"Very clever," she murmured. "You've even got that little mole at the base of your thumb."
"Of course I have. It's been there since birth."
"Very,very, clever, Winnie," she continued, "but it won't do, my Winnie, because you see you aren't my Winnie at all. You're a total stranger."
"I've changed," I admitted. "I'm trying to be half-way decent."
"Whoever wanted Winnie to be half-way decent?" she mused. "Nobody. He was much pleasanter as he was—a rich, friendly boob. As for you, whoever you are, I'm on to your game. You aren't Winfred Tompkins and you know it."
I put some heavy sarcasm into my reply. "How did you ever guess, Mrs. Rutherford?"
She laughed airily, helped herself to a cigarette and leaned forward while I lighted it so that I could not help seeing deep into the straining V of her blouse.
"Lots of things. In the first place, you call me 'Virginia' when we're alone instead of 'Bozo' as you always used to do."
"I stopped calling you 'Bozo' when I made up my mind—" I began.
"Nuts to you, Buddy," she rejoined. "Then you kept pulling at your ear as though you were milking a cow, while I was needling you. Winnie never did that. When he was in a spot, he always reached in his pocket and jingled his change or, as a desperate measure, twiddled his keys."
"Don't judge my habits by my hang-overs," I insisted. "I'm not feeling well and I've had a sort of psychic shock."
"Winnie never said 'psychic' in his life, poor lamb," she observed. "He didn't know what it meant. No, I don't know what your game is but I'm on to you and we're going to be real buddies from now on or—"
"Or what?"
"The police," she observed quietly, "take a dim view of murder in this state. Now I'm willing to be broad-minded. Winnie was a louse who had it coming to him, I guess. I was playing him for a quick divorce and marriage. Three million dollars is a lot of money, even in these days, and it would have been nice to have been married to it. But it's even nicer this way, I guess."
The decanter was within reach. I poured myself another drink. "Have some?" I asked.
"And why not? What's yours is mine, and we both need it."
"Why did you say it was nicer this way, Mrs. Rutherford?" I inquired.
"Virginia to you, Winnie. It's because now I don't have to marry you and I still have a pipe-line to the Tompkins millions."
"So youaregoing in for blackmail," I observed. "Suppose I threatened to divorce Jimmie and marry you. After all, I still could."
"A girl has her pride," she murmured. "Not that I'd mind having fun with you, Winnie—as I think I'd better call you. But a wife can't give testimony against her husband and I think I'd rather like to be able to give testimony if needed. Besides, a husband has too many opportunities to help the undertaker. There are accidents in bath-tubs and garages, medicines get mixed up in the bathroom cabinet and there is always the old-fashioned hatchet. No, since you've managed to get rid of the other Winnie, somehow, I think I'll keep a safe distance and my silence, as long as you make it worth my while."
"Suppose I won't play?" I suggested.
"Then I'll go to the police or the F.B.I.—they're supposed to catch kidnappers, aren't they?—and tell them what I know."
I stood up. This would be easier than I had expected.
"Okay, Virginia," I said, "go right ahead. There's the telephone. You can use it to call the Secret Service for all I care. See what luck you have with your story, when my wife is here to testify that I'm Winnie Tompkins."
Her face paled and her eyes narrowed angrily. "Jimmie too?" she asked. "Then you're both in it!"
"We're both in what?"
The door opened and Germaine Tompkins stood in the entrance.
Virginia Rutherford looked trapped and she instinctively pulled her mink back over her shoulders.
"Nothing, Jimmie," she said at last. "I was foolish enough to hope that if I came back and had a talk alone with Winnie, we could pick up where we left off. He's been acting so strangely that he doesn't seem like himself at all. And so are you. That's what I meant by saying that you were both in it."
"Virginia," my wife said firmly, "my husband told you to stay out of this house—and it's my home, too—and now I find you here. Please go or I'll call the police."
The two women exchanged appraising glances which suggested that they were both thoroughly enjoying the touch of melodrama that had come into their well-fed lives.
"No, it's my fault for letting her in," I said. "She sent in word by Mary—"
"You mean Myrtle."
"—that she would like to see me. I agreed to do so, so you can't blame her. We talked things over and decided that it's all off—a few moments of madness, but that's all, and not worth wrecking two marriages for. Isn't that so, Mrs. Rutherford?"
Virginia shook her head. "No, Winnie, it is not so. Jimmie, I came here with that gun. It wasn't loaded but the next time it will be. I made Myrtle or whatever her name is show me in and I told her I would shoot Winnie if she gave the alarm. Then I told him what I know about him."
"And what is that?" my wife asked.
"That he is not Winnie at all," Virginia declared. "That he is an imposter, that he and perhaps you had done away with poor old Winnie. I told him that I wouldn't tell his secret if he paid me to keep silent. And he told me to call the police."
My wife went over to her and took her hand. "Poor, darling Virginia," she murmured, "why don't you go away and have a good rest? You've got yourself all worked up for a nervous breakdown. Of course it's Winnie. I'm married to him and I ought to know my own husband, shouldn't I? You've simply got run down and all, with rationing and war-work. Why don't you let Jerry send you for a few weeks to the Hartford Sanctuary for psychoanalysis and a good rest?"
Virginia dashed my wife's hand away. "In other words, you think I'm crazy!" she snapped.
"No, but I do think you're hysterical. This is Winnie, I'm Jimmie and you're Virginia Rutherford. We've all been letting ourselves get over-emotional and this war is a strain on everybody. Don't worry. Jerry can fix it for you quite easily and I—we both will be glad to help pay for it, if you're worried about the money. After all," Germaine added wryly, "the whole thing is pretty much of a family affair, isn't it? Let's keep it that way."
Mrs. Rutherford reached over and grabbed the gun from the sofa.
"All right, Germaine Tompkins, murderess," she grated. "If that's the way you're going to play it, I'll play too. Don't worry about my mind. Start thinking about the electric chair. Remember, in this state they execute women who kill their husbands."
Jimmie waited until the door closed behind the doctor's wife. Then she turned to me with a curious expression of weariness.
"Poor man!" she remarked. "You have got yourself into a bad mess, haven't you?"
I nodded.
"It didn't seem like one while I was getting into it," I said. "It's only now when I'm trying to get things straightened out that it seems so awful."
"Let's see," she continued. "How many women is it you've been trying to keep away from each other? There's myself, of course, but wives don't count any more, do they? And there's Virginia Rutherford and Myrtle, and there was that blonde actress we met at Martha's Vineyard last summer, and is it one or two girls at the office?"
Here was where I could object with complete sincerity. "I swear that I've not been fooling with any of the office girls," I said.
"I know," Jimmie agreed wisely. "You always used to tell me that it was considered bad for business to play with the help but after I saw the way you went for Myrtle I decided that there were exceptions to every rule."
"Nobody in the office," I repeated. "I swear it."
"Then perhaps it was the office next door. Maybe you brokers have an exchange system for taking on each other's stenographers—charge it to business expenses for getting information about each other's dealings—but I know I've heard the name Briggs mentioned somehow in your connection."
