Hot Red Money

by Baynard Kendrick

  “Maurice Morel.”

  “Address?”

  “A-11, Morton Court, New York City.”

  “Relationship, doctor, and nature of the disorder of the patient you wish admitted.”

  Maury gave her his most fatuous grin. “Until I talk to Dr. Rheinemann, I’m not admitting anything. Now why don’t you act like your own sweet self? Call him on the telephone and tell him a Mr. Morel is here, who wishes to speak to him on a highly confidential matter that may affect the entire future of the Amity Rest Home.”

  “Dr. Rheinemann is a woman. Dr. Marian Rheinemann.” Miss Flynn’s highly lipsticked lips tightened in anger that Maury shouldn’t know such a thing.

  “Good for her!” Maury said. “Now get her on the phone, will you? Just in case she’s shy of men, tell her I was born on the cusp between Aries and Taurus, in 1910, and am far too gone physically to make any passes, if not mentally.”

  If that threw Miss Flynn off balance it wasn’t visible. She was even more disapproving when she plugged in the phone. “Miss Carse? There’s a Mr. Morel here. M-o-r-e-l. He wishes to speak to Dr. Rheinemann personally. He refuses to state his business, except that it is highly confidential. Is she free right now?”

  There was a wait long enough for Miss Carse and her boss to go into a huddle. Then Miss Flynn said, “Thank you, Miss Carse, I’ll tell him.” She unplugged the phone.

  “Dr. Rheinemann will see you in a few minutes. Just have a seat in the waiting room.” She gestured toward the arch and went back to studying Maury’s uncompleted form.

  Maury went in and took one of the brocade chairs. He lit a cigarette. It was finished and five minutes had dragged out to ten when he heard muffled footsteps crossing the hall. There was a pause for a conference at Miss Flynn’s desk, carried on in tones too low for Maury to hear.

  A tall angular woman, in a pink and white uniform, finally appeared in the waiting room door. “I’m Miss Carse, Dr. Rheinemann’s secretary. The doctor can spare you a few minutes now. Kindly come with me.” She looked at the sticking plaster on Maury’s hair, started to say something, but let it go. Maury trailed her in silence to a door far down at the left of the hall.

  Dr. Marian Rheinemann was seated back of a big flat-top desk that was almost bare. She stood up after Miss Carse had ushered Maury in and closed the door behind him.

  The standing up of Dr. Marian Rheinemann was a performance well worth watching and waiting for. She was a natural flaming redhead with a milky skin devoid of freckles. Her figure was sybaritic, full breasted, and lush. Set off to perfection by a high-necked black silk dress with a flashing diamond throat clip, the white knee-length hospital coat open down the front merely added to her sensual beauty.

  A work of art, Dr. Rheinemann, Maury thought as pinpricks touched his spine. A breathtaker and a band-stopper, made possible only by that rarest of combinations: Mother nature, money, modiste, and coiffeur.

  Maury tried to keep from staring rudely, but what the hell, she’d been stared at plenty before. No woman could be as gorgeous as that and be entirely real. She belonged on a beach in South Pacific—not in the ocean, but in the show. Even the lights in the air-conditioned office were designed by a master electrician, smoothing out wrinkles, if there were any, making her skin more white and her hair more red by their gentle subdued rosy glow.

  Her expression told him his admiration had been noted and approved, but that it was time to get the show on the road. There was a limit to free-loading on that much beauty. Sooner or later the waiter would come and present the bill.

  “Mr. Morel, I’m Dr. Rheinemann. Sit down, won’t you?” She flashed a smile exhibiting teeth so perfect they might have been china, but Maury didn’t think so. She was much too fully developed an animal to have any vitamin count that was low.

  Maury shook her extended hand and found it just as warm as her smile and her cultured voice. He sat down with his sleepy gray eyes half closed, concupiscently thinking of four-poster beds and at the same time searching for flaws.

  Her nails were too long and polished to too high a sheen. That was quibbling, and he knew it. When she took her chair and the light struck her face at a different angle, he found the blemish.

  Her eyes. They were well shaped, golden-lashed, and enticing, but if you looked at them critically you saw that the irises were pale, bordering between blue and green. They were caponized eyes that icily denied the allurement of her body, eyes that could estimate business factors as coolly as a calculating machine.

