When Dorinda Dances

by Brett Halliday

  Shayne carefully went over his interview with Mrs. Davis, recalling her words, her moods. She had actually looked under thirty when he first saw her, but she seemed older, more mature, when she left. He figured ages. She could easily be only thirty-five or six and have a daughter eighteen.

  He said, “What are you getting at, Tim?”

  “That Dorinda denied a friend of her mother’s was there last night—claims not to know any Mrs. Davis—and that maybe she sounded truthful because it was the truth.”

  “My client,” said Shayne, “gave me a card with the name Mrs. Elbert H. Davis engraved on it.”

  Rourke rolled his head lazily on the back of the seat. “Anybody can get a card with any name engraved on it,” he scoffed.

  “Yeh.” Shayne was driving slowly and thinking fast. “Got time to drop by the paper and help me look up some dope in the files?”

  “Sure.” Rourke yawned and added, “There’s a poker game at Jack Farrell’s, but it’s early yet.”

  “You’ll make it in time to lose your shirt.” Shayne sped the car forward, and neither of them spoke again until they were in the Daily News morgue and Rourke switched on the overhead lights.

  “What do you want, Mike?”

  “Whatever you’ve got on Nigel Lansdowne and his family.”

  Rourke’s nostrils quivered. “Judge Lansdowne?” He gave a low, impressive whistle.

  “Strictly off the record, Tim. If you print a word—”

  “What do you think I am?” Rourke demanded hotly. “My God, Mike, if he’s the man—” He paused, his cavernous eyes boring into Shayne’s. “Lansdowne is practically slated to take over as Industrial Administrator of the whole country. One whisper of this—”

  “Right,” Shane cut in. “The country needs a man like Judge Lansdowne in that job more than it needs a thousand H-bombs. So, let’s see where we stand.”

  Rourke turned away, saying, “We’ll have a hell of a file on him—going back fifteen or twenty years.”

  Shayne lit a cigarette, eased himself down on a long table, and puffed smoke toward the ceiling until the reporter returned with a bulging file.

  “This is the latest one. From nineteen forty-five. There are two earlier ones just as full.”

  “We need to know if he has a daughter named Julia,” said Shayne. “How old she is and what she looks like.”

  Rourke laid the big cardboard file on the table and began examining the clippings. Shayne stood beside him, and when he turned over a double-column spread with the photograph of a woman and a young girl at the top, they read:

  August 16th, 1949. Mrs. Nigel Lansdowne of Washington, D. C., and her daughter Julia, prior to the popular young debutante’s departure to enter Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, for her freshman year. Mrs. Lansdowne is the wife of Judge Lansdowne who holds the important government position of Federal Security—

  “There she is,” Rourke exulted. “Her name is Julia, and this would be her sophomore year at Rollins. Do you like it?”

  Shayne had the clipping in his hand, studying the photograph carefully. The girl looked about sixteen, poised and beautiful beside her mother, and there was at least a superficial facial resemblance to the nude dancer at La Roma.

  “Damn these lousy newspaper reproductions,” he growled. “Never can tell much from them. Could easily be Dorinda, but—is it?”

  “If you paid more attention to the gal’s face,” said Rourke acidly, “or if she had posed for this in the all-together, you might recognize her.”

  Shayne snorted. “Is it Dorinda?”

  “Hell, I don’t know any more than you do,” the reporter confessed cheerfully. “If you think I was memorizing facial characteristics, you’re nuts.”

  Shayne continued to study the picture, turning his attention from the daughter to mother. The woman was tall and slender. She wore a flowered afternoon dress and a wide-brimmed garden hat that shadowed her face. She appeared to be much older than the woman who had visited his office, and there seemed to be no marked facial resemblance. He realized, however, that there was nothing definite or conclusive. He had seen too many newspaper photographs of himself that were scarcely recognizable to accept this as positive evidence that Mrs. Davis was not Mrs. Lansdowne.

  “What do you think?” Rourke asked seriously.

