A Handy Death

“I’m sorry,” she said haughtily. “It isn’t permitted that people who are strangers should just barge in unannounced, like. Might I ask to whom you desire to speak?”

Hank shook his head in disbelief at the language, biting back his first comment.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally, trying to sound contrite. “You’re quite right, of course. Is Miss McCloud here?”

“Half a sec.” A cord was inserted into the board and a switch depressed. “Honey? Are you in? Who? I don’t know. Should I ask him? Sure, honey.” The baby-blue eyes came up. “What’s your name, mister?”

“Ross,” Hank said politely. “Hank Ross.”

A pad was obtained and a pencil picked up. Blue eyes came up, anxious to do the job properly.

“How do you spell it?”

“The same as on the top of the pad you’re using,” Hank said, trying to be helpful.

“Oh? Gee, thanks.” The girl spoke into the mouthpiece of her headset. “He says his name is Hank Ross, honey. R-O-S-S. What’s that? What!” She dragged the cord from the switchboard, looking at Hank with justified resentment. “You should have told me you were the boss. I was told to keep people out unless they were announced—”

“And you did very well,” Ross said hastily, and escaped past the barrier.

Sharon was grinning widely as he came into his office, shedding his coat.

“Sic transit gloria mundi,” she said. “Imagine! A telephone operator who doesn’t recognize the great Hank Ross on sight!”

“Merely the generation gap,” Hank said with a smile. “I’ll bet her mother wouldn’t have made that mistake. By the way, where is Molly?”

“She doesn’t have the iron constitution I gave her credit for,” Sharon said. “Dancing, yes. She can dance all night and still come into the office bright and fresh. But she’ll never make it on skid row. One drink is about her limit.”

“And how many did she have?”

“When I had an unlimited expense account at my beck and call? And instructions to ply them both with liquor and worm out their secrets? She had six,” Sharon said. “Doubles.”

“My God! I hope she gets back to work in a week!” Ross sat down at his desk. “I told you to entertain them, not to poison them!”

“Oh, she liked them at the time,” Sharon said airily. “And her boyfriend Jimmy didn’t turn a hair.”

“What about her boyfriend Jimmy?”

“You mean, Target-for-Tonight? Well, Jimmy is a very nice man who honestly dances as well as Molly says. I also do not believe he is married, because he has that same unworried look you have, H. R. And my guess is that he came here looking for a dentist the other week about as much as he flew to the moon last Sunday.”

Ross frowned. “You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

“What makes you so sure?”

Sharon grinned. She said, “We spies usually don’t give away our secret methods, but considering the amount of money we spent last night, I expect you have a right to know. While we were dancing, I asked him how he finally came out with Dr. Gross, his dentist. And he said fine, all he needed was one small filling.”

“So?”

“So, to begin with, the last time he was here the dentist’s name was Ross, not Gross. And in the second place Jimmy suffers from never having been married; he’s had too little practice in lying. He stumbled over words and things like that.”

Ross frowned. “So what was he doing here?”

“That I never discovered,” Sharon admitted. “But at least we know he came here under completely false pretenses.”

“Did he ask about any of our current cases?”

“Well, he claimed to be a baseball fan. He said he remembered Billy Dupaul when he first came up to the Mets. Said he read you were handling the case, and said he hoped you’d get the boy off.”

“That’s all?”

“Well, he asked if you had any plans for the trial; said since he’d been going around with Molly he’d gotten interested in law. It was a natural enough question, I suppose. In any event, I told him you had no special plans, and that was that.”

Ross drummed his fingers restlessly on the desk top.

“It all sounds natural enough, but I don’t like it. I’d still like to know what brought him to the office, and with such a flimsy story. And making up to our telephone girl like that. What’s he after?”

“Maybe another night on the expense account would help, H. R.,” Sharon said, grinning. “Maybe we didn’t ply him with enough liquor.”

“I doubt we could justify it to the income tax people as a deduction,” Ross said, smiling, “let alone Charley Quirt. And speaking of Charles Quirt, would you get him on the line?”

Sharon drew over a telephone and managed to get the new girl to understand. A few minutes later she turned, the receiver cupped in her hand.

“He’s away for a few days.”

Ross’s eyes narrowed. Charley always seemed to be away when Billy Dupaul went to trial. Allergic to trials, possibly?

“Any message?” Sharon said.

“No,” Ross said shortly. “Get Steve in here. We have a trial coming up tomorrow!”