Bring it? Not quite so soon, Menlo thought. “Ah, I am sorry. It isn’t, ah, completely ready to be shown; not quite yet. But perhaps I could come and discuss the situation with you? In one hour?”
There was the briefest of pauses, and then Harrow replied, “That’s fine. One hour.”
“I look forward to meeting you,” Menlo said, but Harrow had hung up. Menlo returned the receiver to its hook and smiled at it. Bringthe statue ? Did Harrow have some idea he could get the statue by trickery, and not pay for it?
A depressing thought occurred to him. Thatmight be why the daughter had been so free with her charms. To lull his suspicions, to dull his wits.
But would a father, even in the United States, use his daughter in such fashion?
He wished he knew for sure what Bett Harrow saw in him. He was not young or handsome, he was only rich. But she was rich too.
He couldn’t understand it. He was grateful for it and he would not refuse it, but he couldn’t understand it.
He left the telephones and went through the blue entrance a slate walk flanked by cool green ponds full of tiny fish and screened on both sides by tall board fences painted blue and entered the rear of the hotel. There was a bank of three elevators here, for the convenience of the swimmers and sunbathers. Menlo rode up to the seventh floor, and then walked the endless corridors to his room.
His black suit had been returned, beautifully cleaned and pressed. His freshly laundered shirts had come back, and the new socks and underwear he had bought in the hotel shop that morning along with the maroon bathing trunks were put away in the dresser drawer. He took a shower and dressed, checked the locked suitcase full of money in the closet, which had not been tampered with, and left the room. He went to the nearer bank of elevators, and when the elevator arrived, said, “Top floor.”
“Yes, sir.”
When he got off, he asked directions to suite D, and was told to bear to his right. He did so. The halls up here were done in pastel shades, much less violent than in the plebeian quarters below, much more restful. He walked a considerable distance before finally seeing a door of any kind, which was marked “C”. After a turning he came to suite D.
A middle-aged gentleman who could have been nothing but an American businessman or perhaps a Swiss businessman, or a Scandinavian businessman, but at any rate a capitalist businessman opened the door to Menlo’s knock. “Mr Menlo?”
“The name is Auguste, for the moment. John Auguste. You are Ralph Harrow?”
“Yes. Come in.”
The daughter, down on the twelfth floor, had a two-room suite. How many rooms this one contained was anyone’s guess. Harrow led the way down the foyer into a large sitting room. Directly ahead, through French doors, was a terrace. Doors in both side walls were open, leading into other parts of the suite.
“Sit down,” said Harrow. “Drink?”
“Perhaps Scotch. And plain water.”
“Right you are.”
The long sofa in the middle of the room was white leather. The marble-topped coffee table in front of it was covered by a number of American magazines, tastefully laid out in a diagonal row, so that the name of each magazine showed. Menlo sat down on the sofa, feeling the whoosh of air leaving the cushion, and looked around. He would have to get a suite like this for himself soon. Once everything has been straightened out.
Harrow brought his Scotch and water, along with a drink for himself in his other hand. He sat down at the opposite end of the sofa. “My daughter tells me you took the statue away from Willis.”
“In a manner of speaking.” Menlo smiled. “Actually he never did have possession of it.”
“Then you’re an amazing man. Willis didn’t strike me as the kind of man you could take things from. Well. But that’s not why you’re here. You realize I paid for the statue once, don’t you?”
“So I understand.”
“Fifty thousand. Willis must have had that on him too. You mean to say you didn’t get it?”
“No. I did not. An oversight, possibly.”
“Bett tells me you have money. Quite a bit of it. In cash.”
“From another source entirely, I assure you.”
Harrow waved that aside. “The point is, I’ve already paid for the damn thing. I don’t like the idea of paying twice.”
“Your daughter didn’t explain my terms?”
“No, she didn’t.”
Menlo outlined them quickly; a safe place for his money, the necessary papers to explain himself should it ever become necessary. “And one last thing,” he said. “One of my teeth is capped, and within the cap is a tiny capsule containing poison. I don’t believe”
“Poison!”
“Yes, I don’t be”
“What on earth for?”
“In my former job it was thought I might find it necessary to take my own life under certain conditions. I somehow do not believe that will ever be necessary now.”
“Good God, man, poison! What happens when you eat?”
