His phone rang.
“Mr. Marko? Miss Ennis, Draperies. Miss Bayard asked me to tell you she’s bringing someone up to see you.”
That was store talk for “She’s pinched a shoplifter and is on her way to your office with her prisoner.” In his present puzzled frame of mind, he’d be inclined toward leniency to any of the light-fingered brotherhood or sisterhood who’d tried to get away with a five-dollar pen off the leather goods counter or a lighter from the giftwares section.
The red glass button on his intercom set glowed. He touched the switch. “Yes?”
“Miss Bayard, Mr. Marko.”
Mary Bayard was a gaunt, drab, horsy-faced woman with mild gray eyes which peered out from behind gold-rimmed spectacles with an expression of surprised bewilderment. In fact, she was seldom surprised at anything and never bewildered.
The girl who preceded her into the office was in striking contrast to the plainclothes woman. She was in her early twenties and remarkably pretty in a thin, pinched fashion. A dainty face; it might have been puritanical except for the petulant fullness of her lips.
Her coat was the finest Shetland; the suit beneath it expensive hand-loomed homespun. If she had bought those shoes at Nimbletts, she’d paid around thirty-seven-fifty for them. She wore no jewelry, but her figure was enough to obtain for her the attention which some females try to attract by the display of precious stones.
Mary Bayard held out a flat bronze disc. “She claims her name is Betterson, Mr. Marko. Mrs. Clark F. Betterson. She ordered nearly twelve hundred dollars worth of upholstery fabrics, Brocaded damasks, cut velours, fancy materials. Wanted the section manager to have them shipped to the Betterson place in Old Westbury. Gave the salesgirl this token.”
The girl cried indignantly, “You have no right to treat me like a criminal! I haven’t taken one single thing out of your old store. You can’t say I’ve stolen anything!”
Don thought there was an undertone of desperation in the soft voice. “Sit down, young lady. If there’s been any mistake on Nimbletts’ part, you can be sure we’ll straighten it out to your satisfaction.” He looked at the token. It was a genuine Nimbletts charge coin, beyond doubt. “Are you Mrs. Betterson?”
The girl hesitated, biting her upper lip. “No.” She lifted her chin defiantly. “I found that coin in the lobby of a hotel and thought it would be fun to see how it felt to pretend I was rich, for once in my life.”
Don tossed the charge token up and caught it on his palm. “Kind of expensive fun for us, wasn’t it? Shipping all that merchandise out to somebody who didn’t want it? So we’d have to bring it all back to the store?”
“I wasn’t going through with it,” she said sullenly. “I’d have told the clerk it was just a joke before I left. Only, this — person—” she gestured irritably toward Miss Bayard — “raised a rumpus before I had a chance to explain.”
Don had heard that one so many times he didn’t even trouble to smile at her lack of ingenuity. “What is your name?”
“I won’t tell you.” The chin went up again. “I don’t have to tell you.”
“If you don’t tell me” — Don shrugged — “you’ll have to tell the judge in court.”
“You can’t arrest me. I haven’t done anything.”
“Sure. It’s a misdemeanor to try to obtain goods by using another person’s name. Your case, it’s a felony, because of the value of the stuff you tried to get away with.”
“I didn’t, I tell you! It was just a gag.” She didn’t act as if she expected him to believe it.
“Well, you can try to sell that to the judge, too.” Don took a card out of his side drawer. “But I might point out that if you’re anxious to avoid getting your real name in the newspapers, it might be easier to talk to me. Once they book you at the police station, I can’t help you at all.”
She flung out her hands in appeal. “If I do tell you — who I am — will you let me go?”
“I’ll have to know a little more than your name.”
Don began to fill in the descriptive blanks on the card. “White — Female — Blonde — Blue—”
“What, besides my name?”
“We can’t have any Tom, Dick or Harriet coming in the store and ordering a thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise charged to somebody else.” He scribbled “5'5”... and “125” on the card. “You claim you found Mrs. Betterson’s token. But you didn’t find her Old Westbury address on the coin.”
“Oh” — she fluttered the fingers of one hand — “I knew where she lived, I’ve seen her out there at the polo matches—” She stopped as if fearful of having said more than she intended.
