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why should I?”
    “Would you consider seventy-five thousand dollars a good reason?”
    I paused, still holding the mangled cigarette stub. “You’re joking.”
    “Do I look as if I were?”
    “Where would you get that much money?”
    “From him, naturally.”
    “You mean steal it?”
    She nodded coolly. “I suppose you would call it stealing. A rather unusual type of theft, and one that’s absolutely fool-proof
    “There is no such animal.”
    “In this particular case, there is. It’s unique. I suppose you’ve heard the expression “perfect crime”. This is the perfect crime, the one that’ll never be solved.”
    I lit another cigarette, still looking at her. She had me badly confused by now. I sat down on the corner of the bed near her. “I’ll admit I don’t know nearly as much about girls as I did when I was nineteen,” I said. “But, even so, your picture and sound track just don’t match. Perfect crime—Offhand, I’d say the worst crime you’ve ever committed was taking advantage of a stuck parking meter.”
    She gestured with a slim hand. “I didn’t say I’d ever stolen anything before.”
    “But you’re going to now. Why?”
    “We can go into the reasons later. I want to know if you’re interested.”
    “I’m always interested in money.”
    “Have you ever stolen anything?”
    No. But I doubt that’s highly significant. Nobody’s ever tried me with seventy-five thousand before.”
    ”Then you could?
    “Probably. But it couldn’t be as fool-proof as you say.”
    “It is,” she said definitely. “As a matter of fact, nobody will ever know it was stolen.”
    “Why? Money doesn’t evaporate. And just where is it?”
    She studied me thoughtfully. “Your stepfather was a broker, I believe you said. So you know what a trading account is?”
    “Sure.”
    “All right. Harris Chapman has a trading account with a New Orleans brokerage firm. The man called Chris you just heard on the tape is the registered representative who handles it for him. And at the present moment the stocks and cash in the account add up to just a little over a hundred and eighty thousand dollars.”
    I whistled. Then I glanced sharply at her. “So?”
    “Well, you know how a trading account like that is handled.”
    “Sure. The stocks he buys are credited to his account, but they’re kept there at the brokerage house in the vault, so he doesn’t have to go through all the rigmarole of endorsing them and sending them back when he wants to sell. He buys and sells all the time, just by picking up the phone—” I got it then, and she was crazy.
    “You see?” she said.
    “I see nothing,” I replied. “Money in a brokerage account is just as safe as money in a bank account. It takes a signature to get it; you ought to know that. Two signatures, as a matter of fact. You have to sign a receipt for the transaction, and then endorse the check to cash it.”
    She interrupted. “Will you listen just a minute? The idea is nothing like as simple as that. Of course it wouldn’t work in any other set of circumstances, but as I told you before, this is unique. All it’ll require is the most elementary sort of forgery because nobody”ll ever look at the signatures anyway.”
    “Why?”
    “Because there’ll never be the slightest doubt but that Harris Chapman drew the money out himself. I’ll take care of that—”
    “You’d better fill me in a little,” I said. “Just who is Chapman, and what’s your connection with him?”
    She leaned over to tap ash off her cigarette. “He’s a businessman, and for a small town a fairly wealthy one. He owns Chapman Enterprises, which consists of a newspaper, a radio station, cotton gin, and a warehouse, among other things—”
    “And you worked for him?”
    Her eyes met mine without any expression at all. “I worked for him. I was his private secretary, mistress, executive officer, fiancée—you name it. I went to work for him eight years ago, and for the