Just Another Sucker Read Online Free PDF Page A

his?’
    ‘Just one of about ten cars he owns.’
    ‘It’s a beaut. I’d like to own it myself.’
    Marshall nodded his balding head.
    ‘Me too.’
    ‘Who would be the woman, driving it? I couldn’t see much of her. She was a blonde, wearing big sun goggles.’
    ‘That’d be Mrs. Malroux.’
    ‘His wife? She didn’t look old… I’d say she was around thirty-two or three. Malroux must be getting on. I seem to have been hearing about him ever since I was a kid. He must be pushing seventy or more.’
    ‘About that. He married again: some woman he fell for in Paris. I forget who she was: a movie star or something. There was quite a write up about her in the Herald .’
    ‘What happened to his first wife?’
    ‘She had a car accident about three years ago.’
    ‘So Malroux’s here for his health?’
    ‘That’s it. His wife and daughter like living in California anyway, and the climate is supposed to be good for his health. That’s the way the quacks talk: from what I hear, nothing now will be any good for him.’
    ‘So he has a daughter?’
    Marshall flicked his thumb, then stuck it in the air.
    ‘He certainly has. From the first marriage: she’s only a kid: eighteen, but some chicken.’ He winked at me. ‘I’d rather have her than the Rolls.’
    ‘Hey! Hey! I thought you were a respectably married man.’
    ‘So I am, but you want to see Odette Malroux. She’d make a corpse have wicked thoughts.’
    ‘So long as you keep it to thoughts,’ I said and slid off the desk. ‘I’d better get moving. I’m late as it is.’ ‘What’s the interest in Malroux, Harry?’
    ‘You know me: I saw the car and the woman. I was just curious.’
    I could see I hadn’t convinced him, but he didn’t press it.
    ‘If you happen to want a temporary job, Harry,’ he said awkwardly, ‘we’re hiring guys to take a traffic count, starting from tomorrow. It pays fifty a week and lasts ten days. Any good to you?’
    I didn’t hesitate one second.
    ‘That’s nice of you, Ed, but I’ve got something lined up.’ I grinned at him. ‘Thanks all the same.’
    In the bus, on the way home, I turned over in my mind the information I had got from Marshall. It excited me.
    The wife of one of the richest men in the world had a job for me. I had no doubt about it. She would telephone tomorrow. An element of risk, she had said. Well, okay, I was willing to take risks if the money was big enough, and it would be.
    As the bus carried me along the beach road, I whistled under my breath.
    This was the first time since I had gone to jail that I had felt like whistling.
    Life was coming alive again.

    II

    Soon after nine o’clock the following morning, I went down to the offices of the Herald .
    Nina had told me that she had some pots to deliver and she wouldn’t be back until midday. This suited me. If Malroux’s wife did telephone, I would have the place to myself. I certainly wasn’t telling Nina what had happened until I knew what the job was going to be.
    I walked into the reference room of the Herald’s offices. There were two girls in charge. I had never seen them before, and they didn’t know me. I asked one of them to let me have the back files of the Herald from January, two years back.
    It didn’t take me long to dig out the information I was looking for. I learned that Felix Malroux had married Rhea Passary five months after the death of his first wife. Rhea Passary had been a show girl at the Lido, Paris. After a whirlwind courtship that lasted scarcely a week, Malroux proposed and she accepted him. It was pretty obvious she wasn’t accepting him, but his money.
    I returned home and sat down to wait. Exactly at eleven o’clock the telephone bell rang. I knew it was her before I lifted the receiver. My heart was beating fast and my hand as I reached for the receiver, was shaking.
    ‘Mr. Barber?’
    There was no mistaking that clear, hard voice.
    ‘Yes,’ I said.
    ‘We met yesterday.’
    I decided this was