“You don’t have it anywhere. I may not be very intelligent, sister, but I’m intelligent enough to know when a common little tramp is telling a fat lie. Besides, I happen to need about three grand at the moment, and I couldn’t take less for my trouble.”
“All right. Three thousand. It makes no difference to me. It isn’t my money.”
“No? Whose is it?”
“My father’s, of course.”
“Oh, sure. You old man’s a millionaire, that’s what he is.”
“That’s right. He is.”
“What’s his name?”
“His name is Arnold Gotlot, and I’m Felicia Gotlot, and we live at Number One, Gotlot Place. It’s a private street that belongs to my father, and so it’s named after him, and we have the only house on it.” Well, if she was a liar, she was a good one. She said it casually, with the sound of truth, as if it were something she was used to saying, and she couldn’t have picked a better old man if she had tried all night, for Arnold Gotlot was a millionaire, sure enough, and everyone knew that much about him, although not much more than that, for he was a reclusive old devil who didn’t say much and wasn’t seen much and, in fact, made a kind of principle or something out of his privacy.
Banty had begun to pinch the end of his nose now, which might be a good sign or a bad sign, depending on what caused it and what came of it, and he and Felicia Gotlot, if that’s who she was, were still staring at each other and seemed to be taking each other’s measure. I was on Banty’s side in whatever might develop, but I was beginning to have an uneasy feeling that I might not be backing the winner.
“In my opinion,” Banty said, “you’re a liar.”
“In my opinion,” she said, “you’re a fool.”
“Get out,” he said.
“If I do, you’ll be sorry.”
“You’re the one who will be sorry if you don’t,” he said.
“Kidnapping’s a serious offense,” she said. “Isn’t it Federal? Don’t they put you in the gas chamber for it?”
Well, now, just like that! Just like explaining something simple to a kid. I felt as if I’d been hit in the belly with a ball bat. It even shook old Banty up. His mouth popped open, and he stopped pinching the end of his nose, and I could tell that he was trying to keep a clear head in spite of being surprised and confused by what she’d suddenly said.
“What do you mean, kidnapping? Who’s kidnapped anyone?”
“That depends on whether you take me back to Kansas City,” she said. “If you don’t, I’ve been kidnapped, and you’d better believe it.”
“You think you can get away with something like that? You just told us you were loaded on gin and went to sleep in the back seat.”
“That’s what I told you. What I tell my father and the police could be something else entirely.”
“Banty,” I said, “I don’t like it. Let’s take her back and be done with it.”
“Wait a minute. I’m thinking.” Banty was pinching the end of his nose again, staring at Felicia Gotlot with odd intensity, and it was apparent that he was thinking hard and fast about something that just come into his head. “I’m beginning to believe this dame. She is Felicia Gotlot, all right. Look at that dress. It doesn’t look like much, and there isn’t much to it, that’s for sure, but I’ll bet it cost three, four hundred at least, if it cost a penny. Look at that bracelet on her wrist. Those are real diamonds, if I ever saw one. Look at that fur piece. It could be mink, and I’ll bet it is.”
He started out talking quietly enough, but the more he said, taking inventory, the more his voice changed. It didn’t get louder or faster, nothing like that, but a kind of excitement came into it, something you could feel more than hear. After the inventory, he was silent for quite a while, still staring at her, and that sense of excitement was as real then, when he was silent, as it was before, when he was talking. All of a sudden he reached inside his coat with his right hand, and I thought he was reaching for a cigarette, but he wasn’t. He was reaching for a gun, a .38, and he pointed it over the back of the seat at Felicia Gotlot.
“Get up front,” he said. “Never mind getting out. Just crawl over.”
I said, “You lost your marbles, Banty?”
“Don’t ask questions,” Banty said. “She wants a kidnapping, she’ll get one. A real one.” The excitement was so big inside him now that his voice began to shake a little from it, but the gun in his hand was steady. “Don’t you get it, Carny? This is the big break. This is what I’ve been waiting for. This is good luck coming after bad. And it just walked in. Just walked right in and went to sleep. A rich little tramp with a load of gin. It’s like fate or something. A man can’t turn his back on fate, Carny. A man who did that would never have any luck again, never as long as he lived.”
It scared me, honest, hearing him talk like that, almost as if he were in a kind of spell, and he meant it all, every word of it. I knew it, and Felicia Gotlot knew it.
“I don’t want any part of it,” I said.
“It doesn’t make any difference what you want,” he said. “You’ve got part of it whether you want it or not. This is a snatch, as of right now, and you’re in it just as much as I am. You take my advice and play along, Carny, because the stakes are big. Five hundred grand against the chamber. Think of that, Carny. A cool half million. Peanuts to old Gotlot for his precious daughter. Maybe we could make it a million. I’ll think about it.”
There was no use arguing with him, or trying to get him to be reasonable at all in that queer mood he was so suddenly in, and Felicia Gotlot understood this as well as I did, for she simply crawled over the back of the seat with a big display of nylon that I’d have appreciated more some other time. She settled down between me and Banty, and Banty handed me the .38 and said, “If she makes a sound or a move, belt her over the head with it,” and we went on down the highway toward the forty acres of rock that Uncle Oakley had left to Cousin Theodore.
We had the devil of a time finding it in the dark, because it was a long way off the highway on a little gravel road leading into the hills, but we finally found it, after a lot of wrong turns and dead ends, and it was hardly worth finding at all, let alone with so much trouble, for it was nothing but a three-room shack made of rough native lumber that was as gray and weathered against the side of its hill as all the rocks around it. It turned out, though, that there was a good fishing stream on the place, and Cousin Theodore came down here often to fish. As a consequence, the place was stocked with sheets and blankets and cooking utensils and things like that, including a lot of canned goods.
There wasn’t any gas or electricity, only kerosene lamps and a wood stove in the kitchen for cooking, and Banty, who had clearly been here before, found some kerosene and lit some lamps while I watched Felicia Gotlot to keep her from getting away, although I don’t know where she’d have gone in those dark hills so far from anywhere. The truth is, she didn’t seem to have going anywhere in mind at the moment, and I don’t blame her.
One of the three rooms was a bedroom, with nothing in it but a bed and a chest with a mirror over it, and we put Felicia Gotlot in there. There was no way of locking her in, which was a problem, and Banty said we’d have to tie her feet and hands.
“It isn’t necessary to tie me,” she said. “There’s nowhere to go, and I wouldn’t know which direction it was if there were.”
“We’ll tie you anyhow, just to be safe,” Banty said. “It won’t hurt you, and it won’t be for long, because this job is hot, and I intend to work fast with it.”
She kicked off her shoes and lay down on the bed, and we tore a sheet into strips to tie her with. We tied her hands together and her feet together and tied her at both ends to the head and the foot of the bed. We left enough slack so she could move some and be fairly comfortable, but not enough so she could sit up or reach her feet with her hands by bending. Then Banty went out to the kitchen to build a fire in the stove and make some coffee, but I hung back after he was gone. I don’t know why I did, exactly, except that I was feeling kind of bad about tying her to the bed that way, like an animal or something. To tell the truth, I admired her and respected her and wished we weren’t doing to her what we were. You had to admire and respect her, I mean. She had plenty of moxie, besides being kidnapped and all, without crying or making a big fuss, and she knew it was her fault for talking too much, letting Banty know who she was, after getting loaded on gin and crawling into the car and going to sleep. She took the blame, as I figured it, and was quiet and sensible.