Over My Dead Body

The office was the big room at the rear of the ground floor. There was a large red carpet and a couple of desks, and chairs scattered around. The walls were decorated with pictures of people dancing and fencing, or standing holding a sticker, with a large one of Miltan in some kind of a uniform, and with swords and daggers hanging here and there. I knew the picture was Miltan because Carla Lovchen took me across and introduced me to him and his wife. He was small and thin, next door to a runt, but wiry-looking, and had black eyes and hair and a moustache which pointed due east and west. He looked and acted harassed, and as soon as he shook hands with me darted off somewhere. His wife, in spite of her New York clothes and her 1938 hair-do, looked like one of those coloured pictures in the National Geographic entitled "Peasant Woman of Wczibrrcy Leading a Bear to Church." At that, she was handsome if you like the type, and she had shrewd eyes.

I went and stood by a glass cabinet which displayed an assortment of curios and implements, among them a long, thin rapier with no edge and a blunt point which apparently wasn't a rapier, since a card leaning against it said: "This йpйe was used by Nikola Miltan at Paris in 1931 in winning the International Championship." I looked around. He was across the room, chinning with a broad-shouldered six-footer maybe thirty years old, with a slightly pushed-in nose and a vacant look to go with it. I looked further. If by any chance Wolfe's long-lost daughter hadn't pinched Driscoll's diamonds, it was probable that the person who had was among those present. Carla Lovchen's voice came, beside me:

"But you… you aren't doing anything."

I shrugged. "Nothing I can do. Not right now. What's Miltan waiting for?"

"Mr Driscoll isn't here yet."

"Did he say he would be here?"

"Of course he did. He only agreed to wait until now to go to the police."

"Who's that guy Miltan's talking to?"

She looked. "His name is Gill. He's a dancing client. It was he who was with Belinda Reade yesterday when they saw Neya in the hall. They say they did."

"Which one's Belinda Reade?"

"Over there standing by a chair. The beautiful one, with hair like yellow amber, talking to the young man."

"Check. Baby doll with a new silk dress and pipe earrings. Not to mention the young man. I seem to recognize him from perhaps the movies. Who is he?"

"Donald Barrett."

"The son of John P. Barrett of Barrett & De Russy, who got you girls a job here?"

"Yes."

"Who are those other girls?"