“Why am I a fool? How dare you open my purse!”
“How much did you get, Daphne?”
“It’s none of your business. My own affairs aren’t to be bandied about and...”
“How much, Daphne?”
“I hate you! I could kill you!”
“How much?”
“I tell you, it’s none of your business. I’ll mind my affairs and you can mind yours.”
I said, “Are you foolish enough to think for one minute that the money isn’t marked?”
“Phooey! You talk like a gangster movie,” she said.
“Just a minute, Daphne, and I’ll show you just how much you can trust people. You thought you were smart. Did you give up the diary?”
“I... That’s something else that’s none of your business.”
I looked up Ruttling’s number in the telephone book, went over to Genevieve’s phone, called the number and assumed the hard-boiled, expressionless voice of a police-radio broadcaster. “Police Headquarters. Let me have Ruttling’s secretary, please.”
Whitney’s voice said, “Yes, Sergeant, this is Mr. Whitney, Mr. Ruttling’s secretary.”
“Give me the dope on that dough again,” I said. “There seems to have been a mistake on some of the stuff.”
“Just a moment,” Whitney said, and I heard the rustle of paper.
“There’s fifteen hundred dollars in five one-hundred-dollar bills, ten fifty-dollar bills, and twenty-five twenty-dollar bills. Now, what numbers did you want?” he asked.
“The numbers on the hundreds.”
“Just a moment,” Whitney said. “Here they are.”
He read off five numbers. I copied them on a sheet of paper, said, “Okay,” and hung up.
I passed the list across to Genevieve. “All right,” I said. “There are the numbers of the hundred-dollar bills.”
It was Genevieve who reached forward and picked up the list of numbers. She turned to Daphne Strate and said, without any expression whatever in her voice, “Pick up the hundred-dollar bills, honey. Let’s see if the numbers check.”
Daphne Strate stood perfectly still. She might not have heard either of us.
Genevieve matter-of-factly started pawing around the bills on the table, pulled out five one-hundred dollar bills and spread them out.
“Come on, honey,” she said, “check the numbers.”
As one in a daze, Daphne Strate leaned over the table. Genevieve read out the five figures.
It didn’t need any affirmation from Daphne Strate to show that the numbers checked.
“There you are,” I said to Daphne. “You’ve traded your diary for a one-way ticket to San Quentin.”
“What... what do I do now?”
“Now,” I said, “you grin and bear it. You started out to be a grownup little girl. You started double-crossing those who were trying to do something for you. You’ve got yourself in a sweet mess, and now you can try to find a way out.”
She looked at me steadily without batting an eyelash, then she walked across the room to the studio couch, flung herself face down on it and remained motionless. If she’d started crying, it would have eased the tension all around, but she didn’t cry, just lay there stretched out and rigid.
I walked over and shook her. “Tell me,” I said, “does Ruttling know where he can get you? Did you give him any address?”
She shook her head.
“Not even any telephone number?”
“I... I... told — him he could reach — me — through a friend.”
“Come on,” I said, “snap out of it. He told you he wanted to take you out again, didn’t he? Suggested that you might have an evening together in San Francisco, now that things were all straightened out; that he held no ill-feeling and wanted to know how he could reach you. Is that right?”
She straightened up on the couch. “Damn him! I could kill him!”
“Never mind that,” I said. “Is what I said correct? Did he ask you where he could get in touch with you, and did you give him an address?”
“He told me he didn’t mind paying me for the diary; that he didn’t mind giving me money at all; that he thought I was entitled to something; that he was acting under the advice of his attorney and his secretary, but that if I’d scribble some way to reach me on a piece of paper and leave it under the blotter on his desk, he’d get in touch with me later on and — well you know, we could talk with each other — informally.”
“What address did you give him?”
“I told him to call here and ask for Genevieve.”
I nodded to Genevieve Hotling “Grateful little devil, isn’t she? How soon can you pack up?”
“Do I have to?”
“I think you’d better.”
Genevieve didn’t say a word. She walked over to the closet, pulled out her suitcase and a bag and started packing. “How long do you suppose I’ve got?” she asked.
“Probably not to exceed ten minutes. Getting all the numbers on those bills copied will hold things up a little while and the police won’t have any idea she’s going to run out on them. They’ll think they have all the time in the world.”
Daphne savagely jerked her own suitcase out from under the studio couch, threw a few things in it, walked over to the table where the money was lying, said bitterly, “Two million dollars’ worth of champagne bubbles!”
She swung her arm in a sweeping gesture and knocked all the money onto the floor.
Chapter Thirteen
I said to Daphne, “Pick up the money, Sweetie.”
“Why should I? I don’t want a one-way ticket to jail.”
I said, “You aren’t going to leave it on the floor and give all of us a one-way ticket to jail.”
“What am I going to do with it, then?” she asked.
“Do you want to burn it?”
“Why not?”
Genevieve said, “We can’t burn it. I do all my cooking with gas here in the apartment, and there isn’t any fireplace.”
“Pick it up,” I said to Daphne.
She looked at me for a second or two with a surly negation in her eyes. I didn’t wait for that to turn into defiance. I turned away from her and said to Genevieve, “Turn on the radio.”
She walked over without a word and turned on the radio.
Daphne was picking up the money, putting it together in a sheaf. “Why do you want the radio on?” she asked.
“It will keep anyone from standing out in the corridor and hearing anything we say. Try and get a news broadcast, Genevieve, and turn it up good and loud.”
Daphne had the money all picked up now. She pushed it out at me and said, “Since this seems to be your party, you take charge of the refreshments.”
I took the money from her, folded it once, snapped an elastic around it, and pushed it down in my coat pocket. Gravely, I took out my wallet, crammed with greenbacks Soo Hoo Duck had given me for the sinews of war. I took out half a dozen twenties and handed them to her.
“What’s this for?” she asked.
I said, “In the underworld there are men who make a specialty of taking hot money and giving clean cash in return for it. If you’re going to be a crook, you’d better start learning the ropes.”
Her eyes blazed. She said, “I could...”
“Don’t pull that favorite expression of yours,” I said, “that you could kill me. That’s something else that could get you into trouble, if it hasn’t already.”
Genevieve brought in a news broadcast, tuning it up so that it was level with the sound of our voices.
“What are you going to do with that money?” Daphne demanded.
“What do you care? You wanted to burn it up.”
“Well, I’m beginning to think you just threw a scare into me so you could climb aboard the gravy train. When you come right down to it, we don’t know anything about you.”