All in all, I commenced to see a great light or thought I did.
I was thinking, all through that evening with the girl, — thinking hard, and as often as I had a chance. She kept up a running fire of conversation, did Lois; and it was so flippant that I had to laugh in spite of myself. She sure gave the world a life sized picture of a girl who hadn’t a worry in the world, and didn’t care who knew it.
I tried to lead her out about Ogden Sly, about her engagement.
“My, my!” she chided, “I believe my lukewarm daddy’s getting jealous. Naughty, naughty! You’ll actually be making love to me next, Ed Jenkins… Come on, let’s dance. I want to get whirled around the floor once more before I finish that filet mignon.”
I tried a new tack.
“I’m leaving the city for three or four weeks,” I remarked casually.
She missed a step, stumbled, and clung to me.
“Not… not honest?”
I laughed at that, noticing even as I laughed the sudden paling of her cheek.
“Of course honest. You wouldn’t think I’d leave the city to do something dishonest would you?”
We danced in silence, and then she drew me from the floor.
“Come on, I’m tired. I want to get back to our meal and get another swallow of tea. You know, Ed, you’re way behind the times. You haven’t a flask and it’s shocking poor form. You’re supposed to order orange juice and keep it filled with just enough kick to make the girls tell their right names. Being sober is passé. It just isn’t done any more.”
We sat down at the table and she played around the edges of her food with listless knife and fork, eyes downcast and shoulders that suddenly seemed to grow limp. After a few minutes she excused herself long enough to go into the dressing-room, and when she returned her eyes were red in spite of the fact that her face had been freshly powdered. One thing was certain, I was a pretty important pawn in the game that she was playing, or thought she was playing.
Then she reached some decision and cheered up. All of a sudden she was as blithe and carefree as any flapper just leaving for college. I glanced around, trying to find out if the cause of her change had been a signal she had received from any of the other diners. The place was crowded, and one guess was as good as another.
We ate and danced, and then stayed to throw a couple of more dances. The girl insisted that I should take her for a drive, and something in the very nature of her insistence aroused my suspicions. However, I went with her. At that stage of the affair I thought I knew what was in the wind, but I wanted to find out pretty well before I started playing my cards.
That ride was a petting party. I’ve heard of ’em before, and I’ve always had an abstract idea of how they were thrown, but I’d never been on a real one. I had been just a bit too mature to ever get mixed up in one of the things before, and I never had anything that made me feel so downright ancient. There was vibrant youth in the girl’s kisses, a fire in her breath, a clinging, passionate something about her lips that made me realize times had changed, that social customs had changed, and that I was not as young as I used to be.
Also there was something on my mind, a something that kept taking my thought energies away from the present, away from the automobile and the girl, and into the interior of John Lambert’s safe. Also I thought of the flabby flesh of Ogden Sly, the reddish eyes, and that curious parrot-like set to the mouth, and every time I thought of him I seemed to see a mental image of his writhing arms with their red, hairy hands sliding over the bare flesh of the girl’s shoulder.
Again I tried to lead her to talk of her engagement, to find out her real emotions for Ogden Sly, and when I mentioned his name her emotions underwent a sudden and marked change. She shuddered as though the chill night air had penetrated to her warm blood, her kisses became forced, lifeless, strained, and then she abruptly started to cry, soul-racking sobs that wrenched her slender frame and made her quiver as she lay against me.
Then, as suddenly as a thunder shower it was over.
“I love you, Ed,” she said thrusting her wet lips to mine, her tear-stained cheek lying damp against my own, her eyes gleaming through the tears. “Oh, I love you so much! Somehow I can’t see how things are coming out at present, but I just know they will.”
I looked down at her, wondering.
“How’s that for a good line?” she surprised me by asking. “Did I pull that like I meant it? You know how it is, Ed, you’ve got to be the regular little red-hot-mama to hold the boys in this day and age. If you don’t make ’em think they’re your Prince Charmings and that you’ve stocked up your hope chest for ’em they make you walk home. Yuh wouldn’t make a regular guy like me walk, would you, Ed?”
I laughed at her. I thought I knew something of the game, but I sure got a kick out of the way this kid played her cards.
I took her back to the parking station where she’d left her car, and then went on to my apartment. I had something to work out, and I wanted to make a good job of it. The something was no less than a letter from C. W. Kinsington to Ogden Sly, and when I got it finished it was a masterpiece.
Ogden Sly had originally fished up the letters that connected John Lambert with the crooked play, and then he’d sent forged demands from Kinsington, or rather, purporting to come from Kinsington, the man who was dead. My letter was a forgery of Sly’s forgeries, but I fancied it’d get by. In it I told the blackmailer that he had made a mistake in thinking that I was dead; that I had been away and that a friend of mine had taken my name and job and had also undertaken to care for my personal effects; that the friend had died and that I had not been notified, but that I had only been able to trace the letters after a great deal of trouble and that then I found that the purchaser of those private papers and letters had been using them for purposes of blackmail. I was demanding an accounting. Every penny that had been obtained by blackmail must be turned over to me or Ogden Sly would go to jail, and I didn’t mean maybe.
I gave some considerable thought to the manner in which the money was to be paid, and then I hit on a scheme that sounded good to me. I instructed Sly to simply go to the Railroad Terminals National Bank and deposit the money to the credit of C. W. Kinsington.
Whether or not the letter would do the work I didn’t know, but I did have some other means of bringing pressure to bear that would do the work if the letter failed. I could imagine Ogden Sly’s frame of mind. He would be worried about this other matter, know that his right hand man, Bill Peavey was in dutch and likely to turn state’s evidence, would realize that he must be suspected by the police of carrying on a regular blackmail game, and then he would suddenly get mixed up in a charge made by some person who would have all the evidence necessary to back up his charges, a person who had nothing to lose, one who was not hounded by a guilty conscience. Coming on top of all of these other things it would spell ruin to Ogden Sly.
There was only one thing for him to do, and that was to stall me along until he could get a personal interview, and then see to it that I didn’t come away alive from that personal interview.
I dropped a note to the Railroad Terminal’s National Bank and explained to them that I was contemplating coming down to look after opening an account in a few days, but that in the meantime there was a possibility of a rather large deposit being made for me, in which event would they please hold it until such time as I was able to get down and have the account properly opened. I put an address in that letter, a post office box where I could get mail all right, but where the letter could never be traced into the hands of Ed Jenkins.