THE FIRST THING I did when I woke was to inspect the damage Blondie had done to me. I looked like hell. My nose was about twice its usual size and my right eye was closed. I looked like I’d been pushing Joe Louis around.
I went back to bed, plenty mad. With a wrecked pan like this I had to wash out taking Mardi to lunch. I couldn’t expect to put my stuff across, looking the ruin I was.
I lit a cigarette and thought over my troubles. If Mardi and me were married it wouldn’t matter a hoot how many black eyes I had, in fact she would be running around fixing me up and fussing me. As soon as that thought filtered through my brain I sat up with a jerk. I was crazy. Me, getting married. That was a laugh. Me, the guy who ribbed the boys who got hooked. Taking one dame on for the rest of my days was one mistake I’d promised myself never to make. And here I was, lying in bed, pondering now nice it would be.
I got out of bed and grabbed myself a drink. I told myself I’d better take some exercise or something; I was losing my grip.
I’d just finished my shower and rinsed off the shaving-soap when the front-door bell whirred violently. Slipping on my dressing-gown, I opened up.
Ackie was standing there, his eyes glittering with suppressed excitement. “H’yah,” he said, pushing his way in. His eye spotted the half-pint standing on the mantelpiece and he went straight across and sunk half of it.
“Finish it up,” I said dryly from the door, “don’t mind me.”
Ackie shook his head and put the bottle back. “Never drink in the mornin’,” he said. “Pity… that ain’t bad liquor.”
I said: “Come into the bedroom while I finish dressing.”
He followed me in and sat on the edge of the bed.
“What’s the excitement?” I asked, pulling on my shirt.
“I gotta job—” He broke off and gaped at me. “Hi!” he exclaimed, his eyes popping, “what the hell’s the matter with your face?”
I shrugged. “Got into a little scrap last night,” I said carelessly. Tell Ackie that a dame had done this? Not a chance! The boys would rib me to death.
Ackie still stared. “Huh,” he said, “gettin’ tough, eh?”
“You should have seen the other guys,” I said, knotting my tie carefully in the mirror. “Three great hoodlums set on me—”
“I know… I know….” Ackie grinned. “And you beat hell out of ’em all. Yeah! You don’t have to tell me.”
“I ain’t goin’ to waste time tellin’ you anythin’ if you ain’t goin’ to believe it,” I said.
“Okay, then don’t, ’cos I won’t.”
I shoved my legs into my trousers. “Gettin’ back to the point. What’s the excitement?”
Ackie stiffened up, as if he suddenly remembered an urgent job. “Yeah,” he said, “I got somethin’ for you. How’d you like to pick up a hundred bucks?”
I put on my coat and fixed my hair. Ackie giving away a hundred bucks was someone I didn’t know. “Doin’ what?”
“You know Colonel Kennedy?”
I turned my head and looked hard at Ackie, but his face was blank. “You don’t have to ask that; you know I do.”
“Pretty thick with him, ain’t you?”
“Come on, come on.” I stood over him. “What is this? What’s Kennedy got to do with it?”
“Listen, Nick, we’re in a jam. We gotta see this guy, an’ we gotta talk to him.”
This sounded screwy to me. I sat on the table. “Why come an’ see me?”
Ackie fidgeted. “Well, this guy’s being difficult, see? He won’t see anyone. We reckoned you could talk to him.”
My instinct told me that there was a story hanging to this. A story that might be big. Colonel Kennedy was one of those rich playboys with so much dough that he never found time to finish counting it. The kind of guy who gives away a couple of million and doesn’t have his bank manager running round in circles.
Some time ago I helped this guy out of a jam. He was running in a yachting race with a nickel cup hanging to it. He could have bought up the whole cup factory if he’d wanted to, but no, he had to go out in a rough sea and try and win it. Just before the gun went, his crew broke his arm. There was Kennedy hopping mad because he thought the cup was escaping him. Well, I was around and I offered to help him out. Somehow or other we got home first, and that guy was tickled to death.
Doing Kennedy a favour meant something. For the first month I was nearly smothered with the things he used to send me. After four weeks of it I couldn’t stand any more, so I changed my apartment and got under cover. Now here was Ackie asking me to go through it all over again.
“You’d better tell me the whole story,” I said, “I ain’t movin’ without it.”
Ackie groaned. “Listen, Bud,” he said earnestly, “this has gotta be done quick. Suppose you come with me an’ let me tell you as we go.”
“Go? Where?”
“The Colonel’s up at his fishing-place. You know where that is.”
I knew Kennedy had a retreat in the hills where he used to go when he wanted to get away from people. It was sixty or seventy miles out of town. I’d never been there, but I’d heard a lot about it. I was too much the newspaper man to waste time talking, so I grabbed my hat and what was left of the half-pint and went downstairs with Ackie. He’d got a big Packard outside, with two of the boys sitting in front. One of them nursed a camera complete with flashlight on his lap. They grinned at me as I got in the back with Ackie.
The way that Packard shot away from the kerb was nobody’s business.
I lit a cigarette and settled down in the corner. There was plenty of room in the car and the springs were swell. “You do yourself well,” I said, bouncing a little to test the springs.
“Official car,” Ackie said. “This is somethin’ big, Nick. The old man himself told me to get you.”
“Suppose you let me have it,” I said.
Ackie looked worried. “I don’t know what the hell it’s about,” he said. “As far as we know, a servant at the lodge ’phoned the police around twelve o’clock this morning and reported hearing a shot fired downstairs in the front room. She was too scared to go down an’ investigate. Well, the cops went out there and spent a little while inside. I guess we’d never have heard of the business only one of our boys was at the desk when the call came through. He tipped the night editor, who thought it big enough to send someone up.
“Well, they sent Hackenschmidt and he gets nowhere. He ’phones for help and a wagon-load of boys go up. I guess they know Kennedy and hoped for free drinks all round, but Kennedy doesn’t show up. We ring him up and he answers the telephone, but as soon as we start askin’ questions he hangs up quick. The old man gets mad because Kennedy’s news, an’ he sends for me. I waste an hour tryin’ to get in, but don’t get to the first base. The old man then says for me to get you… quick.”
I rubbed my nose thoughtfully. “What do the cops say?”
Ackie shrugged. “Kennedy’s slipped ’em plenty. They say the maid was screwy an’ nothin’ has happened.”
I laughed. “You’d look mighty sick if it were true,” I said.
Ackie shook his head. “There’s somethin’ phoney goin’ on, an’ whatever it is is news. So you’re bein’ paid a hundred bucks to get in an’ find out just what.”
A hundred bucks! That was a laugh! If I got in there and there was something hanging to this, it was going to cost the
I said: “Maybe I shan’t get in.”
Ackie’s eyes opened wide. “You gotta get in,” he said, “the old man’s ravin’ mad now. You just gotta get in.”
I love a situation like that. A big newspaper begging you to do something. That always means dough, and lots of it.
“Okay,” I said, taking the Scotch out of my pocket. Ackie fixed his eyes on it. I didn’t leave him much.
We did that trip under a hundred and fifty minutes. I was glad when they pulled the car to a standstill. Driving like that without any breakfast didn’t do me any good.
Kennedy had got a swell place, make no mistake about that. The lodge was hidden from the main road by a
