“Beer’s no good here,” I told him. “It’s a waste of time.”
And he said a little grimly, without thinking too much—
“Yeah, but it doesn’t hurt my eyes or nerves any.”
There was something about the scarred one that I liked. I didn’t bother figuring just what it was. Perhaps I felt a little sorry for him. I had a very strong hunch that death was coming his way. His actions didn’t hurt my hunch any. He wasn’t exactly scared, but he was nervous. I wanted to know something, so I went after it.
“You haven’t been over here long, have you?” I asked, and didn’t make my voice too anxious.
He looked at me narrowly.
“I’m an engineer,” he said. “I’ve been down in Mexico — alone a lot. Had a couple of months leave due me, and grabbed a freighter for Genoa. Just an idea.”
I nodded. I didn’t believe that he was an engineer, but I did believe that he’d been in Mexico and that he’d been there alone. He was fed up, and he’d picked the Riviera and Cannes. And it hadn’t worked. And he was drinking with the man who had spotted him, turned his name up.
There was a crash of glass, somewhere beyond the bar. The entrance door opened and a group of people came in, laughing and letting the wind carry them along. Senna hunched down in the chair again.
“I hate wind,” he muttered. “I gotta get out of this town.”
I thought of my wire and didn’t like that idea. So I said:
“It’ll be blowing all along the Riviera. And you’d have to go pretty far back in the mountains to dodge this breeze. You can’t be sure — it may not stick. Tomorrow morning you may not feel a breath of wind.”
That was an ironic thought. A fast plane could reach Cannes from Paris in five hours. The regular planes did it in six. If some one wanted to see Senna badly enough, if I wasn’t going haywire on my basis and hunches, some one could be at the Grand Hotel around midnight. A good plane could edge into the wind and get down all right.
Senna said—
“You think it may let up, eh?”
I nodded, and finished my whisky sour.
“Sure,” I said. “Have one on me?”
He had another beer, and I had another sour. I tried to get him to open up a little, but he didn’t want to talk. He kept his eyes on the entrance door and on human faces that passed near our corner. I said—
“You played at the Casino — any luck?”
He grinned, showing white teeth. Then his dark eyes got hard and frowning.
“Yeah — too much, maybe,” he stated.
I looked puzzled.
“Too much?” I said.
He got sort of a silly smile on his face only it wasn’t all the way silly. After a few seconds of silence he said a little grimly:
“I’ve only been this lucky a few times in my life. And right after those times — I got unlucky. You know how it is.”
I finished my second sour and rose.
“Yes, sure,” I said. “I know how it is. See you again.”
He didn’t seem surprised at the abruptness of my departure.
“Yeah,” he said. “So long.”
I went out into the wind, got to a phone in the Miramar Hotel and called the office of the small flying field at the end of town. I was known there as Jay Benn, and sometimes I used a ship for a fast hop to Germany or Switzerland or Spain. In Cannes I was thought to be a pretty good American, with enough money but not too much. A fellow who liked that section of the coast.
I got Leon Demoigne on the phone and asked him to ring me if a plane landed around midnight. He said that he would if I wanted him to, but that he could tell me now that one was coming down from Paris. She was a fast monoplane, and there would be two passengers aboard, beside her pilot. I told him that was not the plane I was thinking about, and he said he’d advised by wire against the flight, but that the ship was apparently coming along anyway. He ended up by saying that it was probably bringing along a couple of crazy Americans who had heavy dates.
Even in French his idea didn’t sound right to me. I thought it was perfectly right that the plane was bringing along a couple of Americans. But I was quite certain they weren’t coming because of the kind of heavy dates Leon anticipated. And I was damned sure they weren’t crazy.
I had dinner alone at a small Russian restaurant, and the black bread didn’t taste as good as usual. The thing that got me was that I was pretty sure Tony Senna wasn’t wanted by the police. I was pretty sure that crooks were using a reputable agency, as they had used agencies before, to trace another crook. I had the feeling that I’d put Senna on the spot, and I didn’t like it. He was a killer and probably a lot of things that went with it, but it seemed to me he wasn’t going to have much of a chance. I could almost hear guns — and I could almost see the big scarred man going down. I might be all wrong, but the set-up framed things that way.
At ten o’clock I went back to the hotel and found the telegram I expected. It was from McKee, the agency head, and it was brief. I read, “Fine fast work clients pleased drop further investigation of Senna.” It was in code. And it convinced me that death was coming close to the big fellow. I was to drop out, which was not the ordinary method. The clients would handle things themselves. And they were pleased.
I lay on my bed and listened to the mistral wind howl. It was getting on my nerves too. After a half hour or so I made a decision. Business was business, but some of it took away too much self-respect. I drove to the Grand Hotel. Senna was not in. When I got to the Miramar bar he was just where I’d left him. He’d been eating sandwiches, and he was still drinking beer. He grinned at me.
“I couldn’t go out in that stuff,” he said. “So I just stuck here.”
I nodded and pulled a chair close to him. I ordered coffee and fin. He was looking at me with his dark eyes narrowed.
“Damn mistral!” he muttered. “You think it’ll last three days, maybe six?”
I said:
“You never can tell.” Then I went right into it. “Listen, Senna,” I said softly and without paying any attention to his start of surprise, “you got a tough break in Genoa. I happened to eat in the same spot and see you. I saw your passport edge, at the Casino in Monte Carlo, and I know some things. My name isn’t Benn — and I’m connected with an international detective agency. My office wired me to look for you, and I wired back that you were at the Grand Hotel here. Two Americans are coming down by plane — clients of the Paris office of my agency. They’re coming down to see you, and they’ll get here about midnight. It took me a little while to figure things out, and when I got them figured out I decided that you were being spotted out for killing Al Fess on his gambling barge, off Santa Monica. I didn’t like my part, so I’m warning you. That’s all of it.”
His big hands were gripping the table edge, and getting white with that grip. His dark eyes were slitted and cold. I kept my right hand on the Colt grip.
“I don’t think you’re the whitest guy that ever lived, Senna,” I said. “And I’ve got my hand on a rod now. So don’t do the wrong thing. What I want to get across is that my hunch is the law isn’t coming after you. Not my kind of law. You’ve got a couple of hours, and you don’t like wind. I’m all right, because I wired you were staying at the Grand, and you were. You can hire a machine—”
I stopped. Senna had taken his whitened knuckles away from the table. He was relaxed in the big chair, and his face held a terrible grin. He chuckled. I stared at him and he shook his head slowly.
“Lord!” he breathed. “Imagine a dick tipping me off! Imagine that!”