Hard Case Crime: Blackmailer Read Online Free PDF Page B

spread a towel under her still wet hair.
    “I feel awful,” she said. “Let me have my lipstick.”
    I rummaged around in her purse looking for her lipstick. I found it and handed it to her. She started to use it but she couldn’t make it. She dropped it into the pocket of my coat. “I feel awful,” she said.
    “What were you drinking?”
    “I had one drink,” she said. “Just one drink.”
    I laughed. “In that case, lady, somebody fed you a mickey.”
    Jean Dahl gasped sharply and sat up on the bed. It seemed as if her head had suddenly cleared. “My God,” she said hoarsely, “they tried to kill me.”
    Then she began to sob hysterically.
    I didn’t touch her. I sat in a chair across from the bed and let her cry it out. After a while her sobs stopped. She lay with her head on the towel, her eyes closed, her breathing gradually becoming regular.
    “Jean,” I called. “Jean!”
    But she was asleep.
    My clothes were wet. I went back into the bathroom and got dried up as well as I could. I combed my hair. I had another one of her cigarettes. Then I took her gun out of my pants pocket and dried it off.
    It was a dainty and feminine kind of gun. I didn’t know enough about firearms to tell if it was a .22, a six-shooter, or some new kind of cigarette lighter. But it smelled like a gun. Oily.
    I held it gingerly with two fingers, and tried to think of some place to put it.
    I didn’t want to give it back to her. But I didn’t want to carry it around in my pocket, either.
    Finally I took it into the bathroom and put it in the medicine cabinet. I couldn’t think of anything else to do with it.
    I went back into the bedroom. Jean Dahl, I decided, had slept long enough. I reached down to shake her and as I did so, the telephone beside the bed began to ring.
    I froze.
    Walter’s house is hooked up with phone extensions in every room.
    I knew from the first sound of the phone that it wasn’t someone calling Walter. And it wasn’t a wrong extension. It was someone calling me.
    I let the phone ring three times before I decided to pick it up.
    I lifted the receiver very gently and held it to my ear. I didn’t say anything. I just lifted the phone and waited.
    The man’s voice on the other end of the phone was cold, harsh, and derisive.
    “Eagle Scout,” it said. “Hero. Why don’t you mind your own business?”
    “Who is this?” I said. “Whom do you want to speak to?”
    “You, Lone Ranger. I want to talk to you.”
    “Who is this?” I said.
    “You got your dry clothes on. You can come over now. I want to talk to you.”
    My heart began to beat rapidly.
    “Where are you calling from? What do you want? Tell me or I’ll hang up.”
    “Across the hall, Simon Templar,” he said. “The Saint. I’m calling you from across the hall.”
    “What?”
    “Falcon,” he said. “I’m right across from you. I think maybe we should talk. What kind of manners—to take a lady up to a bedroom in the middle of a party—”
    I felt angry and frightened and vulnerable.
    “Who is this?” I said. “What do you want?”
    “I want to talk to you. Come over.”
    “If you have anything to say to me, say it.”
    “I thought we could have a little talk about books. Or anyway, one special book. I’ll be here in the room waiting for you. Come across.”
    The receiver clicked on the other end.
    I hung up the phone and started for the door. Then I stopped and turned back.
    Jean Dahl was still asleep on the bed.
    I was frightened, but I didn’t like to admit it.
    I thought, What can possibly happen at Walter Heinemann’s during a cocktail party?
    I looked again at Jean Dahl. On my way out, I took the key out of the door.
    In the corridor I stopped. I was taking no chances. I intended to lock Miss Dahl in. I had the key in the lock when I heard a faint sound.
    Then I realized that there was someone standing about two feet away from me.
    The explosion rocked the back of my head with a blinding flash and I slid to the