Well Now My Pretty

Beyond the steel door was a long passage that led to the Staff entrance to the Casino. At the door that led to the rear of the Casino and to a broad strip of tarmac where trucks arrived each morning delivering food, drink, cigarettes and other provisions for the restaurant, was a doorman.

Sid Regan, the doorman, was sixty-one years of age. In another four years he would have to retire. He had worked at the Casino for thirty-eight years. He was short, fat and bulky with an amiable, freckled face, thinning, greyish hair and small, humorous eyes. Regan loved his job. He regretted he was slowly but inevitably reaching the age when he would no longer work at the Casino. He was what is known as a character. This, perhaps, was kind. The younger members of the staff called him a goddam, yakiting, old bore.

The trouble with Regan was he had too many memories. He couldn't resist talking about the good old days. Few bothered to listen to him, but this didn't discourage him. He always managed to find some unwary person who, trapped by his guile, had to stand impatiently while he described with a wealth of detail the glories of the past.

This bulky, elderly man, who did his job well, who had given years of faithful service, represented Harry Lewis's most serious mistake with his staff. Regan had a very important job: to see no one should ever pass his glass box without being known or without he being absolutely sure of their credentials. Regan was proud of his responsibility, and this Maisky had discovered. Maisky had found out by listening to gossip that Regan liked to act on his own initiative. He disliked being told anything. He had held his job successfully for years . . . he wasn't a kid. Why should he be told what to do? Maisky was gambling on this attitude of Regan's, and it was a successful gamble.

When Regan saw a small truck with the well-known I.B.M. letters painted on its sides pull up at the Staff entrance, he was puzzled, but not suspicious. He decided that something had gone wrong and Head Office had failed to alert him. He was thinking, as Jess Chandler got out of the truck, that those girls in the office were getting more and more inefficient.

Chandler had been well coached by Maisky. He walked up to the glass box, pushed his peaked cap to the back of his head and nodded to Regan.

"You have a breakdown in the vault," he said. "My goddam luck! I was right in the middle of a musical on the Telly when the call came through. What a time!" He handed a delivery note to Regan. "Let's snap it up, mister. You know about it, don't you?"

Maisky had impressed on Chandler to use this phrase. He had watched Regan as he had walked to and fro from the Casino to his home. He had seen him stop and talk to people and had seen their desperately bored expressions. He had come to the correct conclusion that Regan imagined that he was the Casino, and he felt certain that Regan would never admit to not knowing about such an important event as a calculator having broken down in the vault.

But his guess hung on a knife's edge. For a split second, Regan was in two minds whether to call the office for confirmation, then, knowing the office was shut and feeling hurt that no one had bothered to consult him, he accepted the delivery note, shifted his glasses to the end of his nose and studied it. This was in order. It had taken Maisky some days to get a printed form from I.B.M.'s local office, but he had got it.

"Yeah. . . yeah," Regan said, pushing up his glasses and regarding Chandler. "I know all about it. They are waiting for you, boy. You take it right in," and he banged down the rubber stamp on the delivery note: a stamp that cleared anyone walking into the forbidden territory.

Wash now appeared from out of the truck, and a moment later, Perry appeared. While Wash and Chandler man-handled the big carton out of the truck, Perry strolled over to Regan's glass box.

"Hi, pal," he said, feeding a cigarette between his thin lips. "Are you the guy who had his photo in the paper last week?"

This again was information supplied by Maisky who had told Perry to use it.

Regan preened himself, taking off his glasses.

"That was me. You see it? Mind you, it's an old picture, but I reckon I don't change much. I've been in this box for thirty-eight years. Imagine! You can understand why they put my photo in the paper, can't you?"

"Is that right?" Perry's fat face showed impressed astonishment. "Thirty-eight years! For Pete's sake! I've only lived in this City for three years. I bet you've seen a lot of changes, mister."

Again this was Maisky's dialogue. Regan snapped at it as a trout snaps at a fly.

By now Chandler and Wash were past him and walking down the narrow corridor, carrying the carton.

"Changes?" Regan said, accepting the cigarette Perry offered him. "You bet. I remember . . ."

Outside, sitting in the truck, his clawlike hands gripping the steering wheel, Maisky waited.

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