says he’s satisfied, but I still don’t believe it.”
Julie looked up quickly.
“But surely, Nick, if the police say so…”
“Yeah, I know, but it foxes me. Why didn’t he come to me if he was so hard up? Maybe I did throw him out last time, but that has never stopped him before. I’ve thrown him out a score of times and he’s always come back.”
“Perhaps he was too proud,” Julie said quietly.
“Proud? Roy? My dear sweet, you don’t know Roy. He had a hide like a tank. He’d take any insult so long as he got money out of me.” English lit his cigar and began to move slowly about the room. “Why did the business collapse like that? When he got me to buy it for him, I took the trouble to investigate it pretty thoroughly. It was paying well then. It was an old-established business. He couldn’t have wrecked it so soon, unless he did it deliberately.” He made an impatient gesture. “I was a fool to have had anything to do with it. I might have known he wouldn’t have worked at it. Imagine Roy a private detective. Why, it’s laughable. I was a mug to have given him the money.”
Julie watched him pace the room. There was a wary, alert expression in her eyes that English didn’t notice.
“I’ve sent Lois to check up at his office,” English went on. “She has a nose for that kind of thing. She’ll be able to tell me what went wrong.”
“You sent Lois there tonight?” Julie said sharply.
“I wanted her to have a look at the place before Corrine takes it into her head to go up there.”
“You mean Lois is actually there now?”
English paused in his pacing and looked at her, surprised at the sharpness of her tone.
“Yes. Harry’s with her. She doesn’t mind how late she works. You sound surprised.”
“Well, after all it is nearly half-past one. Couldn’t it have waited until tomorrow?”
“Corrine might go up there,” English said, frowning. He didn’t like his orders questioned. “I want to know what Roy’s been up to.”
“I think she must be in love with you,” Julie said, moving so that her back was turned to him.
“In love with me?” English said, startled. “Who? Corrine?”
“Lois. She acts as if she were your slave. No other girl would tolerate working for you, Nick.”
English laughed.
“Nonsense. I pay her well. Besides, she isn’t the kind of girl to fall in love with anyone.”
“There’s never been a girl who wouldn’t fall in love if she’s given the chance,” Julie said quietly. “I should have thought you would have more insight, Nick, than to say a thing like that.”
“Never mind Lois,” English said a little impatiently. “We were talking about Roy. I went to see Corrine tonight.”
“That was nice of you. I’ve never seen her. What’s she like, Nick?”
“Blond, plump and dumb-looking,” English said, coming to sit on the arm of her armchair. “She told me I was responsible for Roy’s death and threw me out of the house.”
“Nick!” Julie looked quickly at him, but was reassured by his smile.
“I guess she was hysterical, but to be on the safe side I got Sam out of bed and sent him down to talk to her. I’ve got to be careful there isn’t a stink about this business, Julie. I have a big pot on the boil at the moment.” His brown hand slid over her shoulder and his fingers gently stroked her throat. “In a few weeks the senator is going to break the news that I’m the man behind the new hospital. The committee know, of course, but the press haven’t got it yet. The idea is to name the hospital after me.”
“Name it after you?” Julie repeated blankly. “But why, for goodness’ sake?”
English grinned a little sheepishly.
“Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But I want it, Julie. I want it more than anything I’ve ever wanted.” He got up and began to pace up and down. “I’ve made a fair success of my life, Julie. I started from scratch, and now I’m as good as the next man as regards to money, but money isn’t everything. If I drop dead this moment, Julie, no one would remember me in a week’s time. It’s the name people leave after them that counts. If the hospital was named after me—well, I guess I wouldn’t be forgotten quite so easily. And then there’s another thing, more important. I promised my mother I’d make a name for myself, and she believed me. She didn’t live long enough to know I had started on the way up. When she died I was still fooling around with that compass and getting nowhere, but I told her it was going to be a success, and I told her I was going way ahead, and she believed me. She would have got a big bang out of knowing the hospital is going to be named after me, and I’m soft in the head enough to think she’ll still get a big bang out of it.”
Julie listened in a hypnotized silence. She had never had any idea that English could think and talk like this. She wanted to laugh, but instinctively she knew he would be furious with her if she did. To want a hospital to be named after him! All this sentiment about his mother! It was unbelievable and completely out of character. She thought, not without alarm, that she didn’t know him as she had thought she did. She had always regarded him as a completely ruthless business man whose god was money. This new side of him startled her.
“Go ahead and laugh if you want to,” English said, smiling at her. “I know it’s funny. I laugh myself sometimes, but that’s what I want, and that’s what I’m going to have. The English Memorial Hospital! Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?”
Julie put her hand on his arm.
“If that’s what you want, Nick, I want it, too.”
“I guess that’s right,” he said, suddenly thoughtful. “But this business of Roy’s may slap a lid on it.”
“But why?”
“Believe it or not, Julie, it took me a hell of a time to persuade the commission to let me finance the hospital. You wouldn’t believe that, would you?”
“What commission?”
“The City Planning Commission,” he said patiently. “It’s unbelievable what a bunch of stuffed shirts they are. All from the best families, of course, but not one of them has ever earned a dime. They’ve inherited what money they have, and they’re damned miserly with it, too. Although I bet their private lives wouldn’t stand investigation, on the surface they are about the finest collection of plaster saints you’ve ever set eyes on. They didn’t approve of me. Two of them even said I was a gangster. The senator had to talk pretty sharply to them to get them to accept my money. At the time, nothing was mentioned that the hospital was to be named after me. If it turns out that Roy was in bad trouble, that he did blackmail his clients, the chances of my name being used is as remote as the snows of Everest. Morilli knows that. The police commissioner knows it, too. They’ll expect to be taken care of if this is to be hushed up. But Corrine’s the difficulty. She may try to cut off her nose to spite my face. If she lets on that I wouldn’t finance Roy, and Roy was forced to raise money by blackmail, I shall be ruled out. A scandal like that will make the commission give birth to pups.” He tossed the cigar into the fire and went on in a suddenly harsh voice, “Why couldn’t the louse have shot himself next month when this was in the bag?”
Julie stood up.
“Let’s go to bed, Nick,” she said, and slipped her arm through his. “Don’t let’s think any more about it tonight.”
He gave her bottom an affectionate little pat.
“You’re full of good ideas, Julie,” he said. “We’ll go to bed.”
VI
At the back of