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“Certainly,” I said, “if you wish. I’ll see about getting your money for you. Do you know how much you had coming?”

She shook her head.

“Under those circumstances, I’m afraid you’d better attend to the financial transaction yourself.”

“Oh, it’s quite all right. I know you’re on the up-and-up. I — I wouldn’t have had a thing if it hadn’t been for you, Mr.—”

“Lam,” I said.

“I’m Miss Marvin,” she said, smiling. “My friends call me Diane.”

“My name’s Donald.”

“Donald, I’m just too absolutely, completely flabbergasted to get up and walk into that room. My legs just seem to turn to water. I — Well, I just wish you could see my knees.”

“It’s an idea,” I said.

“Oh,” she said, making a little slap at me. “I didn’t mean it
that
way.”

One of the assistant managers bent gravely over the table. “Did you people wish to cash in your chips,” he
asked, “or would you prefer to have them brought to you here in the bar? You can use them to pay for anything in the house.”

“Let’s hang on to them,” she said instantly. “Could you — Well, could they be brought out here?”

“But certainly.”

He bowed, vanished, and a moment later came back with a plastic container in which my chips had been placed, and a polished wooden rack in which the girl’s chips were stacked.

“We took the liberty of changing some of these chips,” he said, “so they wouldn’t be so bulky. The blue chips represent twenty dollars each.”

“Those blue chips — twenty dollars for each one?”

“That’s right.”

Her fingers caressed the edges of the gold-embossed chips. “Each one,” she said in an awed half-whisper, “twenty dollars.”

The waiter brought champagne, popped the cork, spilled ice out of the glasses and filled them to the brim.

We touched glasses.

“Here’s luck,” I said.

“Here’s to
you
,” she countered. “You’re
my
luck.”

We sipped the champagne. Her eyes studied me. She said abruptly, “I’m betwixt and between.”

“What do you mean?”

She said, “I need money. I have just about half enough here. I’ll be frank with you. I was down to my last cent. I came up here and invested every cent I could scrape up to buy chips. I made up my mind I’d either get what I wanted or be completely broke, and then I’d—”

Her voice trailed away into a significant silence.

“Then you’d what, my dear?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I hadn’t gone that far. Either sell myself or kill myself, I guess.”

I said nothing.

She studied me thoughtfully. “What should I do? Should I quit now, play it safe and try to raise the rest of the money some other way, or should I go ahead and gamble?”

“On those matters,” I said, “I give no advice.”

“You’ve been my inspiration, my luck. You’ve brought me success. Everything was going bad for me. And then you came along.”

I said nothing.

Abruptly the floor manager glided up to the table. “Would you mind stepping into the office?” he asked Diane.

“Oh,” she said, her knuckles suddenly white as she pressed her fist against her lips. “What have I done now?”

The manager’s smile was reassuring. “Nothing,” he said. “Only I have been asked to invite you to step into the office, Miss Marvin, and the boss would like to see Mr. Lam, too.” ‘

I glanced at my watch. It was thirty-five minutes from the time I had entered the place. I still hadn’t seen anything of Horace B. Catlin.

Abruptly Diane Marvin pushed back the chair. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get it over with.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Probably something about my credit — about — I don’t know.”

The floor manager escorted us deferentially to a big door marked
Private.

He swung the door open without touching it, apparently by putting weight on a concealed button.

“Right this way, please,” he said, standing aside.

I followed Diane into an office.

The floor manager didn’t come in. The door clicked shut behind us. I turned to look. There was no knob on the door.

There were comfortable chairs grouped in a half-circle around a table on which were glasses, a decanter, ice, and soda.

A plain door at the far end of the office opened and Hartley L. Channing said, “Right this way, please.”

We walked in.

Channing shook hands with both of us. “How are you, Lam?” he said.

“Fine,” I told him.

He didn’t say anything to Diane.

She walked on into the inner office and I followed.

