“Why, for heaven’s sake?”
“Don’t ask me things I don’t know. I can’t tell you the answers. And don’t ask me things I do know, because I won’t tell you the answers. Where have you been all your life? If a man in my line of work is handed a job, does he go around answering questions about it to anyone that gets curious?”
“There must be a lot of electricity in the air,” he said nastily, “for a man in your line of work to turn down two hundred dollars.”
There was nothing in that for me either. I picked his broad mahogany match out of the tray and looked at it. It had thin yellow edges and there was white printing on it. ROSEMONT H. RICHARDS ‘3—the rest was burnt off. I doubled the match and squeezed the halves together and tossed it in the waste basket.
“I love my wife,” he said suddenly and showed me the hard white edges of his teeth. “A corny touch, but it’s true.”
“The Lombardos are still doing all right.”
He kept his lips pulled back from his teeth and talked through them at me. “She doesn’t love me. I know of no particular reason why she should. Things have been strained between us. She was used to a fast moving sort of life. With us, well, it has been pretty dull. We haven’t quarreled. Linda’s the cool type. But she hasn’t really had a lot of fun being married to me.”
“You’re just too modest,” I said.
His eyes glinted, but he kept his smooth manner pretty well in place.
“Not good, Marlowe. Not even fresh. Look, you have the air of a decent sort of guy. I know my mother is not putting out two hundred and fifty bucks just to be breezy. Maybe it’s not Linda. Maybe it’s something else. Maybe—” he stopped and then said this very slowly, watching my eyes, “maybe it’s Morny.”
“Maybe it is,” I said cheerfully.
He picked his gloves up and slapped the desk with them and put them down again. “I’m in a spot there all right,” he said. “But I didn’t think she knew about it. Morny must have called her up. He promised not to.”
This was easy. I said: “How much are you into him for?” It wasn’t so easy. He got suspicious again. “If he called her up, he would have told her. And she would have told you,” he said thinly.
“Maybe it isn’t Morny,” I said, beginning to want a drink very badly. “Maybe the cook is with child by the iceman. But if it was Morny, how much?”
“Twelve thousand,” he said, looking down and flushing.
“Threats?”
He nodded.
“Tell him to go fly a kite,” I said. “What kind of lad is he? Tough?”
He looked up again, his face being brave. “I suppose he is. I suppose they all are. He used to be a screen heavy. Good looking in a flashy way, a chaser. But don’t get any ideas. Linda just worked there, like the waiters and the band. And if you are looking for her, you’ll have a hard time finding her.”
I sneered at him politely.
“Why would I have a hard time finding her? She’s not buried in the back yard, I hope.”
He stood up with a flash of anger in his pale eyes. Standing there leaning over the desk a little he whipped his right hand up in a neat enough gesture and brought out a small automatic, about .25 caliber with a walnut grip. It looked like the brother of the one I had seen in the drawer of Merle’s desk. The muzzle looked vicious enough pointing at me. I didn’t move.
“If anybody tries to push Linda around, he’ll have to push me around first,” he said tightly.
“That oughtn’t to be too hard. Better get more gun—unless you’re just thinking of bees.”
He put the little gun back in his inside pocket. He gave me a straight hard look and picked his gloves up and started for the door.
“It’s a waste of time talking to you,” he said. “All you do is crack wise.”
I said: “Wait a minute,” and got up and went around the desk. “It might be a good idea for you not to mention this interview to your mother, if only for the little girl’s sake.”
He nodded. “For the amount of information I got, it doesn’t seem worth mentioning.”
“That straight goods about your owing Morny twelve grand?”
He looked down, then up, then down again. He said: “Anybody who could get into Alex Morny for twelve grand would have to be a lot smarter than I am.”
I was quite close to him. I said: “As a matter of fact I don’t even think you are worried about your wife. I think you know where she is. She didn’t run away from you at all. She just ran away from your mother.”
He lifted his eyes and drew one glove on. He didn’t say anything.
“Perhaps she’ll get a job,” I said. “And make enough money to support you.”
He looked down at the floor again, turned his body to the right a little and the gloved fist made a tight unrelaxed arc through the air upwards. I moved my jaw out of the way and caught his wrist and pushed it slowly back against his chest, leaning on it. He slid a foot back on the floor and began to breathe hard. It was a slender wrist. My fingers went around it and met.
We stood there looking into each other’s eyes. He was breathing like a drunk, his mouth open and his lips pulled back. Small round spots of bright red flamed on his cheeks. He tried to jerk his wrist away, but I put so much weight on him that he had to take another short step back to brace himself. Our faces were now only inches apart.
