“Miss Thorpe? Bob Artigan. Yeah. That’s right. We want to make an offer. Check. If you’ve closed out with our friend, it might mean coming out on the short end of the stick. For you, that is. No, I’m not threatening you at all. All right to come over? Just the two of us. Myself and a friend... That would be a little silly, wouldn’t it? See you in fifteen minutes.”
He hung up. “Let’s roll, Anderson. Better stash the currency in your room. I’ll be out in the car.”
I went up to my room. With the odd people loose in that house, it hardly seemed safe to put such a quantity of currency in my suitcase or in the dresser. I went into the small private bath and looked around. I lifted the top off the back of the toilet and examined the float. As I had hoped, it was of the type constructed of two hemispherical shells screwed together. I believe I have mentioned that I have a mechanical turn of mind. Using a towel to prevent my hands from slipping, I quickly unscrewed the float, crimped the packets of bills and inserted them inside, and screwed the float back together. I flushed the toilet and watched the float. Even with the money it retained sufficient buoyancy to function in a normal manner.
George was again at the wheel of the big blue sedan. Mr. Artigan gave him the number of the apartment house on West Osceola. In spite of my apprehension at the course of events, I must admit that I found a certain pleasure in sitting back in that comfortable seat while George wheeled the big car through traffic, much like a shark cruising through a school of lesser fish. The tires purred on the slick asphalt. I wondered with a certain dismay whether this experience would give me a leaning toward a higher standard of living. If so, and if the leaning proved irresistable, the mutual savings account that Martha and I maintain would increase more slowly. I thought of her, beside me, on our brisk Sunday morning walks when the weather is pleasant. She carries our binoculars and I carry the notebook in which we record the bird life which we observe. Later in the day we usually transcribe the brief notes into our bird diary. As I thought of that I suddenly realized, for the first time, that there is something exceedingly birdlike about Martha, with her small pointed nose and the quick movements of her head. Not the small, plump varieties, but something related to the genus stork or crane.
The car pulled up and stopped before a most modern looking apartment house. The doorway, beyond the trim rows of shrubbery rather garishly spotlighted, was a huge sheet of plate glass with a wide aluminum push-bar. The male clerk at the inner desk had long eyelashes and a chirping voice. He phoned up to Miss Thorpe and told us we could take the elevator up to the sixth floor, Apartment 6C.
As we stepped off the elevator, a self-service variety, sliding the door shut behind us, I saw a tall girl standing in the hall beside an open door, looking at us with a markedly insolent expression. She was of the type I have often observed in my infrequent visits to places of commercial entertainment. I understand that the pageboy coiffeur is out of fashion, but this young lady continued to wear it. Her hair was like freshly-melted silver, and the bangs in front curled down, almost touching jet black eyebrows. She wore a silver evening gown with what I suppose would be called a daring neckline.
She stood without a word of greeting. As we came close to her I saw that each forward step seemed to add a certain increment of age to her appearance.
“Who is he?” she said, pointing at me. Her voice had what I believe is most commonly called a whisky burr.
“Out-of-town talent,” Artigan said.
She shrugged and walked ahead of us into her apartment. The dress fitted quite closely. I began to understand what had happened to Mr. Dermody.
She was a remarkably poor hostess. She sat down, leaving it up to us to close the apartment door and sit or stand as we chose. There was a half glass of dark liquor on the table beside her chair. The room can only be described as littered. Apparently she had no talent for housekeeping.
“Make your play and watch the big wheel,” she said.
“How high have they gone?” Artigan asked, sitting down and crossing his legs.
“One hundred and twenty-five thousand round, fat, happy little soldiers,” she said, wrapping her lips deliciously around each syllable.
“A nice fee for a bunch of innocent letters,” Artigan said.
“They mean a lot,” she replied.
“We’ll give you ten thousand for your time and trouble,” Artigan said.
Her eyes narrowed and her long fingernails rattled out a fast tempo on the table top. “Anything I like,” she said, “it’s a good laugh. Walk over here and use a feather on the bottom of my foot, Bobby.”
“I’ve got a house guest,” Artigan said smugly.
“How happy for you! Faint light dawns far in the back of my dim, commercial little mind.”
“A scrappy little redhead named Kelly, Pris.”
The fingers stopped drumming. Prissy Thorpe shut her eyes. The room was very silent. Her heavy lips were compressed. When she opened her eyes again, they looked almost sleepy. “Just adding the pros and the cons, Bobby. I remember the girl. A sister of mine, I believe. It won’t work, Bobby. To the rest of my mealy little family, I’m one dead chicken. The feeling is mutual. I’m a tired girl. I want to retire. The South of France will be nice. Pardo’s payoff will last me for as long as I want to live — conservatively estimated at another ten years. Good years. Kiss the redhead on the forehead for me and tell her it couldn’t happen to a nicer gal.”
“Now, Pris. Use your head. You wouldn’t want me to send her on one of Dickie’s entertainment tours through South America, would you?”
“It’s more subtle than mailing me one of her ears, I suppose, and just as ineffective.”
“You’re a cold dish, Pris,” Artigan said in a tired voice.
She nodded. Her smile was exceptionally ugly. “Once in a lifetime a girl like me gets her hands on a cold deck. When she does, she knows how to deal. You’re sitting there with two little pair, Bobby, and I’ve got aces full of kings. This is a money game. Talk in Pardo’s language and talk loud enough, and I’ll fold my hand.”
Artigan stood up. “Thanks for the chat. Those boys are probably getting tired of standing in the bathroom.”
“You wouldn’t want a girl to take chances, would you?”
She still sat there, the glass tilted to her lips, her eyes crinkled with amusement as we left.
On the way down in the elevator I said, without thinking, “I find it hard to believe that such people really exist.”
He gave me an odd look. “I’d think being around Nicky would give you some fast lessons. Everybody knows he was the one rubbed out his two brothers.”
“Of course, of course,” I said faintly.
Back at the house we said goodnight at the foot of the stairs. I went up and shut myself in my room and sat on the edge of the bed with my face in my hands. From time to time I shivered, though the room was anything but cold. After a time I turned off the lights and sat, fully-clothed, in the dark. A long time later I heard somebody go down the hall and I heard the door shut. I pulled off my shoes. I opened my door silently. The key to Pat’s room was chill in the palm of my hand. A light came up the stairwell. I tiptoed to where I could look over. Artie sat down there in the hall in his shirtsleeves, reading a comic book.
The most serious problem was how to enter Miss Kelly’s room without unduly alarming her. I stood by her door for a long time, listening. I could hear no sound inside. Guiding the key noiselessly into the lock was a long, nerve-wringing process. The bolt slid over with a tiny click. I turned the knob, one millimeter at a time, and pushed the door open. A crack of lesser darkness widened between the door and the frame. I was afraid that the pounding of my heart would be audible all the way across the room. I gave my attention to closing and locking the door on the inside with the same stealth. To keep us from being disturbed, I left the key in the lock.