“I wouldn’t say so.”
“You wouldn’t?”
“Hell no, I think you’re one of the most unusual girls I ever met.” I swung the bag by its strap and set it down on the corner of the desk. Her eyes fastened on it quickly, but she licked her lip and kept on smiling at me.
“And I bet you’ve known an awful lot of girls,” she said. “Why—” she looked down and did that with her fingertip on the desk again—”why didn’t you ever get married?”
I thought of all the ways you answer that. I thought of all the women I had liked that much. No, not all. But some of them.
“I suppose I know the answer,” I said. “But it would just sound corny. The ones I’d maybe like to marry—well, I haven’t what they need. The others you don’t have to marry. You just seduce them—if they don’t beat you to it.”
She flushed to the roots of her mousy hair.
“You’re horrid when you talk like that.”
“That goes for some of the nice ones too,” I said. “Not what you said. What I said. You wouldn’t have been so hard to take yourself.”
“Don’t talk like that, please!”
“Well, would you?”
She looked down at the desk. “I wish you’d tell me,” she said slowly, “what happened to Orrin. I’m all confused.”
“I told you he probably went off the rails. The first time you came in. Remember?” She nodded slowly, still blushing.
“Abnormal sort of home life,” I said. “Very inhibited sort of guy and with a very highly developed sense of his own importance. It looked at you out of the picture you gave me. I don’t want to go psychological on you, but I figure he was just the type to go very completely haywire, if he went haywire at all. Then there’s that awful money hunger that runs in your family—all except one.”
She smiled at me now. If she thought I meant her, that was jake with me. “There’s one question I want to ask you,” I said. “Was your father married before?”
She nodded, yes.
“That helps. Leila had another mother. That suits me fine. Tell me some more. After all I did a lot of work for you, for a very low fee of no dollars net.”
“You got paid,” she said sharply. “Well paid. By Leila. And don’t expect me to call her Mavis Weld. I won’t do it.”
“You didn’t know I was going to get paid.”
“Well—” there was a long pause, during which her eyes went to her bag again—”you did get paid.”
“Okay, pass that. Why wouldn’t you tell me who she was?”
“I was ashamed. Mother and I were both ashamed.”
“Orrin wasn’t. He loved it.”
“Orrin?” There was a tidy little silence while she looked at her bag again. I was beginning to get curious about that bag. “But he had been out here and I suppose he’d got used to it.”
“Being in pictures isn’t that bad, surely.”
“It wasn’t just that,” she said swiftly, and her tooth came down on the outer edge of her lower lip and something flared in her eyes and very slowly died away. I just put another match to my pipe. I was too tired to show emotions, even if I felt any.
“I know. Or anyway I kind of guessed. How did Orrin find out something about Steelgrave that the cops didn’t know?”
“I—I don’t know,” she said slowly, picking her way among her words like a cat on a fence. “Could it have been that doctor?”
“Oh sure,” I said, with a big warm smile. “He and Orrin got to be friends somehow. A common interest in sharp tools maybe.”
She leaned back in her chair. Her little face was thin and angular now. Her eyes had a watchful look.
“Now you’re just being nasty,” she said. “Every so often you have to be that way.”
“Such a pity,” I said. “I’d be a lovable character if I’d let myself alone. Nice bag.” I reached for it and pulled it in front of me and snapped it open.
She came up out of her chair and lunged.
“You let my bag alone!”
I looked her straight in the rimless glasses. “You want to go home to Manhattan, Kansas, don’t you? Today? You got your ticket and everything?”
She worked her lips and slowly sat down again.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m not stopping you. I just wondered how much dough you squeezed out of the deal.”
She began to cry. I opened the bag and went through it. Nothing until I came to the zipper pocket at the back. I unzipped and reached in. There was a flat packet of new bills in there. I took them out and riffled them. Ten centuries. All new. All nice. An even thousand dollars. Nice traveling money.
