She studied the carbon-scored page intently, and presently a belated flash of enlightenment followed. The very arrangement of the dashes showed her what her mistake had been this time. They were too symmetrical; each one had its complement one line directly under it. In other words, they were really double, not single lines. Their vertical alignment didn’t vary in the slightest. She should have noticed that right away. She saw what it was now. The words hadn’t been merely underlined, they had been cut out of the page bodily by four gashes around each required one, two vertical, two horizontal, forming an oblong that contained the wanted word. What she had mistaken for dashes had been the top and bottom lines of these “boxes.” The faint side lines she had overlooked entirely.
She canceled out every alternate line, beginning with the top one, and that should have given her the real kernel of the message. But again she was confronted with a meaningless jumble, scant as the residue of words was. She held her head distractedly as she took it in:
cure
wait
poor
honey to
grand
her
health
your
fifty
instructions
“The text around them is what’s distracting me,” she decided after a futile five or ten minutes of poring over them. “Subconsciously I keep trying to read them in the order in which they appear on the page. Since they were taken bodily out of it, that arrangement was almost certainly not meant to be observed. It is, after all, the same principle as a jigsaw puzzle. I have the pieces now, all that remains is to put each one in the right place.”
She took a small pair of nail scissors and carefully clipped out each boxed word, just as the unknown predecessor had whose footsteps she was trying to unearth. That done, she discarded the book entirely, in order to be hampered by it no longer. Then she took a blank piece of paper, placed all the little paper cutouts on it, careful that they remained right side up, and milled them about with her finger, to be able to start from scratch.
“I’ll begin with the word ‘fifty’ as the easiest entering wedge,” she breathed absorbedly. “It is a numerical adjective, and therefore simply must modify one of those three nouns, according to all the rules of grammar.” She separated it from the rest, set to work. Fifty health—no, the noun is in the singular. Fifty honey—no, again singular. Fifty instructions—yes, but it was an awkward combination, something about it didn’t ring true, she wasn’t quite satisfied with it. Fifty grand? That was it! It was grammatically incorrect, it wasn’t a noun at all, but in slang it was used as one. She had often heard it herself, used by people who were slovenly in their speech. She set the two words apart, satisfied they belonged together.
“Now a noun, in any kind of a sentence at all,” she murmured to herself, “has to be followed by a verb.” There were only two to choose from. She tried them both. Fifty grand wait. Fifty grand cure. Elliptical, both. But that form of the verb had to take a preposition, and there was one there at hand: “to.” She tried it that way. Fifty grand to wait. Fifty grand to cure. She chose the latter, and the personal pronoun fell into place almost automatically after it. Fifty grand to cure her. That was almost certainly it.
She had five out of the eleven words now. She had a verb, two adjectives, and three nouns left: wait, your, poor, honey, health, instructions. But that personal pronoun already in place was a stumbling block, kept baffling her. It seemed to refer to some preceding proper name, it demanded one to make sense, and she didn’t have any in her six remaining words. And then suddenly she saw that she did have. Honey. It was to be read as a term of endearment, not a substance made by bees.
The remaining words paired off almost as if magnetically drawn toward one another. Your honey, poor health, wait instructions. She shifted them about the basic nucleus she already had, trying them out before and after it, until, with a little minor rearranging, she had them satisfactorily in place.
your honey poor health fifty grand to cure her wait
instructions
There it was at last. It couldn’t be any more lucid than that. She had no mucilage at hand to paste the little paper oblongs down flat and hold them fast in the position she had so laboriously achieved. Instead, she took a number of pins and skewered them to the blank sheets of paper. Then she sat back looking at them.
It was a ransom note. Even she, unworldly as she was, could tell that at a glance. Printed words cut bodily out of a book, to avoid the use of handwriting or typewriting that might be traced later. Then the telltale leaf with the gaps had been torn out and destroyed. But in their hurry they had overlooked one little thing, the slits had carried through to the next page. Or else they had thought it didn’t matter, no one would be able to reconstruct the thing once the original page was gone. Well, she had.
There were still numerous questions left unanswered. To whom had the note been addressed? By whom? Whose “honey” was it? And why, with a heinous crime like kidnaping for ransom involved, had they taken the trouble to return the book at all? Why not just destroy it entirely and be done with it? The answer to that could very well be that the actual borrower—one of those names on the book’s reference card—was someone who knew them, but wasn’t aware what they were doing, what the book had been used for, hadn’t been present when the message was concocted; had all unwittingly returned the book.
There was, of course, a question as to whether the message was genuine or simply some adolescent’s practical joke, yet the trouble taken to evade the use of handwriting argued that it was anything but a joke. And the most important question of all was: should she go to the police about it? She answered that then and there, with a slow but determined yes!
