“You think I’m blind?”
“But, Sylwia! This is no way to act! Here we come! Make a big surprise for you! Bring fine script! Queen of the Big House — ah Sylwia, you’ll love this little B-Girl that goes to prison to save the fellow she loves.”
“I can see her now.”
“And we have another surprise! Tell, Vicki!”
Vicki, however, kept silent, and in a moment Sylvia sat down, covered her face with her hands. After a while she went outside, stumbled aimlessly around, spied Tony’s car, got in it. There, in a moment, tiptoeing up to the window, Tony joined her. “Bad, hey?”
“Worse than I could have dreamed.”
“Who are these others?”
“The one in the beret is Dimmy Spiro, head of Phoenix Pictures. The tall one is La Bouche, his production manager. The little one has a last name, I guess, but I don’t know what it is. He’s called Benny the Nib. He’s a check forger that Dimmy brought in as a writer, to do a story for me called Queen of the Big House. And they’re up here to—”
She broke off, thought a minute, as though to decide how much she wanted to tell this man anyway, then told him what was brewing in short, jerky sentences. When she mentioned Hazel he whistled, evidently having long since guessed the girl’s mental condition. Then he said: “Then it all checks up.”
“What checks up?”
“Jake heard a little more. They got in last night, and stayed with your husband in his shack. The idea was, they were to lay low until your divorce was granted, then the girl your husband is to marry — Hazel — would come out and they’d be married. But your husband, he wanted some sort of ring he’d given you, so Hazel could be married with it. He wanted to catch you before you left town, but he hadn’t had a phone put in the shack, so he came here. They’re pretty sore. They didn’t want you to know until it was all over, and they thought the ring could wait.”
“Not a Baltic baron’s ring. It’s his soul.”
“They’re a funny bunch.”
“You’re telling me?”
Mr. La Bouche appeared at the back door and asked Tony if he had a shine boy. Tony called, and a Mexican youth came out of the garage at rear. Mr. La Bouche told him to go inside, and step on it. Benny came out and announced that if he had no saddle soap, he needn’t come in at all. Mr. Spiro came out, flicking a handkerchief against his soft leather boots, and inspected the can the boy had by now taken out of his box. It was at this point that Vicki came out, leaned close, and whispered something to Mr. Spiro. When Mr. Spiro nodded, Vicki started around the club, first stopping to lift Sylvia’s hand out of the car, press a kiss on it, and put it tenderly back. When he had gone, Sylvia said: “Tony, will you lend me the car?”
“You mean now?”
“I’m going to follow him in. I’m going to follow him straight to wherever he’s meeting her. I’m going to stop this horrible thing if it’s the last thing I do on earth.”
“Well — I guess so.”
“Give me the key, quick.”
Following the Baron, however, wasn’t quite as simple as it looked. She was only a few yards behind him as he turned out the gate, and for a few hundred yards up the road she held him in view. But then, as she matched his rapidly mounting speed, the needle leaped to 60, to 70, to 80. At 82 she missed a truck, lost her nerve, and pulled back to a sane rate. The green car disappeared around a curve, then vanished altogether. She drove a few moments uncertainly, then leaned forward with evident purpose. Back in town, she drove to a small office building. When she hurried into a lawyer’s office on the second floor, and asked for Mr. Daly, the girl at the switchboard seemed mildly annoyed. “Well, he’s been expecting you all morning, Miss Shoreham. He’s had to break two engagements outside, and I’ve been trying to reach you.”
Mr. Daly, a tall, thin man with sandy hair, was amiable enough about her tardiness, but when she blurted out that she wanted the divorce stopped he frowned, announced frostily that this was a most unseemly time. Briefly, leaving out psychopathic details, she explained what was afoot. He interrupted disagreeably: “I can’t impress on you too strongly the thought that it will be practically impossible to straighten out your affairs, particularly your professional contracts, until you get this divorce. Under the community property laws of California, your husband can—”
“I want this marriage blocked!”
“Why shouldn’t he marry your sister?”
She didn’t answer.
He got up, took his hat, started for the door. His phone rang and he came back. When he hung up he put his hat back on the tree. “Your decree was entered an hour ago.”
“Mr. Daly, what can I do?”
“Nothing.”
“Can’t we phone the marriage license bureau and—”
“They have no authority to refuse your sister a license, if, as I understand it, she’s of age. Besides, she can be married anywhere. Why don’t you talk to her?”
Dismally, Sylvia drove back to the hotel, but there the clerk shook his head. “Your sister went out, I’d say it was over an hour ago, Miss Shoreham. No, she didn’t leave any message, or—” He broke off to answer his phone, then held up his hand. “It’s for you, Miss Shoreham. Would you like to take it here?”
Trembling, she took the phone, but it wasn’t Hazel, it was Tony. “How’s it going, Miss Shoreham?”
“Just terribly.”
“I just called up to leave word that you needn’t bother about sending the car out or anything. If you’ll just leave the keys at the desk I’ll have somebody drop by for it.”
“Thanks, Tony.”
“Oh, and one other thing. That ring.”
“Ring? What ring?”
“It’s the ring I’ve seen you wear, the one with a coronet on it. I thought perhaps it’s the same one your husband—”
“Yes, it is. What about it?”
“He must have forgotten it, or dropped it, or something. One of the girls picked it up in the office. I’ll bring it in—”
“No, no! Listen to me, Tony!”
“Yes, what is it?”
“He won’t get married without it. He’ll be out after it, and I might still be able to stop them. Say nothing to anybody about it, and don’t give it up, even to him. I’ll be right out, as fast as your car can take me.”
In the casino of the Galloping Domino a fat little man sat playing roulette with one hand, holding a coffee cup with the other, and extending both feet to a Mexican boy who was just finishing an extensive job of polishing two soft calf boots. Behind him, a tall man and a little man stood admiringly, exclaiming over the acumen of his bets, which had now netted him an agreeable profit. In the office, a girl sat at the redwood desk, fingering a ring that lay on the blotter before her. On the steel oval she noticed tarnish, rubbed it on the virgin blotter. It made marks. Possibly to find a smaller blotter she opened the center drawer, then the righthand drawer. But this she closed quickly, for she had glimpsed something never far out of sight in gambling houses: the cold, oily sheen of pistol barrels and rifle butts.
Outside, a car with its lights burning turned in at the gate, a girl at the wheel, a man beside her. He jumped out, ran into the casino. She continued around to the side, turned the car so it faced the road, stopped, and waited.