Returning to the balcony with a glass of ice water and half a glass of cognac, he found the girl in her original position. The last ray of sunshine had gone, and her body was in full shade.
Shayne’s eyes looked broodingly upon her for a time, then he settled one hip on the railing, carefully tested the width of the flat top rail of the grille with the bottom of the tumbler of ice water, and left it there.
He said, “It’s getting late for a siesta, young lady.”
The girl’s right eyelid fluttered. Her body tensed, but she did not move for a full 30 seconds. Then she yawned languidly, rolled over on her back and looked up into the angular face of the redheaded detective who was not more than five feet away.
“Neighborly, aren’t they, these balconies?”
“Intimate,” Shayne said. He took a sip of the cognac and chased it with ice water.
“Um-m-m.” The girl stretched her bare arms and arched her body upward with sinuous grace of a kitten.
A full-faced view of the girl erased any small doubt he might have had about her identity. The girl in the deck chair was Barbara Little, alias Margo Macon.
Grinning broadly, Shayne lifted his cognac glass in a toast and said, “So this is it. The bold, bad French Quarter where beautiful girls loll around unclothed to raise the blood pressure of unwary tourists.”
She nodded, her wide blue eyes frankly interrogating him. “Le Vieux Carre.” A perfectly slurred accent caressed the words. “Do I? And are you?”
“What?”
She smiled lazily, drawing her upper lip away from the fine edges of her teeth and looking entirely unsophisticated. “Do I raise your blood pressure, and are you an unwary tourist?”
Shayne pondered the question, then said, “At the risk of offending you — no.”
Her delighted laughter bubbled up. She turned on her side, rested her chin on her hand and studied his features with unabashed approval. She said, “I like you,” simply and candidly.
“Why?”
“Because — not one man in ten thousand would have stayed on his side of the rail with me lying here — like this. Not one in a hundred thousand here in the Quarter. But you haven’t even tried to get in a lecherous crack,” she ended, a little frown puckering her forehead.
“Don’t get the idea my blood pressure can’t go up,” he warned. “I just don’t like the setting.”
She laughed again. “I didn’t suppose you were a eunuch. Not with that mop of red hair. My name is Margo.”
Shayne nodded approval. “Nicely alliterative with Mike.”
Margo came to a sitting position. “Nice ice water you’ve got there.”
“Shall we drink to lots of future alliteration?” He held up his cognac glass which was half empty.
She made a face at the glass. “I don’t like tea,” she hazarded with distaste.
Shayne laughed. “You’re a lousy crystal gazer.” He set the glass down and swung from the railing, stepped inside and got the cognac bottle. Returning, he leaned over the railing and handed it to her. “The last of my private stock.”
Her eyes widened as she accepted the bottle. “I guessed it would be cognac, but I didn’t hope for Monnet. Should I get a glass or may I drink from the bottle?”
“Go ahead,” Shayne said, “it would be nice to share your diseases.”
She put the bottle to her lips and took three swallows, exhaled a long breath of satisfaction, and her eyes sparkled at Shayne. She held the bottle up and looked at it. “I hope I didn’t take too much.”
“Help yourself. It’s a pleasure to find good cognac appreciated. We can pick up a few more bottles.”
“Not in the Quarter. Not Monnet.”
Shayne emptied his glass and held it out to her. “We may as well split what’s left.”
She studied the liquor line carefully, poured an inch in the tumbler and said dreamily, “This is the way things should happen in the Quarter — and don’t.”
“It’s happening now,” he reminded her.
She took a small sip from the bottle. “Is it — is this really happening, Mike? Won’t I wake up after a while and find some greasy fat man leaping over the rail to paw me?”
“Not while I’m around to ward them off,” he told her confidently.
She closed her eyes and took another sip from the bottle. “Will you ward them off, Mike?” A shiver passed over her tanned body.
“Is it that bad?”
“Worse.” She shivered again and curved her full lips in a smile of self-contempt. “Oh, what a heel I am. Something perfectly lovely happens and I—” she clenched her fingers tightly around the bottle as though it represented some cherished thing.
Shayne got out a pack of cigarettes and shook one partly out and handed the pack over. She nodded and said, “Light it for me and I’ll get your diseases this time.” She was laughing again.
Shayne lit the cigarette. She got up and stood at the railing. When he handed it to her she caught his hand and held it for a moment, then put the cigarette to her lips and puffed quietly.
Twilight was coming on. Shayne smoked and sipped his drink, waiting for Margo to say something. When she didn’t, he said, “Let’s finish off the drinks and talk.”
Again she took three long swallows from the bottle, and again her eyes sparkled with delight. Shayne drained his glass and set it down, offered to take the empty bottle and dispose of it, but she said, “No. I’m going to keep it,” and cradled it in her arms. “It’s crazy,” she went on softly, her blue eyes dreamy, “the way things happen. A month ago I didn’t care whether I lived or died.”
“And now?”
“A month in the sunlight does strange things to people,” she said after a moment. “I can see now how impossible it is for one to be a failure at twenty-three. How utterly juvenile to think so.”
“A failure?” Shayne arched ragged red brows.
“You see, I thought I could write. I’ve always thought so. Then suddenly I found out I couldn’t.” She looked up at him with an odd little smile. “Now I’m convinced that I can’t do it. A month here under the most perfect conditions and I haven’t written a word. But the payoff is that it doesn’t matter. Not any more. I simply don’t care. Does that make sense?”
“Plenty.” Shayne was unsmiling. “Writers need something to write about. After you’ve done a little living—”
“Are you a writer?” she asked eagerly.
Shayne shook his head. “No.”
“And you’re not a tourist,” she mused. “Now let me see — you drink Monnet and wash it down with ice water, of all things! You might be a sculptor — those hands of yours—” She laid a small brown hand over his left one.
Shayne held out his big right hand and studied his long knobby fingers. “They come in handy for a lot of things,” he said, amused. “Why should I be a writer or sculptor?”
“Well, some kind of artist. Why else would you be here in the Quarter wasting your good cognac on a gal you’ve never seen before, and expecting only conversation in return?”
“Maybe I expect more than conversation in return.”
She laughed impishly. “Maybe you’re one of those devils who plan their seductions carefully and lull their victims into false security during the preliminaries. But you look like a forthright scoundrel.”
Shayne said, with a big grin, “You’re too young to be talking so airily about seductions.”
She said scathingly, “After a month in the Quarter?”
Shayne took a final drag on his cigarette and ground it out with the toe of his shoe.