I should have asked Marvin for a lift.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  By the time I got back to Times Square, both my watch and my stomach told me that it was time to eat. I turned into a restaurant and ordered a thick steak, medium rare, with all the trimmings. While waiting for it I picked up a discarded newspaper. One item caught my eye, and I read it again.

  ‘What daughter of what Army man (retired) has been chasing the black and red too long and too heavily for her own good? There’s danger in them there colours, gal. Watch it.’

  It didn’t need much imagination to guess that Susan had been chancing the family wealth on the illegal gambling tables run by some of New York’s more prosperous citizens.

  The food arrived then and I shelved the problem while I fed the inner man. After coffee I paid the bill, bought a couple of packets of cigarettes, then made my way down to the towering building of the New York Tribune. The prim, buck-toothed woman in charge of the reference section greeted me with a glare, and I tried to thaw her frigid soul with a warm smile.

  ‘Good afternoon, madam.’ I showed her one of my cards. ‘Could you help me? I’d like access to the morgue.’

  The morgue was the place where they kept all the information ever collected on every person who had ever been in print. Normally it was closed to the public, but I had hopes of getting inside and saving some time. She had other ideas.

  ‘You may use the reference section,’ she said coldly. ‘You can read the back issues, but the morgue is reserved for newspaper men only.’

  ‘This is a special case,’ I said hopefully. ‘I’m working on something urgent and I could waste days trying to find what I need. If you’d help me I could be out of here in an hour.’

  I paused, staring at her and switching on the charm. It didn’t work.

  ‘The reference section is to your right,’ she said coldly, and bent her head over her desk. I felt like shaking her, but I knew that it wouldn’t be any good. I was standing there wondering whether or not to try a bribe when someone called to me.

  ‘Mike! How goes it?’

  I turned and grinned with relief and admiration at the trim figure coming towards me. I liked Constance Young. I’d liked her ever since I first met her in a downtown bar when she’d been a cub reporter trying to crack down a case. I’d saved her from a nasty experience and we’d kept more or less in touch ever since. I grabbed her arm and told her what the trouble was. She sniffed.

  ‘Why didn’t you ask for me, Mike? I can get you in.’ She smiled at the prim woman and led the way past the barrier. I smiled too, but the prim woman didn’t smile. She stared after us with a mouth which reminded me of a lemon, it was that sour.

  Inside the morgue I told. Constance what the trouble was.

  ‘Norma Geeson?’ She nodded. ‘The Colonel’s second wife. There should be some coverage here. The wedding, the accident, things like that.’

  ‘Find them for me, will you, sweet?’ I gave her a cigarette and we blew smoke against the ‘No Smoking’ sign. She stared at me.

  ‘A story?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘Come off it, Mike. You wouldn’t be interested in the files unless you hoped to dig up some dirt. I want in.’

  She did too. Young as she was, Constance was still the eager-eyed reporter hot on the scent of a scoop. I smiled at her and shook my head.

  ‘I can’t tell you, Constance. Professional ethics, but this I will promise, if I get anything for publication, it’s yours. Fair enough?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ She yelled at a small man wearing a green eyeshield and dirty suspenders. ‘Hey, Harry, where do I find the stuff on Mrs. Geeson?’

  ‘Be with you in a minute.’ He prowled among his files and I sat down at a small desk. Constance sat on the edge and swung a nyloned leg.

  ‘Need any help?’

  ‘Maybe.’ I unfolded the paper with the item. ‘This squib here, where’s this chick been playing?’

  ‘Susan?’ She knew who was meant as well as I did. ‘The Purple Orchid, mostly. You know the place, classy joint down on the Island. Good food, good wines, excellent entertainment, and a nice, private layout in the back.’ She sounded as cynical as a newspaper reporter could be. I nodded.

  ‘That’s what I thought. Thornedyke runs it, doesn’t he?’

  ‘That’s right. Pays plenty of protection too from what I can make out.’ She seemed about to say something else, but Harry came over then with a couple of big folders and I set to work.

