Death of a Doxy (Crime Line)

The doorbell rang. I went, took a look, stuck my head back in, and said, 'Mr. Ballou. He doesn't look jaunty.'

Chapter 10

If Avery Ballou had somehow dropped all his stack, and had been kicked out of his job as president of the Federal Holding Corporation, he wouldn't have starved. I have never seen a neater job of wrapping and taping than he had done on the little package he put on Wolfe's desk before he sat down. Any shipping room in town would have grabbed him. I am assuming that he had done it himself on account of what was in it, but I admit it might have been packaged at the bank. The seams in his face were deeper than ever, and he looked as tired as his wife had felt. Seated, he lowered his head and rubbed his brow with a palm, slowly back and forth. On Tuesday that had been followed by a request for a drink, but now apparently he was beyond that. He raised his head, pulled his shoulders up, looked at Wolfe, and said, 'You said I couldn't hire you or pay you.'

'And told you why,' Wolfe said.

'I know. But the situation is – I want you to reconsider it.' He turned to me. 'You said you could find out when that man Cather learned my name. Have you?'

I shook my head. 'You said it isn't important now.'

'You also said it could have been as long as four months ago.'

'Right. I said 'certainly.' Or eight months, or ten.'

'Four is enough.' He returned to Wolfe. 'I know you have had a wide experience, but you may not realize the absolute necessity of good repute for a man of my standing. Byron wrote 'The glory and the nothing of a name,' but he was a poet. A poet can take liberties that are fatal to a man like me. As I think I told you, I took great precautions when I visited Miss Kerr. No one who ever saw me enter or leave that building could possibly have recognized me. I had full reliance on her discretion; I was more than liberal with her, financially. I was completely certain that nobody whatever knew of my… diversion.'

He stopped, apparently inviting comment. Wolfe obliged. 'You should know that your only safe secrets are those you have yourself forgotten.'

He nodded. 'I now suspect that there are many things I should know that I don't know. My reliance on Miss Kerr was misplaced. I was a fool. I should have known that she might… form an attachment. I assume she did, with Cather? She became attached to him?'

Wolfe turned to me. 'Archie?'

'She burned,' I told Ballou. 'She wanted to marry him.'

'I see. I was a fool. But that explains why she told him my name, and that's important. She was discreet, but of course with him there was no discretion. Doesn't that follow?'

He wanted an answer, and Wolfe supplied it. 'Yes.'

'Then he knew my name, but no one else did. Then he's a scoundrel and a blackmailer. I have been paying him a thousand dollars a month for four months. Almost certainly he is also a murderer. He killed her. I don't know why he killed her, but he's a scoundrel.'

Wolfe's eyes came to me, and I met them. I put one brow up. His eyes went back to Ballou. 'Why the devil,' he demanded, 'didn't you tell me this before? Two days ago.'

'I didn't see it then. Not as I do now, after considering it. You had given me a bad jolt. And you had said that Cather didn't kill her. I think he did. He's a blackguard. I think he'll be tried and convicted, and that's why I'm here. You said the other day that if he is tried my name will inevitably be divulged, and that must not happen. My name connected not merely with a diversion but with a sensational murder – it must not happen.' He pointed to the package he had put on Wolfe's desk. 'That parcel contains fifty thousand dollars in fifty-dollar bills. You told me the other day that you were committed, but you don't have to stay committed to a blackmailer and a murderer.'

He took a breath. 'That fifty thousand is just a retainer. I'm in a tougher trap than I realized, and I have to get out, no matter what it costs. I admit I don't see how it can be done, but you know Cather and you'll know how to deal with him. I'm not asking or expecting anything crooked. If they have the evidence to try him and convict him, all right, that's the law. But my name must not appear. You said that, since no one has called on me, my name isn't in that diary, and also evidently Cather hasn't mentioned my name to the police. Isn't that true?'

'Yes.' Wolfe was pinching his lip with a thumbtip and a fingertip. 'You're going much too fast, Mr. Ballou. I concede that I don't have to stay committed to a blackmailer and a murderer, but am I? I need to know more. Describe the man you paid the money to.'

'I have never seen him. I mailed it to him.'

'When and how did he demand it?'

'On the telephone. One evening in September, at my home, I was told that a man who gave his name as Robert Service Kipling wished to speak to me. Of course I took the phone. He told me that he didn't have to explain why he used that name and told me to go to a nearby drugstore and be at the booth at ten o'clock and answer the phone when it rang. You will understand why I went. At ten o'clock the phone rang in the booth, and I answered it. It was the same voice. It isn't necessary to tell you what he said. He said enough to convince me that he knew of my visits to that apartment and their purpose. He said he had no desire to interfere with them, and he thought I should show my appreciation for his cooperation. He told me to mail him ten hundred-dollar bills the next day, and the same amount on the fifteenth of each month. I said I would.'

He rubbed his brow with a palm. 'I know it is wrong, on principle, to submit to blackmail. But the threat was not exposure, he didn't say he had evidence in his possession, he merely made it plain that I would have to pay him or stop going there. He wouldn't answer my questions, how had he learned my name, but