CHAPTER FIVE
I CAME INTO THE sitting room and she was on the sofa, crumpled on the sofa like a discarded plaster manikin. “How about a glass of water?” I said.
She made no sound. The best thing to do, I decided, was let her alone until she pulled herself together. You think your nerves and glands took a beating, Surratt, I thought. Think what it must have done to hers! So I took a chair in the corner of the room and waited. I was in no hurry.
It gave me time to think, and I needed some time to think. Things were happening fast. It was about time to look a-round and see just where I was.
I had an angle now. I had a woman who was scared to death of her own abnormalities, who tried to cover them up, hide them, call them by strange names. A woman like that added up to an angle that a man could really get his fingers into. That was quite a beginning, considering that this was only my second day out of prison.
But it was only the beginning. An idea had been nibbling at the edge of my brain. Dorris had mentioned that her husband had set out to dispose of his enemies.... Now there was an angle to my liking, because John Venci had been much too polished to try anything as crude as murder. There was not much satisfaction in murder, it was too sudden—no, it would have been something else, it would have been something long-drawn-out and filled with anguish, the most exquisite anguish, I was sure, that it was possible to devise.
And that, of course, would be
Long-drawn-out and filled with anguish, that much fit perfectly, but how would the end eventually be achieved?
Then I had it. Venci had been nothing if not logical-self-destruction would have been his aim! Suicide!
I was on the right track now, I could feel it. Great mental anguish culminated by suicide—that would have appealed to John Venci. So the only thing left was the method with which he would achieve this end. One word came to my mind automatically—Blackmail.
That was it! Venci had set out to blackmail his enemies, and that meant that he must have gone to fantastic lengths to gather evidence against them.
I grinned, feeling like a million dollars. All I had to do was get my hands on that evidence, and I had just the key to turn the lock! I had Dorris Venci! When I get through with this town, I thought, they'll think they've been hit by a hurricane!
I went over to the sofa and shook Dorris. “Okay,” I said, “you ready to talk?”
She shuddered.
“Look,” I said, “I'm not sure how we got off on this tangent, but I know one thing, it's time to get back on schedule. Go in the bathroom and wash your face or something.”
When I was a kid I used to go out on the golf course and find golf balls. Just for the hell of it I would cut the golf balls open, cut deep into them, and the tightly-wound little bands of rubber would snap and writhe like something going crazy. The golf ball would go all to pieces right there in your hand. That's what Dorris reminded me of: she looked like she would go all to pieces any minute.
But she got up and went to the bathroom. After a while she came back and I was surprised to see that she was almost normal.
I said, “You were saying something about my killing somebody...”
She glanced at me, her old icy self again. “I—I'm afraid I have changed my mind. I don't believe I need you, after all, Mr. Surratt.”
“Like hell you don't need me,” I said. “What do I have to do to convince you? You don't want to go through that act again, do you?”
That did it. She closed her eyes for a moment, her hands clenched hard, then she sank to the sofa.
“That's better,” I said. “We understand each other, Dorris; I think we understand each other perfectly. We could make a hell of a pair, you and me, but it's going to take some cooperation from both of us.”
“What is it you want?” she said tightly.
“Right now I want to get back where we left off.”
“It isn't important now.”
“It was important a few minutes ago, so it still is. You wanted somebody killed. I want to know who and I want to know why.”
She knew I wasn't kidding. She glanced at roe, then away. She put her hands in her lap and stared at them. “His name,” she said at last, “is Alex Burton.”
I whistled in surprise. “Alex Burton, the ex-governor of the state?”
She nodded, and I said, “Well, this is very interesting. Suppose you begin at the beginning.” Then, before she could speak, I said, “Wait just a minute. I've been working on a hypothesis, and I want you to tell me if it's right.”
So I told her my idea, the way I had it figured out. Her eyes widened when I began describing the scheme of blackmail and suicide.
“How did you know that!”
“It was just a guess,” I said, “but a pretty sure one. Anyway, we can skip that part of it since I'm already familiar with it. Let's get down to the reasons for killing an ex-governor. Is he the one who killed your husband?”
She wanted to just sit there and say nothing, but she knew better than that. “... No,” she said finally. “That is, I don't know, I'm not sure.”
“Then why?”
“... Alex Burton wants to kill me.”
I thought that one over,, letting the picture take shape. “Uh-huh,” I said, “that could make sense. Your husband was turning the screw on Burton. What he wanted was the dossier that Venci had gathered on him, some irrefutable evidence that would ruin Burton for good, especially in politics. So now Burton is trying to kill you, which means that he didn't get that dossier after all, which means that you have a pretty good idea where it is, or what's in it. Is that the way it is?”
She nodded, heavily.
“Where do you live?”
Only a moment's hesitation this time. She was beginning to come around, she was beginning to realize that I meant business. “208 Hunters Drive,” she said flatly.
I gave the cab dispatcher the address and hung up. “Mrs. Venci,” I said, “you can stop worrying about Alex Burton; I know how to take care of bastards like him. But I think we ought to have an understanding—there's going to be a fee.”
She had recovered from her attack of female pride. Given time to think it over, even Dorris Venci could see that her chances of living were practically nil if Alex Burton wanted her dead—that is, unless I took care of Burton first. She said, “AH right... I'm willing to pay.”
“You don't understand me,” I said. “I want money, but not your money, not John Venci's money. I want that dossier that your husband collected on his enemies.”
She stared hard at her hands. “And what... do I get in return?”
“I told you, Mrs. Venci. I'll kill Burton before he kills you. You know you'll never be safe as long as you have those documents in your possession; actually, I'm doing you a favor by taking them.”
Then she looked at me, and smiled the smallest, bitterest smile I ever saw. “I thought it would be so simple,” she said, “when I helped you escape from prison. You would kill Alex Burton; I would give you a certain amount of money; and then you would leave the city and I would never see you again—that's the way I had planned it.”
“Things are never as simple as they seem at first glance, Mrs. Venci. We'd better go now, the taxi's waiting.”
“Wait a minute,” she said, in a way that made me turn and look at her. “I agree to your... proposition, but under two conditions. The first is that I am never to see you again, after you come into possession of the documents.”
“That's fair enough. What's the second condition?”
“You don't get the documents until after the... transaction has been completed.”
I laughed. “Mrs. Venci, I was not born yesterday, not even the day before yesterday. This is strictly a pay-in-
