Cool & Lam 15 - Beware the Curves

working, she looked thirty-five and tired.
    “What is it you want to know?” she asked.
    I said, "You worked for Karl Carver Endicott ?“
    “Yes.”
    “In what capacity?”
    “As a confidential secretary.”
    “How was he to work for?”
    “Splendid!”
    “A gentleman?”
    “Wonderful!”
    “Anything personal?”
    “Certainly not,” she said acidly. “The relationship was on a business basis. If he hadn’t been enough of a gentleman to have kept it on that basis, I was enough of a lady to have insisted upon it.”
    “You learned a good deal about his affairs?”
    “Yes.”
    “How about his honesty?”
    “He was absolutely, scrupulously honest. It was a very fine position.”
    “Why did you quit?”
    “For personal reasons.”
    “What were they?”
    “I resigned.”
    “Why?”
    “The atmosphere of the office had changed in a way .“
    “In what way?”
    “It’s difficult to describe. I didn’t care for some of the other girls in the office. I could get a job anywhere. I didn’t have to put up with an environment I didn’t like. I quit the job.”
    “Any hard feelings?”
    “Certainly not. Mr. Endicott gave me a very fine letter of recommendation. I can show that to you if you wish.”
    “I’d like to see it.”
    She went to the bedroom and came out after a while with a letter on the stationery of the Endicott Enterprises. It was a swell letter. It recommended Helen Manning as a competent secretary who had been with him for years. She was leaving voluntarily and he regretted losing her.
    “Now then,” I said, folding the letter, “shortly afterwards you went to talk with Mrs. Endicott, didn’t you ?“
    “ I did?” she exclaimed incredulously.
    “You.”
    “Certainly not !” she said. “I had seen Mrs. Endicott in the office once or twice. I knew who she was, and of course I exchanged the time of day with her, but that’s all.”
    “You didn’t talk with her at all after you had quit your position?”
    “I may have said good morning if I saw her on the street, but I don’t even remember that.”
    “You didn’t give her a ring on the telephone and ask her to tell you where you could meet her because you had something to tell her?”
    “Certainly not.”
    “That’s fine,” I said. “Would you mind giving me an affidavit to that effect?”
    “Why should I?”
    “So I can report the true facts to my employers and spike a rumor that is going around.”
    “But I see no reason for making any such statement .“
    “It’s true, isn’t it?”
    “Of course it’s true. I wouldn’t lie.”
    “Then you can make an affidavit.”
    She was silent for several seconds. Then she asked abruptly, “How did you know about this?”
    “About what?”
    “About my going to Mrs. Endicott.”
    “Don’t be silly,” I said. “You didn’t go to her. You’re going to give me an affidavit to that effect.”
    “All right,” she said savagely. “I went to her! I told her things I thought she should know.”
    “What was the trouble with Karl Endicott?” I asked.
    “Everything,” she said. “After all I’d done for him! I gave him the best years of my life. I was loyal. I was absolutely devoted to him. I put up with things that... I closed my eyes to things... I wouldn’t permit the slightest thought of his chicanery even to enter my mind. And then he got this little hussy in. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she could have done the work. She couldn’t even type. She didn’t know straight up. She was just a little strumpet who was twisting him around her finger, and—”
    “And you made a scene?” I asked.
    “I did not make a scene,” she said. “I simply told him that if he wanted to keep a mistress, he should keep her in an apartment and not jeopardize the business by trying to keep her in the office. I also told him that if I was going to be the chief secretary I wanted it understood that I was the chief secretary, that I didn’t want some little tart who had a face and a figure and no brains telling me what to do.”
    “So he fired you?”
    She began to cry.
    “He fired you?” I asked.
    “He fired me, goddam him!” she said between sobs.
    “That’s better,” I told her. “You went to Mrs. Endicott. What did you tell her?”
    “I told her what had happened. Karl Endicott sent John Ansel and another man into the Amazon jungles. He knew that it was legalized murder. He wanted to get rid of both of them.”
    “When did you know this?”
    “I knew it