She sniffed again, loudly. The phone rang. I picked it up. A deeper voice than the kid’s, but still female and familiar, started to speak in my ear.
I said, “I’m busy. Call back in half an hour.”
“But-”
“You heard me. Call back.”
“Well, really! I must say!”
I hung up on my dark goddess with her well-reallys and her I-must-says. It would do the haughty Mrs. Rosten good, from Lash Petroni’s viewpoint, and maybe even from Matt Helm’s, to stew a little longer. The fact that she’d called at all meant that I’d won something, although I still wasn’t quite sure what. I turned back to the kid, took a clean handkerchief from my pocket and placed it in her hand.
“Blow your nose and tell Papa Petroni all about it.”
She looked at my handkerchief and threw it on the floor and ran the back of her hand and forearm back and forth under her nose, defiantly. I guess the unladylike gesture was supposed to shock me.
“All right,” I said. “If you spurn my hanky, have a drink instead-and don’t tell me you won’t touch my lousy liquor. That’s enough temperament for tonight. I read your message loud and clear: you don’t like me any more.”
“I hate you! I don’t know how I could have-”
“Skip it,” I said. I pocketed the money and gave her little purse back. “Now go into the bathroom and wash your face. Other cosmetic and sartorial improvements may occur to you, once you look in the mirror. One might even say the field is wide open.”
“I won’t-”
“Go on,” I said, swinging her around and giving her a slap behind. She started indignantly.
“Don’t touch me!”
“Don’t worry, I’m not contagious.”
She glared at me over her shoulder. “Oh, yes, you are! If it hadn’t been for you, I’d never have dreamed of-”
The phone rang again. It was my busy night. If it kept up like this, I’d have to hire a secretary. I closed the bathroom door on Teddy’s rumpled, rebellious little figure, and crossed the room. This time it was the male half of the Rosten duo on the line. It sounded as if he were calling from a bar or all-night restaurant; there was jukebox music in the background.
“Petroni, I have to talk to you-”
“In the morning,” I said.
“But I must know what went wrong-”
“In the morning,” I said. “I’ll get in touch.”
I hung up on Louis and made the drinks, trying not to feel too pleased with myself. I might not know any more than I had before, but at least I had them all buzzing like angry bees. The kid came out of the bathroom looking subdued and, except for her stained dress, almost respectable. I put a glass into her hand.
“Who was on the phone?” she asked.
“None of your damn business,” I said. “Don’t get nosy.”
She flushed. “You don’t have to be rude!”
I said, “Easy, Teddy. I never told you the devil didn’t deserve you. 1 figure I’ve still got some change coming, as far as rudeness is concerned.”
She looked up at me and drew a long, ragged breath. Her eyes were big and shiny in her tiny face. “I-I don’t understand you, Jim. I don’t understand myself. I know you’re a dreadful person, and I tell myself I hate and despise you, and then I come here and-,-and you’re almost human in your funny, overbearing way, and I-oh, I don’t know what I’m trying to say!” She gulped at her drink, and looked up again. “What happened? What went wrong with your plans?”
“What makes you think something went wrong?”
“Well, Mrs. Rosten-she escaped, didn’t she? She came home a mess, but alive and hopping mad.” Before I could offer an excuse or explanation, Teddy shook her head quickly. “Never mind. I don’t want to know anything about it. I don’t care, just so she’s alive. Why-why, I might be a murderess now!” She glanced at me. “It’s all right, isn’t it? You have your money, all of it. I don’t mind. I must have been insane! I deserve-I don’t mind about the money. But you will go away, won’t you-and forget I ever asked you to- It was horrible,” she breathed. “Simply horrible!”
“What was horrible?”
“All that waiting at the house, making conversation, trying to act natural, not knowing how we’d hear. I thought I’d throw up when the telephone rang, honest! And then hearing her car come up the drive like a maniac was at the wheel, or somebody who’d been-terribly hurt and was trying to get home before-before she-passed out or died.” The childish blue eyes looked up at me, remembering. “And the car screeched to a halt outside, and we heard her get out and stumble up the steps-and I remembered what you’d said about-about smashed faces and ripped out fingernails. I thought I’d die, watching that door, waiting to see what-I wouldn’t go through another minute like that for a million dollars!”
I said, “You hate Mrs. Rosten. She’s responsible for your daddy’s death. Remember?”
Teddy didn’t seem to hear. “And then she was standing there like that, like a-a tattered ghost, like something that had clawed its way out of a damp grave, and I knew if she saw my face she’d know, and I managed to spill my drink-” Her voice trailed off.
“Quick thinking,” I said. “Did it work?”
“I think so. I don’t think she suspects. I’m going back to New York in the morning,” Teddy said breathlessly. “I should never have come! I’ve made a perfect little fool of myself! Why, I really haven’t any proof at all, have I? I guess I was just, well, dramatizing. I just don’t know what I was thinking of!”
