"Oh for G.o.d's sake," Bonny Lee said. "You talk to her."

"Betsy brought you my note?"

"Yes, Kirby."

"And you talked to her?"

"All night, just about. She kept trying to make me remember things about your uncle. She thinks there's something special hidden. I don't have it. I don't even know what it is. Your uncle was a very unusual man. He was so smart, Kirby, he didn't need any special kind of thing. His great mind was enough. I did just as he told me to do, and no matter what they do to me, I'll never, never, "

"I understand your loyalty, Wilma. Out of that loyalty could you be denying the existence of something you know exists somewhere?"

"I swear I'm not, Kirby. I swear it. She told me where you were. Why would you hide in the apartment of a cheap person like that, Kirby?"

"As I don't know the man, I'm not ready to pa.s.s judgment."

"Would that be how you met this trashy girl? Who is this girl, Kirby?"

"Bonny Lee is a good fr, excuse me. Bonny Lee is a girl I am in love with."

"Oh dear," Wilma said.

Bonny Lee winked at Kirby. "Y'almost flunked out, friend."

"That was a lie, wasn't it?" Wilma asked in an almost inaudible tone, "When you told me you were frightened of women. You were saving my face, weren't you? How you must have laughed after you got away from me!"

"I told you the truth. I ran in pure panic, Wilma."

"But right now you seem, different. You don't seem scared of anything in the world, anything."

"I'm scared of a lot of things."

"But he's gettin' right bra.s.sy around the broads lately," Bonny Lee said and giggled at Kirby's look of annoyance. "I hear tell he undressed one right on a public beach. Din' even know her name."

Wilma looked horrified. "Kirby! Are you well?"

"I'm perfectly all right," he said angrily.

"Didn't she struggle?"

"Poor dear little thang couldn' move a muscle," Bonny Lee said.

"Please, Bonny Lee! Please."

"Sure, sugar. I'll be good."

"Wilma, have you been keeping track of the news reports?"

"I think I heard it all, but parts of it I can't remember very clearly. About that yacht and your things being on it, and about you escaping from those policemen this morning, and taking their guns. It just, didn't sound like you."

"When did Betsy leave here?"

"Very early. She said she was going to go race a bluff. That doesn't sound quite right. Run a bluff? Yes, that was it. But the expression is unfamiliar."

"I guess you must realize her bluff didn't work."

"I don't understand what happened. I guess it was almost three hours later when those sailors got here. They rang the bell properly, so I a.s.sumed it was Roger or you or even Betsy coming back. They forced their way in. They seemed quite, cordial in a rather unpleasant way. When I started to be severe with them, Rene, he's the big one, but I didn't know his name then, smiled and took my wrist and turned it slowly until I was finally down on my knees with my face against the carpet. It was absolute agony. My arm still feels odd, you know. Then I knew I had better go along quietly. I couldn't understand who they were. I was afraid they were some thieves who had hurt Roger and made him tell where they could find me, and then they were going to force me to reveal the location of that money, that absurd money that's all gone. But I gathered they v/ere taking me to a yacht, the yacht they worked on, and that Betsy was there waiting for me. They made me sit on the floor in front with my head back under the dash. It was very hot and dirty and uncomfortable. Then suddenly something was very wrong. They became cross with me and with each other, and they argued about what to do and then they came back here. From what they said, I gathered the boat had left without them. They were most surly and rather apprehensive until at last we heard the news about the yacht. But they said Betsy had been taken ill. She seemed a very tense and excitable person, but I did not guess she was close to having a breakdown."

"Sis," Bonny Lee said, "you kill me. You really do. Those ba.s.sars grabbed that Betsy girl and took her onto that boat and hurt her until she said where they could find you and find Kirby here, and made Kirby promise to come on account of being maybe able to help Betsy and to keep them from doing you like they done her. This thing you don't know what it is, they want it bad."

Wilma stared solemnly at Bonny Lee. "Hurt her?"

"Sweetie, of a Sat.u.r.day night in the wrong part of New Orleans, you can get you crippled for a lifetime for a cruddy seven bucks, so why should this make you bug your eyes? Where you been livin'?"

"This is terrible!" Wilma said. "Your uncle would have agreed, Kirby. We must find out what it is they want and see that they get it, or prove to them no such thing exists."

Bonny Lee gave a laugh of derision. "We know what they want, and they don't get it."

"What is it?" Wilma demanded.

"Bonny Lee!" Kirby said warningly.

"No sweat, sugar. Even if I wanted to tell her, she just isn't ready yet and I can lay odds she never will be. What'll we do now?"

"Get her out of here."

"But where? Oh. My place. h.e.l.ls bells. At least it's the one address those people don't know already."

Wilma stared at Kirby, her unpainted lips parted. "Did you , overpower those two sailors, Kirby?"

"Watch it, Winter," Bonny Lee said. She turned to Wilma. "Sweetie, you don't drink so good."

Wilma flushed. "!t seems that I just, I just stopped giving a d.a.m.n about anything. Life had become too confusing to be endurable."

"Surprise h.e.l.l out of you, sis, how much more complicated life can get for a drunky broad. Get out of here, Kirby, and I'll find some d.a.m.n thing to put on her."

"I have clothes."

"I know, sweetie. And gla.s.ses. And your picture in the papers."

Kirby got up and walked out of the bedroom. As he took the first step into the living room, the side of his head blew up. As the floor came toward him, he seemed able to observe the phenomenon with a remote, clinical interest. It was the way they blew up a cliff. First you saw the flash and then the dust and the rumble and tumble of boulders. He heard a remote screaming of women as he fell into velvet.

Chapter Eleven.

Kirby came up from far places, like blundering up cellar stairs in the dark toward the edge of light at the kitchen sill. He opened his eyes and the light was like a spray of acid. There was a slow regular pulsation over his ear, like a child trying to get a balloon started.

Somebody took hold of his chin and shook his head roughly, and he marveled that it did not come loose and fall off.