  Shayne dropped the clipping in the file and said, “Offhand, I think the girl is Dorinda, all right. But I don’t believe that’s a picture of the woman who called herself Mrs. Davis.” He paused, tugging at his left ear lobe. He looked at his watch. “I’m afraid it’s too late to call Rollins College and get any answers. Besides, it’s spring vacation. But I want to see Mrs. Davis right away.”

  Rourke took the folder back to the files, and they went down in the elevator and out to Shayne’s car. Rourke gave him the address where the poker game was in session.

  Thirty minutes later Shayne stepped into the ornate lobby of the Waldorf Towers Hotel, went directly to a row of house phones, picked up a receiver, and asked for Mrs. Elbert H. Davis.

  After a slight delay the operator said, “Mrs. Davis is in four-eighteen,” and began to ring.

  He waited for the tenth ring before hanging up, then went to the desk and spoke to the clerk. “I’d like to leave a message for Mrs. Davis in four-eighteen, if she’s out.”

  The clerk handed him a memo pad and pen, checked the mail and key cubicles, then reported, “Her key is in the box, so she must be out.”

  Shayne wrote: Very important that you phone me at once. He scribbled the telephone number at his apartment, and added: Will be out between 2:00 a.m. and 3:00 or 3:30. Please call before or after that period.

  On the way to the door he dragged his hat off, and outside in the cool night air he mopped perspiration from his face. In his car, he tossed the Panama on the seat beside him and let the wind blow through his hair as he drove back to his apartment where he relaxed with a drink and a lot of questions that apparently had no answers.

  His telephone hadn’t rung, and it was two o’clock.

  There was a worried frown between his eyes when he went down to his car and drove slowly to La Roma. He parked half a block east of the driveway, got out, and sauntered back to the next cross street east, turned left, and circled the block to come up to the night club from the rear. He found a comfortable grassy spot against the trunk of a coconut palm where he could watch the parking-lot, lit a cigarette, and settled himself to wait.

  He was tossing away the fourth cigarette butt when patrons of the final show began to stream through the front door and back to their parked cars. Shayne got up and edged forward until he stood against the rear of the building to watch the stage exit. Several men were grouped around the door, and among them he recognized the tall figure of Mr. Moran.

  Members of the orchestra filed out, and Billie Love was clutching the arm of the leader. Then he saw Dorinda’s bare head in the lighted doorway. She hesitated on the threshold, flashing her eyes around, and as the others moved away she stepped out to join Moran.

  Shayne followed unobtrusively until they got in a maroon coupé parked in the driveway beside the building. In the slow-moving traffic he came up behind the coupé, memorized the license number, then cut diagonally across toward his own parked car. The maroon coupé made a left turn from the drive and passed him on the other side of the street as he slid under the wheel. He waited until it had gone a couple of blocks before wheeling in a U-turn into the thin stream of vehicles trickling away from La Roma.

  The routine of tailing them was simple. He followed the coupé to a four-story stuccoed apartment house on a quiet street in Coconut Grove. Dorinda got out when Moran swung the car across the walk, and he drove on to the garage in the rear.

  Shayne parked across the street and waited. Three minutes after the dancer unlocked the front door and entered the building, lights showed in the two front windows of the second-floor apartment on the right. The shades were up, and he saw her clearly when she went to th
e windows to pull them down.

  Shayne drove back to his hotel. The switchboard operator told him there had been no calls in his absence.

  He went up to his apartment frowning thoughtfully and tugging at his ear lobe. None of it made sense. If the girl was Julia Lansdowne he felt inclined to lay off completely and let her sleep in the bed she’d made. She could probably take care of herself quite well.

  But the thought of her parents in Washington kept coming back as he shrugged off his coat and made himself comfortable in the swivel chair behind his battered desk. Ordinarily, even a man in Judge Lansdowne’s position would be able to weather a minor scandal such as the papers would make of Dorinda’s dancing if her identity became known. But these were not ordinary times. They were damned extraordinary times, with men of high integrity being hounded in the reactionary press by charges of subversion and the wildest sort of unprovable accusations.

  Shayne shook his red head moodily, and his gray eyes brooded into space. No. Mrs. Davis had not exaggerated the effect the disclosure of the nude dancer’s real name might have on her father’s career.

