Lady in Peril

EARLY BIRD BOOKS

FRESH EBOOK DEALS, DELIVERED DAILY

LOVE TO READ?

LOVE GREAT SALES?

GET FANTASTIC DEALS ON BESTSELLING EBOOKS

DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX EVERY DAY!

The Web’s Creepiest Newsletter

Delivered to Your Inbox

Get chilling stories of

true crime, mystery, horror,

and the paranormal,

twice a week.

Lady in Peril

Lester Dent

Contents

Cast of Characters

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Loneman

He paid an exorbitant price for success, but thought it had been a bargain—until too late.

Gabriella

To gain self-confidence, she had to put her life in jeopardy.

Senator Abbot

Being a fair man, the only thing that stood between him and truth was his own self-righteousness.

Doc Thomas

Doc had to compromise: he liked money but didn’t like people.

Enoch Bumpus

Director knew how to stomp out a snake in the grass, but he couldn’t smell a rat.

Ed Allen

He wasn’t very popular—not even with himself.

ONE

SOMEONE BROUGHT A NEWSPAPER INTO THE Senate chamber about midafternoon and it passed from hand to hand like a hot potato.

Guessing roughly as to the number, about half the senators turned for a look at Loneman after they read the headline.

Mostly the looks sent at Loneman were sympathetic. A few were notably not friendly. There were no indifferent looks.

Of course Loneman sensed something. He tried to think what it might be. He was not successful.

Then Senator Harold Abbot from the upstate third, glancing at the newspaper, turned as pale as a piece of fish in a deepfreeze. Senator Abbot bowed his head, his shoulders sagged. For some time the only gesture Senator Abbot made was to touch his closed eyelids with his fingertips. Eventually the Senator lurched erect and in a thick, angry voice, the Senator asked for the floor.

May I address a question to the Chair? Senator Abbot said. He was top man in the Senate, could be the next governor. He got attention. If the Chair will condescend to answer, will the Chair tell us why a notorious hatchetman for a vested interest in this state, a man who holds no elective office, is permitted to sit unchallenged on the floor of this legislative chamber? he said. Is it because this man is so powerful, so malevolent in his oblation of vengeance that the Chair fears to expel him?

Senator Abbot’s shaggy, raging voice subsided. He sat down.

Why, thought Loneman, the old fool must mean me!

And this was correct. For presently a pageboy came to ask Loneman to leave the working floor of the Senate. Loneman did so.

Loneman carried quiet anger behind his tight lips and dark brown eyes. He was compact and tanned, a six-foot man of thirty. He had dark red hair, the color of very old mahogany, and he was dressed in a proper, dark hard-finished sharkskin. He didn’t know why he’d been kicked out of the Senate chamber.

He had been sitting in the chamber visiting with a senator friend. It was true he was a little out of line. The Senate chamber was for senators, Loneman was a lobbyist. But the sessions were not run to strict rule. They did it different in Washington, but this was government on the state level in Missouri. Loneman left the chamber, strode past the doorman, irritation and surprise giving his eye a glint.

Why the boot in the pants, Mr. Loneman? the doorman said.

Don’t know.

Beats me too. He was a pale-skinned, erect man in his seventies. He had been here at the Senate chamber door when Loneman came to the state capitol seven years ago. I’ve seen Senator Abbot deliver a chewing-out before, the doorman said. But I never saw him show so much fang.

Yes, Loneman said. He gave me quite a bite.

They were handing a newspaper around. Something in it set Abbot off, you think?

I got that idea, Loneman said. Did you see what was in the paper?

No, sir, the doorman said. You want me to get you a copy?

I’ll pick it up myself, Loneman said.

Well, the doorman said, a quiet afternoon sure got livened up.

The arched marble capitol corridor was as crowded as usual when Senate was in session. Loneman was spoken to pleasantly, waved at; he took big hands out of his pockets to wave back. He had a wide mouth, a large chin, a muscular neck, and the effect did not exactly make him handsome. He looked like a man other men would like, and they did, with a few noteworthy exceptions.

