You'll Get Yours. Thomas Wills
we get to the point?” she asked. It was the first time I’d heard her voice. It was a vibrant sound, low register, coming not from her throat but from some musical box deep inside her chest.
I found him looking down at the top of her head with a face gone suddenly tough. He said, “I want Barney to have the picture, honey. The whole picture. He’s a very particular guy.”
His voice seemed to affect her. She lowered her head and began staring at her hands in her lap.
“Like I say,” St. George went on, “a first picture is a very delicate thing. It’s got to be handled. The publicity story on Kyle, the angle, is the Cinderella thing. Kyle,” he said, “was a fashion model. Lingerie, stockings, nightgowns, bathing suits—you know the stuff. The story on Kyle is that a producer happened to be leafing through Vogue and came across this nylon ad. Just a leg against a background of black velvet. He immediately sent a wire to the New York office to track that model down. The ad was traced to Kyle and a dozen pictures of her were rushed to the coast.” He took a breath. “As the story will read in the magazines and the columns, this producer was even more impressed with the face than he was with the legs. He sent for her and signed her to a contract immediately. That’s the story.”
If what he was saying was a little rough it didn’t seem to bother her. Her face was expressionless.
“The trouble is,” said Archie, “Miss Shannon is not quite Cinderella.”
“Can’t we skip that?” she asked.
That made him laugh. “Not with Barney Glines,” he told her, unasked for. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” He smiled across the room at me. “Miss Shannon has the tough luck of being a very, very rich girl. How much did your father leave you, honey?”
She said nothing.
“Kyle’s father,” he said to me, “was W. R. Shannon. If you’re behind on your history, W. R. Shannon discovered how to separate aluminum from rocks. It pays better than getting gold out of rocks.”
I was getting as fed up with Archie St George as she was. “So what?” I asked.
“So that Kyle might not appeal to the public if she’s already filthy with the stuff. The public reserves the right to make movie stars rich. It’s bad form for Cinderella or Horatio Alger to start off with more in the bank than they could possibly earn.”
“So what?” I asked again and I found her looking me over. Not a thaw, understand. But some of the ice had chipped off.
“The cat might be getting out of the bag,” the agent said. “Kyle checked into the Park East Hotel last Saturday. Last night her rooms were robbed.”
“That’s too bad,” I said, but I might just as well have said nothing.
“It’s very bad,” St. George said. “They took a jewel case full of diamonds. A hundred thousand dollars’ worth.”
He was looking at me. I was looking at her. She was studying the tips of her fingers. “Who’s the insurance company?”
St. George left his place behind her chair and walked slowly to the gaudy desk he kept. He lowered himself into an over-stuffed, mohair-covered swivel. “That’s the problem, Barney. Kyle has the stuff insured, naturally. But she feels she doesn’t want to file a claim.”
“She does?”
“A claim,” he said, fingering a cigarette lighter, “means police. Police mean newspapers. I think you can imagine how the News would love to have Kyle on their front page. Along with the lush details of her suite at the hotel and the sables and minks. Somebody,” he said, “might even connect her with the Shannons. And all those stories her studio has carefully planted will look a little ridiculous. The bubble will burst and Kyle will be in the middle.”
“Oh,” I said and turned to her. “And the idea is to have somebody get your stuff back without any excitement.”
“Yes,” she said dully. “That’s the idea.”
“Well,” said Archie, his voice bright, “what do you say, Barney?”
“I’ll give it a whirl. The insurance company won’t like it, neither will the police. But I’ll try it.”
I don’t know what it was, but the more I said to this girl the less progress I made. The green eyes that raked my face were sarcastic now—if that’s the word.
“Fine,” St. George said. “I knew we could count on you, kid . . .”
“Don’t expect a miracle,” I said. “And don’t expect anything overnight.”
Archie St. George was smiling at me. “As a matter of fact, Barney, it’s going to be a lot simpler than most of your jobs.”
“In what way?”
“Kyle’s been in contact with the thieves,” he said.
“When?” I asked her.
“At three o’clock this morning.” She said it accusingly. “Ten minutes after I’d discovered the theft.”
“Kyle and I were at the theatre last night,” St. George explained. “We dropped into the Stork for an hour or two and then I took her home. We had a nightcap and I left. When I got back to my place Kyle called me. She’d found the case missing from a drawer in the vanity. Then she got this call.”
“What was said?” I asked her again.
“Not much,” she answered. “The man on the wire told me he had my diamonds. He said I could have them back”—her eyes plunged into mine—“if I got in touch with Barney Glines.”
I don’t know how long I just sat there, I don’t know what kind of expression I had on my face. I do know it was completely silent in Archie St. George’s office. And I do know she had been given a hell of a fine reason not to like me.
Archie coughed and the spell was broken.
“How,” I asked her, “would getting in touch with me help you? Did this man on the phone explain that?”
“He said ‘Barney Glines’ and hung up. Then I called Archie. He said you were a private detective . . .”
“I said you were the lad all the insurance companies hired,” St. George interrupted. “I said . . .”
“Did you say that I wouldn’t touch the ransom racket?”
St. George shrugged. His handsome face was bland. “Kyle’s in trouble,” he said smoothly. “She’s my client and she wants her jewelry back without any splash. She asked me to get you over here, Barney. That’s all I can do about it.” He stood up, got out a cigarette case and walked to her. She shook her head and he lit one for himself.
“Well?” he asked. “What about it?”
Kyle Shannon was watching me and I knew she hadn’t changed her mind about me as a bag-man for some mob. I could convince her by standing up, grabbing my hat and walking out. That would leave me wondering why some punk thief thought he could drop my name into his lousy arrangements. It’s fine to be a boy scout, but only when you’re twelve years old.
“How is it supposed to work?” I asked her.
“You mean you’re in?” said St. George.
“I’m in,” I agreed. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Don’t you know?” the girl asked, her voice cynical.
I sighed. “As naive as it sounds, no, I don’t.”
Archie said, “I imagine they’ll call Kyle again. She’ll tell them it’s all set and they’ll contact you. Wouldn’t you say that’s how it works?”
I stood up. “Yeh. I’d say that’s how it works.” I took