‘The name’s Chester Scott. I live and work in this city.’
‘Scott?’ Her eyebrows came down in a frown. ‘Chester Scott? Where have I heard that name before?’
‘Have you?’
She screwed up her eyes, grimaced, then shrugged.
‘Somewhere… so you liked my act?’ She held out her hand. ‘Give me a cigarette.’
I gave her one, gave myself one and lit hers, then mine.
‘The act was fine, but the background didn’t jell.’
‘I know.’ She blew smoke to the ceiling, then took a little more gin. ‘Did you hear the way they applauded? You would think to hear them, they had blisters on their hands.’
‘It’s the wrong crowd for you.’
She grimaced.
‘An artist who is worth a damn can handle any crowd,’ she said and turned back to examine her face in the minor. She; picked up an eyelash brush and began to stroke up her eyelashes with quick, deft movements. ‘What were you doing down there this morning? I didn’t fall for that swim story.’
‘Looking the place over. What were you thinking about, marrying a cop?’
She put down the eyelash brush and turned her head slowly. Her glittering eyes were now more out of focus.
‘What’s it to you who I marry?’
‘Nothing much. It seemed odd to me a girl like you should want to marry a speed cop.’
Her lips curved into a smile.
‘But then he was a very special cop.’
‘Was he?’ I reached forward to drop ash into an empty tobacco tin that stood on the dressing-table. ‘How special?’
She put her hand to her mouth to cover a gentle belch.
‘He had money.’ She got to her feet and crossed over to the screen and went behind it. She moved unsteadily. ‘Have you any money, Mr. Scott?’
I edged my chair around so I could stare at the screen. I could just see the top of her head as she stripped off her wrap which she tossed on the floor beside the screen.
‘I have a little money,’ I said. ‘Not much.’
‘The only thing in this world that means anything, that has any importance, is money. Don’t let anyone kid you otherwise. They say health and religion are good things to have: but I’ll settle for money,’ she said from behind the screen. ‘If you haven’t got it, you might just as well buy a razor and slit your throat. Without money you’re nothing. You can’t get a decent job, you can’t go anywhere worth going to; you can’t live in a place worth living in; you can’t mix with the people who are worth mixing with. Without money, you’re just one of a crowd, and that’s the lowest form of life to my thinking—being one of the crowd.’
She came out from behind the screen. She now had on a red silk dress that showed off her curves to advantage. She moved unsteadily to the dressing-table to fix her dark hair.
‘I’ve been in this racket for ten years,’ she went on as she ran a comb through her hair. ‘I have a small talent. The words aren’t mine. They were dreamed up by my drunken agent who hangs on to me because he can’t find anyone else to bleed. But the small talent doesn’t bring me in any money worth speaking about. It provides me with a living if you can call it that, and that’s all. So when this redfaced cop started to work on me, I let him, because he had money. For the past ten years I have been in practically every nightclub along this lousy coast, and although I have been propositioned countless times, I have never had an offer of marriage. Then this cop comes on the scene. He is tough and crude and utterly horrible, but at least he wanted to marry me.’ She paused and finished the gin in her glass. ‘He had money. He gave me presents.’ She pulled open a drawer in her dressing-table and fished out a gold powder compact. She held it in her hand so I could see it. It was an expensive, impressive ornament. ‘He gave me this and he didn’t j expect me to throw my clothes off the moment I got it. He gave me a squirrel coat and I still had my clothes on. He said if I would marry him he’d give me a mink coat for a wedding present.’ She paused to pour more gin in her glass. She sipped and grimaced with disgust at its taste. I guessed she wouldn’t be talking like this if she hadn’t been three-quarters tight, but I was listening: listening as hard as I could. ‘He had a bungalow out at Palm Bay. It was nice. There was a terrace overlooking the sea and the rooms were tricky: one of them had a glass floor with lights under it. I would have married that man if he had stayed alive long enough, even though he was so crude he used to come in here with his hat on, put his feet up here on the dressing-table and call me "Baby Doll". But he had to be dumb enough to get killed.’ She finished the gin and put the glass down, shuddering. ‘He had to be dumb enough just when he and Art Galgano…’ She broke off, squinting at me, as if trying to get me in focus. ‘I guess I’m drunk,’ she said. ‘What am I talking like this to you for?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘People talk to get things out of their systems. You’re not boring me. He couldn’t help getting killed. You should feel sorry for him.’
