CHANCE MOLLOY, HEAD UP, EYES straight ahead, contemplated the part of the city before his hotel-room window which night and snow did not obscure. Only a moment ago snow had come. The earlier rain, which had been made up of very small droplets of moisture that were as much suspended in the air as falling, had now changed to a hard pelletlike snow which, driven by a boisterous wind, darted about in the darkness like white gnats. The glassy flakes snapped and tinkled against the windowpane a few inches from his eyes, rebounded, fell eventually into the street below.
Molloy was, generally speaking, untouched by either the elements outside or the cozy warmth in the hotel suite. Nor did he feel very tired. He had reached an edge, physically and mentally, and fatigue for the time being was not a noticeable factor. Later there might be a reaction, but probably not much of a one unless he pumped a good bit more from his energy reserve; certainly, now, he had no need to think of rest, relaxation, sleep. A man who practiced the rules of eating and exercise, he had abundant physical resources, was able to measure their level accurately.
“Really ... really, now!” Nicholas N. Nesbitt’s voice came at him. “I say—again—this is ridiculous, don’t you think?” The man mixed wrath and mystification nicely.
Molloy’s smile was thin. Actually, all the while he stood here, he had been watching Nesbitt’s reflection on the windowpane. He said nothing.
“I should”—Nesbitt tried again—“walk right out of here!”
“Go ahead.”
“You mean you would let me?”
The look on Molloy’s face as he turned from the window was not calculated to ease the other man. “You could try it,” he said lightly. He walked to the telephone, swept up the handset, and said presently, “Operator, is there anything you can do to speed up my call to Los Angeles? ... Yes, please. And thank you.” He dropped the instrument back in place.
Nicholas Nesbitt, poised on the chair edge, hands clamped to the armrests, elbows sticking out like half-folded wings, was glaring.
“Was that—Sir! Sir, are you threatening me?” he snapped.
“Threaten?”
“It sounded that way!”
The thin smiled touched Molloy’s face again, and his hands made soothing patting motions in the air before his chest. He said, “Put it this way: I don’t feel that you could, having listened to as much of my story as you have—you could not, conscientiously, walk out. Not at this point. You are, Mr. Nesbitt, as anyone would reasonably know from your position—general manager of Transfa—a man who sees a thing through. A man of character. You might try to walk out of this room, leaving matters unsettled, but I don’t think your integrity would permit it, nor do I believe you would try, or are seriously considering the idea.” There was no more sincerity in this flowery speech than there had been in the patting movements which Molloy’s hands had made.
Nesbitt held his poised-to-fly position on the chair.
“A very pretty speech, Mr. Molloy!” he said bitingly. “I wonder how much of it comes from the heart?”
“Oh, every bit,” Molloy assured him.
“Then why—for heaven’s sake, why—do you think I’m a damned liar?”
“I don’t.”
“You ... !” Nesbitt flung himself back in the chair; he threw his hands up and brought them down on his knees with a smack. “Your words, Mr. Molloy, bear blessed little relation to your actions, I must say!” He smacked the hands on his knees twice more for emphasis, added, “I certainly must say!”
“I believe you are N. N. Nesbitt,” Molloy said.
“Hah! Then why are you calling the West Coast to check on it?”
“Oh, that! Merely to prove to myself that I am right in believing you are Nesbitt.”
“Indeed! I am to swallow that?”
“Yes.”
Nesbitt shot his head forward. “Next thing, you’ll be saying you believe my statement that Martha is Martha.”
“I believe in its sincerity.”
“What?”
“You tell me the Martha here is the real Martha. I feel you sincerely want me to believe so for the time being.”
“Hah! I’m a liar, and also a poor one. Is that it?”
Molloy shrugged, said, “You are a direct and outspoken man, Mr. Nesbitt, and that’s a quality I like also.”
The other man did not answer. He crossed his legs, drummed fingers on the chair armrests, and frowned at the floor, at Molloy, and at the floor again.
Walking to the bedroom door, which was closed, Molloy bent his head attentively to the polished wooden panel, called, “Is all this keeping you awake?”
“Yes—no ... I mean, I couldn’t sleep anyway,” Julie Edwards responded from the bedroom.
