Cut Thin to Win

Chapter 13

I got aboard the plane among the first passengers and seated myself next to a window.

A woman seated herself next to me.

I didn’t think much of it at the time, but after I fastened my seat belt and looked around, I noticed that there were still quite a few vacant window seats. It was a flight where seats had not been assigned and, things being what they were, I gave my seat companion a sidelong glance.

She was somewhere around thirty-five to forty, and she’d spent lots of money trying to look five years younger than she was. She was as well groomed as soft leather, but there was a certain hardness about her that showed through the grooming.

I wondered if Sellers had planted a stooge.

I surreptitiously looked her over a second time and decided she wasn’t a policewoman, and no private detective could afford to dress like that, so I decided she had some particular reason for wanting that seat and stretched out and relaxed.

The plane gunned into action, took off down the runway, hesitated for a few seconds, then roared into speed.

My woman companion closed her eyes.

The plane lifted off the ground, zoomed sharply upward; then the pilot throttled the motors down.

She said, “I’m always nervous during take-off.”

I knew then that it wasn’t an accident, so I smiled a vague smile and wondered if someone was going to pick up my trail at Las Vegas and if I’d be shadowed twenty-four hours a day.

Ordinarily, police aren’t in a position to do that kind of shadowing except on the most important cases, and unless Sellers had tapped a till, he didn’t have money enough to keep me under that kind of surveillance.

I checked my impressions by playing hard to get — not upstage, particularly, but preoccupied with my thoughts.

I felt her eyes on my profile.

After a moment, she said, “You have the most interesting hands I’ve seen in a long time — I hope you don’t think me forward.”

“What about my hands?” I asked.

She laughed and said, “I’m one of those women who tell fortunes — not professionally, of course, just as private readings for my close friends... The hands show character.”

“What about my hands?” I asked.

She gently reached over, picked up my right hand, spread it out on her lap and caressed the fingers.

“You have imagination,” she said, “a great deal of ingenuity. You use applied imagination in your work, whatever your work is.

“There are several women in your life, but you keep them at a distance. There’s an older woman with whom you have some sort of a business relationship and whom you irritate tremendously, and there’s a younger woman who is eating her heart out for you. She has been in love with you for a long time.

“You’re in some sort of a profession where it’s hard to be married and you’re too much of a gentleman to just take advantage of this girl.”

She raised her eyes to mine and looked at me steadily.

Her eyes were green and it seemed the pupils were abnormally small.

“You understand?” she asked.

“You’re doing the talking,” I told her.

She laughed, a hard metallic laugh. “Now, don’t challenge me,” she said, “because when people are difficult that way I usually jar them right down to their shoe tops.”

“How?” I asked.

“By telling them things that they think I couldn’t possibly know.”

“Isn’t all fortune telling like that?” I asked.

“Well, mostly what I do is character reading, and, of course, character shapes environment.”

“You sound very interesting,” I said, looking at her as though I had really started seeing her for the first time. “What are you, a writer?”

“No,” she laughed.

“What?” I asked.

She hesitated provocatively, then said, “No, I’m not going to tell you now. What’s your name?”

“Lam,” I said, “Donald Lam.”

She said, “Call me Minny — short for Minerva.”

“And the last name?”

She placed her extended forefinger on her lips, glanced at me archly, and said, “Isn’t Minny enough?”

I smiled and said, “It’s always the woman who tells the man where to stop.”

“I’ll bet they don’t tell you to stop very often, Donald.”

“Is that guesswork or character reading?”

“Well,” she said, “it’s a general observation. Let’s get back to your hand.”

She opened the hand wide, stretched the fingers, gently stroked them with her hand, said, “It’s a wonderful hand, Donald. You are something of a genius. You are engaged in some peculiar occupation, something mysterious about it... Tell me, Donald, are you in the secret service or with the F.B.I.?”

“If I were in the secret service,” I said, “do you think I would admit it?”

“I don’t know. Are you supposed to keep it secret?”

“I don’t know, am I?”

She laughed and said, “You’re being very, very cagey — you’re also in trouble of some sort, Donald. Someone is trying to make trouble for you. Someone who is very powerful — you’re going to have to be careful. You’re going to have to be very careful.”

