Hot Water, Page 2

  It will be enough to hint that he was deeply moved. There are some who crave for the honours their country can bestow. Mr Gedge had never belonged to their ranks. He was not an ambitious man. The thought of being Ambassador to France filled him with a sick horror.

  If this awful thing went through, it meant that years must pass before he saw California again. And those years would be spent in a city which he had disliked at sight and in the society of just the sort of people who gave him the heeby-jeebies. And a sudden grisly thought came to Mr Gedge. Didn't Ambassadors have to wear uniforms and satin knickerbockers?

  'But I don't want to be an Ambassador!'

  Mrs Gedge seemed to regard this as a mere animal cry, the wail of some creature of the wilds licking its wounds.

  'There's nothing to being an Ambassador,' she said soothingly. 'It's just a matter of money. If you have money and there are important people like the Vicomtesse de Blissac and Senator Opal behind you...'

  A very faint ray of hope illuminated Mr Gedge's darkness.

  'I suppose you know,' he said, 'that old Opal hates my insides? We had a fuss over a golf game once and he's never forgotten it.'

  'I heard about that. But I think you'll find that he will use all his influence in your support.'

  'Why?'

  'I had a letter from him this morning which gave me that impression.'

  'What did he say?'

  'It was not so much what he said. It was the general tone of the letter.'

  Mr Gedge looked at his wife sharply. Her face was wearing that disquieting half-smile which always indicated that she had something up her sleeve.

  'What do you mean?'

  'Oh, nothing,' said Mrs Gedge. She was, as her husband had frequently had occasion to notice, a secretive woman. 'I am going to see him when I get to London to-morrow, and I think you will find that everything will be all right.'

  'But why in the name of everything infernal do you want me to be an Ambassador?'

  'I will tell you. When I married you, my late husband's sister Mabel made herself extremely unpleasant. She seemed to consider that a woman who had been Mrs Wilmot Brewster ought to be satisfied for life. I'm not sure that when Wilmot died she would not have liked me to commit suttee.'

  'Do what?'

  'I was only joking. Commit suicide. When an Indian dies, his widow burns herself on the grave. They call it suttee.'

  A rather wistful look came into Mr Gedge's face. It was just his luck, he seemed to be thinking, that an unkind fate had made the late Wilmot Brewster a Californian and not an Indian.

  'So I made up my mind that you should be the next American Ambassador to France. I should like to see Mabel's face when she reads the announcement in the papers. A nobody, she called you. Well, the Ambassador to France isn't a nobody.'

  Despite the fact that his chin receded and his eyes bulged, J. Wellington Gedge had a certain rude sagacity. There might be things of which he was ignorant, but this he did know, that if a man is a pawn in a row between women it is futile for him to struggle. For a few tense moments he sat picking at the coverlet and staring silently into a grey future. Then he heaved himself out of his chair.

  'I'll go get that Mal-de-Mer-o,' he said.

  3

  At about the time when Mr Gedge was starting to toddle down to the drug store, a tough-looking man in one of those tight suits which somehow seem to suggest dubious morals had entered the cocktail bar of the Hotel des Etrangers.

  The Hotel des Etrangers is not far from the Casino Municipale. In fact, it is so close that a good sprinter can lose his money at the tables, rush over and get some more at the desk, and dash back and lose that all in a few minutes. St Rocque is proud of the Hotel des Etrangers, and justly. It has all the latest improvements, including a garden for the convenience of guests wishing to commit suicide, a first-class orchestra and cuisine, telephones in the bedrooms, and on the ground floor an up-to-date cocktail bar presided over by Gustave, late of Chez Jimmy, Paris.

  The bar at the moment of the tough man's arrival was empty except for a dark, slender, beautifully dressed person of refined and distinguished appearance who was reading the Continental edition of the New York Herald. It was as he lowered the paper for an instant to knock the ash off his cigarette that the tough man uttered the pleased whoop of one who has sighted a familiar face.

  'Oily!' he cried.

  'Soup!' exclaimed the other.

  They shook hands warmly. In their native America they had perhaps been more acquaintances than friends, but there is always enthusiasm when exiles meet in a foreign land.

  'Well, you darned old horse-thief!' said the tough man.

  In describing his companion thus, he had spoken figuratively. Gordon Carlisle did not steal horses. A specialist in the Confidence Trick, 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 now.'