“It would be better if you got rest,” Molloy said.
“I—is Martha really here in New York after all?”
“Mr. Nesbitt says so.”
“But is she?”
Patiently Molloy said, “Get what rest you can. We’ll check on the Martha situation as soon as I check on Mr. Nesbitt.”
He swung from the door, crossed to the table on which the telephone stood, and took a half-seated position on the table, right leg carelessly across a table corner, foot dangling. He waited there, relaxed, composed, apparently unaffected by Nesbitt’s nasty manner.
He had seen, by now, that Nesbitt was a sharp man. He supposed the fellow was really Nesbitt; the call to the West Coast—to Dike Pines, aviation editor of the Times, whom Molloy knew—should settle that. In the meantime he was studying Nesbitt, pondering, weighing, and firing arrows of suspicion at the story Nesbitt had told them.
Nesbitt, pinned down for inspection, was a difficult one to read. Men of his physical appearance, wiry, almost starved-looking, deeply tanned, appearing tremendously fit, were hard to judge. The man’s age too—fiftyish—helped enclose him in a husk. By the time he reached such age the flair for deceit, if it was in a man, was highly developed, Molloy well knew; it had been his experience that the most dangerous confidence men were the middle-aged and elderly ones. Youth was a shining, translucent garment through which one could see character—age darkened the cloak.
According to Nesbitt’s story he had come to New York on company business—a special matter, an offer received for a large part of Transfa—and had been unable to find a hotel room. He had, rather than bother Paul Roger Copeland, telephoned Martha about the predicament, whereupon Martha suggested he occupy her apartment; she would stay at the Copeland estate, something she had done on other occasions. To this Nesbitt agreed. He saw nothing strange about it. Martha had fully convinced him this was the logical thing to do.
“Tonight,” he had said, “Martha had to work late—Transfa is being liquidated, you know, and there is a lot of detail checking for Martha to do—and she could not very well get away. Martha said she had a friend named Julie Edwards arriving on the two o’clock train and asked me if I would meet the young lady for her. I, naturally, was quite willing. Hadn’t Martha given up her apartment when I couldn’t find a hotel room?”
Molloy had said, “So you were doing Martha a favor and meeting Julie at the station?”
“Exactly.”
“Then what disposal was to be made of Julie?” Molloy’s voice, asking this, had been deceptively unstirred.
“Why, there still aren’t any hotel rooms—there probably are, if you want to run your legs off finding them. I didn’t. So I was going to take Miss Edwards out to the Copeland estate.”
“And Martha is Martha?”
“God!” Nesbitt said explosively. “What a crazy idea to think she isn’t!”
The man’s voice rang with truth during the telling. That might mean nothing, and Molloy did not permit himself to be sold; not, actually, sold on anything. Nesbitt’s story disagreed with facts. Martha was not the girl who was pretending to be Martha, Molloy knew absolutely. On that point he would stand adamant, but he was open in all other ways. His opinions, suspicions, were flexible and ready to be molded as the facts warranted; none of them was nailed down as unalterable, except the one truth that the Martha in New York was not the Martha he had known.
Now, tired of waiting—the California call had been dangling nearly an hour—Molloy had to use a good deal of restraint, and to stand firm and hard-jawed against wild currents of doubt, suspicion, fantastic ideas. He set himself solidly against feelings that the case had gone crazy, that anything could happen now. It was not in his make-up to allow himself to be stampeded, to be thrown off a direct path of action once he had mapped one out.
His hand, as the telephone began ringing, was instantly clamped on the instrument. He listened to an operator’s voice mixed with the voice of Dike Pines. He said, “Dike? Chance Molloy ... Oh, from New York. I’m up here on a sort of vacation. How are things?” He watched Nesbitt and listened to Dike Pines say things were all right, damned fine in fact, for Dike had had ten bucks on Box Boy in the third at Santa Anita that afternoon, the pay-off being eighty dollars for a two-buck ticket. Had Molloy heard about that? Molloy said, “That’s fine, Dike. Listen, you may be able to help me out. Do you know N. N. Nesbitt, of Transfa? ... Uh-huh. What does he look like, what sort is he, and where is he now—is he on the Coast? Tell me anything you think might help. I may have to go up against him in a business deal.”
