Kells sat down and crossed his legs. He studied the glistening toe of his left shoe, said: “It’s going to sound like a fairy tale,” looked up at Fenner. “Bellmann’s a very smart guy. If he wasn’t he wouldn’t be where he is.”
Fenner nodded impatiently.
Kells said: “The smarter they are, the sappier the frame they’ll go for. Bellmann spent weekend before last at Jack Rose’s cabin at Big Bear.” He leaned forward and took his glass from the table. “Rose has been trying to get a feeler to him for a long time, has tried to reach him through his own friends. A few weeks ago Rose took a big place on the lake not far from Bellmann’s, invited Hugg and MacAlmon — Mac is very close to Bellmann — up for the fishing, or what have you? They all dropped in on Bellmann in a spirit of neighborliness, and he decided he’d been wrong about Rose all these years. Next day he returned the call. When Hugg and Mac came to the city they left Rose and Bellmann like that” — he held up two slim fingers pressed close together.
Granquist came in, sat down. Kells turned his head in her direction. Without letting his eyes focus directly on her, he said: “That’s where baby comes in.”
Fenner lighted a cigaret, coughed out smoke.
“She came out with friends of Rose from KC,” Kells went on. “Bellmann met her at Rose’s and took her big. That was Rose’s cue. He threw a party — one of those intimate, quiet little affairs — Rose and a showgirl, Bellmann and” — he smiled faintly at Granquist — “this one. They all got stiff — I don’t mean drunk, I mean stiff. And what do you suppose happened?”
He paused, grinned happily at Fenner. “Miss Granquist had her little camera along, took a lot of snapshots.” He turned his grin toward Granquist. “Miss Dipso Granquist stayed sober enough to snap her little camera.”
Fenner got up and took Granquist’s empty glass, filled it. He looked very serious.
Kells went on: “Of course it all came back to Rose in the morning. He asked about the pictures and she gave him a couple of rolls of film she’d stuck in the camera during the night, clicked with the lens shut, blanks. She discovered that the lens wasn’t open when she gave them to him, they had one of those morning-after laughs about it. Bellmann had a dark green hangover; he didn’t even remember about the pictures until a day or so later and then he wrote Miss Granquist a couple of hot letters with casual postscripts: ‘How did the snapshots turn out, darling?’ cracks like that.”
Kells got up, stretched. “You see, it gets better as it goes along.”