We shook hands. I told him I was pleased to meet him.
“You’re not getting ready to go, Mr. Smith?”
“As a matter of fact, I was.”
“Well, you’re not going to leave just as I come in. You usually bring me luck, and somehow I feel you’re going to bring me lots of it tonight.”
I thought I could complicate the situation by making Parker jealous. I looked at him and said, “Mr. Parker looks like a very capable mascot.”
She said, “He’s my escort. You’re my mascot. Come on over here to the tables.”
“Really, I’m a bit tired and—”
Her eyes bored steadily into mine. The light caught her hair, and it looked more than ever like that piece of hangman’s hemp that I’d seen years ago. “I’m not going to let you get away,” she said, laughing with her red lips, “even if I have to call the cops.”
There was no laughter in her eyes.
I smiled and said, “Well, after all, that’s really up to Mr. Parker. I never like to horn in.”
“Oh, it’s all right by him,” she said. “Parker understands that you’re connected with the establishment.”
“Oh,” Parker said, as though that explained a lot, and instantly began to smile. “Do come along, Smith, and bring us luck.”
I strolled over to the roulette table with her.
She started playing with silver dollars—and losing. Parker didn’t seem inclined to stake her. When she’d lost her money, she pouted a little, and he finally got five dollars in twenty-five-cent chips and let her play those.
When he had moved around nearer the foot of the table, and she had edged closer to me, she suddenly turned and again let her eyes bore into mine. “Slip me two hundred dollars under the table,” she ordered.
I gave her the stony stare.
“Come on, come on,” she said in a fast undertone. “Don’t act dumb, and don’t stall. Either come through,
or else.”
I managed a yawn.
She could have cried she was so disappointed. She slammed the chips down on the board and lost them.
When they were gone, I slipped a dollar into her palm. “That’s the extent of my donation, kid,” I said, “and it’s lucky. Play it on the double O.”
She put it on the double O and won straight up.
“Let it ride,” I said.
“You’re crazy.”
I shrugged my shoulders, and she raked down all but live dollars of her winnings.
I’ll never know what made me say that about the double O.I was skating on thin ice, sticking my neck out. It was just a crazy hunch I had, but one of those things a man gets sometimes when he feels hot all over, as though he had clairvoyant powers. I was absolutely certain that it was going to come double O again. Don’t ask me how I knew. I just knew. That was all.
The ball rattled around the wheel and finally came to rest in one of the pockets.
I heard Esther Clarde gasp, and looked over just to make certain where the ball had stopped.
It was in number seven.
“You see,” she said, “you’d have made me lose.”
I laughed. “You’re still playing on velvet.”
She said, “Well, maybe the seven will repeat,” and played it for two bucks. It repeated. After that, I quit feeling lucky, and stuck around. Esther ran her roll up to about five hundred bucks, and then cashed in.
There was a brunette hanging around the tables, a slinky girl with snake hips, nice bare shoulders, and eyes that were filled with romance like a dark, warm night on a tropical beach. She and the blonde knew each other, and after Esther had cashed in I saw them swapping signals. Later they were whispering together.
Shortly afterward the brunette started making a play for Arthur Parker, and it
was
a play. She was asking his advice, getting her bare shoulder within an inch of his lips as she leaned across him to place a bet at the far end of the board, looking up at him with a smile.
I took a look at the expression on Parker’s face and knew I was stuck with the blonde.
“All right,” I said to Esther Clarde, “you win. Where do
we go?”
“I’ll sneak out to the cloakroom first,” she said. “I’ll be waiting. Don’t try any funny stuff. In case you’re interested, there isn’t any back way out.”
“Why should I want to get away from a good-looking girl like you?”
She laughed, and then after a moment said softly, “Well, why
should
you?”
I stuck around long enough to put a few bets on the roulette table. I couldn’t lay off the double O. I never even got a smell. Parker was all wrapped up with the brunette. Once he gave a guilty start and started looking around. I heard the brunette say something about the restroom, then slip a bare arm around his shoulder and whisper in his ear. He laughed.
