"Quick thinking," I said. "Did it work?"
"I think so. I don't think she suspects. I'm going back to New York in the morning," Teddy said breathlessly. "I should never have come! I've made a perfect little fool of myself! Why, I really haven't any proof at all, have I? I guess I was just, well, dramatizing. I just don't know what I was thinking of!"
I looked down at her for a little while without speaking. It was the first clear profit of the evening's work: I could cross one name off the list. She wasn't acting. She honestly believed she'd just missed becoming a blood-stained criminal; which meant she believed in her ruthless accomplice, the criminal Lash Petroni. She had no suspicion she was talking to a phony. Whoever had listened to those tapes recorded in Jean's room, it wasn't she.
I felt kind of sorry for the little girl standing there with her prettiness tarnished and her self-confidence destroyed. A night's sleep and a change of clothes would fix her up in one respect, but it would take some time before she got over the shock of discovering that she wasn't nearly as wicked as she'd thought. I was tempted to let it go at that; but this was no time for sentimentality. I couldn't afford to let her off the hook as long as there was a possibility of her exerting useful pressure on one of the others.
I took the purse from her hands, got the money from my dressing gown pocket, and stuffed it back the way it had been. I put the purse into her hands.
She said quickly, "But I want you to have it."
"I'll have it," I said. "When I've earned it."
She stared at me, wide-eyed. "But you can't-I mean, you don't have to-I mean, I don't want-"
"Who the hell," I said, "cares what you want, now? You started the ball rolling, how are you going to call it back? Go to New York, go anywhere you please. You'll know when the payoff is due. You'll read about it m the papers. You have the dough ready. Okay?"
"No!" she gasped. "No, it's not okay. You must be crazy!"
"You had your chance to pull out this afternoon," I said. "Don't talk crazy to me, doll. At least I don't change my mind sixteen times a minute. I've got this thing going now, I'm looking forward to doing a job on that snooty dame, and you're not chickening out on Lash Petroni, understand? What the hell do you think this is, anyway? You don't turn a guy like me on and off like a lavatory spigot!" I had her by the arm, leading her towards the door. "Now get out of here-"
As I reached for the knob, it was turned from outside. I stepped back, shoving Teddy aside. The door opened, showing young Orcutt standing on the threshold. He looked at me and he looked at the kid.
"I thought," he said quietly to her, "you might be just about ready to leave, Teddy."
She hesitated, sniffed, and ran to him. "Oh, Billy!"
I asked, "Do you spend your life trailing her around, Billy?"
He said, "It is my ambition to do so, sir." He caught sight of himself in the dresser mirror, straightened his tie, and put his arm around the girl. "I'm working on it, you might say." For all of being a plump boy, he had a kind of impressive dignity.
"There's some risk involved in a plan like that."
"You made that quite plain the last time we met, sir. I'm afraid my performance wasn't very noteworthy." He paused, and went on, "Just the same, I will tell you again what I told you then. Leave her alone, Mr. Petroni. I don't know what's between you and I don't care. Just stay clear away from her, hear? The next time-"
"What about next time, punk?" I asked sneeringly.
"The next time," he said gently, "you'll have to kill me. Come on, Teddy. My car's downstairs. I'll take you back to the motel."
I watched them go out, frowning. There might be less to little Teddy Michaelis, as far as the case was concerned, than had appeared at first, but young Orcutt, with his habit of popping up at odd moments, was becoming more and more interesting.
The phone started ringing behind me. I closed the door and looked at my watch. Mrs. Rosten was calling back right on time; it had been exactly half an hour since her previous call. I shivered, for some reason, as I went to talk to her.
SIXTEEN
Ii WAS A large place on the water, some distance out of town. By the time I reached it, the moon was getting low and a mist was rising. My headlights sent long white fingers searching the lawns and trees ahead of me as I followed the winding drive around to the rear of the house, as instructed. There wasn't a breath of air moving. The small sound as the house door opened seemed as loud as a gunshot.
"This way," Mrs. Rosten called softly. I got out of the car and joined her. She said, "I apologize for the back door, but I thought you'd rather not attract any more at-attention than necessary."
I said, "It couldn't just be that you're ashamed of your guest, lady."
She was wearing something long and pale that whispered when she swung to face me. I couldn't see her face clearly, but her voice was sharp, "Can't you forget that twisted pride for one minute, Petroni? I said please over the phone, didn't I?"
She turned away, leaving me to follow her ghostlike figure through a dark kitchen and a succession of dark rooms into a small, softly lighted, booklined study in which a fire was burning. I noted a gun rack over the fireplace. A leather sofa faced the fireplace. It looked quite comfortable and inviting. On the low table before the sofa was a silver tray holding an array of bottles, two glasses, a silver ice bucket, and so help me, a real honest-to-God soda-water siphon. I hadn't seen one of those in years.
She had stopped to close the door behind me. I turned to face her. We stood like that for a moment. I pursed my lips and whistled softly.
"Not bad. That must be just about the quickest recovery in history."
She'd got her hair up again, drawn back smoothly from her face. It had a dark, velvety luster she must have worked hard to attain in such a short time. I don't know the technical distinction between a negligee and a peignoir, but she was wearing one of those elaborate boudoir creations, creamy white against her brown skin, high-necked and long-sleeved, lace to the waist and layers upon layers of nylon below, reaching the floor all around her.
In this day of trick pajamas and Peter Pan nighties, it's a real treat to see an attractive woman dressed for seduction in a garment with some grace and dignity to it. It raises the whole business of sex to a higher plane, in my opinion. I assumed that seduction was what she had in mind, dressing like that-or at least that it was the idea she wished to plant in Lash Petroni's crude mind, for reasons yet to be determined. In a way it was a relief. I hadn't been sure she wouldn't greet me with a shotgun, or the police.
"You have the tact of an ox, Petroni," she said. "Never remind a woman of looking like hell, particularly when it was your fault. Come to that, you look a little better yourself."
That was a lie. I'd seen myself in the mirror as I left the hotel room in my other Petroni suit. The man who'd looked back at me from the glass had been a real cool cat. I wouldn't have trusted him in the same house with Whistler's grandmother.
"It a wet damn bay," I said.
"Let's drink to that," she said, smiling. "It's something we can agree on, anyway. What will you have?"
I watched her sweep past and bend over the silver tray. There wasn't any peekaboo stuff; there were no provocative displays of skin or limbs such as often go with the negligee bit. She was a great lady entertaining at home, but I couldn't help the distracting thought-as Lash Petroni, of course-that dignified though she might look in the regal gown, she probably had on very little underneath it.