"The name means absolutely nothing to me," I insisted. "If it will make you any happier I'll admit to a hundred women but I'm through with all that sex-stuff. From now on, I'm going to be a one-woman man."
Germaine faced me with an air of resolution. "Would you mind giving me a drink of brandy?" she asked. "I've something to say to you and I'm afraid you won't like it."
I went to the portable bar and poured her a pony of Courvoisier.
"Here you are. Down the hatch! And now what is it you want to tell me."
"Believe me, Winnie," she said, "it's not easy for me. But I'd better say it anyhow. I can't keep on suppressing it. Whoareyou?"
"What's that?"
"Whoareyou?" she repeated. "You look like my husband but you don't talk like him. His clothes fit you but Virginia Rutherford isquiteright—you aren't Winnie Tompkins."
"How did you guess?"
"Don't think I'll give you away," she continued. "I won't because you must have had a terribly important reason for doing whatever you have done. You seem to be in deep trouble of some kind. I—I'd like to help you, if I can. Don't think I'm hard on my husband. It's been years since we—oh, you know. I married him for his money and I still don't know why he married me. Yes, I do, but I've never liked to admit it. He'd made a lot of money in the market and had built this house. He needed a wife the way he needed an automobile, a portable bar, a Capehart, a thoroughbred Great Dane and a membership in the Pond Club. I was available, at a price, which he met—but that's all there is to our story."
"Poor Jimmie!" I sympathized. "We're both lost, I guess. No, I'm not Winnie but I don't know who else I could possibly be. You see, less than twenty-four hours ago I was a lieutenant-commander on a light carrier in the North Pacific and—"
Germaine slowly withdrew her hand from mine.
"Oh!" she exclaimed softly. "Oh Winnie! Poor old idiot! I'll take care of you and see that you get over this. Wait, I'll call the doctor right away. The Hartford Sanctuary's a very nice place, and I can come over every week to—"
I shook my head. "You'll do nothing of the kind, my dear," I ordered. "No doctor can help me on this one. Besides," I added, "how do you know that I wasn't batty before and have just come to my senses."
Her eyes were frightened. "All right, dear," she agreed. "I like you better this way, anyhow."
"Thanks, Jimmie," I replied. "I'm going to try to stay this way."
My wife sat down beside me and studied me closely. "Youlookdifferent," she remarked. "To me, at any rate. You're sort of coming to a focus. If only—. You're so different and—strange."
Here was my chance to recover lost ground.
"As near as I can make out," I said, "I've had a kind of amnesia. I know you, of course, and my name, and that this is my house and that Ponto is my dog, even though he tried to bite me. I know the Pond Club and the Harvard Club, but that's about all I seem able to remember. I can't recall where I work or where I bank, or who my friends are or what kind of car I drive or what I was doing before yesterday afternoon."
She relaxed at the holy scientific word 'amnesia,' as though to name a mystery explained it.
"But you were saying something about being on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific," she objected.
I laughed. "That must have been part of a very vivid dream I was having in a chair in the bar at the Pond, when Ranty Tolan woke me up. It was one of those dreams which seemed so real that real life seemed like a dream. It still does a bit. That's where my alleged mind got stalled and I'm still floundering around. Help me, won't you?"
"You didn't seem to need much help remembering Virginia Rutherford," she remarked, "but I'll try to fill in some of the gaps for you. You have your own firm—Tompkins, Wasson and Cone—at No. 1 Wall Street. It's sort of combination brokerage office and investment counsel. You once told me that your specialty was finding nice rich old ladies and helping them re-invest their unearned millions. You bank at the National City Farmers and your car is a black '41 Packard coupe."
"That helps a lot," I thanked her. "Now how about my friends? If I go to town tomorrow, I ought to be on the look-out for them. Business isn't so good right now that I can afford to let myself be run in as an amnesiac while my partners look after the loot."
She frowned. "I don't know much about your friends in town, since so many of them are in the war," she admitted. "There's Merry Vail, of course, who roomed with you at Harvard, but he hasn't come out here much since Adela divorced him after that business in Bermuda. Sometimes you talk about the men you see at the Club but I've never been able to keep track of the Phils and Bills and Neds and Joes and Dicks and Harrys. You'll have to find your own way there. At the office, of course, there's Graham Wasson and Phil Cone, your partners, but you won't have much trouble once you're at your desk. Wasson is dark and plump and Cone is fair and plump and they're both about five years younger than you are."
"The office doesn't worry me," I agreed. "I can handle anything that develops there."
"You know, Winnie," Jimmie remarked, "if I were you I wouldn't try to go to town for a few days. The office will run itself and you need a rest. I don't know much about amnesia but I've always heard that rest and kind treatment—"
"Uh-uh!" I dissented emphatically. "Worst thing in the world for it. I've always heard that the thing to do is to go back over the ground until you come to the thing that gave you the original shock and then it all comes back to you. If I stick around Bedford Hills I'll just get panicky over not being sure whether I remember things or not. I'll go to town in the morning and see if I can't find myself."
She laughed, as wives laugh. "You may be a changed man," she announced, "but you're still stubborn as a mule. Tell me, to change the subject, you say that you remember me. Tell me what I seem like to you, now that you've changed, as you say, aside from age, sex, scars and distinguishing marks, if any, and marital status."
I closed my eyes and thought of Dorothy as she had been that last night in Hartford before she walked out and I decided to join the Navy as a Reserve Officer.
"You are piano music on a summer night—something Scarlatti or Mozart—thin, cool, precise, gay. You are apple blossoms against a Berkshire hillside. You are the smoke of fallen leaves climbing into the cool October sky. You are surf on a sandy beach, with the gulls wheeling and the white-caps racing past the lighthouse on the point. You are bobsleds and hot coffee and dough-nuts by a roaring wood fire. And you're a lost child, with two pennies in your fist, looking in the window of a five-cent candy-shop."
Germaine relaxed. "Except for that last bit, Winnie, you made me sound like a year-round vacation resort or an ad for a new automobile. You've mentioned almost everything about me except the one thing I obviously am."
"Which is?"
"A simple, rather stupid woman, I guess," Germaine sighed, "who's had everything in life except what she wants."
"All women are simple," I pontificated, "since what they want is simple."
"You moron!" she blazed. "Don't you see that no woman knows what she wants until she is made to want it. You ... you never made me want anything simple, except to crack you over the head with something."
After she had left, I sat for a long time. There seemed to be nothing to do or say. Winnie's domestic life was still in too much of a snarl for me to do the obvious thing and follow Germaine upstairs, and into her bedroom, lock the door, and kiss her tear-stained face and tell her that I was sorry I had hurt her.... Before it would be safe to accept her gambits I must first explore my business connections. Hadn't my wife said something about girls in the office?
My first stop in the morning, after I had been careful to take a late commuting train in to the city in order to avoid business men who were sure to know and greet Winnie Tompkins, was the Pond Club.
Tammy was behind the bar and as soon as I entered he turned and mixed me a powerful pick-me-up. I drained it with the usual convulsive effort and then pretended to relax.
