1953 - The Sucker Punch Read Free Page A

feet above sea level.
    As the taxi rounded the final bend in the drive, the first sight of the house stood me up on my ear.
    I expected something pretty grand, but this wasn't a house—it was a palace.
    It stood on an imposing terrace: a vast and magnificent pile of glittering white marble.
    It was quite a walk up the hundred white steps to the terrace and front entrance.
    Before I could hunt around for a bell or a knocker, one of the doors opened and Hargis, Vestal's butler, stood framed in the doorway.
    He was a big, fat man with the cold aristocratic face of an archbishop, and his pale grey, coldly disapproving eyes ran over me like the Siberian wind.
    "I'm Mr. Winters," I said. "Miss Shelley, please."
    He stood aside, and I walked into a hall the size of Pennsylvania Central Station.
    "If you will take a seat, sir."
    He went away, his head held high, his back stiff as a ramrod.
    I moved around looking at the suits of armour, the battleaxes, the pikes and the broadswords that gleamed dully from the oak-panelled walls.
    There were several oil paintings of well-fed, handsome cavaliers that might or might not have come from the brush of Frans Hals.
    The atmosphere of the house began to have an odd effect on me. I found I was regretting I had put on this sports getup. I was even suddenly scared of meeting Vestal Shelley.
    I had a mental picture of Tom Leadbeater in his neat dark suit, clutching his briefcase in sweating hands, while he waited in this overpowering hall for a battle he knew he couldn't win.
    Hargis returned after a few minutes.
    "If you will follow me. . . ."
    He set off down the passage and I went after him. We walked down a corridor wide enough to take a ten-ton truck and paused outside double oak doors.
    Hargis knocked softly, turned the handle and pushed open the door.
    "Mr. Winters from the Pacific Banking Corporation," he said, and he made it sound as if he were announcing a third-rate act in a fourth-rate vaudeville hall.
    I braced myself and walked in.
    The room was small, bright and full of flowers. Casement windows opened on to a wide terrace with a magnificent view of the garden and the distant ocean.
    There was a big desk by the window and seated behind the desk was a girl whose dark hair was scraped back and whose blue eyes stared at me through hard, rimless glasses.
    I looked no further than the scraped back hair and the glasses, and that's where I made a mistake. Knowing what I know of Eve Dolan now it seems incredible that I shouldn't have spotted that thing in her that was to play all hell with me in a few months' time. I don't care for women who wear glasses, so I didn't bother to look closely at her, and I thought the hard effect of the scraped back hair put her straight into the sour virgin class, and I am not and never will be interested in sour virgins.
    "Mr. Winters?" she asked, and I could see she was staring at my getup.
    "That's right."
    "Oh. I'm Miss Dolan, Miss Shelley's secretary. Won't you sit down? Miss Shelley may be a little time."
    I remembered what Leadbeater had told me; how he had waited hours and then was told to go away. That wasn't going to happen to me.
    "When Miss Shelley wants me you will find me in the garden," I said and walked out on to the terrace.
    I heard her say something, but I kept moving. I walked down the steps to the terrace and sat on the balustrade and lit a cigarette.
    I was pretty keyed up, but I kept telling myself I wasn't going to be sent away without seeing this woman. I decided to give her fifteen minutes and no more before I took action. I watched the regiment of Chinese gardeners tending the lawn, the paths and the packed flowerbeds with slow and loving care. I smoked three cigarettes while the hands of my watch crawled on. At last the fifteen minutes were up. I walked back to Miss Dolan's sanctuary.
    "Miss Shelley still not ready for me yet?" I asked, putting my hands on the desk and leaning forward so she could catch a sniff of the lavender