I looked down at her for a little while without speaking. It was the first clear profit of the evening’s work: I could cross one name off the list. She wasn’t acting. She honestly believed she’d just missed becoming a blood-stained criminal; which meant she believed in her ruthless accomplice, the criminal Lash Petroni. She had no suspicion she was talking to a phony. Whoever had listened to those tapes recorded in Jean’s room, it wasn’t she.
I felt kind of sorry for the little girl standing there with her prettiness tarnished and her self-confidence destroyed. A night’s sleep and a change of clothes would fix her up in one respect, but it would take some time before she got over the shock of discovering that she wasn’t nearly as wicked as she’d thought. I was tempted to let it go at that; but this was no time for sentimentality. I couldn’t afford to let her off the hook as long as there was a possibility of her exerting useful pressure on one of the others.
I took the purse from her hands, got the money from my dressing gown pocket, and stuffed it back the way it had been. I put the purse into her hands.
She said quickly, “But I want you to have it.”
“I’ll have it,” I said. “When I’ve earned it.”
She stared at me, wide-eyed. “But you can’t-I mean, you don’t have to-I mean, I don’t want-”
“Who the hell,” I said, “cares what you want, now? You started the ball rolling, how are you going to call it back? Go to New York, go anywhere you please. You’ll know when the payoff is due. You’ll read about it in the papers. You have the dough ready. Okay?”
“No!” she gasped. “No, it’s not okay. You must be crazy!”
“You had your chance to pull out this afternoon,” I said. “Don’t talk crazy to me, doll. At least I don’t change my mind sixteen times a minute. I’ve got this thing going now, I’m looking forward to doing a job on that snooty dame, and you’re not chickening out on Lash Petroni, understand? What the hell do you think this is, anyway? You don’t turn a guy like me on and off like a lavatory spigot!” I had her by the arm, leading her towards the door. “Now get out of here-”
As I reached for the knob, it was turned from outside. I stepped back, shoving Teddy aside. The door opened, showing young Orcutt standing on the threshold. He looked at me and he looked at the kid.
“I thought,” he said quietly to her, “you might be just about ready to leave, Teddy.”
She hesitated, sniffed, and ran to him. “Oh, Billy!”
I asked, “Do you spend your life trailing her around, Billy?”
He said, “It is my ambition to do so, sir.” He caught sight of himself in the dresser mirror, straightened his tie, and put his arm around the girl. “I’m working on it, you might say.” For all of being a plump boy, he had a kind of impressive dignity.
“There’s some risk involved in a plan like that.”
“You made that quite plain the last time we met, sir. I’m afraid my performance wasn’t very noteworthy.” He paused, and went on, “Just the same, I will tell you again what I told you then. Leave her alone, Mr. Petroni. I don’t know what’s between you and I don’t care. Just stay clear away from her, hear? The next time-”
“What about next time, punk?” I asked sneeringly.
“The next time,” he said gently, “you’ll have to kill me. Come on, Teddy. My car’s downstairs. I’ll take you back to the motel.”
I watched them go out, frowning. There might be less to little Teddy Michaelis, as far as the case was concerned, than had appeared at first, but young Orcutt, with his habit of popping up at odd moments, was becoming more and more interesting.
The phone started ringing behind me. I closed the door and looked at my watch. Mrs. Rosten was calling back right on time; it had been exactly half an hour since her previous call. I shivered, for some reason, as I went to talk to her.
SIXTEEN
Ii WAS A large place on the water, some distance out of town. By the time I reached it, the moon was getting low and a mist was rising. My headlights sent long white fingers searching the lawns and trees ahead of me as I followed the winding drive around to the rear of the house, as instructed. There wasn’t a breath of air moving. The small sound as the house door opened seemed as loud as a gunshot.
“This way,” Mrs. Rosten called softly. I got out of the car and joined her. She said, “I apologize for the back door, but I thought you’d rather not attract any more at-attention than necessary.”
I said, “It couldn’t just be that you’re ashamed of your guest, lady.”
She was wearing something long and pale that whispered when she swung to face me. I couldn’t see her face clearly, but her voice was sharp, “Can’t you forget that twisted pride for one minute, Petroni? I said please over the phone, didn’t I?”
She turned away, leaving me to follow her ghostlike figure through a dark kitchen and a succession of dark rooms into a small, softly lighted, booklined study in which a fire was burning. I noted a gun rack over the fireplace. A leather sofa faced the fireplace. It looked quite comfortable and inviting. On the low table before the sofa was a silver tray holding an array of bottles, two glasses, a silver ice bucket, and so help me, a real honest-to-God soda-water siphon. I hadn’t seen one of those in years.
She had stopped to close the door behind me. I turned to face her. We stood like that for a moment. I pursed my lips and whistled softly.
