Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 46, No. 11, November 1982

Susie turned back into her office, shut the door and leaned against it. Her heart was pounding against her ribs and she could hardly breathe. She glanced around for something she could use to block the door. But the document boxes were not heavy enough, and she knew she could not budge her desk.

She lunged for the telephone and stabbed buttons: got an outside line and called the police.

“Don’t do that,” said the hushed voice over the speakers.

She froze with the receiver in hand. She could hear the first ring on the line.

“Hang up that phone or I’m coming down there for you!”

She dropped the receiver in the cradle. How could he have known what she was doing? In an instant she understood: he must be at the receptionist’s console, and he had seen the switchboard light up as soon as she lifted her receiver. She could not call out without his knowing at once, and he was between her and the elevators.

“That’s better. Now this time just dial the switchboard.”

Susie stumbled around the desk and sank into her chair. Staring at the telephone, she could not pick it up.

“Come on,” said the man irritably. “I don’t mean you any harm.”

The assurance gave her just enough nerve to pick up the telephone and make the call — as it was no doubt meant to do.

He came on the line at once. “What’s your name?”

“I’m — Susan Verver.”

“I take it from the position of your office that you are a litigation paralegal and that you work for Harry Stant. Correct?”

As he said this, it penetrated Susie’s confusion and anxiety that he was a lawyer himself. It was not only the inside knowledge he displayed; it was in the very tone and phrasing of the question.

“Yes,” Susie mumbled.

“I came to get something of Stant’s. Unfortunately for you, I couldn’t find it in his office, or his secretary’s office. Therefore I conclude that you have it.”

So it had been he in Stant’s office all along. Susie cringed at the realization. Swallowing, she managed to bring out the question: “What is it?”

“His appointment calendar.”

She did not have to look. The black-backed calendar was lying on the other side of her desk. She had been scheduling depositions for Stant all day.

“I... I don’t have it.”

“You’re lying,” he replied, and she realized that she had hesitated too long. “Come on, don’t waste my time.”

Susie took the receiver away from her ear, as if that would somehow hold him back, give her time to think and room to maneuver.

An idea came to her. Once, on the telephone, she had recorded a young lawyer’s candid comments about a client, and teased him that she planned to turn the cassette over to the client. It had been one of her most unfortunate practical jokes — but the tape had been clear enough. If she could work the same trick now, it would give her something to bargain with. Switching on her dictaphone, she laid the mike next to the speaker attachment of the telephone. She put the call through it.

“All right,” she said, “I have the calendar.”

“Look at it.” She jumped at the sound of his voice, which seemed so much louder and closer through the speaker. “Is it up to date? Does it have Stant’s appointments for yesterday?”

She opened the calendar. There were lines written beneath the previous date in the neat hand of Stant’s secretary: times, places, names. What could be so important about them? “Yes,” Susie said. “What do you want?”

“Just bring it to me.”

She glanced at the turning reels of the cassette in her dictaphone. “Who are you? What do you want?”

In the momentary pause, she expected the click of the receiver going down. But he replied, “My name is Chester Hellmuth. You know it?”

She did. He was a partner in a firm across town. Without waiting for an answer, he went on, “If you’re satisfied, Miss Verver, I’ll expect you in the library in one minute.” The line went dead.

Susie stared down at the calendar for another moment before snapping it shut. Perhaps Hellmuth and Stant were on opposite sides of a case, and Hellmuth hoped to gain some slight advantage by knowing Stant’s appointments. She strained to believe this, but could not. Hellmuth was risking too much.

She longed to stay where she was just a little longer, to work out what she would do, what she would say to him. But there was no time. Besides, her nerve might fail if she did not go at once.

She stood and switched off the dictaphone. With the cassette in hand, she hesitated: should she bring the calendar along? If her plan worked, Hellmuth would never get to see it.

Still, she took it. She must not arouse his suspicions. She left the office and started down the corridor, pausing only at a secretary’s desk. There she took an envelope — blank but for the firm’s name and address engraved in one corner — and slipped the cassette into it. Sealing the envelope, she put it in her pocket.

She found the library empty. Hellmuth must still be out in the lobby, watching the switchboard and elevators until he was certain that she had arrived.