Read Online Wanted! Belle Starr! by J.T. Edson - Free Book Online Page A

efforts were
intended. “Of course, I would try to help any young man in
difficulty. But I count it a special honor and privilege to be of
service to you.”
    “ My, and they say Yankees
aren’t gallant!” the blonde purred. “You won’t find me ungrateful
for anything you can do, sir.”
    “ Then why don’t you call
me ‘David’?”
    “ May I?”
    “ I wish you would,” Icke
declared, deciding he was achieving his purpose.
    “ Then, David, you must
call me, ‘Darlene-Mae’, the blonde authorized and glanced pointedly
at the clock on the wall. “Great heavens, is that the
time?”
    “ It is,” Icke confirmed,
having had his thoughts jerked from lechery to the more vitally
important matter under discussion. On the point of crossing to the
door, he was struck by a thought. “Will your half-brother be there
when I arrive?”
    “ No,” Darlene-Mae replied.
“I told him that he should send word to Banker Cockburn that he was
suffering from the grippe and must stay away today. I was afraid
that he might say or do something which could betray himself, if he
was to go there under the strain he was suffering. Was I wrong to
give him such advice?”
    “ Of course you weren’t
wrong, my dear!” Icke confirmed, being aware of how easily a man
normally honest could betray himself after having behaved in such
an illicit fashion. He was genuinely sincere as he went on, “As a
matter of fact, you gave him just the advice I would have, if I had
know about it earlier. Well, time’s flying and I’d better be
getting along.”
    “ You will let me know how
you get on, won’t you, David?” the blonde requested, looking so
pathetically eager she might have softened the heart of a confirmed
misogynist and the man she was addressing was far from that. “If
you come straight back to me on your return, unless you think this
too forward of me, I will have a bottle of brandy waiting to toast
your success and our continued friendship.”
    “ I’ll do just that,” Icke
promised and, despite his anxiety over realizing that he had
allowed more time to slip by than he intended before taking his
departure, he felt sure that coming back with the ‘news’ he would
deliver was going to prove worthwhile.
    “ Goodbye for now, David. May
you soon return,” Darlene-Mae purred. “And the very best of
luck!”

Chapter Ten – You Don’t Believe He Is?
    Telling himself the ‘very best of luck’ he
could have had under the circumstances was to have met Darlene-Mae
Abernathy and learned in time of the trouble which was coming to
the National Trust Bank, in which he had deposited a large sum of
money for safekeeping, David Icke wasted no time on leaving her
room. Having no need to go to his own quarters, further along the
passage, he hurried downstairs. Crossing the reception lobby, for
once he was relieved by receiving a negative shake of the head from
the clerk at the desk. The last thing he required at that moment
was to be informed that the message he was expecting had arrived.
It was imperative that nothing further delayed him before he set
out to retrieve the fifteen thousand dollars, not even the arrival
of the criminals for whom it was intended.
    There had been a very good reason for the
agitation Icke had displayed on being informed by the blonde of her
half-brother’s peculations at the bank!
    Although having acquired a certain fame as
an author, a playwright and a politician of radical views, Icke was
only moderately successful at any of them. Certainly he did not
maintain his far from meager standard of living on his earnings
from all three sources. His main income was acquired by having
invested money accrued some years earlier by less than legal means
and becoming, in complete secrecy, one of the major receivers of
stolen property anywhere in the United States of America. He was,
in fact, the biggest ‘fence’ on the Atlantic seaboard.
    Having had a proposal reach him to purchase
a quantity of very valuable