Johnston leaned forward and folded his hands. “Do you think it’s a gag?”
I said: “If it isn’t, it ought to be.”
His blond brows pulled together into a divot over his nose and he said: “Then you don’t think I ought to take the thing seriously?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Wouldn’t it depend on what he might have on your wife?”
Johnston hadn’t expected that. He was surprised first, then amused. He said, “I guess that’s the point of this meeting. She’s a quiet, refined girl I met at a concert at U.C.L.A. We’ve been married over a year, and I knew her for several months before that. She’s probably the most conservative, discreet woman I’ve ever known.”
“Did he talk tough — Hollywood tough, I mean?”
“No. He was kind of polite about it.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. “But it still sounds more like a gag than a case of blackmail. That must be a rather rugged circle you run in…”
“There are a few people with bad taste in every circle,” he said. “But what makes you so sure it isn’t blackmail?”
“I’m not sure. But I don’t like the delay. After all, if he’s got something to sell, why not sell it now? Instead, he gives you two weeks to get set for him. It doesn’t make sense. Blackmailers generally work for the quick touch.”
“And they don’t use phones, do they?”
“Yes, they use phones. They’re real modern now.”
* * * *
JOHNSTON leaned back and nodded slowly. There was a distant look in his eyes and they seemed to have darkened a little. He got up and walked to a walnut cabinet and opened it. It was a bar, and he made two drinks with a nice economy of motion, pushed one into my hand and sat down again.
He gestured toward me with his glass grinned, and said: “I think you’ll do. I don’t agree with you, and I’m not crazy about your attitude. But I like your honesty—if it’s a gag, there’s no job in it for a detective, is there?”
I tasted the drink just to be sociable and said: “There might be, but I didn’t expect you to agree with me anyway.”
He put the glass down slowly, laughed, and said, “You didn’t? Why not?”
“I don’t believe I’ve said anything so far, Mr. Johnston, that you couldn’t have figured out for yourself. What’s the rest of the story?”
He stood up again and turned his back and pulled open the Venetian blinds on the wide window behind his desk. The air conditioner came on and filled the room with a quiet competent drone, and the world outside was lost in a soft summer silence.
He turned back and looked at the drink in his hand as if he were wondering how it got there.
“It’s a funny thing, Bailey. That phone call. It made me realize something. I know very little about my wife. The man might have something.” He sat down heavily on the edge of his desk and went on, talking to his glass:
“I met Margaret at the University of California here in L.A. a year and a half ago. She was a freshman out there, but a little older than the average freshman. She’s twenty-four now. She was a member of my niece’s sorority. We went together about six months. I—I asked her to marry me several times, and she refused me as regular as clockwork.” The smile became wry. “Then one day she asked me if I still wanted her. I abducted her right on the spot, and we went to Tijuana for the wedding…”
He stopped for a drink and I kept him company—never let a client drink alone. It was good whiskey. Soft as a candle’s flame and only slightly warmer going down.
“Well, she never went back to school after our honeymoon, although I told her she could. She had come down from Portland, Oregon, to go to U.C.L.A. But she never gets any mail from Portland…and she never talks about her home. She told me her parents were both dead and she had had to take care of her mother for several years, so she lost touch with her friends.
“Then this phone call made me remember another thing. After we got married she never had any contact with people she had known at the University. Last week I checked up and found out she hadn’t told anyone at the House about our marriage, and she hadn’t left a change of address with the Dean’s office. My niece had graduated before we were married, so she didn’t know about it. Margaret just suddenly dropped out of the world as far as the University was concerned, and the same as far as her home is concerned, apparently.” He sat down and brought his knee up again.
I said: “What did she say when you asked her why she broke her trail at U.C.L.A.?”
“It was very reasonable: Her sorority sisters bored her, and she never intended going back to school, so why bother letting them know where she was.” He looked up at me for the first time since he started to tell the story, and he was trying hard to keep the placid look of easy humor on his face. But the effort showed. I wondered what the expression he was holding back might have been: fear or deep concern.
“But that’s why I’ve called you, Bailey. I used to think it was just reticence, or that she’d simply been unhappy in Portland. But that call gave me the jitters. If she’s hiding something, if she’s got something to fear, I’ve got to know what it is and help her.”
“Why don’t you just ask her what it’s all about?”
* * * *
THE warm smile came painfully back. “I hope you’re not as crude as you seem, Bailey. I’m willing to pay you good money to keep from asking Margaret that question or telling her about the phone call.”
“A dollar will just about cover it. For that price the Merchant’s Credit Association in Portland will give you a pretty full report on her.”
Johnston gave me a quizzical up-from-under look and drawled: “You come to your conclusions with the slow deliberation of a greyhound starting after a mechanical rabbit. Her maiden name as I know it was Margaret Bleeker. I think we’ll find that that is her name, but we don’t know that. We don’t really know anything at all…”
“It takes a high school transcript in good order to get into U.C.L.A., Mr. Johnston. I don’t like to seem difficult, but my services are specialized and I charge accordingly. I like to feel that a job is worth the money before I take it.”
“Are you married?” he asked.
“No.”
“Well, when a man waits till he’s thirty-nine to marry, it’s usually a kind of severe case.” He reddened slightly, but he went on with an unobtrusive dignity that seemed an innate part of him. “I can’t go on wondering if Margaret’s in trouble. And I want what I do about it to be in capable hands. You came pretty highly recommended. I’m not just asking you to go to Portland and see if there’s anything up there Margaret is ashamed or afraid of. I want to retain you to help me handle this…whatever this phone call means. Do you want the job?”
“That phone call wouldn’t have any connection with your appointment to the State Planning Commission
