Kept Women Can’t Quit

I turned to the secretary, looked her over and said, “How in the world does it happen they don’t use you?”

“For what?” she asked.

“For Miss American Hardware at the convention of the National Hardware Association,” I said. “Good heavens, how did they pick Evelyn Ellis when you were around?”

She lowered her eyelids. “Mr. Calhoun never uses the personnel in the office.”

I looked her over again appraisingly. She registered becoming modesty under my glance.

“Where’s Evelyn Ellis now?” I asked casually.

She made a little gesture. “For a while she was on Cloud Seven, ringing up and wanting help getting bookings as a model, wanting us to help her crash the movies. She had a few television appearances and she thought she was the belle of the ball. She quit her job, couldn’t get up until one or two o’clock in the afternoon, spent a couple of hours a day in the beauty parlors.”

I nodded sympathetically. “I know the type.”

“Then she got a job as a car hop somewhere, and more recently she skipped out with a married man.”

“Where’s she living?” I asked.

“She was living at the Breeze-Mount Hotel,” she said.

“Look,” I said, taking out a ten-dollar bill. “You’ve got lots of pictures of her. I want some. I haven’t time to hunt her up and then hire a photographer. How about it?”

She eyed the ten, hesitated.

“Does Mr. Calhoun know you are asking me for these pictures?”

“Will Mr. Calhoun know I gave you ten bucks?”

She took the ten.

She went to a filing cabinet, looked at a card, went to another cabinet and took out some photos. She ran through the photos, found two that were duplicates and handed me the copies.

“Will these do?”

I looked at the photos and whistled.

“Evidently those will do,” she said acidly.

“I was just surprised,” I said. “Those other pictures Mr. Calhoun has in his office weren’t so revealing.”

“Those were for the newspapers,” she said. “These were for the nominating committee.”

I said, “If you ever try out for a contest I’d sure like to know how to get on the nominating committee. How would I go about it?”

She looked me over, smiled. “Why not start your own contest?”

Before I could answer a buzzer sounded.

The secretary flashed me a dazzling smile. “Excuse me, Mr. Lam,” she said. “Mr. Calhoun wants me.”

I didn’t go out until after she had walked around the desk, so that she could see I was standing there to watch her as she walked.

She looked back over her shoulder just before she opened the door and flashed me another dazzling smile.

I walked out, looking at the photographs. They bore the signature of some Japanese photographer and on the back was the stamp, HAPPY DAZE CAMERA CO.

The Happy Daze Camera Company had a San Francisco address.

Chapter 3

The telephone directory listed the Breeze-Mount Hotel as an apartment hotel. I called the hotel and asked for the manager. The woman who was on the phone said, “This is the manager, Mrs. Marlene Charlotte.”

I said, “I’m inquiring for a Miss Evelyn Ellis. Can you tell me if she has her own phone or—”

“She has her own phone, which is still in the apartment, but she vacated the apartment yesterday afternoon, and didn’t even do me the courtesy of calling on me,” she said. “She moved out and left me a note stating that her rent was paid up until the first and I could rent the apartment immediately.”

“You don’t know where she went?”

“I don’t know where she went. I don’t know why she went, I don’t know who she went with. Who is this talking?”

“Mr. Smith,” I said. “I hoped I could catch her before she left. I’m sorry.”

I hung up.

I called the office and asked to talk with Elsie Brand.

“Hi, Elsie,” I said. “Want to do something for me?”

“It depends on how wild it is.”

“This one is really wild,” I said. “You have to compromise your good name.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“That’s not all,” I said, “that’s just the first step.”

“How come?”

I said, “I’ll be sitting in the agency heap outside of the Breeze-Mount Apartment Hotel. That’s at the corner of Breeze-Mount Drive and Thirty-third Avenue. Take a taxi and come out there. Take the signet ring off your right hand, put it on the ring finger of your left hand, turn it around so it looks like a wedding ring when someone is looking at the back of your hand. Make it just as fast as you can.”

“Donald, I wish you wouldn’t do this,” she said.

“I know,” I told her, “but it’s done. Will you help or do I have to get a woman operative and have Bertha screaming about the expenses?”

“Better get the woman operative. Bertha likes to scream.”

“Okay,” I said. “This gal is going to be my wife for a while. If the operative sues the agency for—”

“Say, what is this?” she interrupted.

“A very intimate, interesting job.”

“All right, I’ll help. You want me there right away?”

“Just as soon as you can make it. Anybody watching the office?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Haven’t seen anything more of Sergeant Sellers?”

“No. Donald, a letter was delivered here by special messenger. It’s addressed to you and marked personal and important.”

“Bring it along and come on out,” I said.