caressive movement of the hand with which he pushed his hair back into place.
`Look,' he said, `could we continue this seance in the morning? I've had a hard week, and I'd like a chance to sleep on this business. I've had no real sleep since Monday.'
`Neither have I,' Bastian said.
`Maybe you need some sleep, too. This harassing approach isn't really such a good idea.'
`There was no harassment.'
`I'll be the judge of that.' Hillman's voice rose. 'You brought that knife into my home and shook it in my face. I have a witness to that,' he added, meaning me.
I said: `Let's not get bogged down in petty arguments. Lieutenant Bastian and I have some business to discuss.'
`Anything you say to him you'll have to say in front of me.'
`All right.'
`After I talk to the boy,' Bastian said.
Hillman made a curt gesture with his hand. `You're not talking to him. I don't believe I'll let you talk to him tomorrow, either. There are, after all, medical considerations.'
`Are you a medical man?'
`I have medical men at my disposal.'
'I'm sure you do. So do we.'
The two men faced each other in quiet fury. They were opposites in many ways. Bastian was a saturnine Puritan, absolutely honest, a stickler for detail, a policeman before he was a man. Hillman's personality was less clear. It had romantic and actorish elements, which often mask deep evasions. His career had been meteoric, but it was the kind of career that sometimes left a man empty-handed in middle life.
`Do you have something to say to the lieutenant?'
Hillman asked me. `Before he leaves?'
`Yes. You may not like this, Mr. Hillman. I don't. Last night a young man driving a late-model blue Chevrolet was seen in the driveway of the Barcelona Hotel. It's where Mike Harley was found stabbed, with that knife.'
I pointed to the evidence box on the table. `The young man has been tentatively identified as Dick Leandro.'
`Who made the identification?' Bastian said.
`Ben Daly, the service-station operator.'
`The man who killed Sipe.'
`Yes.'
`He's either mistaken or lying,' Hillman said. `Dick drives a blue car, but it's a small sports car, a Triumph.'
`Does he have access to a blue Chevrolet?'
'Not to my knowledge. You're surely not trying to involve Dick in this mess.'
`If he's involved, we have to know about it.'
I said to Bastian: `Maybe you can determine whether he borrowed or rented a blue Chevrolet last night. Or it's barely possible that he stole one.
'Will do,' Bastian said.
Hillman said nothing.
27
BASTIAN PICKED UP his evidence case and shut it with a click. He walked out without a sign to either of us. He was treating Hillman as if he no longer existed. He was treating me in such a way that I could stay with Hillman.
Hillman watched him from the entrance to the library until he was safely across the reception hall and out the front door. Then he came back into the room. Instead of returning to the table where I was, he went to the wall of photographs where the squadron on the flight deck hung in green deep-sea light.
`What goes on around here?' he said. `Somebody took down Dick's picture.'
`I did, for identification purposes.'
I got it out of my pocket. Hillman came and took it away from me. The glass was smudged by lingers, and he rubbed it with the sleeve of his jacket.
`You had no right to take it. What are you trying to do to Dick, anyway?'
`Get at the truth about him.'
`There is no mysterious truth about him. He's a perfectly nice ordinary kid.'
`I hope so.'
`Look here,' he said, `you've accomplished what I hired you to do. Don't think I'm ungrateful - I'm planning to give you a substantial bonus. But I didn't hire you to investigate those murders.'
