‘Good night, Adam.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t look so damned miserable at times,’ he said crossly as he got out of the car. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow night. You might look through your things. That fur coat he gave you… you don’t need it until the winter…’
‘Good night, Adam,’ she repeated.
They stood facing each other for a moment. She was glad he couldn’t meet her eyes. She leaned forward and kissed his cheek.
‘Try and come early,’ she pleaded. ‘I want to talk to you, darling.’
‘About nine,’ he said, his voice flat and disinterested. Already he was thinking of more important things. He had forty dollars in his pocket. The night was still young. He might do worse than take Lois back to his room. He might persuade her to do that comic dance of hers again. She had wanted fifty dollars the last time: ridiculous! She might do it for twenty if he could convince her that was all she would get. Yes, he’d go along and pick her up. He felt in the mood for Lois’s kind of fun.
He watched Eve as she moved back to the club. She was an odd girl. Sometimes he wondered about her. She didn’t treat him as if he was her brother. There were times when she acted as if she were in love with him. He touched his pencil-lined moustache, frowning. Odd!
After he had left the parking lot, Dallas came out of the shadows and stood looking after him.
IX
Harmon Purvis had a small villa on East Boulevard: a modest, three-bedroom affair with a small garden crammed with roses and a Clematis Jackmanii over the front door.