Mundin never did find out what Harry Coett had done to
old Crowther. As the meeting was adjourned he buttonholed Arnold, who gave him a wan smile. “Come and see me, Mr. Mundin,” he urged. “I’m sure we can get together. Don’t we know each other? Weren’t you with Green, Charlesworth?”
“The girl, Arnold,” Mundin said shortly.
Arnold said, “Miss Lavin is waiting for you in the reception room.”
Trailing tycoons, Mundin raced to the reception room.
Norma Lavin was indeed there, pale and angry. “Hello, Mundin,” she said, not so crisply, not so mannishly. “You took your time about it, I must say.” And then she was weeping on his chest, sobbing. “I didn’t sign it. I knew Don wasn’t dead, I didn’t sign, I———”
“Shut up, superwoman,” Mundin snapped. “Stop giving things away to the eavesdroppers. Your every word is golden.” But he found that he was shaking himself—from the reaction to the hours of strain. And from—Norma.
He got a grip on himself as Coett, behind him mused, “So this is the young lady Arnold horse-traded you, eh? Your principal, Counselor?” *
“Maybe,” said Mundin. •
“Oh, come Qff it, Mundin,” Coett said shrewdly. He tamed to Norma. “My dear,” he offered expansively, “can I drop you anyplace? You too, of course, Counselor.”
“Listen, Mundin,” Nelson urged, “get him to tell you about old Crowther——”
“Damn it,” raged Hubble,- “if you vultures will step aside——”
Mundin said, “I’ll lay it on the line, gentlemen. Miss Lavin and I have to stop in the waiting room to pick up an—uh—a young lady. In five minutes we will be at the front entrance. We’ll go along with all three of you, or with any two of you. You fight it out among yourselves.”
He swept Norma out to the visitors* room. Lana was perched on the receptionist’s desk, looking hostile, but not as hostile as the receptionist. Mundin asked her, “What happened to Bligh?” ;
“Outside,” Lana said. “He said he’d already had a bellyful of Field Days, whatever he meant by that. This your girl?”
“Yes,” said Mundin, “this is my girl.” The three of them collared Norvie Bligh, sitting in the sun outside, and started
toward the ranks of parked cars and half-tracks. They were met by an amicable committee of three.
“All settled, Mundin,” Hubble said happily. “Coett and Nelson are coming with us.”
“Good,” Mundin said. “Where do we go to talk?”
Hubble said joyously, “Oh, my place. It’s all settled. You’ll like it—simple, quiet, but comfortable.”
They made quite a procession: Two cars and a half-track. They didn’t stop for anything, neither the Itty-Bitty checkpoint nor the customs shed.
“We’ll go through Fifth Avenue,” Hubble said.
“Oh, nol” Coett and Nelson groaned.
“I like it,” the younger man said.
They rolled slowly through the condemned Old City, empty and dead. Mundin gasped at the sight of a car other than theirs; it buzzed across their path at 34th and Fifth, under the towering shadow of the Empire State Building. He craned his neck after they passed it and exclaimed, “There’s somebody getting out. Going into the Empire State!”
“Why not?” grunted Hubble over the intercom. He was riding with Nelson and Coett, because none of the three trusted any of the others alone with Mundin and Norma for the ride.
“I’d always understand it was as empty as the rest of the Old City,” the lawyer said with dignity.
“They keep it lit up at night, don’t they? Well, that calls for maintenance. The man was an electrician.”
Mundin was not a very good lawyer, but he was good enough to be quite sure that Hubble was lying to him.
Chapter Sixteen
lana was tugging at Mundin’s shoulder. “I want to go home,” she said.
Mundin said peevishly, “Sure, sure.” Norma, exhausted, had fallen asleep on his arm, and his circulation had been cut off ten miles back. The girl was a solid, chunky weight—but, he was thinking, curiously pleasant
“I mean now.” Lana insisted. “I got a duty to tbe Wabbits.”
“I’d kind of like to go home too,” Norvie Bligb chimed in.
Mundin flexed his arms, considering. Lana and Bligh had done what they had bargained for. He said: