“She doesn’t look at him like he’s a friend,” Mawson insisted, “and unless Czernick is still playing games with me, he didn’t even know her until yesterday. According to Czernick, he assigned him to the Wells/Dutton girl to make sure she was treated with the appropriate kid gloves for a TV anchorwoman.”
“I don’t know where you’re going, I’m afraid,” Payne said.
“Just file that away as a wild card,” Mawson said. “Let me finish.”
“Please do,” Payne said.
“So, after she signed her statement, and she rode off into the sunrise with this Wohl fellow, I came here and put in a call to Wells in London. He wasn’t there. But he left a message for me. Delivered with the snotty arrogance that only the English can manage. Mr. Wells is on board British Caledonian Airways Flight 419 to New York, and ‘would be quite grateful if I could make myself available to him imm-ee-jut-ly on his arrival at Philadelphia.’ “
“Philadelphia?” Payne asked, smiling. Mawson’s mimicry of an upper-class British accent was quite good. “Does British Caledonian fly into here?”
“No, they don’t. I asked the snotty Englishman the same question. He said, he ‘raw-ther doubted it. What Mr. Wells has done is shed-yule a helicopter to meet the British Caledonian air-crawft in New York, don’t you see? To take him from New York to Philadelphia.’ “
Payne set his coffee cup on the end table beside the couch.
“You’re really very good at that,” he said, chuckling. “So you’re going to meet him at the airport here?”
Mawson hesitated, started to reply, and then stopped.
“Okay,” Brewster Payne said. “So that’s the other question.”
“I don’t like being summoned like an errand boy,” Mawson said. “But on the other hand, Stanford Fortner Wells is Wells Newspapers, and there—”
“Is a certain potential, for the future,” Payne filled in for him. “If he had counsel in Philadelphia, he would have called them.”
“Exactly.”
“We could send one of our bright young men to the airport with a limousine,” Payne said, “to take Mr. Wells either here, to see you, or to a suite which we have reserved for him in the ... what about the Warwick? . . . where you will atten
d him the moment your very busy schedule—shed-yule—permits.”
“Good show!” Mawson said. “Raw-ther! Quite! I knew I could count on you, old boy, in this sticky wicket.”
Payne chuckled.
“You said ‘the other question’, Brewster,” Mawson said.
“What, if anything, you should say to Mr. Wells about where his daughter was when you couldn’t find her, and more specifically, how much, if at all, of your suspicions regarding Inspector Wall—”
“Wohl. Double-U Oh Aitch Ell,” Mawson interrupted.
“Wohl,” Payne went on. “And his possibly lewd and carnal relationship with his daughter.”
“Okay. Tell me.”
“Nothing, if you’re asking my advice.”
“I thought it might show how bright and clever we are to find that out so soon,” Mawson said.
“No father, Mawson, wants to hear from a stranger that his daughter is not as innocent as he would like to believe she is.”
Mawson laughed.
“You’re right, Brewster,” he said. He walked to the door and opened it. “Irene, would you ask Mr. Fengler to come over, please? And tell him to clear his schedule for the rest of the day? And then reserve a good suite at the Warwick, billing to us, for Mr. Stanford Fortner Wells? And finally, call that limousine service and have them send one over, to park in our garage? And tell them I would be very grateful if it was clean, and not just back from a funeral?”
“Yes, sir,” she said, smiling.
“Hello, Matt,” Mawson said. “How are you?”