had quit. Maybe she was going to let it work on me, the fear and the suspense and the waiting, until I was actually afraid to go out on the street where the cops were looking for me. Maybe I’d crack wide open, give the keys to her, and ask her to get the stuff out of the boxes and be stupid enough to expect her to come back here with it.
Or maybe she was just sweating me a little before reviewing our contract. Perhaps she wanted to renegotiate the terms, using a little pressure here and there.
There were just two things I was sure of. One was that she wasn’t mixed up about those names. Not with a mind like hers. And the other was that I couldn’t let her know she had me worried.
I took a sip of the drink. “Well, I’ll tell you,” I said. “That looks like something that comes under the heading of your problem. You remember what I told you? If there was any monkey business about that money, hell wouldn’t hold you. So what are you doing about it?”
“What do you think I’m doing?” she asked coldly. “I’m trying to remember. I’ve been racking my brains all afternoon.”
“And just how long do you think you’ll have to rack ‘em before you come up with the answer?”
“How do I know?”
I lit a cigarette. “Well, there are two very simple solutions to it,” I said. “The first one is known as the Blue Method. I just take your throat between my hands and squeeze it until your face turns the color of a ripe grape. When you’re able to breathe again, everything comes back to you. It’s a great memory aid. Something scientific about fresh oxygen in the brain.
“The second one is even simpler. As soon as the banks open in the morning you just pick up the phone and ask ‘em. It’s easier on the neck too.”
“That would be nice, wouldn’t it?” she said icily. “Just give the bank a list of names, and ask if any of those people had a safe-deposit box there? You know they don’t give out information like that.”
I shook my head. “You don’t ask that way. You know how to do it as well as I do, but just to give you an out so we don’t have to use the hard way, I’ll tell you. Call the Third National. You’re Mrs. Henry L. Carstairs. You can’t remember whether or not you received a notice that your box rent was due. Would they please look it up? Either they’ll say it’s paid up until next July, or they’ll say they can’t find any record of your having a box there. In which case you say you’re so sorry, you keep forgetting your husband transferred it to another bank.
“Then you call the Merchant’s Trust, and try again.”
She nodded coolly. “Precisely. And if Mrs. Carstairs is lucky, she finds it there. Then one more call to the third bank, using either Mrs. Hatch’s name or Mrs. Manning’s, will have established all three of them with one call to each bank, no matter which way the last one answers. I know all that. It’s elementary.
“But suppose I’m not lucky, and they still say no to Mrs. Carstairs at the Merchant’s Trust? We know, of course, by the process of elimination, that she has to be at the Seaboard Bank and Trust. But that still leaves the first two blank, with two names, which means starting around again. One more call, to either of them, will do it, but that may be just one call too many.
“Don’t forget that all those boxes are rented under fictitious names, I have no identification at all, my appearance has changed, and I am a fugitive from justice with my picture on the front pages. Anything that makes them take a second look at me when I go in there is dangerous.”
She had the answers, all right. She always had the answers. And she knew I wouldn’t tell her she was no longer a fugitive.
“That’s right,” I said. “But look at it this way. The chances are exactly two to one that you’ll find Mrs. Carstairs on the first two calls. Isn’t that better than telling me you can’t get that money? That way, you haven’t got any chance at all.”
“You will persist in trying to frighten me, won’t you?”
I got up from the sofa and walked across to her. She sat looking up. Our eyes