“Yes, indeed,” I said. “I can appreciate such thoughtfulness. It protects your regular customers from... uh, possible uncouth strangers, interlopers.”
“I perceive you anticipate my very thought, yes sir, my very thought. You can easily understand our position, of course. Why, only this evening one of our regular guests complained to me. It seems that someone very thoughtlessly used his clothing peg. Number 63. He was perturbed.”
I grinned but it was a totally mirthless grin.
“Yes — I can understand the poor man’s chagrin. I’m afraid I used his peg. I have none of my own.”
The doctor-lawyer-insurance salesman leaned over his mighty desk and smiled coolly at me.
“That, Charles Horne, is the distressing point in question.”
Chapter 3
There was about this man, Louise, a certain chilly deadliness that banished the possibility of continued nonchalance, real or pretended. I couldn’t hold up my end of it. He both repelled and fascinated me.
The latent menace of him was overpoweringly impressive. The sheer deadliness seemed to hang in the air about him, around his chair, reach across the polished desk to me. I could feel it as distinctly as I could feel a cold wind biting the back of my neck.
He was fairly easy to classify, mentally. Here was the type of man whose stark malevolence was both cloaked and betrayed by his very quietness. Whose inner thoughts spun and grew for hours on end in absolute, unemotional silence and then, coming at last to an irrevocable conclusion, suddenly lashed out with the unexpected finality of lightning.
I was afraid of him and we both knew it.
I fumbled around in a coat pocket but couldn’t find my pipe. He anticipated me, as usual.
Still smiling frostily, he pushed across the desk a glistening, copper-plated humidor filled with expensive cigars. I took two, and put the other one in my lapel pocket.
“For after a while,” I explained.
He nodded, smoothed out a nonexistent wrinkle in his tuxedo, and almost as an afterthought handed me a long bullet casing mounted on a plastic base. It was about the size used in the army’s machine guns. The green enameled top lifted off to reveal the lighter. It worked on the first spin.
I didn’t want his continued silence, feeling myself much safer if he were talking.
“I can explain my being here,” I started the ball rolling. “It was a kind of an accident.”
“Very much of an accident,” he assured me with grim, subtle intonations. “I have investigated it thoroughly. The driver made a regrettable mistake in stopping for you. It was her initial trip but that does not excuse the error. She carried certain precise instructions. They were not followed to the letter.”
“You shouldn’t hold it against the kid,” I objected. “Anyone in the same place could have made the same mistake. I was loafing on the corner and she thought I was a regular. She talked as if I were.”
He snatched that one up quick. His fingers had been playing with his tie. Now they flew to the edge of the desk.
“You talked with her?”
He had picked it up so quick I realized I was getting the babe into trouble. Here was something the tuxedo hadn’t known.
“Huh! Talked at her is nearer the truth. Getting a worthwhile answer was something else again. It was yes-sir, this, or no-sir that, and she was sorry but she couldn’t take my tip.”
“I see.” But he only partially relaxed. His sensitive fingers left the edge of the desk. There would be a push button under there. “However,” he went on, “it is an error that must not be repeated. And of course we shall cease using that particular corner.”
I grinned at him but there wasn’t much mirth in it.
“Hell, mister. You needn’t worry about me shooting off my mouth. I’m not in the habit of letting it hang open.”
He swung his chair around in a smooth half-arc so that he was no longer facing me. He could watch my movements from the corner of his eye. I pulled on the cigar. His voice dropped to a slightly mocking banter.
“I have absolutely no fear of your speaking out of turn, sir. None at all. If you will forgive me for trespassing upon your privacy, I must inform you that I have taken the liberty of checking on you. You understand, surely. When I was informed that you were downstairs it became necessary to know all about you. You realize that, of course.”
“Of course,” I echoed dryly.
“Good. I felt sure you wouldn’t mind. I know who you are, what you are, and to what exact degree you may be trusted. Knowing this, I repeat, I am securely confident you will say nothing of tonight’s lamentable misunderstanding, nor of your subsequent journey outside the city limits.”
“You should be in my business.”
“Thank you.” And he meant it. He swung around to me again. “However, I still believe it wise to abandon that particular corner. And I must ask you to give me your word you will not attempt to enter this establishment again.”
The request implied I was to be turned loose, which made me feel much better, so I supplemented, “Unless I’m invited.”
His smile was icy, his manner superior and sure. “You won’t be.” And then he struck off at a tangent.
“I must admit to no small curiosity concerning your unexpected presence here. A detective on these premises is a rare thing. I don’t recall it ever happening before. May I inquire if you are at work?”
“You may, and I’m not. The doll surprised me with the pick-up job. I came along for the ride,” I lied, “because she was nice looking.”
“There exists,” he insisted, edging forward, “not the slightest possibility your being here isn’t an accident?”
“None whatsoever,” I stated flatly. “I didn’t know the joint existed until the Judge opened the door.”
“Ah, yes.” He relaxed with a satisfied suavity. “Still another error. That two such could happen in one evening almost pushes the incident beyond the bounds of chance, does it not? The Judge isn’t in the habit of making mistakes. He was a trifle taken aback when I told him.”
I began to have the feeling that there was more here than met my eye, but couldn’t identify the hunch.
“Everyone makes mistakes,” I countered. “That’s what keeps me going in my business. You told him what?”
“What a gullible chap he had been. But I am inclined to forgive him this once. Yours was a subtle deception.”
“There wasn’t much else he could do,” I offered in the old boy’s defense. “He certainly didn’t want me lighting matches out there all night.”
“That is correct.”
“I suppose he’s sore about it. I would be in his place. And he’d probably like to take a poke at me.”
“That too is correct.”
I grinned. “I’ll make it a point to stay out of his way after this. I wouldn’t want to tangle with him on the street.”
“Such a meeting isn’t likely to occur.”
Turning that one over the cooking fire for a second or two, I decided to show the tuxedo what a gullible chap he had been.
“I said a moment ago that everybody makes mistakes and the mistakes keep me going in business. Will you be mad if I point out the one you’ve just made?”
“I?” Incredulously.
“You. In your conversation.”
“Not at all,” he said in a curious manner. “Tell me.”
“You’ve just told me that the Judge doesn’t go downtown. Now everybody goes to town, some town. They want to see the bright lights on Saturday night. They want to buy things they don’t need in the stores. They want a place to keep their women. Therefore, the Judge and probably the rest of your crowd, hang around some other town. A large town.”