Hotel

"You might have something there," Ogilvie conceded. "Anyway, what I found made me do some scouting across at police headquarters where they know me too." He paused to puff again at the cigar as his listeners waited silently. When the cigar tip was glowing he inspected it, then continued.

"Over there they got three things to go on. They got a headlight trim ring which musta' come off when the kid and the woman was hit. They got some headlight glass, and lookin' at the kid's clothin', they reckon there'll be a brush trace."

"A what?"

"You rub clothes against something hard, Duchess, specially if it's shiny like a car fender, say, an' it leaves a mark the same way as fingerprints.

The police lab kin pick it up like they do prints - dust it, an' it shows."

"That's interesting," the Duke said, as if speaking of something unconnected with himself. "I didn't know that." "Not many do. In this case, though, I reckon it don't make a lot o' difference. On your car you got a busted headlight, and the trim ring's gone. Ain't any doubt they'd match up, even without the brush trace an' the blood. Oh yeah, I shoulda told you. There's plenty of blood, though it don't show too much on the black paint."

"Oh, my God!" A hand to her face, the Duchess turned away.

Her husband asked, "What do you propose to do?"

The fat man rubbed his hands together, looking down at his thick, fleshy fingers. "Like I said, I come to hear your side of it."

The Duke said despairingly, "What can I possibly say? You know what happened." He made an attempt to square his shoulders which did not succeed. "You'd better call the police and get it over."

"Well now, there's no call for being hasty." The incongruous falsetto voice took on a musing note. "What's done's been done. Rushin' any place ain't gonna bring back the kid nor its mother neither. Besides, what they'd do to you across at headquarters, Duke, you wouldn't like. No sir, you wouldn't like it at all."

The other two slowly raised their eyes.

"I was hoping," Ogilvie said, "that you folks could suggest something."

The Duke said uncertainly, "I don't understand."

"I understand," the Duchess of Croydon said. "You want money, don't you?

You came here to blackmail us."

If she expected her words to shock, they did not succeed. The house detective shrugged. "Whatever names you call things, ma'am, don't matter to me. All I come for was to help you people outa trouble. But I got to live too."

"You'd accept money to keep silent about what you know?"

"I reckon I might."

"But from what you say," the Duchess pointed out, her poise for the moment recovered, "it would do no good. The car would be discovered in any case."

"I guess you'd have to take that chance. But there's some reasons it might not be. Something I ain't told you yet.

"Tell us now, please."

Ogilvie said, "I ain't figured this out myself completely. But when you hit that kid you was going away from town, not to it."

"We'd made a mistake in the route," the Duchess said. "Somehow we'd become turned around. It's easily done in New Orleans, with the streets winding as they do. Afterward, using side streets, we went back."

"I thought it might be that," Ogilvie nodded understandingly. "But the police ain't figured it that way. They're looking for somebody who was headed out. That's why, right now, they're workin' on the suburbs and the outside towns. They may get around to searchin' downtown, but it won't be yet."

"How long before they do?"

"Maybe three, four days. They got a lot of other places to look first."

"How could that help us - the delay?"

"It might," Ogilvie said. "Providin' nobody twigs the car - an' seein' where it is, you might be lucky there. An' if you can get it away."

"You mean out of the state?"

"I mean out o' the South."

"That wouldn't be easy?"

"No, ma'am. Every state around - Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, all the rest'll be watching for a car damaged the way yours is."

The Duchess considered. "Is there any possibility of having repairs made first? If the work were done discreetly we could pay well."

The house detective shook his head emphatically. "You try that, you might as well walk over to headquarters right now an' give up. Every repair shop in Louisiana's been told to holler 'cops' the minute a car needing fixin' like yours comes in. They'd do it, too. You people are hot."

The Duchess of Croydon kept firm, tight rein on her racing mind. It was essential, she knew, that her thinking remain calm and reasoned. In the last few minutes the conversation had become as seemingly casual as if the discussion were of some minor domestic matter and not survival itself. She intended to keep it that way. Once more, she was aware, the role of leadership had fallen to her, her husband now a tense but passive spectator of the exchange between the evil fat man and herself. No matter.

What was inevitable must be accepted. The important thing was to consider all eventualities. A thought occurred to her.