He kept on along that line for another ten minutes with me not paying a hell of a lot of attention. I swore I was on the water wagon and would stay there. When I finally got rid of him, I poured the rest of the cognac in a water glass and sat down with it to make a plan or two for myself.
Chapter 23
It was a hell of a lot easier to sit down and decide to make a plan than it was to make any. Things were pretty well messed up. The Times’ angle worried me a lot more than I’d let on to Grange. The fact that another reporter was on the trail and maybe ready to crack the story under my nose wasn’t easy to take.
I couldn’t do a thing until I got hold of Sandra. That’s the way it shaped up. There wouldn’t be any percentage in nabbing the rest of them and letting her skip. That had been done a dozen times in a dozen cities. The subordinates would draw light raps, and she’d go on her way to greener pastures.
I picked up and discarded a dozen fool ideas before I hit on something that had a small chance of working. It was a long way from perfect, but I was in a mood to clutch at straws. There wasn’t much time, and I had to do something.
I wrote Sandra a note.
I signed my name to it and put it in an envelope without reading what I had written.
I had a feeling that I had set down just about what I had wished to set down. I didn’t know much about Sandra... but I didn’t think any woman could ignore the sort of a challenge I had offered in the note... no woman who had had her way with as many men as Sandra had.
How to get it to her was the next problem. I hadn’t taken that into consideration while writing it. Every avenue to her was closed. Cherry — Stormy — Lucile.
I took two drinks and got no nearer an answer. I was sitting there glaring at the envelope when my telephone rang.
It was the hotel clerk. There was a messenger in the lobby with a communication to be delivered to me personally. I told him to send the messenger up.
At a knock on the door, I let in a fellow who looked like a crooner or a eunuch. He had the full neck, the bland smile, the treble voice that comes with that type.
I let him in and took a scented note from him. Sensuously scented — like Sandra herself.
There was a single line on the heavy paper inside the envelope:
“Johann will instruct you how to come to me tonight.”
The note was not signed.
I asked the messenger if he was Johann, and he blinked his stupid eyes and nodded.
I had already sealed the envelope containing the note I had written Sandra. I wrote on the outside of the envelope:
“Written before your messenger arrived. There was nothing in your note to cause me to change my mind. I will wait for you here.”
I gave it to him and told him I wouldn’t require his verbal instructions for going to Sandra.
I was shaky after he had gone. I knew I had done a fool thing — taken a long chance. I could have temporized with her. Pretended to fall in with her command and gotten the instructions from her Johann.
That would at least have given me one sure crack at her — even though it didn’t give me a chance to tie her up to the racket.
But no. I had to play it my way. Everything or nothing. I wasn’t sure of anything, but I tried to go ahead as though I was.
Cherry was plenty on my mind. After all was said and done, I figured her for more real brains than all the rest of the gang put together. She wasn’t in deep, but she was prying her way in — and using me for a wedge. That’s what got my goat. Something had to be done about her.
What to do about her was something else. Thinking back, I saw that I’d pulled a dumb play the night before. Up to that time I’d had a feeling that I held a trump card — that I could get her to do almost anything if I went at her the right way.
But I’d gone at her the wrong way.
Then I thought a little further back and I began to see that maybe I hadn’t lost anything by jumping her like I did. She had jumped me first. Twice.
I found out I wasn’t sure of anything any more as I kept on thinking about it. The one thing I would have laid plenty of money on was that Cherry had fallen for me from the very first.
A hell of a mess. No man likes to think he’s right with a woman and then find out he’s been wrong with her all the time.
It was getting along in the afternoon. Pete called me while I was sitting there making faces at myself. His voice was excited:
“That you, Ed? I’ve just got a hot tip from Will Levin of the Times. I think it hooks up with you.”
“Yeh? Where the hell are you? At the shack watching Benton?”
“Naw. I left a pal out there at noon. This is important, Ed, if you can make sense out of it.”
“Who’s Will Levin?”
“Leg-man for the Times. He gets gabby on three drinks. I’ve bought him six.”
“Go on talking.”
“Something’s up for tonight. I don’t think Will knows just what it is. Something that’ll give them the jump on us. He’s been shooting off his mouth about the Bugle bringing an ace man to town and the Times stealing a story from under his nose. The Times is backing a raid tonight. I can’t get anything more definite out of Will. But I’m afraid it’s something to trip you up. You’d better get on your toes if you’re going to crack it for the Bugle.”
“Says you,” I groaned. “As if I’d been anywhere else since I hit this man’s town. If they’ve got a man on it, I’ll swear he’s no more ready to break it than I am.”
“I’m just telling you as ’twas told to me,” Pete said lightly. “Make anything you can out of it. Maybe it don’t mean a thing. Thought you’d like to know.”
“Things are due to happen tonight,” I told him. “How’s for sticking close to the dictograph after dark?”
“I’ll do that,” Pete promised, and hung up.
That put me in deeper. I was in a spot if the Times was getting ready to raid the gambling joint that night...
No matter how much or how little the Times had to go on, it was going to smash everything for me if they did pull a raid. I damned Grange for all I was worth. I knew sure as hell that it was his lousy editorials that had tipped off the Times that they had competition.
All that sort of thinking didn’t lead anywhere. No matter why the Times had decided to shoot before they were ready, it was going to spell finis for me. But I still didn’t believe they could put the finger on Sandra.
That was damned small consolation. If they pulled a raid and bungled it, neither of us would have a chance to put the finger on her.
Late in the afternoon, with the zero hour set for tonight! And all I could do was tear my hair and chew my fingernails — and wait to get an answer from Sandra.
That was my last hope. If I could get hold of her I’d really have something to bargain with. Something big enough to make the Times come to me for at least a split on the story — with the Bugle taking the big end of the split. In fact, I saw where I could work the Times’ raid of the gambling joint in nicely if I had Sandra to spring after it was all over. Sandra and the affidavits I already had.
I could make a monkey out of the Times by waiting until they spread their little headline sensation before the Bugle broke out with the real story behind the Times’ exposé.
I walked the floor as it came to me more clearly. I wouldn’t make a goddamned effort to stop them. I wouldn’t try to get in on the raid at all. Just keep hands off and then laugh at them for the work they’d done after it was all over.