You Find Him – I'll Fix Him

  "We should be able to find this man Sherrard by to-morrow evening," he said, and looked over at Grandi. "Leave your man here. He is to remain here until he is relieved. You can drive us down to Sorrento. Don't forget the jewels, Signor Dawson."

  I picked up the leather box and slipped it into my pocket.

  As we went down the steps and down the drive to the police car, Carlotti said to Grandi, "I'll leave you in Sorrento. Try to find out if anyone knows Sherrard and if he was seen in Sorrento. Check up on all American visitors who arrived yesterday especially on any American travelling alone."

  In spite of the heat, I realized that the sweat on my face felt cold.

III

  I got to the Naples airport at a few minutes to six o'clock. They told me the New York plane was on time, and was due in at any moment.

  I went to the barrier, lit a cigarette and waited. There were four people waiting; two of them elderly women, the third a fat Frenchman and the fourth was a platinum blonde with a bust on her you only see in the pages of Esquire. She was wearing a white sharkskin costume and a small black hat with a diamond cluster ornament that must have cost someone a pile of money.

I looked at her and she turned. Our eyes met

"Excuse me: are you Mr. Dawson?" she asked.

"That's right," I said, surprised. I took off my hat.

"I am Mrs. Sherwin Chalmers."

I stared at her.

"You are? Mr. Chalmers hasn't already arrived, has he?"

  "Oh. no. I've been shopping in Paris for the past week," she said, her deep violet eyes searching my face. She had the hard beauty of a New York show-girl. She couldn't have been more than twenty-three or four, but there was a worldliness about her that made her look older. "My husband cabled me to meet him. This is dreadful news."

  "Yes."

  I fidgeted with my hat

  "It's a terrible thing . . . she was so young."

  "It's bad," I said.

  There was something in the way she kept looking at me that made me uncomfortable.

  "Did you know her well, Mr. Dawson?"

  "Hardly at all."

  "I can't understand how she could have fallen like that."

  "The police think she was taking photographs and didn't look where she was going."

  The sound of an approaching aircraft cut this uncomfortable conversation short.

  "I think the plane's coming in now," I said.

  We stood side by side, watching the aircraft land. After a few minutes, the passengers began

to alight. Chalmers was the first off the plane. He came quickly through the barrier. I drew back and let him greet his wife. They stood talking together for a few moments, then he came over to me and shook hands. He stared at me, then said they wanted to get to the hotel as quickly as possible, that he didn't want to discuss Helen at this moment and for me to arrange a meeting with the police at his hotel at seven.

  He and his wife got in the back seat of the Rolls I had hired for them and, as I didn't get any encouragement, I got in front with the chauffeur.

  At the hotel, Chalmers dismissed me with a curt, "See you at seven, Dawson," and they were whisked away in the elevator up to the fourth floor, leaving me feeling a little breathless.

  I had seen photographs of Chalmers, but in the flesh he was more than life size. Although he was short, fat and built like a barrel there was an atmosphere about him that reduced me and the people around him to the size of pigmies. The best description I can give of him is that he reminded me of Mussolini in his heyday. He had the same ruthless, jutting jaw, the same dark complexion and the same ice-pick eyes. It didn't seem possible that he could have been the sire of a girl like Helen whose brittle, uncoarse beauty had been so fatally attractive to me.

  When, at seven o'clock, Carlotti, Grandi and I trooped into the lush lounge that the Vesuvius hotel had provided for him, he had changed, obviously shaved and showered, and was now sitting at the head of a big table in the middle of the room, a cigar between his teeth and a glowering, dark expression on his hard face.

  Sitting by the window was his wife, June. She had on a sky-blue silk dress that fined her like a second skin and her long, shapely legs were crossed, showing beautiful knees that attracted Grandi's eyes and made his usually gloomy dark face take on a more animated expression.

  I introduced him and Carlotti and we sat down.

  For a long moment Chalmers stared fixedly at Carlotti. Then he said in his barking voice, "Okay, let's have the facts."

  I've known Carlotti pretty intimately for the past three years. Up to this moment, I had never thought much of him as a policeman. I knew he was thorough, and he had a reputation for solving his cases, but he had never struck me as having any great talent for his job. But the way he faced up to Chalmers during the next twenty minutes gave me an entirely different opinion of him.

  "The facts, Signor Chalmers," he said quietly, "will be painful to you, but since you ask for them, you shall have them."