Читать книгу Double Take - Roy Huggins - Страница 6

HANDLING it my own way meant one thing in particular: seeing Mrs. Ralph Johnston. Seeing her probably wasn’t the most cautious move in the world but the obvious one. I had checked with U.C.L.A. She was from Portland all right. Jefferson High School, 1937.

I drove out through the Holmby Hills where white mansions glare superciliously across raw terraced hill sides. At the end of Duarte Road I found the house, or at least the drive. The house was set back and was hidden by acacias and high-trimmed hedges. I made a U-turn and parked outside about thirty feet below the wide entrance. I walked up the shaded drive and along a curving flagstone path to the door. I had checked first and it was safe enough. Johnston was at his office. I pushed a protruding pink button and heard the chime sound far off like an echo in a deep well.

The door was opened by a gaunt, gray-haired woman. She had on a white uniform that looked almost as stiff as her face.

“Was there something?” She left the last word hanging in the air.

“I’m from the Treasury Department. I’d like to speak with Mrs. Johnston.”

Her face shifted a little, but it didn’t relax. “You have a card?”

“I’m just a working man. But I’m sure Mrs. Johnston will see a representative of her government. It’s Mr. Flood, War Bond Division.”

“I’ll see if Mrs. Johnston is in.” She walked away and left the door open. She wasn’t wearing the stiff dress. She was just walking around inside it.

Pretty soon she came back and asked me if I wouldn’t please come in. We walked down a short hall, turned and went down two steps into a large living room. She mumbled the name I’d given her and left, taking the stiff dress with her.

The room had been ordered by catalogue from a firm of interior decorators and then left as they delivered it. There was the current grouping of sofa, chairs, and coffee table about the fireplace. And there was a woman standing in the midst of it. She was wearing blue satin lounging pajamas that buttoned high at the neck, Chinese style

“Thanks for seeing me, Mrs. Johnston.”

“Not at all. Sit down.” She sat in a wing-chair upholstered in something designed by a truck gardener, and waved a cigarette at the sofa.

I sat down and looked at her. About five-feet-six and at least one hundred-forty-five pounds on the hoof. It wasn’t bone, she was just healthfully plump. In almost any other kind of clothes, you’d have called her voluptuous. Her hair was the kind of ash-brown that happens to people who were blondes when they were kids, and it was done up in no particular fashion. The eyes weren’t hiding behind glasses now, but they were the eyes of the picture, dark and steady, and as melancholy as an Irish fairy tale. Her nose was a little broad at the tip, and her mouth was wide and full. She was gazing at me with a thoughtful, remote expression that meant nothing at all. She might have been sizing me up with wary care, or thinking about the menu for dinner.

I said: “Mrs. Johnston, we’re contacting the wives of business leaders in the community to see if we can form a community bond sales group among the ladies. You know, we still want to sell bonds, and we feel that women with go-getter husbands probably have something of the go-getter in themselves.” I smiled at her idiotically.

She studied me with a quiet repose for what seemed a long time without saying anything. I was glad I wasn’t Mr. Flood from the Treasury Department. My day would be ruined. I would need a pep talk. Behind me, in the hall or in another room, I heard a a phone being dialled, faintly.

“Mr. Flood. I’m terribly sorry.” Her voice was low, throaty, but very quiet and very gentle, like her eyes. “But I’m afraid I’m not a ‘go-getter.’ I know I’d just be a burden on the group. I’m sorry.” She smiled. I could feel that smile down to my knee caps. It was wide. It was incongruous. It was lovely. But it didn’t change the eyes much.

“I can’t agree with you, Mrs. Johnston,” I said. “I think you are just what we’re looking for: intelligent, young, of good standing…”

* * * *

MRS. JOHNSTON’S smile froze and she leaned forward and knocked an ash from her cigarette into a crystal tray. She did it slowly, deliberately. When she looked up the thoughtful, neutral, expression was back again.

She shook her head and said: “Really, Mr. Flood, you will have to excuse me. The cause is fine…”

The tall gaunt woman interrupted her, standing vaguely on the stairs from the hall. “Can you answer the phone, Mrs. Johnston?”

She excused herself and they both disappeared down the hall to the left. I hadn’t heard a phone ring, and I had heard one being dialled. It didn’t have to mean anything. The bell might ring in another room, the kitchen maybe, or the den. Or maybe the maid had put in a call for her.

She was back in no time at all. She sat down again and pulled the smile up from nowhere, as bright and as lovely as ever.

“Tell me, Mr. Flood, how large a group are you planning?”

That tore it. Not hearing a phone ring hadn’t really bothered me. But the new lease on the smile and the sudden interest in the size of the group were all wrong. I suddenly wanted to know if anyone was outside looking for the registration card on my steering post. I didn’t keep it there, but I had license plates.

I stood up and said, “We need at least one person to a square block, Mrs. Johnston.” I turned and walked toward the hall. I heard her rise and she said: “Mr Flood, I…”

I turned at the archway and said loudly, with a wider smile and a cock of my head, “Think it over, Mrs. Johnston. I know you’ll be a real addition to our group.”

She had a hand up and her lips were parted, ready to say something when I stopped.

I went right on: “I don’t insist on an answer now, Mrs. Johnston. Talk to your husband about it.” I turned and started for the front door. “And thanks for your time. I know you’re busy.…”

I went out the door. Coming up the flagstone path was the gray-haired maid. She jumped a little when she saw me and tried to pull herself into the dress like a turtle as she squeezed past me.

“You’re wasting your time,” I said. “I stole the car from a gray-haired old lady.”

She hurried into the house without looking at me or saying anything.

I walked out and drove away. My license plates didn’t tell me whether anybody had been looking at them or not.