‘Should I?’ She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘You mean I should feel sorry for myself.’ She splashed more gin into her glass. ‘Are you looking for a wife, Mr. Scott?’
‘I can’t say I am.’
‘What are you looking for?’
‘I’d like to find out how O’Brien got himself run over.’
She lifted the glass of gin and sniffed at it.
‘This is filthy stuff. It’s only when I’ve done my act and get the applause I got tonight, that I use it.’ She peered at me. ‘What’s O’Brien to you?’
‘Nothing. I’m just curious to find out how he got run over.’
‘No reason—just curious?’
‘Just curious.’
She studied me.
‘What did you say your name was again?’
‘Scott.’
‘And you want to know how Harry got himself run over?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I could tell you.’ She sipped the gin, then with a movement of disgust, she crossed the room and poured the gin into the small, grimy toilet basin. ‘I could tell you. How much is it worth to you, Mr. Scott?’
I dropped my cigarette into the tobacco tin.
‘You mean how much in money?’
She leaned her solid hips against the toilet basin and smiled at me: it wasn’t a nice smile, and it made her look as hard as if her face had been hacked out of stone.
‘Yes, I mean how much in money. Chester Scott—of course. I know who you are now. You’re the man Oscar is blackmailing.’
‘What makes you think that?’ I asked, keeping my face expressionless.
‘I hear things,’ she said. ‘I don’t approve of blackmail. I need money, Mr. Scott. I can give you information that can take you off Oscar’s hook, but it’ll cost you. I won’t rob you. I’ll put you wise for five hundred. It’s cheap. I know what Oscar’s asking. Five hundred is nothing.’
‘What information?’
‘Have you five hundred dollars, Mr. Scott?’
‘Not on me.’
‘Can you get it tonight?’
‘I might.’ I thought of the eight hundred dollars we kept in the safe at the office. I could borrow that and pay it back when the bank opened on Monday. ‘What makes you imagine the information you have would be worth all that to me?’
‘Give me another cigarette.’
I crossed over to her, gave her a cigarette and lit it. As she dipped the cigarette end into the flame of my lighter, she put her hand on mine. Her flesh felt hot and dry against mine.
I moved away from her, watching her draw in smoke, then let it out slowly down her nostrils.
‘I can get you off Oscar’s hook,’ she said. ‘I know the whole set-up. You can have it for five hundred. I’ve got to get out of this town and I want a get-away stake.’
‘How do you get me off the hook?’ I asked, wondering if she were taking me for a ride.
‘I’ll tell you when you produce the money and not before. When you get bitt
en by a snake, you use an antidote. I can give you the antidote to Oscar’s bite. If you don’t want to spend five hundred to save thirty thousand, then you’re a fool. Can you give me the money tonight?’
If she really knew how I could fix Oscar, five hundred would be a give-away price.
‘Yes, I can get it.’
‘I’ll be home just after two,’ she said. ‘You’ll find me at apartment 10 Maddox Arms. So you know where it is?’
I said I knew where it was.
‘Bring the money with you, Mr. Scott, and I’ll give you the antidote. Be there sharp at two. I have a train to catch.’ She went over to the door and opened it. ‘I’ve got to sing to those lousy drunks again. See you later.’
I moved past her into the passage, then turned and looked at her. Her face was tense and her eyes were glittering in the hard, ceiling light just above her head. I had an idea she was frightened.
We stared at each other for a long, steady moment, then she gently closed the door in my face.