It was well after eleven by now, and the thought of venturing out on the streets alone at such an hour, especially to and from a place like a police station, filled her timid soul with misgivings. She could ring up from here, but then they’d send someone around to question her, most likely, and that would be even worse. What would the landlady and the rest of the roomers think of her, receiving a gentleman caller at such an hour, even if he was from the police? It looked so…er…rowdy.
She steeled herself to go to them in person, and it required a good deal of steeling and even a cup of hot tea, but finally she set out, book and transcribed message under her arm, also a large umbrella with which to defend herself if she were insulted on the way.
She was ashamed to ask anyone where the nearest precinct house was, but luckily she saw a pair of policemen walking along as if they were going off duty, and by following them at a discreet distance, she finally saw them turn and go into a building that had a pair of green lights outside the entrance. She walked past it four times, twice in each direction, before she finally got up nerve enough to go in.
There was a uniformed man sitting at a desk near the entrance and she edged over and stood waiting for him to look up at her. He didn’t, he was busy with some kind of report, so after standing there a minute or two, she cleared her throat timidly.
“Well, lady?” he said in a stentorian voice that made her jump and draw back.
“Could I speak to a...a detective, please?” she faltered.
“Any particular one?”
“A good one.”
He said to a cop standing over by the door: “Go in and tell Murph there’s a young lady out here wants to see him.”
A square-shouldered, husky young man came out a minute later, hopefully straightening the knot of his tie and looking around as if he expected to see a Fifth Avenue model at the very least. His gaze fell on Prudence, skipped over her, came up against the blank walls beyond her, and then had to return to her again.
“You the one?” he asked a little disappointedly.
“Could I talk to you privately?” she said. “I believe I have made a discovery of the greatest importance.”
“Why...uh...sure,” he said without too much enthusiasm. “Right this way.” But as he turned to
follow her inside, he slurred something out of the corner of his mouth at the smirking desk sergeant that sounded suspiciously like, “I’ll fix you for this, kibitzer. It couldn’t have been Dolan instead, could it?”
He snapped on a cone light in a small office toward the back, motioned Prudence to a chair, leaned against the edge of the desk.
She was slightly flustered; she had never been in a police station before. “Has...er...anyone been kidnapped lately, that is to say within the past six weeks?” she blurted out.
He folded his arms, flipped his hands up and down against his own sides. “Why?” he asked noncommittally.
“Well, one of our books came back damaged today, and I think I’ve deciphered a kidnap message from its pages.”
Put baldly like that, it did sound sort of far-fetched, she had to admit that herself. Still, he should have at least given her time to explain more fully, not acted like a jackass just because she was prim-looking and wore thick-lensed glasses.
His face reddened and his mouth started to quiver treacherously. He put one hand up over it to hide it from her, but he couldn’t keep his shoulders from shaking. Finally, he had to turn away altogether and stand in front of the water cooler a minute. Something that sounded like a strangled cough came from him.
“You’re laughing at me!” she snapped accusingly. “I came here to help you, and that’s the thanks I get.”
He turned around again with a carefully straightened face. “No, ma’am,” he lied cheerfully right to her face, “I’m not laughing at you. I...we...appreciate your co-operation. You leave this here and we...we’ll check on it.”
But Prudence Roberts was nobody’s fool. Besides, he had ruffled her plumage now, and once that was done, it took a great deal to smooth it down again. She had a highly developed sense of her own dignity. “You haven’t the slightest idea of doing anything of the kind!” she let him know. “I can tell that just by looking at you! I must say I’m very surprised that a member of the police department of this city—”
She was so steamed up and exasperated at his facetious attitude that she removed her glasses, in order to be able to give him a piece of her mind more clearly. A little thing like that shouldn’t have made the slightest difference—after all this was police business, not a beauty contest—but to her surprise it seemed to.
He looked at her, blinked, looked at her again, suddenly began to show a great deal more interest in what she had come here to tell him. “What’d you say your name was again, miss?” he asked, and absently made that gesture to the knot of his tie again.
She hadn’t said what it was in the first place. Why, this man was just a common—a common masher; he was a disgrace to the shield he wore. “I am Miss Roberts of the Hillcrest Branch of the Public Library,” she said stiffly. “What has that to do with this?”
“Well...er...we have to know the source of our information,” he told her lamely. He picked up the book, thumbed through it, then he scanned the message she had deciphered. “Yeah—” Murphy nodded slowly, “—that does read like a ransom note.”
Mollified, she rapidly explained the process by which she had built up from the gashes on the succeeding leaf of the book.
“Just a minute, Miss Roberts,” he said, when she had finished. “I’ll take this in and show it to the lieutenant.”
