“There’s an awful lot to tell,” she faltered. “I’d have to start back at the beginning to make you understand.”
“Good. That’s where I want you to start.”
“I couldn’t bear to tell everything.”
I said, “Oh hell,” and got up to get my hat and coat.
Dolly grabbed my hand and begged. “No. For the love of God, Ed, don’t leave me here alone. I don’t know what I might do. I’ve been thinking about June and...”
“And what?” I turned around in the middle of the floor and looked as disgusted as I felt at her playacting.
Dolly was drawn up in a huddle on the lounge. She buried her face in her hands and moaned: “I’ve been thinking... maybe...”
Dolly needed a jolt to start her talking.
“About bumping yourself? Hell! That takes guts.”
“But I can’t go on after this. I... I want to die.”
“Okay.” I had a .32 automatic in my coat pocket. I tossed it on the lounge beside her. “Anything to oblige a lady.”
Dolly raised her head and stared at the gun with bleared eyes. I stood ten feet from her and watched while she groped for it with fingers that were too blunt.
It was late in the afternoon and dusk was creeping into the room.
I laughed at her. “Still playing to a gallery, Dolly.”
I’ll be goddamned if a sort of an animal gurgle didn’t come from her throat. She lifted the gun to her forehead and held it there.
She wasn’t crying any more. Her hand had ceased trembling. She pulled the trigger and went down to the carpet in a limp heap.
I walked over to her and laughed. “Very pretty.”
She looked up at me without understanding, too dazed to argue with me. And the hell of it was that I realized she hadn’t known it wasn’t loaded.
I kicked the pistol out of the way when I saw her eyes slide around toward it. “Okay, Baby. Get off the floor and unload your secret sorrow.”
She got up. Caught hold of my hand and pulled herself erect. She acted like a sleepwalker. As though the power of active thought had deserted her.
Watching her, I had a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach. It wasn’t pity. I don’t go in for that. Something else. I wanted to walk out of there and never come back.
I mixed her a heavy drink and poured it between her lips, bracing my arm about her shoulders to hold her up.
Her negligee was sagging open in front. She didn’t care. I tried not to care. But it was getting darker in the room. And she had quit her weeping.
That made a lot of difference.
And something had happened between us when she put that gun to her head and pulled the trigger.
I put it out of my thoughts, concentrated on the dope I knew she was getting set to spill.
I led her over to the lounge and set her down. “Pull yourself and that negligee together. What have you women gotten yourselves into that pulling a gun on yourselves looks like the only way out?” I didn’t turn on a light. Sat down in a chair and looked past her so I could keep my mind clear for the job immediately at hand.
Dolly faltered: “I guess I went crazy for a minute, Ed.”
“You always were a little bit nuts. What’s sent you off the deep end?”
“I’ve been so worried. I... I didn’t know where to turn.”
“What about Herman?”
She shuddered. “Oh no! Not him.”
“Oke. Herman’s out. Just like the Benton gal’s husband was out, eh?”
I wasn’t watching her so I don’t know how she reacted to that. Except that she said:
“June... hasn’t anything further to worry about.”
“And you have, eh?”
Dolly moaned and lay back on the lounge. I pulled my chair up close enough to take hold of her hand. “You need to talk to someone. I’m a swell talker-to. Spill it. You can’t tell Herman. How about letting me pinch-hit for him?”
“Can you?” Her voice was dreamy. It was dark in the room. I had four highballs inside of me.
“Don’t you know I can?”
“You’re sweet, Ed.” Her fingers tightened on mine.
I let myself slide to the edge of my chair. I could see the blur of her face. The pressure of her hand didn’t let up. I slid from the chair to the lounge. She lifted my hand to her lips.
“Love me a little, Ed.” Her voice was a passion-drugged murmur.
I pulled far enough away from her to get my mind to working again. There was a dictograph planted in my hotel room. If Dolly had the dope I thought she had, it was a job for witnesses.
I said: “Let’s get out of here. We can go to my hotel.”
“I don’t want to move.” She snuggled against me.
I said: “Damn it, I never did like to foul another man’s nest. Even if he’s a guy like Herman. Get something on and let’s go to my room.” I got up and pulled her up. She was breathing heavily. I pushed her toward the bedroom.
“I’ll wait for you in my car down front. Slip into any sort of a dress and come on.”
I grabbed my coat and hat and got out before she had time to argue. There was a telephone booth downstairs. I called the Bugle and got Pete Ryan on the phone. He and I had worked together in Newark before he came with the Bugle and I was sent to Miami on special assignment.
I told him to get a stenographer and go to room 306 in my hotel that was rented in my name and unlocked. It was next to my room and the dictograph came out there.
Dolly came down the stairs just after I hung up, and we beat it to the hotel.
Chapter 2
“Now, suppose you crack loose and tell me what all the shouting’s about.” I reached out for a cigarette and match from the table near the head of the bed. Dolly’s face on the pillow next to me showed white in the flare of the match. Her lips were parted and she was breathing easily like a baby. She blinked and turned her face from the light.
“I feel like telling you everything, Ed. Here in the dark with no one to hear.” Her sigh was almost a moan. “I feel as though I’d go absolutely crazy if I didn’t talk to someone.”
“Swell.” I lay back and puffed on my cigarette. “Get it off your mind to Uncle Dudley.”
“You swear you’ll never tell a soul, Ed? It would be too horrible if Herman ever found out.”
“It’ll be as secret as though you were at confession,” I promised, squeezing her hand. Then I reached out to the table and threw the switch opening the dictograph so Pete and his witness could listen in from 306.
Dolly said: “I hardly know how to start. It’s all such a mess.”
“Start at the beginning.”
“That was at Mrs. Faraway’s. Where a bunch of us used to play bridge.”
“For money?”
“Of course. It isn’t any fun unless you bet. And she suggested going to this other place where you could play all sorts of things. Like roulette and betting on the horses.”
“And you were unlucky?”
“But I didn’t bet half as heavy as June. I’ll never forgive myself for taking her the first time. I didn’t know she’d be like that. Honest to God, I didn’t. I thought it would just be fun for her to go. But she didn’t know when to stop. She’d just bet and bet and keep on losing and then bet some more.”
“Her husband must have plenty.”
“But he hasn’t. That was the terrible part of it. He’s got an insurance office and Herman says he isn’t doing a bit good. But they’d just been married about six months, you know, and they still had a joint bank account. That’s where she got her money at first.”
“Sounds like the same old story.” I put out my cigarette and yawned.
“You haven’t heard anything yet. That’s just the beginning.”
“I haven’t heard anything worth slitting her goozle over.”
“Ed. You wouldn’t be so heartless if you knew.”