I jerked my hand away and closed the fingers.

She looked at me and smiled. “I told you I’d jar you right down to your boot tops, Donald. I hit it right, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” I said curtly.

“You want to tell me about it?”

“No.”

“Lots of times people tell me about their troubles,” she said, “and I’m able to help them.”

“How do you help them?”

“Some sort of an extrasensory perception, I guess.”

I hesitated a moment, then said, “No, I can’t tell you. It would be violating a confidence.”

“A professional confidence?”

“In a way.”

“Donald, are you a lawyer?”

“No.”

She regarded me thoughtfully, said, “You’ve been traveling lately. There’s something in Los Angeles that’s bothering you.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Something in connection with a man and a woman — some surreptitious relationship. You know something that — well, that’s as far as I can go.”

“Why?”

“Because when I said that, you interposed a shield between your mind and mine. I guess perhaps I’ve tried to help you too much, Donald. I was interested in you when I saw your hands, but if you don’t want help, that’s all right.

“I can tell you this much, however, you’re going into a period of great danger. People whom you think are entirely on your side are using you, Donald. They’re using you deliberately and selfishly and when they get done they’re going to cast you to one side. They’ll throw you to the wolves.

“Please, Donald, please don’t trust everybody the way you do. You’re riding for a fall if you don’t start looking out for number one.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Donald, you’ve still done it.”

“Done what?”

“Kept that shield between us. I can’t get that flow of thought any more.”

“You do have a lot of extrasensory perception, don’t you?” I said.

“I think I do, Donald. I’m going to stop bothering you now, because I can see that I’ve disturbed you and, in the position that you’re in right at the moment, you can’t afford to be disturbed. You’ve got to have your emotional reflexes all clear so that you can think with chain-lightning rapidity — only, do this one thing for me, please, think for yourself. Think of what’s going to happen or what may happen before you put yourself in anyone else’s power.

“You’ve got your head in a lion’s mouth now, and I can tell you frankly the lion firmly intends to bite that head off as soon as you have served his purpose.

“How far are you going, Donald, all the way to Los Angeles?”

“No, I’m getting off at Las Vegas.”

“Are you?” she said. “I’m getting off at Las Vegas, too.”

“You live there?”

Abruptly, she put her hand in my lap. “Take a look,” she said.

“At what?”

“I told you everything from looking at your hand. If you want to find out anything about me, you’ll have to tell me from looking at my hand.”

She laughed.

The stewardess walked by, and Minny smiled at her and said, “May I have a magazine, please?”

“Any particular one that you wanted?”

“Just let me see what you have, please.”

The stewardess brought her some magazines. She selected both Look and Life, thumbed through the pages, completely absorbed in the pictures and printed matter.

I sat rigidly erect looking out of the window.

After about thirty minutes, she closed the magazines, said abruptly, “I jarred you, didn’t I, Donald?”

“Yes,” I said.

“And you’ve still got that mental shield up.”

“I have to keep it up.”

She said, “Be particularly cautious about someone who’s paying you money to do something for him, but who is preparing to double-cross you — and a lawyer enters into it somewhere. I can’t get the whole sketch right now, but people that you think are your friends are getting ready to give you the double cross. You’re going to have to be very, very careful, Donald, because they have you in such a position that almost everything you do is playing directly into their hands.”

I let myself nod almost imperceptibly.

Abruptly, she folded the magazines, said, “I won’t bother you any more, Donald. I’m going to sleep.”

She settled back and closed her eyes.

We got to the point where the stewardess announced that we were starting to descend for Las Vegas, and that passengers would please observe the sign about fastening seat belts, and later on, the No Smoking sign.

Minny opened her eyes, fastened her seat belt, smiled at me; then closed her eyes again.

We glided into a smooth landing, and Minny got to her feet the minute the plane had come to a stop. Using her feminine prerogative, she pushed forward and was out of the plane sometime before I was able to get to the ground.

I looked round and failed to see her.

I went over to the rack where incoming baggage was placed and saw no trace of her.

She had vanished into thin air.

All that was left was the warning in my ears.

I went to the telegraph office and wired Colton C. Essex at his office in Los Angeles:

I signed it Donald Lam and went to a hotel.