But if it was Elsa seated beside him, the word “Miami” should have identified him to her.
She finished her drink and slid off the stool and sauntered toward the door. Shayne turned his head and watched her depart, again recalling more of Joe Pelter’s words: “She don’t sling it around for you to look at. It’s there, and she knows you know it’s there, but that’s all.”
Well, it could be, Shayne decided judiciously. There was something quite ladylike about her erect posture, her walk. But what kind of cat and mouse game was she playing? If she expected him to follow her…
Then a real honey-blonde entered the room in a sort of breathless rush, and stopped very still to look about hopefully.
This, Shayne knew with a sudden, unmistakable conviction, was the woman who had brought him out to Los Angeles. His luck was holding good. She was a real knockout. He mentally apologized to Joe Pelter for ever having thought the woman who had just left the stool beside him could possibly be Elsa Cornell.
She was quite tall and she held herself proudly just inside the doorway as she openly and coolly inventoried the male occupants of the room. She wore a clinging black sheath dress with a crimson sash and a crimson silk scarf at her throat. She was about thirty-five, and she had full, bold features. Even at that distance Shayne could almost swear that he smelled her distinctive perfume.
When her slowly moving gaze met his she hesitated momently, but she did not smile or give any sign of recognition. Her eyes moved on along the backs of the other men at the bar, and she completed a full circuit of the room before moving.
Then she did not look at Shayne, although he continued to stare at her openly. She dropped long, dark lashes demurely over her eyes and walked with sinuous grace directly to the empty stool beside him.
He did smell her distinctive perfume now with certainty. It was not too strong. Thank God she had not doused herself with it as she had her letter.
She sat beside him and glanced fleetingly at his cocktail glass, and then told the bartender, “I will have a sidecar, please,” and she had the sort of warmly intimate voice that made the request sound as though she were inviting the man into bed with her… and Shayne knew happily that this was going to be quite an evening.
5
“Do you like them too?” asked Shayne in a tone of politely surprised interest. “That’s quite a coincidence, isn’t it?”
She glanced at him obliquely, as though she wasn’t quite certain what he meant, and he wondered if she supposed for a moment that he hadn’t got a full description of her from the taxi driver… had not recognized the perfume she was wearing.
Then she said, “Oh? Sidecars, you mean? Is that what you’re drinking? It is a coincidence.” She opened her handbag on the bar and groped inside for a thin gold cigarette case, opened it and extracted a cigarette. Watching her with interest, Shayne caught a glimpse of green that came out with the cigarette.
He struck a match and held it for her, asking politely, “May I?”
She cupped her hands, touching his fingers to move the flame to the end of her cigarette. He felt something being pressed between his fingers, and she drew in smoke and moved her hand away from his and said composedly, “Thank you.”
He shook out the match as the bartender set her cocktail in front of her. When the man moved away, Shayne dropped both hands into his lap beneath the bar and unfolded the tightly creased and minutely folded half of a thousand dollar bill which she had pressed between his fingers. He glanced at her and saw that she was looking down at the piece of currency in his hands, that she knew he had received it safely and must now know definitely who she was.
He had no idea why she was playing it this way, but he went along with the act, making it appear that they were complete strangers, drawn together by the coincidence of both liking sidecars.
He drained his glass and motioned to the bartender for a refill, asking her, “Have you ever tried one at the Brown Derby? They’re pretty special.”
She murmured, “I’ve heard that.” There was a tightness in her voice and Shayne felt she was trying desperately to convey something to him without saying it aloud.
He glanced up and down the bar, wondering what she was afraid of here, why she insisted on carrying out the rather absurd pretence to such lengths.
He became conscious then that someone was standing very close behind him and just to his left, close enough, Shayne realized, to be able to overhear anything they said to each other.
He said, “I’m a stranger in town… just trying to see some of the sights. I don’t want to seem presumptuous, but… can you suggest a good place to go for dinner… where some of the stars might be hanging out?”
She chuckled throatily, as though genuinely amused, but behind the sound Shayne thought he sensed overwhelming fear, incipient hysteria.
“You would not be… making a proposition, I trust?”
Shayne said lamely, “Well, I…” Then he turned to her with a wide grin, glancing out of the side of his eyes at the man who stood so close behind them and declaring, “A perfectly honorable one. If you happen to be free for dinner…?”
He turned his head farther to the left and glanced balefully at the man who stood there and told him harshly, “If you’re trying to order a drink, there’s an empty stool right down there.”
He was a fat man with pale, innocuous features. He looked as embarrassed as though he had been caught in the act of peeking through a keyhole, and muttered, “I’m sorry, I… Of course. I had no intention…” He turned and moved to the empty stool Shayne had indicated.
Elsa’s voice was low and strained, very close to his ear. “Let’s get out of here.” She slid off the stool and turned toward the outer door.
He dropped a five-dollar bill on the bar and followed her, noticing that the fat man craned his head around to watch them go out together, exactly as a voyeur might avidly watch a sexual act being performed in front of him.
Shayne went out the door into the Hollywood night behind Elsa and saw the doorman holding the door of a taxicab open while she stepped inside. He strode across the sidewalk and dropped half a dollar into the man’s hand and got in beside her.
The door closed softly and the taxi pulled forward. She pressed warmly against him and put her head against his shoulder and began sobbing like a frightened child.
Shayne put his arm tightly about her shoulders and held her very close, and spoke soothingly with his mouth against her ear:
“It’s all right now. Relax.”
“I’ve been so damn scared… so long.” She whispered the words against him, stopped sobbing and held her breath for a long moment, then let it out in a shuddering sigh.
He began, “Now tell me for God’s sake…” but she hushed him with two fingers pressed against his lips, and murmured, “Just hold me without talking now. That driver…?”
Shayne repressed a snort of derision. She had a bad case of the willies, all right. Did she think that every taxi driver in town was in league against her?
Instead of arguing the point at that moment, he asked her in a low voice, “Where to?”
“Tell him… the Roosevelt Hotel.”
They were headed east on Sunset, and when Shayne told the driver, “The Roosevelt, please,” he nodded his head and continued in the same direction.
The blonde stirred against him and moved away slightly, but not out of the circle of his arm. She turned her head to look up steadily into his eyes, and in the bright lights of the boulevard he saw that her dark eyelashes were wet.
“Michael Shayne.” She pronounced his name softly, almost disbelievingly, in a voice too low for the driver to hear. “You don’t remember me, do you? But I would have recognized you anywhere.”