Harkness repeated the message.
“I can’t thank you enough.”
96
When he had left the cabin I sat up.
“What’s the idea of the hold-up? That’ll bring in the police.”
She looked at me, a far-away expression in her eyes, as if she were thinking of other things
besides what I was saying.
“The car might be traced to Paul. I don’t think there’s much chance of it because the plates
are phoneys, but they might trace it. If they do, the car has to be stolen. You can see that,
can’t you?”
She was right, of course, but I didn’t like it. Sooner or later the story would get back to
Pelotta, and Tom and Alice Roche would hear I had not only clubbed the driver, but had
stolen the car. Even if they had to think I was dead, I didn’t like the idea of them thinking I’d
turned thug.
“Listen, Johnny,” she said, coming to sit on the bed by my side, “in a little while Reisner
will be here. You’ve got to watch your step. He’s no fool. Don’t let him question you. I’ll do
the talking. So far as he’s concerned you’re suffering from concussion, and you’re not fit to
answer questions.”
I nodded.
“The one thing he’s going to find suspicious is why I’m with you,” she went on. “He’ll
wonder why Paul let me come with you from Los Angeles. He’ll probably phone the casino
and try and contact Paul. All they’ll be able to tell him is Paul’s on his way to Paris, and
Ricca on his way to Lincoln Beach, and that’s what we want him to know. If Reisner gets too
suspicious he may try to contact Levinsky in Paris. But Levinsky can’t tell him anything until
the boat Paul was supposed to be on docks. That gives us four days to swing the job, Johnny.”
“You said it would be easy.”
“It is easy. Don’t let Reisner jump anything on you. Leave the talking to me.”
She got up to look out of the window to see if there was any sign of Harkness. I looked at
her slim, square-shouldered back, and a stab of desire went through me. There was something
about her as she stood at the window that would have brought out the primitive in any man.
Uneasily I shifted my eyes away from her and felt in my pockets for a cigarette. In the hip
pocket I found a gold cigarette-case. It was then I remembered I was wearing Wertham’s
clothes, and that gave me the creeps. I lit a cigarette and pushed the case into my hip pocket
again.
97
She came back to the bed.
“Better not smoke, Johnny,” she said. “You’re supposed to be pretty bad.” She leaned
forward and took the cigarette and put it between her lips. I looked up at her, my mouth going
dry. I had to fight against the urge to grab her and pull her down beside me.
She must have realized the way I was feeling, for she stepped away from me, her face
hardening.
“Get your mind on what I’m going to tell you,” she said. “You’ve got to know something
about Paul, how he lived, the things he liked. It’s so easy to be tripped up on the small
things.”
I got a grip on myself. It wasn’t easy, but I did it.
“Go ahead,” I said huskily.
She told me where Wertham lived in Los Angeles, his telephone number, the kind of car he
drove and a lot of details about his personal life. In a very short time she had given me a heap
of facts that only a man who had lived with Wertham and worked with him could have
known.
