“On some angles of this case, Sam, I’m working with the federal men. I’m not supposed to release any information until after I receive a couple of telephone calls. I’ve made arrangements to receive them here.”
“And until then you want to stick around and take up my time?”
“Until then,” Phil Duncan said, “I’ll play you two-handed stud poker — just to pass the time away and give me a little revenge.”
“But I’m a busy man,” Moraine told him.
“No kidding, Sam,” Duncan advised, “if Miss Rice can do your business for you, you’d better let her do it. You’ve got this federal operative trailing you around. I have an idea he’s under instructions to pick you up if you do anything that looks suspicious. He knows I came up here to see you — that is, he should know it. He can find it out by telephoning to his superior. I’ve got to wait here for those telephone calls. If you leave now, it might make things a little embarrassing. If they should pick you up, I don’t think I could get you out right away.”
“What right have they got to pick me up?” Moraine demanded. “They interfered with my sleep last night. Isn’t one night enough?”
Duncan chuckled, and observed, “Well, you insisted on mixing into crime, Sam. I told you you were foolish to do it. Come on, get out your cards and let Miss Rice go handle your business for you, if it is business.”
Moraine frowned thoughtfully while he considered the situation.
“Think you could do it?” he asked Natalie Rice.
“I could try,” she said.
Moraine produced a deck of cards from one of the drawers in his desk, took out a box of chips, and said, “Give me five bucks, Phil, and we’ll divide up the chips.”
“That telephone connected so a call on your number will ring the phone here?” Duncan asked.
“I can connect it so it will,” Natalie Rice told him.
“Go ahead and do it, if you will, please, Miss Rice,” Duncan said. “These calls are rather important.”
“Why be so mysterious about it?” Moraine, asked.
“I’m cooperating with the federals.”
“Do you mean you don’t trust me enough to tell me about what’s up?”
“No, it isn’t that. There may not be anything very serious, Sam, and then, again, it may be serious as the devil. Frankly, I think it would be a good plan for you to watch your step a bit. Can you account for your time all the afternoon?”
“I was taking a beauty sleep,” Moraine said, “right here in the office. Miss Rice can vouch for that. I had half a dozen clients who had appointments canceled because I was too busy to see them, and all the time I was lying in here curled up on that couch with a blanket over me, trying to catch up on lost sleep.”
Duncan turned to Natalie Rice.
“Was Dr. Richard Hartwell one of the visitors this afternoon?” he asked.
“Not this afternoon.”
“I know all about his visit this morning,” the district attorney remarked.
“How do you know that?”
“Oh, I’ve got ways of finding things out.”
“You do seem to get around,” Moraine remarked, shuffling the cards and dealing them. “Since you’re so smart, I wonder if you can tell what my hole card is.”
“I’ve got a ten in sight and you’ve got a nine,” Duncan observed. “That should be worth a couple of white chips.”
“Better put in a blue chip, as well,” Moraine told him, sliding one blue and two whites out from his stack of chips. “I’ve got a pair of nines back to back.”
Duncan sighed, placed a blue chip on top of his whites.
“There you go again,” he said. “I never know whether you’re kidding or whether you really have something. I wouldn’t doubt but what you did have nines back to back and were making me think you were running a bluff.”
Moraine grinned at him. Natalie Rice took a coat from the coat closet, put on her hat in front of the mirror, picked up a shorthand notebook, glanced significantly at Sam Moraine.
“I’ll do the best I can,” she said.
“Go ahead,” he told her. “The way the thing stands now, you can’t do any harm. Remember, there’s a time element to consider.”
“I’ve connected the telephone so any incoming calls will ring on this desk,” she said.
Moraine nodded, dealt a card face up on top of Dim-can’s ten.
“A jack for you, Phil,” he said. “You keep climbing.”
He turned over another card, which he placed on top of his nine.,
“Just a little seven,” the district attorney said. “Have you still got that pair of nines back to back?”
“Sure,” Moraine told him. “How about putting in a blue chip?”
Duncan looked at his hole card thoughtfully, put a blue chip in the pot, saying, “I’d hate to have you bluff me out, Sam.”
Natalie Rice softly closed the door.
Chapter Eight
Phil Duncan had only sixty cents of his original five dollar investment in front of him, when the exit door, which led to the corridor from Moraine’s private office, was shaken violently.
“That’ll be Barney Morden,” Duncan said.
Moraine pushed back his chair, walked toward the door.
“How about putting it all in, and making one hand of showdown?” he said. “Then we can start a three-handed game and perhaps get some of Barney’s money into circulation.”
The district attorney nodded.
Moraine clicked back the spring lock and opened the outer door. Barney Morden came in, pounding his hands, one against the other.
“Cripes,” he said, “but that’s a cold wind.”
“Come in, Barney,” Sam Moraine said. “We’re looking for a little outside money.”
Barney leaned forward and sniffed suspiciously.
“Who has the alcoholic halitosis?” he asked.
“Both of us,” Phil Duncan said. “It’s in the lower right-hand drawer, Barney.”
“My God, don’t you fellows recognize property rights?” Moraine asked.
“Shucks, we’re paying for it,” Barney Morden countered, grinning as he opened the lower right-hand drawer of the desk. “I might just as well sign my salary checks over to you.”
He poured himself a drink of brandy. Phil Duncan, watching him intently, waited until Morden looked up and he caught his eyes.
“Anything?” he asked.
Morden shook his head.
“Heard from the federals?”
“Yes. They haven’t anything.”
Barney drained the brandy and said to Moraine, “Did you know the federals had been shadowing you?”
“Yeah, Phil told me. I feel flattered.”
“Well,” Barney said, “that’s what comes of mixing with crime. Guess they decided to forget it when Duncan came to call on you. There’s no one out there now, but they’d been tailing you. Well, we’ll stick around.”
“My God,” Moraine protested, “can’t the taxpayers provide you birds with an office to work in?”
Duncan looked worried.
Barney Morden made an attempt to be facetious.
“Hell,” he said, “ain’t you a taxpayer?”
“Thank you for the thought, Barney. In my capacity as taxpayer, it will be necessary for me to make a special assessment. This will compensate me for furnishing you birds with an office in which to work, and paying taxes at the same time. It will, therefore, be in the nature of a revolving fund. I pay it to the County, the County pays it to you as salary, you pay it to me as poker winnings.”
“If it’s a revolving fund, it revolves only in one direction,” Morden growled. “You gather it in as fast as I get it. Some day the luck’s going to turn. At that, I don’t mind you winning when you have the cards. It’s the way you talk us into laying down when we have a fair hand and you have nothing, and then talk us into calling when we have nothing and you have a fair hand, that gets my goat.”