  'You do?' said Mr Carlisle, and though he tried to keep the note of disapproval out of his voice it crept in. He hoped he was no snob, but there are social grades and degrees in the world of crime, and everybody knows that stick-up men are not quite.

  Mr Slattery flushed.

  'A guy's got to live,' he argued.

  'Oh, sure,' said Mr Carlisle.

  There was a rather constrained silence. When Mr Slattery spoke again, it was evident that he was anxious to re-establish himself in his companion's eyes.

  'It isn't as if I wouldn't open a safe if I could. There's a big job right here in this town I'd take on to-morrow, if only I'd got a partner to do the inside work.'

  Mr Carlisle was interested. He forgot his disapproval.

  'Right here in this town?'

  'About a mile out. Joint called the Chatty-o Blissac.'

  Mr Carlisle shook his head.

  'Don't know it. I'm a stranger in these parts.'

  'It's up that hill past the Casino. Some American dame has rented it. I'll bet she's got ice.'

  'You don't know.'

  'Must have – a dame that can rent a great place like that.'

  'Probably keeps it at her bank,' said Mr Carlisle, whom misfortune had made a pessimist.

  'Yeah, I guess so. Not that it's any use getting worked up about it. I couldn't do a thing, anyway, me not having an inside worker.'

  'Well, I could do the inside stand,' said Mr Carlisle on a brighter note. 'If it comes to that, why couldn't I do the inside stand?'

  'How are you going to get inside? You see,' said Mr Slattery, 'that's how it goes. A man's helpless.' He drained his glass and rose. 'Well, I'll be taking a little stroll. You staying on here?'

  'Might as well be here as anywhere,' said Mr Carlisle gloomily. The industrial depression had affected his spirits considerably.

  Mr Slattery passed out into the sunlit street, walking aimlessly towards the harbour. And it was as his wandering feet brought him to a narrow and unfrequented alley that he observed immediately ahead of him a small tubby man reading a letter.

  For a moment Mr Slattery hesitated. Then, with a half-sigh, he produced his automatic. The task before him was distasteful, but these were times when every little helped. He sidled towards the tubby man.

  'Stick' em up!' he said.

  4

  Mr Gedge stuck them up. He would have been glad to oblige anyone so big and ugly even without the added inducement of an automatic pistol. He was conscious of a sinking sensation akin to that which his wife's eye sometimes induced in him and, mingled with alarm, a tender pang of commiseration for anyone so deluded as to regard holding him up as a step on the road to wealth.

  Mr Slattery, who had been doing some brisk exploring with his left hand, now appeared to have learned the sickening truth. A look of chagrin came into his gnarled features, and the tip of his broken nose twitched in obvious disillusionment. His whole aspect was that of one suddenly brought face to face with the facts of life.

  'Haven't you any dough?' he asked querulously.

  'Not a cent,' sighed Mr Gedge.

  Mr Slattery grunted unhappily. Mr Gedge was an opulent-looking little man, and he had hoped for better things. Replacing the pistol in his pocket, he pushed his hat back with a sort of Byronic despair. The movement caused Mr Gedge to utter an exclamation.

  'Say! I've seen you before.'

  'Yeah?'

  Mr Slattery spoke indifferently. He rather gave the impression that he felt that nothing mattered now. All this trouble and fuss, and not even lunch-money at the end of it.

  'Aren't you the fellow who stuck me up one night in Chicago?'

  Mr Slattery eyed him dully He seemed to be saying that one meets so many people.

  'What were you wearing?'

  'A grey business suit with an invisible blue twill.'

  'I don't place you. Sorry.'

  'Sure you do. A cop came along and you made me put my arm through yours and stroll along as if we were old friends. We sang, don't you remember?'

  'Sang what?'

  ' "Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar." You took the bass.'

  Mr Slattery's face brightened suddenly.

  'Why that's right. I remember now. Well, well!'

  'It's a long way to Chi.'

  'It sure is.'

  'They told me your name, too. It'll come back to me in a minute.'

  'Who told you my name?'

  'The cops, when I described you. I've got it. Soup Slattery. One of the cops said it sounded like Soup Slattery, and another cop said yes, he wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't old Soup, and then they went on playing checkers. The only thing that seemed to puzzle them was that you should be holding people up on the street. They said you were an expert safe-blower.'

