Read The Golden Gizmo for Free Online Page A

Toddy grinned. "How about another beer?"
    Uncomfortably conscious of Milt's curious and troubled gaze, Toddy left shortly after he had finished the beer. But he was by no means free of the tantalizing reflections which the watch had inspired. They expanded and multiplied in his mind as he strode back through the hazy streets.
    Dammit, that gold was being bought, regardless of what Mitt said. And this was entirely different from anything he had ever touched. He'd have to be careful, certainly. He'd have to do some tall scheming. But just because he'd had a few bad breaks in the past, there wasn't any reason to-
    Toddy was almost running when he reached the hotel. He ignored the elevator and raced up the steps. He went swiftly down the hall. He shouldn't have left Elaine alone. He shouldn't have left the watch in the room.
    His hand trembled on the doorknob. He turned it and went in. The room was dark. He found the light switch and turned it on.
    She lay sprawled backwards on the bed. Naked. Sheets tumbled with her strugglings, damp from her bath. Eyes glazed and bloodshot; pushing whitely, enormously from the contorted face. Veins empurpled and distended.
    One of the stockings was tied around her throat, knotted and reknotted there, and her stiffening fingers still clawed at it. The other stocking had been stuffed into her mouth; the toe of it, chewed, wet from gagging, edged out through the open froth-covered oval of her lips.
    Toddy swayed. How could I know… something I read… she was always asking for trouble … He closed his eyes and opened them again. He put a hand out toward her-toward that hideously soggy fragment of stocking. Hastily he jerked the hand back.
    The room had been ransacked, of course. Every drawer in the dresser had been jerked out and dumped upon the floor. Toddy's eyes moved from the disarray to the window. He went to it and flung up the shade.
    There was a man down there near the foot of the fire escape. He was a small man with a hat almost as wide as his shoulders. One of his feet had slipped through the steps, and he was struggling frantically to free it.

7
    Toddy had been sitting on his roll when he met Elaine Ives. He'd built up his wardrobe, had several grand in his kick, and was driving a Cadillac-rented, alas-while he tried to hit upon a line.
    Toddy liked nice things. He liked to live in good places. He found that it paid off. In the swank apartment hotel where he resided, he was believed to be the scion of a Texas oil millionaire. No one would have thought of associating the tanned, exquisitely tailored young man with anything off-color.
    He was sitting in the bar of his hotel the day he met Elaine. Apparently she had followed him in from the street, although he had not seen her. The first he saw of her was when she slid onto the stool next to his and looked up at him with that funny, open-toothed smile.
    "Order yet, darling?" she said. "I believe I'll have a double rye, water on the side."
    He looked at the bartender, who was giving Elaine a doubtful but chilly eye. "That sounds good enough for me," he said. "Two double ryes, water on the side."
    In the few seemingly casual glances he gave her, while she drank that drink and three others, he checked off her points and added them up to zero. She was scrawny. Her clothes, except for her hat-she was always careful with her hats-looked like they had been thrown on her. The wide-spaced teeth gave her mouth an almost ugly look. When she crinkled her face as she did incessantly, talking, laughing, smiling, she looked astonishingly like a monkey.
    Yet, dammit, and yet there was something about her that got him. Something warm and golden that reached out and enveloped him, and drew him closer and closer, yet never close enough. Something that even infected the bartender, making him solicitous with napkins and ice and matches held for cigarettes-that held him there wanting to do things that were paid for by the doing.
    Toddy glanced at his watch