A portly gentleman with a rosy bald head and a sun-reddened face ending in three chins dozed behind the desk, the right side of his face cradled in a pudgy palm. He wore a wilted white shirt opened at the neck, the sleeves rolled up above his elbows. He opened one eye and looked up, startled, when Shayne said, “Good afternoon. What’s the chance of getting a room?”
He got up slowly and came over to the counter. “Welcome, sir,” he said in a high, squeaky voice. “Only one room left. It’s on the southwest corner and so all-fired hot nobody else’d take it, but I reckon you’re mighty lucky to get that.”
The detective had written “Michael Shayne and…” on the register before he finished speaking. He stopped with pen lifted and said, “Only one room? We want two.”
“This is a large double room,” the clerk assured him. “Bath right across the hall. You and the Missus will be mighty comfortable if you can stand the heat.”
Shayne said, “Miss Hamilton is my secretary. Haven’t you got a couple of singles.”
“Secretary, huh?” He sighed and screwed his eyes up tight to look at Lucy. He shook his head doubtfully and said, “Well, I dunno. There’s a cabin. But I’d have to charge her for the double room and you the full price for the cabin, and I don’t reckon…”
“Wait a minute… how about two cabins,” Shayne interrupted.
“H-m-m. Just driving through?” he asked.
“We might stay a few days,” Shayne told him. “If you have two cabins…”
“Well, now, if you’re stayin’ a while, I reckon so.”
Shayne finished writing in the register, “…Secretary, Miami, Florida.”
The fat man turned it around and read the names aloud. “Shayne, huh? From Miami? Would you be a newspaper man?”
Shayne said, “No. Can we see the cabins?”
“No offence, stranger.” He struck a bell on the desk and a colored man came through a door in the rear. He took two keys from a hook and said to the porter, “Show these folks nine and ten.”
“Just a minute… how about some ice and a drink?” Shayne asked.
“Well, sir, we don’t have any ice and we don’t sell liquor here at the hotel. Plenty of that down in Centerville, though.”
Shayne turned to Lucy and made a grimace of disgust and said, “Come on,” and they followed the porter outside. Shayne got in his car and started the motor. Lucy walked across the grounds behind the Negro while Shayne drove slowly over the baked and rock-covered distance from the hotel to the cabins.
When they reached nine and ten, the porter handed Shayne the key marked “9” and went on to open number ten.
Shayne got out and unlocked the door and was struck by a sickening and sultry blast of heat that had been accumulating all day inside the tightly closed cabin. He hastened to open both windows, looked behind a flowered curtain in one corner and found a concrete-floored shower stall and lavatory and toilet.
He went out to get his bag from the car. The porter had already taken Lucy’s. He glanced over at her cabin to see the windows opened and the door ajar.
Back in number nine, Shayne tossed his bag on the bed, opened it and took out a clean polo shirt and a fresh pair of slacks and clean underwear. He peeled off his sticky clothes and ducked into the shower. The water was lukewarm at first, and he felt slightly nauseated, but it ran cooler after a while. He came out drying himself with a towel which he gloomily estimated might dry the body of a debutante who had been dieting for six months in preparation for her coming out party.
His rangy body was still wet when he put on his clothes, but he felt refreshed and cooler. He hastily ran a comb through his unruly stubble of red hair and went out. He hesitated about closing the door and locking it, decided against it on the chance that it would catch a little more of the evening air.
He walked over to the hotel and appreciated the comparative coolness of the dim lobby when he stepped inside.
The clerk looked up and said, “I reckon it’s almighty hot out there.”
“It might help,” said Shayne, “if you’d leave the windows open so your guests wouldn’t be roasted before they could get to them.”
He chuckled. “It don’t help. We tried it. When it gets hot in Kentucky, it gets by god hot.”
Shayne went to the telephone and read the hand-printed sign pasted on it, LIFT RECEIVER BEFORE TURNING CRANK.
Shayne lifted the receiver and turned the crank. When the Centerville operator answered, he asked for number 340. She said, “Thank you,” in a sweet southern drawl, and rang the number.
Shayne leaned against the wall with the receiver to his ear and massaged his left earlobe. His gray eyes were half-closed, his wide mouth relaxed. He glanced over at the fat clerk. He was leaning on the counter with his mouth open, as though he expected to eavesdrop through it instead of his ears.
A soft, slurred feminine voice spoke in Shayne’s ear, “Yessuh?”
“I want to speak to Mr. Charles Roche.”
“Mistuh Charles Roche, did you-all say?”
“That’s right. Is he in?”
“Jest a minute,” the Negress said doubtfully.
While Shayne waited, he glanced again at the clerk. His mouth was open a little wider, and a faint wheeze came from him as if he were about to snore. His eyes were nearly closed.
Presently a man’s voice came over the wire. “Who is this calling?” His tone was gruff and slightly irritable.
“Mr. Roche?”
“What do you want with him?”
“I’d like to speak to him personally,” Shayne said gently.
“Would, eh?” the voice said. “What about?”
“I prefer to tell Mr. Roche that.”
“Where you calling from?” The tone was curt now, and definitely irritable.
“Is Mr. Roche there?” Shayne asked.
“No. Give me your name and…”
“I’ll call back.” Shayne banged up the receiver and mopped his face. He stood for a moment rubbing his angular jaw, then felt in his pocket for some coins. His hand came out clutching several, and he walked slowly along the four slot machines looking at the combinations showing. He selected the half-dollar machine, inserted the fifty-cent piece and pulled the handle.
The screen door opened and a man stepped inside as the tumblers whirred and the cylinders revolved. The first cylinder to stop showed a lemon, and he turned to the quarter machine. He fed it twice without getting a paying combination, and glanced aside with a shrug of his wide shoulders at the newcomer who was silently watching him.
He was a tall, bony-faced man with leathery skin and white bushy brows. He wore a sweat-streaked gray cotton shirt, and denim trousers held up by faded suspenders. He met Shayne’s gaze and said, “That’s the price of a meal you’ve wasted, Mister.”
“Or a couple of drinks,” Shayne agreed. He turned to the dime machine. It absorbed four dimes, giving him three lemons in succession, then gently slid off a five-pay combination after hesitating on it for an instant.
Shayne knew, then, what he was bucking. He tightened his wide mouth and moved on to the nickel machine. Lemons showed on one or more of the cylinders, two pulls out of three, and twice more a paying combination slid off just before clicking into place.
Stepping back with his hands empty, he said disgustedly, “Gimmicked to hell and gone. I’ve never seen worse in Juarez or Tia Juana.”
“What did you expect?” asked the gaunt-faced man. “This is Centerville.” He spoke without rancor. Flatly. As though being in Centerville, Kentucky, explained everything. This was the first time Shayne had heard those three words, “This is Centerville,” spoken, but it wasn’t the last time he was to hear them, always with that flat assumption of dogmatic acceptance. He was to discover that it explained so many things which could not otherwise be explained.
He shrugged and admitted, “One generally expects to get a little play from his money, even from these one-armed bandits. Thirty or forty per cent return, at least. It’s just good business. To have them pay off a little would encourage the suckers,” he went on irritably. “The people who gimmick these things so tight are just cutting their own throats.”