II
As I drove out of the parking lot, I noticed a black Clipper edge out of the second row of cars and move after me.
I thought nothing of it at the time even though it kept behind me all the way back to town and only passed me when I pulled up outside my office block, but I was to remember it later.
The time was now a quarter to one. I had a key to the main door, but I knew if I opened the door I’d set the alarm off, so I rang for the janitor, hoping he hadn’t gone to bed.
He came eventually and peered through the plate-glass door at me. Then he turned off the alarm and let me in.
‘I hope I didn’t get you out of bed,’ I said. ‘I forgot some papers I want to work on over Sunday.’
‘That’s okay, Mr. Scott,’ he said cheerfully, ‘I was just about to turn in, but I wasn’t in. Will you be long?’
‘Five minutes,’ I said.
‘Then I’ll wait for you here and shut you out. You certainly work late hours.’
I made a non-committal remark and crossed over to the elevator.
It took me only a few minutes to unlock my office and open the safe. I exchanged an I.O.U. slip for the five hundred dollars I took from the cash box.
During the run down from Mount Cresta I had been doing some thinking. Dolores had said she would give me an antidote to Ross’s bite. That could only mean she was going to give me information that I could threaten him with so he wouldn’t dare use the information he had against me.
As I stowed the five hundred dollars away in my hip pocket, I wondered what the information was and just how far I could trust Dolores. Going down the elevator I recalled that Ross had said he had to leave town. Dolores had said she needed money to leave town. Could these two have been hooked up in some racket that had gone sour now that O’Brien was dead?
Obviously O’Brien was a character worth investigating. A speed cop who can promise a mink coat and who owned a bungalow with a glass floor must have a pretty handsome private income, so why had he remained a cop?
The janitor was patiently waiting for me as I crossed the lobby. I said good night to him and he let me out.
As I walked to where I had parked the Buick I saw a man standing in a shop doorway on the opposite side of the road. As I looked at him, wondering what he was doing there, he drew back into the shadows.
By the time I had reached the Buick and was driving towards the residential quarter of Palm City, I had forgotten him, but, like the black Clipper, I was to remember him later.
Maddox Arms was a block of apartments on Maddox Avenue in the less fashionable quarter: a brown stone building that had been put up some fifty years ago, and looked as if nothing had been done to the outside since then.
I climbed fifteen steep steps to the front entrance and walked into a dimly lit lobby with a line of mail boxes on the right, an ancient elevator facing me and a door marked Janitor on my left.
I learned from the wall indicator that apartment 10 was on the third floor. As I got into the elevator, I glanced at my wrist watch. The time was three minutes to two o’clock.
The elevator dragged me up to the third floor in a way that made me feel that any moment the cage might part from its cable and plunge me down into the basement. I was glad when it came to a creaking standstill and I got out.
I stepped into a narrow passage: at either end were doors. The one on the left was the door to apartment 10.
I went down the passage and paused outside the door. There was a card fixed to the door panel with a thumb tack which read: Miss Dolores Lane.
I pressed the bell push and heard a bell ring sharply somewhere inside the apartment.
There was a pause while I stood there, pretty tense and wondering if within the next ten minutes I would be in a position to fix Oscar Ross.
Then I heard the sound of movement behind the door, which opened an inch or so and came to rest on a chain lock.
‘Who is it?’ Dolores asked, not showing herself.
‘Scott,’ I said. ‘Who did you think it was?’
The door closed for a moment while she slid off the chain, then she opened up.
She was wearing a lightweight travelling coat over a grey dress. Her expression was tense, but she managed to give me a small, meaningless smile.
‘Come in. When you live alone in a dump like this, you have to be careful who you open the door to at two o’clock in the morning.’
I stepped past her into a fair-sized room, sparsely furnished with the kind of furniture you will see only in furnished apartments: junk that no one in their right minds would buy for themselves. It told me that she was living the hard way, and had probably been living like that for some time.