"Thanks, Tammy," I said. "That's what I needed." "Good morning, Mr. Tompkins," he remarked. "I'm glad to see you back. You were looking a trifle seedy—if you don't mind my saying so, sir—when you were in here Monday afternoon."
"I took a day off in the country and got rested up," I told him. "I feel fine now. Anybody in the Club?"
"Not just now, sir. A couple of gentlemen were asking for you yesterday afternoon—that would be Tuesday. That was Commander Tolan, sir, and a friend of his, a Mr. Harcourt his name was, who hasn't been here before. They asked me if you were at your home but I just laughed. 'Him gone home?' I said. 'Not while he has a girl and a flat on Park Avenue.' Begging your pardon, Mr. Tompkins, I knew you didn't want to be bothered wherever you were and so I said the first thing that came to my head."
"You're doing fine, Tammy," I assured him. "I don't want to see anybody for a couple of days. Now then, I'd like you to tell me what happened here Monday afternoon. It's the first time in my life I've ever drawn a complete blank."
"Well, sir," the Club steward recited. "You came in about two o'clock and sat down in your usual chair—that one in the corner. You said something about having had lunch at the Harvard Club, sir, and had a couple of Scotch and sodas here."
"Was I tight, Tammy?"
"Not to call tight. You didn't show it, and after a time you went to sleep, like you was tired out. You was still sleeping when Mr. Morgan, Mr. Davis and Commander Tolan came in. That would be a little after three o'clock, sir. They made some talk about how you were sleeping through the noise they made, that it would take a bomb to wake you. Then, sir, I guess you had some kind of a dream. You began talking like and thrashing with your arms and making noises. So Commander Tolan he said, 'Jesus we can't drink with that going on' and went and shook you by the shoulder until you woke up. You'd been dreaming all right, Mr. Tompkins, because you talked wild when you woke up, about Alaska and where were you. The others joked a bit about it after you left but I'd take my oath, sir, that you weren't really what might be called tight, Mr. Tompkins."
"Thanks a million, Tammy," I said. "That's a load off my mind. I drew a blank and didn't know where I'd been or what I'd been doing. Can you let me have some money? I'm a bit short of cash."
"Of course, sir. How much will you need?"
"A couple of hundred will do," I told him, "if you have that much."
"That will be easy, sir. If you'll just sign a check, like the house rules says, I'll get it from the safe."
He nearly caught me. Signing checks was something I simply could not do until I had learned to imitate Winnie Tompkins' signature. I had tried in the guest-room at Bedford Hills, the previous evening, and found that my original signature as Frank E. Jacklin was completely unchanged by my transmigration, and that my own copy-desk scrawl was the only handwriting I could commit. I had burned the note-paper on which I had made the crucial experiments and flushed the ashes down the toilet. One of my objects in coming to the Pond had been to see if I couldn't get money by simply initialing a chit.
I hastily looked in my bill-fold. There was still a fair amount of money left. It would last me until I found a way to draw on Winnie's bank-account.
"Never mind, after all," I told Tammy. "I guess I have enough to last me until I get down to the office. If anybody asks for me, you haven't seen me since Monday and don't know where I am."
"Very good, sir," he agreed. "I'll take any messages that come for you, sir, and not let on I've set eyes on you."
My next stop was at an old hang-out of mine and Dorothy's from my early newspaper days: a place on East 53rd Street, where you can get a good meal if you have the money to pay for it and the time to wait for it—and I had both. I knew that none of Winnie's friends would be seen dead in the place and I didn't want to try lunch at the Harvard Club, where I'd have to sign the dining-room order or the bar-check. The place was reasonably uncrowded—it was not quite noon—and I had a pleasant lunch.
It was a little after one o'clock when I reached the Harvard Club. The door-man glanced at my face and automatically stuck a little ivory peg in the hole opposite the name of Tompkins on the list of members. I checked my hat and coat and strolled through the sitting-rooms into the large lounge-library beside the dining-room. A couple of men nodded and smiled as I passed them, so I nodded back and said, "Hi!" in a conversational tone. In the lounge I found a chair and a copy of the World-Telegram, so I decided to catch up with the war-news. The German Armies were beginning to crumble but there was still talk of a stand along the Elbe and Hitler was reported fortifying the mountain-districts of Southern Germany into a redoubt for a last Valhalla Battle. The Pacific news was good. The fighting on Okinawa was going our way and the clean-up in the Philippines was well in hand. The Navy Department discounted enemy reports of heavy damage to American warships by Jap suicide-pilots but, as an old Navy P.R.O., I could tell that it had been plenty. I'd heard about the Kamikazes from some of our pilots who had seen them off Leyte and I had no doubt that they were doing a job on the 7th Fleet. Roosevelt had gone South for a couple of weeks rest at Warm Springs, Georgia, and Ed Stettinius was in the final throes of organizing the United Nations Conference at San Francisco—
"Hi, Winnie? Don't you speak to your old friends any more?"
I looked up to see a lean, wolfish-looking man, with a gray moustache, a slightly bald head and definitely Bond Street clothes.
"Oh, hullo!" I said and returned to reading the paper.
The newspaper was firmly taken out of my hands and the man sat down beside me.
"We've got to have a talk," he said.
"Why? What's happened?"
"There's been a lot of talk about you running around town in the last twenty-four hours, Winnie. None of the other alleged friends we know had the guts to tell you. But I thought your room-mate—"
"So you're Merry Vail," I said stupidly.
"You're in worse shape than I thought you were, Winnie," he replied. "Yes, I'm Merriwether Vail who started his life-long career of rescuing Winfred Tompkins from blondes and booze at Harvard in 1916. Now, if you'll just crawl out of your alcoholic coma and listen to me for five minutes before you take off for your next skirt, you'll learn something to your advantage."
"How about a drink, Merry?" I asked, to keep in character.
"Not before five, so help me, and you'd better lay off liquor till you hear this. Here it is. There's a story going the rounds that the F.B.I. is after you. At any rate, at least one obvious G-man has been reported in full cry on your foot-prints."
I sat up, startled. This was too much, even for purgatory. WhathadWinnie been up to?
"What am I supposed to have done, Merry?" I asked. "Trifled with the Mann Act? Told fibs on my income tax return? Failed to notify the local draft board that I was taking the train to New York? Bought black market nylons for my mistress? or what?"
Vail looked mysterious. "For all I know I may be letting myself in for Alcatraz, old man, but the dope is that you've been violating the Espionage Act, communicating with the enemy, or stealing official secrets."
I leaned back in my chair and shook with laughter. "Of all the pure, unadulterated b.s. I've ever heard! I give you my word of honor as a Porcellian that there's not a syllable of truth in it."
Vail looked increasingly distressed. "If you're really innocent, you'd better be careful. Ten-to-one you haven't an alibi, and you'll need a lawyer. Slip me a bill now and retain me as your counsel. No, this isn't a gag. Something's cooking, even if it's only mistaken identity, and I've seen enough of the law in war-time to know that you'll be better off with the old cry, 'I demand to see my attorney,' when they march you down to the F.B.I. headquarters to answer a few questions."
