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

coat pocket. “Mr. Carter, I want a girl.”

“A girl?” Bunny repeated incredulously.

“One who can type,” said Maclain. “She has to have certain qualifications. Foremost among them is that she can keep her mouth shut. She has to have an unbroken record as an American citizen—a record that’s known to you. She must lack curiosity entirely, and not be subject to temptation at the sight of a lot of money.”

“Miss Tavestock will fill the bill,” Bunny remarked without hesitation. “What do you want her to do?”

“I want her to copy a letter,” said Maclain. “I want it copied exactly. Each line must be measured with a ruler and spaced to the fraction of an inch, and I want a stencil cut so that I can feel it all the way through the paper.”

“That’s easy enough. What sort of a letter is it?”

“It’s a letter from a perfume house,” said Duncan Maclain, “and that’s the hard part about it. If Miss Tavestock gets curious and happens to mention it to her boy friend some night, or to anyone else, she’s apt to wake up some bright morning and find that her head’s been chopped off on the floor!”

CHAPTER XIX

1

WHEN DUNCAN Maclain left the International Aircraft plant he was carrying a brief case loaned to him by Bunny Carter. Inside the pigskin bag was the stencil cut by Miss Tavestock, and an Ediphone record from Bunny’s machine. On that record was a verbal copy of the advertising letter as read to Maclain in Bunny’s most formal dictating tone. The contents of the letter not only were engraved on the cylinder, but were equally impressed on the sensitive receptiveness of Duncan Maclain’s brain.

For thirty minutes after Bunny had recorded the letter, the Captain had sat in the seclusion of the president’s office with headphones clamped to his ears, playing the record repetitiously through and through. Once or twice Bunny had looked in from his secretary’s office, where he was watching Miss Tavestock cut the stencil with conscientious accuracy. Each time, the Captain’s head had raised alertly and one of his expressive hands had motioned Bunny impatiently away.

“What do you make of it?” Bunny had asked when he returned carrying the stencil and the original letter. “It looks like an ordinary enough circular to me.”

“That’s the beauty of it,” said Maclain. “That’s the beauty of everything we’re dealing with. It looks so ordinary that even the most alert investigator is likely to glance at it but once, and then turn away.”

Bunny asked him, “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to take this record, the letter, and the stencil to Middletown, if you’ll lend me a brief case to carry them in. That is, if you don’t mind my using your car.”

“Not at all,” said Bunny immediately, “but why Middletown? What do you expect to find there?”

“A State Police laboratory.” The Captain carefully put the letters and the record into the brief case and snapped it shut. “Sometimes there’s more writing on a piece of paper than appears on the surface. Police laboratories have curious means of bringing it to light with chemicals and ultraviolet rays.”

Word by word the Captain mentally sifted the contents of the letter as Bunny’s Lincoln drove him on his way. There weren’t more than a hundred and twenty words on the single sheet of fine bond typewriter paper embossed with the heading: —

THE HOUSE OF BONNÉE

TANNER BUILDING

EAST 57TH STREET

NEW YORK CITY

The words were simple, carrying no hint of espionage or intrigue, carrying nothing except some advertising man’s conception of an angle which might induce a recipient of the letter to buy the products of the House of Bonnée.

The Captain gave it up after a while and relaxed in a corner of the car. He remained motionless, head back, with his finger tips pressed gently against his eyes, until he sensed by the sound of the car that they were crossing the long bridge leading into Middletown. Then he sat up and grasped the handle of the brief case beside him. There were still many things he couldn’t understand. One of them was why that lingering scent of violets should be in Bunny Carter’s car.

2

Dr. Jellicoe, a neat, precise man in his early fifties, tapped the edge of his pince-nez against his teeth and stared across his desk at Schnucke and Duncan Maclain.

“You think there’s a message of some kind written on this piece of paper in invisible ink, Captain?” The Doctor replaced his pince-nez and stared down once more at the letter in his hand.

“I haven’t any idea,” said Maclain, “but it’s something I’d like very much to know.”

“It’s a type of work that’s a little outside of my field.” Dr. Jellicoe’s unlined forehead was momentarily marred with a tiny frown. “I’ve used iodine fumes for bringing out latent fingerprints, and I believe there’s a process with a combination of sodium nitrate and silver nitrate solution that’s very effective.”

“Two solutions in the latter method, to be exact,” said Maclain. “It’s what they call a sulphate picture. After the sodium nitrate and the silver nitrate you’d have to use Formalin and sodium hydroxide, but I’m afraid it won’t do. It’s apt to destroy the visible writing which I want to keep particularly.”

Dr. Jellicoe checked a question and said, “You might make a copy.”

The Captain smiled. “I’m afraid that wouldn’t do much good either. You see, I want to throw this letter away.”

“Yes, certainly,” Dr. Jellicoe agreed a shade too quickly. He began to wonder if Duncan Maclain knew that he was an accredited member of the staff of the Connecticut State Hospital for the Insane.

The Captain continued. “That may sound funny to you, Doctor, but I want to see who finds it.”

“Oh, yes,” said Dr. Jellicoe, studying a button on the desk by his side and wondering if an attendant was near. “Yes, I have that same urge at times, myself. I think it exists in everyone in a greater or lesser degree.”

“Pardon me?” said