The Long Saturday Night (1962) by Charles Williams

Author:Charles Williams [Williams, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Noir Fiction, Thriller & Suspense
Published: 2010-07-25T05:00:00+00:00

7

She dialed the operator and put through the call. In a moment a girl’s voice said, “Norman Detective Agency.”

“Detective agency?” Barbara asked.

“Yes. Are you sure you have the right number?”

“Well, it must be, if this is the Norman agency. Could I speak to Mr. Norman, please?”

When he came on the line, she said, “This is the Warren Realty Company, in Carthage—”

“Who’s speaking?” he asked.

“Barbara Ryan. Mr. Warren’s not here, and we’ve received a rather strange telegram from a Mr. Weaver, in—”

He cut her off. “Never mind where it’s from; if it’s what I think it is, I’d just as soon not know. Maybe you’d better read it to me.” She read it.

“Umh-umh,” he said. “Your telegram’s from your boss.”

“From Mr. Warren himself?”

“In person. He pulled a whizzer on me, and now he’s about to pull one on you.” “How do you mean?”

“He wants some information I’ve got for him, but if you pass it along to him without telling the police where he is you’re sticking your neck out a mile. When he hired me to get this information for him he didn’t tell me he was hotter than radioactive cobalt; I had to find that out by reading the papers last night, like any other dope. And now I’m expecting the cops to come pounding on the door any minute; they know he was here in town, and it was Mrs. Warren we asked five thousand people about yesterday. But that’s all right; I don’t know where he is, and I don’t want to know.”

“Would you be breaking any law if you gave me the information?”

“No. I’ve got a signed authorization to do it, as long as you have that file number. What you do with it is your pigeon.”

“I suppose, under the circumstances, I should give it to the police, along with the telegram. But if Mr. Warren calls, I’ll also give it to him. After all, he’s paying for it. You don’t object to the police knowing he hired you, do you?”

“No. As long as. I’m not withholding information as to his whereabouts, I’m in the clear. I don’t think it’ll be much help to him, but we have found out what he wanted. I mean, what his wife was doing down here.”

I waited tensely. “What was it?” Barbara asked.

“She was playing the ponies.”

That trumpet call! I cursed myself for a tone-deaf idiot; anybody else would have placed it long ago. It was the same one they always play at racetracks when the horses come out to parade to the post. She’d called from a booth somewhere near the track.

“Are you sure of that?” Barbara asked.

“No doubt of it at all. For the whole week she was out there every afternoon the track was open. And she really dropped a wad. At four yesterday afternoon we located two taxi drivers who remembered taking her out to the track on different days, so we shagged out there and started flashing her picture to the sellers. We didn’t have any luck until we hit the $50 window, but he remembered her all right.

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