Bidwell read it over my shoulder, groaning audibly. “That came out last weekend in a syndicated column which went all over the country.”
“It doesn’t prove anything.”
“Perhaps not, but it’s ghastly publicity for us. Can I depend on you, Mr. Gunnarson?”
“To do what?”
“Not to repeat to others what you’ve just said to me?”
I hadn’t really said anything, but he imagined I had. “I won’t, unless my client’s interests are affected. You have my word.”
“How would your client’s interests be affected?”
“She’s suspected of being in complicity with Gaines. She was involved with Gaines, but innocently. She was in love with him.”
“Another one in love with him? How does he do it? I admit he’s a handsome brute, but that’s as far as it goes. He’s raw.”
“Some like them raw. I take it Mrs. Ferguson is one of those who do.”
“She and her husband aren’t too delightful themselves. I’ve made two big mistakes in the past year, hiring Gaines, and admitting the Fergusons to membership. Those two mistakes have combined into the biggest mistake of my life.”
“It can’t be that bad.”
“Can’t it? My life may be in danger.”
“From Gaines?”
“Hardly. He’s long gone. They may be in Acapulco by now, or Hawaii.”
“They?”
“I thought you knew. The Holly May creature went with him. And Colonel Ferguson blames me for the whole thing. He’s out in the club bar now, lapping up rye whisky. I think he’s building up his courage to kill me.”
“Are you serious, Bidwell?”
He leaned forward into the light. His eyes were intensely serious. “The man’s a maniac. He’s been drinking ever since she took off, and he’s taken it into his head to blame me for the elopement.”
“When did she leave?”
“Last night, from here. She and her husband were having dinner in the dining room. There was a telephone call for her. She took it, and then walked right out of the club. Gaines was waiting in the parking lot.”
“How do you know?”
“One of the members saw him there, and mentioned it to me later.”
“Did you tell the police about this?”
“I should certainly say I didn’t. This is a delicate situation, Mr. Gunnarson. An insane situation, but a delicate one.” He managed a small pale smile. “Ours is the most respected club west of the Mississippi-”
“It won’t be if one of the members shoots the manager for conspiring with a lifeguard against Holly May’s chastity.”
“Please don’t spell it out.” He closed his eyes, and shuddered. “At least, if he did shoot me, it would be the end of my worries.”
“You almost mean that, don’t you?”
He opened his eyes, wide. “I almost do.”
“Does Ferguson have a gun?”
“He has an entire arsenal. Really. He’s a big-game hunter, among other things. He actually
“Maybe you better go home.”
“He knows where I live. He was there early this morning, shouting at the front door.”
“I think you should have him picked up. He may be dangerous.”
“He is. He is dangerous. But I cannot and will not bring the police into this. There is simply too much at stake.”
“What, exactly?”
“The reputation of the club. There hasn’t been a major scandal here since the Abernathy suicide pact, and that was before my tenure. All I can do now is hold on and hope that something will happen to save us at the eleventh hour.”
“Let’s hope so, Mr. Bidwell.”
“Call me Arthur, if you like. Here, let me pour you a drink.”
“No, thanks.”
He was trying to prolong the conversation. I looked at my watch. It wasn’t the eleventh hour, but it was nearly the ninth. The Ella Barker case had led me far afield, and threatened to lead me further. It was time to go home to Sally. The thought of her was like a stretching elastic which never quite snapped.
But sometimes it went on stretching.
The phone on Bidwell’s desk rang. He lifted the receiver with an effort, as if it were a heavy iron dumbbell. He listened to a scratchy voice, and said: “For God’s sake, Padilla, I told you to head him off… No! Don’t call them, that’s an order.”
Bidwell sprang to the door, slammed it shut, and locked it. He leaned against it with his arms spread out, like someone getting ready to be crucified. “Padilla says he’s coming here now.”
“Then you better get away from the door. Who’s Padilla?”
“The bartender. Ferguson told him he’s waited long enough.” Droplets were forming on his face as they do on a cold glass. “Talk to him, won’t you? Explain that I’m utterly blameless. Utterly. I had nothing to do with his blessed wife’s departure.” He stepped sideways, tanglefooted, and leaned in the corner.
“Why does he think you had?”
“Because he’s insane. He makes mountains out of molehills. I merely called her into my office to take a telephone call.”
“From Gaines?”
“If so, he must have disguised his voice. I thought myself it was a woman’s voice-not one I recognized. But Ferguson seems to think I’m in cahoots with Gaines, simply because I called his wife out of the dining room.”
“I hear you, Bidwell,” a voice said through the door.
Bidwell jumped as if he’d felt an electric shock, then slumped against the wall as if the shock had killed him.
“If I didn’t hear you, Bidwell, I could smell you. I could tell that you were in there by the smell.” The doorknob rattled. The voice outside rose an octave. “Let me in, you lily-livered swine. I want to talk to you, you Bidwell swine. And you know what about, Bidwell.”
Bidwell shuddered each time he heard his name. He looked at me pleadingly. “Talk to him, will you? It only makes him angrier when I try to talk to him. You’re a lawyer, you know how to talk to people.”
“What you need is a bodyguard.”
Ferguson punctuated this remark with a heavy thud on the bottom of the door. “Open up, Bidwell, or I’ll kick the bloody well door down.”
He kicked it again. One of the panels cracked, and sprinkled varnish on the rug.
Bidwell said urgently: “Go out and talk to him. You have nothing to fear. He doesn’t hate you. I’m the one he hates.”
Under Ferguson’s third kick, the cracked panel started to give. Standing to one side of it, I unlocked and opened the door.
Ferguson kicked air and lurched in past me. He was a big man in his fifties, shaggy in Harris tweeds. His face was long and equine. Small eyes were closely and deeply set under his overhanging gray eyebrows. They scowled around the room. “Where is he? Where is the pandering little swine?”
Bidwell was behind the door. He stayed there.
“That’s pretty rough language, isn’t it?” I said.
Ferguson swung his head to look at me. The movement tipped him off balance. He fell back against the side of the doorway. Something metallic in his jacket pocket rapped the door frame.
“You better give me your gun, Colonel. It might go off and shoot you in the hip. Those hip wounds can be
