Slocum's Silver Burden Read Online Free PDF Page B

scoop-necked blouse allowed the barest hint of the silky skin to plump up and outward. Or maybe the pearls ensured that anyone’s gaze was properly directed to those well-formed breasts. Slocum had the feeling that nothing this woman did was by accident.
    The papers on her desk were precisely stacked. Two books at the right side were carefully aligned. He saw one was a dictionary with a dozen small scraps of paper marking pages for future reference. Rather than looking up words a second time, she had found a way to reduce the time leafing through the book. The other title was hidden from him by the base of an unlit oil lamp. What caught his attention was a partly opened desk drawer. The glint of light off a blue gun barrel told him she was more than just an ornament decorating the outer office.
    â€œThis here is Mr. John Slocum, come to see Mr. Collingswood about a job.” Underwood sounded pleased as punch when he made the introduction, as if the woman knew who Slocum was and would be impressed.
    â€œFor the great hunt?” The woman’s musical voice enchanted Slocum as surely as her loveliness. She shifted slightly in her chair and pushed shut the drawer holding the pistol. That made it seem as if he had been accepted and was no longer a threat.
    To her? Or to the man in the office?
    But as bedazzled as he was by her beauty, he didn’t miss how the job had gone from “the hunt” mentioned by the guard below to “the great hunt” referred to by the woman just outside the boss’s inner sanctum.
    â€œUnderwood hasn’t told me anything about this job. What’s it all about?” He stepped back a half pace and read the nameplate on her desk. “Miss Crittenden.”
    â€œThat’s something Mr. Collingswood must discuss personally with you,” she said. She gave him a quick scouting from where his boots crushed the expensive carpet up to his green eyes. “It’s not up to me, sir, but if it were, you’d be hired immediately.”
    â€œMuch obliged, Tamara, for your endorsement,” Underwood said. “Can we go right in?”
    She reached under her desk. Slocum heard a distant buzz like the signal on a telegrapher’s key announcing an incoming message. He turned toward it. The buzz sounded inside Collingswood’s office.
    â€œThat’s a handy dingus,” Slocum said. “Nobody sneaks up on him?”
    â€œNot with me sitting here,” Tamara Crittenden said. She looked over her shoulder, then back at Slocum. “Go right in, Mr. Slocum.”
    â€œYou coming along?” Slocum asked Underwood.
    â€œDo I look like anyone’s fool? Why talk with the boss when I can stand out here and talk with the purtiest filly in town?”
    This made Slocum laugh, joining in the other man’s obvious enjoyment of the entire situation. Then he settled himself, took the crystal doorknob in his hand, twisted, and stepped into the room. For a moment, Slocum thought he had stepped into another world completely separate from the one of bustling Market Street, dead bodies, and crooked policemen.
    The hallway from the elevator had been lined with expensive items. The rug under his feet had made him feel as if he walked on clouds. But here it was as much a change as stepping from the elevator. He resisted the urge to take off his boots and wiggle his bare toes in the rug’s nap. Stepping on moss seemed uncouth by comparison. The two outer walls of the office were almost all plate glass window. One looked out over the Embarcadero and beyond, to San Francisco Bay with its freighters and tall-masted sailing ships in dock or waiting out in the middle of the Bay.
    The other decorations had been kept to a minimum. Two low tables held strange dwarf trees all bent up in a style Slocum had seen over in Japantown. The oak desk was polished so hard he had to squint against the reflection of the afternoon sun.
    â€œYou like the trees? Bonsai.