  “You spoke to Miss Flynn about a confidential matter that you wished to discuss with me. I presume it has to do with admitting a patient. You could have saved us both a lot of time if you had given the necessary information to Miss Flynn. She’ll have to get all the details anyhow. But since you’re in here, suppose you go on and give them to me.”

  She took a cigarette from a silver case and returned it to the pocket of her long white coat, making no move to offer a smoke to Maury. She used a gold lighter with a studied gesture and fluffed up the back of her auburn hair.

  “I’m Maury Morel, Staff Writer for the Globe-Star. I’m working on a series that will explain in some detail the operation and facilities of the principal private mental hospitals in the vicinity of New York City. I can give space only to four or five, and I’d like to include the Amity Rest Home.”

  She took a couple of placid puffs while the pale eyes vacillated between blue and green.

  Maury gave what he thought was a wolfish grin that might please her. “Particularly since I’ve had the pleasure of meeting you.”

  “Just a minute.” She pushed a lever down on an inter-com that stood on a table beside her desk. “Miss Carse?”

  “Yes, Dr. Rheinemann.”

  “You and Miss Flynn have let another snooping reporter force his way into my office. This is the second one this year. The next time it happens, you can rest assured that I’ll take delight in promptly replacing both of you. Spare me the excuses, please.” She swung back to Maury with a poisonous smile. “You were saying.…”

  “You’re a little rough on the girls, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, and now I’m going to be rough on you, since this is the first time I’ve had the misfortune of meeting you. I don’t like you, Mr. Morel—Maury the Fink. I don’t like your pseudo-liberal scandal sheet, the Globe-Star. Mainly due to those muckraking lies published under your name. You’re a Red-baiter of the very worst type. You’re utterly lacking in principles, and without regard as to whether or not your allegations are true. Any liberal who speaks his mind is grist for your mill.”

  She swung around again to stab out her cigarette in an ashtray on top of the inter-com. When she turned back she found Maury leaning forward, studying the front cover of a white printed pamphlet lying on her desk. The title in conservative type was: Lycoming’s Leads. A weekly newsletter for investors. Distributed to subscribers only by Henry Lycoming & Co., Investment Counselors.

  Dr. Rheinemann angrily snatched it up, opened a drawer, and thrust it in. The desk quivered when she slammed the drawer. “Even a person’s private affairs aren’t safe from a snooper like you!”

  “I’m a connoisseur of facets, Doctor, and you have a great many.” Maury settled back in his chair. “In addition to psychiatry, I notice that you analyze the stock market, too. Maybe even take a little flyer now and then. If you’ll keep that sorrel-top temper in hand, I might even print a straight interview with you—slice of cheese cake with it, too.”

  “You just try it, Fink Morel. You’ll find yourself and your rag so deep in a libel suit you’ll have to clean your ears out.”

  “Oh, tut and double-tut!” Maury said. “Act your age, Glorious! There isn’t any libel if the facts are true, and you have to prove damages, too.”

  “The facts are,” Dr. Rheinemann informed him coldly, “that I happen to have a few connections as well as you. My ex-husband, Max Rheinemann, is one of the wealthiest brokers in New York City, and our relationship is s
till most friendly. My father, Jason Philips, is Chairman of the Board of the Crescent Valve Corporation. He’s also a very close friend of B. Franklin Jeffers, who happens to own the Globe-Star Syndicate, and I presume that means he owns you.”

  “Body and soul, Doctor. How right you are. Well, you’ve certainly done well for yourself in the way of connections. Good for you!” Maury stood up. “You wouldn’t happen to have a patient in here named—” He shook his head. “No. You wouldn’t. Give me a ring at the paper if you’re in New York with an evening free. I’ll buy you a dinner, if you promise not to threaten me. It will be worth it just to look at you. Toodleoo!”

  He waved at Miss Carse on his way through her office, yelled “Beaver!” at the tycoon with the Vandyke beard, and blew a kiss to the unreceptive Miss Flynn. None of the three returned his salutations.

  In the parking place a pleasant-faced, well-muscled young man in hospital whites was getting into the car next to Maury’s.