  Suddenly he was glaring at the silent telephone on the desk. He looked at his watch. Where the devil was Mrs. Davis? It was almost four o’clock, and no call from her. Plenty of women, he realized, stayed out much later than that in Miami, but she hadn’t seemed to be the type. Particularly when she was so worried about her friend’s daughter. Had she tried again to get in touch with Dorinda? Found out where she lived—gone there and run into Moran?

  He came to his feet and stalked to the liquor cabinet, got a bottle of cognac, thumped it down on the low table in front of the couch, and went to the kitchen for ice cubes and water. Returning, he sank down on the couch and took Dorinda’s photograph from his pocket. Propping it against the lighted end-table lamp, he studied it, comparing the whirling nude dancer with the shy, sweet girl who sat at the dinner table and unaffectedly consumed a thick steak with the relish of any healthy, hungry schoolgirl.

  He rubbed his angular jaw, and the lines deepened in his gaunt cheeks. How could it possibly add up? If, of course, she were Julia Lansdowne. Where did Moran fit into the picture? Without doubt, the girl was deathly afraid of the man.

  Shayne took a long drink from the bottle and chased it with ice water. His mouth tightened, and his fingers instinctively closed into fists. Why hadn’t he followed his first impulse and forced a showdown with Moran at La Roma? He could have shaken Lawry off and, if necessary, made a forward pass to the opposite wall with his slimy little body if Tim—

  He relaxed abruptly. Tim was right, of course. Attacking Moran at La Roma would undoubtedly have brought the publicity which had to be avoided at all costs if the girl was Judge Lansdowne’s daughter.

  The telephone rang. He sprang to his feet, relieved by the expectation of hearing Mrs. Davis’s voice and finally hearing an explanation for her failure to call earlier. He reached the desk in three long strides, snatched up the receiver, and said, “Shayne speaking.”

  The apologetic voice of the night clerk said, “I hope I didn’t waken you, Mr. Shayne.”

  “That’s okay, Dick. What is it?”

  “There’s a girl down here asking for you. She looks scared. Says her name is Dorinda.”

  “Send her up. And shoot through any telephone calls that come in.” He replaced the receiver slowly, wonderingly. He heard the elevator stop at his floor, and high heels tapping down the hall. He went to the door and flung it open to admit his late visitor.

  CHAPTER IV

  Dorinda wore the same cool dress she had changed to after her first dance. Her short blond hair was windblown and her violet eyes were terrified. Her hands were tightly clasped together and she cried out, “Please, Mr. Shayne! You’ve got to help me. I know it’s horribly late, but it was my only chance to—to get away. If you’ll only listen to me—”

  “There’s nothing I’d like better,” he assured her. He caught her tight little hands and drew her into the room, stepped past her, and glanced out in the corridor with interest, asked, “Are you alone?”

  “Oh, yes! You mean Ricky? Golly, yes. If he knew I was here—”

  Shayne closed the door firmly and threw on the extra latch. “What would he do if he knew you were here?” he asked when she stopped talking. He turned to see tears in her eyes. Her mouth was trembling, and she caught her lips between her fine white teeth. Shayne took her gently by the arm and led her to the deep chair that Timothy Rourke had drawn up close to the table and opposite the couch. “Sit down here. Make yourself comfortable and tell me all about it.” When she was seated, he went back to his place on the couch.

  “I’ve been an awful fool,” she began. “I’m half crazy with shame—and I’m scared to death. If you’ll only h-help m-m-me.” She swayed sideways, folded her arms on the arm of the chair, and buried her face against them, sobbing convulsively.

  “Of course I’ll help you, Dorinda. But crying won’t. You’re safe here, and everything is going to be all right.” He took a handkerchief from his pocket, reached across, and tucked it in her hand. She caught it and inched it up to her face, but she kept on crying. Occasionally she blew her nose, and after a long time she sat up.

  “I’m not a crybaby, Mr. Shayne. I’m sorry.”

  “Take your time,” he said hastily. “Would you like a drink to settle your nerves? A little sherry?”