  Constance hovered over me for a while then, knowing I wouldn’t spill anything until I was ready, took off on her own private business. I sat and smoked and read the clippings, making notes now and again, and slowly building up a picture of the missing woman.

  It didn’t help.

  Either the papers didn’t know or, more likely, she hadn’t been in print before her marriage. There was plenty of coverage for the wedding, some background for the Colonel, and a sickly write-up about the new bride. There were pictures of the children too, Stephan looking more human than when I had last met him. I turned back and read about the accident. The Colonel’s first wife had died instantly when her car had smashed against a pylon at sixty miles an hour. Cause of death was, as Marvin had told me, a burst front tyre. Even to me there was no suspicion of foul play. The insurance people would have covered that possibility.

  I stayed in the morgue for over an hour, and when I left I was little the wiser. The thing I had hoped to find just wasn’t in the files, but I hadn’t given up trying.

  At a bar I changed a dollar into nickels and shut myself in a phone booth. Half an hour later I contacted the party I wanted.

  A smooth voice asked me to wait, and I could hear the low mutter of conversation as an order was relayed to someone else. I waited, lighting a cigarette and trying not to feel the cold, which had turned my feet into a couple of cakes of river ice. A voice echoed in my ear.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Colonel Geeson?’

  ‘Yes, yes, what is it?’ He was impatient—I had called him away from a bridge session at his club.

  ‘Lantry here, Colonel.’

  ‘Lantry?’ His hesitation was as phony as a three-dollar bill. ‘Ah, yes I recall the name now. Well, have you found her yet?’

  I smiled at his innocence.

  ‘Not yet, Colonel. This case isn’t as simple as I thought. I need some more help. Would you instruct your lawyers to give it to me?’

  ‘What!’ For a moment I thought that he was going to choke. ‘My lawyers! Really Lantry, is this necessary?’

  ‘No,’ I snapped. My feet were getting even colder and my temper was running out. ‘I can do it the hard way. I can ask around and leave a trail of speculation, or I can grease a few palms and get unreliable information. I can act like an undercover man, or I can be open about it. What reason have you for refusing to assist me?’

  ‘I came to you, Lantry,’ he said, and I could imagine how he looked, ‘because I didn’t want to be bothered with trivial details. As yet, you’ve done nothing but make a nuisance of yourself. I—’

  ‘Hold it, Colonel.’ I dragged at my cigarette and forced myself to remember that I needed his money. ‘I’m not bothering you. All I want you to do is to phone your lawyers and tell them to assist me. Unless they hear from you they’ll throw me out, and rightly so. I can get the information I want from the police if I have to, but—’

  This time it was my turn to be interrupted. ‘Not the police, Lantry.’ He seemed almost to be scared of the word. ‘I want no publicity, understand? Just find my wife, that’s all I ask you to do.’

  ‘That’s what I intend doing,’ I said. ‘And I want to do it fast. Well?’

  ‘I’ll phone them. You know who they are?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘Wendle, Wendle, and Wayne. They have offices on—’

  ‘I’ll find them. Incidentally, Colonel, just for the record, were you at home when your wife left?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ I didn’t have to ask the question in my voice.

  ‘No, Lantry, I wasn’t. I’d been at my club playing poker with a few old friends, and when I returned she had gone.’ He hesitated. ‘At least I assume that she had gone.’

  ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘We had separate rooms,’ he explained. ‘It was late and I didn’t look in at her. She could have gone any time during the night.’

  I nodded. It made sense.

  ‘One other point, Colonel,’ I said gently. ‘That ten thousand dollars you offered for finding your wife. Does it matter if she’s dead or alive?’

  For a long moment he didn’t answer. The wires hummed and outside the booth a waiting client stamped his feet with impatience and cold.

  ‘Dead or alive?’ He didn’t seem to know how to put it. ‘What makes you think that she is dead?’

  ‘I don’t. I’m only covering myself.’

  ‘I see.’ Relief? I didn’t know, but I’d have taken a bet that he was sweating. ‘Find her, Lantry.’ Now he had lost his casualness and made no attempt to hide his desperation. ‘Find her and I’ll pay you the ten thousand.’

