She said nastily, without raising her head: «That’s ridiculous.»
«Why is it ridiculous?» Mallory asked, looking mildly surprised and rather annoyed.
Rhonda Farr lifted her face and gave him a look as hard as marble. Then she picked a cigarette out of a silver case that lay open on the table, and fitted it into a long slim holder, also black. She went on:
«The love letters of a screen star? Not so much any more. The public has stopped being a sweet old lady in long lace panties.»
A light danced contemptuously in her purplish-blue eyes. Mallory gave her a hard look.
«But you came here to talk about them quick enough,» he said, «with a man you never heard of.»
She waved the cigarette holder, and said: «I must have been nuts.»
Mallory smiled with his eyes, without moving his lips. «No, Miss Farr. You had a damn’ good reason. Want me to tell you what it is?»
Rhonda Farr looked at him angrily. Then she looked away, almost appeared to forget him. She held up her hand, the one with the cigarette holder, looked at it, posing. It was a beautiful hand, without a ring. Beautiful hands are as rare as jacaranda trees in bloom, in a city where pretty faces are as common as runs in dollar stockings.
She turned her head and glanced at the stiff-eyed woman, beyond her towards the mob around the dance-floor. The orchestra went on being saccharine and monotonous.
«I loathe these dives,» she said thinly. «They look as if they only existed after dark, like ghouls. The people are dissipated without grace, sinful without irony.» She lowered her hand to the white cloth. «Oh yes, the letters, what makes them so dangerous, blackmailer?»
Mallory laughed. He had a ringing laugh with a hard quality in it, a grating sound. «You’re good,» he said. «The letters are not so much perhaps. Just sexy tripe. The memoirs of a schoolgirl who’s been seduced and can’t stop talking about it.»
«That’s lousy,» Rhonda Farr said in a voice like iced velvet.
«It’s the man they’re written to that makes them important,» Mallory said coldly. «A racketeer, a gambler, a fast money boy. And all that goes with it. A guy you couldn’t be seen talking to—and stay in the cream.»
«I don’t talk to him, blackmailer. I haven’t talked to him in years. Landrey was a pretty nice boy when I knew him. Most of us have something behind us we’d rather not go into. In my case it is behind.»
«Oh yes? Make mine strawberry,» Mallory said with a sudden sneer. «You just got through asking him to help you get your letters back.»
Her head jerked. Her face seemed to come apart, to become merely a set of features without control. Her eyes looked like the prelude to a scream—but only for a second.
Almost instantly she got her self-control back. Her eyes were drained of color, almost as gray as his own. She put the black cigarette holder down with exaggerated care, laced her fingers together. The knuckles looked white.
«You know Landrey that well?» she said bitterly.
«Maybe I just get around, find things out… Do we deal, or do we just go on snarling at each other?»
«Where did you get the letters?» Her voice was still rough and bitter.
Mallory shrugged. «We don’t tell things like that in our business.»
«I had a reason for asking. Some other people have been trying to sell me these same damned letters. That’s why I’m here. It made me curious. But I guess you’re just one of them trying to scare me into action by stepping the price.»
Mallory said: «No; I’m on my own.»
She nodded. Her voice was scarcely more than a whisper. «That makes it nice. Perhaps some bright mind thought of having a private edition of my letters made. Photostats… Well, I’m not paying. It wouldn’t get me anywhere. I don’t deal, blackmailer. So far as I’m concerned you can go out some dark night and jump off the dock with your lousy letters!»
Mallory wrinkled his nose, squinted down it with an air of deep concentration. «Nicely put, Miss Farr. But it doesn’t get us anywhere.»
She said deliberately: «It wasn’t meant to. I could put it better. And if I’d thought to bring my little pearl-handled gun I could say it with slugs and get away with it! But I’m not looking for that kind of publicity.»
Mallory held up two lean fingers and examined them critically. He looked amused, almost pleased. Rhonda Farr put her slim hand up to her white wig, held it there a moment, and dropped it.
A man sitting at a table some way off got up at once and came towards them.
He came quickly, walking with a light, lithe step and swinging a soft black hat against his thigh. He was sleek in dinner clothes.
While he was coming Rhonda Farr said: «You didn’t expect me to walk in here alone, did you? Me, I don’t go to night-clubs alone.»
Mallory grinned. «You shouldn’t ought to have to, baby,» he said dryly.
The man came up to the table. He was small, neatly put together, dark. He had a little black mustache, shiny like satin, and the clear pallor that Latins prize above rubies.
With a smooth gesture, a hint of drama, he leaned across the table and took one of Mallory’s cigarettes out of the silver case. He lit it with a flourish.
Rhonda Farr put her hand to her lips and yawned. She said, «This is Erno, my bodyguard. He takes care of me. Nice, isn’t it?»
She stood up slowly. Erno helped her with her wrap. Then he spread his lips in a mirthless smile, looked at Mallory, said:
«Hello, baby.»
He had dark, almost opaque eyes with hot lights in them.
Rhonda Farr gathered her wrap about her, nodded slightly, sketched a brief sarcastic smile with her delicate lips, and turned off along the aisle between the tables. She went with her head up and proud, her face a little tense and wary, like a queen in jeopardy. Not fearless, but disdaining to show fear. It was nicely done.
The two bored men gave her an interested eye. The dark woman brooded glumly over the task of mixing herself a highball that would have floored a horse. The man with the fat sweaty neck seemed to have gone to sleep.
Rhonda Farr went up the five crimson-carpeted steps to the lobby, past a bowing headwaiter. She went through looped-back gold curtains, and disappeared.
Mallory watched her out of sight, then he looked at Erno. He said: «Well, punk, what’s on your mind?»
He said it insultingly, with a cold smile. Erno stiffened. His gloved left hand jerked the cigarette that was in it so that some ash fell off.
«Kiddin’ yourself, baby?» he inquired swiftly.
«About what, punk?»
Red spots came into Erno’s pale cheeks. His eyes narrowed to black slits. He moved his ungloved right hand a little, curled the fingers so that the small pink nails glittered. He said thinly:
«About some letters, baby. Forget it! It’s out, baby, out!»
Mallory looked at him with elaborate, cynical interest, ran his fingers through his crisp black hair. He said slowly:
«Perhaps I don’t know what you mean, little one.»
Erno laughed. A metallic sound, a strained deadly sound. Mallory knew that kind of laugh; the prelude to gun-music in some places. He watched Erno’s quick little right hand. He spoke raspingly.
«On your way, red hot. I might take a notion to slap that fuzz off your lip.»
Erno’s face twisted. The red patches showed startlingly in his cheeks. He lifted the hand that held his cigarette, lifted it slowly, and snapped the burning cigarette straight at Mallory’s face. Mallory moved his head a little, and the white tube arced over his shoulder.
There was no expression on his lean, cold face. Distantly, dimly, as though another voice spoke, he said: