Dead or Alive Read Online Free PDF Page B

o’clock on the evening of the 1st, when he walked out of his flat. Nobody’d seen him. Nobody’d heard from him. He never turned up, and he never will.” He shut the note-book with a snap. “You tell Mrs O’Hara to see her lawyer and get on with it!”
    Bill Coverdale was sitting up.
    â€œYou say nobody saw O’Hara after the first of October?”
    â€œOne Oct: thirty-three,” said Garratt laconically.
    â€œWell—I saw him.”
    â€œYou?”
    â€œI. And I can fix the date, because I sailed for South America next day, and I sailed on the fifth.”
    â€œYou’re sure of that?”
    â€œDead sure. But you can verify it if you want to.”
    Garratt fished a pencil out of his pocket and sucked the end of it.
    â€œAll right, if you’re sure. You saw O’Hara on the fourth. That’s four days after anyone else did. Where did you see him? What was he doing? Who was he with?”
    â€œHe was in a taxi,” said Bill Coverdale. “It was somewhere short of midnight, because my train was a bit late, and it was due at eleven.”
    â€œWhere were you coming from?”
    â€œKing’s Cross. I’d been up north, and I’d run it fine, so I was in a hurry. I was sailing the next day. I was held up at a crossing, and I saw O’Hara go by in a taxi. I didn’t think anything about it at the time, and barring that it was somewhere between King’s Cross and Piccadilly Circus I can’t say where the hold-up was. I just didn’t think anything about it.”
    Garratt scribbled in his note-book.
    â€œYou’re sure it was O’Hara?”
    Bill nodded.
    â€œOh, yes, it was O’Hara.”
    â€œAnd it was a taxi, not a private car?”
    Bill shut his eyes for a moment.
    â€œYes, it was a taxi—one of those green ones.”
    Garratt scribbled again.
    â€œYou’re twelve months after the fair. We might have got on to the taxi if we’d known at the time. Was he alone?”
    Bill Coverdale got up and walked to the window. Like Garratt he frowned at the hygienic fiats, but unlike Garratt he did not see the bright blank windows or the staring concrete. He saw O’Hara in a taxi at midnight—O’Hara with every feature clear and distinct, and beyond him, close at his shoulder, a woman. The anger which he had felt then swept over him again. To have Meg for his wife, and to go chasing off with that sort of girl! He tried to visualize her and failed.… Yet he had had the impression that she was that sort of girl. There must have been something to give him that impression.
    Garratt repeated his question impatiently.
    â€œWas he alone?”
    And with that Bill turned back to the room again.
    â€œNo, he wasn’t. There was a girl with him.”
    â€œSee her face?”
    â€œI suppose I did. I can’t describe her.”
    â€œYou’re being damn useful!” said Garratt with a growl in his voice. “All this is about as much use as a sick headache. You’re sure there was a girl?”
    â€œYes, I’m sure of that.”
    â€œYou wouldn’t know her again, or anything like that?”
    Bill was half turned away. He was frowning deeply. Behind that impression of his there must be something if he could only get hold of it. He said without knowing what he was going to say,
    â€œI never said I wouldn’t know her again.”
    * See Danger Calling .

IV
    Bill Coverdale walked back to his hotel. It seemed pretty fairly certain that O’Hara had been dead for the best part of a year. That being the case, the next thing to do was to follow Gamut’s advice and take any steps that were necessary to get O’Hara pronounced dead legally. Garratt seemed to think there wouldn’t be any trouble about it.
    He began to wonder how soon he could ask Meg to marry him. He wanted to take care of her. He wanted to give her things. He wanted to take her out of