That’s all, I swear that’s all, I almost never see him, he never comes here!”
“You’re a goddam liar. If he never comes here, how does he get the messages?”
“I call at a hotel in New York, and then he calls me back. Sometimes he comes out to pay me, but only two or three times a year.”
“You call a hotel in New York. You mean where he stays?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t talk to him?”
“No, I just leave a message with the desk.”
“The message you get, you leave at this hotel desk?’
“No. I call there, and I say I want to leave a message for Mr. Edward Latham. Then I just leave my name, and after a while he calls me back, and I tell him the message.”
He was frowning, and he said, “That’s awful damn complicated.”
“That’s the way he wants to do it.”
Still standing in the same position, left leg up on hearth, right hand on hip, left elbow on mantelpiece, he gnawed a thumb-knuckle now and brooded. She watched him, watching him think about it and wondering whether the He Parker had worked out for her would hold up or not. What if he decided to call the hotel?
“All right,” he said finally, and moved away from the fireplace. “What’s the hotel?”
“The Wilmington.”
“Move over.”
The phone was beside her. She got up and moved to the other end of the sofa, and he sat down and said, “What’s the number there?”
“I’ll have to look it up.”
He frowned at her, with one hand resting on the phone. “Look it up? You call this number all the time, you don’t know it?”
“Not all the time. There aren’t that many messages to pass on. And I’m terrible with numbers.”
“Terrible with numbers. I think you’re lying, honey, and if it turns out you are, you’ll go out screaming.”
He turned his back on her, and picked up the phone, ready to dial.
In a small voice she said, “You have to dial one first.”
He frowned at her again. “What?”
“If you’re calling New York, you have to—”
“Area code, I know.”
“No, before that. You have to dial one first. You see, this is just a little phone company out here, it isn’t—”
“Shut up.” He said it flat and cold, and sat looking at her with totally blank eyes. All the mean comedy was gone from his face now. He said, “I take very bad to frustration. I break my toys. You ought to be warned.”
She nodded, birdlike, afraid to speak.
He turned back to the phone and dialed one, and then the area code, and then a New York number. He waited, and his free hand tapped his knee. She looked at the hand, and it was stubby-fingered and thick, the backs of the fingers covered with burns and scratches as though he’d been doing carpentry work without gloves. The nails were wide and stubby and dirty. The hand looked strong and humorless and .mean.
“Hello, Information? Yes, hello, dear, Manhattan. Wilmington Hotel. Okay, dear, thanks a lot.” He broke the connection, started to dial again, stopped, said, “Damn!” He started again; he’d forgotten to dial one, and he must have gotten the recorded announcement.
“Hello, Wilmington Hotel? Do you have a Mr. Latham registered there, Edward Latham? Yeah, I’ll wait.”
The stubby fingers tapped the rough cloth over his knee. His face was turned away from her, and the wild- haired back of his head told her nothing except that she should be afraid of him.
“Hello? Thursday? Hold on, there’s somebody wants to leave a message for him.” He got to his feet, turning in a half-circle so he could extend the phone receiver over toward her. “You want him to call you right away.”
She leaned leftward, taking the receiver, trying to think. What message would sound realistic to this man? What name should she use? The name on the mailbox, wouldn’t that be safest? “Hello?”
The voice of the disinterested desk clerk seventy miles away spoke in her ear: “Yes?”
“I have a message for Mr.—Mr. Latham.”
“Yes?”
“Would he call Mrs. Willis as soon as possible.”
“Mrs. Willis was that?”
“That’s right. He knows the number.”
“Very well. Call Mrs. Willis as soon as possible.”
“Yes, thank you.”
