“Louise.”
“You’re a double-talker. I can spot a guy like you a hundred miles away. You’ve got a wife, no children, and a house you haven’t paid for. Tonight you’re slumming, and tomorrow you’ll be bragging all over the commuter’s special that you know a real artist, the famous Louise Patterson.” She slammed a fist on the bar. Gil came back to us and phlegmatically assembled two more drinks. “But to hell with all that. I want my Study in Fundamentals. It was promised to me, and it’s worth a lot of money. Where is it?”
“You can’t have it,” I said, bluntly. “It’s mine.”
She glared, and snarled.
“You bastard, I think you mean it.”
“Certainly I mean it. After all, it is mine. I paid for it, didn’t I? And it means something to me. That picture is a part of my life. I like it. I want it. I need it.”
She was, all at once, moderately amiable.
“Why?”
“Because that particular picture gave me an education. It is continuing to give me an education. Maybe, sometime, it will put me through college.” I looked at my watch. If I could get to the Van Barth in ten minutes, I would be approximately on time. “But I’ll make a deal with you. I’ve got that Fury in the office, and four other things of yours at home. You can have them all, instead of the Temptation of St. Judas, which is not for sale at any price. Not to anyone.”
She asked me, wistfully: “Do you really like it so much?”
I didn’t have time to explain, and so I simply said: “Yes.”
This shut her up, and I somehow got her out of the place. In front of Gil’s I put her into a cab, and paid the driver, and gave him her address.
I caught the next taxi that passed. I knew I’d be a few minutes late at the Van Barth. But it didn’t seem to matter so much.
The big, silent, invisible clock was moving along as usual. But it had forgotten all about me. Tonight it was looking for someone else. Its arms and levers and steel springs were wound up and poised in search of some other person in the same blind, impersonal way it had been reaching for me on the night before. And it had missed me, somehow. That time. But I had no doubt it would get around to me again. Inevitably. Soon.
I made sure that my notebook was stowed away in an inside pocket. It had Louise’s address, and her phone number. I would never call her, of course. It was enough, to be scorched by one serious, near-disaster. All the same, it was a nice, interesting number to have.
My taxi slowed and stopped for a red light. I looked out of the window and saw a newspaper headline on a corner stand.
EARL JANOTH, OUSTED PUBLISHER, PLUNGES TO DEATH.
The Big Clock Page 15
