Things were whirling around now like an electric fan. But that’s better than having them get static in an unfavorable position. While things are moving around, it’s always possible to reach in and grab out something that you want. When they freeze in an unfavorable position, you’re frozen, too.
I walked over toward the connecting door intending to knock, when there was the sound of a gentle, almost surreptitious knock at the outer door of my cabin.
I hesitated a moment.
The knock was repeated.
I went to the door, opened it a crack.
Minerva Badger was there.
“Hello, Donald,” she said.
Her voice was dripping with syrup.
“Hello to you,” I said.
I thought I heard a motion behind me.
“May I come in, Donald?”
“Who’s with you?”
“I’m all alone.”
“Where’s this lawyer of yours?”
“Oh, you’ve met him?”
“You know I have.”
“He’s in his office, I guess.”
“How are the trump cards?” I asked. “Still got every one in the deck?”
“Donald, I have to talk with you about that.”
“Go on and talk.”
“Not here.”
“Come on in,” I invited.
She came into the room.
“You act pretty fast,” she said.
“Do I?”
“You just take the bit in your teeth and start going. You don’t give a person a chance to talk with you.”
“You’re talking now.”
“I need you, Donald.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you had every trump in the deck.”
“That’s the trouble,” she said. “I think I have every trump in the deck, but I don’t know what’s trumps. I think you do.”
“Talk some more,” I invited.
She said, “You know who I am, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know who I was when I got on the plane?”
“I suspected it.”
“How? What tipped you off?”
“Your clothes, your manner, the fact that you had followed me aboard the plane and then dropped into the seat beside me, the approach, the whole thing.”
“What about my clothes?”
“You were too well groomed for a detective or any kind of a woman having a job; you radiated money.”
“I took my big diamond off,” she said.
“I know you did,” I told her, “and the indentation in the flesh of the finger was very obvious.”
“All right,” she said, “you had me spotted and you’ve got me spotted now. But I need you.”
“How?”
“You had a job to do. You did it. You can help me now.”
“In what way?”
“My Denver lawyer has negotiated a property settlement. It’s not a very good property settlement. If I had the proof that my husband had been playing around and I could put my finger on the girl he’d been playing around with, I could make a lot more money.”
“How much more?”
“A whole lot more.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Talk.”
“I can’t tell you anything that will help you.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t.”
“You mean because you don’t know, or because of professional ethics?”
“I mean I can’t tell you a thing that will help you.”
She came over close to me, put her hands on my shoulders. “Look, Donald, I admit that I played tag with you on the plane. I wanted to talk with you. I thought perhaps a little sex would win you over and bring you into my camp.
“Now then, you’ve avoided me and left me in a spot where I hold a whole fistful of cards that I think are trumps, but I can’t establish that they are trumps without your help.
“You’re young. You’re working for money. You could have lots of money.”
I shook my head.
“And,” she said seductively, “you could go places — the Italian Riviera, the Alps, round-the-world cruises, and you could have — you could have your choice of women.”
She was standing close to me now. “You know what I mean, Donald? Your choice.”
“Wouldn’t that be rather hard to explain?” I asked.
“Phooey on explanations,” she said. “We’d make a settlement. I’d get a divorce, and you and I could be on a boat within forty-eight hours. We could go anywhere you wanted — do anything you wanted — anything.
“Donald, please, please.”
Her arms were around my neck now. “You can’t be just a thinking machine. You have to be a human, Donald, and I’m human, too, and from the minute I saw you I liked you — fell for you.
“I want—”
The sound which came from the closet was a combination of a suppressed sneeze and a strangled cough. It sounded like a thunderclap.
Minerva Badger jumped away from me as though I’d suddenly turned red hot. She gained the door to the closet in four swift strides and jerked it open.
Elsie Brand was seated there holding a handkerchief to her mouth, her eyes wide and glassy, the tape recorder running, the shorthand book in her lap filled with pothooks.
“And what, may I ask, is the meaning of this?” Minerva Badger demanded.
I had time only to flash Elsie one quick wink. “My God,” I said, “my wife!”
“Your wife!” Minerva shouted.
“Good heavens, Elsie,” I said, “how in the world did you get here and how long have you been here?”
Again I handed her a wink.
Elsie did her best to carry off the part. She got to her feet and said indignantly, “Long enough. I’d heard you were carrying on with a rich divorcee in Las Vegas.”
She reached over, put the tape recorder into high-speed reverse, rewound the tape, picked the spool off the spindle, put it in her purse, picked up her shorthand book, tucked her chin in the air, marched right through the apartment and out the front door.
Minerva stood looking at me with consternation all over her face. “You never told me you were married,” she said.
“You didn’t ask me,” I told her, “You were the fortuneteller. You were looking in my hand. Couldn’t you tell?”
“Don’t crack smart with me, Donald Lam. I didn’t know you were married.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“What’s she going to do with that tape recording?” she asked.
“Probably sue me for divorce and name you as co-respondent.”
“I didn’t do anything,” she said.
“It depends on what’s on that tape recorder and what Elsie says about the tone of your voice. It probably sounded rather seductive to a jealous wife sitting in a closet listening — getting evidence for divorce case.”
“Good Lord,” Minerva said, “of all the damned messes.”
She walked over to the telephone, dialed a number and said into the telephone, “Marvin... I guess you’d better get down here to this motel I told you about. I seem to have walked into a trap of some kind.”
She looked up from the instrument to glower at me and said, “At least I’m beginning to think it was a trap — No,” she said into the telephone, “I want you to come down here — that’s right — right away.”
She hung up the telephone.
She looked at me and said, “All right, your wife is gone, the tape recorder is gone. I’ll put it on the line. There’s evidence that exists that my husband was unfaithful. I want that evidence.”
“How do you know it exists?”
“I... I know.”
“What kind of evidence?”