He turned. “Nikki?”
“You knew who I meant.”
“Who have we been talking about?”
“Nikki.” Her beautiful forehead creased into a frown. “I haven’t been able to put my finger on it, but ever since — well, since the other day, I’ve sensed that there is something missing. In you, darling. But you’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“There isn’t anything to tell.”
“You’ve told me absolutely nothing of yourself since — since 1943. That’s seventeen years, Tom. You haven’t been in a vacuum in all that time.”
“I was in the Pacific until late ’45.”
“That’s only two years. I... I know you had a hard time during the war. You were quite severely wounded. But it doesn’t show on you.”
“No, it doesn’t show,” he said.
“There’s still fifteen years.”
“It took a while to settle things, Linda. I drifted around a while. It was two or three years before I settled down to the heir-searching work.”
“Was there — has there been another girl, Tom? I’ve told you about Newcombe and Freddie, although I don’t think I should have. The least you can do is tell me if there is another girl?”
“There has been no one else, Linda. I’ve gone out with girls, of course. A great many. I’m not a hermit and I don’t live in a monastery.”
“You’re still being very cautious, Tom, my lad. You very carefully put in — since the war. What about during the war? Did you meet anyone during the war?”
“There was no other girl, Linda. There has never been anyone else. Not — like you.”
She got to her feet. “It wouldn’t be any good tonight, would it, Tom? I... I’ve put my foot in it somehow.” She smiled ruefully. “Maybe I should have let Harris take a poke at you. I think it would have roused you from that... that coma you’re in. Coma, as far as I’m concerned. He wanted to start a fight pretty badly. He’s — very physical. He might have licked you.”
“He might, at that,” said Alder.
She blew him a kiss and started for the door. “I’ll take you to your room,” he offered.
She opened the door. “I found it down here and I guess I can make it back without a Seeing Eye dog. Good night, Tom. Pleasant dreams, if they’re about me.”
She went out.
Chapter 20
He had just finished his snack and pushed the table to one side when the telephone rang.
He crossed to it. “Yes?”
“Tom? Miller Hastings. You said it was urgent, so I ran over. All right if I come up?”
“Yes. Room 1424-S.”
Hastings arrived in a couple of minutes. He had a tall, dark young man with him. He reminded Alder of an old picture of Valentino, the one-time film idol.
“Shake hands with Steve Szabo, Tom,” said Hastings, a heavy-set man who had been a police lieutenant before opening his own private detective agency. “Steve is a Hungarian, besides being a very good operator.” He grinned. “Women like him. Go ahead, Steve.”
“As Mr. Hastings said, I’m a Hungarian. A Magyar. My people are from the old country and if there’s a Hungarian in Chicago my father doesn’t know, he’s keeping it a secret. Some of his friends have a little group living near Elgin. Truck farmers, asparagus, stuff like that. Istvan Kovacs is one of them. Istvan is Stephen, like my own name. The description pretty much fits them. A woman visits them once in awhile. A very beautiful woman, who’s supposed to be married to a big man in California. It could be the Kovacs’ daughter. Old Istvan is a close-mouthed man. He’s spent a few hundred-dollar bills in the last few years. One of them was brand new, smelled of perfume. He gave it to Father Benes at St. Stephen’s Church. One of the parish women whispered the story. It came to my mother, who told it to my father.”
“Elgin,” said Alder, “that’s about forty miles from here.” He looked at his watch. “It’s after eight.”
“Can’t it wait until morning?” asked Hastings. “Steve will drive you out.”
“Kovacs lives out in the country a few miles. We’d have to ask directions,” said Szabo.
“I’d like to go now.”
Szabo shrugged. “I get time and a half for overtime.”
“He’s paying for it,” said Miller Hastings.
In twenty minutes, they were clearing the western suburbs of Chicago and then the handsome young private detective opened up the throttle of his little convertible.
“Stepped-up job,” he explained to Alder. “Police don’t like it, give me hell when they catch me. Haven’t been lost on a tail job, though. Not since I fixed up this motor.”
“Like this kind of work?”
Szabo shrugged. “It’s better’n the drugstore. My Dad wanted me to be a pharmacist like himself, but I wouldn’t be any good mixing pills. Make a mistake and somebody’d get theirselves awfully sick. I’m thinking of going into politics. Maybe next year, the year after. Our alderman’s pretty old and the party’s going to dump him. The Hungarians in our ward throw a lot of weight. Jacobs, our ward committeeman likes me. His son and me went to high school together.”
The stepped-up motor whipped the car along the roads and by nine o’clock they were in Elgin. Young Szabo stopped at a gas station, asked a few questions and they were soon rolling along a highway that ran beside the Fox River.
At nine-twenty-two, they cleared a small town and Szabo turned left on a narrow macadam road. He slackened speed and began to watch mailboxes.
“Kovacs,” he said suddenly.
A rural mailbox carried the name. It was in front of a neatly kept white cottage, which adjoined a small truck farm. Fifty feet from the white cottage was its twin, but there was no mailbox outside of this one. Lights were on in both houses.
Alder and Szabo got out by the mailbox. They went down a drive, through a picket fence and up to the porch of the white cottage.
A knock on the door brought Istvan Kovacs to the door. He was about sixty-two or three, a work-worn, slightly stooped man with gnarled hands.
“Mr. Kovacs,” said Alder, “my name is Alder. I am a friend of Mrs. Nikki Collinson.”
“No speak the English,” said Kovacs promptly.
“I believe Mrs. Collinson is your daughter,” Alder persisted. “I am anxious to get some information about her and I have reason to believe...”
“Sorry, no speak Anglis.” The Hungarian truck farmer’s accent became even stronger.
Alder gave Szabo a nod and the young man started over in Hungarian. The truck farmer listened, but the gathering cloud on his face showed that he did not like the trend of Szabo’s remarks.
He spat out an answer and gestured with his hands.
Szabo said, in English, to Alder: “He says he has no daughter. He has only a son who is ashamed to admit that he is of Hungarian descent. His name is Stephen Schneider. Schneider is German for Szabo, which means tailor. Stephen, his son, is the owner of a bowling alley on the North Side of Chicago and seldom visits his mother or his father...”
“Mrs. Collinson,” said Alder. “Ask him if he knows her, if she has visited here.”
“He denies everything. He raises asparagus. People sometimes come here to buy from him, although he prefers to sell wholesale to the vegetable houses.”
He turned again to the farmer, who responded as vehemently as before.
“It’s no use trying to talk to his wife,” Szabo said, shaking his head. “She will not talk, if he does not want her to. The woman I asked him about lives in Elgin. They bought the farm from her, seven or eight years ago, and she comes to collect the payments. That’s a lie, Mr. Alder, but he’s said it and he’s going to stick with it.”
“Ask him,” said Alder, “ask him if the woman he makes the payments to gives him the change in hundred dollar bills. Bills that are perfumed.”