soap. I used hand soap to lather up, and shaved. Then I put the shirt and tie back on. It was a little better.

The coffee had started to boil. It smelled good. I poured a cup and sat down to smoke another cigarette. The sun was coming up now. I thought of all that had happened since this time yesterday morning. Everything had changed.

I no longer worried about the fact that I was breaking laws as fast as they could set them up in the gallery. My only concern was that what I was doing was dangerous as hell and if I was caught I was ruined. But it was not even that which caused the chill goose flesh across my shoulders.

It was the thought of that money, more money than I could earn in a lifetime. It lay somewhere just beyond the reach of my fingers, and I could feel the fingers itching as they stretched out toward it. Mrs. Butler knew where it was.

And I had Mrs. Butler.

It was nearly two hours before I heard her move on the bed in the other room. She was coming around.

I’d better be good now. I had to be good to make this stick. I picked up the bottle of whisky and a glass, and went in.

Five

She was sitting up on the bed with her hands on each side of her face, the fingers running up into her hair. It was the first time I had ever seen her eyes, and I could see what Diana James had meant when she said they were big and smoky-looking.

She stared at me.

“Good morning,” I said. I poured a drink into the glass.

“Who are you?” she demanded. She looked around the room. “And what am I doing in this place?”

“Better take a little of this,” I said. “Or if you’d rather have it, we’ve got black coffee.” I knew damn well which she’d rather have, but I threw in the coffee just to keep talking.

She took the drink. I corked the bottle and went out into the other room with it. When I came back I had a basin of cold water, a washcloth and towel, and her purse. I set them on the table and shoved the table over where she could reach it. She ignored the whole thing.

“Will you answer my question?” she said. “What am I doing in this revolting shanty?”

“Oh,” I said. “Then you don’t remember?”

“Certainly not. And I never saw you before.”

“We’ll get to that in a minute,” I said. “Right now I just want you to feel better.”

I squeezed out the cloth and handed it to her. She scrubbed at her face with it and I gave her the towel. Then I dug her comb out of the jumble of stuff in her purse. I watched her comb her hair. It wasn’t quite black in daylight. It was rich, dark brown.

“How about some coffee?” I said.

She stood up and brushed at the blue robe. I nodded toward the door and followed her into the other room. She sat down in the chair I pulled out for her. I poured some coffee and then gave her a cigarette and lit it. Then I sat down across from her, straddling a chair with my arms across the back.

She ignored the coffee. “Perhaps you can explain this,” she said.

I frowned. “Don’t you remember anything at all?”

“No.”

“I was hoping you would,” I said. “Especially what happened before I got there.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “And will you, for the love of the merciful God, tell me who you are?”

“Barton,” I said. “John Barton, of Globe Surety. Remember? I’m from the Kansas City office, but they put me on it because I used to work out of Sanport and know this country.”

I had to keep snowing her. She was rum-dum, but she still might be sharp enough to want to see something that said Barton, of Globe Surety Company. The thing was to give her the impression I’d already shown her my credentials but that she’d been drunk when she’d seen them. We wouldn’t mention that. It would be embarrassing.

But she didn’t go for the fake hand-off. She came right in and smeared me. “I’ve never heard of a company by that name,” she said. “And I never saw you before in my life. How do I know who you are?”

It was the longest, coldest bluff I had ever pulled in my life, and if I didn’t make it