Diana ran to him. She turned in his arms and smiled up at Steve. “It was a secret,” she said solemnly. “We had to promise, didn’t we, Paulie?”
Paulie had a fresh bottle of Coke. “She raised heck about hurting Betty Baker,” he said with obvious masculine disgust.
“I did not!” Diana said.
“You did so! You cried.”
Diana showed signs of being about to cry again, this time with indignation.
McGell said, “You were both good kids.”
Still sitting on his heels, one arm around Diana, McGell grinned up at Lew Prade. Steve was glad that a grin of that sort wasn’t directed at him. McGell said, “I’ve been in town for over a week, Prade. Time was getting short. I’ve been in touch with Miss Hess. The committee appropriation was about to run out on us, and so we had to nail you down fast. We wouldn’t have been able to manage it if you hadn’t tried to sucker Mr. Dalvin here.”
“Nail down. Nail down,” Lew said contemptuously. “You’ve got nothing.”
“Haven’t we? I ought to keep this to myself, Prade, but it’s too good to keep. I had a little conference with a man named George Ryan in the small hours this morning. Got his cooperation. So he phoned me at once when Dalvin here got Ryan to have the kids taken out to his house. Your Joe tailed Russ and we tailed Joe, just in case. When he turned back at the house, we went in. We had a hunch you’d try to get the kids out of there somehow. It was a scramble getting just what we needed, and I had to do a lot of talking to my girlfriend here, to get her to let me do a little operation.”
“A real one!” Diana said with awe.
“We opened up that doll, Lew, and we put a little one-tube mike and a battery pack in there. The doll sat there and took it all in, and we picked it up on tape in that truck parked down the street. Now, do you think you’re nailed?”
Lew sat down abruptly. He was chalky white. They left him there, on the porch, left him with his silent, uneasy crew, left him to long thoughts of self-excuse and worry about retribution.
McGell said, “Want to come along? I think you’ve earned it. The good doctor is going to let our Miss Hess out of her padded cell.”
They dropped the children with Mrs. Chandler, and McGell drove Steve’s car out toward Valley Vale, the borrowed phone truck following along behind them.
Steve said, “It’s — moving so fast. I thought I was way out on the end of a limb. And you showed up like the United States Cavalry. How come you talked to George Ryan?”
“After Gloria dropped you off last night, she came right to the hotel. We had a long talk. But first she made me promise that I wouldn’t use any part of it, that it had to be up to you. She told me it sounded too pat, all the way down the line. I agreed. It began to look as though maybe Marty weren’t dead. She agreed to take the chance of trying to get into Dressner’s records. After she left I did some thinking. I broke my promise. I went to Ryan, told him most of the story, told him to let me know any developments. Nice guy, that Ryan. Nice to work for, I imagine. As I told Prade, Ryan let me know about the kids. Your little girl was hard to convince. We got the truck, put the equipment aboard, and parked within range and waited. It had to work, Dalvin. If it didn’t, it was going to be no easy job getting Gloria out of there.”
Steve said, “Won’t Lew warn Dressner?”
“Not a chance. We fixed that.”
Fifteen minutes after they drove through the gates of Valley Vale, Gloria walked out of her private room, pale and shaken, her eyes enormous. She walked into Steve’s arms, and he felt the trembling of her body.
A week later Steve and Gloria sat on his front porch, drinking chilled beer in the warm summer night while Mrs. Chandler was getting the kids to bed.
Steve broke the long silence. “Every time I see that for-sale sign next door I feel good.” It was too dark to see her expression.
“It’s such a little accomplishment though, Steve. Mr. McGell says it will put only a minor crimp in Farlini’s operations. Prade and Dressner will take it in the neck, but not too seriously. All that work for so very little.”
“Don’t let me sound fatherly, darling. But if everybody starts putting little crimps in the operations of all the Ross Farlinis, this will be a better country to live in. We showed it can be done. Maybe we’ve given somebody else moral courage to take the next whack. — Listen to me! Dalvin, the monument of integrity. Until you came along I was fighting with all the reckless bravery of a cornered mouse. Just sitting on my back legs, squeaking.”
“Stop it! You think you would have gone through with it, but when it came right down to it you’d never have...”
“I want you to believe that. But I’d like to convince myself, too.”
“We’re a pair of amateurs.”
“We’re a pair.” He slid his chair closer. “Are you interested in saving my face?”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“There’s an unpleasant little clerical type who figures I was stood up. He cackled at me. I’d like him to know there really is a girl willing to fill out the rest of that blank.”
“Steve, dear, that was a business arrangement. Besides, I did the proposing. Who’d want to remember a thing like that? You’d never let me forget it.”
He found her hand in the dark, held it tightly. “All right. Miss Hess, would you care to help me provide a home for a lot of homeless butterflies?”
“Saturday-morning butterflies?”
“The kind that get in the back of your throat. Got any?”
He could tell from the sound of her voice that she was smiling. “Hold it a minute. I’ll check.”
“There better be at least one. The kids were doing some strenuous matchmaking at dinner.”
“I noticed.”
“How many butterflies, darling?”
She moved closer to him. He knew she was not smiling. Her voice was warm, tremulous. “There are too many to count, my darling,” she said. They stood on the dark porch and kissed. This time she did not withdraw. He held her close then, and, with her dark hair against his cheek, he looked out across the nighttime lawn, noting with vast, benign detachment, with fatuous delight, that there was indeed a fine crop of fireflies on this warm summer night. Too bad they couldn’t be hung in her dark hair, and it was definitely time to kiss her again, for luck.
