blood money. I hope you’ll be happy with it.”
She stood away from the chair and took a couple of steps backward. Then suddenly she giggled.
“Who could prove it?” she half squealed. “Who’s alive to prove it? You? Who are you? A cheap shyster, a nobody.” She went off into a shrill peal of laughter. “Why even twenty dollars buys you.”
I was still holding the packet of photos. I struck a match and dropped the negative into the ashtray and watched it flare up.
She stopped dead, frozen in a kind of horror. I started to tear the pictures up into strips. I grinned at her.
“A cheap shyster,” I said. “Well, what would you expect. I don’t have any brothers or sisters to sell out. So I sell out my clients.”
She stood rigid and glaring. I finished my tearing-up job and lit the scraps of paper in the tray.
“One thing I regret,” I said. “Not seeing your meeting back in Manhattan, Kansas, with dear old Mom. Not seeing the fight over how to split that grand. I bet that would be something to watch.”
I poked at the paper with a pencil to keep it burning. She came slowly, step by step, to the desk and her eyes were fixed on the little smoldering heap of torn prints.
“I could tell the police,” she whispered. “I could tell them a lot of things. They’d believe me.”
“I could tell them who shot Steelgrave,” I said. “Because I know who didn’t. They might believe me.”
The small head jerked up. The light glinted on the glasses. There were no eyes behind them.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not going to. It wouldn’t cost me enough. And it would cost somebody else too much.”
The telephone rang and she jumped a foot. I turned and reached for it and put my face against it and said, “Hello.”
“Amigo, are you all right?”
There was a sound in the background. I swung around and saw the door click shut. I was alone in the room.
“Are you all right, amigo?”
“I’m tired. I’ve been up all night. Apart from—”
“Has the little one called you up?”
“The little sister? She was just in here. She’s on her way back to Manhattan with the swag.”
“The swag?”
“The pocket money she got from Steelgrave for fingering her brother.”
There was a silence, then she said gravely, “You cannot know that, amigo.”
“Like I know I’m sitting leaning on this desk holding on to this telephone. Like I know I hear your voice. And not quite so certainly, but certainly enough like I know who shot Steelgrave.”
“You are somewhat foolish to say that to me, amigo. I am not above reproach. You should not trust me too much.”
“I make mistakes, but this won’t be one. I’ve burned all the photographs. I tried to sell them to Orfamay. She wouldn’t bid high enough.”
“Surely you are making fun, amigo.”
“Am I? Who of?”
She tinkled her laugh over the wire. “Would you like to take me to lunch?”
“I might. Are you home?”
“I’ll come over in a little while.”
“But I shall be delighted.” I hung up.
The play was over. I was sitting in the empty theater. The curtain was down and projected on it dimly I could see the action. But already some of the actors were getting vague and unreal. The little sister above all. In a couple of days I would forget what she looked like. Because in a way she was so unreal. I thought of her tripping back to Manhattan, Kansas, and dear old Mom, with that fat little new little thousand dollars in her purse. A few people had been killed so she could get it, but I didn’t think that would bother her for long. I thought of her getting down to the office in the morning—what was the man’s name? Oh yes. Dr. Zugsmith—and dusting off his desk before he arrived and arranging the magazines in the waiting room. She’d have her rimless cheaters on and a plain dress and her face would be without make-up and her manners to the patients would be most correct.
“Dr. Zugsmith will see you now, Mrs. Whoosis.”
She would hold the door open with a little smile and Mrs. Whoosis would go in past her and Dr. Zugsmith would be sitting behind his desk as professional as hell with a white coat on and his stethoscope hanging around his neck. A case file would be in front of him and his note pad and prescription pad would be neatly squared off. Nothing that Dr. Zugsmith didn’t know. You couldn’t fool him. He had it all at his fingertips. When he looked at a patient he knew the answers to all the questions he was going to ask just as a matter of form.
When he looked at his receptionist, Miss Orfamay Quest, he saw a nice quiet young lady, properly dressed for a doctor’s office, no red nails, no loud make-up, nothing to offend the old-fashioned type of customer. An ideal receptionist, Miss Quest.
Dr. Zugsmith, when he thought about her at all thought of her with self-satisfaction. He had made her what she was. She was just what the doctor ordered.
