The blonde hiked carefully plucked eyebrows with a mixture of inquiry and invitation as he passed. With an amused shake of his head he walked on. Shrugging, she turned in the opposite direction and entered another tavern.
The bus depot was on the edge of Ridgeford’s downtown section in an area devoted to taverns and small night clubs. Glancing through plate-glass windows as he went by, Sands noted that there was a sprinkling of customers in most of them, even though it was only mid-afternoon. Many of the customers were paired off with women wearing gowns more appropriate to the evening than the afternoon, he also noted. Undoubtedly B-girls.
He knew nothing of Ridgeford, but even at this quick first glimpse it gave the impression of being a live town.
He passed two hotels advertising rooms at a dollar and up, ruefully wondering as he went by how long it would be before he’d be forced to settle for accommodations like that Four blocks from the depot he found one more to his liking. It was a small building of only three stories named the Hotel Centner, and its rooms started at two fifty.
Apparently the Centner’s sole income was from renting rooms, as there was no sign of either a cocktail lounge or a dining room off its small lobby. The lobby was deserted except for a woman of about twenty-five behind the desk.
She was a redhead with wide-spaced green eyes, a wide, friendly mouth and an upturned nose liberally splashed with freckles. Though her features were rather plain, there was such an air of vitality about her, your first impression was that she approached beauty. It took a second look to realize that her attractiveness was largely a matter of facial expression and personality.
From the neck down her beauty was strictly aesthetic, however. The black knit suit she wore was appropriately conservative for a hotel desk clerk, but failed to conceal that she had a breath-takingly lush figure.
Her expression as she watched him cross the lobby was at first one of only polite interest. But as he neared, it turned to reserved approval. Setting down his bag, he exposed white teeth in a grin of such brazen admiration that she adjusted her features to a formal expression.
“Yes, sir?” she inquired, a little distantly.
“Like a room,” he said.
She pushed a registration card toward him. As he bent his head to fill it out, he was conscious of her studying him. He wrote down the alias Sanford Judd, under home address listed Chicago, then suddenly looked up into her face. He caught her watching him with such approving interest, he couldn’t prevent giving her a wicked smile.
She turned crimson. Reversing the card, she looked down at it to cover her confusion.
“We have rooms at two fifty and three fifty without baths, Mr. Judd,” she said primly. “Four fifty and five fifty with private bath.”
Temporary lack of money never caused Jud Sands to cut corners when payment could be postponed. He had an abiding faith that something would turn up before bills became due. He said, “Give me one of your five-fifty rooms.”
Her blush had faded, but she still carefully avoided looking at him when she reached for a key from the rack behind her. She came out from behind the desk.
“This way, please,” she said, and moved toward the elevator. Apparently the Centner didn’t employ bellhops.
Following behind her with his bag, he admired the provocative sway of her hips. The movement so intrigued him that they were nearly to the elevator before he dropped his gaze to see what kind of legs she had. He was gratified to note they were straight and full-calved.
She pushed the second-floor button. As the car slowly moved upward, he examined her in profile while she self-consciously looked straight ahead, obviously aware of his examination. She had an excellent profile, from her upturned little nose all the way down. She had a full, firm bust, flat stomach, a slim waist and nicely rounded hips.
When the car stopped and the doors slid back, she swung her face toward him and said with mocking sweetness, “Thirty-six, twenty-two, thirty-five, Mr. Judd.”
“Cold statistics hardly tell the story,” he said. “It would take poetry.”
She flushed again. Silently she led him down the hall to a door numbered 207, unlocked it and entered. It was a bare, clean room with a double bed, a single dresser, an easy chair next to a bridge lamp and a small writing desk with a straight-backed chair in front of it. She dropped the key on the dresser and moved to open the windows.
Setting down his bag, he said, “Any chance of getting my suit pressed?”
She looked at him, noting with surprise, and apparently for the first time, the rumpled condition of his clothing. The light gabardine suit he wore was of expensive cut, but his long bus ride had left it creased and wrinkled. Jud Sands was one of those men who somehow manage to look debonair even in fishing slacks and a sweat shirt, and the girl had missed the signs travel had left on his clothing.
“The hotel doesn’t offer valet service,” she said. “There’s a place two doors left of the main entrance that presses while you wait.”
He dropped a hand in his pocket, wondering if he should offer a tip. Reading his mind, she gave him an amused smile.
“You don’t have to tip me,” she said dryly. “Your admiration was enough reward.”
As she moved toward the door, he asked, “What’s your name?”
She elevated her brows. “Why?”
“If I phone the desk for something, I don’t want to just say, ‘Hey, you.’”
She regarded him contemplatively. “What would you be phoning to ask, Mr. Judd?”
He shrugged. “Information about the town. Places to eat, points of interest, what time you get off work.”
“I thought so,” she said. “I’ll save you the trouble. There’s a nice restaurant across the street called the Fox and Hounds. There aren’t any places of interest except night clubs.”
“Uh-huh. And my last question?”
She studied him again, then suddenly smiled in self-mockery. “I’m being coy, aren’t I? You’d think I was sweet sixteen. I work till ten P.M. and the name is Miss O’Rourke.”
“Something like Maurene O’Rourke?” he hazarded.
“Something like,” she admitted. “It’s Bridget.”
“I knew it would be a fine Irish name,” he told her. “I’ll be after seeing you at ten.”
Her eyebrows raised. “Just like that? You’re informing me, are you? You don’t bother to ask. You’ll be after seeing me long enough to bid me good-night, Mr. Judd.”
“You put words in my mouth, lass. I meant I’d be along to beg the privilege of buying you a nightcap.”
Her lips curved slightly. “You have the gift of blarney, but your accent is strictly vaudeville. What’s Judd? English?”
“My Scotch ancestors will spin in their graves,” he said.
She looked puzzled. “Judd is Scotch?”
She was too alert, he thought. It hadn’t occurred to him that it wasn’t a Scotch name, possibly because his real one wasn’t glaringly Gaelic. He said quickly. “My great-grandfather dropped the Mac. It only means ‘son of’ and he was individualist enough not to want himself identified as merely the son of someone. See you at ten?”
She gave him a noncommittal smile and went out, pulling the door shut behind her.
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Copyright © 1959 by Richard Deming, Registration Renewed 1987
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This is a work of fiction.
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eISBN 10: 1-4405-4155-8
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4155-1
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