Not Quite Dead Enough (The Rex Stout Library)

“A suggestion, sir. I understand that General Fife and Colonel Tinkham are to be kept in ignorance of what Sergeant Bruce is: the brains of G2, apparently. So I should think they would be startled by her presence here and maybe suspect she is not a simple little WAC. So I just whispered to her to ask if she likes to dance, and she whispered back that she does. I respectfully suggest-”

“Go on, go on, get out of here, both of you. It’s a good idea at that, isn’t it, Dorothy?”

She nodded. “That’s why I told him I like to dance.”

Momentarily, I let it go. But after we had left the house and walked to the corner and flagged a taxi and she had got in, I spoke to her through the open door.

“Let’s start from scratch. He can take you to Eleventh Street, or he can take us uptown. Do you like to dance or don’t you?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Then your telling the boss that you told me you like to dance because it would be for the good of your country and help win the war for you to leave there, that was a lie?”

“Yes.”

“Swell. Now all the familiarity. ‘Ken darling.’ ‘Dorothy’ from the boss. Did you sit on their laps when you were a baby, or is it a recently formed habit?”

She chuckled and gurgled, or whatever that noise was. “That,” she said, “is nothing but congenital friendly exuberance. Also I feel rather protective about them. I feel that way, more or less, about lots of men-those I don’t dislike. They’re so darned dumb.”

I grinned at her. “Fifty years from now I’ll remind you of that, and you’ll claim you never said it.” I got in the cab. “For myself I don’t care, but my colleagues, one billion human males, are counting on me.”

I told the driver, “Flamingo Club.”

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3/09/2007

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