“Wrong. You’re not that stupid, Charlie. You knew who he was, and you knew my connections. You just didn’t give a damn. I’d advise you to think it over the next time you feel like gambling with my prospects.”
He looked back from the door; neither Charlie nor Max had changed position. On the stairs he separated the wad of bills into two sections, and restored the slightly larger one to the inside breast pocket. His mind was busy as he ran down the balance of the stairs. Eighteen months ago it had been a good idea to import those two upstairs into the game, but eighteen months ago he hadn’t known he could marry Ann Schofield. Now they represented a hazard, at the very least a potential blackmail threat.
Lieutenant Conway settled his big body behind the wheel of his car, rested his hands lightly on the steering wheel, and considered the possibilities. It didn’t take him long to make up his mind. From his years of poker playing a maxim subconsciously filtered into the forefront of his thoughts: when you make a move, make it a strong one. Charlie and Max called for a strong move.
He started the car and drove over to Chisolm’s Hay and Grain Company. The front was dark, but he rapped on the glass panel in the door with his ring until old Bart’s bald head appeared behind the glass.
“Afraid you was a customer, Joe,” the old man told him as he stood aside to let him in. “I don’t aim to keep this place open day an’ night, too.” He led the way to the rear of the dusty smelling store, a wide-set, slow-moving man.
Lieutenant Conway sat down in the chair Bart Chisolm pulled out for him and looked around the little office littered with cracked dishes of seed samples and half empty grain bags. His host seated himself ponderously at the old-fashioned roll-top desk, settled a pair of battered spectacles on his high-bridged nose, and swivelled in his chair to look over the top of them.
“Social visit, Joe?” Chisolm asked.
“Not exactly. I hear the game’s gone a little frantic.”
The old man smiled. “Shouldn’t wonder but what you’re right. Boys will be boys. Been six, eight weeks since I’ve sat in myself; got a little too rich for my tired old blood, I’ve had it in mind to drop around and talk it over with Dave, but you know how it is. You keep puttin’ it off—”
“Talk it over with Dave Corbin? Why?”
Bart Chisolm smiled his slow, easy smile. “You young fellas tend to think nothin’s ever happened in this world if it hasn’t happened to you personal. Now I mind the time fourteen, fifteen years ago that the reg’lars in the game was crowded out by a passel of highrollers drifted in from all around this end of the state. I talked it over with Dave Corbin that time. He raided the game.”
“Raided it!”
Bart’s eyes twinkled behind the spectacles. “Before your time, I guess. Your poker playin’ time, anyway. Just seemed to happen, somehow, that the night Dave broke in an’ collared ’em all upstairs warn’t no one in the game but highrollers. All the locals was to home beatin’ their wives, I reckon. Dave took ’em all in, charged ’em with bein’ present, fined ’em ten dollars apiece, and turned ’em loose. Kind of broke up the game, it did. Couple of months later a few of us regulars started it up again.”
Lieutenant Joseph Conway sat in the dingy office with a hundred watt bulb coming on in his mind. Thank you, Bart, he thought. That makes it so simple. So beautifully simple. He cleared his throat. “I have a feeling you’re going to be raided tonight, Bart.”
The old man nodded solemnly. “Clear the air a mite, I shouldn’t wonder. I’ll make a few phone calls. Don’t believe there’s anyone I’ll talk to that’ll need to get dusted off by the mule if they know his heels are cocked.”
He frowned. “ ’Cept Ted Lindsay, maybe. He’s set in his ways. Susie Goddard, used to teach you boys in high school, always said Ted tended to scatter a bit in his thinking, but then of course Susie never saw him at a card table. Kind of a needler, too. Really likes to lift up in the saddle to put a little weight on the spurs when he can see ’em diggin’ in. But a real good poker player, that boy. Almost as good as you, Joe.”
“Thanks, Bart. Don’t call Ted. Let him come. He’ll make it look better, and I’ll see to it that he gets away in the scuffle.” I should have a local witness present when I kill Charlie and Max, Lieutenant Conway thought; Ted would do nicely.
He drove home in the twilight’s heat, showered, and changed. The shoulder holster’s bulge under the white linen suit was scarcely noticeable in the mirror, and he hurried out to his car again. He was late.
Judge Schofield was sitting on the wide veranda when Conway drove up, his frail figure dwarfed by the big chair. Conway never headed his car into the spacious grounds at the rim of the graveled driveway without thinking that one day all this would be Ann’s, and that what was Ann’s would very soon be his. A very human feeling, he felt.
The judge raised the glass in his hand as the big man lithely ascended the steps. Under the mane of white hair the seamed, parchmented face had a yellowed look. “Evening, Joe. Join me?”
“Thanks. If you have a moment after dinner, sir—?”
“Surely. Don’t let me forget.”
Dinner, as always, Conway thought, was a testimonial to the judge’s taste no less than to his pocketbook. Ann sat directly opposite him, complaisantly agreeable in her absent-minded way. Not for the first time he wondered what really went on within that pale, cool looking envelope.
He had a feeling at times that she might qualify as a truly passionless woman. Not that it mattered. A few miles away he had a quiet little arrangement that was anything but passionless, and Ann or no Ann, he saw no necessity for disturbing it. Before or after marriage, for that matter.
In the library afterward he accepted one of the Judge’s slim panatellas, and when the Judge had stiff-jointedly lowered himself into his wing chair handed him three thousand dollars of Charlie’s money, and a quick rundown.
The old man listened impassively, but the lined features were drawn and tired long before the finish. His voice was a rasp, a faint echo of the man he had been. “I appreciate this, Joe. Evidently it’s not only the cuckolded husband who’s the last to hear things. I had no idea... the boy has the combination to the office safe, of course—” He tapped the bills thoughtfully on the arm of his chair. “How the devil did you manage to recover this?”
“Let’s say I knew which way to lean, sir.”
“Evidently,” the Judge said dryly. “It’s not the first time you’ve impressed me with the force and vigor with which you attack a problem.”
The tired eyes stared unseeingly at the panelled bookcases a moment before refocusing. “I especially appreciate your giving me the opportunity to handle this myself, Joe. Austin is a little... unstable. I feel responsible for him. My brother—” He exhaled a cloud of light blue smoke impatiently. “Lame ducks. The world is full of lame ducks. I’ll have a talk with you presently about Austin. Not tonight.”
“We’ll housebreak him, Judge.”
The lined face was unsmiling. “We’ll do exactly that. You’re a strong shoulder, Joe. I seem to need one lately.”
“I’m speaking downtown tonight, sir, so if you’ll excuse me—”
The Judge nodded, and Conway left the library with the aging man seated in his huge chair and staring out across the big, high-ceilinged room. He made his goodnight to Ann at the coffee table on the veranda; unquestioningly she held up her face to be kissed. Cool. Cool and untouched. Unemotional? He couldn’t decide. Some day he would make an impression upon this girl stranger to whom he was engaged, and she would stop this business of looking right through him...