Free Ross Macdonald - 1960 - The Ferguson Affair by Ross MacDonald Page A

charged.
                 Padilla
served coffee in the living room. It was a huge room with windows on two sides,
and teak paneling in a faintly nautical style. The lap of the surf below, the
intermittent sweep of the lighthouse beam, contributed to the illusion that we
were in the glassed-in deckhouse of a ship.
                 Ferguson
drank about a quart of coffee. As the effects of alcohol wore off, he seemed to
grow constantly more tense . Wrapped in a terrycloth
robe, he bore a queer resemblance to a Himalayan holy man on the verge of
having a mystical experience.
                 He
finally rose and went into another room. I could see through the archway, when
he switched on the light, that it contained a white concert grand piano and a
draped harp. A photograph of a woman, framed in silver, stood on the piano.
                 Ferguson
picked it up and studied it. He clasped it to his chest. A paroxysm went
through him, making his ugly face uglier. He looked as if he was weeping,
dry-eyed, in silence.
                 “Poor
guy,” Padilla said.
                 He
went as far as the archway, and paused there, deterred by the privacy of grief.
I wasn’t so sensitive. I went in past him. “Ferguson, was that phone call about
your wife?”
                 He
nodded.
                 “Is
she dead?”
                 “They
claim not. I don’t know.”
                 “ ‘They’ ?”
                 “Her abductors. Holly has been abducted.”
                 “Kidnapped?”
                 “Yes.
They demand two hundred thousand dollars for her return.”
                 Padilla
whistled softly behind me.
                 “Have
they called you before?”
                 “Yes,
but I wasn’t home. I haven’t been here much in the past day.”
                 “This
phone call was your first communication from them?”
                 “Yes.”
                 “Why
didn’t you say so at the time? We might have had some chance of tracing the
call.”
                 “I
don’t want anything done along those lines. I didn’t even intend to tell you
and Padilla. I’m sorry now that I did.”
                 “You
can’t handle a thing like this all by yourself.”
                 “Why not? I have the cash. They’re welcome to it if they
give Holly back to me.”
                 “You
have two hundred thousand dollars in cash?”
                 “I
have more than that. I had it transferred to the local Bank of America because
I’ve been intending to buy some property here. I can draw it out when the bank
opens in the morning.”
                 “When
and where are you supposed to pay them?”
                 “He
said I was to wait for further instructions.”
                 “Did
you recognize his voice on the telephone?”
                 “No.”
                 “Then
it wasn’t Larry Gaines?”
                 “It
wasn’t Gaines, no. It wouldn’t make any difference to me if it was. They have her.
I’m willing to pay for her.”
                 “It
may not be quite that simple. I hate to say this, Colonel, but this could be a
shakedown. Some petty crook may have heard that your wife is missing, and is
trying to cash in on the fact.”
                 “I
hadn’t thought of that.” The thought sat heavy on him for a moment. Then he
shook it off. “But it can’t be the case. Even if it were, I’d have to go ahead
with it.”
                 He
was still holding the photograph against his chest. He polished its glass with
his sleeve and held it up to the light, gazing at it almost reverently. The
pictured woman was a blonde in her middle twenties.