The Bitch by Gil Brewer Page B

nasty edge to the tone that belied any too obvious grace. I had expected this.
    “Come along, Morgan.”
    I stepped up to him, took hold of his arm, swung him around.
    “What about those two men?” I said. “Don’t go into your act, Morrell. There are two men dead. Do you know anything about that?”
    “Take your hands off me.”
    I tightened my grip on his arm, really putting on the pressure, and enjoying it, too. It seemed suddenly as if this man was the cause of the whole thing. I knew it wasn’t so, but I desperately wanted to believe it. There was no place left for me to go, no ground left for me to stand on. It was all taken, and I was storming around in the brush—aimlessly.
    “Did you hear me, Morrell?”
    “The law’s after you,” he said quietly, not struggling now, and not showing any degree of pain, either, and I was holding that arm of his hard. He didn’t move at all. “Would you like me to call them in?”
    “You wouldn’t do that.”
    He did not answer. He turned his head down and looked at where I held his arm, and I let go. He shrugged his shoulder, and that was all, watching me. Then he turned sharply and strode along the hibiscus bushes. I followed him. He’d somehow won the first round, without my even realizing we were in the ring.
    • • •
    There was no sign of Thelma around the trailer. We entered a large screened-in patio projecting from one side of the trailer. Shrubs pruned in round billowing shapes grew around the lower edges of the screen, and the floor inside was tiled in a red and white design. The patio was furnished with rattan chairs, settees and tables. A man sat in one of the chairs reading a newspaper by a dim floor-lamp. Morrell went on inside the trailer and let the door slam. I pushed it open and went inside. It was immense in there, furnished modernistically, air-conditioned. We stood in the living area, and I stepped over and looked down through the dining room, on through the kitchen and saw a closed folding door.
    “Thelma’s in the bedroom,” Morrell said, turning and looking at me. Then he went over to a couch and sat down. “I’m glad you phoned me,” he said. “We’d have found you, of course. But this facilitated matters.”
    He looked very young, too young to be doing the things he was doing, but youth often accounts for little. Every other time I’d seen him he always wore a blue suit, and the white tropical thing changed him subtly. He wore no tie, his white shirt open across a tanned throat. He wore a crew-cut, his hair very dark, his eyes very calm, the muscles in his broad jaw twitching a little involuntarily. Now I could see that Morrell was really as nervous as a cat.
    “Who’s that outside?” I said.
    “A friend. Name’s Stewart.” He sat there looking up at me and he kept moving his shoulders a lot. The nervousness was all through him. “Morgan,” he said. “I’m not kidding—I don’t like to make a scene. I want to know where that money is. An awful lot depends on that money. I realize you don’t have it with you. But I want it right away so we can split and quit seeing each other. This town is going to be hot. You’ll never see a town so hot. Your brother’s really made it worse for everybody, you see?”
    “I don’t believe he did that.”
    “He did. You think I have any reason for lying about that? Why didn’t you contact me sooner?”
    “I couldn’t.”
    “We have a man we can count on at headquarters. He called in just before you phoned. Your brother walked into headquarters and spilled everything. He said he’d been with you, Morgan—how about that?”
    “Go on, tell me about it.”
    “He said he hadn’t been going to turn you in, but his conscience finally got the better of him. People and their consciences. It’s enough to make me puke.”
    “Sure.”
    “His story was he wanted to try and save his detective agency, but he realized it was a selfish motive in view of the circumstances.”
    Morrell’s