when somebody discovered my speaking voice. I studied drama, landed my first good radio parts. As soon as I could afford it, I got a divorce on the grounds of desertion. It was his next letter that I answered. I told him I was free and asked him to leave me alone. I did get fewer letters, but the demands were bigger. In 1942 I came to New York under contract for the two big spots I have now. I didn’t hear from Eddie again. I thought I was really free.”
How many times have I heard that line! I thought I was free. I thought I could put the past behind me. Only you never can. You and the past are one.
“And now Eddie,” I said, “has decided to return.”
“I had a letter from him last Monday.” She fumbled in the smoothly expensive purse, handed me a dog-eared envelope, with a Grand Central, New York, post-office cancelation. The envelope was addressed in an old-fashioned, flowery script, to Dawn Ferris, care of the broadcasting company.
“That his handwriting?” I asked.
She nodded. “Eddie has very little formal education. He told me he learned that shaded script from a calling-card writer in a carnival. He likes showy things and considers himself an elegant dresser. His shoes might have no soles, but the uppers would be shined, and probably yellow.”
I got the general idea as I opened the letter. The cheap stationery bore the imprint of a Los Angeles hotel I had never heard of. The careful, shaded handwriting, in violet ink, filled the page and came out evenly at the bottom. I figured it had been recopied several times.
Sweetie:
You will no dobt be suprized to here from me agin and know I am back in the Big Town. I had a war job in L.A. and did alright. I herd you on the radio and you are swell. You dont owe me nothing and woulden go for that old times sake routine and I woulden ask but it’s not for me I’m asking. We had a kid and that makes us still pardners and thats why I have to see you and talk to you on account of her. Meet me Fri. aft. five oclock in the Comodore lobby.
Your
Eddie
I folded the page, returned it to the envelope. Dawn moved uneasily in her chair. I said, “I seem to catch an overtone of blackmail.”
“I didn’t know what it was, or what he wanted. I didn’t answer it. I put in a wretched week waiting for him to turn up at the studio or the apartment. Without the extension number, it’s practically impossible to call me at the studio, and I have an unlisted number at home, but I was afraid to answer the phone. Eddie always seemed to know—how to reach me.”
“Did he show?”
“No word, no letters. Nothing. I began to breathe easily. Then—last Friday—something happened. I know it sounds crazy. But . . . a little girl was kidnaped. You must have read about it. Little Bette Alexander.”
I’d read about it. Read every detail. Followed that case as if I’d been hired for it. All my life, I followed every big crime as if it were my own particular problem. Dad taught me that. He wanted a son who would grow up to make his mark on the Force. I was a girl, but he treated me as a boy . . . almost. Every big murder, every major crime—as long as it wasn’t too bad—he’d tell me all the details and how he’d solve it if he were a detective instead of a cop.
So I knew about Bette Alexander. How she disappeared from her family’s estate on Long Island on Friday afternoon. How the police had received only one note from the kidnapers and were still waiting for that bid for final contact.
Dawn Ferris sat very straight in heir chair. “Miss Gallagher, I can’t be sure, but—Bette Alexander may be my little girl.”
This honey-haired woman, who called herself Dawn Ferris, paced the floor of my office as she talked, spilling out the story of this notion that had become an obsession in her mind. Now I could relax; she was really getting to the core of her visit.
“I didn’t actually believe it at first,” she said. “It was only . . . something familiar about the little girl’s picture. Then as I kept looking at the picture in the paper, it began to seem much more real—more certain. The face—the features—were so familiar. I got out an old picture of Eddie, the earliest one I had, and compared them. They could have been brother and sister. As if that weren’t enough, the paper gave Bette Alexander’s birthday, Miss Gallagher. It was the birthday of my little girl. Do you see? I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t dreaming. Can you understand? This was my little girl.”
She caught hold of herself. “I wasn’t deliberately trying to believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. But this girl was gone—nobody knew where. She might be murdered. I’ve walked like this”—she indicated her path through my office with a sweep of her hand—“for three nights. I’ve been trying to talk myself out of it, but I can’t. It’s too much . . . too perfect for coincidence. It couldn’t . . .”
“Dawn,” I used her first name deliberately, “sit down. You can’t let it beat you . . . even if you’re right. And in spite of all you say, the chances are a thousand to one you’re wrong.”
She sat down slowly, crossed her legs, lighted another cigarette. Then she opened that big purse, drew out a newspaper clipping and a small glossy photograph. “Look at these.”
The clipping I’d seen before. It showed a reproduction of a painting of Bette Alexander, done by John Bartley Crane, the society artist. A tilt-nosed, freckle-faced girl with peaked eyebrows and a firm little chin, a gamin in an Abercrombie and Fitch riding habit.
Then I looked at the photograph and it looked right back at me, bold and impudent. A slim young fellow in a dark coat, ice-cream pants, and a bow tie, with a skimmer tucked under his arm. A young fellow with a tip-tilt nose, winged brows, and a look in his eyes Dad would have called devil-may-care. A pouty, buttonhole mouth and a weak chin robbed the eyes of their promise, but the face was still unusual.
I moved the photograph and clipping close together for comparison. The man and girl looked exactly alike except that the girl’s mouth had wide, generous, well-formed lips. It could have been Dawn Ferris’s mouth and chin.
Dawn was leaning over the desk.
“You see?” She was almost childishly eager for confirmation. “It can’t be coincidence.”
“I’ve known of more extraordinary coincidences,” I stalled. “You’ve lived with this bottled up inside you for days. When the kidnap story broke, your mind began to make things fit. You could be right. But you aren’t really thinking in terms of facts. . . .”
Patsy, in spite of her flightiness, always keeps files of major cases. I pressed the buzzer and asked for the folder on the Alexander case. It wasn’t much—only newspaper clippings. Yet they made it simple, on the surface at least, to tear Dawn’s theories to shreds.
“Bette Alexander is not an adopted child,” I told her. “Theodore Alexander, the father, left his entire fortune in trust for that youngster when he died six months ago. The mother only gets an income. Would a man leave all that to an adopted child and not mention in his will that she was adopted? Of course, adopted children share equally with what the law calls issue, but this isn’t a question of equality. Bette Alexander inherited the works.”
Dawn didn’t answer. She kept looking at me as though she realized fully this was only what it said in the paper—it made no difference in her mind.
“Further,”
