While she paced, picketing the place for information so to speak, she kept thinking it out. Inside there, in this place I’m doing sentry-duty before, a redhead in a light-green dress handed Graves a note earlier tonight. I’ve got the place and I’ve got the note. All right, I’ve got that much. Let’s see now. To write that note in the first place she needed a pencil and paper. Those are things that the average chippy of her kind doesn’t carry around with her ordinarily; she sends most of her messages with her eyes and hips. Maybe this one did have pencil and paper; if she did, that’s my tough luck. Let’s say she didn’t have, though. Then in that case she must have had to borrow them from somebody in there. She wouldn’t be likely to interrupt one of the dancers on the floor and ask “Can you lend me a pencil and paper?” She wouldn’t be likely to accost some pair or group at one of the tables and ask it. What’s left? The waiter at her table, if she sat at a table. The man behind the bar, if she sat at the bar. The girl behind the hat-check counter. The attendant in the powder-room.
That narrows it down to somebody who works in there.
That’s what I’m doing out here now.
Even in their street-clothes she could more or less identify them at sight as they came out one by one. This trim, pert little good-looker, emerging now modishly garbed as any of her customers, for instance, couldn’t be anyone but the checkroom girl in such a place.
She stopped short as she felt Bricky’s hand come to rest on her sleeve, and then a look of genuine surprise overspread her face at the discovery that the arresting hand was feminine for once. She even seemed a trifle frightened or guilty for a moment, as one dreading retribution, until the question had been put.
“No, it works the other way around at my stall,” she said in a fluting, baby voice. “They all take out their own pencils and use them, where I’m concerned.” She opened her handbag and dug up a fistful of assorted cards and scraps of paper bearing names, addresses, telephone-numbers.
One escaped, and she thrust it away with her foot. “Let it go,” she said, “I’ve got enough without that.” She put the rest away. “No women borrowed a pencil from me; in fact I haven’t one to lend.” She went on up the street, with a little twittering sound of diminutive feet.
This colored damsel coming out, equally modish in her turn, could only be the powder-room attendant.
“Wut kine pencil?” she answered the query aloofly. “An eyebrow pencil?”
“No, the regular lead kind, the kind you write with.”
“They doan come in there to write, honey, you got the wrong number.”
“No one did ask you for one, though, all evening long?” Bricky persisted.
“No. That’s about the one thing they left out. Come to think of it, that’s the one thing I ain’t got in there to give. You’ve give me an idea; I think I’ll get me one tomorrow night and have it in there, I might get a call for it.”
A man came out.
He stopped and shook his head. “Not at my end of the bar. Better ask Frank, he works the other end.”
Another man came out right after him.
“Are you Frank?”
He stopped and smiled and singed her with his eyes. “No, I’m Jerry, but I’m not doing anything. Don’t let the name stand in your way.”
This time she was the one who had to go away, ten yards or so away, until he was gone and the coast was clear again.
But by that time somebody else had already come out and was well on his way. She had to run up the street after him to overtake him.
“Yeah, I’m Frank.”
“Did a girl borrow a pencil from you tonight, at your end of the bar? She was a tall girl, and she was red-haired, and she was in a light-green dress. Oh, it was a long time ago, earlier in the night, but see if you can remember— Did someone? Did anyone?”
He nodded. She got it. “Yeah,” he said, “someone like that did. I remember. It was way back around twelve o’clock, but someone did.”
“You don’t know her name, though?”
“No, that I don’t. I’ve got an idea she works in one of the other clubs around here—”
“You don’t know which one, though?”
“No. The only reason I say that is because I happened to overhear somebody else say to her, ‘Whatcha doing in here? You through at your own place already?’ ”
“But you don’t know—?”
“I don’t know who she is or where she works or anything else about her. Only that she borryed a pencil from me and bent over close, scribbling something behind her arm for a minute, then looked up and gave it back to me.”
He stopped by her a moment longer. There wasn’t anything else for either one of them to say.
“Wish I could help you.”
“I do too,” she said wanly.
He turned and went away. She stood there looking down at the sidewalk at a loss.
That was as close as she could probably hope to get. So near and yet so far.
She raised her head. He’d turned a second time and come back to her again.
“It seems to have you worried.”
“Plenty,” she admitted forlornly.
“Here’s a tip for you. I don’t know if you’re in club work yourself or not, but they’ve got funny habits. There’s a theatrical drugstore they all hang out in after the clubs’ve closed up. People that aren’t in the know, they think they step out with these stage-door johnnies, go on champagne parties. Well, some of them do some of the time, but most of them don’t most of the time. Don’t you believe it. Nine times out of ten they head for this place like a bunch of kids when school’s been let out. They like it better. They gang up there and drink malted milks and let their hair down. Go over there and take a shot at it. It’s worth trying, anyway.”
Was it! She broke away so fast she left him standing there staring after her. She ran all the way. It was only down a couple of blocks from there.
They weren’t exactly lined up at the fountain, as he’d led her to expect. Maybe that was because it was too late and the majority of them had already disbanded. But there were a group of three still lingering down at the far end. One of them had a Russian wolfhound with her. She must have brought it out for an airing before going to bed for the morning. They were all ganged up around it, feeding it crumbs from their plates and making a fuss over it. Its owner was in what might be called a state of street-wear deshabille. She had a polo coat thrown over her shoulders, and under it peered the bottoms of a pair of boudoir pajamas, stockingless ankles, and house slippers. None of the three was a redhead.
Their heads came up. Their attention left the borzoi and settled fleetingly on Bricky instead.
“She means Joanie, I guess,” one of them said. She addressed her directly, and rather fatuously. “That who you mean?”
How could she tell, if she didn’t know herself?
They didn’t know her last name, it appeared.
“I just know her from in here,” one said.
“Me too,” a second one added.
“She didn’t show up tonight,” the third one supplied. “Why don’t you go around to her hotel, look her up there? It’s just down the line a ways. I think it’s called the Concord or the Compton or something like that.” Then she qualified it: “I don’t know if she’s still there, but she was a couple nights ago. I walked her over as far as the door, to give Stalin some exercise.”