Odor of Violets, Baynard Kendrick [best short novels .txt] 📗

Even Bunny Carter was stopped at the door of International to explain the presence of a friend.

A moment later they stepped inside, Maclain doubly guided by Schnucke on his left and the pressure of Bunny’s hand on his arm. They crossed a large lobby which the Captain judged to be a reception room and were stopped at another door. Bunny’s whispered explanation was repeated again. It admitted them into a smaller room where a girl’s friendly voice said, “Good morning, Mr. Carter.”

Bunny introduced his secretary, Miss Tavestock, to Duncan Maclain. They went through another door.

“This is my private office, at last.” Bunny conducted the Captain to a chair.

Maclain’s left hand lightly brushed the flat-top walnut desk in passing. Once seated, he let his fingers rest on the leather arms of the chair and said, “Lie down, Schnucke.” The dog stretched herself out close beside him.

“They certainly make you comfortable,” he remarked, settling back at ease. “I suppose the importance of your office is indicated by the size of this room. A man could almost get lost in here.”

A creak of a spring sounded as Bunny sat down in his swivel chair. “I’d be a sorry president if I couldn’t pick the best office in the place for myself.”

The springs creaked again as he leaned back a trifle too far and straightened up suddenly, bringing both his feet to the floor. “Damn it all, Maclain, you worry me! Who told you this office was big? You touched my desk as you passed by, but how do you know I didn’t walk you clear across the room and set you close to the opposite wall?”

The Captain’s eyebrows wiggled delightedly. “None are so blind,” he said, “as those who have ears and won’t see.”

“Don’t be cryptic,” Bunny pleaded. “I honestly mean it—you worry me.”

“I can judge the size of a room by the sound of my voice,” the Captain explained. “It’s a trick I learned by reading Bragg’s book, The World of Sound. The late blind Justice Fielding and Sir Arthur Pearson both developed it until they could give the dimensions of any room they entered with amazing accuracy. Try it yourself, Mr. Carter. If you practiced it consistently for about twenty years, you’d find that it comes very easily.”

“I don’t know why Colonel Gray doesn’t hire you as a spy instead of sending you up here to worry me!” Bunny tapped his toes thoughtfully on the heavily carpeted floor. “Ribbentrop would probably take you on a personally conducted tour of the Krupp Works—heaven knows what you’d be able to see.”

“You might be surprised.” Maclain leaned forward earnestly. “I’ve already learned the approximate dimensions of the buildings you’re putting up, and of the one we’re in now, by driving past them in your car. Would you like me to tell you?”

“No!” said Bunny emphatically. “You’ll give me a headache if you’re anywhere near right. I’m having enough trouble with espionage now.”

“I noticed that as we came in,” Maclain remarked drily.

Bunny slapped the desk top with the flat of his hand. “It would do this country a lot of good if everybody in it had to spend some time around a business that was meat and drink for a spy. One of the directors was howling his head off just the other day about ‘foolish precaution.’ I wish he could have been here this morning to get a demonstration of what even you can see. Not that I mean to be discourteous,” he added quickly.

“Skip it,” said Maclain.

Bunny left his chair back of the desk and began to pace the floor. “Things are so stringent here now that visitors to the plant on business aren’t allowed to go to the rest rooms alone for fear of what they may see. The public doesn’t realize that a single glimpse of wings hung up in a drying room can be built up to give an accurate estimate of how many planes we’re turning out a day.”

“That’s interesting,” said Maclain.

“It’s maddening,” Bunny assured him, “when you’re trying to keep information quiet that the whole world wants to know. Supposing a trained agent sees finished planes through an open door. He can figure out how much space they’re occupying on the floor. Photographs are taken of the plant as a whole from the outside and measured to scale. Watch is kept on how many hours the plant runs in a week. That information is compared with plants in the agent’s own country and they know almost to a hair what will come out of this plant during the next few months.”

“And what about your own employees?”

“They have to keep pretty much to their own departments,” Bunny explained, “but of course information can leak out even there. Naturally we take every precaution we can—it’s vital information like Tredwill’s bombing sight that worries me. That’s why I had him do a lot of his work at home. And now—”

“Yes, now,” Maclain put in, “information has leaked out even there. Tracings have been made of Tredwill’s plans. When we find out who did that, Mr. Carter, we’ll find out who kidnaped that girl.”

The Captain paused, crossed his legs, and smoothed his overcoat down. Bunny quit pacing the office and hoisted himself up on his desk.

For a time, he kicked his heels against the side. Then he asked, “Where do we go from there?”

“All over the United States.” The Captain’s voice lowered to a note which was grippingly serious and grim. “Catch a spy, Mr. Carter, and you have nothing at all. To break up espionage, you have to catch a skillfully organized band. We’re up against one now. They have one weak link. If they make tracings, those tracings have to be delivered somewhere, somehow. Tracings aren’t easy things to get out of a house like The Crags by mail. Equally weak is the fact that somehow instructions must be sent to an individual spy.”

Bunny sucked his upper lip in thoughtfully. “I see.”

“That’s gratifying.” Maclain put one hand into his inside