Defense for the Devil by Kate Wilhelm Read Free Book Online

sparse hair carefully combed over a bald spot, and he was very pale and gray—hair, eyes, expensive suit, all gray. His handshake was perfunctory, hardly more than a touching of her hand.
    “The office is this way,” Barbara said. He was looking around at everything; people had returned from lunch, some were still trickling in; there was a murmur of voices, a laugh from the stenographer’s room.
    In the office, with him in the chair Bailey had used, and her behind the desk, she asked pleasantly, “Would you like a cup of coffee? Tea, perhaps?”
    “No.”
    He had examined the office with the same careful scrutiny he had shown in the corridor. Now he sat primly with his feet together, his hands on the arms of the chair in what looked like a very uncomfortable position.
    “I don’t know why your client thought it necessary to employ legal counsel for what is a very simple request,” he said.
    Barbara glanced down at the open legal pad and closed it. “As you see, however, she did seek counsel,” she said.
    “Mitch Arno is basically a messenger,” he said, “a courier, no more than that, but a highly trusted courier until this incident.” He told the same story she had heard from Maggie. When Barbara did not comment, he said coldly, “Arno left our material at his ex-wife’s inn. We need to recover it.”
    Barbara nodded. “So they sent you. Why you?”
    “Because I can identify the bags, and I can open them. I can identify the contents. We assumed I could reason with Ms. Folsum, explain the situation to her, and compensate her for any trouble this has caused.”
    “Have you requested police help in locating Mitch Arno?”
    “No! Absolutely not! We are constrained by the nature of the papers he was carrying. It must not be known that such sensitive material was out of our hands for even a second. This must be kept confidential.”
    He leaned forward. “What we propose, Ms. Holloway, is a meeting with Ms. Folsum, long enough for me to demonstrate that I have the combination to both of those locks. I shall show her enough of the papers to prove my point. In your presence, of course. We are willing to pay her five thousand dollars, and to cover any uninsured losses to her inn.”
    Barbara shook her head kindly. “I’m afraid that won’t work,” she said. “Ms. Folsum doesn’t have anything of Mitch Arno’s lying about, nothing less than eighteen years old, from the time he abandoned her. Of course, you could get a court order to force anyone who might have happened across your material to release it. With the proper identification, verification of employment of Arno, a statement from him, certified authorization from your company, you know, all those petty details, you might gain possession. No doubt everything would have to be opened in a judge’s chambers to verify the contents of the bags, in such an event.”
    “What do you want?”
    He had not shown any anger and showed none now. Ah, she thought, he had been kissed by the Snow Queen. He could neither laugh nor cry.
    “I was working on that earlier,” she said, and opened her legal pad. “At five hundred a month for child support for the older child, for eighteen years, I arrived at one hundred and eight thousand dollars. For the younger daughter, the figure is one-hundred-and-two thousand. Seventeen years,” she said, looking up pleasantly. “The damage to the inn has yet to be determined, as has the cost of the loss of business.”
    His eyes narrowed, his only reaction.
    “We want to talk to Mitch Arno and arrange a settlement with him,” she said, closing the pad again. “If we can’t reach an agreement with him, we are prepared to institute garnishment proceedings, in which case a third party who happens to hold property or money belonging to the defendant would be ordered by the court to retain such property awaiting due process. An investigation, of course, would follow—full disclosure, proof of ownership, and so forth.” She