“You exaggerate so, honey. They deserve all they get. I wish you wouldn’t look like that. You make me feel creepy.”
I grinned, picked up the glasses, and went out to the kitchen for more gin. When I came back she frowned at me over anxious dark eyes and asked:
“Now what did you bring the ice pick in for?”
“To show you how my mind’s running. A couple of days ago, if I thought about it at all, it was as a good tool to pry off chunks of ice.” I ran a finger down its half-foot of round steel blade to the needle point. “Not a bad thing to pin a man to his clothes with. That’s the way I’m betting, on the level. I can’t even see a mechanical cigar lighter without thinking of filling one with nitroglycerine for somebody you don’t like. There’s a piece of copper wire lying in the gutter in front of your house—thin, soft, and just long enough to go around a neck with two ends to hold on. I had one hell of a time to keep from picking it up and stuffing it in my pocket, just in case—”
“You’re crazy.”
“I know it. That’s what I’ve been telling you. I’m going blood-simple.”
“Well, I don’t like it. Put that thing back in the kitchen and sit down and be sensible.”
I obeyed two-thirds of the order.
“The trouble with you is,” she scolded me, “your nerves are shot. You’ve been through too much excitement in the last few days. Keep it up and you’re going to have the heebie-jeebies for fair, a nervous breakdown.”
I held up a hand with spread fingers. It was steady enough.
She looked at it and said: