She stood aside as my cue to enter. I entered.
Willet was entrenched behind his super-sized desk and was staring dubiously at something that looked like a Last Will and Testament, and probably was. A fat, gold-tipped cigarette burned between two brown fingers. He waved me to a chair without looking up.
The platinum blonde went away. I watched her go. At the door she managed to snap a hip so it quivered under the black sheen of her silk dress. I was sorry when the door closed on her.
I sat down, and looked inside my hat and tried to remember when I had bought it. It seemed a long, long time ago. The hatter’s imprint was indecipherable. I told myself I’d buy myself a new hat if I could persuade Willet to part with any more money. If I couldn’t, then I’d make do with this one.
I thought these thoughts to pass the time. Willet seemed lost in his legal film-flammery: a picture of a big-shot lawyer making money. You could almost hear the dollars pouring into his bank.
“Cigarette,” he said suddenly and absently. Without taking his eyes off the mass of papers he clutched in his hand, he pushed the silver box towards me.
I took one of the fat, gold-tipped cigarettes I found in the box and lit it. I hoped it would make me feel like a moneymaker too, but it didn’t. It looked a lot better than it tasted: that kind of cigarette usually does.
Then suddenly, just as I was getting ready to doze, he tossed the papers into the out-tray, hitched forward his chair, and said, “Now, Mr. Malloy, let’s get at it. I have another appointment in ten minutes.”
“Then I had better see you some other time,” I said. “We won’t be through in ten minutes. I don’t know how much you value the Crosby account, Mr. Willet, but it must be worth a tidy sum. Without shouting it from the house tops it wouldn’t surprise me if you won’t have the account much longer.”
That jarred him. He stared at me bleakly, crushed out his half-smoked cigarette and leaned halfway across his desk.