She looked at me steadily and I looked at her steadily. I breathed gently into my glass until it misted.
«Well, I don’t think we need be mysterious about it,» she said. «Although as a matter of fact I know more about it than Fred thinks I do. He doesn’t know, for example, that I saw that letter.»
«The letter he sent me?»
«No. The letter he got from Los Angeles with the report on the ten-dollar bill.»
«How did you get to see it?» I asked.
She laughed without much amusement. «Fred’s too secretive. It’s a mistake to be too secretive with a woman. I sneaked a look at it while he was in the bathroom. I got it out of his pocket.»
I nodded and drank some more of my drink. I said: «Uhhuh.» That didn’t commit me very far, which was a good idea as long as I didn’t know what we were talking about. «But how did you know it was in his pocket?» I asked.
«He’d just got it at the post office. I was with him.» She laughed, with a little more amusement this time. «I saw that there was a bill in it and that it came from Los Angeles. I knew he had sent one of the bills to a friend there who is an expert on such things. So of course I knew this letter was a report. It was.»
«Seems like Fred doesn’t cover up very well,» I said. «What did the letter say?»
She flushed slightly. «I don’t know that I should tell you. I don’t really know that you are a detective or that your name is Evans.»
«Well, that’s something that can be settled without violence,» I said. I got up and showed her enough to prove it. When I sat down again the little dog came over and sniffed at the cuffs on my trousers. I bent down to pat her head and got a handful of spit.
«It said that the bill was beautiful work. The paper, in particular, was just about perfect. But under a comparison microscope there were very small differences of registration. What does that mean?»
«It means that the bill he sent hadn’t been made from a government plate. Anything else wrong?»
«Yes. Under black light — whatever that is — there appeared to be slight differences in the composition of the inks. But the letter added that to the naked eye the counterfeit was practically perfect. It would fool any bank teller.»
I nodded. This was something I hadn’t expected. «Who wrote the letter, Mrs. Lacey?»
«He signed himself Bill. It was on a plain sheet of paper. I don’t know who wrote it. Oh, there was something else. Bill said that Fred ought to turn it in to the Federal people right away, because the money was good enough to make a lot of trouble if much of it got into circulation. But, of course, Fred wouldn’t want to do that if he could help it. That would be why he sent for you.»
«Well, no, of course not,» I said. This was a shot in the dark, but it wasn’t likely to hit anything. Not with the amount of dark I had to shoot into.
She nodded, as if I had said something.
«What is Fred doing now, mostly?» I asked.
«Bridge and poker, like he’s done for years. He plays bridge almost every afternoon at the athletic club and poker at night a good deal. You can see that he couldn’t afford to be connected with counterfeit money, even in the most innocent way. There would always be someone who wouldn’t believe it was innocent. He plays the races, too, but that’s just fun. That’s how he got the five hundred dollars he put in my shoe for a present for me. At the Indian Head.»
I wanted to go out in the yard and do a little yelling and breast beating, just to let off steam. But all I could do was sit there and look wise and guzzle my drink. I guzzled it empty and made a lonely noise with the ice cubes and she went and got me another one. I took a slug of that and breathed deeply and said: «If the bill was so good, how did he know it was bad, if you get what I mean?»
Her eyes widened a little. «Oh — I see. He didn’t, of course. Not that one. But there were fifty of them, all ten-dollar bills, all new. And the money hadn’t been that way when he put it in the shoe.»
I wondered if tearing my hair would do me any good. I didn’t think — my head was too sore. Charlie. Good old Charlie! Okay, Charlie, after a while I’ll be around with my gang.
«Look,» I said. «Look, Mrs. Lacey. He didn’t tell me about the shoe. Does he always keep his money in a shoe, or was this something special on account of he won it at the races and horses wear shoes?»
«I told you it was a surprise present for me. When I put the shoe on I would find it, of course.»
«Oh.» I gnawed about half an inch off my upper lip. «But you didn’t find it?»
«How could I when I sent the maid to take the shoes to the shoemaker in the village to have lifts put on them? I didn’t look inside. I didn’t know Fred had put anything in the shoe.»
A little light was coming. It was very far off and coming very slowly. It was a very little light, about half a firefly’s worth.
I said: «And Fred didn’t know that. And this maid took the shoes to the shoemaker. What then?»
«Well, Gertrude — that’s the maid’s name — said she hadn’t noticed the money, either. So when Fred found out about it and had asked her, he went over to the shoemaker’s place, and he hadn’t worked on the shoes and the roll of money was still stuffed down into the toe of the shoe. So Fred laughed and took the money out and put it in his pocket and gave the shoemaker five dollars because he was lucky.»
I finished my second drink and leaned back. «I get it now. Then Fred took the roll out and looked it over and he saw it wasn’t the same money. It was all new ten-dollar bills, and before it had probably been various sizes of bills and not new or not all new.»
She looked surprised that I had to reason it out. I wondered how long a letter she thought Fred had written me. I said: «Then Fred would have to assume that there was some reason for changing the money. He thought of one and sent a bill to a friend of his to be tested. And the report came back that it was very good counterfeit, but still counterfeit. Who did he ask about it at the hotel?»
«Nobody except Gertrude, I guess. He didn’t want to start anything. I guess he just sent for you.»
I snubbed my cigarette out and looked out of the open front windows at the moonlit lake. A speedboat with a hard white headlight slid muttering along in the water, far off over the water, and disappeared behind a wooded point.
I looked back at Mrs. Lacey. She was still sitting with her chin propped in a thin hand. Her eyes seemed far away.
«I wish Fred would come home,» she said.
«Where is he?»
«I don’t know. He went out with a man named Frank Luders, who is staying at the Woodland Club, down at the far end of the lake. Fred said he owned an interest in it. But I called Mr. Luders up a while ago and he said Fred had just ridden uptown with him and got off at the post office. I’ve been expecting Fred to phone and ask me to pick him up somewhere. He left hours ago.»
«They probably have some card games down at the Woodland Club. Maybe he went there.»
She nodded. «He usually calls me, though.»
I stared at the floor for a while and tried not to feel like a heel. Then I stood up. «I guess I’ll go on back to the hotel. I’ll be there if you want to phone me. I think I’ve met Mr. Lacey somewhere. Isn’t he a thickset man about forty-five, going a little bald, with a small mustache?»
She went to the door with me. «Yes,» she said. «That’s Fred, all right.»
She had shut the dog in the house and was standing outside herself as I turned the car and drove away. God, she looked lonely.
FOUR
I was lying on my back on the bed, wobbling a cigarette around and trying to make up my mind just why I had to play cute with this affair, when the knock came at the door. I called out. A girl in a working uniform came in with some towels. She had dark, reddish hair and a pert, nicely made-up face and long legs. She excused herself and hung some towels on the rack and started back to the door and gave me a sidelong look with a good deal of fluttering eyelash in it.