"Thanks, Merry," I said, "and here's twenty bucks to go on with. If the police are looking for me, I'd better go down to my office and see that things are apple-pie before they lock up the brains of our outfit.
"Besides," I added, "you've just given me an idea of how I can make a hell of a lot of money."
Tompkins, Wasson & Cone maintained sincere-looking offices on one of the upper floors of No. 1 Wall Street. The rooms were carefully furnished in dark wood and turkey-red upholstery, in a style calculated to reassure elderly ladies of great wealth that the firm was careful and conservative.
The girl at the reception desk looked as though she had graduated with honor from Wellesley in the class of 1920 and still had it—pince-nez and condescension—but she was thoroughly up-to-date in her office-technique.
"Oh, Mr. Tompkins," she murmured in a clear, low voice, "there's a gentleman waiting to see you in the customer's room, a Mr. Harcourt. He's been here since ten o'clock this morning."
"He's had no lunch?" I inquired.
She shook her head.
I clucked my tongue. "We can't have our customers starve to death, can we? Send out for a club sandwich and some hot coffee. Give me five minutes to take a look at my mail and then send him in. When the food arrives, send that in, too."
She blinked her hazel eyes behind her pince-nez to show that she understood, and I walked confidently down to the end of the corridor to where a "Mr. Tompkins" stared at me conservatively from a glazed door.
My office lived up to my fondest dream of Winnie. It was an ingenious blend of the 1870's and functional furniture—like a cocktail of port wine and vodka. There were electric clocks, a silenced stock-ticker in a glass-covered mahogany coffin, an elaborate Sheraton radio with short-wave reception, tuned in on WQXR, and desks and chairs and divans and a really good steel engraving showing General Grant receiving Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, with a chart underneath to explain who was who in the picture.
The desk I was glad to note, was bare except for an electric clock-calendar which told me that it was 3:12 p.m. of April 4, 1945, and a handsome combination humidor, cigarette case and automatic lighter in aluminum and synthetic tortoise-shell. A glance out the window gave me a reassuring glimpse of the spire of Trinity Church. There was a single typed memo on the glass top of the desk, which read: "Mr. Harcourt, 10:13 a.m. Would not state business. Will wait."
I pushed one of the array of buttons concealed underneath the edge of the desk and a door opened to admit a largish blonde in a tight-fitting sweater.
"Yes, Mr. Tompkins?"
"Please have Mr. Harcourt sent in," I said, "And when he comes, bring your notebook and take a stenographic record of our conversation and—er—what's your name?"
She raised her well-plucked eyebrows. "I'm Eleanor Roosevelt, my parents named me Arthurjean—after both of them—Arthurjean—Miss Briggs to you!"
"Very well, Miss Briggs, tell Mr. Harcourt I'll see him now."
A moment later, she reappeared holding a card in her fingers as though it was a live cockroach. "Sure you want to see this?" she asked.
The card read: "Mr. A. J. Harcourt, Special Agent. Federal Bureau of Investigation, U. S. Department of Justice, U. S. Court House, Foley Square, New York 23, N. Y."
"Of course," I replied, "I've been expecting him for some time."
A. J. Harcourt was neat but not gaudy: a clean-cut, Hart, Shaffner and Marx tailored man of about thirty-five, with that indefinable family resemblance to J. Edgar Hoover which always worries me about the F.B.I.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Harcourt," I said pleasantly, "and what can I do for the F.B.I.?"
Harcourt shook my hand, took a seat, refused a cigarette and cast a doubtful glance over his shoulder at Arthurjean Briggs, who was working semi-silently away at a stenotype machine.
"Oh, that's my secretary," I explained. "I always have her take a record of important conversations in this office. I hope the machine doesn't disturb you, Mr. Harcourt."
"If it's all right with you it's all right with me," he said grudgingly. "I thought perhaps you'd rather have this private."
"Not in the least," I replied. "Miss Briggs is the soul of discretion and I can imagine nothing we could talk about that I wouldn't want her to hear."
The G-Man looked as though he was worrying over whether he ought to call Washington for permission. They hadn't taught him this one in the F.B.I. academy of finger-printing, marksmanship, shadowing and wire-tapping.
"By the way, Mr. Harcourt," I added, "I just learned as I came in that you've been waiting for me since ten this morning. It's after three now so I took the liberty of sending out for a sandwich and some coffee for you. I thought you might like a bite of lunch while you are talking with me."
The Special Agent looked as surprised as though he had found Hoover's fingerprints on the murder-gun, but he nodded gamely.
"Here it is now," I remarked, as there was a knock on the door and a knowing-looking boy placed an appealing tray-load of sandwiches, pickles and coffee in front of Mr. Harcourt.
"Now you go right ahead and eat your lunch," I urged. "Ask me for any information in my possession and you shall have it. And of course I'll have Miss Briggs send a complete transcript of our talk to you at F.B.I. headquarters by registered mail. First of all, if you don't mind, would you show me your official identification and let Miss Briggs take down the number and so on. It's always best to put these things in the record, isn't it?"
The G-Man gulped and produced a battered identity card, complete with fingerprints, number, Hoover's signature and a photograph which would have justified his immediate arrest on suspicion of bank-robbery.
"I imagine, Mr. Harcourt," I remarked, "that you've had plenty of time in the last five hours to question members of my staff about whatever it is you think they might know about my business."
He looked up, almost pathetically. "I asked a few questions," he admitted. "This is just an informal inquiry. Nothing for Grand Jury action—yet."
I didn't like that last word.
"Do you think I ought to call my lawyer in before I proceed with our talk?" I asked. "I resent your reference to Grand Jury action. So far, I don't even know what you wish to see me about and you have just made a libelous statement in front of a reliable witness. Is that the way J. Edgar Hoover trains his Gestapo?"
"I—well—"
"Come on, Harcourt, let's get on with it!" I interrupted. "I'm a busy man and you've wasted five hours of the time my taxes help to pay for, just waiting to take more of my time."
He pulled a black leather notebook out of his pocket and consulted it.
"The Bureau was asked to interrogate you, Mr. Tompkins, on behalf of another government agency."
"Which? Internal Revenue? W.P.B.? The S.E.C?"
"No sir, it was none of those. I'm not at liberty to tell you which one. I am simply instructed to ask you what you know about U.S.S. Alaska and naval dispositions in the North Pacific."
I leaned back and laughed. "Now I get it," I said. "That's O.N.I, and that triple-plated ass, Ranty Tolan, trying to win the war in the barrooms of New York. It all goes back to a dream I had while I was dozing at the Pond Club Monday afternoon. Something about the U.S.S. Alaska being blown up off the Aleutians. Tolan was there when I woke up and I passed a few remarks about my dream before I was fully awake, if you know what I mean. That's all there is to it, Mr. Harcourt."
The Special Agent made a number of hen-tracks in his notebook.
"Thank you very much, Mr. Tompkins," he said. "No doubt you'll be able to explain things if my chief wants to call you in. I don't think my chief believes in dreams. Not that kind of dream. Not in war-time."
