For just a moment I reached across the table and took her hand. “You're quite a riddle,” I said. “A few minutes ago you turned pale every time I mentioned Burton, now you're taking it in stride.”
“Maybe I've come, at last, to join the Living, as you advised.”
“You won't be sorry. Burton had his day in this town, but, believe me, I'll have mine too. And soon. Pat I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I'm going to turn this town upside down and shake it till its teeth rattle—so help me, within a few months nobody'll remember Alex Burton ever lived!”
She looked at me, steadily. “When you say it like that, I can almost believe you will do it.”
“I'll do it, all right. I'll...”
I looked up and the chef, a great, red-faced man with bristling mustaches and lively eyes, stood beaming down on Pat.
“Miss Kelso!”
“Mario, it's wonderful to see you again!”
“Thank you!” he said, obviously not annoyed at being called from his kitchen. “Now!” he beamed. “For dinner, what shall it be? But wait, let Mario do it! A great surprise, what do you say to that?”
“I think it's wonderful. You do that, Mario, a surprise for two.”
I said, “Tell me something.” And she looked straight through me, waiting. “Tell me,” I said, “why you decided not to walk out on me.”
“Credit it to momentary insanity.”
I laughed. “All right, now tell me something else, about you, Pat Kelso.”
A full minute went by before she said a thing. Then, at last, when she did speak, her voice was surprisingly calm and pleasant. “There isn't much to tell; my family was poor but proud, as they say. My father sent me to the best schools, although it plunged him into bankruptcy, and I failed to live up to his expectations by marrying well-to-do, so... I began looking for a job.”
“That's how you met Burton?”
“... Yes.”
“One thing I would like to know. Were you in love with him?”
I thought she wasn't going to answer at all this time. But finally she looked at me with a forthrightness that was stunning. “I'll say this one time, just one time, and then well never speak of Alex Burton again.”
“That's fair enough.”
“No, I don't think I loved him,” she said flatly. “But I adored him. He was the kindest, gentlest, most generous man I have ever known. When I was with him he made me feel that I belonged to another world. The world my family had once belonged to, long ago.”
That stopped me for a moment. I had only to look in her eyes to know that she actually believed it, what she had said about Burton.
Great God! I thought, what a politician he must have been! That thieving bastard, that robber of the poor, that murderer who could look a girl like Pat in the eye and convince her that he was kind, gentle, generous—a saint, practically! I felt the laughter bubbling in my throat but didn't dare let it come out. What a joke this was!
But she would never know. Not from me. I had the good sense to see that nothing I could say would change it—it would only make her hate me—so I said nothing. I accepted it.
After all, what difference did it make now? Alex Burton was dead.
Then I began getting a hunch about Pat Kelso. I began to wonder if it had been Burton's gentleness, kindness, that had really drawn her to him. I wondered if it couldn't have been his “generosity” that had really hooked her...
I saw the wine waiter headed in our direction and I said quickly, “I told you once I was going to shake this town till its teeth rattled. And I will. A lot of loose change is going to fall from a lot of pockets—how'd you like to be standing in just the right place to catch some of it?”
She smiled, mostly with her eyes.
“You amaze me, Mr. O'Connor. I'd like very much to be standing there when the money starts to fall.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IT WAS CALLED the Marlow Building, a relatively new and modern building in downtown Lake City. I walked in and studied the building directory for a moment, then headed for the elevator. The elevator starter, a uniformed girl of about twenty-four, held the car when she saw me coming.
“Going up, sir?”
“I sure am!”
Yes sir, there was no doubt about it. I was on my way and the sky was the limit. The elevator doors came together with a whisper, shutting out the marble-floored lobby, the small exclusive shops. It's quite a building, all right, I thought, and it must cost Parker King a pretty penny to keep a suite of office in it. A man with a very tall stack of blue chips. That was Mr. King, Senator Parker Everest King.
I felt nine feet tall when I stepped out of the elevator on the fourteenth floor. This was one of those buildings that had no thirteenth floor—ten, eleven, twelve, fourteen. But it was still the thirteenth floor, no matter what they called it, and Parker King was going to find it plenty unlucky; you could bet your life on that.
I walked left from the elevator and there were eight doors, all in a line, all with frosted glass panels, all with the lettering on them: THE P. E. KING COMPANY CONTRACTORS. I opened the first door and went in.
The receptionist, an attractive, businesslike woman of about forty-two or three, said, “May I help you, sir?”
“Yes, I'd like to see Mr. King.”
“I see. Mr. King has a very full morning, sir, I'm afraid I couldn't possibly disturb him just now. May I have your name, sir, and the nature of your business?”
“William O'Connor, which won't mean anything to him. The business is... confidential.”
“I see,” she said, writing it down: William O'Connor, no appointment, confidential business. She took the note and went into another office.
She returned. “I'm sorry, Mr. O'Connor, but Mr. King's morning schedule is completely filled. Perhaps if you could come again tomorrow, or call...”
“I'm afraid that will be impossible,” I said.
I took an envelope from my inside coat pocket, selected one of several photostats that had been in it, and put the other photostats back in my pocket. I borrowed the receptionist's fountain pen and wrote across the face of the photostat: This will give you an idea how confidential my business is. O'Connor.
I said, “Will you please give this to Mr. King?”
She didn't like the, idea of disturbing the Great Man again, but that hocus-pocus with the photostat had looked pretty important and she didn't want to miss any bets. The receptionist gave the envelope to the other girl, and the girl took it into the other office, and after a moment she came back, spoke to the receptionist, both of them looking at me.
“Mr. King will see you, Mr. O'Connor,” the receptionist said.
“Thank you.”
“This way, sir,” the other girl, the secretary, said.
I followed her out of the front office, through the other office, and through the doors of the sanctum sanctorum itself.
Parker King was waiting, and he was angry. He stuck the opened envelope under my nose and said, “What the hell's the meaning of this!”
“I thought it was perfectly obvious.” I said. “It's blackmail.”
That stopped him. He was a good looking guy about forty, well tanned, well dressed, well fed, and no doubt well satisfied, until I had stepped in with that photostat and knocked the wind out of him. There is some sort of perversity in most humans that makes it impossible for them to call a spade a spade, no matter how obvious it is.
“Blackmail,” I said. “There's no use chasing out tails and wasting time. You have in your hand a photostatic copy of some very important and confidential documents, made from originals which are in my possession, though not on my person, naturally. To get down to cases, you will notice that there is a cancelled check, made out to cash and signed by you, in the amount of thirty-five hundred dollars. And here is a photostat of the county commissioner's bank statement —please note the deposit date of May Third, the day after you wrote the check; the entry is a deposit of thirty-five hundred dollars. Strangely enough, here is a photostat from the commissioner's office records which shows that your firm was awarded a large turnpike construction contract on the very day the check was written, despite the fact that there were seven bids lower than the one your firm submitted.