“That’s very thoughtful of you,” she said, and looked furtively down the garden at the old bent back and the yellow panama hat.
I slipped the bill into her hand. She snapped it up the way a lizard snaps up a fly. I had an idea the old man at the bottom of the garden wouldn’t ever set eyes on it. At least, I hadn’t spoilt her afternoon.
IV
I pushed open my office door and marched in. Jack Kerman was dozing in the armchair by the window. Paula was sitting at my desk working on one of her hundreds of card indexes: indexes that kept our fingers on the pulse of Orchid City, that told us who was who, who was in town and who had left town, who had married who, and so on. Although she had four girls working continuously on the cards, she insisted on keeping the key-cards up-to-date herself.
She moved out of the desk-chair as I tossed my hat at Kerman, waking him. He gave a startled grunt, rubbed his eyes and yawned.
“What’s it like—working?” he asked. “Or haven’t you started yet?”
“I’ve started,” I said, and sat down, reached for a cigarette, lit it, shot my cuffs and plunged into the tale. I gave them all the details with the exception of my session with Nurse Gurney. I skirted over that, knowing Paula wouldn’t have approved and Kerman would have got too excited to think straight. “Not much,” I concluded, “but enough to make me think it’s worth while going on with. Maybe there’s nothing wrong; maybe there is. If there is the less commotion we make the better. We don’t want to tip anyone off just yet.”
“If this guy in the Dodge was tailing you, it seems to me someone’s tipped off already,” Kerman pointed out.
“Yeah, but we can’t be sure of that. Maybe my face interested him. Maybe he was practicing to be a detective.”
I reached for the telephone. “Give me police headquarters,” I told the exchange girl.