“How did Eddie ever find out anything?”
A shaft of sunlight fell across the Benton landscape. It was such a peaceful scene, so remote from the inner turmoil of this woman. A mere glance fortified me, reduced the risk of emotional contagion.
I began making notes on my scratch pad, things she had mentioned. Names. “This Dr. Wurber,” I said. “Have you contacted him since that time?”
“He still has that house in the Sixties, but apparently isn’t there very often. I called several times. He has a service to take messages. That girl asked if I wanted an appointment, but I couldn’t bring myself to make one. You see, I couldn’t be sure . . .”
“And you knew he wouldn’t tell you, even if you were right,” I finished. “Besides, you didn’t want him to know who you are now.” She nodded bleakly and I went on. “How about Eddie? Any idea how to reach him? How about cronies in New York? Or former haunts?”
“I don’t know where he stayed. I don’t think he’s got any cronies. He isn’t the type who keeps friends.”
I tossed my pencil down. “This isn’t our kind of case, Miss Ferris. The FBI and the police are working on the Alexander investigation. Go to them. If your hunch is right, you should go to them.”
“I can’t and you know it,” she shot at me. “It means ruining everything on a chance. I don’t want to wreck my life—twice.”
Her hands tightened on her purse and for a moment I thought she was going to cry. I concentrated on those two pictures on the desk. Tears baffle me. I don’t cry over important things—only movies and books—so I can’t judge the emotion fairly. But after that first moment’s hesitation, instead of crumpling, Dawn sprang to her feet, releasing a soft wave of perfume and a flash of the fight that brought her from burlesque performer to finished actress in ten years.
Suddenly—surprisingly—I found myself liking her. The look of determination on her face was interesting. The kind of look you would have expected on the face of Ann Preston, Woman Physician. Maybe phony, put on like her lipstick, but she was carrying the thing off. You had to admire her for it. I was about to say I’d consider handling the case, but she was ahead of me.
“I’m not asking you to investigate the kidnaping, but your business, Miss Gallagher, as I understand it, is tracing missing persons, people not involved with the law.”
“More or less,” I agreed airily, “that’s how I make a living.”
“Then I want to engage your services to try to locate for me the baby girl born to Edward and Ethel Wells on May fifth, 1933.”
“And just incidentally,” I added, “I might become involved in the Alexander kidnaping?”
“All I want,” she said slowly, “is for you to tell me—prove to me—that I’m wrong. I want to know that Bette Alexander is not my child. I want to know just that much.”
She laid her hand flat on the desk, then moved it slowly. Two crisp thousand-dollar bills looked up at me. My first astonished reflection was that such big bills didn’t get around enough to be worn limp. I got my breath and said, “It’s a bit over my usual fee.”
She smiled. “It’s not a usual case. Will you hunt for her?”
“I’d hunt elephants,” I said, picking up the bills, “for the proper fee.”
Dawn sat down again on the edge of the chair, took a lipstick and large compact from her purse, and drew on a fresh mouth. She glanced up at my words with a touch of triumph. “It’s such a relief to know someone else is with me on this. You can’t imagine what it’s been like.”
“You can’t imagine how we may get involved,” I said, making out the forms for her signature. “Suppose Eddie is in this—even helped engineer it? Would you be willing . . .”
“If that’s the case,” she spoke slowly, as she signed the agreement, “we’ll—find some way to handle it.”
She said it curiously, as though she already had a plan. She was putting the lipstick and compact in her purse. It was only an instant that the big bag was tipped toward me. Yet I spotted the glittering object inside. She pulled the zipper closed. “Then I’ll hear from you, Miss Gallagher?”
“Give me a couple of days,” I said.
She moved toward the door with buoyant professional grace. Watching her, I wondered why Dawn Ferris carried a nickel-plated automatic in her purse.
2.
I BROKE a date for dinner that evening. I had too much on my mind for company. I dined alone at a place on Central Park South, near my apartment. Louis, my favorite waiter, assured me everything was to my liking, and I took his word for it. For once I wasn’t paying attention to food. I was too busy considering the facts I’d gathered on Eddie Wells.
After Dawn left, Patsy and I set to work to earn those two lovely green bills. Digging up information fast isn’t easy, but I know a couple of places specializing in information on theatrical people. I shot Patsy over to those agencies.
By midafternoon she had an envelope of faded press clippings and cracked publicity pictures, covering the vaudeville days of Eddie Wells. There were also pictures of his partner, Ethel Wells, in buckety hats and knee-high dresses that would have set the present Dawn Ferris’s teeth on edge.
Our own master files turned up more recent leads. There were several inquiries on Eddie Wells, variously known as Ed Welsh and Ned Wills. These were warning sheets from Western agencies who were looking for him. We wired for details.
I didn’t expect much from these inquiries. They were after him for bad debts. For my money, it’s a waste of time to trace men like Eddie for debts. They’re dead beats and strictly uncollectible. But they’re easy people to trail.
I checked with the Bureau of Vital Statistics. There was no record of a child born to Edward and Ethel Wells on May 5, 1933. But there was a birth certificate recorded on that day for Elizabeth Anne, daughter of Theodore and Sylvia Alexander. I asked for a photostat.
I reread news stories on the kidnaping. On Friday afternoon Bette Alexander had stepped from the station wagon of the exclusive Purvence School, waved to her friends, and run through the gates of the family’s palatial home near Huntington, Long Island. She was not seen again. A thin, rather plain child, she was tall for her fourteen years, an excellent swimmer, and a fine horsewoman. An accident was suspected until the ransom note was received on Saturday night. Then the FBI joined the Suffolk County police in the hunt.
There were interviews with Bette’s mother, Sylvia Alexander, a handsome blonde of about forty, and with M. E. Baxter, the Alexander family lawyer and an executor of the estate. Also with John Bartley Crane, society artist, specializing in portraits of children, whose recent painting of Bette had been so widely used.
I called up a few people I knew. One of Dad’s old pals, a former Suffolk County detective, now working on the Alexander case, also a News reporter who had a by-line story on it. I kept my questions very casual, but from what I gathered in talking to them, there wasn’t the slightest indication that Bette was the adopted daughter of Sylvia and Theodore Alexander. Besides, there was also that matter of the estate I’d mentioned to Dawn. Would a man leave his entire fortune to an adopted child without
