He said, “The message, Miss Elling?”
She averted her head wildly, flinging both hands up to her face to hide it from him, moaning tremulously through tight lips.
“Please.” His voice was tolerant and reasonable, yet with an added note of curtness. “You did get the message?”
She nodded her head slowly, keeping her face turned away and covered with her hands. Her voice was muffled and thin as she forced herself to say, “Tell Wayne they jumped the gun and grabbed Letty ten minutes ago on the Sawmill River Parkway. I lost them headed for town.”
Wayne stood motionless and silent. Miss Elling held her breath for a long moment, expelled it with a shuddering sigh, and dared to steal a glance at him through outspread fingers.
He stood close beside her, but his head was lifted and he was looking over her head. His face was taut and hard, and there was a look about him of listening, of waiting tensely for some signal.
He had forgotten her, she thought. He stood there beside her chair after reading her nymphomaniacal ravings and was as unaware of her as though she did not exist.
He turned abruptly without a downward glance and strode to his inner office, where he looked searchingly out the window again. Somehow, Wayne's indolent manner had vanished. There was a sudden impression of terrific leashed power in every movement and in his stance before the window.
It didn't mean anything to him, she thought wildly. He doesn't care what I wrote. I needn't be ashamed at all. He doesn'tcare. She bit her underlip until a drop of blood spurted from it, reached forward listlessly to rip the sheet from her typewriter and tear it into tiny fragments.
She was standing up with her back to the room, reaching up with trembling fingers for an absurd concoction of feathers and ribbon that hung on the wall when Wayne's voice sounded immediately behind her with the purring timbre of a jungle cat. “What are you doing, Miss Elling? It isn't quitting time.”
She stood with her back turned, her slender body rigid. “Oh, yes, it is.” Her voice trembled and she hated herself for that. “I'm leaving. I've had quite enough of this job.”
She made herself lift the hat from its hook on the wall, and it fell from nerveless fingers to the floor when his fingers lightly touched the right side of her neck where the flesh flowed down smoothly into the shoulder.
“I need you, Lois.” His voice caressed her. She fought against the weakness, against the flame that crept over her body with the touch of his fingers against her flesh, the sound of his voice only inches from her ear.
“This is it, darling. Don't you see?” His fingers put pressure on the side of her neck, turning her head so that she looked into the hot glow from Morgan Wayne's eyes. “Call this number I've left on your desk.” His voice had a hypnotic quality that soothed and embraced her. “Get Julius Hendrixon. He must call me at once. As soon as he gets any word whatever. The moment it comes. Day or night. Don't leave this phone until six. Then go home fast and stay there for a message. Give Hendrixon your number.”
“And where... can I reach you later?” The words came out flatly and Miss Elling was scarcely conscious of speaking them.
“Where do you think—after that letter you wrote me?” His eyes held hers and strength flowed out of her body. “Take your hot bath, Lois, and open that bottom bureau drawer... and wait for me.”
He was gone then. And Miss Elling slumped back against the wall and watched him go. Her mouth opened and closed slowly half a dozen times but no words came out.
She pushed herself erect after a time, pressed the knuckles of doubled fists to her forehead, and shook her head back and forth dazedly. Then, moving like a sleepwalker, she sat at her desk to dial the number he had left for her, and to deliver his cryptic message to a man named Julius Hendrixon.
Chapter Two
Exactly twenty minutes later, Morgan Wayne's convertible wheeled up to the curb in front of a cellar joint on Fifty-second Street that said “Gingham Gardens” over the cave door.
It was too early for the neons, but the life-sized oil painting of a long-stemmed doll in lacy bra and G-string with gingham parasol coyly poised above her head had been wheeled out in front to attract the early suckers. And the doorman was operating his clip. He strolled across the sidewalk with shoulders bursting from his fancy monkey suit, shaking his head sternly under a three-cornered headpiece of gingham.
“No parking here, sir. You'll have to...”
Wayne opened the door and got out. He said pleasantly, “Watch my car, will you? And take care of any cops.” Somehow there was a ten-dollar bill in his hand, and somehow it disappeared, and the doorman said, “Certainly, sir,” to his back as he went down three steps to the dim foyer.
