The Glass Key Read Free Page B

her teeth together and pushed her face nearer his. Her eves widened. "Does he owe you anything?"
    "I won-" He coughed. "I'm supposed to have won thirty-two hundred and fifty bucks on the fourth race yesterday."
    She took her hands from his arms and laughed scornfully. "Try and get it. Look." She held out her hands. A carnelian ring was on the little finger of her left hand. She raised her hands and touched her carnelian ear-rings. "That's every stinking piece of my jewelry he left me and he wouldn't've left me that if I hadn't had them on."
    Ned Beaumont asked, in a queer detached voice: "When does this happen?"
    "Last night, though I didn't find it out till this morning, but don't think I'm not going to make Mr. Son-of-a-bitch wish to God he'd never seen me." She put a hand inside her dress and brought it out a fist. She held the fist up close to Ned Beaumont's face and opened it. Three small crumpled pieces of paper lay in her hand. When he reached for them she closed her fingers over them again, stepping back and snatching her hand away.
    He moved the corners of his mouth impatiently and let his hand fall down at his side.
    She said excitedly: "Did you see the paper this morning about Taylor Henry?"
    Ned Beaumont's reply, "Yes," was calm enough, but his chest moved out and in with a quick breath.
    "Do you know what these are?" She held the three crumpled bits of paper out in her open hand once more.
    Ned Beaumont shook his head. His eyes were narrow, shiny.
    "They're Taylor Henry's I 0 Us," she said triumphantly, "twelve hundred dollars' worth of them."
    Ned Beaumont started to say something, checked himself, and when he spoke his voice was lifeless. "They're not worth a nickel now he's dead."
    She thrust them inside her dress again and came close to Ned Beaumont. "Listen," she said: "they never were worth a nickel and that's why he's dead."
    "Is that a guess?"
    "It's any damned thing you want to call it," she told him. "But let me tell you something: Bernie called Taylor up last Friday and told him he'd give him just three days to come across."
    Ned Beaumont brushed a side of his mustache with a thumb-nail. "You're not just being mad, are you?" he asked cautiously.
    She made an angry face. "Of course I'm mad," she said. "I'm just mad enough to take them to the police and that's what I'm going to do. But if you think it didn't happen you're just a plain damned fool."
    He seemed still unconvinced. "Where'd you get them?"
    "Out of the safe." She gestured with her sleek head towards the interior of the apartment.
    He asked: "What time last night did he blow?"
    "I don't know. I got home at half past nine and sat around most of the night expecting him. It wasn't till morning that I began to suspect something and looked around and saw he'd cleaned house of every nickel in money and every piece of my jewelry that I wasn't wearing."
    He brushed his mustache with his thumb-nail again and asked: "Where do you think he'd go?"
    She stamped her foot and, shaking both fists up and down, began to curse the missing Bernie again in a shrill enraged voice.
    Ned Beaumont said: "Stop it." He caught her wrists and held them still. He said: "If you're not going to do anything about it but yell, give me those markers and I'll do something about it."
    She tore her wrists out of his hands, crying: "I'll give you nothing. I'll give them to the police and not to another damned soul."
    "All right, then do it. Where do you think he'd go, Lee?"
    Lee said bitterly that she didn't know where he would go, but she knew where she would like to have him go.
    Ned Beaumont said wearily: "That's the stuff. Wisecraeking is going to do us a lot of good. Think he'd go back to New York?"
    "How do I know?" Her eyes had suddenly become wary.
    Annoyance brought spots of color into Ned Beaumont's cheeks. "What are you up to now?" he asked suspiciously.
    Her face was an innocent mask. "Nothing. What do you mean?" He leaned down towards her. He spoke with considerable