The Devil Met a Lady Read Online Free PDF Page A

don’t want money. If I go to the police the newspapers will find out, the radio, the fan magazines. And the police can’t watch her all the time. They’ll assign someone for a week or two. We’ll get a lot of publicity and, besides, I’d have to tell the police why someone threatened Bette or wanted her kidnapped. I can’t do that.”
    “Why?”
    “Because,” he went on, “I’m involved in some very private aeronautical research. I’m a pilot and … I can’t say much more. My work is done very quietly in Minnesota for a nongovernment research company. If we’re successful, the war could end sooner than we hoped. Obviously, there are people who know a little about what we’re doing who don’t want us to succeed.”
    “Spies.”
    He shrugged. “Spies, Nazi sympathizers.”
    “What makes you think?…”
    “I told you. I got a phone call,” said Farnsworth, putting out his cigarette and lighting another as Rusty returned with my sandwich and Pepsi. He gave Farnsworth a disgusted look and dropped the check between us.
    Farnsworth waited till Rusty was moving to another table before he went on. “The man said he had something that my wife and I would not want to get into the hands of the wrong people. Some nonsense about a record of my wife and her first husband. He indicated that I might want to trade some information on the work I was doing for the recording. He said that if I didn’t see him to discuss it, my wife might disappear and the record might be sent to the newspapers. He also said I shouldn’t tell anyone.”
    “You’re telling me,” I said, lifting half the American Reuben in two hands and taking a bite.
    “The man on the phone told me to call you,” he said.
    “Me?”
    “The man on the phone said you were the person to act as a go-between to arrange delivery of the papers they want. He said you would know he was telling the truth about the record.” Farnsworth looked decidedly nervous and fingered his coffee cup. “Peters, I don’t know if you’re involved in this or not and I don’t care, but you’ve got to protect my wife and you’ve got to convince this person that I cannot give him those plans.”
    “Why believe this guy on the phone?” I asked, nibbling at a few crumbs I had missed.
    “He … he played part of a record of Bette’s voice. She was saying … saying …”
    “Forget it,” I stopped him. “I don’t have to know.” I was beginning to get the eyes-in-the-back-of-my-head feeling that I was being set up.
    “If I tell the people I work for about this,” Farnsworth said, “they’ll want to pull Bette from Los Angeles, hide her someplace. She won’t do it. She has to work. And even if they go to the government and they do assign some people to watch her, we’ll have the publicity problem again.”
    I grunted and kept eating.
    “And there’s one more problem,” he went on. “I’m not sure the people I work for or the police would believe me. They might think it was a publicity stunt. This is Hollywood. People do things like that all the time.”
    “I know,” I said, finishing a mouthful, “but that’s not the reason they wouldn’t believe you.”
    Farnsworth took a deep breath and shook his head.
    “Cops and G-men might think the phone call and kidnapping threat came out of a bottle,” I concluded.
    “Yes, I have a drinking problem,” he said. “I’ve been trying to deal with it. I don’t think Bette knows how bad it is, but the people I work for do, and you’re right. I doubt if it would take the police long to find out. I’m good at what I do, but … I got that call, Mr. Peters. I’ve been honest with you. I’ve told you more than I’ve even told my wife. I’m desperate. He told me they’d contact you, that I had to persuade you to do this for me. He was so sure you’d do it.”
    I drank some Pepsi and tried to ignore Carmen’s broad smile and ample breasts, which were now somehow suggestively visible in the curve of her