‘Don’t take any notice of this,’ she said, seeing me look around. ‘Thank goodness I’m leaving it. The only thing in its favour is it’s cheap.’
I moved away from her.
There was a door standing half open near me. Through the open doorway the room beyond appeared to be a bedroom. At the foot of the bed was a fair-sized suitcase. It looked to me as if she were ready to go.
‘Did you bring the money?’ she asked and I caught an anxious note in her voice.
‘I brought it,’ I said, ‘but I’m not parting with it until I’m satisfied the information you have is worth buying.’
Her lips twisted into a bitter smile.
‘It’s worth buying. Let me see the money.’
I took from my hip pocket the wad of bills and held them so she could see them.
She stared hungrily at them. ‘Five hundred dollars?’
‘Yes.’
‘Now I’ll show you what I’ve got,’ she said and moved over to a shabby desk that stood in one of the corners of the room. She pulled open a drawer.
All along, at the back of my mind, I had an idea I couldn’t trust her, but I was vain enough and stupid enough to believe, because she was a woman, I could handle her.
She dipped her hand into the drawer, then turned to face me. She had a .38 automatic in her hand which she pointed at me, and there was an expression in her eyes that sent a chill crawling up my spine.
‘Don’t move,’ she said softly. ‘Put the money on the table.’
For a long moment I stared at her and at the gun. It was pointing rock steady at my chest.
This was the first time in my life that anyone had ever pointed a gun at e and I didn’t like it. The gun looked terribly dangerous and horribly lethal.
I had often read in detective thrillers of the hero being held up by a gun, and I have accepted the author’s impression that his hero could face such a situation without turning a hair. I now discovered that I wouldn’t be much of a hero in fiction. I found my mouth had turned dry and there was a cold, empty feeling in my stomach.
‘You’d better put that down,’ I said huskily. ‘It might go off.’
‘It will go off if you don’t put the money on the table.’
There was a scraped, bleak look on her face and her da
rk eyes were glittering. She moved slightly to her left, keeping me covered. Her hand groped behind her, found the control knob on the oldfashioned radio that stood on a table against the wall and turned the set on.
‘There’s no one on this floor to hear the shot,’ she went on, speaking rapidly. ‘The old fool below us is deaf. He’ll think it’s a car back-firing or he probably won’t hear anything.’
The room suddenly became full of the sound of strident, violent jazz as the station came through the loudspeaker.
‘Put the money on the table or I’ll shoot you,’ she said, a vicious hiss in her voice.
I continued to stare at her. My heart gave a little bounce when I saw the expression in her face and saw she wasn’t bluffing. I saw too the skin of her knuckles tighten as she started to take up the slack on the trigger. I had a bleak feeling that any second the gun would go off.
She drew in a sharp breath and slightly lowered the gun. Even with her pancake make-up, I could see she was sweating.
‘Back up against the wall!’
I backed up against the wall and watched her scoop up the bills and stuff them into her overcoat pocket.
‘You won’t get far,’ I said, speaking as evenly as I could, which wasn’t anything to be impressed about. ‘The police will pick you up.’
She smiled at me.
‘Don’t kid yourself. You tell the police about me and I’ll tell about you. I know too. Don’t think I like doing this. I’m not a thief and I’m not a blackmailer, but I’ve got to get out of this town and this is the only way I can do it. Don’t turn suddenly brave and try to stop me leaving here or you’ll get shot. Now turn around and face the wall and don’t move.’
There was a ruthless, frightened expression in her glittering eyes that warned me she would shoot if I didn’t do what she said. I turned around and faced the wall.
I heard her go into the bedroom and then come out almost immediately. By the heavy way she walked, I guessed she was carrying the suitcase.
‘So long, Mr. Scott,’ she said. ‘You’ve been useful to me. Sorry for the double cross, but if you’re fool enough to fall for it, you can’t blame me.’
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