Conant banged on the table top, leaned back, looking calmly at the blue gun in Carmady’s hand.
Carmady stared into the big man’s eyes, said very softly: «That hood at Cyrano’s tonight — he wasn’t your idea of putting on the pressure by any chance, Conant, was he?»
Conant grinned harshly, shook his head. The door at the top of the stairs opened a little, silently. Carmady didn’t see it. He was staring at Conant. Jean Adrian saw it.
Her eyes widened and she stepped back with a startled exclamation, that jerked Carmady’s eyes to her.
The albino stepped softly through the door with a gun leveled.
His red eyes glistened, his mouth was drawn wide in a snarling grin. He said: «The door’s kind of thin, boss. I listened. Okey? … Shed the heater, rube, or I blow you both in half.»
Carmady turned slightly and opened his right hand and let the blue gun bounce on the thin carpet. He shrugged, spread his hands out wide, didn’t look at Jean Adrian.
The albino stepped clear of the door, came slowly forward and put his gun against Carmady’s back.
Conant stood up, came around the table, took the Luger out of Carmady’s coat pocket and hefted it. Without a word or change of expression he slammed it against the side of Carmady’s jaw.
Carmady sagged drunkenly, then went down on the floor on his side.
Jean Adrian screamed, clawed at Conant. He threw her off, changed the gun to his left hand and slapped the side of her face with a hard palm.
«Pipe down, sister. You’ve had all your fun.»
The albino went to the head of the stairs and called down it. The two other gunmen came up into the room, stood grinning.
Carmady didn’t move on the floor. After a little while Conant lit another cigarette and rattled a knuckle on the table top beside the birth certificate. He said gruffly: «She wants to see the old man. Okey, she can see him. We’ll all go see him. There’s still something in this that stinks.» He raised his eyes, looked at the stocky man. «You and Lefty go downtown and spring Targo, get him out to the Senator’s place as soon as you can. Step on it.»
The two hoods went back down the stairs.
Conant looked down at Carmady, kicked him in the ribs lightly, kept on kicking them until Carmady opened his eyes and stirred.
NINE
The car waited at the top of a hill, before a pair of tall wrought-iron gates, inside which there was a lodge. A door of the lodge stood open and yellow light framed a big man in an overcoat and pulled-down hat. He came forward slowly into the rain, his hands down in his pockets.
The rain slithered about his feet and the albino leaned against the uprights of the gate, clicking his teeth. The big man said: «What yuh want? I can see yuh.»
«Shake it up, rube. Mister Conant wants to call on your boss.»
The man inside spat into the wet darkness. «So what? Know what time it is?»
Conant opened the car door suddenly and went over to the gates. The rain made noise between the car and the voices.
Carmady turned his head slowly and patted Jean Adrian’s hand. She pushed his hand away from her quickly.
Her voice said softly: «You fool — oh, you fool!»
Carmady sighed. «I’m having a swell time, angel. A swell time.»
The man inside the gates took out keys on a long chain, unlocked the gates and pushed them back until they clicked on the chocks. Conant and the albino came back to the car.
Conant stood in the rain with a heel hooked on the running board. Carmady took his big flask out of his pocket, felt it over to see if it was dented, then unscrewed the top. He held it out towards the girl, said: «Have a little bottle courage.»
She didn’t answer him, didn’t move. He drank from the flask, put it away, looked past Conant’s broad back at acres of dripping trees, a cluster of lighted windows that seemed to hang in the sky.
A car came up the hill stabbing the wet dark with its headlights, pulled behind the sedan and stopped. Conant went over to it, put his head into it and said something. The car backed, turned into the driveway, and its lights splashed on retaining walls, disappeared, reappeared at the top of the drive as a hard white oval against a stone porte-cochère.
Conant got into the sedan and the albino swung it into the driveway after the other car. At the top, in a cement parking circle ringed with cypresses they all got out.
At the top of steps a big door was open and a man in a bathrobe stood in it. Targo, between two men who leaned hard against him, was halfway up the steps. He was bareheaded and without an overcoat. His big body in the white coat looked enormous between the two gunmen.
The rest of the party went up the steps and into the house and followed the bathrobed butler down a hall lined with portraits of somebody’s ancestors, through a still oval foyer to another hall and into a paneled study with soft lights and heavy drapes and deep leather chairs.
A man stood behind a big dark desk that was set in an alcove made by low, outjutting bookcases. He was enormously tall and thin. His white hair was so thick and fine that no single hair was visible in it. He had a small straight bitter mouth, black eyes without depth in a white lined face. He stooped a little and a blue corduroy bathrobe faced with satin was wrapped around his almost freakish thinness.
The butler shut the door and Conant opened it again and jerked his chin at the two men who had come in with Targo. They went out. The albino stepped behind Targo and pushed him down into a chair. Targo looked dazed, stupid. There was a smear of dirt on one side of his face and his eyes had a drugged look.
The girl went over to him quickly, said: «Oh, Duke — are you all right, Duke?»
Targo blinked at her, half-grinned. «So you had to rat, huh? Skip it. I’m fine.» His voice had an unnatural sound.
Jean Adrian went away from him and sat down and hunched herself together as if she was cold.
The tall man stared coldly at everyone in the room in turn, then said lifelessly: «Are these the blackmailers — and was it necessary to bring them here in the middle of the night?»
Conant shook himself out of his coat, threw it on the floor behind a lamp. He lit a fresh cigarette and stood spread-legged in the middle of the room, a big, rough, rugged man very sure of himself. He said: «The girl wanted to see you and tell you she was sorry and wants to play ball. The guy in the ice-cream coat is Targo, the fighter. He got himself in a shooting scrape at a night spot and acted so wild downtown they fed him sleep tablets to quiet him. The other guy is Carmady, old Marcus Carmady’s boy. I don’t figure him yet.»
Carmady said dryly: «I’m a private detective, Senator. I’m here in the interests of my client, Miss Adrian.» He laughed.
The girl looked at him suddenly, then looked at the floor.
Conant said gruffly. «Shenvair, the one you know about, got himself bumped off. Not by us. That’s still to straighten out.»
The tall man nodded coldly. He sat down at his desk and picked up a white quill pen, tickled one ear with it.
«And what is your idea of the way to handle this matter, Conant?» he asked thinly.
Conant shrugged. «I’m a rough boy, but I’d handle this one legal. Talk to the D.A., toss them in a coop on suspicion of extortion. Cook up a story for the papers, then give it time to cool. Then dump these birds across the state line and tell them not to come back — or else.»
Senator Courtway moved the quill around to his other ear. «They could attack me again, from a distance,» he said icily. «I’m in favor of a showdown, put them where they belong.»
«You can’t try them, Courtway. It would kill you politically.»
«I’m tired of public life, Conant. I’ll be glad to retire.» The tall thin man curved his mouth into a faint smile.