Walking Dead Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

Zorn, Peter Potter, and Cleaves. I had to get clearance from Mr. Battle before Cleaves and Potter could be let through the front gate. He seemed not to know who Potter and Cleaves were, but he allowed them to come in. Naturally I was surprised when I saw Potter. He’s a dwarf, you know, but a nice little man, very witty, fun to talk with. Cleaves was the way he always is, handsome but cold, distant, his expression hidden by those black glasses. I don’t recap Gloria’s notes, so I had no idea why they were there, but I knew Maxwell Zorn was in the film business and that Cleaves had written a best-selling novel. Potter seemed like a sort of court jester. I wasn’t asked to sit in on their conference. As soon as they were gone, Mr. Battle sent for me.
    “‘I have agreed, under certain conditions, to finance a film for Maxwell Zorn,’ he said. ‘Make a note of the date and the time. And I want an airmail-special delivery letter sent to Pierre Chambrun in New York.’ Then he gave me the letter. I remember it quite clearly. ‘Pierre: Richard Cleaves, author of A Man’s World, is in reality Richard St. Germaine. You should be warned that he hasn’t forgotten.’ It was marked ‘Personal’ and mailed that afternoon.”
    “Forgotten what?” I asked.
    “You don’t ask Mr. Battle that kind of question,” Shelda said. “I never saw any of them again until just before we left France. Then Peter turned up at the villa.”
    “Peter?”
    “Peter Potter.”
    “So you’re on first-name terms with him?”
    “Careful, Mark,” Ruysdale said.
    “He came to see me,” Shelda said. A faint spot of color appeared in her cheeks. “That was the first time that I heard that Mr. Battle wanted me to—to act in the film. That I was one of the conditions he’d made for putting up the money for the film. Mr. Battle had never mentioned it to me.”
    “That is rather odd, don’t you think?” Ruysdale said. It kept me from some other inanity.
    “Not if you know Mr. Battle,” Shelda said. “Peter came to offer me the part. He said Mr. Zorn and Richard Cleaves had seen me and both felt, at once, that I was the girl they wanted for it. I said no. Then Peter mentioned a sum of money—a very large sum of money. I was startled, but I still said no. Then he told me the truth. It was Mr. Battle who wanted me to take it. It was one of his conditions. ‘I think he meant to do you a favor,’ Peter said. ‘If you tell him you don’t want it, he may drop it as a condition.’ He gave me his charming smile. ‘It’s very important to us.’”
    “Seven million dollars’ worth,” I said.
    “I went to Mr. Battle,” Shelda said. “He was very sweet about it. He told me he had made my getting the part a condition. He hadn’t told me because he’d wanted me to think that Mr. Zorn and the others had chosen me. He saw it as an opportunity for me to make a great deal of money and possibly develop a glamorous career. He had meant it as a gesture of gratitude to me for the year of work I’d given him. He advised me to—to overcome my reluctance to appear in the nude. The—Victorian age was long gone, he said. He urged me not to give a final answer until I’d had a chance to think about it, perhaps talk about it with someone close.”
    “Like maybe David-baby?” I said.
    Shelda looked straight at me for the first time. “He suggested you, Mark—someone who’d once been in love with me and would have my best interests at heart.”
    “So ask me what I think!” I said.
    “I don’t thin k I could trust you to be disinterested,” she said.
    “I don’t think I can trust either of you to remember we’ve got a would-be assassin running around the hotel and that Mr. Chambrun may be the target,” Ruysdale said.
    “What about this Richard Cleaves who ‘hasn’t forgotten,’ Shelda?”
    “Have you been prying into my private files, Ruysdale?” Chambrun’s voice was cold and so unexpected that we all spun around like guilty