I laughed again. "I'm afraid I can't help that. So far as I am concerned, the F.B.I. can believe in my dream or stick it in the files."
Harcourt coughed. "It's not easy working with O.N.I, or other intelligence outfits," he said. "They never tell us anything. The trouble with your dream seems to be that the general public isn't supposed to know that the U.S.S. Alaska is in commission and that the Navy department has had no word from her since last Saturday."
"Don't let that worry you," I said. "If she was anywhere near the Kuriles, she'd keep radio silence, specially off Paramushiro."
"Oh!" Harcourt remarked. "O.N.I. didn't say anything about Paramushiro. Thank you, Mr. Tompkins. We'll be in touch with you, off and on."
He rose, very politely, shook hands again, thanked me for the food, nodded to Miss Briggs and made a definitely Grade A exit.
His steps died away down the corridor. Miss Briggs waited until he was out of earshot then turned to me. "You God damned fool!" she said fondly. "You had him bluffed until you talked about Paramushiro. Why did you admit anything?"
I looked up at her broad, pleasant face.
"So you've made a monkey out of me. I alibied you up and down. Listen, Winnie, the F.B.I. have been all over the joint since early yesterday. We were warned not to whisper a word to you. There was an agent waiting to grill me when I got home last night. I told him you'd been spending the week-end with me."
"You told him—" I was startled.
"Sure! Why not? He wasn't interested in my morals. I told him about our place up in the fifties and gave you a complete alibi from Friday close of business until Monday noon. And now you have to make like a Nazi with the ships in the Pacific. Say, what is it you've supposed to have done—kissed MacArthur?"
"Damned if I know, Miss Briggs. That's part of the trouble."
"Lay off that 'Miss Briggs' stuff. That was to punish you for giving me the fish-eye when you came in. I'm your Arthurjean and the market's closed so you'd better catch the subway uptown with me and I'll cook you a steak dinner at our place."
This was too deep water for hesitation, so I took the plunge. Taking my hat and coat I told the genteel receptionist that I'd be back in the morning. I waited for Arthurjean at the foot of the elevators and followed her lead, into the East Side subway and up to the 51st Street station, on to "our place."
It was very discreet—an old brown-stone front converted into small apartments. There was no door-man and an automatic elevator prevented any intrusive check on the comings and goings of the tenants. The third-floor front had been made into a pleasant little two-room suite—a "master's bedroom" (Why not 'mistress's?' I thought) with a double-bed, dresser and chairs, and an array of ducks which revealed the true Tompkins touch. There was a small sitting-dining room as well, and a kitchenette with a satisfactory array of bottles in the Frigidaire and a reasonable amount of groceries.
Arthurjean took off her hat and coat, fixed me a good stiff drink and then disappeared into the bathroom. After a good deal of splashing and gurgling, she reappeared clad in maroon satin pyjamas.
"There," she said, "now I feel better."
I smiled at her. "Here's to Arthurjean!" I said.
"Nuts to Arthurjean," she replied. "How about Winnie? You've always been swell to me, and you know it. I don't care if you're a louse or a souse. You can always come to me any time you're in trouble and I'll fix you up. Now you're in trouble with the cops, so how about me helping you? Huh?"
"You're a good kid," I said truthfully, for Arthurjean was indeed one of God's own sweet tarts. "The truth is I'm in all kinds of a jam. You see, I can't seem to remember what I've been doing before last Monday. It's sort of like loss of memory, only worse. This F.B.I. thing is only one of my headaches."
She looked at me questioningly. "So you don't remember where you were before Monday?" she asked. She slouched across the room, leaned down and gave me a hearty kiss. "Will that help you remember? It was like I told that detective. You and me were right here in this place over Easter and don't forget it."
I sighed. I liked Arthurjean, though she was as corned-beef and cabbage to Germaine's caviar and champagne. "Okay," I said. "I won't forget it."
"Attaboy!" she agreed. "Now that we've got that settled, suppose you tell me where the hell you really were over the week-end. You stood me up Friday night and today's the first time I've set eyes on you since you left the office Friday morning. Boy, you may have some explaining to do to the F.B.I., but it's nothing to what you got to explain to momma."
"And so, Arthurjean," I concluded, "my guess is that for some crazy reason it's up to me to take up where Winnie left off and try to do a good job with the hand he's dealt himself."
She remained silent, hunched on the floor beside me, with her maroon pyjamas straining visibly and a pile of cigarette butts in the ash-tray at her side.
"Give me a break," I pleaded. "When I tried to tell my wife—Winnie's wife—Mrs. Tompkins, that is—all she could think of was to send me off to a plush-lined booby-hatch until I was sane again. The others—at least Virginia Rutherford—are beginning to suspect that something is wrong and that damned dog knows it. So be original and pretend that I might be telling the truth."
She didn't answer. Instead, she stood up, stretched, strolled over to the kitchenette and mixed us both two good stiff drinks.
"Mud in your eye!" she said.
"Glad to see you on board!"
"I don't see why not," she observed conversationally. "I don't pretend to be smart and I know that the other girls in the office think I'm nothing but a tramp because I don't pretend I don't like men, but I'm damned if I think that Winnie, who is one of God's sweetest dumb-bells, could have dreamed up anything as screwy as this."
"As I remember him, he wasn't any too bright," I said.
"Skip it! He wasn't dumb in business. He picked up a couple of million bucks and gave them a good home in his safe-deposit box. He wasn't so hot on music and books and art—except for his damned ducks—but he was a lot of fun. He liked a good time and he liked a girl to have a good time. He should have been born in one of those Latin countries where the women do all the work and the men play guitars, drink and make love."
I drew a deep breath. I had won my first convert. I knew what Paul of Tarsus felt when he met up with Timothy. I thought of Mahomet and Fatima, Karl Marx and Bakunin, Hitler and Hess. Crazy though the whole world would consider me, here was one human being who could listen to my story without phoning for an ambulance.
"Tell me about this Frank Jacklin," Arthurjean remarked. "I don't get all the angles about him and this Dorothy. Seems to me you—Winnie, that is—told me he was the guy she'd had a sort of crush on at school. Winnie was still sort of sore about it twenty years later."
"It's hard for me to be fair," I admitted. "Jacklin was a big shot at school and may have had a swelled head. Winnie wasn't so hot then—nice but with too much money. Jacklin's people were poor, by comparison that is. He got through Yale, slid out into the newspaper game, held his job, married a girl, had a bust-up with his wife and joined the Navy as a reserve officer after she walked out on him. The Navy assigned him to P.R.O. work and sent him to the Pacific."
"He sounds like a heel," she observed, "leaving his wife like that. Tell me more about her. Is she pretty?"
I thought a long time. "I don't quite know," I said finally. "I never knew. She was necessary to me, long after I was necessary to her. She had a mole on her left hip and a gruff way of talking when she was really fond of me. I guess she got tired of living in Hartford and took it out on me."
"Any kids?"
I shook my head vigorously. "Cost too much on a newspaper salary. She said she didn't want any until we could afford them. I was fool enough to believe her. Then when we could afford them she didn't want them. Can't say I blame her."