Nesbitt snorted.
Presently Molloy said, “Thanks, Dike. That will do it.” He added good-bys, replaced the telephone on its cradle, swung his gaze back to Nesbitt, and said, “Dike gave you a clean slate. Said he knew you personally.”
“He does,” Nesbitt said briefly.
“I was afraid he wouldn’t. After all, Dike has only been on the Times a couple of months. Before that he was in San Francisco.”
Nesbitt nodded. “It was in San Francisco I got acquainted with him. He did aviation for the morning paper.”
“Yes, so Dike said. You had personal charge of the Frisco plant of Transfa, he said.”
“That’s right.”
“A nice guy, Dike.”
“He’s okay.”
“It’s a small world.” Molloy seemed interested in a faint bubbling, like a baby with its bottle, that came from the steam radiator. “Yes, a small world,” he added. The radiator, situated under the window, its presence masked by a metal cover painted, like the walls, a shade of blue a few tones lighter than robin’s egg, threw warmth strongly into the room, battled the inroad of chill air around the window. Molloy continued, “Dike said he looked around for a house for you to rent when you transferred to Los Angeles last month. That does make it a small world, doesn’t it? I know Dike, and Dike knows you.”
There was no friendliness in Nesbitt’s eyes. “I don’t consider it remarkable enough to be subject for endless conversation. After all, I know half the aviation editors in the nation, and so, probably, do you.”
Molloy smiled amiably.
“Anyway, now I can put you down in my book as okay, Nesbitt,” he said.
“That,” snapped Nesbitt, “overwhelms me!”
Molloy’s smile retained its pleasantness, widened. He said, “Does it?”
“I don’t like”—Nesbitt’s hands lifted, banged down on the chair armrests—“to be made a fool of!”
“No one enjoys being made a fool of,” Molloy agreed.
Nesbitt glared his feelings. A dynamic man, whiplike in his movements, he was taking, or pretending to take, the restraint off his puzzled wrath.
“Molloy!” He brought his arm up, leveled it. “You know, Molloy, I’ve heard of you! Heard, by God, some things that lead me to think you’re a hard customer.” He followed the pointing arm up out of the chair and shouted, “I understand, Molloy, that you’ve done well for yourself. I’ve heard how too—by cutting many a sharp corner. You take, I hear, the damndest chances, and you always come out on top. You’re known as a foxy man, Molloy, a bad man for one to have after him. They say you’ve got the whole South American aviation business by the tail, and for you, a tail hold is as good as having a collar and chain on it. How? How do you do it? By methods that aren’t always orthodox, I understand.”
The tirade had no effect at all on Molloy. He said quietly, “The word ‘crook’ has been applied to me—thoughtlessly in each case—before. Do you want to use it?”
“If I did I’d probably have to thrash you. I don’t believe I could do that.”
“I don’t believe so, either,” Molloy said dryly. “What are you leading up to with these theatrics, Nesbitt?”
“Theatrics? Hah!” The man thrust his head forward. “Molloy, I think you’re playing a conniving game on me. A devious, hard, scheming skin game. That’s what I think.”
Molloy’s head went back; his laughter, hearty, actually amused, tumbled into the room. After he had gotten sincere enjoyment from the moment he rubbed a hand against the side of his face, chuckling inwardly as he did so. He slid off the table.
“Now we understand each other,” he said.
Nesbitt’s voice shook. “I warn you—warn you fairly, Molloy—you’re not getting away with anything!”
“You ... ?”
“I’m going to stop it, right now!” Nesbitt yelled. “How? I’ll tell you how: right now, this instant, we’re going out and talk to Martha. And Copeland. Copeland, too. He’s going to know about these mysterious goings on.”
Molloy shrugged. “It’s all right with me.”
“What! You—” Suspicion crossed Nesbitt’s flushed face. “You’re willing to talk to Martha and Copeland?”
“I had planned to do so.”
“This Julie ...”
A hardness came around Molloy’s mouth.
Nesbitt had wheeled; he jabbed a hand toward the bedroom, said, “That girl goes along with us.”
“I’ll be the judge of that, my friend,” Molloy said coldly.
