Hot Water Read Free Page A

he would have considered such behaviour low.
    'You old dog-stealer!' he replied.
    This, too, was mere playful imagery. Soup Slattery had never stolen dogs. He was an expert safe-blower.
    'Well, well!' said Mr Slattery. 'Fancy running into you!'
    He sat down at the table. His face, which in repose resembled a slab of granite with suspicious eyes, was softened now by a genial smile. He had not actually parked his gun in the cloak-room, but he had the air of a man who has done so.
    'What you doing here, Oily?'
    'Oh, just looking around.'
    'Me, too.'
    They turned for a space to converse with the waiter on the subject of beverages. This question settled, the reunion was on again. It was some time since they had met, and they had much to discuss.
    Old days passed under review. Old names came up for mention. Reminiscences of Plug This and Shorty That were exchanged. Soup Slattery showed Mr Carlisle the scar on his fore-arm where a quick-drawing householder of Des Moines, Iowa, had pipped him a couple of years back when he was visiting at his residence. Mr Carlisle showed Soup Slattery the nasty place on his left leg where a disappointed investor in Australian gold-mines had bitten him. It was only after some half-hour of these confidences that the talk took on a softer and more sentimental note.
    'Got the little woman over here with you?' asked Mr Slattery.
    'Little woman?'
    'I met some guy, forget who it was, told me you were married to Gum-Shoe Gertie.'
    Gordon Carlisle had a somewhat melancholy face. At these words, its melancholy deepened.
    'No,' he said.
    'This guy said you were.'
    'Well, I'm not.'
    He spoke a little sharply. Then, as if feeling remorse for having snubbed a well-meaning friend, he explained.
    'Gertie and I had a fight.'
    He brooded for a space. Then the urge to pour forth his troubles overcame reserve.
    'Just about nothing,' he said bitterly. 'A trifling misunderstanding you would have thought could have been put right in a couple of words. She'd had to go to hospital for a few weeks with a broken leg, and while she was there it happened that I saw something from time to time of a girl friend of hers. Purely on business. And when she heard about it, she went haywire. I kept telling her the whole thing had been strictly on the up-and-up, but she wouldn't listen. One word led to another, and in the end she hit me over the head with a vase and went out of my life. That was a year ago, and from that day I've not set eyes on her. Women are tough.'
    'You bet they're tough,' agreed Mr Slattery 'You never know where you are with them. You take me, for instance. Boy, could I write a book! The slickest partner I ever worked with goes and leaves me flat without so much as giving me her telephone number.'
    'I'm sunk without Gertie.'
    'I'm sunk without this dame. Julia her name was.'
    'Professionally, I mean.'
    'Professionally's what I mean. There wasn't any of the hearts and flowers stuff between Julia and me. You never met Julia, did you?'
    'No.'
    'Well, she was just the best inside worker a safe-blower ever had. Used to get herself invited to these swell homes, and could get away with it, too, because she had style and class and read books and all. To hear her talk you'd of thought she was in the Social Register.'
    'Gertie...'
    'Julia,' said Mr Slattery, manfully holding the floor, 'worked with me for years. And then one day – four years ago almost to this very minute – she told me out of a blue sky, as you might say, that she was through. Just like that. No explanations. Just gave me the Bronx Cheer and beat it. And me who had split Even Stephen with her on every deal, never chiselling, never holding out on her, no, not so much as a dime. Seems to me sometimes, the squarer a guy is with these beazels, the worse they treat him. Well, sir, off she went, and I've never been the same since. I've gone down and down, as you might say.' Mr Slattery hesitated. 'Shall I tell you something, Oily? I even do stick-up work