the Arizona line, in Mexico.'
'Swell,' I tell him, putting the gun away.
I get up.
'I'll be seem' you, Fernandez,' I crack, 'an' while I am away don't you do anything your mother wouldn't like to know about.'
CHAPTER 7
I DRIVE back to the Hacienda.
On my way I am thinkin' plenty. I am thinkin' that this guy Fernandez knows a durn sight more than he is lettin' on. I reckon that he only blew this stuff about the dame Paulette Benito just because he was afraid that I was goin' to blast a bunch of daylight into him, an' even then I don't think he woulda come clean if he hadn't thought that I'd known something about a dame anyway.
But I am very interested in the way this guy tries to bust down Henrietta's story about there bein' some other woman. It is a cinch that this Fernandez an' Burdell are workin' together on some set-up that they have thought out, but just what they are gettin' at - search me, I just don't know.
An' for all I know Fernandez an' Burdell an' Henrietta an' Maloney can be all playin' along together, I've known crooks put on good acts before an' when you come to think of it I know just as much about this bezusus as when I started in. All the way along the thing has got sorta confused with new people an' things bustin' in.
But one thing is stickin' outa foot. Both Langdon Burdell an' Fernandez want me to think that Henrietta bumped Granworth off. Everything they have done an' said is calculated to get my mind workin' that way. What are they gettin' at?
I reckon that I have gotta get next to this Paulette Benito. Because I reckon that she is goin' to be able to tell me more about Granworth Aymes than anybody else. If she was the woman he was chasin' around after, an' if he thought enough of her to give a swell dame like Henrietta the go-by for her, then she must have some little thing that the others haven't got She must have plenty, an' I reckon that Granworth never had any secrets from her.
Because, an' I expect you have noticed this too, a bad guy always likes to kid himself that he is goin' for a good dame, but in the long run he always makes a play for some jane who thinks along the same lines as he does. He does this because she always talks the same sorta language an' believes in the same sorta things. Maybe Henrietta made Granworth feel like two cents just because she was so much better than he was an' so he takes a run out powder an' hitches up with this Paulette, who knows how to play him along. In nine cases outa ten like goes for like.
I remember some high-hat jane in Minnesota. Her pa wanted her to get hitched to some young bible-student who was kickin' about the place, but she wouldn't have it at any price. She goes off one night an' she runs away with a two-gun man who finally gets fried for murder, after which she comes back an' marries the church guy with a contented mind. I reckon that if she hadn't gone off with the other guy she wouldn'ta been able to appreciate the bible-puncher.
There is one idea that I have got in my head an' that sorta sticks. It is that Burdell an' Fernandez an' anybody else who is playin' in with them woulda expected me to have pinched Henrietta before now. After all I have got evidence that she was in New York that night. I am entitled to suppose that she know somethin' about the counterfeitin' an' most people woulda pulled her in before now - as a material witness at least.
An' the reason why I have not done this is just because I have got this idea that they expect me to do it, an' I am a guy who never does what other people expect. That is why I told Fernandez the story that Henrietta had told me. I wanted to see what his reaction to it was, an' sure as a gun the big palooka starts to throw it down, even though, if what he told me before was true, he didn't know anything about what had happened that night in New York because he was stickin' around at his own place.
I pull up around the back of the Hacienda, an' walk around to the front entrance. It is a lovely night, hot as hell, but there is a moonlight that is making the old adobe walls look like silver an' castin' shadows all around the place like it was some sorta fairyland.
I go in the entrance an' I see that some of the lights are out. When I get on to the main floor I see that the band is just packin' up an' that all the tables are deserted. I look up the stairs an' I see a guy an' a dame disappearin' into the room where the play is held so I think that maybe Periera has fixed a game for tonight.
Just then I see him. He comes outa the storeroom behind the bar, an' he opens the flap in the counter an' walks across to me.
'Meester Caution,' he says. 'There ees a little game tonight - not very beeg. I know that ect ces not legal, but 1 theenk that you don't mind, eb? Eet don' matter to you?'
'You bet it don't,' I tell him. 'I'm a Federal Agent not a Palm Springs dick, an' it ain't my business to worry about people breakin' the State gamblin' laws. Maybe I'll come up an' take a look.'
He says thank you very much an' looks as pleased as if I had given him a thousand bucks. I have already told you that I do not like this guy Periera one bit. He is a nasty bit of business an' I personally would like to take a sock at him any time, but right now I am feelin' like playin' anybody around here along. I want 'em all to think that they're gettin' away with everything, that I am just a big dumb cluck with no brains, because I reckon that this way, sooner or later, somebody is goin' to do something that is goin' to give me an idea to get goin' with.
So I ease up the stairs an' go into the gamin' room. There are a bunch of people there. Maloney is there an' Henrietta an' about six or seven other guys an' a few dames. One of the waiters is servin' liquor around an' there is a faro game goin' on at the top table an' they are just startin' to play poker at the centre table.
I stick around an' take a straight rye an' just look. Henrietta is playin' at the poker table - she is evidently playin' on the house, an' Maloney is sittin' behind a stack of chips an' lookin' pleased. Maybe he is winnin' for once. Periera is just hangin' around lookin' nice an' benevolent. In fact it is a nice quiet evenin' for all concerned. Fernandez ain't there an' I reckon that he is sittin' way back in that swell cabin of his doin' a spot of quiet thinkin'.
An' what will he be thinkin' about? I reckon that he will be thinkin' about this dame Paulette Benito that he has told me about.
First of all you gotta realise that he only told me about this jane because he was good an' scared an' because he thought that if he hadn't come across I was goin' to give him the heat. I reckon that when I pulled that gun on him he was scared plenty. An' the reason I pulled it was just this: I knew that there was some dame besides Henrietta in this business. I always had that sorta idea an' I had it just because Burdell, who had always talked plenty, had never even mentioned about there bein' another dame or not. Even when he was suggestin' to me that Henrietta took the letters she had wrote from Granworth Aymes' desk just so's nobody would know that she had written 'em, he never said whether she had been justified in writin' them.
If she hadn't been, that is if he'd known there wasn't another dame in the business, he coulda said so then. But he didn't say a word about the dame that brought Henrietta to New York an' that is one of the reasons why I thought that Henrietta was tellin' the truth.
An' I reckoned to take Fernandez by surprise an it came off. You gotta understand that the last thing that Fernandez heard from Burdell was on that phone call, that I had been along to the Burdell office an' heard all tat stuff he pulled on me an' believed it. Neither of 'em guessed that I had their telephone conversation plugged in an' listened to.
Now here is another thing: Fernandez tells me that he thoughta marryin' Henrietta but that he has changed his mind. Yet when Burdell telephoned through he tells Fernandez to go ahead with this marryin' business. Fernandez makes out that he has changed his mind about it an' tells me so because it looks to him that I am goin' to pinch Henrietta, but just when he gets this idea into head'n thinks that everything is hunky dory I pull a fast one an' a gun an' bust the story about this other' dame outa him.
So I can certainly rely on one thing, an' that is that when I go an' see this Paulette Benito-an' I am certainly
