She stopped talking and laced her fingers together tightly, then pulled them apart violently, as if she wanted to hurt herself. She went on: «I met Targo through Cyrano and Shenvair through him. Shenvair knew the photos. He’d worked once for an agency in Frisco that was hired to watch Ada. You know all the rest of it.»
Carmady said: «It sounds pretty good. I wondered why the touch wasn’t made sooner. Do you want me to think you didn’t want his money?»
«No. I’d have taken his money all right. But that wasn’t what I wanted most. I said I was a tramp.»
Carmady smiled very faintly and said: «You don’t know a lot about tramps, angel. You made an illegitimate pass and you got caught. That’s that, but the money wouldn’t have done you any good. It would have been dirty money. I know.»
She looked up at him, stared at him. He touched the side of his face and winced and said: «I know because that’s the kind of money mine is. My dad made it out of crooked sewerage and paving contracts, out of gambling concessions, appointment pay-offs, even vice, I daresay. He made it every rotten way there is to make money in city politics. And when it was made and there was nothing left to do but sit and look at it, he died and left it to me. It hasn’t brought me any fun either. I always hope it’s going to, but it never does. Because I’m his pup, his blood, reared in the same gutter. I’m worse than a tramp, angel. I’m a guy that lives on crooked dough and doesn’t even do his own stealing.»
He stopped, flicked ash on the carpet, straightened his hat on his head.
«Think that over, and don’t run too far, because I have all the time in the world and it wouldn’t do you any good. It would be so much more fun to run away together.»
He went a little way towards the door, stood looking down at the sunlight on the carpet, looked back at her quickly and then went on out.
When the door shut she stood up and went into the bedroom and lay down on the bed just as she was, with her coat on. She stared at the ceiling. After a long time she smiled. In the middle of the smile she fell asleep.