pure auburn and on it she wore a hat with a crown the size of a whiskey glass and a brim you could have wrapped the week’s laundry in. She wore it at an angle of approximately forty-five degrees, so that the edge of the brim just missed her shoulder. In spite of that it looked smart. Perhaps because of that.
She was about twenty-eight years old. She had a rather narrow forehead of more height than is considered elegant. Her nose was small and inquisitive, her upper lip a shade too long and her mouth more than a shade too wide. Her eyes were gray-blue with flecks of gold in them. She had a nice smile. She looked as if she had slept well. It was a nice face, a face you get to like. Pretty, but not so pretty that you would have to wear brass knuckles every time you took it out.
“I didn’t know just what your office hours were,” she said. “So I waited. I gather that your secretary is not here today.”
“I don’t have a secretary.”
I went across and unlocked the inner door, then switched on the buzzer that rang on the outer door. “Let’s go into my private thinking parlor.”
She passed in front of me with a vague scent of very dry sandalwood and stood looking at the five green filing cases, the shabby rust-red rug, the half-dusted furniture, and the not too clean net curtains.
“I should think you would want somebody to answer the phone,” she said. “And once in a while to send your curtains to the cleaners.”
“I’ll send them out come St. Swithin’s Day. Have a chair. I might miss a few unimportant jobs. And a lot of leg art. I save money.”
“I see,” she said demurely, and placed a large suede bag carefully on the corner of the glass-topped desk. She leaned back and took one of my cigarettes. I burned my finger with a paper match lighting it for her.
She blew a fan of smoke and smiled though it. Nice teeth, rather large.
“You probably didn’t expect to see me again so soon. How is your head?”
“Poorly. No, I didn’t.”
“Were the police nice to you?”
“About the way they always are.”
“I’m not keeping you from anything important, am I?”
“No.”
“All the same I don’t think you’re very pleased to see me.”
I filled a pipe and reached for the packet of paper matches. I lit the pipe carefully. She watched that with approval. Pipe smokers were solid men. She was going to be disappointed in me.
“I tried to leave you out of it,” I said. “I don’t know why exactly. It’s no business of mine any more anyhow. I ate my dirt last night and banged myself to sleep with a bottle and now it’s a police case: I’ve been warned to leave it alone.”
“The reason you left me out of it,” she said calmly, “was that you didn’t think the police would believe just mere idle curiosity took me down into that hollow last night. They would suspect some guilty reason and hammer at me until I was a wreck.”
“How do you know I didn’t think the same thing?”
“Cops are just people,” she said irrelevantly.
“They start out that way, I’ve heard.”
“Oh — cynical this morning.” She looked around the office with an idle but raking glance. “Do you do pretty well in here? I mean financially? I mean, do you make a lot of money — with this kind of furniture?”
I grunted.
“Or should I try minding my own business and not asking impertinent questions?”
“Would it work, if you tried it?”
“Now we’re both doing it. Tell me, why did you cover up for me last night? Was it on account of I have reddish hair and a beautiful figure?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Let’s try this one,” she said cheerfully. “Would you like to know who that jade necklace belonged to?”
I could feel my face getting stiff. I thought hard but I couldn’t remember for sure. And then suddenly I could. I hadn’t said a word to her about a jade necklace.
I reached for the matches and relit my pipe. “Not very much,” I said. “Why?”
“Because I know.”
“Uh-huh.”
“What do you do when you get real talkative — wiggle your toes?”
“All right,” I growled. “You came here to tell me. Go ahead and tell me.”
Her blue eyes widened and for a moment I thought they looked a little moist. She took her lower lip between her teeth and held it that way while she stared down at the desk. Then she shrugged and let go of her lip and smiled at me candidly.
“Oh I know I’m just a damned inquisitive wench. But there’s a strain of bloodhound in me. My father was a cop. His name was Cliff Riordan and he was police chief of Bay City for seven years. I suppose that’s what’s the matter.”
“I seem to remember. What happened to him?”
“He was fired. It broke his heart. A mob of gamblers headed by a man named Laird Brunette elected themselves a mayor. So they put Dad in charge of the Bureau of Records and Identification, which in Bay City is about the size of a tea-bag. So Dad quit and pottered around for a couple of years and then died. And Mother died soon after him. So I’ve been alone for two years.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She ground out her cigarette. It had no lipstick on it. “The only reason I’m boring you with this is that it makes it easy for me to get along with policemen. I suppose I ought to have told you last night. So this morning I found out who had charge of the case and went to see him. He was a little sore at you at first.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “If I had told him the truth on all points, he still wouldn’t have believed me. All he will do is chew one of my ears off.”
She looked hurt. I got up and opened the other window. The noise of the traffic from the boulevard came in in waves, like nausea. I felt lousy. I opened the deep drawer of the desk and got the office bottle out and poured myself a drink.
Miss Riordan watched me with disapproval. I was no longer a solid man. She didn’t say anything. I drank the drink and put the bottle away again and sat down.
“You didn’t offer me one,” she said coolly.
“Sorry. It’s only eleven o’clock or less. I didn’t think you looked the type.”
Her eyes crinkled at the corners. “Is that a compliment?”
“In my circle, yes.”
She thought that over. It didn’t mean anything to her. It didn’t mean anything to me either when I thought it over. But the drink made me feel a lot better.
She leaned forward and scraped her gloves slowly across the glass of the desk. “You wouldn’t want to hire an assistant, would you? Not if it only cost you a kind word now and then?”
“No.”
She nodded. “I thought probably you wouldn’t. I’d better just give you my information and go on home.”
I didn’t say anything. I lit my pipe again. It makes you look thoughtful when you are not thinking.
“First of all, it occurred to me that a jade necklace like that would be a museum piece and would be well known,” she said.
I held the match in the air, still burning and watching the flame crawl close to my fingers. Then I blew it out softly and dropped it in the tray and said:
“I didn’t say anything to you about a jade necklace.”
“No, but Lieutenant Randall did.”
“Somebody ought to sew buttons on his face.”
“He knew my father. I promised not to tell.”
“You’re telling me.”