Nesbitt was impressed. He locked gaze with Molloy, held the stare long enough to demonstrate that he was unafraid, then fell to contemplating the ceiling. He was thinking. His belligerence remained, but, with tightening of jaw, firming of mouth, he put it under wraps.
Molloy, lazily almost, went to the bedroom door. He had won. He trusted his skill at judging men enough to feel sure that Nesbitt was, basically, afraid of him—if not afraid, the man at least had a genuine respect for his opponent—and was probably fighting in some sense a cornered fight. His feeling of triumph was not tempered by doubts about Nesbitt. He thought he had the man measured, placed in the picture.
He gave out a sharp sigh. His thoughts, arrayed, forward-marching, had left the dark ramparts where doubt and mystification had kept them entrenched and defensive. He saw for the first time a clear battlefield ahead, a sharply defined foe. Shots no longer need be fired blindly. Action need not be halting or withheld entirely.
His knuckles hit firmly against the bedroom door.
Julie Edwards called, and he went in.
She sat, fully dressed, in a chair. “I gave up trying to sleep,” she explained. He took a seat on the edge of the bed. He saw that she had freshened herself and put a little color on her face. She was, he made note again, a girl who made a very strong appeal to him ... His sigh, softly drawn but deep, was a tribute to his wish that things might quiet down so that he could explore this emotional appeal ... He moved a hand over the bedspread, said, “I could use a little sleep myself.”
“He’s awfully mad, isn’t he?” Julie nodded toward the other room.
He was oddly stirred by this girl. He already saw qualities in her that were strangely stirring, enough so that he was surprised at himself. Susceptibility to the female of the species wasn’t a particular weakness with him. His requirements, while not specific, were set high. At thirty-nine, he was unmarried. This could only mean, since he had known many women, some intimately, that he had never been actually reached. Not wholly. He pondered this, while damming the excitement that, if it didn’t snuff out the candle of a gentler emotion, kept it guttering, low-burning, an unnatural and strained flame.
Wondering, he thought: I feel as if I knew a great deal about her. He was not usually like that. His judgment was not usually so quick. Personalities, to him, were to be explored warily and at leisure, watching cause and effect; he preferred to measure the strength—buoyancy against dashed hopes, greed against temptation, stoicism against pain. But he had drawn an affinity for this girl, a comfortable feeling of knowing her well. She was, for instance, quite an inward person with great depths of thought and emotion, in addition to having a stirring body. Exploring her mind would be an ever-interesting experience. It held, he was sure, fascinating treasures. Emotionally she contained—hard-restrained—great fire and thrilling capacity for response, he felt. He did not, as she obviously did, take an alarmed view of this inwardness. He could see she was worried about it, she had said so too; and he imagined it was vastly upsetting to her and would continue to be, until she found an answer, extremely unhappy. He did not scoff. To one like her, sensitive, hyperalert, finely tuned, self-dissatisfaction would be an agony. He wished he could help her.
He said, “He’s noisy, at any rate.”
“Is he really N. N. Nesbitt?”
“There isn’t much doubt.”
“He—for the general manager of a big airplane company, he seems awfully excitable.”
“Probably he’s scared.”
“Of you?”
He leaned over, bracing with an arm against the bed. “He probably hasn’t—this is a guess—told all he knows. Or suspects. He strikes me as someone, not particularly brilliant, who has worked hard and faithfully and applied himself to a groove for a long time, as a result achieving some success. Now, presented with a startling, a horrifying development—this is another assumption—which is far from the sort of thing he is used to coping with, he finds himself rattled. He’s covering up disorganization with loudness. You’ll notice he hasn’t done the natural things—like calling a cop. He already knew we intended to confront the phony Martha and tell Copeland she was a fake ... As for any effect I have on him, I think he purposefully exaggerated that. Part of the smoke screen.”
“Is he—about Martha—lying?”
“Let’s not go into that now.” He was shocked by the apprehension that shook her. He leaned forward, took her hands, and added, “Listen, what I really came in here for was to decide whether to take you out to see this Martha.”
“Yes! Yes, you must!”
“Okay.” He came to his feet. “We’ll go out to Copeland’s now and wind up this nasty mess.”