Uncovering the Facts
“Peter,” Judy said after a little silence, “you’re looking for facts,
and I do have something that may help you uncover them. It’s—right
here.”
She handed him the slip of paper she had been saving and told him what
it was.
“Lawson’s post office box number!” exclaimed Peter. “I can’t believe it.
You should be working for us—”
“For you, Peter,” she interrupted quietly.
“Where did you get this little piece of paper?”
“It was handed to me by a fat woman who peered at me from behind a
shattered glass door—”
“Judy, you didn’t—”
“I did,” she confessed. “I found his name on the back of the church
calendar, and Pauline told me where he lived. He was gone, of course.
The people in the church don’t know their building fund money went with
him, do they?”
“They do now,” Peter said, handing her the paper he had been reading
when she came in. An item on the second page told only part of the
story.
Boy Held in Shooting of FBI Agent Pleads Guilty in Kidnap Plot, the
headlines ran. Underneath it told how Frederick H. Christie, sixteen, of
New York, arrested for the shooting of an FBI agent, pleaded guilty but
refused to give any information that would lead to the apprehension of
Clarence Lawson, who was wanted in a dozen states for extortion and
robbery.
“Won’t the box number I gave you lead to his apprehension?” asked Judy
when she had finished reading the newspaper account.
“We can have the box watched. Maybe we can nab him when he comes for his
mail. I’ll be out of here in a day or two. Then we can really go to work
on it. In the meantime perhaps we can uncover a few more facts. The
so-called plot never got beyond the talking stage, the boy said. We may
have scared them off. Since it didn’t happen I guess I’m at liberty to
tell you about it,” Peter continued. “I think Lawson planned to bring
the victim to his home and then changed his mind. We heard him say,
‘We’ll hold the actress until her husband comes across with a donation.’
That’s the way Lawson operates. His charities are all legitimate. People
are asked to make donations on the theory that they may be helped
because they have been helpers. Someone is missing. A donation is made,
and the missing person promptly returns. It’s one of the slickest ransom
schemes anybody has yet devised. Somehow they work it so that the victim
is never held against his will. Some worried relative donates money to a
worthy cause. No law is broken until the money disappears. By then
Lawson or one of his business partners is off for parts unknown. We
would have nabbed him this time if bedlam hadn’t broken loose in the
street outside his house. It was staged to look like a rumble between
two rival street gangs in which we were just accidentally involved.”
“Oh, Peter!” exclaimed Judy. “Nobody will believe that.”
“People do believe some surprising things. I’m no prophet,” he said
grimly, “but I predict the boys will get long sentences and Lawson will
go scot free. It’s happened that way before. He’s one of the slickest
criminals in the United States. I don’t know who this actress was or how
they planned to make her disappear, but they were counting on the fact
that her husband would be worried.”
“Her husband? Oh dear!” Judy exclaimed. “Irene is married. I ought to
warn her—”
“No, please, don’t alarm her,” Peter interrupted. “It didn’t happen the
way they planned. I’m sure of that. It was supposed to take place
Saturday night—”
“It was Saturday night that Clarissa disappeared. But she isn’t an
actress, and she isn’t married.”
“And she isn’t a phantom,” Peter added. “Whatever else we know about
her, we can be perfectly sure she’s real. She may be in real danger,
too. If I can’t find Lawson I want the confidence men who are working
with him. This is no small outfit. It appears to be a nationwide
organization. We want the top men, not just the tough kids they hire to
do the shooting for them.”
“Do you really think they were hired?” Judy asked.
“We know they were following orders. Their minds, in some way, had been
taken over by the minds of the criminals who gave those orders.”
“I see.” Judy was quiet a moment. Did these mind manipulators have, in
their possession, some fiendish machine more dangerous than an atom
bomb? It was a terrifying thought.
“Peter,” she asked, “what about Irene? Why didn’t she have a nightmare
like Pauline and Flo and me? Irene told me this morning that she hadn’t
dreamed an unpleasant thing.”
“Was she on the tour with you?”
“No, she’d gone to her rehearsal. We didn’t see her again until it was
time for the show. There were a lot of people we didn’t know on the tour
with us,” Judy remembered. “There was an ad man from Flo’s office, too.
He was the one who quarreled with Mr. Lenz.”
“Mr. Lenz?”
“The projectionist. Irene’s show isn’t all live, you know. Sometimes
they run film strips. Nearly all the commercials are on film. The show
is sponsored by a tooth paste company now, but she’s thinking of getting
a new sponsor so she can be on one of the big networks. It would be
almost like having her visit us every Saturday evening in our home. She
was against it at first,” Judy went on. “Flo asked me to talk her into
it.”
“Did you?”
“No. Irene knows what’s right,” declared Judy. “I still can’t imagine
her saying she uses a product when she doesn’t. And she’d never use
golden hair wash. She hates the idea of everybody being blond as much as
I do. Imagine it, Peter! No more black or brown hair. No more dark
blondes like Clarissa and Honey—”
“And no more redheads. We couldn’t let _that_ happen!” Peter exclaimed.
Judy gave him one of her special smiles. Gray eyes met blue ones in a
moment of understanding. Then she said, “I want to help. I’ll begin by
making a list of the things we did Saturday.”
“Ask Pauline and Flo to go over it with you,” Peter suggested. “Then
call up Irene. I would call her myself. They’ve given me a telephone
right here at my bedside. But it would be better if you made the call
from the booth outside.”
“What’ll I say? I’m so mixed up at this point I’m not sure what I’m
trying to find out. Am I supposed to ask her about Clarissa or this
unknown actress?”
“You’re trying to find out about that redheaded patient upstairs, for
one thing,” Peter told her. “Ask Irene to come in and pay her a visit.
She may know who she is.”