“Look, Irish. You’re a good anything—and that’s the truth. You have looks and you have brains and I have a hunch through all that Emerald Isle sauciness you have a heart too. But—”
“But you don’t want to tell me.”
“It isn’t I don’t want to, but no one’s supposed to know, not even the President.”
“You sure make it sound mysterious.”
“Just the officers. Oh, hell. I don’t know. What good would it do if I told you?”
“I guess you’d just get it off your chest, that’s all.”
“I can’t tell anyone official, Sheila. I’d have my head handed to me. But I’ve got to think and I’ve got to tell someone. I’ll go crazy, just knowing and not doing anything.”
“It’s important, isn’t it?”
Larry downed another drink quickly. It was his fourth and Sheila had never seen him take more than three or four in the course of a whole evening. “You’re damned right it’s important.” Larry leaned forward across the postage-stamp table. A liquor-haze clouded his eyes as he said: “It’s so important that unless someone does something about it, we’ll all be dead inside of twenty-four hours. Only trouble is, there isn’t anything anyone can do about it.”