Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 1, No. 12, December 1956
- Автор: Дил Борден, Томпсон Джим
- Год: 1956
- Язык: английский
- Год: H.S.D. Publications
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 1, No. 12, December 1956». Краткое содержание книги:
Her soft hand came over my shoulder and stopped at my neck, her fingers gently working along the side of my face. I met her eyes and tried to read what lay underneath. She had started it, of course. But why?
“About the money, Maggie.” I laid the bills on the glass-topped table and stacked the silver dollars on top. “It’s over four hundred. You keep it, Maggie. I guess Bart Akers didn’t strip it off of us because he couldn’t risk possible claims that he strong-armed someone to get the winnings back. It’s yours.”
“No, Matt.”
“Sure,” I grinned. “I’ve got my trucking business and you’re fresh out of a job. Take the stuff. I’ll settle for the lesson I learned.” I stroked the top of my head. “Lucky I got a hard one.”
“Matt, I can’t.” Her hand was working at my neck again. “Some things you do for money and some you don’t. If I took the cash, Matt, I’d be a cheap chiseler and it didn’t start that way. Not really. I saw you sitting with Wirth and — I don’t know, Matt — somehow I wanted you to win.”
“What’ll you do now? That sister in L.A.?”
“I may as well. I’ve been wanting to see her. Maybe this does it. Maybe it’s a good thing, really, because there doesn’t seem to be very much of a future in dealing—”
“Look, Maggie,” I said quickly, “I’ll be making the run back to Los Angeles as soon as Jake Wirth gets his junk off my truck. Why not hold down the other side of the cab? It isn’t exactly Pullman, but I keep a clean rig and I’d be tickled pink to have company.”
“Why, Matt. I think that’s a perfectly sweet idea.” Her lips parted in the breathless air of a girl who’s just been invited to a prom. Only as I remember my school days, not many babes were surprised by a bid to the big moment. Most of them worked long and hard to get the right boy to ask. And I got the feeling all at once that the blonde beside me hadn’t been nearly as surprised as she might have been by the idea of going south with Matt Brady. Once again I sensed that things were slipping out of control, like a loaded truck on an ice-glazed street. I needed time. There were smokes in a tiny box on the coffee table. I lit two and held one out to the blonde.
“It’s a deal,” I said. What else could I say?
“I’ll pack in the morning,” she was saying. “Two suitcases and my little radio — that’s all I have.”
There wasn’t anything else to settle. I covered her hand with mine. She didn’t move it. She was curled up on the sofa, her feet drawn up under her with only a small ankle and one high-heeled shoe showing from under the filmy nylon skirt. The effect was more than perfect. Everything was wonderful — except there were so many things happening so fast I didn’t know where I stood.
Our eyes met and that spark danced between them. And suddenly, it didn’t matter that the pieces in this little puzzle were badly scrambled. It didn’t matter that the beautiful blonde seemed to weave in and out among them like a bright strand in the pattern of a rag rug. We leaned toward each other at the same time, our lips pressing together, our arms locking around each other.
“Matt — you shouldn’t have gotten mixed up with me. Why did it have to be you, Matt?”
I didn’t answer, just held her close. For a long time we were like that; then Maggie broke it and drew back. “We better take it easy, Matt,” she said.
“Sure, kid.” I got up and went to the open window and let the night air wash over me. When I turned back, I had things under control. I grinned. “You don’t have to work your passage south, Maggie. I’ll be here as soon as Wirth clears my truck. Ten, maybe, or a little after. We’ll be out of Reno by eleven; hit L.A. before midnight sometime.” Then I found my cap, walked to the door, and opened it. But the beautiful card-sharp came over and put her hand on the door. She slipped in between, the half-open door behind her, her hands on my shoulders.
“It isn’t like that, Matt. I—”
“Suppose you tell me just how it is,” I said. “There’s so much I don’t know about—”
She stood on tiptoe, her arms sliding all the way around my neck. I kissed her full on the mouth, her lips soft and trembling under mine. I heard her shoe touch the wood behind her. The door clicked shut.
At eight in the morning I leaned against my truck in front of Jake Wirth’s Place and waited for the lord of the manor to show. I’d phoned, and he’d said he would be right down, and his voice had been something less than cordial. I drew on a cigarette and wondered if the gambling barons had a grapevine, and if so was it fast enough to have taken the word to Jake about last night’s affair at the Silver King. When I saw Wirth striding along the street, his square jaw set in an even more rigid angle than usual, I knew he’d heard from Akers all right.
Wirth looked at me with apprehension. “Hell of a note, Brady,” he said briefly. Then he opened the door and we went in among the mirrors, etchings, and fresh paint. No carpets. “You managed to get into a peck of trouble after I left you yesterday, Brady.”
“And how about you getting that truck unloaded, Wirth—”
“We’ll get to that. Now on that lousy double deal you and that blonde worked on Bart, we don’t like that kind of thing in Reno, Brady. In fact, we don’t stand for it.” He gave me a cold look, tossed his hat on the bare desk, and went on a tour of his hall. If he expected me to follow along and explain, he was in for a surprise. I went across to the other side, looked in the mirror, and brushed a piece of lint off my green shirt. Then I looked up to see what the etchings had to offer. The name in the lower right hand corner caught my eye: Wirth. I moved to the next, although there wasn’t much point in it. It was plain they’d all been done by the same person, and very well done. By Wirth.
I went back to the desk and parked my fanny on the glass top. A talented man, Wirth. Etchings. Setting up a first-class gambling joint. Sharp operator. Just a rough diamond with a lot of facets. And choosy about which phone he uses when he calls someone to talk about carpets. I smoked and waited.
“We’ll get you unloaded right away, Brady,” he said casually. He sat down in his desk chair, looked up at me, and then got right up and went into his small office in back. When he returned, he had a chair for me. Jake Wirth didn’t like people sitting high enough to look down on him, apparently.
“I’ve got Joe out rounding up some workmen — ought to be here any minute. The quicker you clear Reno the better.”
“News travels fast,” I said.
“We manage. Anybody runs a roust on one of us, we pass the word along. The thing that makes me sore, Brady, is that I brought you into Bart’s place. In a way I was going good for you and—”
“Save the tears,” I cut in. “You don’t need a sponsor to get into a card game in Reno. Anybody with dough in his jeans can walk into the Silver King, put his cash on the table and his keister on a cushion. They’ll deal him a hand. What’s hurting you Wirth? You got a piece of the King?”
His jaw dropped open, then closed. He eyed me shrewdly. “Hell, no. It’s just that—”
“Then stop screaming.”
He rubbed a fist into the palm of his other hand. Then the old personality smile worked its way across his face. He was trying awfully hard to get along with Matt. Brady. I had deliberately needled him. He wasn’t the kind to take anything from anyone, but he was taking it now. I tried to figure why.
Joe turned out to be the same dark-haired gent I’d seen yesterday, but in a different set of tweeds. He had four assorted down-at-the-heel stumblebums in tow, ones he’d culled from the hanger-on list, I guessed. All we got from Joe was a lot of impractical suggestions, but the boys he’d found for the work were pretty anxious to collect their cash and get to a table, so we made out. When I swung the doors shut and locked my truck, I, figured the bill and took it in to Wirth. He raised an eyebrow.