“She was doing the dancing,” Shayne said. “I just gave her moral support. Too bad you don’t have a car. Brannon’s probably shown my picture to all the cab drivers who are still working.”
“More than likely. But we are going to need a car, Mike.” He struck a match. He seemed to be having a hard time getting his pipe to draw. “Stay where you are. I’ll run out and steal one.”
10
Michael Shayne smoked a cigarette sitting in the darkness on the Englishman’s front steps. When he heard the crunch of tires on the gravel, he gulped the last of his drink and put the glass on a window sill. Powys was driving without lights. He coasted to a stop at the gate, and Shayne got in.
“Nice little Morris,” Powys said with satisfaction. “Amazing how easy it is to steal a car. Never did it before. I think it belongs to Miss Trivers, so let’s try not to get any bullet holes in it.”
He kept the lights off until they were a quarter of a mile from the Lodge. Then he decided not to run the risk of going through the town. Once again Shayne circled St. Albans on back roads.
“Don’t forget there’s a cop in front of the place,” Shayne reminded him.
“Never fear, never fear. That man is very much on my mind.”
They came in through the straggly unpaved streets of the Old Town. “Everybody asleep,” Powys observed. “Wouldn’t mind being asleep myself.”
They passed through the native market. After rejecting several possible parking places, Powys parked on a steep street beside the old church.
“I’ll look the situation over. Back in a tick.” He glanced at Shayne as he got out. “Pity you’re so bloody big, Mike. And that red hair. There’s no getting around it, you don’t look much like a tourist.”
He latched the door softly and disappeared. They were several blocks from the nightclub district; Shayne could see the fitful reflections from the big electric signs, which would go on blinking for another few hours. He heard a goombay band, perhaps playing in the Pirate’s Rendezvous. Beginning to feel trapped in the little car, he got out and stood waiting for Powys in the side doorway of the church. After a time he saw the Englishman coming up toward him rapidly. Seeing Shayne, Powys signalled. He turned and started back in the direction he had come. Shayne followed, keeping close to shop-fronts.
Powys stopped at the entrance to a narrow cobbled alley. “You’d better go in through the back,” he said as Shayne came up to him. “I couldn’t make out what kind of guard they have on the door, but with all those pretty gels in the floorshow, they must have something. I’ll pave the way. Another sudden attack of drunkenness is called for, I’m afraid. I’ll have quite a reputation before the night’s over.”
He nodded and plunged into the alley. At the next intersection he looked around the corner with care, and walked briskly across. A car went by. The instant Shayne heard the sound of the approaching motor he dove for a shadow and pressed hard against a damp wall. He waited until the car was well out of the neighborhood before he continued to the corner. Powys, across the street, waved jauntily. Without waiting for Shayne, he turned into the continuation of the alley. Shayne crossed the street at a run and saw Powys going up a short flight of steps that led into one of the buildings, probably the one that held the nightclub. The goombay band was resting between numbers, but even without the music there were muffled indications that the building was alive.
The Englishman’s walk suddenly became lurching and uncoordinated. He was gone by the time Shayne reached the top of the steps. The door was open, and the redhead looked into a long hall, poorly lit by a single 25-watt bulb. Powys was dancing solemnly with an old colored woman, who had apparently been watching the door. Shayne grinned. This was clearly a dance step of the Englishman’s invention, a weird combination of a cha-cha and a waltz. He held her in both arms, whirling her around and around while she shrieked with laughter and tried to push him away. He danced backward into an open doorway, looking down at her with his usual owlish solemnity. Shayne heard him say, “My good woman, you dance superbly.”
The redhead slipped past. Glancing to the left at the end of the hall, he saw a stove and a man in a chef’s hat, and heard the clatter of dishes. He turned right. A moment later he found himself at the foot of a steep iron staircase. Sticking a cigarette in his mouth, he looked around. A man in the costume worn by the orchestra came through a doorway mopping his forehead. A drum began to beat slowly.
“Where’s Vivienne?” Shayne asked casually.
“Working,” the man told him, without giving Shayne a second glance. “Her dressing room upstairs. First door.”
Shayne thanked him and went up. This part of the building, which the public never entered, was in a bad state of repair. The paint was peeling, the floors were dirty. He stood aside on the landing to let a dancer go by. She was barefooted, and wasn’t wearing much in the way of a costume. The first door at the top of the stairs was unmarked and without a latch. Shayne pushed it open and went in.
It was little more than a large closet. An unshaded bulb was burning above a make-up table with a fly-specked mirror. Clothes were thrown carelessly over the back of a chair. A small window that looked out on the alley was open as far as it would go, but the air in the room was heavy with the smell of cosmetic preparations and stale tobacco smoke.
Shayne lit his cigarette and made a quick survey of the room. One of the several dresses hanging along one wall had a Paris label, a sign that he was in the right place. He opened a small trunk, and found it filled with a jumble of costumes. He continued around the room, his deeply trenched face clearly showing his distaste for the job. He almost missed the small purse on the dressing table, amid a litter of jars and tubes and crumpled tissues. He cleared a space on the table and turned it inside out.
Below, the drum-beat had quickened. Shayne disregarded the few coins, the hairpins, lipstick and eye-tools. There were several torn scraps of newspaper and a folded letter. The drum-beat was now very fast; the girl’s number must be nearing its climax. He pulled the letter out of the soiled envelope and read it quickly. It was on a letterhead of the American consul, addressed to Mile. Vivienne Larousse at a St. Albans hotel. In stiff official language it listed the conditions under which French citizens could be assigned a quota number for permanent admission to the United States. Mile. Larousse’s chances, the consul seemed to feel, were not good.
Shayne thrust the letter back and picked up the newspaper clippings. The lines on his face deepened. They were radio schedules, like the one he had found in the Camel’s desk, and a light pencil-line had been drawn in the same way around several listings. The drummer in the main room of the nightclub was slapping his drum with mounting frenzy. He beat out a complicated series of rhythms in a final excited flurry, and there was an abrupt burst of applause. Shayne swept the assortment of objects back into the purse. Before he snapped it, he looked at the radio schedules again. One of the little circles had been drawn around the six o’clock news on Wednesday in the previous week. That was the exact moment when Albert Watts had locked his travel agency and walked off toward the bay, not to be seen again alive.
Closing the purse with a snap, Shayne stepped back against the opposite wall. His eyes were bleak. The crowd continued to applaud, and mixed with the clapping there were a few drunken shouts. Gradually the noise died. A moment or two later, Shayne heard the click of high heels on the iron steps. The door opened.
In addition to high-heeled slippers, all she seemed to be wearing was a light cotton wrap, which she wasn’t bothering to hold together. When Shayne had seen her earlier that evening, her face had been alert and interested. Her eyes had been alive. Now, coming into a mean, sordid room where she believed herself to be alone, her face sagged and was without luster. She seemed years older. Sitting down at the dressing table, she leaned forward to look without pleasure at her reflection in the mirror. She had reached up to take off her eyelashes when she saw Shayne.