  “Tell me if I’m talking out of turn,” Maury said to him, “but do you work here in the Amity Rest Home?”

  “Sure do. Dave Alren. I’m an orderly in the men’s division. Anything I can do for you?”

  “Ten bucks worth, to get to the point. I’m a reporter, Maury Morel, on the Globe-Star.”

  “Well, what d’you know. I’ve heard of you.”

  “Have you run across a patient in there named Turlock. I don’t know his first name, but he’s a foreigner at a guess.”

  “What breed?”

  “Russian. Polish. Yugoslavian. Arabic. Hungarian.”

  Dave Alren pinched his upper lip. “There’s fifty-six men patients in there and I know them all. Some of them come in under phony names on purpose. Are you sure this man you’re talking about didn’t?”

  “I’m not sure of anything,” Maury said.

  “You say this fellow might be Russian. Hungarian maybe?”

  “Might be.”

  “Speak with an accent then, wouldn’t he?”

  “Probably, but I’m stabbing in the dark again.”

  “Would it still be worth that ten spot if I gave you the name of a patient who might fill the bill?”

  “Yes,” Maury said, “and if your guess turned out right and you watch the mails your ten spot might grow into two. One right now and the other later.”

  “Try out Igor Sandor for size,” Dave Alren said. “He was admitted just two weeks ago. Dr. Rheinemann is trying electric shocks, but she’s wasting time, if you want my opinion. He has a persecution complex a mile wide. Paranoia. He can get pretty rough to handle any time. Still she hasn’t got him upstairs in security and none of the hired hands, like me, can figure out why.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Downstairs on the men’s side. Room 22. Are you thinking of visiting him?”

  “Not after your diagnosis.” Maury slipped him a folded up ten spot. “But he sounds promising.”

  Dave Alren said, “Thanks. I’m getting married next week. I hope this grows to two.”

  Maury waited until Dave had backed out his car, then followed it down the horseshoe driveway. On the way into town he ticked off facts as the miles went by: Pringle to Shebab to Turlock. Turlock to Rheinemann to Lycoming. Lycoming to Philips to Igor Sandor. Somewhere that circle would complete itself and he’d get back to Pringle and his story would be in the bag.

  If he wasn’t in a box, himself, by then, he and the Commies would be forever finished with one another. He offered up a silent prayer that his relationship with Mrs. Anne Morel wouldn’t be forever finished, too.

  Chapter Seven

  It was said around the offices of the Globe-Star that Thomas Tremayne Sturtevant, who occupied a stained glass cubicle of his own in the southwest corner of the fifth floor, spoke to no one but the Old Man, B. Franklin Jeffers, and through some strange attraction of opposites, to Maury Morel.

  Thomas Tremayne Sturtevant was affectionately known as “Ticker Tape”—usually shortened to T.T. He wore the title of financial editor, as he wore his clothes, with a great deal of dignity. The title was rather euphemistic since the Globe-Star was an evening paper and carried no full financial section, per se.

  T.T. had been acquired when Jeffers took over the assets and most of the staff of the respected and conservative Morning Star, and merged it with the Evening Globe many years before.

  T.T. had been through the mill. He was a graduate of the Wharton School of Finance, a Pennsylvania certified public accountant, and had worked up from a customers’ man to owning a third interest in a brokerage company of his own.

  He had climbed five rungs of the millionaire ladder when his brokerage house fell out of bed, along with everything else, in the crash of 1929.

  Promptly hired as comptroller and promoter of one of the many ventures of a Detroit tycoon, T.T. spent two fruitless years trying to market stocks and bonds to customers who were patronizing soup kitchens and closely watching the price of apples.

  That unprofitable enterprise exploded in a shower of red figures in 1931. T.T. wasn’t too unhappy about it, for the tycoon was allergic to the smell of tobacco and allowed no smoking in any of his offices.

  T.T. was addicted to a mixture of tobacco, made up for him by a tobacconist on Eighth Street, that consisted of approximately 10% Latakia, and 90% perique. He smoked this sulfurous concoction in a pipe as big as a chamber pot and insisted that the pipe was given to him by his father on the day he was born. The pipe, reminiscent of Yale’s famous football mascot, bulldog Handsome Dan, had by constant use become strong enough to throw Li’l’ Abner’s mammy over a barn.

