Read Online One Minute Past Eight by George Harmon Coxe - Free Book Online

any money found here?”
    “Not that I know of” Jeff said.
    Webb took a breath and reached into an inside pocket. He brought out what proved to be four cables, two which he had received and two which were copies of replies that he had sent. He handed them to Jeff, who glanced through them quickly to see if they were arranged by dates. He noticed that the two copies were the same messages that Pedro Vidal had read at Segurnal and now he said:
    “You work for the Westwind Hotel? Doing what?”
    “I’m one of the assistant managers.”
    “You knew my stepbrother when he was out there?”
    “He worked for us,” Webb said, the corner of his mouth dipping as though he found the recollection distasteful. “We knew him plenty. Baker, too. He was one of our cops for a couple of years.”
    Jeff gave his attention to the first cable, which had been sent from Barbados on Saturday. It read:
    Offer 120 thousand to clean up Arnold Lane matter, if acceptable and no reprisal cable Harry Baker, Marine Hotel, Barbados, B.W.I.
    The amount mentioned startled him but he went on to read again the message found on Baker which spoke of the acceptance of the offer.
    The third cable, addressed to the Westwind read:
    Cash ready for collection your convenience room 312 Tucan Hotel, Caracas, Venezuela. Advise.
    The fourth message was the one saying that Carl Webb would collect this evening.
    Jeff returned them. “What’s the rest of it?” he asked. “Did Arnold run out with a hundred and twenty thousand?”
    “One hundred grand, even,” Webb said. “Nearly three years ago.”
    “How could he get his hands on that much?”
    “Because in our business we deal in cash.” Webb pulled out a silver case and stuck a cigarette into his mouth. “We have to. You never know when some guy—and some are pretty big operators—is going to get hot and hit you for plenty.”
    He got a light and said: “Arnold Lane went to work for us about four years ago. He was a big, good-looking guy with plenty of personality when he kept it turned on. He dressed the place up and he was smart. They gave him more and more responsibility and finally let him handle the take and the payroll. One day about a year later he took off with a dame who had just gotten her divorce. We traced them to Los Angeles and lost them.”
    “You sent a couple of your boys to Boston,” Jeff said.
    “We sure did.”
    Cordovez cleared his throat. “You would have had Grayson arrested and sent to prison?” he asked.
    “Grayson?” Webb paused, a faint smile touching his mouth. “So that’s the name he uses here… No,” he said to Cordovez. “It’s not that simple. In the gambling business you deal in cash. You have to have people around you that you can trust and you have to keep them honest because there’s a lot of temptation. We get a few chiselers, a stickman who’s a thief, things like that, but when a guy scoops a bundle it’s no good going to the cops.”
    He pointed his cigarette. “Take Lane—or Grayson. He takes us for a hundred big ones and suppose the cops finally catch up with him. O. K. He gets a lawyer and maybe gets off with a couple of years. So suppose he’s spent most of the boodle? Where do we get off? Un-unh,” he said and his mouth twisted.
    “We handle things like that ourselves. A guy turns out to be a heavy thief he has to pay the hard way. It’s always been done that way and that’s why it seldom happens any more. We have to make an example, you know what I mean?”
    “I think so.” Cordovez nodded. “You dispose of this man who has robbed you.”
    “Right,” Webb said. “And we make sure the word gets around. Maybe we still take a loss, but we make a point. It keeps the rest of the help straight all over town, because they know the same thing can happen to them. It’s very simple. I don’t know all the answers, but I can figure part of this. Grayson wanted to come home and he knew that if he did he’d eventually wind up at the side