The hat-check girl was a languid blonde. Her smile had a frozen, tailored quality, and mascaraed eyebrows arched upward haughtily when she saw he was hatless.
Wayne moved toward her slowly and smiled with a shake of his head. “It's not that way at all, honey. I'm not ducking the pay-off, it's just that I don't like hats.” This time the bill between his fingers was a five. She appeared not to notice it as she took all of him in. Her eyes began to glow and the tailored quality vanished from her smile. She leaned a little forward so the counter pushed lush breasts up even more revealingly inside the georgette blouse and assured him, “On you, no hat looks O.K. to me.”
She had long, smooth fingers with nails lacquered ruby red. The tips were warm and they pulsed against his hand as they took the bill. Wayne leaned one elbow on the counter and studied the interior decorations of the thin blouse with appreciation. He asked, “Anybody around?” scarcely moving his lips and keeping his eyes hooded.
She wriggled a trifle and moved closer, bathing him in body warmth and perfume. “Don't you like what you've seen this far?”
He said, “I've seen worse in my time.” He lifted his gaze slowly, catching the smooth line of her throat, the pouting mouth that was close to his with the wet tip of tongue just inside, the brown eyes that opened a little wider as he met them and glowed with open invitation.
She said, “I'm off in a couple of hours.”
He said, “I'll keep that in mind.” He trailed the tips of his fingers across her bare forearm, let his smile widen into a grin, and turned inside.
The Gingham Gardens was typical of this block on Fifty-second. Long and narrow and dark. Red gingham paper on the walls. Blue gingham cloths on the tiny round tables. Accent on sweet simplicity to make the corn-and-cotton-belt boys feel at home. Sweet simplicity fronting for every sort of loathsome vice in the big town.
The back bar was lighted at this lull before the cocktail hour, and down at the other end of the room a bucket lamp threw a yellow glow where the hot-piano man was fingering some arrangements.
Wayne turned in to the deserted bar and the beefy bartender came alive. “What's yours, Mac?”
Wayne knew that bar rye was what you got in a joint like this no matter what you ordered, so he didn't mince matters.
“Bar rye and soda.”
It came in a heavy glass thimble that nicked him ninety cents. Wayne carefully gathered up the dime left from his bill and pocketed it, smiling gently at the glowering look this action earned from the bartender. He dribbled the drops of whisky over ice cubes in his highball glass and asked casually, “Anybody around?”
The bartender rested a chunky forearm on the bar and shook his bullet head slowly. “Only a cheapskate dropping in from the street now and then.”
Wayne didn't say anything. He carefully poured soda in his glass, swished it negligently for a moment, then, threw the contents of the glass in the man's beefy face.
The man ducked and sputtered, swiping at his face with a bar rag and stooping to reach beneath the bar.
Morgan Wayne didn't alter his casual posture. He said, “I wouldn't,” and something in his voice jerked the man to a halt before he came erect.
Their eyes locked across the bar and the chill blue of Wayne's drilled into the veined milkiness of the ot
her's. “I asked,” Wayne reminded him, “if anybody was around.”
“Trouble, Pete?”
The voice came from behind Wayne's right shoulder. He turned casually. A man had emerged from the sick dimness of the rear. He wasn't big like the barman. He didn't even look tough. But in the half-light from behind the bar he exuded menace. Maybe it was his eyes.
His hair was slick and black. A slight figure and a boyish face. All but the eyes. They weren't boyish. They weren't anything you could describe. Holes for him to see through. Mirroring nothing. No imagination, no feelings. Nothing.
He stood hard on the heels of two-toned Oxfords, hands thrust deep in the slanting pockets of a tan sports jacket. He could be holding a pocket gun. At any rate, Wayne caught the bulge of a shoulder rig that the carefully tailored jacket had been built to hide.
“Bastard got nasty and trun his glass at me,” the bartender sputtered. “You want I should—”
“Shut up, Pete.” The man's voice was like his eyes: flat and devoid of expression, yet somehow imbued with the reptilian menace of a Gila monster. He didn't look at the bartender as he spoke. He asked Wayne:
“Why?”
