The Paris Deadline

The Paris Deadline Read Online Free PDF

Book: The Paris Deadline Read Online Free PDF
Author: Max Byrd
Tags: Fiction, Historical, Thrillers, Mystery & Detective
York. He's an invalid. He spends all day in bed. It's of no interest to

anybody else, I should think. A trinket. Worthless, really. But he likes ducks."
         I didn't say anything.
         "I know you have it," she said, sniffing. "A maid at the Ritz Hôtel told me you took it away in a taxi."
         "And you're sure this duck is yours?"
         "Of course I am! This is Monday. On Saturday I went to that little man's shop on the rue Bonaparte and bought it for a hundred and fifty francs, except I didn't have that much cash on me and Monsieur Bassot, who is by the way a very lecherous person, wouldn't let me take it without full payment, or . . . never mind. I said he was lecherous. I gave him fifty francs and came back that night with the rest, but he was closed and wouldn't answer the door. And then this morning he told me his boy had sent it to an American woman at the Ritz by mistake." She dug into her purse and came up with a yellow sheet of paper, which she spread out on the corner of my desk. "That's my receipt."
         I picked up the paper and tried to decipher somebody's water-soaked French scrawl.
         "It isn't here," Elsie Short went on, "the duck isn't. I know because I admit I looked."
         "It's safe in the inky bosom of the Trib. "
         "You mean your office?"
         I nodded and handed her back the paper.
         "You talk funny," she said. "And I don't think you believe a solitary word I've said."
         There were not many female reporters in Paris—two or three chain-smoking ice-cube chewing basilisks over at the New York Herald , a nice woman named Flanner who wrote witty articles for the New Yorker magazine, an elderly matron who served as the Tribune' s fashion editor, but wisely stayed as far away as possible from the male clubhouse atmosphere of the city room. I had forgotten how direct, straightforward, and untrustworthy the American Girl could be.
         "Nope. Not a solitary word."
         Elsie Short's face was not difficult to read. A flush began at her collarbone and moved slowly up her neck. She opened her mouth, closed it again, and glowered.
         "Let us," I said foolishly, "go and have a cup of coffee and I'll tell you why."

            Seven

    I N RETROSPECT , I SHOULD HAVE STOPPED right there. Politely shaken her hand and said goodbye. Then gone back into my cozy room a free man, murmuring the words of that lifelong bachelor Thomas Gray, "Where ignorance is bliss . . ." Or possibly Goldsmith, "When lovely woman stoops to folly . . ."
         Should have done. Of course, in retrospect, I should have also gone to Yale instead of Harvard, learned Spanish instead of French, and volunteered for the New Mexican Navy or the Dirigible and Hot Air Balloon Corps instead of the Third Army Engineers.
         There were at least five cafés at the bottom of the rue du Dragon, including the noisy and expensive Café de Flore, where hardy Parisians sat outside on the terrace all winter long, warmed by charcoal braziers placed on tripods among the tables.
         But my taste doesn't run to the expatriate crowd at the Flore, and we went into a snug, lace-curtained café next door, "Le Camargue," empty except for us, the Greek owner by the zinc bar, and a lanky brown and white cat named Byron. Elsie Short

gave the cat a suspicious look right out of the terrier universe and ordered a hot chocolate. I ordered a plate of cheese and a half bottle of Fleurie and from long habit pulled the curtain to one side so I could see outside. It was snowing lightly again. The pavement glinted under a white skin of ice that would still be there in the morning.
         "Well," said Elsie Short stiffly when the wine and chocolate had come. "Why don't you believe a solitary word I say, Mr. Toby Keats?"
         I poured myself a glass of the Fleurie. "In the first place," I said, "the duck in question is much too old and beaten up to be a Christmas gift, even for an invalid
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