If Death Ever Slept

“This may or may not affect the job you undertook for Mr. Jarrell-don’t interrupt me-very well, that we undertook. Murder sometimes creates only ripples, but more frequently high seas. Assuredly you are not going back there to take women to lunch at Rusterman’s or to taverns to dance. I offer no complaint for what has been done; I will concede that we blundered into this mess by a collaboration in mulishness; but if it was Mr. Jarrell’s gun that was used to kill Eber, and it isn’t too fanciful to suppose that it was, we are in it willy-nilly, and we should emerge, if not with profit, at least without discomfiture. That is our joint concern. You ask if you should start something up there. I doubt if you’ll need to; something has already started. It is most unlikely that the murder had no connection with that hive of predators and parasites. I can’t tell you how to proceed because you’ll have to wait on events. You will be guided by your intelligence and experience, and report to me as the occasion dictates. Mr. Jarrell said he has instructions for you. Have you any notion what they’ll be?”

“Not a glimmer.”

“Then we can’t anticipate them. You will call police headquarters?”

“Yes, on my way.”

“That will expedite matters. Otherwise there’s no telling when the body would be found.”

I was on my feet. “If you phone me there,” I told him, “keep it decent. He has four phones on his desk, and I suspect two of them.”

“I won’t phone you. You’ll phone me.”

“Okay,” I said, and went.

Chapter 6

PASSING THE GANTLET OF the steely eyes of the lobby sentinel, mounting in the private elevator, and using my key in the tenth-floor vestibule, I found that the electronic security apparatus hadn’t been switched on yet. Steck appeared, of course, and said that Mr. Jarrell would like to see me in the library. The eye I gave him was a different eye from what it had been. It could even have been Steck who had worked the rug trick to get hold of a gun. He had his duties, but he might have managed to squeeze it in.

Hearing voices in the lounge, I crossed the reception hall to glance in, and saw Trella, Nora, and Roger Foote at a card table.

Roger looked up and called to me. “Pinochle! Come and take a hand!”

“Sorry, I can’t. Mr. Jarrell wants me.”

“Come when you’re through! Peach Fuzz ran a beautiful race! Beautiful! Five lengths back at the turn and only a head behind at the finish! Beautiful!”