Luba nodded, her red hair brushing Malone"s cheek silkily. "I"m coming, too," she said.
Surrounding the Great Universal, Malone remembered, was a small belt of parkland. He flagged a hallway car--remembering carefully to check whether or not the driver was the sn.i.g.g.e.ring Murray--and he and Luba piled in and started out for the park. In the car, he held her hand silently, feeling a little like a bashful schoolboy and a little like Sir Kenneth Malone. It was a strange mixture, but he decided that he liked it.
They got out, standing in the cool darkness of the park. Overhead a moon and stars were shining. The little hallway car rolled away and they were alone. Completely alone. Malone swallowed hard.
"Sleuth," Luba said softly in the darkness.
Malone turned to face her.
"Sleuth," she said, "don"t you ever take a chance?"
"Chance?" Malone said.
"d.a.m.n it," Luba said in a soft, sweet voice, "kiss me, Ken."
Malone had no answer to that--at least, no verbal answer. But then, one didn"t seem to be needed.
When he finally came up for air, he said: "Lou--"
"Yes, Ken?"
"Lou, how long are you going to be here? Or in New York? What I mean is--"
"I"ll be around," Lou said. "I will be going back to New York of course; after all, Ken, I do have a living to make, such as it is, and Sir Lewis is expecting me."
"I don"t know," Malone said, "but it still sounds funny. A girl like you working for ... well, for the Psychical Research people. Ghosts and ectoplasm and all that."
Suddenly Lou wasn"t in his arms any more. "Now, wait a minute," she said. "You seemed to need their information, all right."
"But that was ... oh, well," Malone said. "Never mind. Maybe I"m silly. It really doesn"t matter."
"I guess it doesn"t, now," Lou said in a softer tone. "Except that it does mean I"ll be going back to New York pretty soon."
"Oh," Malone said. "But ... look, Lou, maybe we could work something out. I could tell Sir Lewis I needed you here for something, and then he"d--"
"My, my," she said. "What it must be like to have all that influence."
"What?" Malone said.
Lou grinned, almost invisibly. "Nothing," she said. "Nothing. But, my fine feathered Fed, I don"t want to be pulled around on somebody else"s string."
"But--"
"I mean it, Ken," Luba said.
Malone shrugged. "Suppose we table it for now, then," he said, "and get around to it later. At dinner, say ... around nine?"
"And just where," Luba said, "will you be before nine? Making improper advances to the local contingent of chorines?"
"I will make improper advances," Malone vowed, "only to you, Lou."
Lou"s eyes sparkled. "Goody," she said. "I"ve always wanted to be a Fallen Woman."
"But I have got some things to do before nine," Malone said. "I"ve got to work, too."
"Well, then," Lou said in a suspiciously sweet voice, "suppose I talk to Sir Lewis Carter, and tell him to keep you in New York? Then--"
"Enough," Malone said. "Nine o"clock."
[Ill.u.s.tration]
XI
Somebody somewhere was wishing all the world "a plague on both your houses," and making it stick. Confusion is fun in a comedy--but in the pilot of a plane or an executive of a nation....
Back in his room, Malone put on a fresh shirt, checked the .44 Magnum in his shoulder holster, changed jackets, adjusted his hat to the proper angle, and vanished.
He had, he"d realized, exactly one definite lead. And now he was going to follow up on it. The Government was apparently falling to pieces; so was business and so was the Mafia. n.o.body Malone had heard of had gained anything. Except Mike Sand and his truckers. They"d beaten the Mafia, at least.
Sand was worth a chat. Malone had a way to get in to see him, but he had to work fast. Otherwise Sand would very possibly know what Malone was trying to do. And that might easily be dangerous.
He had made his appearance in the darkness beneath one of the bridges at the southwest side of Central Park, in New York. It was hardly Malone"s idea of perfect comfort, but it did mean safety; there was very seldom anyone around after dark, and the shadows were thick enough so that his "appearance" would only mean, to the improbable pa.s.serby, that he had stepped out into the light.
Now he strolled quietly over to Central Park West, and flagged a taxi heading downtown. He"d expected to run into one of the roving muggers who still made the Park a trap for the unwary--he"d almost looked forward to it, in a way--but n.o.body appeared. It was unusual, but he didn"t have time to wonder about it.
The headquarters for the National Brotherhood of Truckers was east of Greenwich Village, on First Avenue, so Malone had plenty of time to think things out while the cab wended its laborious southeast way.
After a few minutes he realized that he would have even more time to think than he"d planned on.
"Lots of traffic for this time of night," he volunteered.
The cabbie, a fiftyish man with a bald, wrinkled head and surprisingly bright blue eyes, nodded without turning his head. "Maybe you think this is bad," he said. "You would not recognize the place an hour earlier, friend. During the real rush hour, I mean. Things are what they call _meshuggah_, friend. It means crazy."
"How come?" Malone said.
"The subway is on strike since last week," the cabbie said. "The buses are also on strike. This means that everybody is using a car. They can make it faster if they wish to walk, but they use a car. It does not help matters, believe me."
"I can see that," Malone murmured.
"And the cops are not doing much good either," the cabbie went on, "since they went on strike sometime last Tuesday."
Malone nodded, and then did a double-take. "Cops?" he said. "On strike? But that"s illegal. They could be arrested."
"You can be funny," the cabbie said. "I am too sad to be funny."
"But--"
"Unless you are from Rhode Island," the cabbie said, "or even farther away, you are deaf, dumb and blind. Everybody in New York knows what is going on by this time. I admit that it is not in the newspapers, but the newspapers do not tell the truth since, as I remember it, the City Council election of 1924, and then it is an accident, due to the major"s best friend working in the printing plants."