BOBBIE LEE SAW MY reaction. She said, “Are you saying it's like a dress you are familiar with, Mr. Quayle?”
“It's not like it. It is it. Charlotte wore that dress when we went to a party in January. I'd recognize it anywhere.”
His intensity of feeling grew and Bobbie Lee and I exchanged glances.
Quayle began to wave his hands and said, “I am a poet. An artist. My eyes are tools. People burn themselves into my brain and bring their garments with them. I know clothes, Ms Leonard. You, for instance, are a perfect ten. The dress in that drawing was designer-made as an approximate twelve but taken in at the waist. Charlotte has exceptionally slender hips for a woman of her height.”
Bobbie Lee did not respond and Quayle turned to me. “You know her, Samson. Do you think that a woman like Charlotte Vivien buys her dresses from a Sears Roebuck catalog? Each of her garments is unique. That dress is one of Charlotte's. And I want to know what you are doing with a drawing of it on your desk.”
“You're not my only client,” I said.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“This happens to be one of a series of drawings for a fashion company.”
“What fashion company? In Indianapolis?”
“That is not your business.”
“What do you do for a fashion company?”
“I get them drawings of garments that they might not see otherwise.”
“You steal designs? Oh, Albert, I am disappointed.”
“I'm not admitting to anything illegal. But look at the picture. There's almost no face at all.”
“Yes,” he said slowly.
“Which proves it's a fashion drawing,” I said. “It is the clothes that are important.” He considered this.
“I don't mean to interrupt,” Bobbie Lee said, saving me further inanities, “but I have to leave.”
“Of course,” I said.
“Are you coming with me, Mr. Quayle? If you are, we've got to roll.”
Quayle looked at me and then at gap-toothed Bobbie Lee. Poet was confused and less than satisfied with my explanations. But it was no contest. They left together.
Still, Poet's agitation was nothing to my own.
Suddenly, if the dress was Charlotte Vivien's I had a direct line to the woman who had picked up the missing bomb.
Did people like Charlotte Vivien lend their clothes?
At least, surely, she would know what had happened to the dress.
I went to the telephone.
But as I reached to pick it up, it rang.
The sound startled me. After the third ring I answered it. “Albert Samson.”
An artificially high voice said, “Mr. Samson, it's about that meeting you wanted.”
The Frog. Jesus!
I said, “What about it?”
“I can only provide two of the people concerned this evening. The others have commitments that it will be impossible for them to break. Do you want to see the two?”
I said, “Can you arrange our meeting for tomorrow morning instead?”
After two sharp breaths she said, “I will try. I think I can.”
“O.K. Eleven o'clock. But I may need to get back in touch with you later tonight, so give me your number.”
“I don't really want to do that,” she said. Her voice was so laden with distress that I wondered if she was in physical pain.
But I said, “Don't give me a hard time. I know where you live. If I was going to turn you in, the place would be crawling with little blue men already.”
She gave me the number.
“And who do I ask for?” I said.
“You don't know my name?”
“No. But it would be easy to find out.”
There was a long pause. With an unsteady voice she said, “Kathryn Morgason.”
“Morgason?”
“Yes.”
“As in Cab-Co Morgason?”
“Yes.”
“Does he know that—”
“He hasn't got the slightest idea, Mr. Samson.” And then she said, “I knew there were big risks. But when the danger is so close, it seems much more awful than I ever imagined it was going to be.”
I would have asked how Sick was, but that just seemed like rubbing the risks in.