"Did she make you happy?"
"Of course not! Who wants to be happy? She made me miserable, but it was exciting to be around her. I never knew what I'd find when I got home—a knockdown drag-out fight over nothing at all or hearts-and-flowers equally over nothing."
Arthurjean yawned. "That part's convincing," she agreed. "I'll play this one straight. You're Frank JacklinandWinnie Tompkins rolled into one. The point is, where do we go from here? Let's see you sign Jacklin's name."
I pulled out Winnie's gold, life-time fountain pen and wrote "Frank E. Jacklin" over and over again on the back of an envelope. She studied it carefully.
"That's no phony," she agreed, "and it's nothing like Winnie's handwriting. Think I could get a check cashed on it?"
"Let's try," I suggested. "Tomorrow when I get to the office I'll pre-date a check on the Riggs Bank at Washington. You mail it in for collection and we'll see if it clears."
She shook her head. "No dice! If I tried that, first thing we know we'd have the A.B.A. dicks after you for forgery. Can you think of anything else?"
"Not unless you go to Washington and see Dorothy in O.S.S. and ask her to verify my handwriting. Or, wait. You can go and talk to her and notice whether she wriggles her nose to keep her spectacles up. You can find out whether she's still nuts about Prokofiev. You can ask if she still thinks that Ernest Hemingway is a worse writer than Charles Dickens, and whether she still uses Chanel's Gardenia perfume."
"That's enough," she interrupted. "But how'm I going to get to Washington and do all these things?"
"Next week," I said, "you and I can fly down on a business trip—war-contracts, cut-backs, something official—and while I'm being whip-sawed by the desk-heroes you can check on Dorothy. See if I'm not right."
She nodded. "That's one way. What can we cook up? The office is tied up in estate work and that leaves no chance for Uncle Sam. You get what he leaves the heirs and they tell me that the inheritance tax is here to stay."
I considered the problem. "Tell you what, Arthurjean," I replied. "I've been thinking this over. The war's going to end this summer. What I saw on the Alaska means that nobody can hold out against us. The Germans are on their last legs, but most of the wise guys are saying that it will take from eighteen months to two years to clean up Japan—a million casualties, billions of dollars. This thorium bomb will do the trick and the war will be over by Labor Day. There's a chance for Winnie Tompkins to make another two or three millions."
She laughed sardonically. "How?"
"There's uranium stocks," I suggested.
"All sewed up by the insiders. Last year you—or Winnie—got a query on uranium and found that there wasn't any to be had."
"There's wheat and sugar," I argued. "The world's going to be hungry. There's a famine coming sure as hell. Buy futures and we'll be set."
"Sure," she agreed, "if you want to buy Black and can get funds into Cuba or the Argentine. But there are inter-allied pools operating in sugar and wheat and you can't break into the game without connections at Washington."
"How about peace-babies?" I demanded. "We can sell our war bonds and invest in something solid for post-war reconstruction. Say General Motors or U.S. Steel."
Arthurjean crossed the room and rumpled my head affectionately. "Baby," she observed, "it's damn lucky for you and Winnie's dough I know my way around the Street. Lay off heavy industrials until the labor business gets straightened out. It's all set for a big strike-wave when the shooting stops and a lot of investors are going to be burned. You can sell short of course but you'll have to wait for that. If you must go in for gambling, try the race-track or the slot-machines. Uncle Sam has it fixed so that the only way you can make money out of the peace is to be a Swiss or a Swede."
"But that doesn't make sense," I objected. "In any place and at any time, advance knowledge on what is going to happen is worth a fortune. How about selling some of the war industries short?"
She shook her head. "You wait till you've been to Washington. Some of the smart guys down there may know the answers. Perhaps it will be real-estate, if they can only get rid of rent-control. Probably it will be surplus war-stocks but that's going to be a political racket. Anyhow the tax-collector will be waiting for you, so why worry?"
"Speaking of cashing checks," I reminded her, "how in hell am I going to get some dough? How does Winnie sign himself at the City Farmers anyhow?"
She laughed. "He has three or four separate accounts. The one he uses for purely personal hell-raising is just signed 'W. S. Tompkins.' Let's see you try to write that. Remember he loops all his letters and draws a little circle instead of a dot over the 'i'."
I tried that a few times until she shook her head.
"There isn't a bank-clerk in New York who wouldn't stop a check with that on it. Let's see, he signed his name to something around here. See if you can't copy it."
She fumbled under a pile of magazines and finally came up with a copy of "The Story of Philosophy" by Will Durant.
"Winnie thought this would be good for me," she explained. "Here it is: 'For Miss Arthurjean Briggs, with the compliments of W. S. Tompkins.' He was like that—sort of formal—it gave him a kick. He bought that for me second-hand after we'd been drinking Atlantic City dry at an investment bankers convention. Try it."
I tried the signature again but the effort was even worse than my free-hand efforts. This time it looked like what it was—a clumsy forgery.
"Hell," I exclaimed, "I've simply got to do better than that. How about my tracing it?"
"You'd be surprised," she told me, "how easy it is to spot a signature that's been traced. It's something about the flow of the ink and the angle of the pen. No two signatures are exactly alike and that's why a tracing gives itself away. They got machines which spot it."
"Well, how'm I going to get some dough?" I demanded. "I can't draw on Jacklin's Washington account—and the chances are there isn't much there anyhow. And if I try to draw on Tompkins' account I'll find myself in the hoosegow."
She got up and mixed us another pair of drinks. "I got it," she announced. "It won't be too nice for you but it's better than starving."
"You mean you'll lend me some?"
"Hell, baby, I got no money—twenty-five or thirty in the account and a few hundreds in war-bonds. No, this is better. Just hold out your hand and shut your eyes."
It sounded like jewels. I leaned back in the chair, closed my eyes and extended my right hand in front of me, palm upward. I heard her pad into the bathroom. When she came back, her voice sounded strained as she whispered: "This is it, baby. Keep those eyes shut!"
There was a smooth, tingling sensation across the tips of my fingers, then my right hand was suddenly warm and wet. I opened my eyes to see Arthurjean holding a stained safety-razor blade in her hand and staring at me, white-faced, as the blood trickled from my finger-tips.
"Winnie—" she faltered, and slumped down in the divan.
I hastily grabbed the handkerchief from my breast-pocket and wrapped it around my throbbing fingers.
"Ouch! Damn you!" I exclaimed.
"I'm sorry, baby," she whispered. "I didn't want to hurt you. It seemed the only way—"
"You damned fool," I almost shouted at her. "Do you realize you flopped with that blade in your hand and might have cut an artery?"
"No, did I?" She scrambled up hastily and looked around. "Gee, I feel lousy. Does it hurt much?"
"Not yet. What's the big idea?"
"Now you sound like Winnie," she replied. "He never got ideas easy. Listen, you big slob, if you've cut your fingers you got to have a bandage and if you got a bandage on your right hand, your signature's going to be screwy. All you need do is fumble it and I or one of the girls will witness it and the bank will clear it and you'll get the dough."