This was a room fixed up both as a den and an office. There were a television set, a radio, phonograph, a safe, filing cabinet, a desk, and comfortable lounging chairs. There were bookcases, paneled walls, indirect lighting, and there wasn’t a window in the place. An air conditioning unit kept a stream of fresh air flowing in and out.

Channing turned to Diane and said, “You can lay off, Diane. He’s not a fish.”

She said indignantly, “Well, then, why the hell didn’t I get the signal? I—”

“Keep your shirt on,” he told her. “There’s been a mix-up.”

“I’ll say there’s been a mix-up! I had things coming along just fine and—”

“That’ll do,” he told her. “You can go now. Forget you’ve seen this man, that you’ve been here, forget everything.”

Without a word to me she got up and flounced out through the door.

I couldn’t tell whether she had the combinations so that she knew how to open the door which had no knob, or whether there was some secret connection at Channing’s desk by which he could open it.

Channing and I looked at each other across the desk.

“I’d like to see the card by which you got past the doorman, Lam.”

I smiled at him.

“Well?” he said, extending his hand. “I’m waiting.”

I said, “The card was good enough to get me in. Isn’t that good enough for you?”

“No.”

I made no move.

Channing frowned. “You certainly aren’t naïve enough to think I don’t control the situation here,” he said.

I said, “I certainly hope you aren’t naive enough to think I’d let you know
what
I’m thinking.”

“This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“It’s got me this far.”

“That may not prove to be entirely beneficial — for you.”

I stole a glance at my wrist watch. I had a little over nineteen minutes to go.

I said, “Perhaps you and I might talk without chasing each other around in circles, and really get somewhere.”

“I want to see that card.”

I said nothing.

I didn’t see Channing give the signal — probably a concealed button somewhere under the desk — but abruptly the door from the outer office opened and a man in a tuxedo stood quietly on the threshold.

“Mr. Lam,” Channing said, “had a card when he entered the place.”

The newcomer said nothing.

“He doesn’t wish to produce that card,” Channing said. “I’d like very much to look at it.”

The man moved forward, smiling serenely. “The card, Mr. Lam,” he said.

I made no move.

The man hesitated briefly by my chair.

Channing nodded.

The man reached forward and grabbed my wrist. I tried to jerk the arm free. I might as well have tried to pull against a steel cable.

Swift, efficient fingers did things to the wrist. The other hand hit against my elbow. My arm doubled around, flew up against my back, the wrist was doubled into a grip that pulled the tendons until it was all I could do to keep from screaming.

“The card,” Channing said.

I twisted my body, trying to ease the tension and the pain as much as possible.

“Of all the damn fools,” Channing said, and came over to search me.

I was powerless to make a move.

Channing’s hand shot into my inside pocket, came out with my wallet. He deftly extracted the card I had used in entering the place, started to put the wallet back, then thought better of it and took the wallet and the card over to his desk.

“That’s all, Bill,” he said.

The man in the tuxedo released the grip on my wrist.

I dropped back into the chair. My arm felt as though every tendon in it had been pulled out of place.

Channing started to tell Bill to go, then thought better of it. “Stick around, Bill,” he said.

Channing said, “Lam, I don’t like this. You sat around in front for several hours with a companion. The man is still down there waiting for you. I suppose if you don’t appear within a certain time he’s to come and get you or else call the police. Is that it?”

“You’re talking. I’m listening.”

“I suppose you feel that gives you a paid-up policy of life insurance.”

“I’ll run my business,” I said, “you run yours.”

He examined the card carefully.

“This is a genuine card,” he said. “It not only bears my signature but it has the little secret mark on it that you wouldn’t even know was there. It’s a genuine card. Where did you get it?”

“It was given to me.”

He shook his head. “Those cards aren’t obtained in that way.”

I said nothing.

He studied the card again, then looked over at me and I didn’t like what I saw in his eyes.

“Lam,” he said, “I’m not going to tell you
how
I know, but this is one of the cards that were given to George Bishop for distribution to a very select few.

“Ordinarily George kept his connection with this place completely secret, but for the few people whom he knew he could trust, he had some special cards. This is one of those cards. Now where did
you
get it?”