  “Oh no, thanks. I don’t drink. I’m all right now.” She bent toward him and said earnestly, “I’ve gotten myself into a horrible mess, and I was determined to get myself out of it without Mother and Father ever finding out about it.” She paused, staring at the nude photograph of herself propped against the lamp. “I’m not like that, Mr. Shayne. Not really. I nearly die every time I see one of them—and I’m terribly ashamed.”

  Shayne glanced aside at the picture. “You haven’t anything to be ashamed of. And you did sign them, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. I signed a lot of them, but that was back in the beginning. I thought I was being smart and sophisticated. But when you said what you did about Mother and Father tonight—” She stopped, and her lips began trembling, but after a moment she continued. “I’ve” known it all the time—from the very first day—but I wanted to be a good sport, you see.”

  “I don’t see very much yet,” said Shayne. He lit a cigarette and leaned back with his eyes half closed. “If I’m to be any help at all, I’ll have to know the truth this time.”

  “That’s why I came. I don’t know anyone else in Miami, and after tonight, I just had to talk to someone.”

  “Then you are Julia Lansdowne?”

  “Yes. I thought you knew when you asked me tonight.”

  “And your parents think you are visiting a college friend in Palm Beach during the spring vacation at Rollins?”

  “Yes. She’s the only one who knows—and she doesn’t know all of it. Not the worst part.” Color flooded into her cheeks.

  “You arranged with this friend to pretend you were visiting her while you slipped away to dance at La Roma?”

  “Yes. I write to Mother and send the letters in a separate envelope. She sends them on to her.” She paused, and for a moment she looked down at her small white hands, clasping and unclasping them nervously. Suddenly she sat erect and lifted her head high. “Mr. Shayne, you said something about a Mrs. Davis, Mother’s best friend, coming to your office about me. Does that mean that Mother knows?”

  Shayne nodded. “Your mother asked her to come down.”

  “But I don’t know anyone by that name. I’ve thought and thought, and I can’t remember any Mrs. Davis.”

  “She may have given me a false name,” said Shayne, “but you certainly must have recognized her last night at La Roma when she sat at a table near the stage and afterward sent a note back to you.”

  Dorinda bit her lower lip, and a frown threaded her smooth brow. “I never really see anyone,” she told him, “and I didn’t get any note. There must be some mistake. Ma
ybe it’s someone Mother knows, but I haven’t met. Or one of her friends who was a widow and married a Mr. Davis.”

  “Mrs. Elbert H. Davis was engraved on the card she gave me,” said Shayne. He gave her a detailed description of the woman, and added, “She claimed to have known you all your life—said she was your mother’s best friend and was sure she had gained your complete confidence as you grew up.”

  The frown in her forehead deepened. “I don’t know any woman like the one you described, Mr. Shayne. I just don’t understand it.”

  Shayne shrugged. “I’m only telling you what she said. She offered me two thousand dollars belonging to your mother to get you away from La Roma without any publicity.”

  The girl gasped audibly. “Two thousand dollars! How did Mother find out? And Father? Does he—know—too?” Her eyes were stark with terror and her face was white.

  “Not yet.” He felt impelled to give her that assurance, but he had to get the truth from her and he couldn’t afford to ease up yet. He needed a drink, decided against drinking from the bottle, got up, and went into the kitchen.

  He returned with a shot glass, filled it, drank it down, and sat down again. He didn’t speak immediately and he avoided looking at her directly. She looked like a child waiting for a promised whipping from a stern parent.

  “Here’s the way I got it, Julia,” he finally said in an even tone. “Your mother received one of those pictures in the mail with an unsigned note that hinted at blackmail.”

  “Mother—saw one of those?” she gasped. She turned in the chair and flung both arms on one arm of the chair and buried her face against them. “Oh, God!” she moaned. “I wish I were dead! It will kill Mother, and I don’t want to live.”

  “Snap out of it, Julia. Mothers are more understanding than you think. The picture hasn’t killed her. On the contrary, she acted promptly to prevent your father from learning the truth. No matter who the mysterious Mrs. Davis may be, she has retained me to see that this thing is hushed up and the blackmailer dealt with. Sit up and tell me how you got mixed up in this mess.”