Mardonne said: «All right, Henry. I’ll be busy.»
The blond young man got off the desk, yawned, put his hand to his mouth with an affected flirt of the wrist. There was a large diamond on one of his fingers. He looked at Mallory, smiled, went slowly out of the room, closing the door.
Mardonne sat down in a blue leather swivel-chair. He lit a thin cigar and pushed a humidor across the grained top of the desk. Mallory took a chair at the end of the desk, between the door and a pair of open windows. There was another door, but the safe stood in front of it. He lit a cigarette, said:
«Landrey owed me some money. Five grand. Anybody here interested in paying it?»
Mardonne put his brown hands on the arms of his chair and rocked back and forth. «We haven’t come to that,» he said.
Mallory said: «Right. What have we come to?»
Mardonne narrowed his dull eyes. His voice was flat and without tone. «To how Landrey got killed.»
Mallory put his cigarette in his mouth and clasped his hands together behind his head. He puffed smoke and talked through it at the wall above Mardonne’s head.
«He crossed everybody up and then he crossed himself. He played too many parts and got his lines mixed. He was gun-drunk. When he got a rod in his hand he had to shoot somebody. Somebody shot back.»
Mardonne went on rocking, said: «Maybe you could make it a little more definite.»
«Sure… I could tell you a story… about a girl who wrote some letters once. She thought she was in love. They were reckless letters, the sort a girl would write who had more guts than was good for her. Time passed, and somehow the letters got on the blackmail market. Some workers started to shake the girl down. Not a high stake, nothing that would have bothered her, but it seems she liked to do things the hard way. Landrey thought he would help her out. He had a plan, and the plan needed a man who could wear a tux, keep a spoon out of a coffee-cup, and wasn’t known in this town. He got me. I run a small agency in Chicago.»
Mardonne swiveled towards the open windows and stared out at the tops of some trees. «Private dick, huh?» he grunted impassively. «From Chicago.»
Mallory nodded, looked at him briefly, looked back at the same spot on the wall. «And supposed to be on the level, Mardonne. You wouldn’t think it from some of the company I’ve been keeping lately.»
Mardonne made a quick impatient gesture, said nothing.
Mallory went on: «Well, I gave the job a tumble, which was my first and worst mistake. I was making a little headway when the shakedown turned into a kidnapping. Not so good. I got in touch with Landrey and he decided to show with me. We found the girl without a lot of trouble. We took her home. We still had to get the letters. While I was trying to pry them loose from the guy I thought had them one of the bad boys got in the back way and wanted to play with his gun. Landrey made a swell entrance, struck a pose and shot it out with the hood, toe to toe. He stopped some lead. It was pretty, if you like that sort of thing, but it left me in a spot. So perhaps I’m prejudiced. I had to lam out and collect my ideas.»
Mardonne’s dull brown eyes showed a passing flicker of emotion. «The girl’s story might be interesting, too,» he said coolly.
Mallory blew a pale cloud of smoke. «She was doped and doesn’t know anything. She wouldn’t talk, if she did. And I don’t know her name.»
«I do,» Mardonne said. «Landrey’s driver also talked to me. So I won’t have to bother you about that.»
Mallory talked on, placidly. «That’s the tale from the outside, without notes. The notes make it funnier—and a hell of a lot dirtier. The girl didn’t ask Landrey for help, but he knew about the shakedown. He’d once had the letters, because they were written to him. His scheme to get on their trail was for me to make a wrong pass at the girl myself, make her think I had the letters, talk her into a meeting at a night-club where we could be watched by the people who were working on her. She’d come, because she had that kind of guts. She’d be watched, because there would be an inside—maid, chauffeur or something. The boys would want to know about me. They’d pick me up, and if I didn’t get conked out of hand, I might learn who was who in the racket. Sweet set-up, don’t you think so?»
Mardonne said coldly: «A bit loose in places… Go on talking.»
«When the decoy worked I knew it was fixed. I stayed with it, because for the time being I had to. After a while there was another sour play, unrehearsed this time. A big flattie who was taking graft money from the gang got cold feet and threw the boys for a loss. He didn’t mind a little extortion, but a snatch was going off the deep end on a dark night. The break made things easier for me, and it didn’t hurt Landrey any, because the flattie wasn’t in on the clever stuff. The hood who got Landrey wasn’t either, I guess. That one was just sore, thought he was being chiseled out of his cut.»
Mardonne flipped his brown hands up and down on the chair arms, like a purchasing agent getting restless under a sales talk. «Were you supposed to figure things out this way?» he asked with a sneer.
«I used my head, Mardonne. Not soon enough, but I used it. Maybe I wasn’t hired to think, but that wasn’t explained to me, either. If I got wise, it was Landrey’s hard luck. He’d have to figure an out to that one. If I didn’t, I was the nearest thing to an honest stranger he could afford to have around.»
Mardonne said smoothly: «Landrey had plenty of dough. He had some brains. Not a lot, but some. He wouldn’t go for a cheap shake like that.»
Mallory laughed harshly: «It wasn’t so cheap to him, Mardonne. He wanted the girl. She’d got away from him, out of his class. He couldn’t pull himself up, but he could pull her down. The letters were not enough to bring her into line. Add a kidnapping and a fake rescue by an old flame turned racketeer, and you have a story no rag could be made to soft-pedal. If it was spilled, it would blast her right out of her job. You guess the price for not spilling it, Mardonne.»
Mardonne said: «Uh-huh,» and kept on looking out of the window.
Mallory said: «But all that’s on the cuff, now. I was hired to get some letters, and I got them—out of Landrey’s pocket when he was bumped. I’d like to get paid for my time.»
Mardonne turned in his chair and put his hands flat on the top of the desk. «Pass them over,» he said. «I’ll see what they’re worth to me.»
Mallory let out another harsh laugh. His eyes got sharp and bitter. He said: «The trouble with you heels is that you can’t figure anybody to be on the up and up… The letters are withdrawn from circulation, Mardonne. They passed around too much and they wore out.»
«It’s a sweet thought,» Mardonne sneered. «For somebody else. Landrey was my partner, and I thought a lot of him… So you give the letters away, and I pay you dough for letting Landrey get gunned. I ought to write that one in my diary. My hunch is you’ve been paid plenty already—by Miss Rhonda Farr.»
Mallory said, sarcastically: «I figured it would look like that to you. Maybe you’d like the story better this way… The girl got tired of having Landrey trail her around. She faked some letters and put them where her smart lawyer could lift them, pass them along to a man who was running a strongarm squad the lawyer used in his business sometimes. The girl wrote to Landrey for help and he got me. The girl got to me with a better bid. She hired me to put Landrey on the spot. I played along with him until I got him under the gun of a wiper that was pretending to make a pass at me. The wiper let him have it, and I shot the wiper with Landrey’s gun, to make it look good. Then I had a drink and went home to get some sleep.»