“That’s what your Coast Guardian’s for.” Fenner stopped in front of Kells. “Just what form does this, uh — incriminating information take?”
Kells shook his head, slowly. “You’ll have to take my word for that,” he said. He leaned forward and put his empty glass on the table.
The doorbell rang. Fenner went out into the hall, followed Granquist back into the room. Kells got up and introduced her to Fenner, and Fenner took her coat into the bedroom and then came back and poured drinks for all of them.
“Mister Kells has raised the ante to twenty-five thousand,” he said. He smiled boyishly at Granquist.
She took her drink and sat down. She raised the glass to her mouth. “Hey, hey.” They all drank.
Granquist took a sack of Durham, papers out of her bag, rolled a cigarette.
Fenner said: “Of course I can’t enter into a proposition involving so much money without knowing definitely what I’m getting.”
“You put twenty-five thousand dollars in cash on the line and you get enough to put the election on ice.” Kells got up and went over to one of the windows. He turned, went on very earnestly: “And it’s a hell of a long ways from that now.”
Fenner pursed his lips, smiled a little. “Well — now...”
“And it’s got to be done tonight.”
Granquist got up and put her empty glass on the table.
Fenner said: “Help yourself, help yourself.”
She filled the two glasses on the table with whiskey and ice and White Rock. She said: “Do you let strangers use your bathroom?”
Fenner took her through the hallway to the bedroom and turned on the light in the bath, came back and sat down and picked up the telephone, asked for a Mister Dillon. When the connection was made, he said: “I want you to bring up the yellow sealed envelope that’s in the safe... Yes, please — and bring it yourself.” He hung up and turned to Kells. “All right,” he said, “I’ll play.”
Kells sat down and crossed his legs. He studied the glistening toe of his left shoe, said: “It’s going to sound like a fairy tale,” looked up at Fenner. “Bellmann’s a very smart guy. If he wasn’t he wouldn’t be where he is.”
Fenner nodded impatiently.
Kells said: “The smarter they are, the sappier the frame they’ll go for. Bellmann spent weekend before last at Jack Rose’s cabin at Big Bear.” He leaned forward and took his glass from the table. “Rose has been trying to get a feeler to him for a long time, has tried to reach him through his own friends. A few weeks ago Rose took a big place on the lake not far from Bellmann’s, invited Hugg and MacAlmon — Mac is very close to Bellmann — up for the fishing, or what have you? They all dropped in on Bellmann in a spirit of neighborliness, and he decided he’d been wrong about Rose all these years. Next day he returned the call. When Hugg and Mac came to the city they left Rose and Bellmann like that” — he held up two slim fingers pressed close together.
Granquist came in, sat down. Kells turned his head in her direction. Without letting his eyes focus directly on her, he said: “That’s where baby comes in.”
Fenner lighted a cigaret, coughed out smoke.
“She came out with friends of Rose from KC,” Kells went on. “Bellmann met her at Rose’s and took her big. That was Rose’s cue. He threw a party — one of those intimate, quiet little affairs — Rose and a showgirl, Bellmann and” — he smiled faintly at Granquist — “this one. They all got stiff — I don’t mean drunk, I mean stiff. And what do you suppose happened?”
He paused, grinned happily at Fenner. “Miss Granquist had her little camera along, took a lot of snapshots.” He turned his grin toward Granquist. “Miss Dipso Granquist stayed sober enough to snap her little camera.”
Fenner got up and took Granquist’s empty glass, filled it. He looked very serious.
Kells went on: “Of course it all came back to Rose in the morning. He asked about the pictures and she gave him a couple of rolls of film she’d stuck in the camera during the night, clicked with the lens shut, blanks. She discovered that the lens wasn’t open when she gave them to him, they had one of those morning-after laughs about it. Bellmann had a dark green hangover; he didn’t even remember about the pictures until a day or so later and then he wrote Miss Granquist a couple of hot letters with casual postscripts: ‘How did the snapshots turn out, darling?’ cracks like that.”
Kells got up, stretched. “You see, it gets better as it goes along.”
“What are the pictures like?” Fenner was standing near Granquist, his little pointed chin thrust toward Kells.
“Don’t be silly. They’re right out of the pocket of one of those frogs that work along the Rue de Rivoli.” Kells ran his fingers through his hair. “That’s not the point though. It’s not what they are, it’s who they’re of: Mister John R. Bellmann, the big boss of the reform administration, the Woman’s Club politician — at the house and in the intimate company of Jack Rose, gambler, Crown Prince of the Western Underworld and a couple of, well — questionable ladies.”
“And exactly what am I buying?”
“The negatives and one set of prints. My word that you’re getting all the negatives and that there are no other prints. The letters — and certain information as to what Bellmann and Rose talked about before they went under...”
The doorbell rang.
Fenner said: “That’ll be Dillon.” He went out into the hallway and came back with a sandy-haired, spectacled man. Both of them were holding their hands above their shoulders in the conventional gesture of surprise. Two men whom Kells had never seen before came in behind them. One, the most striking, was rather fat and his small head stuck out of a stiff collar, his tie was knotted to stick straight out, stiffly from the opening in his collar. He held a short blunt revolver in his hand.
The fat man said: “Go see if the tall one has got anything in his pockets.”
The other man went to Kells. He was a gray-faced nondescript young man in a tightly belted raincoat. He went through Kells’ pockets very carefully and when he had finished, said: “Sit down.”
Dillon shifted his weight from one foot to the other and the fat man, who was almost directly behind him, raised the revolver and brought the muzzle down hard on the back of his head. Dillon grunted and his knees gave away and he slumped down softly to the floor.
The fat man giggled quietly, nervously. He said: “That’s one down. Every little bit helps.”
Kells sat down on the divan and leaned back and crossed his legs.
The fat man said: “Put your hands up, Skinny.” Kells shook his head slightly.
The young man in the raincoat leaned forward and slapped Kells across the mouth. Kells looked up at him and his face was very sad, his eyes were sleepy. He said: “That’s too bad.”
Fenner turned his head, spoke over his shoulder to the fat man: “What do you want?”
“I don’t want you. Go sit down in that chair by the window.”
Fenner crossed the room, sat down.
The fat man said: “Reach back of you and pull the shades shut.”
Granquist said sarcastically: “Now pull up a chair for yourself, Chub.” She leaned forward toward the table. “Ain’t you going to have a drink?”
Kells said: “Don’t say ‘ain’t,’ sweet.”
The fat man sat down in the chair nearest the door. His elbows were on the arms of the chair and he held the revolver loosely on his lap, said: “I want a bunch of pictures that you tried to peddle to Bellmann, girlie.”
“Don’t call me girlie, you son of a bitch!”
Kells looked at Granquist, shook his head sadly. “That’s something you forgot to tell me about,” he said.
“I want all the pictures,” the fat man repeated, “an’ I want two letters — quick.”