Wayne shrugged. He was leaning sideways with one elbow on the bar. He said, “Tell your boss Morgan Wayne is here.”
“Will that make him clap his hands?”
“Try it, Sutra. Or should I call you Willie?”
“Where'd you get my name?”
“Saw you on TV. Don't you know you're famous, Willie, since your testimony in front of Kefauver? About how you think the drug traffic stinks and no decent crook should sell the stuff to kids.”
The trace of a smirk appeared on Willie Sutra's face. “No kiddin'? I done that good, huh?”
Wayne sighed. He said, “Nuts to this.” He looked over Willie's head to the end of the long room, where a girl was now standing in the pool of light over the piano. She was looking at Wayne, humming softly while the piano player soft-keyed. She was tall and slender and impossibly lovely, and at thirty feet her gaze had an impact that hit a man in the midriff. Her eyes held Wayne's and she kept on humming softly. He straightened slowly and moved away from the bar in her direction.
Willie Sutra was in his way. Willie didn't move. He spoke in a voice so soft it was barely audible. “The other way is out.”
Wayne paused, wrenching his gaze away from the girl with an effort to look down consideringly at the little man. “I don't think the boss would like seeing the floor all messy with blood.” His tone was almost as soft as Willie's. “Your blood.”
He started forward and this time Willie stepped aside.
Wayne paid no more attention to him. He was headed for the girl standing in the soft pool of light beside the piano. He didn't know what he was going to say to her when he got there, but he knew she was in it somehow. The key to the whole situation was here. If she had it, she would give it to him. He knew that with certainty as he moved slowly toward her.
It happens that way sometimes. You look at a girl and she looks at you and you both know how it is, how it has to be. How it's going to be if you both have to tear down a dozen stone walls to make it so.
It was more than just desire. Hell, you could desire a sexy twerp like the hat-check girl. Call it lust if you like. That's a good four-letter word. No matter what name you give it, Wayne knew he had been clubbed.
Maybe because she seemed so out of character here. You wouldn't think a girl in a cellar joint could look demure, but this one did. You looked at her once across thirty feet of dimness and you thought of everything the hat-check girl made you think of. But you also thought of home and mother. Climbing rosebushes and a white cottage with lighted windows.
Her dress matched the gingham decor of the place. A material of small green checks that looked like gingham, but had the radiance of silk. A wide neck, but not immodestly low. An old-fashioned bodice hugging her incredibly slender waist, giving her breasts what you knew was an unbrassiered uplift that made you think of a pair of hands cupped beneath them. Your hands. But on her it wasn't lewd, somehow. Beneath the bodice, a wide skirt flared to just below her knees. If she moved fast you'd expect it to show flashes of a peek-a-boo petticoat playing tag with sheer nylons.
Wayne was close to her now. She had stopped humming and was just standing there. Watching him. He didn't know what he was going to say. But he didn't think it was going to be difficult to get started.
It wasn't. She cued him with coolly perfect lips that had been lightly touched with pale lipstick that hadn't ruined the contour:
“Don't look now, mister, but I think you're being followed.”
Wayne stopped in front of her. He didn't look around. He said, “Tell him to go away.”
She said, “Go away, Willie.” Her eyes smiled at Wayne.
Wayne had always thought that only girls in fiction had green eyes. But this girl was real. And her eyes were green. Limpid sea green, with bluish depths that invited him to sink into them and drown deliriously. Wayne did a double take on that one. When you begin to get lyrical about a cellar wren's eyes...
But, goddamnit, they were green. Limpid sea green. With bluish depths....
A cold kill with her red hair. Because the hair wasn't just red. It wasunbelievably red. But you wanted to believe it. On her it was easy to believe. Pouring in a smooth flow to her shoulders, alive and vibrant and with a tinge of gold. It couldn't be real, but you knew it was.
He heard Willie Sutra's voice behind him, disappointed and sullen: “But this here goop—”
“I said to go away, Willie.”
Wayne lifted his gaze to her face again. “They've got the wrong girl in the picture outside.”
