Read The Wrong Venus for Free Online Page B

was a wistful flowering of hope in Dudley’s voice. “Maybe he’ll try it and kill himself.”
    “Do you know where he’s from?”
    “Los Angeles. The Chronicle.”
    “Are you sure he’s got the whole story?”
    “The whole story? The bastard could hang me! Look. . . . He called here yesterday, wanted to arrange an interview. He was on his way home from Berlin or somewhere and stopped off in Paris. He wanted to do a feature article on Sabine Manning, under a by-line, good publicity for her, that pitch. I told him nothing doing, of course, Miss Manning was too busy on her new book. That gets rid of most of ‘em, but this bird was a little tougher. He sneaked in through the kitchen this morning, and walked right into the room where Sanborn was working. Oh, sweet Jesus—!”
    Colby whistled softly.
    “Sanborn just thought he was the new writer I’d been trying to get, so he showed him the manuscript and started to fill him in. By the time I walked in from the airport he had it all, and he started to laugh and said wait’ll this hits the front page. I tried to buy him off—that’s how I got him into the office.”
    “All right,” Colby said. “Keep him locked in there till we can get to Paris. We’ll call you from Orly.”
    “You mean, you think there’s something we can do?”
    “I don’t know yet. But I used to be a—” He turned, intending to motion for Martine to start getting dressed. She already had.
    “—news—”
    She had the garter belt girded around her under the loosened peignoir, and was sitting on the edge of the bed pulling on her nylons. A slender, tapering leg was thrust up and outward, rotating at the ankle as she slid the stocking-top up a satiny expanse of thigh and clipped it to the tab.
    “What’s the matter?” Dudley demanded. “Have you got  asthma?”
    “Asthma? No. I’m twenty-twenty in both eyes.”
    “Oh . . . Martine. I think she grew up on a destroyer. But you used to be a what?”
    “A newspaperman,” Colby said. An idea was beginning to take form in his mind. “It’s just possible we may be able to get that guy out of your hair, but there’ll be a slight fee.”
    “How much?”
    “A thousand dollars.”
    “A thousand!” Dudley seemed to choke, and began making sputtering noises.
    “Plus expenses,” Colby went on.
    “Five hundred—”
    “If he files that story, you know what your manuscript’ll be worth?”
    “So I know, I know! Okay, a thousand. But no-cure-no-pay.”
    “Right,” Colby agreed. “We’ll be in Paris as fast as we can get there. Find out his name and where he’s staying. And feed him a sob story. Sabine Manning died of cholera out in some back island of the Cyclades and you were trying to finish the novel she was working on so you can give the money to some charity she was interested in—”
    “You want me to tell that to a reporter?”
    “So let him laugh. When we call you from Orly, answer from some other extension so he can’t hear you. . . . Oh, one more thing—that Flanagan girl still hasn’t shown up?”
    “No. And if I ever get my hands on her—”
    “You haven’t checked with the police?”
    “No.”
    “She hasn’t got her passport with her,” Colby pointed out. “If they’d picked her up for anything, they’d hold her till she produced one. Are you sure they haven’t tried to call you?”
    “Sure I’m sure. They’d speak English, wouldn’t they?”
    “Not necessarily. They would if they saw they had to.”
    “That’s what I thought. This jerk that keeps bugging me—”
    “What?” Colby asked.
    “Nothing. Just some flip-lid that keeps calling up here three or four times a day trying to sell me something. In French, for Christ’s sake! But never mind him—”
    “Wait a minute,” Colby broke in. ‘Tell me about this guy.”
    “Hell, I don’t know anything about him. I got troubles of my own without listening to his, even if I could understand ‘em. When I hang up on him, he calls right