But when he came back, she could tell by his attitude that his superior didn’t take any more stock in it than he had himself. “I tried to explain to him the process by which you extracted it out of the book, but...er...in his opinion it’s just a coincidence, I mean the gashes may not have any meaning at all. F’r instance, someone may have been just cutting something out on top of the book, cookies or pie crust and—”
She snorted in outrage. “Cookies or pie crust! I got a coherent message. If you men can’t see it there in front of your eyes—”
“But here’s the thing, Miss Roberts,” he tried to soothe her. “We haven’t any case on deck right now that this could possibly fit into. No one’s been reported missing. And we’d know, wouldn’t we? I’ve heard of kidnap cases without ransom notes, but I never heard of a ransom note without a kidnap case to go with it.”
“As a police officer, doesn’t it occur to you that in some instances a kidnapped persons’ relatives would purposely refrain from notifying the authorities to avoid jeopardizing their loved ones? That may have happened in this case.”
“I mentioned that to the lieutenant myself, but he claims it can’t be done. There are cases where we purposely hold off at the request of the family until after the victim’s been returned, but it’s never because we haven’t been informed what’s going on. You see, a certain length of time always elapses between the snatch itself and the first contact between the kidnapers and the family, and no matter how short that is, the family has almost always reported the person missing in the meantime, before they know what’s up themselves. I can check with Missing Persons if you want, but if it’s anything more than just a straight disappearance, they always turn it over to us right away, anyway.”
But Prudence didn’t intend urging or begging them to look into it as a personal favor to her. She considered she’d done more than her duty. If they discredited it, they discredited it. She didn’t, and she made up her mind to pursue the investigation, single-handed and without their help if necessary, until she had settled it one way or the other.
“Very well,” she said coldly, “I’ll leave the transcribed message and the extra copy of the book here with you. I’m sorry I bothered you. Good evening.” She stalked out, still having forgotten to replace her glasses.
Her indignation carried her as far as the station house steps, and then her courage began to falter. It was past midnight by now, and the streets looked so lonely; suppose—suppose she met a drunk? While she was standing there trying to get up her nerve, this same Murphy came out behind her, evidently on his way home himself. She had put her glasses on again by now.
“You look a lot different without them,” he remarked lamely, stopping a step below her and hanging around.
“Indeed,” she said forbiddingly.
“I’m going off duty now. Could I...uh...see you to where you live?”
She would have preferred not to have to accept the offer, but those shadows down the street looked awfully deep and the light posts awfully far apart. “I am a little nervous about being out alone so late,” she admitted, starting out beside him. “Once I met a drunk and he said, ‘H’lo, babe.’ I had to drink a cup of hot tea when I got home, I was so upset.”
“Did you have your glasses on?” he asked cryptically.
“No. Come to think of it, that was the time I’d left them to be repaired.”
He just nodded knowingly, as though that explained everything.
When they got to her door, he said: “Well, I’ll do some more digging through the files on that thing, just to make sure. If I turn up anything...uh...suppose I drop around tomorrow night and let you know. And if I don’t, I’ll drop around and let you know that too. Just so you’ll know what’s what.”
“That’s very considerate of you.”
“Gee, you’re refined,” he said wistfully. “You talk such good English.”
He seemed not averse to lingering on here talking to her, but someone might have looked out of one of the windows, and it would appear so unrefined to be seen dallying there at that hour, so she turned and hurried inside.
When she got to her room, she looked at herself in the mirror. Then she took her glasses off and tried it that way. “How peculiar,” she murmured. “How very unaccountable!”
The following day at the library she got out the reference card on Manuela Gets Her Man and studied it carefully. It had been out six times in the six weeks it had been in stock. The record went like this:
Doyle, Helen (address) Apr. 15 – Apr. 22
Caine, Rose Apr. 22 – Apr. 29
Dermuth, Alvin Apr. 29 – May 6
Turner, Florence May 6
– May 18
Baumgarten, Lucille May 18 – May 25
Trasker, Sophie May 25 – June 3
Being a new book, it had had a quick turnover, had been taken out again each time the same day it had been brought back. Twice it had been kept out overtime, the first time nearly a whole week beyond the return limit. There might be something in that. All the borrowers but one, so far, were women; that was another noticeable fact. It was, after all, a woman’s book. Her library experience had taught her that what is called a “man’s book” will often be read by women, but a “woman’s book” is absolutely never, and there are few exceptions to this rule, read by men. That might mean something, that lone male borrower. She must have seen him at the time, but so many faces passed her desk daily she couldn’t remember what he was like any more, if she had. However, she decided not to jump to hasty conclusions, but investigate the list one by one in reverse order. She’d show that ignorant, skirt-chasing Murphy person that where there’s smoke there’s fire, if you only take the trouble to look for it!
Women's Wiles Page 27