Chapter 11
Oval Face
IT WAS TEN MINUTES to midnight when I rode up in the ancient elevator and walked over the creaking boards of the Post-Dispatch editorial rooms. Phil Dobe was standing up behind his desk— he glared at me as I came along. When I got up close enough he used words. “You’re just two jumps ahead of the bulls, Mal. What’d you do— go out the back way?”
I looked puzzled. There were a couple of good cigars lying beside a blue pencil— I took one of them, bit off an end, lighted up. Dobe swore at me.
“What you holding out on me for?” he demanded. “Haven’t I covered you up?”
I grinned. “What do you mean— holding out? I’ve been sleeping a lot.”
He swore again. “Not so much— you haven’t,” he muttered. “But you know someone who’s sleeping right now.”
I told him his cigars were
