I stared at her blankly. She was being very difficult. Really, I
shouldn't be bothering with her, someone I barely knew, someone I
hadn't even heard of until--
That reminded me. I said, "Rena, how did you know my name?"
Her eyes went opaque. "Know your name, Tom? Why, Mr. Gogarty introduced
us."
"No. You knew of me before that. Come clean, Rena. Please."
She said flatly, "I don't know what you mean." She was beginning to act
agitated. I had seen her covertly glancing at her watch several times;
now she held it up openly--ostentatiously, in fact. "I am sorry, but
you'd better go," she said with a hint of anxiety in her voice. "Please
excuse me."
Well, there seemed no good reason to stay. So I went--not happily; not
with any sense of accomplishment; and fully conscious of the figure I
cut to the unseen watcher in the other room, the man whose coffee I had
usurped.
Because there was no longer a conjecture about whether there had been
such a person or not. I had heard him sneeze three times.
* * * * *
Back at my hotel, a red light was flashing on the phone as I let myself
in. I unlocked the play-back with my room key and got a recorded
message that Gogarty wanted me to phone him at once.
He answered the phone on the first ring, looking like the wrath of God.
It took me a moment to recognize the symptoms; then it struck home.
The lined gray face, the jittery twitching of the head, the slow,
tortured movements; here was a man with a classic textbook case of his
ailment. The evidence was medically conclusive. He had been building up
to a fancy drinking party, and something made him stop in the middle.
There were few tortures worse than a grade-A hangover, but one of those
that qualified was the feeling of having the drink die slowly, going
through the process of sobering up without the anesthetic of sleep.
He winced as the scanning lights from the phone hit him. "Wills," he
said sourly. "About time. Listen, you've got to go up to Anzio. We've
got a distinguished visitor, and he wants to talk to you."
"Me?"
"You! He knows you--his name is Defoe."
The name crashed over me; I hadn't expected that, of all things. He was
a member of the Council of Underwriters! I thought they never ventured
far from the Home Office. In fact, I thought they never had a moment to
spare from the awesome duties of running the Company.
Gogarty explained. "He appeared out of nowhere at Carmody Field. I was
still in Caserta! Just settling down to a couple of drinks with Susan,
and they phoned me to say Chief Underwriter Defoe is on my doorstep!"
I cut in, "What does he want?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account