We sipped the champagne. Her eyes studied me. She said abruptly, “I’m betwixt and between.”
“What do you mean?”
She said, “I need money. I have just about half enough here. I’ll be frank with you. I was down to my last cent. I came up here and invested every cent I could scrape up to buy chips. I made up my mind I’d either get what I wanted or be completely broke, and then I’d—”
Her voice trailed away into a significant silence.
“Then you’d what, my dear?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I hadn’t gone that far. Either sell myself or kill myself, I guess.”
I said nothing.
She studied me thoughtfully. “What should I do? Should I quit now, play it safe and try to raise the rest of the money some other way, or should I go ahead and gamble?”
“On those matters,” I said, “I give no advice.”
“You’ve been my inspiration, my luck. You’ve brought me success. Everything was going bad for me. And then you came along.”
I said nothing.
Abruptly the floor manager glided up to the table. “Would you mind stepping into the office?” he asked Diane.
“Oh,” she said, her knuckles suddenly white as she pressed her fist against her lips. “What have I done now?”
The manager’s smile was reassuring. “Nothing,” he said. “Only I have been asked to invite you to step into the office, Miss Marvin, and the boss would like to see Mr. Lam, too.” ‘
I glanced at my watch. It was thirty-five minutes from the time I had entered the place. I still hadn’t seen anything of Horace B. Catlin.
Abruptly Diane Marvin pushed back the chair. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get it over with.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Probably something about my credit — about — I don’t know.”
The floor manager escorted us deferentially to a big door marked Private.
He swung the door open without touching it, apparently by putting weight on a concealed button.
“Right this way, please,” he said, standing aside.
I followed Diane into an office.
The floor manager didn’t come in. The door clicked shut behind us. I turned to look. There was no knob on the door.
There were comfortable chairs grouped in a half-circle around a table on which were glasses, a decanter, ice, and soda.
A plain door at the far end of the office opened and Hartley L. Channing said, “Right this way, please.”
We walked in.
Channing shook hands with both of us. “How are you, Lam?” he said.
“Fine,” I told him.
He didn’t say anything to Diane.
She walked on into the inner office and I followed.
This was a room fixed up both as a den and an office. There were a television set, a radio, phonograph, a safe, filing cabinet, a desk, and comfortable lounging chairs. There were bookcases, paneled walls, indirect lighting, and there wasn’t a window in the place. An air conditioning unit kept a stream of fresh air flowing in and out.
Channing turned to Diane and said, “You can lay off, Diane. He’s not a fish.”
She said indignantly, “Well, then, why the hell didn’t I get the signal? I—”
“Keep your shirt on,” he told her. “There’s been a mix-up.”
“I’ll say there’s been a mix-up! I had things coming along just fine and—”
“That’ll do,” he told her. “You can go now. Forget you’ve seen this man, that you’ve been here, forget everything.”
Without a word to me she got up and flounced out through the door.
I couldn’t tell whether she had the combinations so that she knew how to open the door which had no knob, or whether there was some secret connection at Channing’s desk by which he could open it.
Channing and I looked at each other across the desk.
“I’d like to see the card by which you got past the doorman, Lam.”
I smiled at him.
“Well?” he said, extending his hand. “I’m waiting.”
I said, “The card was good enough to get me in. Isn’t that good enough for you?”
“No.”
I made no move.
Channing frowned. “You certainly aren’t naïve enough to think I don’t control the situation here,” he said.
I said, “I certainly hope you aren’t naive enough to think I’d let you know what I’m thinking.”
“This isn’t getting us anywhere.”
“It’s got me this far.”
“That may not prove to be entirely beneficial — for you.”
I stole a glance at my wrist watch. I had a little over nineteen minutes to go.
I said, “Perhaps you and I might talk without chasing each other around in circles, and really get somewhere.”
“I want to see that card.”
I said nothing.
I didn’t see Channing give the signal — probably a concealed button somewhere under the desk — but abruptly the door from the outer office opened and a man in a tuxedo stood quietly on the threshold.
“Mr. Lam,” Channing said, “had a card when he entered the place.”
The newcomer said nothing.
“He doesn’t wish to produce that card,” Channing said. “I’d like very much to look at it.”
The man moved forward, smiling serenely. “The card, Mr. Lam,” he said.
I made no move.
The man hesitated briefly by my chair.
Channing nodded.
The man reached forward and grabbed my wrist. I tried to jerk the arm free. I might as well have tried to pull against a steel cable.
Swift, efficient fingers did things to the wrist. The other hand hit against my elbow. My arm doubled around, flew up against my back, the wrist was doubled into a grip that pulled the tendons until it was all I could do to keep from screaming.
“The card,” Channing said.
I twisted my body, trying to ease the tension and the pain as much as possible.
“Of all the damn fools,” Channing said, and came over to search me.
I was powerless to make a move.
Channing’s hand shot into my inside pocket, came out with my wallet. He deftly extracted the card I had used in entering the place, started to put the wallet back, then thought better of it and took the wallet and the card over to his desk.
“That’s all, Bill,” he said.
The man in the tuxedo released the grip on my wrist.
I dropped back into the chair. My arm felt as though every tendon in it had been pulled out of place.
Channing started to tell Bill to go, then thought better of it. “Stick around, Bill,” he said.
Channing said, “Lam, I don’t like this. You sat around in front for several hours with a companion. The man is still down there waiting for you. I suppose if you don’t appear within a certain time he’s to come and get you or else call the police. Is that it?”
“You’re talking. I’m listening.”
“I suppose you feel that gives you a paid-up policy of life insurance.”
“I’ll run my business,” I said, “you run yours.”
He examined the card carefully.
“This is a genuine card,” he said. “It not only bears my signature but it has the little secret mark on it that you wouldn’t even know was there. It’s a genuine card. Where did you get it?”
“It was given to me.”
He shook his head. “Those cards aren’t obtained in that way.”
I said nothing.
He studied the card again, then looked over at me and I didn’t like what I saw in his eyes.
“Lam,” he said, “I’m not going to tell you how I know, but this is one of the cards that were given to George Bishop for distribution to a very select few.
“Ordinarily George kept his connection with this place completely secret, but for the few people whom he knew he could trust, he had some special cards. This is one of those cards. Now where did you get it?”