“Bring your little popgun along.” An idea came into my head and I worded it. “You’d better be all dressed up—evening duds.”
“Dinner coat?”
“No—the limit—everything but the high hat. Now for your behavior: you’re not supposed to be an op. I’m not sure just what you’re supposed to be, but it doesn’t make any difference. Tom-Tom Carey will be along. You act as if you were neither my friend nor his—as if you didn’t trust either of us. We’ll be cagey with you. If anything is asked that you don’t know the answer to—you fall back on hostility. But don’t crowd Carey too far. Got it?”
“I—I think so.” He spoke slowly, screwing up his forehead. “I’m to act as if I was going along on the same business as you, but that outside of that we weren’t friends. As if I wasn’t willing to trust you. That it?”
“Very much. Watch yourself. You’ll be swimming in nitroglycerine all the way.”
“What is up? Be a good chap and give me some idea.”
I grinned up at him. He was a lot taller than I.
“I could,” I admitted, “but I’m afraid it would scare you off. So I’d better tell you nothing. Be happy while you can. Eat a good dinner. Lots of condemned folks seem to eat hearty breakfasts of ham and eggs just before they parade out to the rope. Maybe you wouldn’t want ’em for dinner, but—”
At five minutes to eleven that night, Tom-Tom Carey brought a black touring car to the corner where Jack and I stood waiting in a fog that was like a damp fur coat.
“Climb in,” he ordered as we came to the curb.