The Two Faces of January Read Online Free PDF

pock-marked. Chester got out at the sixth floor and the man followed him. Chester was just raising his hand to knock on his door, when the man said:
    â€œPardon me. You are, I think, Richard Donlevy?”
    The name meant Atlanta to Chester. The Suwannee Club. “No,” said Chester blankly.
    â€œOr—Louis Ferguson?”
    That was Miami. Chester shook his head. “No. Sorry.”
    â€œYou are travelling with your wife, yes? May I have a few words with you in your room, sir?”
    â€œWhy? What’s all this about?”
    â€œPerhaps nothing,” the man said with a smile. “I represent the Greek police. I should like to ask you a few questions.”
    Chester looked down at the billfold the man had opened. In a window of it was an authentic-looking card covered with Greek print and signatures, and, in heavy black letters in the middle of it, GREEK NATIONAL POLICE . If he refused to talk to him, Chester thought, it might make matters worse. “All right,” Chester said indifferently, and knocked.
    The door opened at once, but only a crack. Colette was in her dressing-gown.
    â€œExcuse me, dear,” Chester said. “I’m with a gentleman who wants to talk to me a moment. May we come in?”
    â€œWhy, of course,” said Colette, but her face had gone a little pale.
    They went in. Colette wrapped her dressing-gown closer about her, and stepped back near the chest of drawers.
    The Greek agent bowed to her. “Madam. Forgive my intrusion.” He turned to Chester. “May I ask under what name you are registered here?”
    Chester drew himself up and frowned. “What’s this about? What right have you to ask me that?”
    The man pulled from his overcoat pocket a small looseleaf notebook, opened it to a certain page and extended it to Chester. “This is not you?”
    Chester’s heart stumbled. It was a photograph of himself, fuzzy from enlargement but still recognizable, laughing, with a highball glass in his hand. It was from a group photograph of the dinner guests at the Suwannee Club maybe three years ago, when he’d been Richard Donlevy, with more hair and no moustache then, and he’d been selling some kind of stock. Selling what? He’d forgotten. Chester shook his head. “That’s not me. I see some resemblance, but . . . I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”
    â€œIt is in regard to various—how do you say—investment matters in the United States,” said the agent, still calm and pleasant. “I have not the details with me, and it is not my place to say them now, if I knew. I am only working in cooperation with the American authorities, who suspected you were in Europe.”
    A chill of panic passed over Chester and did not quite leave him. They were on to him in the States. Someone had tried to put up his stocks as collateral or something like that, and had been told they were phony. Or perhaps it was even the Walkie Kar. He looked at Colette and saw his own fear leap to her face for an instant, then she controlled herself and gave him a quick smile. “But you’re looking for somebody with another name, you told me,” Chester said.
    â€œVarious names. It does not much matter. You will please to come with me, anyway, to answer some questions, will you?” the man asked with an air of being very sure that Chester was going to come with him.
    â€œNo. Why should I? It’s your mistake,” said Chester, taking off his overcoat.
    Colette came forward, lifted the notebook in the agent’s hand, studied the picture, and said, “Why, that’s not my husband.”
    â€œMadam, under what name are you both registered here? It is the easiest thing in the world for me to find out. I shall simply call down and ask who is in room six twenty-one.”
    Colette looked at him, and said in her high, young voice, “I don’t think that’s any of your