  He accepted an offer to go to work for the Star in 1932, and put his unusual knowledge of bulls and bears into print for two main reasons: First, the Editor told him he could bring his pipe along. Secondly, once every week a payday rolled around, albeit at the start the checks were small.

  Old Man Jeffers inherited the pipe, as well as T.T. from the Star and enclosed them both, with a stock ticker, in the cubicle in the corner. A stained-glass gas mask to protect the rest of the office, according to Hal Gow.

  The pipe was just as much a part of T.T. as the shoe-button eyes that sparkled back of rimless pince-nez, always clamped too tightly on the bridge of his short straight nose. It was just as familiar to the G-S staff as T.T.’s touched up black hair parted carefully in the middle, or T.T.’s too white and too perfect false teeth that so firmly tried to bite through the pipe stem, in his wide humorous mouth above the dimpled chin. It was just as black and polished as T.T.’s funereal broadcloth suit and patent leather shoes, or his black silk four-in-hand tie with its tiny pearl pin.

  It was a quarter past five, and the clatter of the ticker tape, feeding out its daily diet of ups-and-downs, had been replaced by the clatter of T.T.’s antique typewriter, tortured beyond endurance with punches from T.T.’s two slender white forefingers, when Maury Morel knocked discreetly on the stained glass door of the sanctum.

  T.T. shouted above the keys, “Come in!”

  Maury filled his lungs with one last long breath of the comparatively fresh office air and went in. The door slammed behind him pulled by a spring that threatened to shatter the glass at each closing.

  “Hi, Tom.” Maury pulled a battered armchair, shedding stuffing, up toward the front of the desk and sat down.

  T.T.’s swivel chair creaked protest as he swung around. He shoved a pile of government pamphlets, and Wall Street Journals, away from in front of him, to add to the clutter at the left of his desk.

  “Hail Guest! We ask not what thou art: If Friend, we greet thee, hand and heart; If Stranger, such no longer be; If Foe, our love shall conquer thee!” He knocked out his pipe in a large metal ashtray, reached for his can of tobacco and started to load it again.

  “To become Love, Friendship needs what Morality needs to become Religion—the fire of emotion!” Maury quoted back at him.

  “Ah, but you don’t know who said it.” T.T. performed some horrible operation with a pipe c
leaner, regarded it disgustedly, and dropped it into the wastebasket.

  “Richard Garnett, from the Preface to De Flagello Myrteo. Your greeting is Arthur Guiterman.” Maury gave a grin.

  “So you slave here in the salt mines, like I do.” T.T. took a couple of big wooden matches from a box, struck them both at once, and built a fire over his tobacco. “Why haven’t both of us taken half a million from some quiz show?”

  Maury laughed, coughed, and lit a cigarette that proved to be tasteless in the acrid atmosphere. “You might, Tom. You gave me the opening for that rabbit punch I delivered. It’s one of the only five quotations I happen to know.”

  T.T. pursed his lips and shook his head dolefully. “Hippocrates said, ‘… at least avoid all citations from the poets, for to quote them argues feeble industry.’ What the hell do you want, Maury?”

  “Information.”

  “Free?”

  “Cocktails and dinner. I know your strange aversion to restaurants, so we’ll make it at the house when Anne gets home. Any day now.”

  “The laborer is worthy of his hire,” T.T. said. “And they are fools who roam. The world has nothing to bestow; from our own selves our joys must flow, and that dear hut, our home.”

  “It’s an humble thing, I admit,” Maury said. “But it does belong to Morton Court, Incorporated. Of course, if you don’t like the hut, you don’t need to come. Answer me some questions, anyhow.”

  “Ask and learn,” T.T. said, “and nevertheless, I come.”

  “Did you ever hear of an investment counselor named Henry Lycoming?”

  T.T. emitted a cloud that would have done credit to a wood-burning locomotive. He took off his pince-nez and wiped his beady eyes with a piece of Kleenex. He restored the glasses and stared at Maury like a teller confronted with a questionable $1000 bill.

  “Investment Counselor? It’s a strange thing, Maury, anyone we pay for advice on how to lose our money becomes an investment counselor. He puts out this tip sheet, Lycoming’s Leads. Here—”