Some time ago I helped this guy out of a jam. He was running in a yachting race with a nickel cup hanging to it. He could have bought up the whole cup factory if he’d wanted to, but no, he had to go out in a rough sea and try and win it. Just before the gun went, his crew broke his arm. There was Kennedy hopping mad because he thought the cup was escaping him. Well, I was around and I offered to help him out. Somehow or other we got home first, and that guy was tickled to death.
Doing Kennedy a favour meant something. For the first month I was nearly smothered with the things he used to send me. After four weeks of it I couldn’t stand any more, so I changed my apartment and got under cover. Now here was Ackie asking me to go through it all over again.
“You’d better tell me the whole story,” I said, “I ain’t movin’ without it.”
Ackie groaned. “Listen, Bud,” he said earnestly, “this has gotta be done quick. Suppose you come with me an’ let me tell you as we go.”
“Go? Where?”
“The Colonel’s up at his fishing-place. You know where that is.”
I knew Kennedy had a retreat in the hills where he used to go when he wanted to get away from people. It was sixty or seventy miles out of town. I’d never been there, but I’d heard a lot about it. I was too much the newspaper man to waste time talking, so I grabbed my hat and what was left of the half-pint and went downstairs with Ackie. He’d got a big Packard outside, with two of the boys sitting in front. One of them nursed a camera complete with flashlight on his lap. They grinned at me as I got in the back with Ackie.
The way that Packard shot away from the kerb was nobody’s business.
I lit a cigarette and settled down in the corner. There was plenty of room in the car and the springs were swell. “You do yourself well,” I said, bouncing a little to test the springs.
“Official car,” Ackie said. “This is somethin’ big, Nick. The old man himself told me to get you.”