Lady Afraid Read Free Page A

Mr. Brill. I’d started to think you weren’t coming.”
    He shrugged. “Vile weather.”
    Her nod was slight. Rather more strongly than usual, she did not like this man. It had occurred to her that Calvin Brandeis Brill, attorney-at-law, had come to her in the beginning with this thing. Come adeptly, with so little air of soliciting this particular piece of business that for a long time she had not realized that he was out-and-out mercenary.
    “Well?” More tension than she wanted got into her voice. “Is today to be the day, or isn’t it?”
    The lawyer leaned back, took his time answering, took enough time so that she suspected him of indicating he would not be driven by her impatience.
    “Do you know the firm of Maurice and Black?” he asked.
    Sarah shook her head.
    “Private detectives,” he said.
    She looked at him blankly.
    “I’m using them,” he said. “They’re scouting the scene of operations for you. I’ll get a report from them later in the day, and you’ll need to wait for it.”
    “I wish you hadn’t done that!” she said sharply.
    His eyes grew opaque, and presently a thinness that could be contempt settled on his thin lips. “They’re not expensive.”
    “It’s not that!” Sarah retorted. “It’s just that I’d rather no one knew.” She frowned and then added gravely, “I don’t like the idea of someone I don’t know, private detectives or anyone, being told about it.”
    “Maurice and Black aren’t going to spill anything, Mrs. Lineyack. Do you know what would happen if you called them up right now? They wouldn’t know a thing about it.”
    “I don’t care. I don’t approve,” she said firmly.
    “I’m sorry, but it’s already done, Mrs. Lineyack,” Brill told her, and got up and went to the counter. He came back presently with a glass of milk and two pastry rings on a saucer. He added, “Really, Mrs. Lineyack, you’re going to do this open and aboveboard. You must make no act that the law can construe as evidence that you thought you were doing wrong. Before this is over with, we may need that point in your favor.”
    He had, she knew, defeated her with logic. She remained silent, the quality of dislike for the man strongly about her. She wished wryly that she had possessed the mental brass to double-cross him, take his idea, lay it on the desk of some lawyer she liked. Surely a congenial one could be found.
    She detested acts of sly intrigue. About to engage in such an act herself, she nonetheless was repelled by foxy ways. And this Brill was clearly an artist at furtive maneuvering. The circumstance of their acquaintance was an example: A girl Sarah knew, a girl named Lida Dunlap, who worked in Mr. Arbogast’s office, had introduced Brill to Sarah at a Biscayne Yacht Club dance. The first evening Attorney Brill had been merely conventional: he had made passes at her, had been rebuffed, and had been too sly to drop the amorous approach instantly. She remembered how gradually he had wheedled from her the story, getting the gate open for himself as it were. She was now sure that from the first he’d known who she was and had her case in mind for himself.
    But Brill had been all business once he had maneuvered into position. His next step apparently had been to impress on her that he was a good lawyer. He had practiced in Chicago until a few months ago, and he had casually presented newspaper clippings of cases Attorney Calvin Brandeis Brill had handled in Chicago. All criminal cases, she noticed. And she had thought him gaudy, like an uninhibited actor. As he was. But his brash, foxy self-confidence must have sold itself. For here she sat.
    Brill was eating wolfishly now, cramming pastry past his lips, washing it down with milk. Pastry rings, milk, vanished with repulsive speed.
    “Here’s one other thing you had better do, Mrs. Lineyack,” he said. A sugar crumb lay in his mouth corner. His tongue got it with a quick flick. “You had best leave a