I thought that one over. "You've got something in your head besides those big blue eyes," I admitted. "Now if you only have some iodine and bandages we'll see if I can stave off lock-jaw."
She giggled. "Lock-jaw's the last thingyou'llget," she said. "There ought to be something in the medicine cabinet. Gee," she added. "I suppose I'll have to get you undressed and dress you in the morning just like a baby. Ain't that something?"
"How about some food?" I demanded. "You said something about a steak back at the office and all you've given me is Scotch and razor-blades. You get on with your cooking and let me try to fix my hand."
I went into the bathroom, located some mercurochrome and a box of band aids. Once the flow of blood had slacked, I managed to incapacitate myself sufficiently for the purpose of forging Winnie Tompkins' signature.
"Say, Winnie!" Arthurjean suddenly appeared at the bathroom door, with an aroma of steak behind her. "I've just figured out something. If you aren't Winnie but a ringer from the Aleutians, it's not decent for you to see me in my pyjamas. We're strangers!"
"Oh, keep 'em on till after dinner," I said. "I won't stand on ceremony. I'm hungry."
She laughed. "You sure can make like Winnie," she admired. "Jesus, the steak's burning!"
"Say, old man, what happened to your hand?" Graham Wasson, plump, dark and fortyish, but very clean-cut and with a Dewey dab on his upper lip, was my questioner. He sat across the glass-topped desk in my Wall Street Office, while Arthurjean Briggs typed demurely in the adjoining office.
"Changing razor-blades," I confessed. "The damn thing slipped and before I knew it I made a grab for it. Lucky it didn't go deep. Hence the surgical gauze and the lousy signature. Do you think you can get my check cleared through the bank or should I write Winnie 'X' Tompkins, his mark?"
Wasson chuckled like a well-fed broker. "We'll get enough witnesses to your John Hancock to make it legal," he promised. "Now what you've got to do is to ease old lady Fynch into the trustee's delight and take a gander at her former investments. I've brought the list with me. As you know, she insisted that you okay the deal."
I glanced at the typed list. "This stuff looks pretty good to me, Graham," I said. "Detroit Edison's safe as the Washington Monument, A.T.&T. is solid, and G.E. ought to do all right with this new electronic stuff."
"And how!" My partner agreed. "Boy! what a windfall! Stuff like that is scarcer than hen's teeth on the open market. With close to a million bucks to turn over, we ought to do pretty well on this. Here's what we're buying for her."
Wasson passed me a slip of paper. "The trustee's delight," he said. "G-Bonds. You buy 'em, we should worry. No money back for ten years. Morgenthau's dream-child."
The slip was attached to a printed Treasury form. "See here," I pointed out. "These damn bonds depreciate 2.2% a year for the first five years and then start climbing up the ladder again, and they're non-transferable."
"That's it, Winnie. The trustee's delight," Wasson agreed. "They pay 2-1/2% a year if you hold them but if you try to sell them within five years the discount means you only get about .03% on your money. Once a trustee has put you aboard this roller-coaster, he can't conscientiously advise you to get out."
"Who dreamed up that swindle?"
"Oh, a couple of dollar-a-year bankers we sent down to help the Treasury win the war. It's a natural. It's patriotic to invest in war-bonds. The yield's conservative as hell and you get it all back if you wait long enough."
"But what if the old girl dies within the next five years? Won't the estate be liquidated? How will the heirs feel when they have to take a loss of $60,000?"
"That's their worry, Winnie," Wasson pointed out. "All we have to do is sign the papers and la Fynch gets about $25,000 a year for the rest of her life."
"Instead of the $40,000 a year she's getting out of her present investments now."
"Sure, Winnie. We're not in business for our health. Industrials are risky and Miss Fynch is awful set on beating Hitler. We take over her present portfolio and take our chances on the market. If values shift we're in a position to unload—but fast. She isn't. She only gets to town twice a year, once between Bar Harbor and Long Island, and then next time from Palm Beach to Long Island. Come on, Winnie, stick your fist on these papers and I'll handle the transfers."
I shook my head. "I'd like to think this over," I said. "If I was an old woman and expected only five or ten more years of life, I'd be hanged if I'd tie myself down to these financial mustard-plasters. It sounds okay to be patriotic, but I think I'd stick to the greater risks and higher yields and get a run for my money. Tell you what, Graham, you phone and tell her I'd like to have a talk with her before she makes up her mind."
Wasson shoved back his chair and faced me, bristling. "I'll be damned if I will. This is a natural and, handled right, is worth $100,000 to the firm. You talked her into it and now if you're getting cold feet you can talk her out of it. All I know is that you've gone nuts."
"We aren't so hard up that we have to swindle old ladies."
"Swindle my eye! What's wrong about $25,000 a year guaranteed by your Uncle Sam?"
"Less income tax," I reminded him.
"Oh, sure—that—"
"Well, it's about $15,000 a year less than she's getting now. If she sold out and invested in an annuity she could get about $70,000 a year, tax-free. No, I don't want to rush her into this."
"Then you've forgotten how we made our pile in the first place," my partner growled. "Phil Cone and I will have to talk this over. This is a fine time to go soft on us."
I grinned at him. "Go on, talk it over. If you want out, you're welcome. I'd rather like you to stick around, as I'm on to something really big and I don't want the Street to say we fleeced our clients."
"I resent that, Winnie," Wasson snapped.
"What else would you call it? Reinvesting?"
"Listen," he exploded. "You built up this business. You invented the methods. I'm damned if I let you call me a swindler for following your lead!" And he stormed out, slamming the door. A moment later, he stuck his head in again. "Forget it, Winnie. If you're working on a big operation, count me in!"
I studied the list of the Fynch investments again and the more I saw it the more I wondered how anybody but a fool would fall for the proposition of putting money in the government bonds for ten years, when you could clean up outside government.
There was a tap on the edge of my desk. I looked up to see Arthurjean. "Mr. Harcourt is back to see you," she said. "I'll get set with the stenotype. And don't worry about that Fynch dame. I'll give you a fill-in later. She knows what she's doing."
"Fine!" I told her. "Now you show Mr. Harcourt in and make with the stenotype. Did you finish copying what we said yesterday?"
Her mouth dropped open and her sweater quivered eloquently. "Omigawd! baby! I clean forgot."
Mr. Harcourt seemed much more vital and self-possessed than on the previous afternoon—perhaps because he had obviously had a sleep, a shower and a hearty breakfast, presumably prefaced by ten minutes of vigorous push-ups and toe-touching in bathroom calisthenics. At any rate he looked fit.
"Morning, Harcourt," I said casually. "Sorry to tell you that Miss Briggs was home with a bad headache last night and wasn't able to make that copy of our talk yesterday."
G-Men on duty are not supposed to smile without written permission from their immediate superior but Harcourt must have had an extra helping of Wheaties for breakfast. "Call yourself a headache, Mr. Tompkins?" he asked. "That's who our man reported Miss Briggs had last night at 157 East 51st Street, third floor front. Can I get her some aspirin?"
