Ferguson picked it up and studied it. He clasped it to his chest. A paroxysm went through him, making his ugly face uglier. He looked as if he was weeping, dry-eyed, in silence.
“Poor guy,” Padilla said.
He went as far as the archway, and paused there, deterred by the privacy of grief. I wasn’t so sensitive. I went in past him. “Ferguson, was that phone call about your wife?”
He nodded.
“Is she dead?”
“They claim not. I don’t know.”
“ ‘They’?”
“Her abductors. Holly has been abducted.”
“Kidnapped?”
“Yes. They demand two hundred thousand dollars for her return.”
Padilla whistled softly behind me.
“Have they called you before?”
“Yes, but I wasn’t home. I haven’t been here much in the past day.”
“This phone call was your first communication from them?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you say so at the time? We might have had some chance of tracing the call.”
“I don’t want anything done along those lines. I didn’t even intend to tell you and Padilla. I’m sorry now that I did.”
“You can’t handle a thing like this all by yourself.”
“Why not? I have the cash. They’re welcome to it if they give Holly back to me.”
“You have two hundred thousand dollars in cash?”
“I have more than that. I had it transferred to the local Bank of America because I’ve been intending to buy some property here. I can draw it out when the bank opens in the morning.”
“When and where are you supposed to pay them?”
“He said I was to wait for further instructions.”
“Did you recognize his voice on the telephone?”
“No.”
“Then it wasn’t Larry Gaines?”
“It wasn’t Gaines, no. It wouldn’t make any difference to me if it was. They have her. I’m willing to pay for her.”
“It may not be quite that simple. I hate to say this, Colonel, but this could be a shakedown. Some petty crook may have heard that your wife is missing, and is trying to cash in on the fact.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” The thought sat heavy on him for a moment. Then he shook it off. “But it can’t be the case. Even if it were, I’d have to go ahead with it.”
He was still holding the photograph against his chest. He polished its glass with his sleeve and held it up to the light, gazing at it almost reverently. The pictured woman was a blonde in her middle twenties.
Ferguson set the picture on the piano, very carefully, as if it were an icon whose exact position might somehow affect his wife’s fate. I took a closer look at it, and remembered seeing the same face on movie marquees and in the newspapers.
It had the standard perfections of her trade, but it had an individual cast as well. It was a face which had known trouble, and smiled back at it. The smile was a little too bold for comfort. The knowledge in the eyes was a little too definite. Holly May would be interesting to know, but perhaps not easy to live with.
“It’s a good picture of her,” Padilla said at my shoulder. “You ever see her?”
“Not in the flesh.”
“Christ, I hope she’s all right. I was afraid that something happened to her, I told you that. But I didn’t think it could be a snatch.”
Ferguson moved between us and the picture. Perhaps he was jealous of our stares. I could understand why jealousy of Gaines had been eating him. He was at least twice his wife’s age, and not nearly so pretty. An unlikely match, in spite of all the money he had, or was supposed to have.
“I want you men to keep this affair to yourselves,” Ferguson said. “It’s of the utmost importance that you do. If the authorities get wind of it, it will put her life in danger.”
“The dirty crumbs,” Padilla growled. “Is that what they said on the telephone?”
“Yes. He said that they are in a position to know every move the police make. If I call in the police, they will kill my wife.”
I said: “This may not be the way to save her, Colonel. You’ve had a hard day, and you may not be thinking as straight as usual. In a situation like this, you need all the help you can get. You should take the local police into your confidence. The chief detective, Wills, is a friend of mine. He can advise you about contacting the FBI-”
Ferguson cut me short. “It’s absolutely out of the question. I want your solemn word that you won’t go to the police, or anyone else!”
“You should listen to the man,” Padilla said. “Like he was saying, you’ve had a lot to drink. Maybe you could use a little advice.”
“I know what I have to do. No amount of advice will change the facts. I’m bound and determined to do my part.”
“Let’s hope that they do theirs, Ferguson. I think you’re handling it wrong. But it’s your wife.”
“I’ll trust you to remember that. I don’t want either of you to endanger Holly by going to the police. The criminals have a friend on the force, apparently-”
“That I doubt.”
“I know something about American police. If the RCMP was available, I’d gladly go to them.”
The man’s naivete would have been funny under other circumstances. I made one last attempt. “Listen to me, Ferguson. I urge you to discuss this matter with someone. Do you have a lawyer you trust?”
“I have in Calgary, Alberta. If you think I’m going to hire you to give me advice I don’t want and won’t take-”
“I’m not trying to get myself hired.”
“That’s good, because I know you American lawyers. I had dealings with some of your breed when Holly was trying to get free from that wretched studio.” He paused, and gave me a canny look. “Of course, if a small retainer will keep you quiet-you can have a couple of hundred.”
“Keep it.”
He smiled grimly, as if an angry atmosphere suited him. “We’re mutually agreed then. Can I trust you to respect my confidence?”
“Naturally.” I realized, a second too late, that I had been manipulated-maneuvered into a dubious position.
“What about you, Padilla?”
“You can trust me, Colonel.”
chapter 8
“THE OLD BOY HAS GUTS,” Padilla said in the car.
“Yes, where his brains should be. I’ve got a good mind to go to the police, in spite of what he said.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Why not? You surely don’t believe the police are collaborating with the kidnappers?”
“Naw, but it wouldn’t be fair. You got to give him a chance to handle it his own way. He’s no dope, you know. He may talk like a dope, and act like one, but he’s got a head on his shoulders. You don’t make his kind of money without a head on your shoulders.”
“I don’t make his kind of money, period. Where did he get his money?”
“Out of the ground, he told me. He started out on a ranch in Alberta where they discovered oil. He used his
