Hard Money Read Free

shoulders.
    â€œDo you make a practice of walking into hotel rooms at night?” she asked quietly.
    Over in the dark, out of the circle of lamplight where she could not see him, Charles Bonal chuckled. “This is Phil Seay, Sharon. My daughter, Seay.” Then he added to Sharon dryly. “He came up because he was asked.”
    Sharon’s face relaxed a little, and only then did Bonal understand that she had been genuinely frightened. She came across the room and nodded slightly to Seay, who towered above her in muteness.
    â€œMay I stay, Dad?” she asked.
    â€œNo. You can’t even have a drink with us,” Bonal said gruffly. “This is strictly business, dear.”
    Sharon came over and kissed him, and Bonal said, “I’ll come in later, Sharon. Go to bed.”
    Sharon went back across the room. On her way she looked long, frankly at Seay, who returned the look with a kind of brash hostility before she closed the door.
    Then Bonal ripped off his tie, pulled off his coat, hauled a chair around where he could put his feet on the desk and sat with his hand cupped over the brandy glass. The cigar he offered Seay was refused, and while Seay drank, Bonal regarded him covertly.
    â€œWhat do you do now?” Bonal asked finally.
    â€œI’ll see what your proposition is first,” Seay said.
    â€œHow do you know I’m going to make you one?”
    â€œYou aren’t the kind of a man who breaks a gambler for the fun of it,” Seay told him quietly.
    Presently, Bonal said, “That’s right. But you aren’t a gambler, either,” and he added. “I don’t mean that offensively.”
    â€œI’ve been one for a week now—a good one.”
    â€œBut not before that.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYou have no liking for it?” Bonal asked.
    Seay looked at his brandy. “For gambling, yes. For being a gambler, no.”
    â€œThen you’re not sorry I broke you tonight.”
    Seay’s quick smile was dry, amused. He said, “Bonal, are you trying to make me thank you for breaking me? Every man wants money. I want it, too. There are other ways to make it besides gambling. I prefer them, I think, but when I began I didn’t have a choice.”
    Bonal only grunted, and then he said abruptly, “I suppose you know I’m in the thick of a fight.”
    â€œFrom what I hear, you always are,” Seay replied.
    â€œI don’t mean that kind—quarreling with mine shares, jockeying stock. That’s a pillow fight for a man with money. I mean a real fight.” He paused and added bluntly, “A fight for survival.” He gestured toward the table, where the canvas sack of bank notes and gold still lay. “For instance, these winnings from you tonight will be sent by messenger to the coast tomorrow. Very likely, this messenger will meet my creditors on the way to here.” He smiled faintly. “Haven’t you heard that, even?”
    â€œI’m a working man, Bonal. That’s my kind. We don’t hear things you Big Augurs don’t want us to.”
    â€œYou resent it?” Bonal asked shrewdly.
    Seay nodded faintly. “A little. But someday I’ll be one of you and do the same thing.”
    Bonal smiled secretly. “Then you haven’t heard that work on the Bonal Tunnel has stopped?”
    â€œA rumor, yes.”
    â€œWell, it hasn’t,” Bonal said flatly. He drank off his brandy and rose and walked around the desk.
    Talking, he moved the lamp over to the corner of the desk and from the bottom drawer drew out a heavy paper which unfolded into a map approximately the size of the desk top. Seay rose and stood before it: a large-scale map of the Tronah section; and Bonal let him study it. Presently, Bonal put a grimy finger on what appeared to be a large woolly caterpillar running north and south across the map, but which in reality was the Pintwater range, the group in