We both remained silent as the cab rolled along Park Lane. What she was thinking about, I don’t know, but I was thinking I had wasted an evening. Isobel Jones gradually was taking form in my mind as a woman who grabbed at every passing man she saw. I was relatively certain she had been having some kind of affair with Willard Knight, for she did not impress me as the type of woman who would go to the defense of a man merely because he was her husband’s partner. And it also seemed certain the character we had just left at the Sheridan was, or had been a man in her life. Possibly, judging from her agitation at seeing him, one she was trying to ditch.
To clinch it, she was making a mild pass at me. Women don’t pass at men with faces like mine unless they are in the habit of instinctively passing at every man.
We crossed Mason Avenue and moved slowly along the sweepingly curved drives of the park. It was a moonless night, but brilliant starlight barely prevented it from being pitch black.
“Put your arm around me,” she demanded.
I put my arm around her.
She turned up her face and closed her eyes. Her lips pursed expectantly, and I grinned down at her until she finally popped her eyes open. She looked cross when she saw my grin.
“Kiss me,” she said sharply.
I gave her a short, careless kiss, then pushed her erect and removed my arm. “Look me up between murders.”
She watched me uncertainly, chewing her lower lip. “Take me home,” she decided suddenly.
The cab driver half turned in his seat. “Car without lights following.”
Craning to peer through the rear window, I saw it about a half block back. It kept the same distance while I watched it for two more blocks.
“Want me to lose him?” our driver asked.
“No. Take the lady home.”
The rest of the trip we made in silence. Isobel periodically glanced through the rear window at our shadow, her face nervous and her brow puckered thoughtfully. As we neared her home, she asked the driver to let her out at the corner.
Getting out first, I held the door for her. Our tail, suddenly switching on his lights, rolled past as though he had no interest in our doings. It was a taxicab.
“That must be your friend, George,” I said to Isobel. “What’s on his mind?”
She shook her head. “I’ve no idea.”
She watched the taxi’s tail light until it disappeared around the next corner, then abruptly said good-bye and nearly ran toward her house. I got in the front seat with the driver and told him the address of my flat.
As we turned into Grand Avenue, the cab driver said, “Our friend’s with us again.”
“Let him enjoy himself.”
I didn’t even bother to look around. When we reached my flat, the trailing taxi pulled in right behind us, his bumper nearly against ours. As I paid off my driver, I watched from the side of my eyes and saw George Smith step from the other cab. My driver pulled away and I waited for George to make a move. But when he merely glowered from under shaggy brows, I grinned at him and started up the walk toward the apartment house door.
George caught up just as I reached it. I held the door for him to follow me into the lobby, then faced him, waiting.
His angry eyes burned up and down my frame as though he were calculating his chances. They halted at my jaw line, and suddenly he swung.
My knees bent just enough so that his fist skimmed off my hat. A short left jab into his exposed ribs swooshed the air out of him. Then I snapped erect, crashed a right hook to his jaw, and he spun like a top. The second time around he pitched forward and I caught him in my arms. I lowered him gently to a seated position with his back against the wall.
When he returned to this world, I was seated on the lowest steps puffing a cigar. He wagged his head a few times, felt his jaw and focused his eyes at me with difficulty.
“Sleep well?” I asked.
He eyed me with distaste. “I ought to knock your block off.”
I blew smoke at him. “You can keep trying. But you’ll only end up punchy. What’s your grudge?”
Struggling to his feet, he groped for the outer door handle to hold himself up. “Stay away from Isobel,” he said.
“Why?”
He leaned toward me, nearly lost his balance and recovered. “Because I’ll beat your brains out if you go near her again.” His eyes burned with an emotion I suddenly realized was jealousy.
“Why, you’re in love with her, aren’t you?” I asked softly.
“That’s some more of your business,” he snarled, and pushing through the door, was gone.
VIII
I made four calls the next day, none of which added to my knowledge of who killed Walter Lancaster, or why. The first was to Headquarters, where I signed formal charges against Percival Sweet — yeah, that was the goon’s name — and Barney Seldon.
The second was to the Jones and Knight Investment Company, where I learned from Matilda Graves she had been unable to unearth anything whatever about Willard Knight’s personal financial transactions. I found Harlan Jones in, but he seemed as remarkably uninformed about his partner’s private affairs as was the secretary-bookkeeper.
My third visit was to Knight’s home where I bullied Mrs. Knight into letting me go through his private papers. And again I drew a blank. If Knight ordinarily kept personal financial records at home, he had removed them along with himself, I decided.
Although from our previous conversation I was reasonably sure Knight did not make a habit of confiding anything at all to his wife, I asked her if she knew what stocks he owned. She didn’t. Then I asked her for a picture of her husband, only to learn Lieutenant Hannegan had beat me to the request and the only two photographs she had of him were now at Police Headquarters.
My fourth visit was back across the river to Carson City, where I spent the rest of the afternoon in the morgue of the Carson City Herald. When I finished I had a chronological record of Walter Lancaster’s public life, including all the welfare fund drives he had headed during the past twenty years, all the speeches he had made and the community projects he had engaged in, but none of it pointed to anything interesting. If he had ever been involved in anything unsavory, his influence had been great enough to keep it out of the papers.
At six I quit for the day, had a leisurely dinner and went home to shower and dress for my date with Fausta.
When I arrived at the apartment over El Patio I found Fausta prepared for an evening of riotous gaiety. Her gown, an affair of flaming red which sedately hid her legs clear to the ankles, was not quite so sedate from the waist up. It had no back, no shoulder straps, and so little front she would have been arrested had she appeared in it on a stage. Since obviously it was held up solely by chest expansion, and would embarrass us both the first time she exhaled in public.
At the car, I slid under the wheel. “I like your dress,” I said. “Particularly the bottom half. But don’t come around for sympathy when you get pneumonia.”
“With the temperature eighty — five? Where are we going?”
“I planned making the rounds. A drink here, a drink there. Maybe a floor show later on. But in that gown I think I’d better take you to the Coal Hole.”
“That dark place?” Fausta asked indignantly. “I want to go to the Plaza Roof.”
So we went to the Plaza Roof. After that we went to the Jefferson Lounge, the Casino Club and the Barricades. About eleven-thirty we drifted into the Sheridan Hotel.
The Sheridan’s head waiter stopped us just inside the door to inform us in a regretful voice there were no empty tables. He spoke to me, but his eyes remained on Fausta’s shoulders.
“We will sit at the bar,” Fausta decided.