“That is so. Where is he?”
“Somewhere in Stamford, I presume. Just where, I can’t say.”
“Oh, come now. How about your phone talk at seven-twenty?”
“What do you know about that?”
Slim Johnson took a sheet of paper from the inside pocket of his coat. “Just about everything, Bill, old thing,” he smiled. “Everything except the number you called. Here’s a report of the conversation. Amusing reading it makes, I must say. I might mention that we have tapped your home line, but the silly fool who listened in didn’t wake up until you’d been put through to your friend Evans. Come, let’s have the number!”
“Nothing doing, Johnson,” Bill said steadily, although he fully expected to see the gangster’s arm shoot forward the next instant, as it had done when Hank was killed. “You already know what I said to Evans. Well, that goes with you too, so far as I’m concerned.”
Slim Johnson gave him a quizzical glance. Then he lit another cigarette, which he smoked in a long gilded holder. For several minutes he stared at a print above Bill’s head and sent smoke rings toward the ceiling.
“From what I know of your character,” he said at last, and his voice sounded to Bill for all the world like the purr of a great cat playing with its prey, “you mean just what you say—at present. By morning, you may change your mind. Otherwise, I’m afraid we’ll have to use other methods. Go in to the bedroom now. I’m sorry that you will have to bear with all that’s left of dear Hank for a while; but we’ll remove the body later. Good night to you—and sweet dreams!”
Bill saw that Jake stood by the door with the automatic menacing him once more. Without a word he got to his feet and walked into the bedroom. Behind him the door closed and he heard a bolt shot home.
In the soft glow from rose-shaded lamps, Bill saw that this room was also of good size. The place reminded him of those impossible boudoir-bedrooms one sees portrayed on the screen. The bed was a huge, canopied affair of gilt and rose, and stood on a dais at one end of the room. Twenty or thirty small pillows covered with rose-colored silk were piled at the head on a rose damask coverlet. The walls and ceiling of the room were of white painted wood with panels of rose silk framed in gilt. On the hardwood floor, a rose rug, silk-piled, was spread. A chaise lounge, wicker arm chairs and mirrored tables laden with jars and bottles all bore out the same color scheme.