Fletcher Flora - The First Golden Age of Mystery & Crime MEGAPACK™ - 26 Stories by Fletcher Flora

“You couldn’t hurt his face much,” she said. “You could change it, but you couldn’t hurt it.”

She was gone, and I said, “Lovely thing. Is it yours?”

“Now and then.” He shrugged. “If you’re interested, I won’t be offended.”

“I’m not. Besides, I’m too ugly. Were you threatening me a moment ago?”

“About the hospital, yes. About the funeral, no. It wouldn’t be necessary.”

“You never can tell. I get tired of living sometimes.”

“You’d get tireder of being dead.”

“That could be. The way I hear it explained, it sounds pretty dull.”

“You’re a pretty sharp guy, Hand. You’ve got a nose for what’s phony. I’m surprised a guy like you wouldn’t smell a phony case.”

“I won’t say I haven’t. I’m open to conviction.”

“All right. Regis and Constance had a real fire going. It didn’t develop, it was just there in both of them at first sight. First sight was right here. Downstairs in the lounge. Don’t ask me to explain it, because I can’t. Regis was there, and Constance was there, and to hell with everyone else. Everyone and everything. They got in bed, and whatever they had survived. They ran away together, that’s all. Why don’t you leave it alone?”

“You make it sound so simple. I can’t help thinking, though, that running away’s one thing, disappearing’s another. You see the difference? There is one you know.”

“I see. It wouldn’t seem so strange if you’d known the woman. Constance, I mean. She’d had a bad time. She was sad, lost, looking for a way to somewhere. You get me? She was a real lady, but she had queer ideas. When she left, she wanted to leave it all, including herself. It’s pathetic when you stop to think about it.”

“I get the same picture everywhere. The same idea. I’m beginning to believe it. I’m skeptical about Regis, though. He doesn’t seem the type.”

“He wasn’t. Not before he met Constance. Before he met her, he was a charming, no-good bastard, but then he met her, and he changed. Queer. You wouldn’t have thought she’d have appealed to him, but she did. He’d have done anything she wanted. Very queer.”

“Yeah. Queer and corny.”

“I don’t blame you for thinking so. You’d have to see it to believe it.”

“Did Regis have an interest in this restaurant?”

“Regis didn’t have a pot. Just what I gave him. Spending money.”

“What did they use for cash when they left? What are they using now? And don’t feed me any more corn. You don’t live on love. Some people get a job and live in a cottage, but not Regis and Constance. Everything they were and did is against it.”

The fingers of his left hand moved up the keys. It was remarkable how lightly that chunk of rock moved. The thin sounds of the short scale lasted no longer than a few seconds. The left hand joined the right in his lap.

“I’ll tell you something,” he said. “I don’t know why. What I ought to do is throw you out of here. Anyhow, Regis had cash. Enough for a lifetime in the right place. See that picture over there? It’s a copy of a Rembrandt. Behind it there’s a safe. Regis knew the combination. The night he went away, I had seventy-five grand in it. Regis took it.”

“That’s a lot of cash to have in a safe behind a picture.”

“I had it for a purpose. Never mind what.”

“You let him get away with it? You didn’t try to recover it?”

“No. To tell the truth, I was relieved. I always felt an obligation toward him because of the woman whose lousy kid he was. Now the obligation is wiped out. We’re quits.” He lifted both hands and replaced them gently on the keys of the piano. There was not the slightest sound from the wires inside. “Besides, I figured it was partly for her. For Constance. I liked her. I hope she’s happier than she ever was.”

I started to refer again to corn, but I thought better of it. Then I thought that it would probably be a good time to leave, and I turned and went as far as the door. “Hand,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Forget it. Drop it. You hear me?”

“I hear you,” I said.

I opened the door and went out. After three steps in the hall, I heard the piano. What I heard from it was something else by Chopin.

On the way in, no one had spoken to me. On the way out, someone did. The lower hall was the place, and Robin Robbins was the person. She was standing in the entrance to the cocktail lounge, at the edge of the shallow step, and although she was standing erect, like a lady, she somehow gave the impression of leaning indolently against an immaterial lamppost. Her voice was lazy, threaded with a kind of insolent amusement. “Buy me a drink?” she said.

“I’m too poor,” I said.

“Tough. Let me buy you one.”

“I’m too proud.”

“Poor and proud. My God, it sounds like something by Horatio Alger.”

“Junior.”

“What?”

“Horatio Alger, Junior. You forgot the junior.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t forget him altogether. What do you say we start trying?”

“I’m surprised you know anything about him to start trying to forget. He was a long time ago, honey. Were kids still reading him when you were a kid?”

“I wouldn’t know. I was never a kid. I was born old and just got older.”

“Like me. That gives us something in common, I guess. Maybe we ought to have that drink together after all. I’ll buy.”

“No. I’ve got a better idea for a poor, proud man. In my apartment there’s a bottle of scotch left over from another time. Someone gave it to me. We could go there and drink out of it for free.”

“I don’t care for scotch. It tastes like medicine.”

“There’s a bottle of bourbon there too. In case you don’t care for bourbon, there’s rye.”

“No brandy? No champagne?”

“Anything you want.”

“That’s quite a selection to be left over from other times. Was it all given to you?”

“Why not? People are always giving me something. They seem to enjoy it.”

“Thanks for offering to share the wealth. However, I don’t think so. Some other time, maybe.”

She opened a small purse she was holding in her hands and extracted a cigarette. I went closer and supplied a light. She inhaled and exhaled and stared into the smoke with her smoky eyes. Her breath coming out with the smoke made a soft, sighing sound.

“Suit yourself,” she said. “It’s just that I’ve got something I thought you might be interested in.”

“You’ve got plenty I might be interested in, honey.”

She dragged again and sighed again. The smoke thinned and hung in a pale blue haze between us. In her eyes was a suggestion of something new. Something less than insolence, a little more than amusement. Her lush little mouth curved amiably.

“That’s not quite what I meant, but it’s something to consider. What I meant was something I can tell you.”

“Information? Is it free like the scotch and the bourbon and the rye? Don’t forget I’m a guy who wears ready-made suits.”

“I remember. Poor and proud and probably honest. Right out of H. Alger, Junior. Don’t worry about it, though. It’s free like the scotch and the bourbon and the rye.”

“Everything free. No price on anything. I hope you won’t be offended, honey, but somehow I got an idea it’s out of character.”

“All right. Forget it. You were asking questions about a couple of people, and I thought you were, interested. My mistake, Horatio.” Her mouth curved now in the opposite direction from amiability. What had been in her eyes was gone, and what replaced it was contempt. I thought in the instant before she turned away that she was going to spit on the floor. Before she could descend the step and walk away nicely on her nice legs with the neat movement of her neat behind, I took a step and put a hand on her arm, and we stood posed that way for a second or two or longer, she arrested and I arresting, and then she turned her head and looked at me over her shoulder.