The Mouse in the Mountain | Page 8

roundabout way."
"Now you are laughing at me!" Janet bit down hard on her lower lip. "I don't care! It's not true, and it's wicked to make girls think it is!"
"What's not true?" Doan inquired.
"What they say in novels and movies about how you can go to beauty parlors and fix yourself all over and men will be--will be attracted to you."
"In a nice way, of course," Doan added.
"No!" said Janet angrily. "I don't want them to be attracted in a nice way!"
"I can work up a pretty fair leer if you give me time," Doan offered. "Will that help?"
"You stop making fun of me!"
Greg turned around in his seat and looked back at them. "Miss Martin, is that detective fellow annoying you?"
"What?" Janet said blankly.
"He looks like that sort," Greg said. "Wouldn't you like to sit up here with me?"
"Greg," said Patricia Van Osdel. "If you want someone to sit with you, Maria will."
Greg ignored her. He was smiling, and his teeth were white and glistening under the pencil-line mustache. He had quite a personality when he wanted to exert it. It hung around him like an aura.
Maria got up, and Greg turned to look at her with the slow, dangerous movement of a snake picking out the place it is going to bite.
"Stay where you are, you hag," Greg said evenly. Maria sat down again quickly.
"I'll sit next to you, then, Greg," Patricia Van Osdel said sweetly.
"When I ask you to--not before," Greg told her. "Won't you join me, Miss Martin?"
"Thank you," Janet said uncertainly. "But--I'm quite comfortable here."
"Later, then," Greg said, and he made the two words a promise and an insinuation.
Janet sat still, her face stiff and surprised looking. Patricia Van Osdel watched her with greenish, calculating eyes.
Henshaw cleared his throat.
"The scenery we came to see," said Mrs. Henshaw, "is outside the bus."
"Yeah," Henshaw agreed absently. "Pretty, huh?"
"How do you know?" Mrs. Henshaw asked.
"Huh?" said Henshaw. "Oh." He peered industriously out through the window.
"Feel better now?" Doan murmured to Janet. "Oh!" said Janet. "Why, then, it must be true about beauty parlors!"
"Undoubtedly," Doan agreed.
"I know it makes me sound awfully stupid," said Janet, "but you see I did spend seventy-five dollars in them before I started, and I was beginning to be very disappointed in the results. No men seemed to--to look at me. I mean--"
"I know what you mean," Doan told her.
Janet stretched out her legs. Carstairs grunted in sleepy protest as his headrest was shifted, but he didn't open his eyes. Janet looked at her legs thoughtfully.
"Are they the kind of legs men like?" she asked.
Doan studied them judicially. "Yes."
"I'm not wearing any stockings."
"I noticed."
"My toenails are tinted."
"Very prettily, too," Doan commented.
Janet relaxed again and sighed contentedly. "I can't believe I'm here and that this is really happening. It's much more wonderful even than I'd dreamed it would be. I've just got to talk to somebody. Can I tell you about it?"
"On one condition," said Doan. "And that is that you don't confess any crimes. Just because I'm a detective people are always taking advantage of me and confessing. You can't imagine how boring that is."
Janet looked at him. "Why, I should think you'd want people to confess to you. It would save so much time."
"That's the point," Doan told her. "I don't want to save time. I get paid by the week. The longer a job takes, the more I make. I always try to stretch them out, but it's pretty hard to do. Take the last one I was on, for instance. A clerk embezzled fifty grand or so from a loan company. No sooner did I walk in the joint and ask him his name than he started to confess."
"What did you do, then?" Janet asked, fascinated.
"Shut him up, of course, and went around making like I was looking for clues. But the guy wouldn't drop it. He haunted me. Every time I sat down to rest my feet, he started confessing all over again. It got so obvious I had to arrest him."
"Well, is that--ethical? I mean to--to stall around like you did?"
"Is it what?" Doan said.
"Ethical."
"I'm a detective," said Doan. "A private detective."
"Don't private detectives have ethics?"
"I don't know," Doan answered, frowning. "I never thought about it. I'll have to look the matter up sometime. But what was it you were going to tell me?"
"You won't laugh or make fun?"
"I promise."
"I'm a schoolteacher," Janet whispered.
Doan looked shocked. "No!"
"You promised!"
"I'm sober as a judge," Doan said.
Janet said: "I'm a schoolteacher in the Wisteria Young Ladies' Seminary."
"Now, after all," said Doan.
"It's true! There is such a place, and I teach in it. I'm on a leave of absence to visit my sick aunt. I haven't any aunt, of course. I haven't any relatives at all. I was raised in an orphanage--until I