presumably to nurse someone. She had seen Crosby die. So she had been locked up in this room for two years and had drug shot into her in the hope that sooner or later her mind would deteriorate and she wouldn’t remember what had happened. That much was obvious, but she still remembered. The horror of the scene still lingered in her mind. Maybe she had come suddenly into the room where the two girls had been fighting for the possession of the gun. She may have drawn back when Crosby had taken a hand in the struggle, not wishing to embarrass him, and she had seen the gun swing on Crosby and the shot fired.
I looked at the still, white face. Sometime, but not now, there had been character and determination in that face. She wasn’t the type to hush anything up, nor would she be influenced by money. She was much more likely to insist on the police being called. So they had locked her away.
I scratched the side of my jaw thoughtfully and flapped the little diary against the palm of my hand. The next move was to get out, and get out quickly.
And as if in answer to this thought, there was a sudden and appalling crash that shook the building: it sounded as if part of the house had collapsed.
I nearly jumped out of my skin, reached the door in two strides and jerked it open. The corridor was full of mortar and brick dust, and out of the dust came two figures: guns in fists, running swiftly towards Hopper’s room— Jack Kerman and Mike Finnegan. At the sight of them I gave a croaking cheer. They pulled up sharply, their guns covering me.
Kerman’s tense face broke into a wide, expansive grin.
“Universal Services at your service,” he said, grabbing my arm. “Want a drink, pal?”
“I want transport for a nude blonde,” I said, hugging him, and took a slap on the back from Mike that staggered me. “What did you do—pull the house down?”
“Hooked a couple of chains to the window and yanked it out with a ten-ton truck,” Kerman said, grinning from ear to ear. “A little crude, but effective. Where’s the blonde?”
Where the mess-grill window had been there was now a gaping hole and shattered brickwork.
I hauled Kerman into Anona’s room while Finnegan guarded the corridor. It took us about ten seconds to wrap the unconscious girl in a sheet and carry her out of the room.
“Rear-guard action, Mike,” I said as we swept past him to the hole in the wall. “Shoot if you have to.”
“Sling her over my shoulder,” Kerman said, twittering with excitement. “There’s a ladder against the wall.”
I helped him climb up on the tottering brickwork. A naked arm and leg hung limply near his face.
“Now I know why guys join the Fire Service,” he said, as he began his cautious climb down the ladder.
Below I could see a large truck parked near the house and at the foot of the ladder I spotted Paula. She waved to me.
“Okay, Mike,” I called. “Let’s go.”
As Mike joined me, the door at the end of the corridor burst open and the hatchet-face nurse appeared. She gave one gaping look at us and the ruined wall and started to scream.
We scrambled down the ladder and piled into the truck.
Paula was already at the driving-wheel, and, as we scrambled into the back of the truck, she let in the clutch and drove crazily across the flower beds.
Kerman had laid Anona on the floor and was looking down at her.
“Yum, yum,” he said, and twirled his moustache. “If I’d known she was as good as this, I’d have come sooner.”
Chapter V
I
A buzzer buzzed, and the platinum blonde unwound her slinky form from behind her desk and came over to me. She said Mr. Willet would see me now. She spoke as if she were in church, and looked as if she should have been in the front row of Izzy Jacob’s pretties at the Orchid Room Follies.
I followed the sway of her hips across the outer office to the inner sanctum. She tapped on the door with an emerald green nail, opened it and tucked up a stray curl the way women have as she said, “Mr. Malloy is here.”
She stood aside as my cue to enter. I entered.
Willet was entrenched behind his super-sized desk and was staring dubiously at something that looked like a Last Will and Testament, and probably was. A fat, gold-tipped cigarette burned between two brown fingers. He waved me to a chair without looking up.
The platinum blonde went away. I watched her go. At the door she managed to snap a hip so it quivered under the black sheen of her silk dress. I was sorry when the door closed on her.
I sat down, and looked inside my hat and tried to remember when I had bought it. It seemed a long, long time ago. The hatter’s imprint was indecipherable. I told myself I’d buy myself a new hat if I could persuade Willet to part with any more money. If I couldn’t, then I’d make do with this one.
I thought these thoughts to pass the time. Willet seemed lost in his legal film-flammery: a picture of a big- shot lawyer making money. You could almost hear the dollars pouring into his bank.
“Cigarette,” he said suddenly and absently. Without taking his eyes off the mass of papers he clutched in his hand, he pushed the silver box towards me.
I took one of the fat, gold-tipped cigarettes I found in the box and lit it. I hoped it would make me feel like a moneymaker too, but it didn’t. It looked a lot better than it tasted: that kind of cigarette usually does.
Then suddenly, just as I was getting ready to doze, he tossed the papers into the out-tray, hitched forward his chair, and said, “Now, Mr. Malloy, let’s get at it. I have another appointment in ten minutes.”
“Then I had better see you some other time,” I said. “We won’t be through in ten minutes. I don’t know how much you value the Crosby account, Mr. Willet, but it must be worth a tidy sum. Without shouting it from the house tops it wouldn’t surprise me if you won’t have the account much longer.”
That jarred him. He stared at me bleakly, crushed out his half-smoked cigarette and leaned halfway across his desk.
“What exactly do you mean?”
“Do you want it in detail or do you want just a quick peep at it?” I asked. “It’s bad either way, but in detail it sort of creeps up on you.”
“How long will it take?”
“A half an hour, maybe more; and then you’ll want to ask questions. Say an hour, maybe a little longer. But you won’t be bored.”
He chewed his lower lip, frowning, then reached for the telephone and cancelled three appointments all in a row. I could see it hurt him to do it, but he did it. A ten-minute interview with a guy like Willet would he worth a hundred bucks, maybe more—to him, not to you.
“Go ahead.” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Why haven’t you been in touch with me before?”
“That’s part of it.” I told him, and laid my hat under my chair. I had a feeling I might he buying a new one before very long. “I’ve spent the past five days in an asylum for the insane.”
But I wasn’t going to jar him so easily again. He made a grunting noise, but his expression didn’t change.
“Before I get started,” I said, “maybe you might tell me about Miss Crosby’s banking account. Did you get a look at it?”
He shook his head.
“The bank manager quite rightly refused. If he had shown it to me and the fact had leaked out, he would have lost the account: it’s worth a lot of money. But he did tell me the insurance money had been converted to
