The Reluctant Pinkerton Read Online Free PDF Page B

doesn’t like me. He couldn’t fire me because of Allan, but he doesn’t assign me to anything.”
    “And what’s going on with you and Allan?” Roper asked. “That is, what
was
going on?”
    “Oh,” she said, staring at him, and then, “Oh! No, no, nothing like that!”
    “I’m sorry,” he said, “but—”
    “No, no,” she said, “Allan had been lonely since his wife died. We started to talk, that’s all. Whenever he cameto the offices, he’d stop by my desk and talk to me. One day he asked me if we could have lunch. I thought…well, like you—but that wasn’t it, at all. He was a perfect gentleman. He just wanted to talk. Soon, it became a regular thing and he—knowing what people would think—started to bring me here, where no one would see us.”
    The bartender came over, set the drinks down, and withdrew. Roper didn’t know if the man remembered Dol from other visits, but he acted like he’d never seen her before. The man was obviously good at his job.
    “Well then,” Roper said, “if you talked with him so much, maybe you can tell me how he died?”
    “That’s just it,” she said. “I don’t know. It’s what I want to find out.”
    “And you thought I’d know?”
    “If you don’t,” she said, “you will, as soon as they tell you. Then you can tell me.”
    “That’s all you want?”
    “Yes.”
    “You don’t want me to talk to William about your work?”
    “I’m quite sure the first thing William is going to do when he gets back to the office is fire me.”
    “And why would he do that?”
    She hesitated, then said, “Let’s just say he’s not the gentleman his father was, and leave it at that.”
    William? Roper thought. The married, with children, William Pinkerton making advances toward one of his female operatives? That didn’t sound like the man Roper knew, but then the Allan Pinkerton whom Dol knew was certainly not the same man whom Roper knew. The two of them had very different experiences with the Pinkertons.
    “You are seeing them later, aren’t you?” she asked.
    “Yes,” he said, “for dinner.”
    “I thought so.”
    “Do you know what they want with me?” he asked. “Why they were so anxious for me to come to their father’s funeral?”
    “Not specifically,” she said. “I just know there’s a job they don’t feel they have the right man—or woman—for. I believe they’re going to offer you the job.”
    “Well,” he said, “they’ll be pretty disappointed when I turn it down.”
    “But you have no idea what job they are going to offer you,” Dol said.
    “It doesn’t matter,” Roper said. “I’m not a Pinkerton operative.”
    “Why did you quit?” she asked. “Allan said you were the best op he ever had.”
    “Did he?”
    “I probably shouldn’t have told you that,” she said, “but since I did, I’ll tell you this, too…it really hurt him when you left. He thought he’d be turning the agency over to you one day.”
    “I had to live my own life, Dol,” Roper said. He didn’t believe for a minute that Pinkerton would have handed the reins of the agency over to him and not his sons. If that’s what he told Dol, then at least Roper now knew that Pinkerton had been telling her some giant fibs.
    “Well,” she said, “I suppose you did the right thing. They
do
consider you to be the best private detective in the country.”
    “So they say.” He’d heard that, too, but he didn’t know who “they” were.
    “Listen,” she said, “can we meet for breakfast tomorrow so you can tell me what they wanted you for?”
    “If I say yes,” he answered, “do I get more food for breakfast than I got for lunch today?”
    She stared at him for a moment, then looked at the table and seemed to just realize that they had never ordered food.
    “Oh my,” she said, “I did invite you to lunch, didn’t I?”
    “Yes, you did.”
    “They have wonderful sandwiches here,” she said. “Please, let me buy you lunch.”
    “Only