“Don’t be a fool,” I said. “They can get you off. No jury in the country will hang you. They don’t hang insane people. They just put them away.”
“Shut up,” she said.
My eyes were fixed on the finger on the trigger of the gun. I watched her knuckle tighten.
I screamed as the gun clicked. The small click was loud in the quiet room.
The safety was on.
She did not blink. With her thumb she snapped off the safety. Then behind me, from over my shoulder, I heard Walter say, “What a touching scene!”
The picture covering the broken mirror had slid noiselessly away and Walter stood in the opening framed by the jagged pieces of the broken mirror. He was holding a revolver very elegantly in his hand.
“All right, my dear,” Walter said from the other side of the opening. “Drop that gun or I shall shoot you. You know I would have no hesitation in doing so.”
She hesitated only an instant.
But it was long enough. I had her wrist and this time there was no trouble. I twisted the gun out of her hand.
“Keep an eye on her,” I said.
I knelt quickly by the fireplace.
There were a few of the pages that might possibly be salvaged. But she’d fanned them out and most of them had burned rapidly.
“The book,” I said. “She burned the book.”
The life had gone out of Janis Whitney’s face. Her hair was disheveled and her robe hung open.
Mechanically, half in a daze, she picked up her hairbrush and began to brush her hair.
My lighter was lying on the floor. I picked it up and put it in my pocket.
Inside my pocket my hand touched something.
I pulled out Jean Dahl’s lipstick.
It seemed like I’d been carrying it in my pocket for days.
“Here,” I said. “Fix yourself up. Your picture’s going to be in the papers.”
I started to toss her the lipstick.
But I didn’t.
I stood holding Jean Dahl’s lipstick.
With my thumb I pushed the top up.
I looked at it. I looked at it for almost a minute. Then I began to laugh.
I stood there for a long time holding the lipstick in my hand and laughing. Then I put the lipstick back in my pocket.
“The hell with it,” I said. “I’m going to remember you for a long time, darling. And it’ll be better if I remember you looking like this. It’ll be easier.”
I turned to Walter. “Well,” I said, “I guess I’ll be running along. I’m sure you two will have a lot to talk over. I won’t bother calling the police. You can do that. Maybe you can even fix this whole thing up. I don’t know how, but you’re pretty good at fixing things. I’ll be interested to see how it all comes out, however.”
“Richard,” Walter said. “What about our deal?”
I laughed.
“May I take it then that you are not going to publish the book?”
“I’m not going to publish your book,” I said. “I’m going to publish Anstruther’s.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I haven’t got time to go into it now,” I said. “You can read all about it in the New York Times Book Review.”
I turned, unlocked the door, and left quickly.
I sat in the bar on West Forty-eighth Street looking at the autographed picture of Martin and Lewis.
On the table in front of me were two things.
My fifth drink and Jean Dahl’s lipstick.
I looked across the room at the booth on the other side and I noticed something. A new picture.
I picked up my drink and the lipstick and moved to the booth across the way.
I had two more drinks. I drank them slowly and deliberately. Then I looked up at the picture and said, “Hey, baby, want to see something?”
I pulled the cap off Jean Dahl’s lipstick and turned it upside down. The roll of microfilm fell out in my hand. “There it is, baby,” I said to the picture. “Microfilm. No wonder Jean was willing to sell you her copy of the book so cheap. She had it all on microfilm, right here. I guess this is what Maxie’s boys were looking for in my apartment the other night. I guess a lot of things. I guess I’ll have another drink.”
Chapter Fifteen
I walked into Pat’s office two days later and (in reality, not in a daydream) casually tossed the manuscript, all three hundred and forty-seven photostated pages of it, on his desk.
“What’s this?” Pat asked.
“Oh,” I said. “A book.”
“What book?”
“The new Anstruther,” I said casually. “If we rush it into galleys we can have it for late spring.”
Pat was aghast.
“You’re drunk,” he said.
“You’re right,” I said. “But there’s the book.”
“Come back here,” he said. “Where are you going? You’re drunk. You look terrible.”
“You’re right,” I said. “And now I’m going to get drunker and look worse.”
I left the office and went for a long walk. Then I went to the movies. I spent the whole afternoon and part of the evening in the moldy theatre on Sixth Avenue, watching the movie over and over again.
Then I walked back up Sixth Avenue, stopping in each bar along the way.
The last place I went into was the one on Forty-eighth Street.
I wanted to take a last look at the new photograph.
But I was too late.
They’d already taken it down.