All The Way Read Online Free PDF Page B

She submitted agreeably enough, but I could sense impatience. Pulling away from me, she nodded towards the dresser.
    There were two things on it that hadn’t been here this morning. One was a small tape recorder about the size of a portable typewriter, and the other an old briefcase plastered all over with labels. It had come air express, and I could see the return address on one of the labels. It was the same as that on her driver’s license.
    “That’s the mail you were waiting for?” I asked.
    She nodded. “It’s just come. And the tape recorder is what I went to Miami for. Have you ever heard your voice on one?”
    “I don’t think so,” I said. “Did you buy the recorder?”
    “Yes,” she replied. “Why?”
    “I just wondered. I assume it has something to do with that proposition you mentioned, and it occurred to me I must represent a sizable investment by this time. Four or five hundred to have me investigated by those keyhole astronomers, and now another couple of hundred for the recorder. You must be very sure of yourself.”
    “It’s a calculated risk,” she said.
    She unstrapped the briefcase. I could see excitement growing in her face as she opened it and began removing its contents. They appeared to me to be largely rubbish. There were a dozen or more thin pamphlets I recognized as the annual statements of corporations, some old fire-insurance policies, and two or three stenographer’s notebooks. She casually tossed all this into the wastepaper basket.
    “I didn’t want my housekeeper to know what I was really after,” she explained. “So I told her to ship the briefcase and I’d look for the papers I needed. Oh—Here we are.”
    There were two of them, flat cardboard boxes about seven inches square. They were packed with reels of tape. She selected one and put it on the machine, and stuck an empty reel on the other spindle. When the tape was connected, she ran several feet of it on to the empty reel with a control on the front panel, and pressed the “Play” switch. A man’s voice issued from the speaker. She adjusted the volume.
    “—take a chance and hold the Lukens Steel for another five points. I think it’ll go, but the minute it does, sell. It’s too volatile for my blood pressure. How’d Gulf Oil close, Chris?”
    “Let’s see—” This was also a man’s voice. “Here we are. Gulf was up three-quarters. I’d say hang on to it.”
    “I intend to. And buy me another hundred shares in the morning.”
    “Right. One hundred Gulf at the market. Anything else, Mr. Chapman?”
    “Just one more thing. Will you ask the research department to send me everything they’ve got or can dig up on an outfit called Trinity Natural Gas? It’s a pipeline company that was formed about two years ago. The stock sold over the counter until last month, but now it’s listed on the American Exchange. Marian has a hunch about it. She went to college with the man who’s head of it, and says he’s a ball of fire.”
    She stopped the machine and glanced at me. “Do you know what it is?”
    I lit a cigarette. “Sounds like a man talking to his broker over the phone.” I couldn’t see what the excitement was, or why she wanted me to listen to it.
    “Right,” she said. She ran the tape back, watching the mechanical counter on the panel. “Now listen closely. I’m going to play that last speech again, and I want you to repeat it.”
    “Okay,” I said.
    She pressed the “Play” switch again. Chapman’s voice began. “Just one more thing. Will you ask the research department—” I listened, noting at the same time that she was taking it down in shorthand. It was only five or six sentences.
    She stopped the machine at the end of it, and rapidly transcribed her notes. She handed me the sheet of paper with the sentences written out in longhand.
    “I don’t need it,” I said. “I’ve heard it twice.”
    “Read it anyway,” she said. “So you won’t pause or stumble.” Plugging