"There are no secrets from the Gestapo," I observed, "and I have no comment to offer except to say next time come on up and have a drink with us instead of doing the G-Man in a cold and drafty doorway across the street."
The Special Agent gave an entirely unofficial wink at Arthurjean. "Oh, hell," he remarked. "What's the use of all this coy stuff? The Bureau isn't interested in your private life. What I wanted to say, Mr. Tompkins, is that I reported our talk to my chief and he teletyped my report down to Washington. We're not going to fool around with Church Street on this one. The Director's going to take it up direct with Admiral Ballister at the Navy Department. For my part, I told him I thought it was all a pipe-dream but like I said the F.B.I. doesn't believe in dreams that come true."
Arthurjean crossed the room and stood behind him, pressing a little unregenerately against the back of his chair, until Harcourt remarked conversationally to U. S. Grant in the engraving, "I'm a married man, baby, with a wife and kids in Brooklyn."
My secretary smiled and gave him a smart tap on the top of his head. "You're a good boy, junior," she told him, "and I'm all for you. But don't you go making trouble for this dumb boss of mine or I'll call on your wife, personal, and Tell All."
Harcourt murmured to the engraving that unconditional surrender washisname, too, but that Tompkins was making so much trouble for himself that he was damned if he could see how the F.B.I. could make it any worse. In any case, he added more directly, he would keep in touch with me and let me know whether I was wanted up at the Federal Court House.
"See here, Harcourt," I replied. "One good turn doesn't make a spring. This is the screwiest case you've ever been on. If you can drop in and visit Miss Briggs and myself on Saturday after lunch at our place, I'll give you a fill-in that will rock the F.B.I. from its gats to its toupees."
"That's mighty white of you—and Miss Briggs," the Special Agent allowed. "If the chief lets me, I'll meet you up there, say about 2:30."
"Swell!" I said. "And which do you prefer—Scotch or rye?"
"I don't drink on duty," he told me, "but I find Bourbon helps fight off colds this early spring weather."
After his departure, I locked myself in the office and with Arthurjean's help, brought myself up to date on Winnie's business operations. Tompkins, Wasson & Cone were not, as I had believed, a high-toned bucket-shop. The proposed Fynch swindle was only the result of a dopey old maid who practically insisted on helping beat the Axis by turning her money into Government bonds. There was plenty of honest graft and many a solid perquisite in straight commission work and supervision of estates. The firm was not, of course, very scrupulous but it always gave value for its transactions. It was, in fact, a pretty slick set-up.
There was a buzz on my inter-office telephone and the receptionist announced: "Mr. Axel Roscommon to see you, Mr. Tompkins."
"Oh, ask him to see one of the other partners, will you?"
"I told him that you were too busy, but he said he must see you and would wait."
"He too?" I asked. "Okay. Send him in. Do you know an Axel Roscommon, Arthurjean?"
"Uh-uh!" She shook her head. "The name's sorta familiar. Something in oil before Pearl Harbor. I can find out if you'll wait a bit."
"Never mind," I told her. "I'll see him. You stay in the next room and keep the door ajar so you can take a record."
She laughed. "I can do better than that, boss. I'll switch down the inter-office phones and keep the door shut. That way. I'll hear every word you say. It's like a dictaphone."
Mr. Roscommon was an extremely well set up man in the middle fifties, about six-feet two, lean, with iron grey hair, a grey moustache, steel-blue eyes and a bear-trap grip. He looked prosperous but not worried by it. He spoke with a faint Irish lilt in his voice but his manner was most direct and unHibernian.
"Mr. Tompkins," he remarked. "You must excuse the lack of formality but you will understand when I tell you that I am chief of the German intelligence organization in the United States. Now don't think I'm crazy or indiscreet. The only reason I have come to you is because my agents in the F.B.I. tell me that you are involved in the sinking of U.S.S. Alaska off the Aleutians. Thorium bombs, wasn't it? Chalmis was a pretty smart chap and I warned our people that he was getting hot. Now I don't ask you why in Wotan's name the Fuehrer thinks it makes sense to have two intelligence services in this country. Probably Berlin didn't like my last reports. No, don't get excited. I've engaged in no subversive activities, I'm an Irish Free State citizen and if you go to Washington you'll find that they know all about me. Hitler may want the old Goetterdaemmerung spirit in our outfit but I can't see the point of too much zeal."
I offered him a cigarette. "What do you want to see me about, Mr. Roscommon?" I asked. "For all you know there may be dictaphones planted all over the place. My last visitor today was actually a special agent of the F.B.I."
Roscommon lighted his cigarette with a flick of a gold Dunhill lighter. "That would be Harcourt—A. J. Harcourt—wouldn't it? A fine chap and a conscientious agent. I'd heard he'd been assigned to your case. You'll find him completely reliable. As you know, in time of war there has to besomepractical way of maintaining direct confidential communication between the enemies. Switzerland? Bah! All milk chocolate, profiteering and eyewash. I wouldn't trust a Swiss as far as I could throw the Sub-Treasury Building. I'm acting here for Berlin and you have at least three men in Berlin to keep in touch with the German Government over there. That's the only practical way modern wars can be fought, eh? As Edith Cavell said last time, 'Patriotism is not enough.' The fact is that even in war, two great countries like Germany and America must and do maintain direct contact."
I pushed the button for Arthurjean. "Miss Briggs," I asked, "have we any brandy in the office?"
Dead-pan and nonchalant, she crossed the room to a small safe, disguised as a Victorian low-boy, twiddled the dials and revealed a neat little Frigidaire. She prepared two brandies and soda, handed them to us and returned to her office.
"Prosit!" said I.
"Heil Roosevelt!" Roscommon answered.
"But what did you want to see me about?" I inquired. "Youmay be all right butI'malready under investigation by the F.B.I."
"Nonsense, old boy, nonsense," he reassured me. "If they, get troublesome, let me know—I'm in the phone book and my girl will always know where to reach me, day or night—and I'll tell Washington to stop proceedings. No, Tompkins, what I wanted to tell you was that—when you report back to your superior and I'll lay ten-to-one he's that ass Ribbentrop—just tell him that the war's lost. Our game now is to salvage resources for the next war, which will be against Russia, unless I miss my guess. We've got to use these last few weeks and days to rush funds, patents, papers, brains and organization out of the Reich. Send them to Sweden, to Switzerland, to Italy. Fly them to Spain, slip them in U-boats to Buenos Aires or Dublin. Tell Ribbentrop that New York understands our problem and will play the game right across the board, but there must be no shilly-shallying, no nonsense about 'last stands.' If Hitler wants a Siegfried finish, let him have it, but from now on our job is to save Germany as an asset for her Western Allies and as a people whom the world will need to fight the Soviets. Tell him that, will you, old man? Thanks most awfully."
Roscommon finished his drink with an expert swirl of the glass, smiled, shook hands and left the room as abruptly as he had arrived in it. I picked up the outside phone.
"Get me F.B.I. Headquarters," I said. "I wish to speak to Mr. A. J. Harcourt. Thanks, I'll wait."