I went out to the cloakroom. Esther Clarde was waitings for me. “Got a car?” she asked. “Or do we ride in taxis?”
“Taxis,” I said.
“All right, let’s go.”
“Any particular place?”
“I think I’ll go to your apartment.”
“I’d rather go to yours.”
She looked at me for a minute, then shrugged her shoulders and said, “Why not?”
“Your friend, Mr. Parker, won’t show up, will he?”
“My friend, Mr. Parker,” she said grimly, “is taken care of for the evening, thank you.”
She gave the address of her apartment to the cab driver. It took about ten minutes to get there. It was her apartment, all right. Her name was on the bell marker, and she used her key and went up. Well, after all, as she’d said, why not? I knew where she worked. I could have found out all about her. The newspapers had carried her picture and an interview with her describing the man who had asked her the questions about Ringold. She had nothing to fear from me.
On the other hand, I was in it, right up to my necktie. It wasn’t a bad apartment. One look told me she didn’t keep it from the profits she made out of running the cigar stand at a second-rate hotel.
She slipped off her coat, told me to sit down, brought out cigarettes, asked me if I wanted some Scotch, and sat down on the sofa beside me. We lit cigarettes, and she sidled over to lean against me. I could see the gleam of light on her neck and shoulders, the seductive look in her blue eyes; and the hair that was like raveled hemp brushed against my cheek. “You and I,” she said, “are going to be good friends.”
“Yes?”
“Yes,” she said, “because the girl who went up to see Jed Ringold—the one you were following—was Alta Ashbury.”
And then she snuggled up against me affectionately.
“Who,” I asked, with a perfectly blank face, “is Alta Ashbury?”
“The woman you were following.”
I shook my head, and said, “My business was with Ringold.”
She twisted around so that she could keep looking at my face. Then she said slowly, “Well, it doesn’t make any difference in one way. It’s information that I can’t use myself—directly. I’d rather work with you than with anyone else I know,” and then added with a little laugh, “because I can keep
you
straight.”
“That isn’t telling me who Alta Ashbury is. Was she his woman?”
I could see the blonde thinking things over, trying to decide how much to tell me.
“Was she?” I insisted.
She tried a counteroffensive. “What did
you
want with Ringold?”
“I wanted to see him on a business matter.”
“What?”
“Somebody had told me that he could tell me how to beat the Blue Sky Act. I’m a promoter. I had something I wanted to promote.”
“So you went in to see him?”
“Not me. I got the adjoining room.”
“And bored a hole in the door?”
“Yes.”
“And looked and listened?”
“Yes.”
“What did you see?”
I shook my head.
She got mad then. “Listen,” she said, “you’re either the damnedest fool I’ve ever seen, or the coolest. How did you know I couldn’t call the cops when you didn’t slip me that two hundred under the table?”
“I didn’t.”
“You’d better get along with me. Do you know what’d happen if I took down that telephone receiver and called the cops? For God’s sake, be your age and snap out of it.” I tried to blow a smoke ring.
She got to her feet and started toward the telephone. Her lips were clamped tightly, and her eyes were full of fire.
“Go ahead and call them,” I said. “I was getting ready to call them myself.”
“Yes, you were.”
I said, “Of course, I was. Don’t you get the sketch?”
“What do you mean?”
“I was sitting in that adjoining room with my eye glued to the hole in the door,” I said. “The murderer had picked the lock about half an hour before I went in. He’d pried the molding loose, fixed the lock, gone back into the room, put the molding back into place, waited for a propitious moment, then unlocked the door, stepped into the little alcove, and went into the bathroom.”
“That’s what you say.”
“You forget one thing, sister.”
“What’s that?”
“I
saw the murderer. I’m the only one who did. I
know
who it was—Ringold had a talk with the girl. He gave her some papers. She gave him a check. He put it in his right-hand coat pocket. After she went out, he started for the bathroom. I didn’t know this other person was in the bathroom, but I’d found the communicating door was unlocked on my side, and I’d locked it when I bored the hole. The murderer knew Ringold was going to come to the bathroom, and tried to slip back into four-twenty-one. The door was locked. I was in there. The person on the other side of the door was trapped.”
