The Follower by Patrick Quentin Read Free Book Online

tossed the pack. Victor reached out an arm and caught it neatly.
    ‘Thanks, honey. Merry Christmas. And, look, when you locate Ellie drop me a post card. I’d like to send the kid a little Christmas present.’
    Mark left the room. As he walked down the corridor towards the head of the stairs he heard a soft ‘psst’.
    The red-head had opened a door to the left. She was beckoning, the sleeve of her housecoat falling back from her round, white arm.
    ‘Hey, you, Liddon.’
    He turned towards the door. She pulled him in and closed it behind them. The butt of the cigarette she had snitched from Victor still drooped from her lips. She looked straight at him with absolutely no expression in the flat green eyes.
    You didn’t tell Victor where Ellie is, did you?’
    ‘I don’t know where she is. That’s what I came to find out. Do you know?’
    ‘Me? I don’t know from nothing. But find her. Find her and find her fast — before Victor does.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Don’t you know why? Don’t you know she dropped twenty-five grand last week and took a powder?’
    Twenty-five thousand! He had never dreamed it could be that much.
    The red-head flicked the butt across the room into the fireplace. ‘I’m no Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,’ she said. ‘Ellie Ross could be peddling her wares on Lexington Avenue and I wouldn’t lend her a penicillin pill. But I don’t like sudden death. I’m funny that way.’
    She put her hand on his arm. ‘You look like a nice guy, Liddon. Why should you be a widower? Find that girl and make it snappy.’
    ‘And if I raised the cash?’ He knew he couldn’t — not half of it. But he had to know.
    The red-head shrugged. ‘Now you’re being silly. It isn’t the dough, it’s the principle. She ran out on him. She gets the twenty-five grand work-out. Matter of ethics.’
    Suddenly something Ellie had said to him the first night they met came back. It had seemed frivolous then. Now it had terrifyingly changed its mood. ‘Victor doesn’t want me to lose. Because — if I lost I wouldn’t pay and he’d have to kill me. He has to kill people who don’t pay up. It’s the only way he can keep in business.’
    Because Mark was an essentially straightforward person, Victor’s duplicity appalled him. He’d shot Corey, of course. Now there was no doubt about that. And there was no doubt either that his hoodlums would be combing New York for Ellie. And yet he could lie languidly in his preposterous bed, grinning, being affectionate, bumming cigarettes from the husband of the girl he had condemned to death.
    He asked urgently: ‘He doesn’t know where she is? You’re sure of that?’
    ‘I told you I don’t know from nothing. Relations between Victor and me are conducted strictly by gestures. But I don’t think he does.’ The red-head pushed him towards the door.
    ‘Now get out of here and don’t blab about this little interview. I’m a neurotic gal. I like having two arms and two legs and none of them broken.’
    At the door he turned to look at her, wondering what the hell her life must be like. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Thanks a lot.’
    She grinned. ‘Think nothing of it, Liddon. Just remember me next time you unroll your prayer mat.’
    The butler was waiting in the hall with his hat and coat. He helped him on with the coat and let him out into the gently falling snow.
    ‘Merry Christmas, Mr Liddon,’ he said and closed the door.

6
    MARK started towards Fifth Avenue. The falling snow made a Radio City stage show out of Central Park. He was tormented by a feeling of responsibility. It was his fault that this dreadful thing had hit Ellie. He saw that now. When she married him she’d been drifting, frightened, with nothing to cling to. He’d been warmth, security, safety to her. And, instead of sticking by her, he’d blundered off trying to make money because his pig-headed pride couldn’t take the fact that she was richer than he. Other offers would have come along later.