Gulf Coast Girl Read Online Free PDF

you stick to business, old boy.”
    There was no longer any doubt as to who was boss, but the pug wanted me so badly he tried once more. “This is a quiet place to ask, and he might know Macaulay.”
    Tweed Jacket waved him toward the door. “Quite unlikely,” he said. His eyes flicked over the girl’s figure again with that same cool amusement. “I’d say his interest in Macaulay was vicarious, to say the least. Vive le sport.” They went out.
    In the dead silence I could hear their footsteps retreating along the pier, and in a moment the car started. I breathed deeply. I was pulled tight and soaked with sweat. Tweed Jacket’s urbane manner covered a very professional sort of deadliness, and it could easily have gone the other way. Only the profit motive was lacking. He simply didn’t believe Macaulay was here.
    I turned. She was still holding the front of the bathing suit. “Thank you,” she said, without any emotion whatever, and looked away from me. “I’m sorry you had to become involved. As soon as I can change, I’ll drive you back to town.”
    I walked over in front of her, so mixed up now I didn’t know anything. “It’s all right,” I said. “But I wonder if you’d tell me what this is all about? And why you threw that gun in the lake?”
    She looked through the place I’d have been standing if I had existed. “Really,” she said coldly, “I thought you had that all figured out.”
    She was about as beautiful when she was angry as at any time. I tried to filter that out of my mind and look at her objectively. It wasn’t easy.
    What had changed the picture? Nothing had really happened to prove I was wrong about it, but I was suddenly very ashamed of myself. It was odd, especially when I still didn’t know why she’d done it, or why she had told me her name was Wayne while they’d called her Macaulay. All I was sure of was that I’d jumped to the wrong conclusion.
    “I’m very sorry,” I said. “I’d like to apologize, if it’s worth anything.”
    Her face brightened a little. Then she smiled. With the eyes still full of tears that way, it could catch hold of you right down in the throat.
    “It’s all right,” she said. “It’s my fault, anyway. I don’t know how I could have been so stupid as not to realize that was the way it would look. What else could you think?”
    I was uncomfortable. “I’d like to forget it,” I said, “if you could. But what in the name of God did you do it for?”
    She hesitated. “I’d hoped I would have more time to make up my mind before I told you. If I told you at all. But you were too observant.”
    “Make up your mind about what?”
    Her eyes met mine simply. “About you.”
    “Why?” I asked.
    She stood up. It was obvious she was under a strain. “Would you—excuse me a minute? I’d like to change, and maybe if I had a chance to think—”
    “Sure,” I said. She went out. I sat down and lit a cigarette. There was no use trying to guess what it was all about, or what she really wanted. I thought of the two men who had just left. There was something deep and probably quite dangerous going on under the surface here, but I couldn’t see what I had to do with it.
    I switched back to her, and as usual I couldn’t get my thoughts sorted out. I was conscious of being happy about something, and in a moment I realized it was simply knowing I’d been wrong about the whole thing. That made no sense at all, of course. Maybe I ought to see a psychiatrist, I thought sourly.
    She came out in a few minutes, dressed and looking as smooth as ever. She had put on fresh make-up, and the ugly redness was gone from the side of her face. She touched it gently.
    “I want to thank you again,” she said. “I don’t know how much more of it I could have taken.”
    I stood up. “Then you do know where he is?”
    She nodded quietly.
    I began to understand then what she had been trying to make up her mind about. But I still didn’t see why. What did