want to spoil her enjoyment. He was so seldom home anyway. That afternoon she had been silent, which was a relief, particularly since he kept losing.
Willa had tried not to win, because she knew it made her husband feel better if he won, but he hadn’t been concentrating on the game at all so she kept winning despite herself. She wore an apologetic frown throughout the game because she couldn’t keep from winning. She was keeping score, and she kept adding her score up wrong, to give herself less than she really had, but it didn’t do any good. She just kept on winning until finally they quit by mutual consent. Bronson hadn’t seen her since, except for a glimpse of her going by the office door on her way to bed, an hour ago.
He had to get out of this mausoleum soon. Willa was driving him crazy. When he was away from her, it was all right, but when he was in the same house with her, he felt as though he ought to make some effort to be friendly to her, and the strain left his nerves ragged.
Well, at least he wouldn’t have to introduce her to Quill. Some sense of his being an interloper himself forced him to introduce everybody who came in the house to see him to Willa, including the bodyguards. At the same time, he knew it was ridiculous to introduce your bodyguards to your wife as though they’d come for a meeting of the gentlemen’s auxiliary of the DAR. But she was in bed, as she’d been the first time Quill had come, so, fortunately, he wouldn’t have to present him this time either.
Bronson stood at the head of the stairs and watched Quill come up. Quill was the new breed. He wore grey suits and horn-rimmed glasses, he carried a briefcase, he looked like an insurance adjustor, and if he ever did tote a gun, which was unlikely, it would be a Berretta Minx.
“Hello, Mr Bronson,” Quill said, from the landing. He started up the rest of the way. “A real mess, that Cockatoo situation.” He could have beenan insurance adjustor, the way he talked.
If he switches the briefcase to his left hand and tries to shake hands with me, Bronson thought savagely, I’ll kick him downstairs.
But Quill shook hands only with clients or other adjustors, not with employers. He reached the head of the stairs and said, “Very nice house, Mr Bronson. Really very fine.”
“You said that last time.”
Quill smiled easily. “I must mean it, then.”
“Yeah. Well, Quill, come on into the office.”
Bronson led the way. Of course, this was necessary. What he’d been thinking a minute ago that the talk with Quill was superfluous now was wrong. The Club Cockatoo had been robbed, which should have been impossible. It was Quill’s job to find out why it hadbeen possible, so it would never be possible again. And after analysing the Cockatoo problem, Quill would have to investigate the other eleven robberies as well. Something was wrong with the whole organization if they could be hit so easily. No matter what was done with Parker, with Karns, with Fairfax, these other problems were real and had to be solved.
They went into the office. Bronson sat at his desk while Quill opened his briefcase and started producing masses of paper.
“I made a thorough investigation, Mr Bronson,” he said, “and I believe I have come to some conclusions which may startle you.”
“Is that right?”
“Now” Quill started to open one folded sheet of paper which he kept unfolding endlessly. It eventually turned out to be a large blueprint of the Club Cockatoo. “Now, in order for you to get the picture, to see whythis happened, you’ll have to see howit happened. May I?”
He wanted to spread the plan on the desk. Bronson grudgingly cleared space for it. Then Quill stood at his elbow, planted a finger on the blueprint and started talking. He had reconstructed the movements of the robbers from beginning to end, and he now described the robbery in detail, his finger tracing the path of the robbers in through the front door, through the maze of the plan and out again by the side door. Despite himself, Bronson got interested in the recital, and followed the operation, his eyes on the moving finger.
After his reconstruction of the robbery, Quill straightened up and went to the other side of the desk for his briefcase and the mass of papers.
“I have here,” he said, “statements from virtually every Club Cockatoo employee. You can go through them later, I’ll just give you the high spots now.”
He put the mass of papers on the corner of the desk and ticked off the main facts on his fingers. “Number one: No one at the Club Cockatoo, from the manager on down, had ever considered the possibility of an armed robbery by experienced professionals. They were prepared for amateurs, who might come in waving guns and shouting ‘Stick ‘em up,’ or pass notes to the cashiers to put all the money in a canvas bag, that sort of thing, but they were not on guard against intelligent professionals.
“Number two: No one at the Club Cockatoo, from the manager on down, had any idea what to do in case a successful robbery actually did take place. There was no organized plan, no procedure for this eventuality. As a result, the search for the robbers was undertaken exclusively by a limited number of Club Cockatoo employees, with no experience or instruction of this kind of activity. It wasn’t until five hours after the robbery that the manager finally thought to call the local organization head for more capable assistance. By then, of course, it was too late. If the call had been made at once, there would have been fifty expert armed men on the robbers’ trail within half an hour.
“Number three: No one at the Club Cockatoo, from the manager on down, was prepared to offer any real resistance to an armed robber. The attitude seems to be that the Outfit makes enough money to absorb a robbery or two, so there’s no sense risking one’s life.
“Number four: The employees of the Club Cockatoo all behaved as though they were employees of any ordinary lawful corporation, without the self-awareness of divorcement from society which should reasonably be a part of their make-up.”
Bronson was lost by now, but he nodded anyway.
Quill held up four fingers. “So there are four things which set the club up,” he said. “They didn’t think they’d be robbed, they hadn’t thought about what to do if they wererobbed, none of them would risk being shot to protect the organization’s money, and they didn’t think of themselves as crooks. In a nutshell.”
“Hold on,” Bronson held up his own hand, ringers splayed like a traffic cop’s. “What do you mean, they don’t
