Graham saw she had been weeping. Her eyes behind the lenses of her glasses were red-rimmed and swollen.
She was very pale, but in control of herself and she managed a faint smile as Algir crossed the room, his own smile friendly but sober.
‘We have never met, Norena,’ he said, offering his hand. ‘I have looked after your mother’s affairs for some time now. She has often talked to me about you. I wish we could have met under happier circumstances.’
‘Yes, Mr. Tebbel,’ Norena said and looked away, struggling to control the emotion that surged over her.
‘We’ll get off,’ Algir said, turning to Graham. ‘I’ll telephone you as soon as I have some news.’ He turned to Norena. ‘The car’s at the door. Will you go on ahead?’
Graham took the girl’s hand.
‘Goodbye, Norena. You mustn’t worry. It’ll come out all right. It generally does.’
‘Goodbye, doctor and thanks.’ She turned quickly and left the room.
‘Is her luggage ready?’ Algir asked. ‘I don’t think she’ll be coming back. This is her last term, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it’s her last term. She’s only packed a bag. I’ll have the rest of her things sent on to her home.’
‘Fine. I’ll get off. Well, let’s hope.’
The two men shook hands, then Algir hurried down the steps and got into the Buick by Norena’s side.
He sent the car down the long drive-in and out on to the Alain Street. He drove with restrained care through Greater Miami. He itched to shove his foot down hard on the accelerator, but he was very conscious that an accident or a traffic infringement could foul up the most desperate plan he had ever embarked upon to make big money.
It was while he was steering the Buick through the heavy traffic of trucks heading for the Florida Keys that Norena said hesitatingly, ‘Mr. Tebbel, is my mother really dangerously hurt?’
‘She’s pretty bad, Norena,’ Algir said. ‘You mustn’t worry. There’s nothing either of us can do right now.’
‘It was a car, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s right. She stepped off the pavement and the driver didn’t have a chance of stopping.’
‘Was... was she drunk?’
Algir stiffened. He glanced quickly at the girl at his side. She was staring through the windshield, her face pale and set.
‘Drunk? What do you mean? That’s not a nice thing to say about your mother, Norena.’
‘Mummy means more to me than any other person alive,’ the girl said with such fierce passion that Algir winced. ‘I understand her. I know what she has been through. I know she did everything for me. She sacrificed herself for me. I know she drinks. Was she drunk?’
Algir moved uneasily.
‘No,’ he said finally. ‘Now look, Norena, I’ve got some thinking to do. I’m working on a case. You sit quiet, will you? Just don’t worry. I’ll get you to your mother as quickly as I can, alright?’
‘Yes. I’m sorry to be a nuisance.’
Again Algir winced. His big suntanned hands gripped the steering wheel tightly. He didn’t want to know this girl. He wanted her to remain a complete stranger to him as Johnnie Williams had been a complete stranger to him. It had been simple enough for him to walk into Williams’ bedroom and shoot him five times through the heart. He hadn’t known the guy. It was like shooting at a stuffed dummy. If he allowed this girl to talk, to make mental contact with him, how could he bring himself to kill her?
Even now, those few words she had spoken had upset him. He could feel a film of cold sweat on his face and a sick feeling of horror building up inside him.
He was through the congested motorway out of Miami now and was on the first broad stretch of highway 4A. Leaning forward, his eyes intent on the road ahead, he sent the big car surging forward.
The aircraft on the night flight from New York touched down at the Miami airport exactly on schedule. As the passengers crowded into the reception lobby, the hands of the wall clock stood at 07.30 hours.
Among the passengers was a slimly built girl of seventeen years of age. There was something elfin-like in her attractive, sharp-featured face. She wore a white headscarf, bottle green suede jacket, tight black pants that fastened under her flat-heeled shoes and a white scarf knotted at her throat. Her bra lifted her breasts to a provocative angle, and her neat, small buttocks had a cultivated ducktail swish that caught the eye of every man in the lobby.
She was very sure of herself. A cigarette drooped from her full red lips, her blue eyes had a flinty hardness, and when the men stared, she stared back with hostile, challenging contempt.
Ira Marsh, Muriel Marsh Devon’s youngest sister, had been brought up in a Brooklyn slum. Her sister, twenty-two years her senior, had left home and had disappeared out of the lives of the Marsh family before Ira was born. Her mother had produced eleven children and Ira was the last of the brood. Four of the boys had been killed in a drunken car crash. Two others were serving life sentences for armed robbery. Four of the girls, including Muriel, had simply walked out of the slum that had served them as a home and hadn’t been seen nor heard of since. If it hadn’t been for Ticky Edris, Ira would never have learned that her eldest sister lived as a prostitute and a drug addict. Not that she would have cared one way or the other. Her sisters and her brothers meant as much to her as her father, a drunken old lecher, against whom she had to lock her bedroom door.
One evening, some four months ago, a smiling dwarf had been waiting outside her tenement block in a red Mini Cooper. Ira was returning from the Public Baths where she had spent a luxurious hour soaking her beautiful little body in hot water, washing her hair and generally preparing herself for the jive session she always attended on a Sunday night.
At the sight of her, the dwarf slid out of the car and planted himself in front of her. He was wearing a brown sports jacket with patch pockets, grey flannel slacks and a brown baseball cap worn at a jaunty angle over his right eye.
‘If you’re Ira Marsh,’ he said, his smile bright, his eyes watchful, ‘I want to talk to you.’
She stared down at the little man, frowning.
‘Out of my way, Tom Thumb,’ she said sharply. ‘I’m fussy who I talk to.’
Edris giggled.
‘It’s about your sister Muriel. Don’t be snooty, baby. Muriel is a special pal of mine.’
Already the women sitting on the iron balconies of the tenement block were staring down at these two. The kids had stopped playing their street games and were converging on them, hooting and pointing at Edris.
Ira swiftly made up her mind. She knew her sister only by name. She found herself suddenly curious to know more about her. She stepped to the car and slid into the passenger’s seat. Edris trotted around to the driver’s seat and drove down the street, followed by a screaming bunch of kids who were quickly left behind.
‘My name’s Ticky Edris,’ he said as he drove. ‘I’m putting together a little job that could make you and me some money.’
‘Why me?’ Ira said. ‘You know nothing about me. Why me?’
‘There’s nothing I don’t know about you,’ Edris returned. He slowed by a vacant building lot and pulled up.
A month ago in one of her blue moods, Muriel had mentioned her youngest sister. ‘I’ve never even seen her! If I hadn’t run into one of the old crowd living near my home, I wouldn’t have known she was born. Think of it! A sister as old as my daughter, and I’ve never even seen her!’
It was this random remark that had given Edris the key to a problem he had thought up to now insoluble. He had got in touch with an Inquiry Agency in New York and had instructed them to find out everything that was to be found out about a seventeen-year old girl named Ira Marsh. For two hundred dollars, the Agency came up with a five-page report that had given Edris the information he needed and the firm conviction that with this girl, handled right, his problem was practically solved.