I got the same cool, polite brush. “Really, I couldn’t. But thank you just the same.”
I went back to my own room. After I’d showered and changed into gray flannel slacks and a light sports shirt, I sat down in front of the air-conditioner with a cigarette and went back over the whole thing from the time I’d noticed she was eavesdropping. She’d looked me over and dropped me. Why? And what had she really wanted? An adventure, an interlude, a break? Whatever it was, I’d failed to measure up somewhere. Well, you couldn’t win ’em all. The phone rang.
“I’m just stirring some Martinis,” she said warmly. “Why don’t you come over, Mr. Hamilton, and have one with me to celebrate your sailfish?”
You never know, I thought; maybe that’s why they’re so fascinating. “Love to,” I said. I dropped the phone back in the cradle and was out the door in two strides.
I knocked on No. 17, and stepped inside. She’d changed into a pleated black skirt and white blouse, and was very smart and very, very attractive from the sling pumps to the sleek dark head. There was a bucket of ice on the glass top of the dresser, and she was stirring Martinis in a pitcher.
She turned and smiled. “Do sit down, Mr. Forbes.”
Two
The way she said it told me there was no point in trying to bluff. I stepped inside and closed the door. Her room was exactly the same as mine, furnished with a brown carpet and curtains, twin beds with yellow spreads, a dresser, and a glass-covered desk at the right of the door. The telephone was located on the desk, and beside it— almost under my hand—were two sheets of motel stationery covered with the slashes and pot-hooks of shorthand. Two names were spelled out in the message; one of them was Murray, and the other Forbes.
I glanced up at her. “You just got this?”
She nodded coolly, and poured the Martinis. “Just a few minutes ago.”
“But you knew who I was all the time? You practically told me there in the bar.”
She smiled. “I couldn’t resist it; you were so insufferably smug. And I wanted to see how you’d react.”
“Are you from the police?”
“Of course not,” she said. She handed me the Martini, and picked up her own. “Here’s to your sailfish. Or should we drink to Mr. Murray’s durability, or the high cost of extradition?”
“What about Murray?” I demanded.
“Haven’t you heard?”
“How could I? I was afraid to call anybody on the Coast. And there was no mention of it in the papers I could get.”
“Then you were still afraid you’d killed him?”
I took a sip of the drink; I needed it. “No. I assumed he was tougher than that. But felonious assault is pretty damn serious itself. What do you know about it?”
“Would you hand me those notes, please?”
I took them off the desk and passed them to her, so completely at sea now I didn’t feel anything at all. She walked around between the beds and sat down on the farther one with a leg doubled under her and the pleated skirt spread carefully over her knees. Taking a sip of the Martini, she said, “Hmmm,” as she studied the shorthand. Then she put her drink down on the night table and groped for a cigarette. I held the lighter for her. She smiled, and nodded to the armchair near the end of the bed. “Please sit down.”
“What about Murray?” I said impatiently.
“Broken jaw,” she said, consulting her notes. “Mild concussion. Something or other to the something sinus— ethmoid, I think. Scalp lacerations. Various minor injuries. A hundred and fifty dollars’ damages to his camera and possibly two hundred to the furnishings of a motel room. He’s recovering satisfactorily, and the woman’s husband appears to have used a little influence to smooth it over and keep it hushed up. You might go to jail for any one of half a dozen misdemeanors if they could get their hands on you, but there’s no felony charge. Nothing they would extradite you for.”
I sighed with relief.
“You apparently don’t care much for private detectives.”
“I can contain my enthusiasm for them,” I said. “Snoopy bastards. I had to have that film, anyway; and since I didn’t know how to get into a Speed Graphic, I opened it on his head.”
“You were lucky it was no worse.”
I lit a cigarette. “Would you mind telling me who you are, and just what this is all about?”
“I’ve already told you who I am,” she replied, taking a sip of her drink. “Mrs. Marian Forsyth.”
“And you’re a private secretary to some businessman in Louisiana,” I said. “Don’t give me that.”
“I am,” she said. “Or was, rather. However, let me finish this dossier. Correct me if there are any errors. Your full name is Jerome Langston Forbes, you’re usually called Jerry, you’re twenty-eight, and you are from Texas—at least, originally. You’re single. You drink moderately but you gamble too much, and at least twice you’ve been involved in a messy affair with a married woman. You attended Rice Institute and the University of Texas, but didn’t graduate from either. I believe it was some trouble over a crap game at Rice, and you left the University of Texas to go into the Navy during the Korean war. You don’t appear to be the plodding type of wage-earner, to say the least. Since your discharge from the service in nineteen fifty-three you’ve owned a bar in Panama, written advertising copy for two or three San Francisco agencies, been a race-track tout, and at the time you got into this brawl in Las Vegas you were doing publicity for some exhibitionist used-car dealer in Los Angeles. Is that fairly accurate?”
“Except for a minor point,” I said. “I wasn’t the racetrack tout; I was the man behind him. I made him. It was a public-relations deal. But never mind that. How’d you find out all this?”
She smiled. “You’ll love this. From a private detective.”
“But for God’s sake why? And where was it I saw you before?”
“Miami Beach,” she said. “Six days ago.”
“Oh. Then you were staying—”
She nodded. “At that same Byzantine confection you were. The Golden Horn.”
The Golden Horn was one of those chi-chi motels in the north end of Miami Beach that really aren’t motels at all except that you can park your own car if you want. I didn’t have a car, of course; I’d stayed out there merely because they were less expensive than the big places. I thought of it now, trying to remember when I’d seen her.
“It was by the pool,” she said. “You were trying to pick up some girl from—Richmond, I believe.”
I frowned. “I remember the girl, all right. Silver blonde with a seven-word vocabulary. Priceless, hilarious, hysterical—I can’t remember the other four. But I don’t know why I’m so vague about seeing you. As attractive—”
“Competition, perhaps,” she said. “The pool side is not my terrain. Nor the beach. I’m too thin.”
“You’re entitled to your own opinions,” I said. “Don’t try to brain-wash me. I still say I’d have noticed you. I could spot the line of that head a hundred yards—”
“I had my hair up, and I was wearing a swimming cap,” she said crisply. “Now, if we’re through discussing my visibility, or lack of it, would you care to know what I was doing?”
“That one I’ve already figured out. You were listening.”
She gave me an approving glance. “Right.”
“But why? What was it about my voice? If you’re a talent scout for Decca, I can’t sing a note.”
For the moment, let’s just say your voice has a certain unique quality that interests me. And it might make you a great deal of money.”
“How?” I asked.
I can’t tell you right now; maybe I won’t at all. I don’t know. But at any rate you know now why I started investigating you—especially after I began to suspect your name wasn’t really George Hamilton.”