Free Strictly For Cash by James Hadley Chase

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    "It wasn't two hundred miles," he said patiently. "It was more like seventy. As you were nearer to Miami than Lincoln Beach, they brought you here."

    I began to get excited again.

    "But I hadn't even reached Lincoln Beach before the crash," I said. "We were only a few miles outside Pelotta, on our way to Lincoln Beach, when that car hit us!"

    "Don't bother your brains about it," he said, getting his bedside smile hitched to his face. "It'll straighten out in a few days."

    And when he left me, I lay there, feeling cold, wondering if the bang on the head had affected my brain, wondering if I were going crazy. I began to long for Riskin to come and see me. Every time anyone came into the ward, I raised my head and looked eagerly to see if it were him. I got so my heart pounded every time that door opened.

    The next morning they moved me out of the ward.

    "What's the idea?" I asked the nurses as they pushed the bed along a corridor. "Where are you taking me?"

    "Doctor thought you'd like to have a room to yourself," the fat nurse said. "He wants you to rest more than you're doing."

    That wasn't the reason, I told myself. Maybe they thought I was nuts and wouldn't be safe with the others. I began to get excited.

    "I don't want to be alone!" I said. "Take me back! I'm fine as I am. I don't want a room to myself!"

    The doctor appeared from nowhere.

    "There's nothing to get excited about," he said. "You'll like this room. It's got a wonderful view."

    I thought if I made too much commotion they'd put me in a strait-jacket: that's the kind of state I had worked myself into.

    It was a nice room, and the view was swell, but I hated it. I had a feeling I had been put in there for a purpose, and I wanted to know what that purpose was.

    In the evening, around six, when I was lying there alone, looking out of the window at the ocean and the pleasure boats and people surf-riding, the door pushed open and Riskin came in.

    "Hello, boy," he said, easing the door shut, "how are you coming?"

    "Why have they put me in here?" I said, trying to sit up. "What's the idea?"

    He tiptoed across the room to the bed.

    "Hey, hey, what's biting you? Don't you know a room like this costs dough?"

    "Then what's the idea?"

    He reached for a chair and sat down.

    "I don't think that doc likes his other patients to see me coming in here," he said. "Maybe it's that. He's a nice guy, that doc. Maybe it occurred to him it might be embarrassing for you to have policemen asking questions with everyone in the ward trying to listen in. That might be an idea, too."

    I looked at him for a long moment, then I drew in a deep breath, and ran my fingers over my face, feeling it was damp and hot.

    "That angle didn't strike me. Know what? I was beginning to think I was going nuts, and that's why they had taken me out of the ward."

    He produced a packet of cigarettes.

    "Like a smoke, boy?" he said. "You don't want to get those ideas into your head." He struck a match and lit the cigarette for me. Then he lit one for himself. "I bet if the nurse catches us she'll raise blue murder," he went on. "Still, that's what nurses are for, aren't they?"

    I grinned at him. I was feeling much, much better.

    "I wish you had come before. I was getting worried."

    "I've been busy." He examined the end of his cigarette, then his pale, sharp eyes looked right into mine. "I've got a little shock for you. Think you can take it?"

    I drew on the cigarette, aware my heart was beginning to pound.

    "I guess so. What is it?"

    "That car wasn't a Bentley; it was a Buick convertible: a black job, with red-leather upholstery, disc wheels and built-in head and fog lamps. You were found in the driving seat. She was found wedged down in the back seat. They had to cut the front seats away to get her out. There was no third person found. There was no other car, either. I've been over the ground myself. I've seen all the photographs. I've seen the Buick. I've talked to the cop who