“How did he get out of the house?”
“He jumped from my window, my bedroom window.”
“Then there's one hell of a sore hoodlum somewhere in Lake City this morning, taking a drop like that. But it's over now. The main thing is for you to calm down and be quiet, and keep Ellen quiet too. I'll think of something.”
“Soon!”
“All right, soon.”
“Today! Tonight at the latest!”
“All right, I said I would take care of it. Calm down.”
“There's one more thing,” she said. “My safe was open, the wall safe upstairs where the strongbox was kept.”
I whistled. “That was close; I got that stuff just in time. And you are right about Burton, the bastard is entirely too persistent. Well, he won't be so persistent this time tomorrow. Just think about that and try to get some sleep.”
I hung up.
That goddamn Burton, I thought, he's going to ruin things good if I don't stop him. When a politician gets in so deep that he starts playing with murder, that was the time to do one of two things: either back off fast and get out of the blast area when the explosion comes, or close in fast and try to get at the fuse.
There was one thing I was sure of—I wasn't backing away. I had my hands on a million dollars worth of blackmail material. So Burton had to go, and fast. Soon as he found out that Dorris no longer had the evidence, he'd come after me. Somehow he would find out about me. That's the only trouble with blackmailing—sooner or later you run into a guy like Burton, a guy who won't give.
So, right on the spot, I made up my mind about Burton. I was going to kill him today, or tonight—anyway, within the next twelve hours—if it was humanly possible. But it wasn't going to be easy. I didn't know a thing about his personal habits, except he was somehow tied up with his secretary, Pat Kelso. That was the angle I would have to use, it was the only angle I had.
The only thing to do was begin at the beginning and try to find out something about Pat Kelso. I had a look at the door across the hall, the door to Pat Kelso's apartment, hoping that it would be unlocked, but of course it wasn't. That didn't stop me for long.
I went back and looked at my own door and smiled a little when I saw that it was equipped with an ordinary spring-operated night latch. In my kitchen I found a cheap paring knife, a flexible, stainless steel affair that was practically made to order.
I made sure that the hallway was empty, then went to work on Miss Kelso's night latch. The blade went in easily. I bent the knife toward the door and forced the point down the sloping shoulder of the spring bolt. When the point of the knife reached the leading edge of the bolt, I bent the blade the other way and the stronger tension of the steel blade snapped the spring-actuated bolt back into the latch body and the door was open. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.
The apartment was much like mine but neater. It was almost mannish in its neatness and simplicity.
I walked into the bedroom and this too was neat and simple: tweed at the windows, fruitwood furniture which was not expensive but too expensive to belong to the apartment. I started going through a chest of drawers and found nothing but lingerie, but there was a silver-framed photograph on top of the chest that interested me. It was a man of about fifty-five or so, a square-jawed, blunt-featured man with bristling gray hair, and a rather grim mouth that was bent determinedly up at the corners in something that might pass as a smile. Just for the hell of it I took the picture out of the frame, and there on the back scrawled in bold, blunt letters, was: “For Pat, with all my love, Alex.”
It was strange, the way that picture affected me. Until that moment Alex Burton had been an abstraction, an inanimate obstacle that had been placed in my path and which had to be removed. Now it was different. The longer I looked at that picture, the more I hated the man it represented, and I didn't know exactly why, except that I resented the presence of that picture and its implications. I simply couldn't see a girl like Pat Kelso with a man like Burton. I thought of the girl I had seen at the mail box, then I looked at the picture, and I looked at the bed in Pat Kelso's room, and the three of them came together in my mind.
With that picture in my hand, I thought: You sonofabitch, you lousy sonofabitch! without even knowing what I was angry about.
At last I put the picture back in the frame. I made myself settle down. I got out of that bedroom.
Stop it, Surratt! What kind of insanity is this, anyway, getting yourself steamed up just because another secretary decides it's more convenient to sleep with the boss than look for another job? She's just another broad, Surratt, and a broad you hardly even know, at that. So forget her. Think about the job at hand—that ought to keep you busy.
It was good advice. And I took it. When a man starts thinking with his glands instead of his brain he's sunk, and I realized that I had been doing exactly that. I had been too damn long without a woman. After all, I was human, I was a man. Any other man would react the same way, I thought, after five years of celibacy.
I was convinced.
“It is perfectly normal and completely glandular,” I said aloud.
I went back to the sitting room and got into action with the telephone directory. In the white pages I found Burton, and then I moved down to Burton Finance and Loans, and dialed the number. After a moment a blatantly nasal voice bleated: “Burtonfinanceandloans!”
“I want to talk to Miss Kelso. Pat Kelso.”
“Sorrynooneherebythatname!”
I hung up and moved down to Burton Manufacturing and Construction Company. This time the voice was pleasant and professionally precise.
I said, “I want to talk to Miss Kelso.”
“Miss Kelso is on the other line, sir. Would you like to...”
I hung up.
Now I had a starting place.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE FIRST THING I did was rent a black Chevrolet sedan from a U-drive-it place which I found in the telephone directory. Then I started looking for the Burton Manufacturing and Construction Company.
It turned out to be a sprawling brick building, and several smaller buildings, south of the city in the factory district. I circled the place slowly, looking it over, and finally found a parking place in front of the main building where the office workers would come out. Then I settled down to wait.
This was the tedious way of getting at Burton, but it was the only way. One thing I was sure of, I wasn't going to stalk the lion in his lair, I wasn't going to elbow my way through hired bodyguards, hoodlums and flunkies to get at him—I was going to let Alex Burton come to me. I hoped he would come to me today, but if he didn't, I could wait. I was going to sit here and wait for Pat Kelso to come out of that building, and then I was going to follow her to the end of the line.
Sooner or later it would lead me to Burton. More than that, it would lead me to Burton when he was most vulnerable. I knew these men like Alex Burton, these bigshots who like to throw their weight around but deep inside are scared in their guts. Because they are scared they hire themselves a pair of hotshots from Chicago, or Detroit, or some place, and they place armed guards and electric fences around their homes, and they tell themselves they are safe. No matter how many enemies they make, they are safe. Or so they think.
But they are vulnerable. There are situations in which they have to stand on their own feet, naked and alone.
With women, they are vulnerable. I never heard of one, no matter how great a coward he was, who prepared himself for a lady's bedroom by flanking himself with bodyguards.