“It was given to me.”

“You know, Lam, there’s just a chance, just an outside chance that you’ve been over talking with Irene Bishop. I wouldn’t like that.”

I said nothing.

He picked up my wallet, started going through it, became motionless. “Well, I’m damned,” he said, half under his breath. “You’ve got four more cards — all given to George Bishop!”

I realized then how foolish I had been to keep this evidence on me. There undoubtedly was a secret mark on each of those cards.

For ten or fifteen seconds he sat there, saying nothing.

I stole another glance at my wrist watch. I had eleven minutes to go, then Danby would call the police
if
he followed instructions. I hoped he’d follow instructions. I didn’t care particularly about having the police butt in at
this stage of the game, but I could see that things might be getting just a little out of hand.

Abruptly Channing said, “Bill, there’s a man waiting down there in the guy’s car. I had assumed he was just an errand boy carrying a life insurance policy for this guy, but I think we’d better make sure.”

“Yes?” Bill said.

“Go down and bring him in,” Channing said.

“Suppose he doesn’t want to come?”

“I told you to
bring him in.
”

Bill started moving for the door.

I knew I had to stall for ten and a half minutes.

“We might talk first,” I said.

“We might talk afterward,” Channing retorted.

I got up out of the chair, said, “I think I’m tired of being pushed around.”

I hoped that would bring Bill back to pull another judo grip on me and delay things for a while.

Bill looked questioningly at Channing.

Channing said, “Get going, Bill,” and pulled a .38 revolver out of the top drawer in the desk.

“I think,” he said, “I’m going to readjust a lot of opinions within the next few minutes. I’m readjusting some right now. So you really are a private detective. What the hell are you working on, and who the hell are you really working for?”

The door closed behind Bill. I knew I was sunk then. I should have cut the time limit down to thirty minutes, gone in and got out.

And really I didn’t want the police any more than Channing did. That probably was why I’d made it an extreme outside limit. I had really expected to go in there, get the information I wanted, and be out inside of half an hour. I’d have done it, too, if it hadn’t been for Diane Marvin. The fact that the man behind the roulette wheel
had given her the signal to start playing me for a live one had given me a false sense of security.

Channing thought things over for a while, then tossed the wallet across the desk so it lit in my lap.

“Put it away,” he said. “I don’t want you to think we’d take anything by force here. You’ll find that everything’s in your wallet. I just wanted to look at it — and it’s a damned good thing I did.”

“Okay,” I said, “what do we do next?”

“We wait.”

I said, “I was having a bottle of champagne with your come-on out there. I suppose the champagne is still waiting. It—”

“Don’t mention it, Lam,” he said magnanimously, “there’ll be no charge. In fact, I’ll have it brought in here. I may want to use it for a christening.”

“What christening?”

“I think I’ll pour it all over you and christen you the heel of the week.”

“That won’t get you any place.”

“Shut up, I want to think.”

We were silent for a while, then a loudspeaker said, “Bill is at the door. He says to tell you he has a man with him.”

Channing said, “Tell him to take the guy into office number two and plug in the sound connection. Question him in there. You can help him with the questions. I want to find out who this guy is and what he’s doing around here.”

“I suppose,” Channing said, turning to me, “you have one of your agency men with you.”

I said nothing.

“You’re a communicative cuss, aren’t you?”

“My clients pay me to get information, not to give it.”

“Who are your clients, by the way?”

I grinned at him.

“I wonder,” he said softly, almost to himself, “if Irene is just a little smarter than we’ve been thinking she is.”

I still said nothing.

“If Irene wants to make any trouble,” he said, his eyes narrowing, “it would be a dirty, nasty mess — for her. She wouldn’t get anything out of it. Make no mistake, Lam, I’ve taken over here and that’s final. There isn’t the scratch of a pen that ties George Bishop into this thing. There isn’t anyone who can show this isn’t my business built with my money, and there isn’t any way of passing this thing on to George’s widow. She wouldn’t stand one chance in a million.”