  It was the only answer I could expect.

  I hung up and thumbed through the phone book for the address of the lawyers. I found it, a swanky office off Fifth Avenue, and memorised it. I nodded to the half-frozen character waiting outside and, because the Colonel was paying expenses, I took a cab.

  The firm of Wendle. Wendle, and Wayne occupied a full floor of a big new office block where money had been spent to the best advantage. I rode up in a plush, lined elevator, walked across an acre of carpet, and let the thick pile slow me to a halt before a receptionist who was just a little too perfect to be true. She glanced at me, a quick, professional glance which checked every item of clothing I wore, X-rayed my wallet, and took a shrewd guess at the size of my bank account.

  She wasn’t impressed.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘My name is Lantry, Mike Lantry.’ I gave her one of my personal cards. ‘Mr. Wendle, or someone, is expecting me.’

  ‘Indeed?’ She didn’t call me a liar, but her eyes did it for her. She flipped the switch of an intercom.

  ‘Mr. Wendle. There is a person, a Mr. Lantry, outside to see you. He says that you are expecting him.’

  The machine crackled in a language all of its own, and she lost her supercilious expression.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ She looked at me. ‘Mr. Wendle will see you now.’ She pointed towards a door to one side of the desk. ‘If you will enter his private office, he will join you in a moment.’

  I nodded, flicked ash over the carpet, and walked towards the indicated door.

  Wendle—I never did find out just how he stood in relation to the others in the firm—was a surprisingly young man for a lawyer. That put him around fifty, with the regular touch of grey at his temples, the pink, well-massaged jowls, the controlled paunch, and the too-bright teeth. He shook my hand, neither trying to impress me with his strength nor disgust me with his weakness, and waved me to a chair.

  ‘Did the Colonel phone you?’ I looked around for an ash tray, and he pushed one towards me. I parked my butt and was ready for business.

  ‘He did.’ Wendle coughed with a lawyer’s innate caution and sat down behind his desk. He rested his elbows on the polished wood, his fingers held steeplewise, and his eyes staring at me from either side as though he were a bird looking at a worm.

  ‘So you know who I am and why I am here. Suppose you tell me what you’ve discovered so far?’

  ‘That can be told in one word—nothing.’

  ‘Nothing at all?’ I frowned. ‘Look, I don’t want to tell you your business, but I assume that the Colonel has been through the usual routine. Or you did it for him. Yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘The Colonel contacted us the morning after she disappeared. We’ve covered the ground pretty well, Mr. Lantry. The hospitals, the morgue, the usual thing. No sign of her.’

  ‘How about the stores where she had a charge account? The bank? Places like that?’

  ‘We know our job,’ he said dryly. ‘When I say that we have found no trace of her, I mean that literally.’

  I nodded and lit a fresh cigarette. Wendle obviously knew what he was talking about, and if the missing woman had stopped off for clothes or money, he would know about it. It would be wasting time for me to cover the same ground. I blew a thin streamer of smoke towards the ceiling.

  ‘A question, Mr. Wendle. Why hasn’t the Colonel informed the police of his wife’s absence?’

  Wendle shrugged, saying nothing, and silence began to close in around us. I tried again.

  ‘Tell me, do you approve of the Colonel employing me to find the missing woman?’

  ‘The firm recommended you,’ he said quietly.

  ‘The firm? Not you, personally? Why?’

  ‘I think that all this is wholly unnecessary, Mr. Lantry. It wouldn’t be the first time that a young and beautiful woman has run away from a, shall we say, old husband? My belief is that she will contact him as soon as she needs money. To employ you, or to inform the police, is merely to arouse a lot of undesirable publicity which the Colonel will be the first to regret.’

  ‘Perhaps. But if the firm recommended me, it must be confident of my discretion.’ I leaned forward. ‘Now, Mr. Wendle, just how badly does the Colonel want to find his wife?’

  He took his time over that one, studying the tips of his fingers as though he had never seen them before.