  'I sometimes do a bit of stick-up work on the side,' said Mr Slattery with a touch of stiffness. Any objection?'

  'None,' said Mr Gedge hastily. 'None whatever. It's all right by me.'

  He may have been going on to cite the classical precedent of Michelangelo, who refused to be satisfied with one branch of Art; but at this moment his companion returned to the main point at issue.

  'Why haven't you any dough?'

  'I never have.'

  'You look rich enough.'

  'My wife is rich. Immensely rich. Her late husband left her millions.'

  'And you slipped in and copped off the widow? Did pretty well for yourself

  Mr Slattery spoke disapprovingly. He was a man of sentiment, and when he saw one of these cold, commercial unions in a motion-picture he always hissed.

  Mr Gedge sensed the unspoken slur.

  'I did not marry my dear wife for her money,' he said warmly. 'I was a rich man myself at the time of our wedding. But unfortunately I played the Market....'

  There was nothing of the austere in Mr Slattery's manner now. He was eyeing Mr Gedge with warm-hearted interest.

  'Were you caught in the big crash?'

  'Was I! Lost every dollar I had.'

  'Me, too,' said Mr Slattery, wincing at the memory. 'Hot zig! Those were the days! Like going down in an express elevator, wasn't it? Did you have any Electric Bond and Share?'

  'Did I!'

  'What did you buy it at?'

  'A hundred and sixty-seven.'

  'A hundred and sixty-nine – me. How about Montgomery-Ward?'

  'Mine cost me a hundred and twelve.'

  'So did mine.'

  'General Motors?' asked Mr Gedge eagerly.

  'Say, let's talk of something else,' said Mr Slattery.

  For a few moments the two financiers let their thoughts stray silently back into the past. Mr Slattery sighed.

  'Well, I'm mighty glad to have met you again, Mr – what was the name?'

  'Gedge. J. Wellington Gedge. And I've certainly appreciated meeting you, Mr Slattery. How about coming and having a little drink?'

  A touch of the old moroseness returned to Mr Slattery's manner.

  'What do you mean, coming and having a little drink? You haven't any money,'

  'Lend me some,' said Mr Gedge.

  It had been no part of Mr Slattery's plans when he set out that morni
ng with his gun to finance his victims, but there was something so appealing in the other's voice that a sort of noblesse oblige spirit awoke in him. He handed over a hundred francs.

  'You couldn't make it two hundred, could you?'

  'Sure,' said Mr Slattery, though not very heartily.

  'I'll tell you what,' said Mr Gedge, inspired. 'Give me a level thousand, and then that'll be a nice, round sum.'

  Mr Slattery peeled a mille off his slender roll, but his manner as he did so was not vivacious. He seemed to be wondering what had ever given him the impression that sticking people up in the street was a sound commercial venture.

  5

  Seated with his new friend at a table in one of the little cafes near the harbour, Mr Gedge became communicative. For many months he had been yearning for a sympathetic ear into which to decant his troubles, and now he had found one. This charming safe-blower, he decided, should hear all.

  'Yessir,' he said. That's how it is. My wife has all the money, and I'm simply the Hey-You around the place.'

  'Is that so?'

  'Yessir. The Patsy, that's what I am. Just the squidge. You wouldn't be far out if you said I was only a bird in a gilded cage. Whatever Mrs Gedge says, goes. I want to live in California. She insists on coming to France. Do you think if I had any money I'd be living in a dump like the Château Blissac? No, sir. I'd be back in Glendale, where men are men.'

  Mr Slattery gave a little start.

  'Do you live at the Chatty-o Blissac?'

  'Yessir. Right there at the Château Blissac.'

  Mr Slattery chewed his lower lip thoughtfully. The discovery that this little man was residing, even if only in the modest capacity of a bird in a gilded cage, at the house which had been so much in his day-dreams, had stirred him a good deal. He could not have said just what he hoped would develop from their acquaintanceship, but he certainly felt that it was worth taking trouble to conciliate him. He cocked an eye politely.

  'Do you now?' he said. 'Well, well!'

  'Yessir. Mrs Gedge insisted on renting it, and I wouldn't give you a nickel for the place. It makes me sick. And that's not the half of it.'

  'No?'