“What did
you
do?” she asked, barely breathing.
“I was a damned fool,” I said. “I should have taken up the telephone, called the lobby, and told them to block the exit, and telephone for the cops. I was rattled. I didn’t think of it. I twisted the bolt on the communicating door jerked it open. I followed the murderer out as far as the corridor. I stood in the doorway and looked up and down the corridor. Then I went over to the elevator and got off at the second floor. When the squawk started, I went out.”
“A sweet story,” she said, and then after a moment’s thought added, “By God, it
is
a sweet story—But you’ll never make the cops believe it.”
I smiled patronizingly at her. “You forget,” I said, “that
I saw the murderer.”
Her reaction was as fast as though someone had shot an electric current into the seat of the chair. “Who was it?” she asked.
I laughed at her and blew another smoke ring. Or tried to.
She crossed the room and sat down. She crossed her knees, held the left knee in interlaced fingers. The thing didn’t make sense to her, and she didn’t know what to do about it. She’d look at me, then down at the toe of her shoe. The skirt of her evening gown got in her way. She started to pull it up, then got up, walked into the bedroom, and took it off. She didn’t close the bedroom door. After a minute or two she came out wearing a black velveteen housecoat. She came over again and sat down beside me. “Well,” she said. “I don’t know as it changes the situation a hell of a lot. I need someone to handle the Ashbury angle. You look like a good guy. I don’t know what there is about you that makes me trust you—sight unseen, so to speak. Who are you, anyway? What’s your name?”
I shook my head.
“Listen, you, you’re not going to get out of here until you give me your name, and I mean
your name.
I’m going to see your driving license, your identification cards, take your fingerprints—or I’m going over to your apartment, find out where you live, and all about you. So get that straight.”
I pointed to the door. “When I get damn good and ready, I’m going to walk right out of that door.”
“I’ll rat on you.”
“And where will that leave you with your swell shake down with Alta Ashurst?”
“Ashbury,” she said.
“All right, have it your own way.”
She said, “What’s your real moniker?”
“John Smith.”
“You’re a liar.”
I laughed.
She tried a little wheedling. “All right, John.” She twisted around, drew up her knees, and slid over across my lap so she was lying on one elbow, looking alluringly up into my face.
“Listen, John, you’ve got sense. You and I could team up and make something out of this.”
I didn’t look at her eyes. The color of her hair kept fascinating me.
“Are you in or not?”
“If it’s blackmail, I’m out. That’s out of my line.”
“Phooey,” she said. “I’m going to let you in on the ground floor. Then you and I are going to make some dough.”
“Just what have you got on Alta Ashbury?”
When she opened her mouth, I suddenly put my hand over it. “No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
She stared at me. “What’s eating you?”
“I’m on the other side of the fence,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Listen, sweetheart, I can’t do it. I’m not that much of a heel. You’re not kidding me a damn bit. You were in on the whole play. Jed Ringold got those checks from Aka Ashbury. He turned them over to you to take up here to the Atlee Amusement Corporation. You gave the boys here a slice, had a little stick to your fingers, turned the rest of it back to Ringold, and Ringold passed it on to the higher ups—or the lower downs whichever you want to call them.
“Now, I’m going to tell you something. You’re done, finished, all washed up. Make a move against Alta Ashbury, and you’ll be on the inside looking out.”
She straightened up and sat looking at me. “Well, of all the damn nuts,” she said.
“All right, sister, I’ve told you.”
“You sure as hell have—you big boob.”
I said, “I’ll have another one of your cigarettes if you don’t mind.”
She gave me the cigarette case and said, “Well, strike me down. If that ain’t something-I guess I’m going nuts. I see you go into a hotel, the cops start looking for you, I run into you, I ditch a date, bring you up here, and spill my guts to you without finding out who the hell you are or anything about it. I suppose you’re a private dick working for Alta Ashbury— No, you’d be more apt to be hired by the old man.”
I lit the cigarette.
“But what’s the idea of being such a dope? Why didn’t you let me go ahead turning myself inside out, pretend you were going to work with me, pump me for information, and then throw the hooks into me?”