Senator Abbot’s blow-up was no good for Loneman. He needn’t be told. Senator Abbot was the state’s great crusader. The Senator lacked humor, he was built like a well-worn bulldozer. He’d headed many investigation committees in his day. None had been laughing matters. Senator Abbot was a fair man, an honest man, but he was a business man’s senator and he hated co-operatives. Since Loneman worked for the largest co-op in the state, Ploughman Co-operative, he was cast as villain in the Senator’s eye. A hundred thousand people doing business in the state, a few had to be crooks. By and large there was honesty, but sometimes there wasn’t, for people are people. It did not follow that all co-op men were thieves, a fact Loneman felt that Senator Abbot was convinced of.

I wonder, Loneman asked himself, if he got the truth about Grocer Jones?

That was the worry? Recently Senator Abbot’s committee had pulled off the greatest coup of the Senator’s career. Out of that hundred thousand people, thirteen food handlers, a whole thieving baker’s dozen, had been rooted out by the committee. Rooted out, indicted, and some jailed, for illegal price-fixing deals. Plain robbery, a type the public understood. This combined with Senator Abbot’s gubernatorial yen were important; the spring primaries were not far away. Understandably, Senator Abbot was happy with it all. He’d have been happier if the baker’s dozen were co-op men, which they weren’t, not one. But he was happy. To a degree, happy in ignorance. He didn’t know Grocer Jones was Loneman’s brother-in-law.

This Grocer Jones had been a dream witness. His name was David Stanley Jones. He owned and operated a food market in St. Louis. He was a slender, quiet man, grayhaired, soft-voiced, a churchman, and convincing. The price-fixers were hurting him; he got his evidence on them the simplest possible way. He roped them—became friendly, visited their homes, their drinking parties in country lodges—with a wire recorder in one pocket and a good camera in the other. The newspapers gave him the handle Grocer Jones. He was terrific, as any brother of Loneman’s wife, Gabriella, was sure to be.

Grocer Jones had stood before Loneman. I’m your brother-in-law, Loney, he said. But I don’t want it known. This was before he went to Senator Abbot. Before the newspapers called him Grocer Jones. Don’t see why, Loneman said.

Simple, the quietly angry groceryman said. I’m not going to Senator Abbot wearing any kind of a co-op tag. I want his heart in this.

What’s the real reason? Loneman asked. You think someone in Ploughman might be in on the steal? That it?

That would be a reason too, wouldn’t it? The groceryman had not shown Loneman his evidence. Loneman hadn’t asked to see it.

If there’s a crook in Ploughman, I’ll wring the so-and-so’s neck, Loneman said, meaning it.

Exactly, the groceryman said. Such a crook wouldn’t let a brother-in-law of yours within a mile. Right? Put that down as my second reason, in case I need one.

Senator finds out, I get rawhided, Loneman said. But O.K.

The way it worked out, every Senator came to know Grocer Jones as Loneman’s discovery. But the brother-in-law angle was kept under cover.

Now Loneman walked straight ahead down the fine old capital corridor. His eyes were grim. His mind was uneasy—he was out on the limb at another place. He had not told Director that Abbot was being foxed a bit. He had not told the boss. If you worked for Ploughman, you told Director such things.

This Director was named Enoch Bumpus. He was the head of Ploughman Co-operative. He was a grand terror of a man. He was built like a grizzly bear. He had the manners of a hop-toad. His heart was as full of gold as is Fort Knox. His version of formal business garb was a blue denim overall jumper; he could call a hundred farmers by their first names in any county. It was he who had kept Senator Abbot from getting the governorship when Eisenhower made his first sweep: Director and the Senator were not exactly buddy-buddy.

Boy, did you get the heave-o! A hand clamped on Loneman’s shoulder from behind. Did you get told!

Loneman turned. Ed Allen, he said. His voice was cold and sarcastic, My cup runneth over.

Ed Allen’s soft stubby fingers kneaded Loneman’s shoulder. Ed was a heavy chub of a man. He wore a flashy, pinstripe suit, a fashionable narrow-brim hat. He was laughing at Loneman from behind expressionless, remarkably blue eyes.

Rambunctious way for old Abbot to act, Ed Allen said. Cracking down on a Ploughman man. Didn’t think he had the viscera.