Bancroft: "You know why. They don't want the government mixing into
this any more than we do."
Woman: "Well, then, are they just going to sit and take it? No,
they'll find some way to--"
"HELLO, THERE, MISTER!!!"
Dalgetty jumped and whirled around. His heart began to race, until he
felt his ribs tremble and he cursed his own tension.
"WHY, WHAT'S THE MATTER, MISTER? YOU LOOK--"
Effort again, forcing the volume down, grasping the thunderous heart
in fingers of command and dragging it toward rest. He focussed his
eyes on the girl who had entered. It was the rec girl, the one he had
asked for because he had to sit in this booth.
Her voice was speaking on an endurable level now. Another pretty
little bit of fluff. He smiled shakily. "Sit down, sweet. I'm sorry.
My nerves are shot. What'll you have?"
"A daiquiri, please." She smiled and placed herself beside him. He
dialed on the dispenser--the cocktail for her, a scotch and soda for
himself.
"You're new here," she said. "Have you just been hired or are you a
visitor?" Again the smile. "My name's Glenna."
"Call me Joe," said Dalgetty. His first name was actually Simon. "No,
I'll only be here a short while."
"Where you from?" she asked. "I'm clear from New Jersey myself."
"Proving that nobody is ever born in California." He grinned. The
control was asserting itself, his racing emotions were checked and he
could think clearly again. "I'm--uh--just a floater. Don't have any
real address right now."
The dispenser ejected the drinks on a tray and flashed the
charge--$20. Not bad, considering everything. He gave the machine a
fifty and it made change, a five-buck coin and a bill.
"Well," said Glenna, "here's to you."
"And you." He touched glasses, wondering how to say what he had to
say. Damn it, he couldn't sit here just talking or necking, he'd come
to listen but.... A sardonic montage of all the detective shows he had
ever seen winked through his mind. The amateur who rushes in and
solves the case, _heigh-ho_. He had never appreciated all the detail
involved till now.
* * * * *
There was hesitation in him. He decided that a straightforward
approach was his best bet. Deliberately then he created a cool
confidence. Subconsciously he feared this girl, alien as she was to
his class. All right, force the reaction to the surface, recognize it,
suppress it. Under the table his hands moved in the intricate symbolic
pattern which aided such emotion-harnessing.
"Glenna," he said, "I'm afraid I'll be rather dull company. The fact
is I'm doing some research in psychology, learning how to concentrate
under different conditions. I wanted to try it in a place like this,
you understand." He slipped out a 2-C bill and laid it before her. "If
you'd just sit here quietly it won't be for more than an hour I
guess."
"Huh?" Her brows lifted. Then, with a shrug and a wry smile, "Okay,
you're paying for it." She took a cigarette from the flat case at her
sash, lit it and relaxed. Dalgetty leaned against the wall and closed
his eyes again.
The girl watched him curiously. He was of medium height, stockily
built, inconspicuously dressed in a blue short-sleeved tunic, gray
slacks and sandals. His square snub-nosed face was lightly freckled,
with hazel eyes and a rather pleasant shy smile. The rusty hair was
close-cropped. A young man, she guessed, about twenty-five, quite
ordinary and uninteresting except for the wrestler's muscles and, of
course, his behavior.
Oh, well, it took all kinds.
Dalgetty had a moment of worry. Not because the yarn he had handed her
was thin but because it brushed too close to the truth. He thrust the
unsureness out of him. Chances were she hadn't understood any of it,
wouldn't even mention it. At least not to the people he was hunting.
Or who were hunting him?
Concentration, and the voices slowly came again: "--maybe. But I think
they'll be more stubborn than that."
Bancroft: "Yes. The issues are too large for a few lives to matter.
Still, Michael Tighe is only human. He'll talk."
The woman: "He can be made to talk, you mean?" She had one of the
coldest voices Dalgetty had ever heard.