  ‘Mrs. Geeson is a young and beautiful woman,’ he said slowly, as if that explained everything, which maybe it did. ‘Naturally, he wants to find her.’

  ‘Let me put it a different way,’ I said. ‘The Colonel married her, sure, but his son Stephan is carrying a torch for her. He says that he knew her first. What made her marry the old man instead of his son?’

  ‘Stephan has no money of his own,’ explained Wendle. ‘His mother left certain sums in trust, but they are controlled during the lifetime of his father at the Colonel’s discretion. I assume, if you must have an answer, that Mrs. Geeson saw on which side her bread was buttered.’

  ‘Which means that you don’t think much of the Colonel’s lady.’ I gave him a man to man look and he thawed a little.

  ‘We made investigations, of course. I made them myself, checking her background and things like that. Unfortunately, Mrs. Geeson did not have too good a reputation.’

  ‘Did not?’ That past tense again. I wondered if people always spoke of absent people as though they were dead. He didn’t let it throw him.

  ‘Did not,’ he repeated firmly. ‘Since her marriage she has been most circumspect.’

  ‘The Colonel knew about her? About her reputation?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘And still he married her?’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes.’ Wendle coughed again. ‘There’s an old saying, you know.’

  ‘No fool like an old fool.’ I nodded, this wasn’t getting me anywhere. ‘All this is very interesting, but it isn’t of much help.’ I paused, then sprang the sixty-four-dollar question. ‘Who gets the money if the Colonel should die?’

  I didn’t get an answer and I wasn’t surprised. Lawyers are closer than oysters when it comes to keeping secrets, and the disposal of the Geeson fortune would be the secret of the year. I rephrased the question.

  ‘Let me put it this way. If Mrs. Geeson were to be found dead, who would benefit?’

  ‘No one. There is a little insurance, of course, but the Colonel is hardly in need of that.’

  ‘A little? How much?’

  ‘A hundred thousand dollars.’ He dismissed it as though it were a couple of cents. ‘I handled the policy, the normal thing: she named her husband as benificiary.’

  ‘And the Colonel, what if he should die?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Look,’ I said patiently. ‘Let’s play a game called suppositions. I do the supposing and nothing we say will be repeated outside of this room. Supposing the Colonel should die before his wife? Well?’

  ‘Then the fortune, aside from certain trust funds, would go to her.’

  ‘And if he should die after her?’

  ‘Stephan, as the eldest child, would inherit.’

  ‘I see.’ I frowned down at the polished surface of the desk. ‘So, if the old man should die, his wife would collect—but good.’ I looked at him. ‘I know that a marriage invalidates any will made prior to the marriage. But is there any way in which a man could cut his wife out of his estate?’

  ‘If good cause were to be found,’ admitted Wendle reluctantly. ‘It could be done, in this state at least, but only on good grounds.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Desertion. Adultery. Wilful neglect of wifely duties.’ He shrugged. ‘On this matter as on any other the law is vague. Much would depend on prior circumstances, witnesses, and actual proof. Such a will would be certain to be contested.’ He stared at me. ‘What are you getting at, Lantry?’

  ‘Nothing, just collecting answers.’ I smiled at him and he seemed to relax. ‘You said that you had the job of checking her background. Did you find anything?’

  ‘Such as what?’

  ‘Such as previous husband, children, divorce, police record, the usual thing. Well, did you?’

  ‘No. She had lived on the fringe of the law and worked in a night club, but that was really nothing against her. There was one spot of bother down in Florida when a club was raided and she was fined, but she was only sixteen at the time and it wasn’t important.’

  ‘I see.’ I looked at him. ‘What was her name before she married?’

  ‘Hartridge. Mona Hartridge.’

  ‘Born?’

  ‘New Jersey.’ He rose from behind his desk. ‘I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you, Mr. Lantry. Please let me know of any future developments, and if there is any way in which I can help you don’t fail to ask.’ He smiled at me, waiting for me to get to my feet. I had one more question.

  ‘Her bank statements. Can I see them?’