She made a bashful-girl curtsy, and an honest-to-God dimple dented her left cheek. “Thank you, sir, she said. But don't you think it might be a mite egotistical, since I own the joint? Pardon me—my highly paid promotion man is trying to teach me to call it an establishment.”
“My God,” said Wayne softly. “Of course. The Gingham Girl, they called you when you first turned up as a warbler for Lon Kagle's band. And six months later you ended up by owning the joint. Pardon me, Miss Endicott. Establishment.”
“Sordid success story, isn't it?” She smiled like a little girl explaining away childish mischief. “And why don't you call me Priscilla?”
Wayne's blue eyes were hooded now, his strong face set in lines of harshness. “My God,” he said again, more softly now, “I'm beginning to remember... a lot of things.”
“And?” Her chin was lifted proudly and he saw a pulse leaping at the base of her lovely throat.
“Hake Derr.” He pronounced the two words slowly, as though tasting them dubiously. He shook his head briefly and angrily and looked into her eyes again. “Do you know what you did to me, Priscilla? When I walked across the room to you?”
Her slender body stiffened as though to defend itself against physical onslaught. The piano man was hunched on his stool half turned from them, cigarette drooping from slack lips, loose fingers brushing the keys softly as though seeking an unborn melody.
Priscilla Endicott said, “Yes.” She paused, lowering golden lashes and catching a seductive lower lip indecisively between her teeth in maidenly embarrassment, or the best facsimile of it that Wayne had ever witnessed. “The same thing you did to me.” Her voice was a whisper, throaty and full of promise.
He steeled himself against it. This was Priscilla Endicott! And there were the rumors about Hake Derr. About other men, too, but none of them mattered. Hake Derr did matter.
Wayne moved closer to her. He said, “But it's too late for that. Isn't it, Priscilla?” He put urgency into the question.
She lifted her lashes to invite him again to drown in the bluish depths of her limpid green eyes. “Is it ever too late for that... between a man like you and a woman like me?”
Wayne reached forward to touch the cold fingers of her hand, which rested on the piano. He said gently, “I'm Morgan Wayne.”
<
br /> A convulsive tremor rippled through her taut body. Her fingers tightened into a fist beneath his hand. He knew the name meant something to her—knew he was on the right track. The key was here. She could give it to him, if...
She said slowly, “You came here looking for Hake?”
“And found the most beautiful woman in the world.”
She shuddered and closed her eyes. “Go away, Morgan Wayne. Fast. Don't ever come back.”
“Then it's true?”
“What?”
“What they say about Hake Derr... and the Gingham Girl.”
“Yes.” She opened her eyes and attempted a derisive smile. It wasn't a good effort. It ended up in a pitiful appeal that tore at his heart. Again, he wondered whether she could be that good an actress.
She tightened her lips and made her voice hard. “So you see why you'd better beat it fast, Morgan Wayne.”
He shook his head. His voice remained gentle, but there was a thread of steel in it. “I'm not very good at running. I won't until you sayyou want me to, Priscilla... privately.”
She appeared to go listless then. She withdrew her fingers from beneath his hand and straightened with a suggestion of a shrug. Perhaps it was a shrug of defiance, or of desperation.
“Perhaps I had better tell you... privately.”
She moved away from him and Wayne followed her. The piano player did not lift his head as they passed behind him. His fingers continued to brush the keys lightly and the haunting sound followed them down a corridor to a flight of narrow stairs that led upward.
Priscilla Endicott climbed the stairs unhesitatingly. There is something about a woman going up a stairway and a lone man close behind her. Something for both of them. Disturbingly intimate. Something atavistic, perhaps. Buried deep in the subconscious of both. An intimate awareness of each other and of animal instincts that have been glossed over and submerged by centuries of civilization. Yet never wiped out. Still the dominant instinct in man and woman.
As he followed Priscilla closely on the stairway, Wayne's face remained level with her moving loins. Her woman perfume came back to him in a warm wave, and there was the rustle of her taffeta skirt. Something, always, between a man and a woman climbing single file on a narrow stairway.
The Avenger Page 2
